Skull Session (48 page)

65

M
O CHECKED THE GATE AND found it locked. He got back into the car, parked it to one side of the driveway, and began the walk up to the lodge. There'd been wind and some sleet during the night, but then it had warmed up and just rained, leaving the ground wet. Now it was just a gray, raw, lousy day. The weather reports had yammered about the early winter storm hitting New England, but it had pretty well fizzled out by the time it got this far south. It was typical of the times, he thought morosely, that even the weatherman had to sensationalize the headlines. A whole society with jaded senses, no way to reach them but the extremes.

Against his chest he could feel the pressure of the photograph he'd slid into his jacket pocket before leaving, the one he'd confront Vivien Hoffmann with. He'd gone home from his meeting with Paul and found that, despite all the other urgent aspects of Highwood, what he kept thinking about was the unusual skull-feather earring Paul had picked out of the rubble. The earring that had teased him every time he'd seen it.

Late last night, on the verge of sleep, he'd found the nagging memory that had evaded him for almost a week, sat up suddenly, slapped on the lights, went to the case files he'd brought home with him. Not Essie, not Richard, not Steve—flipping through the photos in the files, he found the school portrait of Dub Gilmore, who along with Steve Rubio had disappeared in September. A plain-faced kid, small nose, brown hair slightly punked-out. And one pierced ear, with a small but unusual earring in it. A silver skull and small bright feather, some tropical bird's feather.

Afterward, he couldn't sleep.
Mrs. Hoffmann, I want to show you
something,
he rehearsed.
Your nephew found this earring here at the house.
This is a photo ofa kid I'm looking for. Same earring, right?Either the kid took
yours from this house, or he left his here. In either case, he was up here. I need to
come in here with a forensic team.
If she didn't come around, he'd get a judge to give him a warrant on the basis of the earring. Period.

He should be pumped up with the find, but instead all he felt was a peculiar resignation, a lot like the suspension of caring you went through when you went into a possible dangerous arrest or stakeout, but with an added melancholy. It had to do with women, he decided. With Lia. For the past few weeks he'd been hving with Lia always at the back ofhis mind. She'd been like the sun rising on a clear and perfect day. Without the prospect of her somehow coming into his life, his horizons seemed bare and stark. He'd have to get deliberate about meeting women—hanging out in bars, joining clubs, whatever. It was a depressing prospect. He marched, mad at himself for feeling crushed because some completely unfounded fantasies, fucking
hallucinations
really, hadn't materialized.

One thing was clear: It was time to finish this up, get on with something else, begin to forget.

Mo tugged his parka collar up against the cold. Maybe Paul hadn't forgotten to leave the gate open, but had gotten nervous about unexpected visitors and relocked it. Mo's talk about an imminent repeat of the violence had probably gotten him on edge. Good.

He came over the crest of the drive to find that Paul's car was nowhere to be seen. So Paul was late. Terrific. He half-heartedly tried the smoking room door and found it locked, as he'd expected—leaving him with the choice of hanging out and freezing until Paul showed, or walking all the way down the driveway again to wait in the car. His luck didn't seem to be running good.

Killing time, trying to keep warm, he walked around the lodge, getting an idea of approaches, hiding places, lines of sight. The woods were a dense tangle, even with the leaves gone: wrist-thick, ropy vines hanging from the big oaks, jagged points of granite ledge breaking through, a snarl of fallen trees and branches. Good killing ground. No one would ever know.

Mo came out on the uphill side of the house, near the kitchen door. He tried the knob and found that the door was unlocked. In his exhaustion, Paul was forgetting things. Still, he was glad to be inside. He made his way across the main room and into the smoking room, where he followed the instructions on the kerosene heater and got it lit.

Another reason for his feeling low, despite the imminent resolution of this case, was that the nature of its closure wasn't quite satisfying. Sure, maybe he'd slam the door on Rizal and Royce, and after months or years of paperwork and trials
maybe,
long shot, manage to get a conviction. But part of him longed for something more dramatic.

Let that fucker Rdzal and Royce or whoever come up, catch them in the act, blow them away. Somebody deserved payback for what had happened to Richard Mason, and Heather, and who knew how many others.

On the other hand, you couldn't just shoot people all the time. It was difficult to explain. Also, if they'd killed before to protect their plan, they'd no doubt try to kill Mo. It was always unpleasant to have people trying to kill you.

Mo listened to the silent house, warming his backside against the heater, holding the earring and matching it to the photograph of Dub. No mistake: either the same earring or one that was identical.

Where was Paul? They'd arranged to meet a half hour ago. Paul would have to be anxious to get the work done before his aunt got here. Anyway, he didn't seem the type to keep someone waiting.

Mo put away the photo, took a turn on the rug. The room was getting warm now. He could picture Lia sitting in the wingback chair, one leg over the arm, the band of sunlight falling across her face and hair. Remembering the
inspiration
of her, he abruptly felt lonely, empty, hollow. When was he going to feel that warmth again, the closeness? What if it was never? Guys got routed away from all that, there was nothing you could do about it, the tracks of your life could just be laid in that direction and you wouldn't know until you woke up to find you're in your mid-thirties, divorced, not up for anything short of the right thing. And before you know it you wake up to find you're mid-forties or fifties, living in hotel rooms. The elbows of your suits got shiny, you ate dinner at bars—burgers and pickled eggs and booze. You wouldn't recognize the right thing if you tripped over her, and she wouldn't know you either. It happened a lot to career cops.

The thought made him breathless for an instant. The old feeling of exhaustion came over him, and he wished he'd taken the time to eat breakfast.

When the sound came from the far end of the house, it was not what he'd been expecting, and yet there was an odd familiarity about it. A heavy thump and clatter, and a sound like a bunch of kids scampering, lots of little footsteps. It wasn't Paul, who would have seen Mo's car at the bottom and would have come in through the smoking-room door, or called out when he first entered.

Mo's heartbeat quickened, and he felt the weight ofhis gun against his ribs, warm, heavy, insistent. After due deliberation, he took out the pistol.
Stay intentional,
he reminded himself.
There's no hurry. Stay calm.

You'll have the time.
The old fear came up in him, of the lethal reflexive thing that lived inside him and made his gun a perfect extension of its will.

He opened the smoking-room door a crack and listened. The pattering noise was louder in the big room, and now he heard another noise that he couldn't place.
Shicka-shicka-shicka,
like someone sawing wood, or filing something, only much faster. There was an almost metallic edge to the sound, like his father sharpening the knife before carving the roast, stropping it first down one side of the steel and then down the other. Only this was impossibly fast.

In one motion, Mo shoved the door all the way open and stepped into the big room, legs spread, elbows bent, the gun pointed toward the ceiling. The scampering was louder, heavier now. The floor seemed to vibrate slightly. And the other noise, coming closer.

The light shifted in the dining room doorway, someone momentarily blocking the light from the kitchen windows.
Hold back, hold off, stay
deliberate,
Mo screamed at himself.
Stay conscious, keep control, don't go
reflexive, no mistakes.

Then there was someone in the doorway, coming into the room faster than Mo would have thought possible. He held off the impulse to fire for an instant, commanding his hand to wait, and immediately realized he'd made a mistake, he'd lost his one chance because now the utterly impossible being was moving in the big space, too fast to track, and now it was coming his way. He fired and fired again, knowing that he was too slow, he was way behind it, he didn't have a chance.

Mo started to dodge but then felt the first colossal impact, and then without any transition he was facing the wrong way, a view of the corner of the ceiling when only an instant ago he was looking across the big room. There was a feeling like pain but impossibly large, an everywhere sensation too big to feel. Then as if there'd been an earthquake the view shifted again and he was staring across the room, eyes level with the floor, and the
shicka-shicka
was all around him. A blurred pair of dancing feet moved across his sight and the sound drifted farther away.
Bare
feet. That seemed particularly horrible and terrifying.

So this is where my tracks lead,
he thought dreamily. There was something very sad about it. And yet a relief too.
You're always dying,
all your life, only you don't recognize it.
It was good to let go and stop fighting it. He wished Lia were nearby, one more glimpse of that wonder, then realized she would be back soon and would be killed too unless Paul could do something, maybe Paul would know what to do.

Not that there was much anyone could do. Abruptly he wished his mother was there, not the little dried-up white-haired way she was now but how she was a long time ago. He felt the shape of her name on his lips,
Mama,
although no sound came.

How ironic. First you let go, you let yourself go on automatic and that's what
fucks you up. So you learn to hold back and the next time you hold back and
that's
what fucks you up.
It was almost funny. Paul should know.

There was something sad and strange in his field of view, and he focused on it with all the effort he could make. A familiar shape, two shapes, but different than he'd ever seen them. After a moment he recognized the objects as his own legs, his own lower body really, lying on the floor with the legs still in their pants and still joined at the hip, one foot with a shoe on and the other off like the nursery rhyme "My Son John," only the legs were too far away, and there was a trail of red and white slimy fat strings from the top of the waist toward where he lay.
Five things worse than dying,
he thought.
Only five, Heather?
Then he thought:
No, nothing's worse.
It was a funny way to see your own legs, your bottom half, and wasn't it appropriate that he'd finally been made into two totally separate parts, Paul would appreciate the ironies of it, wouldn't Paul be amazed by the whole thing, and it was sad because the legs were so awkward and motionless.

He looked at them as if they were old friends he'd miss terribly, and then they disappeared along with everything else.

66

P
AUL JERKED OUT OF THE dream to find himself sitting up, panting and blinking in the too-bright light of mid-morning. He vaguely remembered waking up earlier, then pausing as he sat on the edge of the bed, mustering the energy to get up. He'd begun thinking about the situation at Highwood, closely examining the buckle on the band of his watch, turning it in the sunlight, fascinated. The trancelike state had come over him again, deeper this time. Just hke when he was a kid.

The unforgettable image stayed in his mind's eye:

Seeing the sapling thrash, the pink shapes moving. Ears filled with the sawing
sound. Dropping the handkerchief with the snack in it, turning to go, tripping
over something in the path. Looking back to see a
head,
a man's grimacing head,
staring stupidly at the ground, red-streaked tongue too far out the mouth, neck a
ragged, torn stump. Scrambling upright, running away, seared into a white empty
panic by the sight: a head without a body, on the ground.

Paul felt his stomach start to turn. It couldn't be a real memory. It was an anxiety-inspired dream, an exhaustion dream. Any psychologist would tell him the same thing: "Tripping over your head" was such a perfect symbol ofhis own lifelong dilemma. He'd been tripping over his head all his life: his early neurological problems, then the Tourette's. Tripping over his fucking mind, his intellect, second-guessing his every move, reasoning the joy and spontaneity out of everything he did. Plodding away with his systematic but sluggish haloperidol-saturated brain.

But maybe that wasn't all there was to it. The image was too detailed: blood-streaked extended tongue, lightless eyes, white knuckly glint of spinal column—

Abruptly he was wide awake, energy surging through him.
Railroad
tracks. Forty-four days.
Mo forgot one thing, looking forward from his two dates for the third cycle. What happens when you count back—for an
earlier
cycle? Yes, the pattern took shape. Yes, it made sense of Mo's convergences of dates, deaths, comings and goings. The mandala of cause and effect around the hidden mover, the hidden gravity well, the spiral of light that surrounds the invisible black hole.
Who could you trust?
Yes, the blood tells.

How long had he been sitting? From the windows he could see that the storm had come and gone during the night, leaving the land wet. The sun was too high. He turned over the watch, still in his hands: 11:30. He must have been sitting staring at the watchband buckle, upright but unconscious, for over four hours.

He got quickly out of bed, stood up into his jeans. He'd agreed to meet Mo at the lodge at ten. It was vital to meet with Mo, let him know what he was getting into. But first: Lia. Paul ran to the telephone in the kitchen, dialed, and, half-expecting to get a busy signal again, was relieved when it rang. Then the line was picked up and he heard his own voice: "We can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message when you hear the sound of stampeding elephants . . . ."

He waited for the message to finish, astonished that he'd ever lived a life that indulged the dull, innocent humor of telephone machine greetings. "Lia, it's me," he barked at last. "Listen—it's important that you don't,
do not,
come down today after all. I don't have time to explain right this minute, but call me tonight here at Corrigans'. I'll call Janet and explain that our plans for Mark have to change."

There was a note from Elaine on the counter:
You'll probably be cross
with us, but we haven't heard a peep out of you this morning and we decided to let
you sleep in. You deserve it. We're out running errands and shopping so we'll
have lots of goodies for Mark. Good luck with the Dragon Lady. We'll be back
around one o'c. If M. and L. come before then, just have them come on in.

He balled up the note, dialed Janet's number. "Janet, it's Paul," he said breathlessly.

"I'm on my way out the door. It's not a good time to get into anything complicated."

"This isn't complicated. I can't seem to reach Lia. I need you to tell her something when she calls or comes by for Mark. There's been a change of plans. Tell her not to bring Mark this weekend. It's very important."

"Number one, Paul, I don't appreciate your lack of respect for other people's schedules, especially when it concerns your son, who is very,
very
much looking forward to seeing his father, as we planned. Number two, I'm not going to start being personal secretary for your girlfriends. Number three," she said with satisfaction, "you're too late. They left, what, over three hours ago."

Paul couldn't say anything.

"Lia said she tried to reach you this morning but didn't get an answer.

I thought she left you a message."

For the first time, Paul noticed the blinking light on the answering machine. No doubt she'd called the lodge, then called the Corrigans', left the message. Dempsey and Elaine must have already left the house, he'd been sitting in his trance. "They left?" he croaked.

"She came to pick him up at nine." Janet paused, and her tone of gratified annoyance changed to one of suspicion. "What's this about, Paul?"

Time to be careful offanet.
He had to avoid giving her anything she might use against him. She had already convinced herself he was unstable.
Don't bolster her case.

He tried to calm himself, modulate his voice. "Nothing to be concerned about. Janet, do me a favor, will you? If you happen to hear from Lia or Mark while they're en route today, please tell them to come straight to the Corrigans'. Will you do that for me?"

As he'd hoped, the request brought back enough of her hostility to override her suspicion. She agreed curtly.

He reversed the answering machine tape and listened to Lia's voice: "Hi everybody! Paul, if you're hearing this, I tried to reach you at the lodge, but no luck. Everything's gone like clockwork here. I finished my errands yesterday, so Mark and I are going to get an early start today.

I miss you horribly, and I can't wait to see you and Mark together. Look for us noonish, maybe early afternoon. Dempsey and Elaine, we'll swing by the lodge to see Paul on the way in, I want Mark to see what an amazing job his father has done, and see you later this aft. Bye!"

Paul yanked on his boots and his down jacket, threw open the door. Outside, the air hovered just above freezing. The big winds had plastered wet leaves over the MG's red finish, making it look as if it had sat in the driveway for years. Paul wiped the windshield clear, then slid behind the wheel. To his relief, the motor started readily. He let it warm up for a few seconds and pulled out.

The relief lasted only until the first bend of Dempsey's driveway, where the car sputtered and died, rolled to a dead stop. He tried the ignition only twice, not wanting to run down the battery.
Distributor cap,
he thought. The important thing now was not to let things unravel. Moisture must have blown into the engine compartment, condensed in the cap. Easy enough to fix.

Paul jogged back to the house, where he yanked off a wad of paper towels from the roll in the kitchen. He grabbed a screwdriver from the counter on the way out, then ran back to the car. He opened the hood, dried the spark plug wires, and pulled off the cap. It didn't look bad, but you couldn't always tell. He dried it carefully, then did a routine check of the electrics, blotting up any moisture he found.
Coil wire okay,
he told himself.
Spark plug wires okay. Condenser wire okay. No need to panic.

Might not be today. Mo's probably up
there
—
he'd have waited, to meet with
Vivien, to protect us all. Voltage regulator dry and probably okay. Lia and Mark
might not have gotten down yet, maybe they stopped for lunch. Ground wire
okay. Mo's a supernatural shooter. Battery terminals okay.

He finished the check, slid inside and turned the key again. The starter turned listlessly. No combustion. He resumed his checklist, trying to keep the rising tension in check.

Fuel okay. Too warm for fuel line icing.
Nothing enlightening on the instrument panel. He went back to the trunk, found the tool kit and returned to the engine compartment. Fingers stiffening in the raw air, he fumbled with the screwdriver and dropped a screw in the wet gravel of the drive.

Fuses appeared okay but he replaced them all anyway from spares he kept in the glove box. He tested the spark at every juncture and found the circuitry intact. When he was done, he got back inside and turned the key. The car refused to start.

He cleaned the breaker points with a piece of emery cloth. When the car wouldn't start for the third time, he realized his fingers were too stiff for any further fine work, and he returned to the house.

It was a quarter past noon. He worked his fingers, trying to get feeling back into them. Trying to think.

He scrawled a note to Lia and tacked it to the front door:
Lia, please
come in, call me at the lodge. DO NOT come to Highwood today. I'll explain
later.
On the off chance she'd come here first. He wished he hadn't given her a key to the driveway gate.

Then he went out to the garage. The Corrigans had two cars, Dempsey's Buick and a little Toyota, and as he'd expected the big old Buick was still in the garage, gray and solid as a piece of military equipment. He'd look for a key for five minutes, he decided. Then he'd hotwire the car.

No key in the ashtray or over the visor or under the mat. He felt beneath the seat, then got out and checked the garage, looking for pegs or convenient hiding places. No key. He realized he was throwing things, starting to lose control.

He returned to the house and began rummaging in the kitchen: hooks, drawers, cubbies. House keys, padlock keys. Didn't Dempsey use a key ring? Did he take it with him when they left? Where might he keep a spare car key?

He found the cluttered ring on a bureau in the Corrigans' bedroom, the Buick's long stiletto key prominent. He charged outside again, ran to the garage, remembered, ran back to the MG.
One more little detail.
He unlocked the glove compartment and took out the box containing Ted's .38, which he'd made a point of keeping with him, not wanting it to fall into the hands of some kid visiting the lodge on the sly.

As Lia had shown him, he released the cylinder and rolled it out, verified that it was empty, then swung it back into place. He practiced sliding the safety button back and forth with his thumb and pulled the trigger. The gun was heavy and cold to the touch, its plastic grips shaped perfectly to his hand, every feature purposeful and full of deadly logic.

Just a tool,
Paul thought. Just a well-made hand tool like so many others he'd mastered. He could make do with it if he had to.

The Buick rumbled to life with a cloud of blue smoke.
Not yet one
o'clock. They're probably not there yet. I'll be there in ten minutes. Mo may still
be there. They'll be okay.
At the thought of Mo with his alert eyes, his smooth competence, his gun, he felt a wave of affection.
When this is all
over,
Paul thought,
we'll befriends.

He clunked the lever into drive and peeled out of the garage only to realize he couldn't get around the MG. The driveway was raised, with a drop on the right side, too narrow for two cars to pass. Suddenly he hated the little red car, and without slowing he brought the Buick's bumper up against its back end. The Buick lurched, the MG lunged forward. It was a bad match, and he could see the trunk lid crumple. The MG rolled a few feet and he hit it again, keeping the pressure on as it swung left and right and finally went off the low end of the driveway. It bobbed abruptly down the embankment and stopped hard against a clump of saplings. Their tops thrashed once, and suddenly Paul could see the memory image again, the tortured sapling jerking, the loathsome head on the ground. He spun out of the driveway and floored the car toward the lodge.

The first thing he saw was Mo's Chevy, pulled over to the side of the driveway. The gate was open, and a pair of tire tracks was faintly visible against the rain-wet ground. Mo must have arrived at ten, found the gate locked, walked up. He'd found a way inside, waited for Paul, determined to meet Vivien today. Then Lia and Mark must have come, probably only moments ago, opened the gate, driven up. Paul shifted into low and blew on up the winding drive.

At the top he was surprised to find only the furnace crew's van, pulled up at the far end of the terrace.
Of course.
He'd forgotten that he'd given Becker keys too, forgotten Becker had planned to come by today. Why wasn't he more relieved? He pulled up behind the van and got quickly out of the Buick, bringing the gun box with him. Through the windows he could see the well-ordered room, the stacks of file boxes against the wall. Lia and Mark hadn't arrived, he should be feeling some relief, some calming, but his nerves wouldn't stop screaming.
Akathisia.

He knocked at the smoking room door, expecting Mo to open it, but no one came.

He unlocked the door, stepped inside. His first impression was that the room was fully warm; someone had gotten the heater going a good while ago. His second was that the smell was wrong, a salty-sweet odor that eluded a name until he remembered the most recent time he'd smelled it, only a few days ago. It was when Mo was demonstrating the effect of hollow-nose bullets. The smell of gunpowder. And the house was completely quiet, only the faint hiss of the heater drawing air. There should be muffled noises of work in the basement, some conversation. Something was wrong.