Regina's Song (29 page)

Rankin had one of those rich, oratorical voices that made him sound like a member of the U.S. Senate. He could probably have made a weather report sound like earthshaking news.

“Mr. Forester,” he said then, turning to James, “When did you first meet Miss Greenleaf?”

James pondered that. “If I remember correctly, she came to dinner at the boardinghouse one evening in late September or early October last fall. Mark had mentioned her background and her mental problems, so we didn’t really know what to expect. She charmed us all into a corner, though, and entertained us with stories about the private sanitarium—she called it the nuthouse—where she’d spent a fair stretch of time following her sister’s murder.”

Rankin was staring at James with an awed look on his face. “You have a magnificent voice, Mr. Forester,” he said. “I’ve
got
to get you on the witness stand. You sound almost like the voice of God.”

James smiled. “That might depend on your definition of God, Mr. Rankin. We could talk about that if you’d like, but I’m not sure the witness stand would be the best place for such a discussion. The limitations of ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ could interfere with theological speculation, don’t you think?”

“I could listen to this man talk all day,” Rankin told the rest of us with a broad smile.

“Keep him clear of Hegel, though,” Charlie suggested. “Kant’s OK, but Kierkegaard and Hegel make my teeth hurt.”

“Patricia tells me that you’re a scientist, Mr. West,” Rankin said.

“I don’t know if I’d go quite
that
far, Mr. Rankin,” Charlie replied. “I’m an engineer. I make stuff. A scientist works with theories; engineers work with nuts and bolts. Science guys are usually covered with chalk dust, but we’ve got grease and metal filings on our clothes. We get paid better than they do, though.”

“And when did
you
first meet Miss Greenleaf?”

“That same evening James did. Mark brought her to dinner. She was auditing a class he was teaching, and she did a paper—’How I Spent My Summer Vacation.’
That’s
what got our gang interested in her. Mark’s still got copies, so he can give you one. Keep a tight grip on something when you read it, though. Reality starts to slide away about halfway through
that
puppy.”

“You have very colorful speech, Mr. West,” Rankin observed.

“I’m a working slob,” Charlie replied with a shrug. “I was perfectly happy with a weekly paycheck and enough spare time to mess around rebuilding cars. I do read a lot, though.”

Rankin nodded. Then he looked at Erika. “Your turn, Miss Erdlund,” he told her. “Patricia tells me you’re in medical school.”

Erika nodded. “Charlie rebuilds cars; I rebuild people—at least that’s what I’ll be doing when I come out at the far end of med school. I’ve got a few years to go yet. I met Twinkie on the same evening when the rest of the gang did.”

“What’s this ‘Twinkie’ business?” he asked her.

“It’s a pet name Mark had for the twins—both of them. I think Renata actually preferred that name after her sister was murdered. Sylvia might not agree, but I think that ‘Twinkie’ thing kept Regina sort of present in Renata’s world. When you get right down to the bottom of it, I think it was Regina’s absence that drove Renata crazy. The twins were a unit, and once Regina was gone, Renata was only half there.”

“Now
that’s
something we might want to pursue,” Rankin said. “What do
you
think, Miss Cardinale?”

“I wish Erika would quit poaching in my territory,” Sylvia replied.

“What a thing to say,” Erika murmured.

“Oh, quit,” Sylvia told her. Then she turned back to Rankin. “As usual, Erika’s raised something troubling. Her notion that Renata was permanently maimed by her sister’s murder suggests that Renata’s apparent recovery was a pure sham. She
pretended
to recover so that she could chase down Regina’s murderer and kill him. I don’t think anybody who doesn’t have a twin can ever fully understand the linkage that exists between twins. They share an awareness we can’t even begin to comprehend. I’m sure that Trish has told you that I’ve been working on a case history of Renata for my master’s thesis.”

Rankin nodded. “It’ll probably come up during the preliminary hearing,” he told her.

“I was almost sure that it would,” Sylvia said. She frowned. “Renata’s condition doesn’t quite match any of the textbook terms. At first I looked into the possibility of multiple personality disorder, but that didn’t fit. The twins were so close that they knew each other completely. Dr. Fallon, her psychiatrist, thinks that fugue might come closer, but I don’t believe that matches either. We may have to come up with an entirely new term for Renata’s condition—’the Twin Disorder’ maybe.”

“I can see that I’ll be talking some more with you and Dr. Fallon,” Rankin mused.

“I think it’s your turn in the barrel, Mark,” Charlie said.

“Thanks a bunch,” I replied sourly.

“Don’t mention it.”

“You seem reluctant, Mr. Austin,” Rankin noted. “I’ll grant you that this won’t be very pleasant, but your testimony will probably be the key to our whole case.”

“I know, but I’m not looking forward to it.”

“You
were
present in the church when Renata came in on the night of February tenth, weren’t you, Mr. Austin? Your previous statement didn’t exactly ring true.”

“I sort of made that up,” I admitted. “Actually, I followed her into the church after she killed Fergusson.” Then I explained how I’d spent that whole night following Twink. “I was one step behind her the whole way,” I said regretfully. And then it dawned on me that Rankin had led me to the one part of the story that I
couldn’t
tell. I took a deep breath and pushed on. “Father O’Donnell and I could hear her raving on in twin-speak. She was soaking wet and delirious, so we called an ambulance. You know the rest. If I’d had my head on straight, I’d have grabbed that purse of hers before the ambulance got there. She’d be back in Doc Fallon’s bughouse by now, and we wouldn’t have to go through all this.”

“
That
gets right down to the nitty-gritty, doesn’t it?” Charlie said admiringly. “You’re even sharper than I thought, Mark. Shipping Twinkie back to the nuthouse would have been a perfect solution.”

“Yeah, but I dropped the ball.”

“You had quite a bit on your mind, Mark,” James said.

“It was still a major screwup,” I replied.

“Well, I’d like to thank all of you,” Rankin said then. “You’ve given me a lot to work with, and I think the facts in this case are definitely on our side. That covers everything for now, I guess.”

We all stood up at that point.

“Could you stay for a moment, Mr. Austin?” Rankin said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“We’ll wait downstairs, Mark,” James told me as they filed out.

“Something else happened in that church, didn’t it?” he asked me shrewdly. “You glossed over something just a little too quickly, Mr. Austin.”

Rankin was sharp, that’s for sure.

“This won’t go any further?” I asked him.

“Not if you don’t want it to.”

“All right. I need to tell somebody about this anyway. When I got to the church, Renata had already gone in. She was hiding in one of those niches where there was a statue. Father O’Donnell and I could hear her, but we couldn’t see her. Then a car went past the church, and its headlights lit the inside of the church. Then we saw her—but she wasn’t alone. There were
two
people in that alcove. They were identical, Mr. Rankin. Renata was there, but Regina was as well. Renata was crying, and Regina put her arms around her. Then they seemed to merge, almost as if they were melting together. Then once they had . . . joined, I guess, Renata began to sing, very softly.”

Mr. Rankin’s eyes were wide, and his face had gone pale under that perfect tan.

“Father O’Donnell says he’s reported the
incident
to his bishop, and the bishop ordered him not to talk about it, not even to confirm anything I might tell anybody else. I guess that’s standard church policy. It wouldn’t make any difference in court anyway, so there’s no point in making an issue of it. Renata’s gone, Mr. Rankin, and she won’t come back. She and Regina are reunited somewhere in her mind. I know the twins pretty well, and I’m absolutely positive that the rest of us don’t even exist in their merged awareness. They have each other, and they don’t need anybody else. They’re complete just the way they are. All of these proceedings are just formalities. The Twinkie twins are back together, and they won’t even be aware of anything that’s happening here in our world. Was that what you wanted to know?”

He kept staring at me, and he didn’t say anything, so I quietly left the room and took the elevator to the lobby.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Trish had advised us that the preliminary hearing was scheduled for 10:00 A.M. on Tuesday, March 3. The media had made quite a big thing out of it, so I was fairly sure that the courtroom would be filled to the rafters with curious onlookers and TV cameras by the dozen.

We all got up early that morning to get dressed and presentable. James and I had a hell of a time persuading Charlie to wear a necktie—partly because the only one he owned was that hideous one Erika had given him for Christmas. I lent him one of mine. Then I had to tie it for him.

We were all pretty tense about the whole thing, so breakfast was a bit sketchy. We
did
drink three pots of Erika’s coffee, though.

James had persuaded us that we should all ride into town in his station wagon. “Let’s all stick together, children. The media folks are likely to be all over us as soon as we walk out the door.”

“He’s right,” Trish agreed, “and we’d better stick to the standard ‘no comment’ response.”

“Aw,” Charlie said, “I was gonna be a star. Don’t you think the reporters would be awfully impressed if I answered their questions in German?”

“Just cool it, Charlie,” Trish told him. “If we ignore the reporters, maybe they’ll give up and go away.”

“Fat chance,” Erika murmured.

We went out the front door at about a quarter to nine, and James, scowling and looking ominously bulky, led our little phalanx out to the street. He wasn’t carrying a club or anything, but James didn’t really need a club to get his point across.

The reporters stepped back to give us room, but several of them
did
throw some shrill questions at us.

Trish fielded the questions with an icy “no comment.”

That didn’t make the reporters
too
happy, but you can’t please everybody, I guess.

Mr. Rankin had given Trish a parking permit, so James drove straight into the parking garage at the courthouse, and we took the elevator up to the fourth floor. A bailiff checked our IDs against a list and passed us on through. That list
really
upset the reporters, and the bailiff’s announcement—every four or five minutes—that “This hearing is
not
open to the public—or the press,” raised a lot of protest.

The bailiff was wearing a gun, though, so the reporters didn’t push him
too
hard.

Mr. Rankin was waiting for us at one of the tables down front. “I don’t think I’ll be calling on any of you to testify today,” he told us, “but Judge Compson might step over some of the more picky procedural details and move directly into a sanity hearing. Fielding wouldn’t like that very much, but I want to be ready—just in case. Take your seats in that first row, and listen very carefully. This is basically a hearing where the prosecution’s obliged to present its case against Miss Greenleaf.”

“She won’t actually be here, will she?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “She has to be present to hear the case against her.”

“But she won’t understand a damn thing,” I protested.

“I certainly hope not—and I hope it shows. If she’s disturbed enough, Judge Compson
could
declare her to be incompetent to stand trial before the day’s out. That’d put an end to this before it goes any further. Don’t get your hopes up, though.”

Les Greenleaf arrived a few minutes later. Inga wasn’t with him, but Mary was. She wasn’t wearing her uniform, but she still had that cop aura hanging over her. The two of them joined us in the front row. Then, a moment or so later, a tall young man carrying a briefcase hurriedly entered.

“That’s Fielding,” Trish told us quietly.

The prosecuting attorney was followed into the courtroom by four people: a uniformed cop; Bob West; a nervous-looking oriental gentleman; and a thick-shouldered fellow with what appeared to be a permanent case of five o’clock shadow and bushy black eyebrows.

“That’s Burpee,” Mary identified the last man.

“It wouldn’t be the same without him,” Charlie said.

Then a side door behind the judge’s bench opened, and a couple of hospital orderlies—one man and one woman—quietly led Renata into the courtroom.

That really jolted me. Up until then this had seemed like a mere charade, with assorted people dancing on strings. With the appearance of Renata, though, it got real serious in a hurry.

“All rise,” the bailiff called from the front of the courtroom.

We stood, and a woman with iron grey hair wearing a black judicial robe entered and sat down behind the bench. “You may be seated,” she announced. She waited a moment while we sat down, then she rapped her gavel. “This hearing is now in session,” she said. “Now then,” she continued, “just to be certain that everyone here understands the rules, this is a closed hearing, and these proceedings are to be kept strictly confidential. The court will be
very
unhappy with anybody who violates the confidentiality of these proceedings.” She looked around sternly. “Am I going too fast for anybody? To put it in the simplest of terms, keep your mouths shut. If somebody here tries to turn my courtroom into a three-ring circus, I’ll lean on him—hard. The press can go be free somewhere else, and the public has the right to know only as much as I
choose
to let it know. This is
my
court, and we’ll play by
my
rules. Have we all got that straight?”

“Wow!” Charlie whispered.

“She’s not kidding,” Mary quietly told us. “She’s one tough cookie, and you
definitely
don’t want to cross her.”

“The prosecution and the defense will approach the bench,” Judge Compson said then.

Mr. Rankin and the nervous young prosecutor went up to Judge Compson’s bench, and the three of them held a brief conference. Then Rankin and Fielding returned to their seats.

“Call your first witness, Mr. Fielding,” the judge instructed.

“The prosecution calls Officer Paul Murray,” Fielding responded.

The uniformed cop rose and went to the front of the courtroom. One of the bailiffs swore him in and he sat down in the witness chair beside the judge’s bench.

“You were the officer who discovered the body of a Mr. Walter Fergusson on the night of February 10?” Fielding asked him.

“Yes, sir. It was after midnight—1:13, to be exact. Because of the series of homicides in park areas during the past six months, we’ve been instructed to patrol the parks regularly. My partner and I were cruising along Green Lake Way, and we heard some noise coming from down by the lakeshore. It was very foggy that night, so my partner radioed for backup. We made a cursory search, and several other officers soon joined us. Then I discovered Mr. Fergusson’s body, perhaps ten feet from the water’s edge. I determined that he
was
, in fact, deceased. The other officers joined me, and we secured the scene. Then my partner went back to the car and radioed for the detectives.”

“Could you describe the condition of Mr. Fergusson’s body for us, Officer Murray?” Fielding asked.

“There were multiple stab wounds, Mr. Fielding, but they weren’t actually stabs. They were more like long cuts. An ordinary stab wound goes straight in. The wounds on the deceased’s body were long and fairly shallow. I’m no medical expert, but I’d say that Mr. Fergusson bled to death.”

“Have you been involved in the investigation of any of the other murders with a similar MO in the past several months?”

“Yes, sir, a couple of them. The wounds on this most recent body were consistent with those on previous ones—except that there were more of them. The killer even went so far this time as to remove the victim’s shoes and slice the soles of his feet.”

Fielding winced. “Ah—no further questions, Your Honor,” he said.

“Your witness, Mr. Rankin,” Judge Compson announced.

Rankin rose to his feet. “Could you describe the noise you heard that prompted you and your partner to investigate, Officer Murray?”

“It was peculiar, Mr. Rankin,” Murray replied. “It was hard to hear very precisely, but it sounded like a cross between moaning and singing. And something had the animals over in the Woodland Park Zoo all stirred up, and the wolves were all howling—as if they were singing along with whoever was making that noise down by the lake.”

“No further questions, Your Honor,” Rankin said.

“Call your next witness, Mr. Fielding,” Judge Compson said after the uniformed Murray had been dismissed.

“The prosecution calls Sergeant Robert West,” Fielding said.

Bob West was wearing a dark suit, and his face was pretty bleak. It was obvious to those of us who knew him that he wasn’t happy about this. He was sworn in, and he sat down in the witness chair.

“You are Sergeant Robert West of the Seattle Police Department?” Fielding asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you are a detective currently assigned to the north precinct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how long have you been on the force, Sergeant West?”

“It’s going on twelve years now, Mr. Fielding.”

“And you have been involved in the investigation of the series of murders which have taken place in various parks in north Seattle—and others as well, but beyond the immediate jurisdiction of your precinct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you characterize these murders as ordinary, gang-related stabbings?”

“They were anything
but
ordinary, Mr. Fielding.”

“Would you please elaborate, Sergeant West?”

“An ordinary stabbing is usually not very well thought out in advance,” Bob told him. “In many cases, it’s a spur-of-the-moment act, and its main intent is to kill the victim quickly and with a minimum of noise. The Slasher killings were obviously intended to take much, much longer than a simple stab and run. The weapon was not really very efficient.”

“Pardon me a moment, Sergeant West,” Fielding said. He went to a table just in front of the desk and picked up a linoleum knife. He held it up so that Bob could see it. “Was this the murder weapon you just described?”

“If the tag attached to the handle has my name on it, it is.”

“If it please the court, the prosecution will designate this implement as ‘Exhibit A,’ ” Fielding said to Judge Compson.

“So ordered,” the judge replied.

“This would not seem to be a very effective weapon, Sergeant West,” Fielding suggested.

“That would depend on the killer’s intent, Mr. Fielding. If the killer wanted quick and quiet, that wouldn’t have served his—or her—purpose. But it would seem that ‘quick’ was the
last
thing the killer wanted. The intent was quite obviously to make the killing last for a long time. The killer’s primary objective seems to have been to inflict as much pain as possible on the victim. The killer had come up with an unusual means to ensure quiet.”

“And could you elaborate on that, Sergeant West?”

“We were at a loss to explain how the Slasher could slice somebody repeatedly without so much as a squeak coming from the victim. It wasn’t until the December seventeenth murder that we got the answer. That was the killing that took place on the military reservation in Discovery Park. The victim was one Thomas Walton, a sailor in the United States Navy. The Navy doctors refused to release the body to the King County coroner, and they performed the autopsy themselves. They tested Walton’s body for a lot of chemicals—most of them narcotics, they told us—but one of their tests revealed the presence of something decidedly unusual in Walton’s bloodstream.”

“And what was that, Sergeant West?”

“Curare, Mr. Fielding.”

“And what exactly
is
curare?”

“I’m no chemist, Mr. Fielding. As I understand it, though, some Indian tribes in the Amazon smear it on their arrows to paralyze game animals. It has the same effect on humans, I understand.
That
was what kept the victims quiet—the killer drove a hypodermic needle into their throats for a quick dose of curare before the cutting started.”

“Wouldn’t curare be quite rare in this part of the world?”

“No. Doctors use it when a patient is having a seizure—or so the coroner tells us. I understand that it’s available in any well-stocked pharmacy.”

Fielding went back to the exhibit table and picked up a hypodermic needle with a small yellow tag tied to it. “The tag on this syringe has your name on it, Sergeant West, and it’s dated February tenth. Would you tell the court who found it, and where, and what the significance is?”

“That was found in Miss Renata Greenleaf’s purse by the staff of the University of Washington Medical Center after she’d been brought to the emergency room by ambulance. The linoleum knife was in there as well, along with a couple of sets of rosary beads.”

“And the syringe was tested for any chemical residue?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what chemical, if any, was found in that residue?”

“Curare, Mr. Fielding.”

“If it please the court, the prosecution will designate this syringe as ‘Exhibit B,’ ” Fielding said to Judge Compson.

“So ordered.”

Fielding turned back to Bob. “Were any further tests performed on Exhibits A and B, Sergeant West?”

“Yes, sir. They were tested for blood residue.”

“And what were the findings?”

“The lab confirmed that the blood on the knife was Mr. Fergusson’s. There wasn’t enough blood on the hypodermic to do a DNA test, but the blood type
did
match Fergusson’s.”

“Does this evidence confirm the probability that Miss Renata Greenleaf should be considered the prime suspect in the murder of Mr. Walter Fergusson, and of a number of other murders as well?”

“The MO is consistent. Curare and a linoleum knife appear to have played a part in many recent murders.”

“And was there in your opinion sufficient probable cause to place Miss Greenleaf under arrest?”

“There’s no question about that, Mr. Fielding.”

“And did you arrest her.”

“No, I did not.”

Fielding lost it right there. “You
didn’t
? Why not, for God’s sake?”

Judge Compson rapped her gavel. “That’s enough of that, Mr. Fielding,” she told him firmly.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Fielding apologized, then turned back to the witness. “Would you please explain to the court why you chose not to place Miss Greenleaf under arrest, Sergeant West?”