Skull Session

  Mo took notes in his own illegible shorthand. "And what sort of relationship did she have with Heather?"

  "As far as we could tell, a good one. As I said, Heather can be very hard to relate to. Essie seemed to do quite well. Of course, I wasn't always here when she came. I stayed home for the first few visits, but once I got to know Essie I took the opportunity to do things out of the house. I felt secure that Heather was in good hands with Essie and the Gonzalezes, my household staff, here. In the past five years, with Heather at home a lot of the time, I have often been housebound. I was very grateful to have someone like Essie here. I took a weekly dance class, Mr. Ford, Victor and I could go to movies or visit friends at their houses. Then Rickie was killed. Right around then, they called to say Essie wouldn't be coming." She massaged her forehead, which had drawn into furrows. "Oh," she said, realizing what she'd just said. "So there's one of the connections, right?"

  "How long had Essie been coming, at that point?"

  "I'd say three months. Yes, I think she started coming in April."

  Not long before Richard Mason would have come back from college, Mo was thinking. He wouldn't ask her about that, he decided. Not yet. He poured himself another half cup of the superb coffee and swigged it, not sure whether the excitement he felt was the edge of caffeine hitting his bloodstream or something else. It just might all connect. If he remembered correctly from Wild Bill's notes, the Masons had gone out the night Richard was killed, returning at around midnight from dinner with friends.

  "Mrs. Mason, before I meet Heather, I'd like you to tell me about her. I know the clinical definition of schizophrenia, but I don't know what it means in terms of Heather's behavior."

  She drew a deep breath, let her shoulders slump. "Schizophrenia is just a name. The fact is, everything has a name, but names don't necessarily mean anything. What does 'love' mean, Mr. Ford? Do you 'love' your wife? Your dog? Pizza? America? How many meanings does the word have? The same is true with psychological terms. Only there you have complete disagreement to compound the issue. No one can list all the ways schizophrenia manifests in behavior." She had a lot of anger here, Mo saw. "The term ends up not meaning anything. No one knows all the types of craziness."

  "You said she's bright."

  "She's mathematically gifted, she reads at an adult level, mainly clinical texts about psychopathologies. Yes, she's very intelligent. Maybe that's one of her problems."

  "You keep referring to the degree to which Richard's death affected Heather. Were she and Richard very close? Or do you think the particular nature of his death—"

  "We told her almost nothing about the accident. No, it wasn't that. He was important to her. You have to understand that she lives in a type of isolation you and I can only vaguely imagine. When Richard came home from school, I think he filled a gap in her life. He was her own flesh and blood. They often did things together."

  "What sort of things?"

  Mrs. Mason opened her hands to each side. "What young people do. They went to movies, went swimming sometimes. Shopping. Concerts at Caramoor."

  "Did Essie ever accompany them?"

  "Once or twice. Essie could control Heather better than Richard, if she got difficult in public."

  Mo nodded, taking notes. Mrs. Mason continued, slipping into reminiscence, and he let her go on, looking for the lines that converged. At last she shook her head, as if to clear it.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I have probably gotten off track. If you'd like, we can go up to Heather's room now. I think you'll have more luck with her if she feels like she's on her own turf, but I can't promise she'll cooperate, and I don't have any way to compel her to."

  "Understood." Mo followed her through the house and up the broad staircase.

  Heather's room turned out to be a small suite—one large room, a bathroom, and a bright alcove facing the backyard. It was a reassuringly normal, adolescent girl's bedroom: white carpet, white curtains trimmed with pink, stuffed animals on shelves and bureaus, a boom box surrounded by piles of CDs. On the walls, among pinups of musicians, posters of Freud and Einstein. The only jarring element Mo could see was a large, framed print of Munch's The Scream over the bed.

  Heather was seated at a table in the alcove, bent over and writing studiously with a pen. She was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt. Though he couldn't see her face, Mo remembered the photo of her with her family, the straight blond hair, surprised eyes and loose, thick lips.

  "Heather, this is the man I said would be coming—Mr. Ford."

  Heather didn't lift her head or stop writing. "He's been here for an hour already. What were you doing, prepping him for me?"

  "I wanted to talk to your mother about various things," Mo said.

  "You can go now, Mom," Heather said, still not looking up.

  Mrs. Mason glanced at Mo. You see what I mean, her eyes said. 'I'd like you to be polite to Mr. Ford. He thinks you may be able to help him. Don't forget, we need to be ready to go by one o'clock. And I want you to eat some lunch before we go." She went to the door, where she paused as if she had more to say, then turned down the hall.

  Mo waited for Heather to say something. Through the windows of the alcove, he could see that the sky outside had cleared and a bright sun shone down into the backyard. With the sun had come a wind, tossing the tattered oak leaves that still clung to the trees. He looked around the room for a moment, then back at Heather. She still had not lifted her head; all Mo could see was the curtain of her hair, almost touching the spiral notebook she was writing in.

  "What are you writing?" he said at last.

  "A story."

  "Oh yeah? What's it about?"

  "It's sort of a detective story."

  "Ah. What kind of a detective story?"

  Heather jotted another line. "It's about a detective who comes to talk to a schizophrenic girl."

  Mo stopped, feeling out of his depth. She was playing with him. He had been with her three minutes and had already lost control of the interview.

  When he didn't answer, Heather looked up for the first time. She had pale skin, a child's face. She hardly looked fourteen, more like ten or eleven, Mo decided, with her skinny legs, narrow shoulders, undeve- loped chest. The loose and unguarded look of her mouth was made more awkward by the braces on her teeth. Only her eyes looked older.

  "Don't you want to know what happens?"

  "Okay. What happens?"

  Heather smiled coquettishly at him. "I'm not going to tell you. You have to guess."

  It would be useless to humor her or condescend to her, Mo decided. Better to challenge her, throw her off balance, take a gamble. "Fine." He cleared his throat, put his hands in his jacket pockets, and paced while he talked: "I'd guess it's about a schizophrenic girl whose older brother is in love with a girl, a girl who's a friend of the schizophrenic and is almost her age. The brother often takes his sister with him when he goes out with the other girl because neither the brother nor the other girl want anyone to know they're hanging out together. Am I warm?"

  Heather's eyes had narrowed. "I don't like you," she said.

  "Sometimes the three of them go out when everybody thinks the other girl is visiting the schizophrenic girl. But other times they go out when nobody knows, and they bring the schizophrenic girl along so she's not alone at the house, or in case any of the parents find out."

  Heather climbed awkwardly out of her chair and went to the window seat, where she looked out at the backyard. All he could see was the curtain of hair again.

  "I really don't like you," she said again. Her voice was shaky, and Mo felt at once a rush of excitement and a stab of pity. This kid was messed up. She'd been through a lot. Mo could guess only so far, and then he drew a blank. He had no idea what had happened or what Heather knew or didn't. At some point, he'd have to have her cooperation, or he'd get nothing. "Anyway," Heather continued bitterly, "she wasn't really the schizophrenic sister's friend."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "B
ecause she just came because she was supposed to for her religious club. Because she just came to see Richard."

  "Couldn't she do both of those and still really be a friend too? I think she could."

  "And the brother just went places with the sister so he could be with the girl."

  "I don't think it has to be that way either."

  Heather shook her head. "You think you're very smart, but you're really stupid. If the schizophrenic girl thinks things like that, she can't be mad at them, and if she can't be mad, then she'll have to be even more sad and it will all be much worse. You get mad so when you think of it, all you can think of is how mad you are. You don't have to think of what happened."

  Mo waited, hoping she'd go on, his heart thudding so hard he was sure she'd hear it. He wished he'd brought a tape recorder. This was rich stuff, material to be analyzed by a forensic psychologist. She sat silently, working her hands together as if they were fighting, so much tension and force in the knotting motions that Mo had to look away. "What did happen, Heather?"

  "How should I know? I was talking about a story. I haven't written it all yet." Heather turned to face him, and he was shocked to see her smiling, an incongruous, horribly artificial ear-to-ear grin.

  "That's not true."

  The smile went away. "Besides, there's another thing behind the mad, not just sad, that's even worse."

  "What," Mo said quietly. She seemed to want to tell him, tell somebody.

  "Scared," she whispered with a round-eyed, childish certainty.

  Mo's skin prickled. "What kind of scared?"

  "Very very. But you have to guess."

  Mo knelt in front of her. He had to overcome the desire to take her by the shoulders and shake it out of her. "Heather, you need to tell me. I need to hear you. But I can't do this. I'm not as smart as you are, and this isn't a game. And it isn't a story. You know it isn't."

  "And the brother said never to tell. About them."

  "He never thought all this would happen."

  "Sometimes he'd park the car and they'd go up. I'd wait. Sometimes I'd walk partway too. You couldn't park too close because people would see the car there."

  Mo waited, his eyes locked on hers, trying to keep it flowing between them by force of will. Heather seemed to draw into herself, her eyes watching some scene he couldn't imagine. She didn't continue.

  Mo let several minutes pass. "And?" he prompted at last.

  "What?"

  "And what happened then?"

  She looked across the room, her eyes suggesting resignation, as if she were disappointed with him. "See, you think it's just a detective story. I said sort of a, detective story."

  "Well, what kind of story is it then?"

  "It's much, much more than that. It's very important. It's about when we think we know what's real and then find out we didn't know. How we didn't know hardly anything. How people can do things nobody ever, ever imagined they could. Ever, ever, ever, ever, never, never, never, never, never."

  She chanted the last words as if they were a warding ritual from which she took some desperate comfort. Mo felt lost again. Heather was drifting into abstractions that he couldn't fathom. He'd have to bring her back.

  "Heather, what happened then? They parked the car and you waited, and they went up. What happened after that?"

  She looked at him as if surprised. "When?"

  "In the story."

  "What story?" She stood up and went to the table, where she picked up the spiral notebook. "This? This isn't a story. You were right, it's not a story. See? I was fooling you." She brandished the book at him, and he could see that the lines weren't script at all, just a series of uniform squiggles neatly filling each line on the page. She tore four or five pages from the book and began ripping them neatly in half, then in half again.

  "Heather, please," he said.

  Heather pointed at a wall clock over her table. "It's time for me to be getting ready for my therapy session with Dr. Kurtz. I call him Dr. Klutz."

  "We will have to talk again. Would that be okay?"

  "Probably not. If I tell my mother or Dr. Kurtz how much I don't like you, they won't let you see me again."

  Mo stood and watched her as she brushed her hair in front of the bureau mirror. He tried to think of the thing to say, the one right thing that would provoke her, crack her open again, but couldn't come up with a guess. If he ever slipped, guessed too wide of the mark, she'd know she could dodge him forever. It was safer to let it ride. For now.

  "Okay," he said. "Heather, you've been very helpful. I'm going to go. I hope you'll consider talking with me again." He went toward the door of the bedroom and stood, wondering if she'd say good-bye.

  To his surprise, she turned quickly. "Wait," she said. She came toward him, smiling a little smile now. "Don't look so sad. I'll tell you a clue. A secret." Standing close to him, she tilted her child's face up toward him, and he automatically bent toward her. She put her lips next to his ear, so close he could feel her breath on his cheek.

  "It was Superman," she whispered, her voice lisping slightly because of the braces. The skin across Mo's back drew taut with a sudden chill. She pulled away and looked at him round-eyed, awed, shaking her head up and down with that childlike certainty. "Superman."

  "Great," Mo said. He had no idea what was going on. He just felt a strong desire to get away from this demented, pathetic, frightened girl and try to sort out what he'd learned, if anything. He couldn't keep track of the levels of truth, deception, denial, manipulation, and whatever else she was working through. The hell with it. He wasn't cut out for this. He turned to go down the hall but stopped when she spoke again: "Don't you want to know what happens to the detective in the story?"

  "Okay. I'll bite, Heather," he said wearily. "What happens to him?"

  "He gets killed," she said, still round-eyed, certain.

  19

  "ROYCE DID IT," Kay said immediately.

  They were all at the big dining room table at Kay and Ted's house in Philadelphia, the feast spread out before them. Paul and Lia had been describing their visit to Highwood, and Paul had recounted his visit with Vivien. The whole group had relished the story—Kay and Ted, their two children Alexis and Ben, Aster, and a younger neighbor couple, Jim and Francette, with their eight-month-old baby.

  At the head of the table, Ted sat next to Kay, serving the turkey he'd carved. He'd put on weight since Paul had seen him last, and his wide shoulders were now offset with a broadening belly. His dark, thick hair and bristly mustache were shot with gray.

  Kay was plumper too, but she looked vigorous, happy, her skin pink from the heat of the kitchen. Now she worked as the plates came around again, serving seconds of mashed potatoes and stewed onions from gigantic bowls.

  Down at the far end of the table, the three children were still acting shyly toward one another. Alexis was now twelve and had begun to get her growth; Ben was nine, stocky like his father, an extroverted, good-natured boy. Seen with his cousins, Mark seemed smaller and paler, his uncertainties obvious. Between the divorce and his neurological problems, his confidence was weak, especially in this rather staid, well-off household.

  Only Aster hadn't enjoyed the talk about Highwood, scowling when the others appeared to be enjoying the narrative too much. She'd had her hair permed recently, a tight curl that made her hair stiff and too sculpted, like a ball of steel wool. It emphasized the age lines in her face.

  "Yep—Royce," Kay said again. "He's our cousin, the son of the woman who owns the house," she explained to Jim and Francette.

  "Why Royce?" Lia asked.

  "He was always a creep. He also hates his mother. Always has."

  "You two used to be very close friends," Aster said. Then she addressed Ted and the neighbors, as if looking for support: "The two of them were inseparable from the moment we set foot on the hill to when I had to pry Kay away. You never heard so much laughing and carrying on."

  "He was spoiled rotten, he was neurotic
and manipulative. And he made sure we never forgot that they had money and we didn't."

  "We all had a perfectly lovely time at Highwood," Aster insisted.

  "We ran around like loonies, it's true. It would have been hard not to have fun up there. But I pretty well had to do what Royce wanted. It wasn't always very nice. More turkey, anyone?"

  Jim held out his plate, and Ted forked a piece of meat onto it.

  "Ohhh, bay-fcw/i!" Paul said. It was the tic of the day, the Big Bopper's voice. Nobody paid any attention—the family was used to it, and he'd taken a moment earlier to explain to the guests.

  Ted thoughtfully rubbed the bristles of his mustache. "Why do you say he hated his mother?"

  "Because he often said so. There was always this strange antipathy. It's easy for me to believe he'd take it out on her, on the house, even all these years later."

  "Chilling idea," Jim said. "An adult man harboring such a deep resentment that its expression takes such a vehement form, even after thirty years. Pathological, really." Jim was the guidance counselor at Alexis and Ben's school. At the far end of the table, the three children were eating silently, following the conversation.

  "Fantasy, really," Aster said, disgusted. "Royce has been a successful businessman, with interests all over the world, for many, many years."

  Ted had been stirring his food with the tip of his fork, listening thoughtfully. "There are other possibilities that fit what you've described. Think about it—someone's been slashing the ducts, poking holes in the walls, busting open bureaus, emptying out file cabinets. Sounds to me like they've been looking for something."

  Lia nodded. "The thought had occurred to me. Not that there isn't a lot of other damage that doesn't fit that pattern—"

  "The real question," Francette put in, "then becomes whether or not they plan to come back to continue looking for whatever it is. And how they'll react when they find you there, dutifully trying to put things back together."

  "Have you talked to the police up there yet?" Ted asked. "Maybe this should be looked into from a crime perspective before you disturb the scene. There may be evidence in the rubble."