Skull Session

  No more noise from Vivien's bedroom.

  And then a shape leapt out of the doorway, a looming black silhouette against the muted light from the window. Paul drew back the poker, and instantly the broad-shouldered shape did the same thing, pulling back a bat-size leg of some piece of furniture.

  It was Royce.

  "Good Christ, cousin! You look like you're ready to kill someone. Who in hell were you expecting?" Royce lowered his weapon.

  "I didn't hear anyone come up," Paul said. Royce must have arrived while he'd been in the library, gathering another box of papers.

  "Drove right up. Car's right out front. Would have knocked, but it didn't seem as if anyone was here." Royce tossed down his club, dusted his hands against each other.

  "What are you doing here?"

  Royce came toward him, smiling. "Thank you for the hospitable greeting, Paulie. Quite the welcome home for the prodigal son." He clapped Paul on one shoulder, and then gently pushed the point of the poker toward the floor. "I don't think that's necessary, do you?"

  "What do you want, Royce?"

  "I grew up here, remember? I was in the area, visiting some old acquaintances. Thought I'd stop by to finish our discussion. Which you told me you'd think about. Also to take a look at the old homestead. I was curious."

  "I thought you were flying to Europe."

  Royce put his hands on the railing and looked out over the incredible chaos of the big room. "And here I thought you were exaggerating! This verges on the downright fabulous, doesn't it? In a morbid sort of way. How intriguing." Royce spat over the railing, watched his spit drop, then turned to face Paul. "Indeed I am leaving. First thing tomorrow. Time, as they say, is therefore of the essence regarding my proposal."

  "I can't do the work at your apartment. I'm committed here."

  "Certainly there's enough here to keep you busy." Royce turned back to the railing. "Well. It does something to one to see the old place like this, doesn't it? One's boyhood memories and all."

  "Who did it, Royce? You?"

  Royce jerked his head slightly, but kept looking out over the room. "I'm not, as you've gathered, fond of my mother," he said. He sighed and began to walk around the balcony. Paul followed, still gripping the poker. "But I assure you, cousin, if I wanted to revenge myself upon her I would think of more effective means than this."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as the one thing she absolutely cannot endure: ignore her. If you understood her better, you'd see that. For me to spend this much time and energy, even to strike out at her, would constitute nothing less than an effusive gesture of affection." Royce laughed, a harsh bark that echoed in the room. "And I would never give her that satisfaction."

  Downstairs, Royce picked his way across the big room to the bedroom that had been his. He stopped just inside, surveying the rubble: drifts of shattered pieces of wood mixed with bedding, clothes, papers, tangled cords of lamps, ripped canvas and splintered frames of paintings. A section of the paneled wood ceiling had been ripped open, leaving a loop of sagging wiring hanging from the gap. The exposed piano harp leaned against one wall, trailing a snarl of broken strings. The skin and head of a polar bear, its jaw ripped impossibly wide, seemed to writhe in the rubble. Over all of it lay a haze of goose down, from some shredded pillow, drifting lazily in the drafts their entrance had caused.

  Royce prodded the stiff raccoon corpse with his toe. "To bad. I always liked raccoons," he said. "Well. My mother didn't exacdy preserve my room as a shrine to her dear boy, did she?" He stooped to pick up a brass claw foot, its talons clenched around a glass glide. "You know what this is? The earthly remains of my piano stool, the kind you spin on to adjust higher or lower. Used to have a good time making myself sick, spinning around on it." Royce held the foot to his eye, peered through the glass for a moment, then slipped it into his coat pocket. "A little souvenir. I'd prefer my old polar bear rug, actually. But I suspect you'd object."

  "Personally, I don't care. But my employer might."

  Royce kicked at the debris absently, roiling the feathers. "All I can remember of my adolescence is the joy of discovering masturbation. In those days, you couldn't just pick up girlie magazines in every grocery store. I'd sneak across to the library, bring back a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and open it to 'Greece.' The pictures of Greek sculpture. Gave myself what you might call a classical education. Inadvertently picked up the principles of aesthetics and proportion, caught a glimpse of some decent architecture whenever I thumbed past the Parthenon on my way to the nudes. Pity kids nowadays." A wry smiled played on his lopsided mouth. "Of course, when I came of age it took me years to get used to women having arms. Well. Nothing comes without a price."

  Hunched in his overcoat, hands in his pockets, Royce looked pensive. "Cold as a bitch in here," he said at last.

  "I've got a heater set up in the smoking room. You're welcome to come in to warm up," Paul said, "before you leave."

  "Yes, yes. Which of course I'm expected to do shortly. Well, warming up sounds delightful. Lead the way."

  They went into the smoking room and stood next to the heater, turning their hands in the rising heat. After a few moments, Paul lit the lantern.

  With the room better lit, Royce scanned the labeled boxes of papers and turned aside to shuffle through some of the photos spread out on the leather-topped game table: "I suppose my mother has evidence of my own sordid adventures salted away here somewhere. Quite the little bastard, wasn't I? Mind if I look at some of it?"

  "Yes, I mind. Among other things, Vivien asked me, quite emphatically, to maintain her privacy."

  "And you're being a dutiful guardian of it."

  "She's paying me for the job, and that's part of our agreement. And I'd just as soon not get caught in a conflict between you and Vivien." Paul stood across from him, knuckles of both hands on the table, making it obvious it was time for him to leave.

  Royce flipped through a few more of the photos. "So, Paulie," he said, scrutinizing one closely, "there's nothing I can say to persuade you to change your mind? I should think you'd be overjoyed to get away from this museum of horrors."

  "We've been through this. I said no. I've got a contract here."

  "Your loyalty is admirable. But has it ever occurred to you that Vivien may not be so very deserving of your loyalty? That she isn't, shall I say, entirely forthcoming with you?"

  "Unlike Royce, who is totally aboveboard."

  Royce's cheek twitched, but he kept his eyes on the photos, fanning them like cards. "Yes, you are very wise to want to avoid getting caught in a cross fire between my mother and myself. That could get awfully unpleasant. But has it occurred to you that you already have?"

  "Is that a threat?"

  "God, no. A simple observation." But the look he gave Paul was dark. He cleared his throat, raised his chin to straighten his tie, and buttoned his coat. "In any case. On the assumption that your homegrown naivete is genuine, let me make an observation: You're neck-deep now. Do you really want to find out how much deeper it gets?"

  "Try me."

  "I don't think you're up to it, cousin."

  "How about telling me what you were looking for in Vivien's room?"

  "Actually, what I was looking for was this—or something hke this. I wanted to see if she'd kept. . . such things." Royce picked out one of the photos and flicked it spinning across the table toward Paul. It was the shot of Vivien with the two children, Royce the baby in her arms, and the other, the toddler. "Tell me," Royce said. "Who do you think this is?"

  "Vivien. You. I don't know the other kid. Why the riddles, Royce?"

  "And this—your father, whom we all admired so greatly." Royce shoved across one of several photos of Ben that Paul had found. He was looking up from reading a book, his shirt sleeves rolled to reveal strong forearms. "Who do you think he is, Paulie? Ever wonder what made him—"

  "Don't push your luck," Paul said.

  "Wasn't it you who just said, 'Try me'?" Royce
shrugged. "Just obliging you. Perhaps these are things you might want to look into. Good-bye, Paulie." At the door, he turned to look at Paul, a surprisingly open look of appraisal. Then he shut the door, and Paul heard his footsteps fading away. Paul looked at the photos, the wide-faced strange boy, the smiling Ben. After a few moments, he heard Royce's car start up and scatter gravel as it pulled out.

  By the time Paul put the pedal down and spun the MG onto 684, it was just getting dark. Heading north, the open highway—he was glad to leave Highwood behind for a few days. And he was relieved that Albert had actually arrived to put up the gate. But there was still no shortage of things to worry about. Who was the strange boy in the photo Royce had tossed at him? Seeing Albert again had reminded him of the old woman, Albert's grandmother. Those two kids, she'd said. One just a baby, the other not right in his head. Senile rambhng, or had his mention of Highwood triggered something in her memory?

  And Royce. Beyond all the disturbing questions Royce's visit had raised, what stayed in Paul's mind was the first moment he had encountered him on the balcony. The queer elation of confronting a concrete, material enemy. The strength that came with the resolution to fight back.

  He kept returning to the image of Royce's dark silhouette as he'd leapt out of the doorway, landing with his feet well apart, the table leg held ready. He'd shown remarkable agility for a man his size.

  41

  MO CAME HOME FROM WORK Friday night feeling pissed off, sick of an endlessly ramifying case and of having Superman breathing down his neck. Unable to sleep, he turned on the computer and clicked around trying to construct a graphic model of the case, factoring in every variable that he thought might bear upon it. He sat in the glow of the monitor, scowling. Everything about the case bothered him. The level of destruction at the house, for example. He couldn't think of any other description beyond what he'd told Paul and Lia: pathological Not that there wasn't plenty of room for more conventional modes of vandalism; no doubt, in addition to whatever else had happened, local teenagers had come and gone many times. But kids alone couldn't account for it. Not that level of strength and persistence and intensity.

  If he could safely assume that there was a pathological aspect to the whole thing, certain other assumptions might follow. When he had first started taking forensic science courses, the psychology textbooks talked about there being two general categories of violence: what they called "emotional" and "instrumental." Instrumental violence was violence intended to achieve a particular goal or reward—money, status, territory, etc. A terrorist bombing or an armed robbery, for example. Emotional violence, on the other hand, stemmed from feelings of rage, anger, hate, fear, frustration, jealousy—the jealous husband killing his wife's lover, the coke dealer who offed somebody who'd dissed him.

  Then there was an emerging third category. In recent years, neurological and biochemical theories had become increasingly influential in the study of violence. A lot of violence was now known to stem from medical problems such as temporal lobe epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, paranoia, cranial trauma. Often these conditions amplified emotional triggers, increasing the likelihood of feelings spilling over into violent actions.

  And increasingly the law accepted such considerations as factors mitigating guilt. Neurological conditions could result in automatism, defined in both medicine and law as a state in which a person "though capable of action, is not conscious of what he is doing." Another way of saying that people could turn into violent machines.

  Mo swiveled to his bookshelf and leafed idly through a couple of criminology texts, eyes not focused, as if he could pick up ideas from the blur of pages. Aristotle and the other ancient Greeks talked about catharsis, the purging or release of emotion, an idea refined by people hke Freud and Lorenz into what psychologists called the "hydraulic" principle of violence. That is, violent impulses built up until they reached an intolerable level and demanded an outlet, like steam in a boiler. Healthy people, so this reasoning went, let off steam bit by bit, or chose harmless objects for their anger; violence-prone people let it build up until they had to explode.

  Somebody had exploded at Highwood.

  A cop saw evidence for the hydraulic theory every day. People harbored hatred or anger or repressed sex drives, and it eventually burst out. Wife beaters, serial killers, tavern brawlers, abuse victims who turned the tables, rapists, violent school kids. The whole zoo. For some it took a lifetime to get to the point of explosion, for others it took only days or weeks.

  The problem with the theory was that it suggested an unpleasant answer for the ancient argument over whether mankind was inherently violent and aggressive. You couldn't help but conclude that the secret soul of man contained an ever-filling well of poison.

  Mo tossed the books onto the floor, making a thump that he immediately regretted, thinking he'd either bother Alice downstairs or prompt another invitation he'd have to decline. This was what happened when you pondered weighty issues late at night in an apartment that was stark and underfurnished, in the general aftermath of a divorce, et cetera. Over the centuries, better minds than his had pondered such issues and hadn't come up with squat. No sense in wasting time dealing with gargantuan abstractions or pondering the poor savage soul of mankind, which in any case Mo Ford was unlikely to fix. He'd do better to keep his agenda manageable. Maybe that's one reason you became a cop in the first place: It was a way to break off one piece of the world's problems at a time and do your bit to contain the damage. Sometimes you succeeded, sometimes you didn't. In any case, you had specific tools and techniques and rules you could use: the law, the forensic sciences.

  Okay. So what the science of criminology clearly demonstrated was that violent behavior tended to be periodic. Cyclical. Studies showed that the cycles could be connected to almost anything—the moon, tides, rising sex urges, mood disorders, medication cycles, drug availability, the arrival of welfare checks or paychecks, school semesters, menstruation. Serial killers almost always killed at regular intervals, getting their jollies and then chilling out for a while as the well of poison filled and the urge became overpowering again.

  Assuming the Highwood thing was connected to the missing kids at all, could it be something like that—a serial killer at work? Is that what Heather Mason had figured out when she'd sent him the letter? It's going to happen again soon. Probably before Christmas.

  But she'd also said, with that fiendish, innocent certainty, See, you think it's just a detective story, but it's much much more than that. What'd she say then? It's about when we think we know what's real and then find out we didn't know. How people can do things nobody ever imagined they could. What exactly had she seen somebody do?

  Mo shut Heather out of his thoughts with difficulty. Assuming that there was a cycle here, what was it? He tapped the keyboard to call up the calendar he'd constructed. Richard Mason died and Essie Howrigan disappeared on August 6, Dub Gilmore and possibly Steve Rubio disappeared on September 19. Forty-four days, a little over six weeks apart. If you factored it forward at cycles of forty-four days, you'd get another blowout of whatever psychopathology around November 2, and another—he clicked ahead—about December 16. Before Christmas, like Heather said. Coming right up. How nice.

  Of course, he only had two real dates, and two dates didn't add up to anything. You needed at least three to triangulate. And he had nothing to plug into the November slot.

  Mo backed out of the program and switched off the computer. It was all bullshit, flailing around in the dark because he had so little to go on. It was too late at night for this crap. He cut the lights and groped his way to bed.

  His resolution to spend the weekend resting his brain cells, broadening his personal horizons, lasted only until Saturday afternoon, when the phone rang and he picked it up to hear Lia's voice.

  "Is this Mo?" she asked.

  "Yes. Lia?"

  "Hi. Did I call at a bad time?"

  Mo realized he must have sounded startled. "No—this is fine.
It's great."

  "Well, I'm glad I caught you. I'm calling from Vermont—We couldn't remember if we'd told you we'd be back up here this weekend."

  "No."

  "I drove up this morning. I guess the guy is supposed to put up the driveway gate today, then Paul's driving up too. We wanted you to know our number up here, in case you needed to reach us. Do you have a pencil?"

  "Yep." Mo jotted the number.

  "Paul's coming back down on Tuesday, I'll need to stay until Wednesday."

  "Okay." He felt knocked off balance at hearing the sound of her voice here in his apartment where he'd suffered through two mostly sleepless nights trying not to think about her. He found himself listening closely, yet not hearing what she'd actually said, tuning in instead to the music of her voice and the nuances it might contain.

  "Anyway," Lia said, "I should go." She hesitated, then seemed to choose her words carefully: "I was thinking about you on the drive up, and I just wanted to tell you that it was a pleasure to meet you, and that I'm very glad to have you helping us with whatever it is that's happening up at the lodge. We both think you're a great guy. So, anyway—thanks."

  "I'm glad," Mo said. "Yeah, well, it was great to meet you, you two. I'm looking forward to next time."

  "Okay. Ciao," she said brightly.

  Then he was just sitting there holding a telephone receiver in his hands.

  He realized he'd said maybe ten words to her during the whole call. Was there anything in the call besides what she'd said? I was thinking about you on the drive up. Hard to tell what she'd said and what he was reading into it. He suppressed a feeling of elation that wanted to burst into bloom in his chest.

  Her call set his thoughts percolating again, to the point where he abandoned his resolution, decided to make a few phone calls, weekend or not. It was December 3—if there was any truth to the idea of cycles, he'd better crack this son of a bitch soon.