Skull Session

  "Apparently not."

  "I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to—"

  "Alice is my neighbor. She's not my girlfriend."

  "You don't have to explain anything, Mo," Lia said, still wearing a slight frown of concern for Alice. "Whatever she is or isn't, she obviously has some hopes in your direction."

  "Yeah, she's made that pretty clear."

  "I commend her good taste. Well. I assume you'll sort it out with her, won't you?" Lia said. Then her frown went away, and she smiled conspiratorially. "It's awful of me, she seems like a sweet person, but my first thought was, 'Oh no, this can't be, she's not right for Mo at all.' Isn't that horrible?" '

  "Only a little horrible. I agree."

  The waiter returned: "Just two after all?"

  "Just two after all," Mo affirmed. It felt good to say. They ordered sandwiches.

  "And the fact is," Lia said, "I don't mind the idea of lunch with you. I mean without someone else here."

  "I was thinking the same thing." Her words dazed him. Here's a million bucks, Mo, you just won the lottery. He felt himself at the top of something, holding just back of the edge, nearing a sweet fall, something he hadn't felt since the night Dara and he first admitted their love and went to bed together. The wonderful release of the secret of longing. Lia was coming toward him, they were coming toward each other. His every instinct was screaming, go, go, go to her.

  "What was it you wanted to discuss with me?"

  She looked thoughtful, as if wondering where to start. "Several things. First, I don't think Paul remembered to tell you that his aunt is returning here soon—this Saturday. It seems like your investigation is getting going, but it'll be hard to keep up our meetings once she's here. I thought you should know. On the bright side, maybe you can approach her about a consent search again, in person."

  "Thanks—I'm glad you told me."

  "Another thing is, I'll be heading back to Vermont for a few days—I'm leaving tomorrow and I'll be back Saturday with Paul's son. It's bad timing in terms of the house getting done and Vivien's arrival, but Mark's coming down can't wait and I have end-of-semester obligations at Dartmouth I can't get out of. I thought that before I left, maybe you and I should talk."

  "Okay."

  She grabbed his forearm across the table, squeezed it hard, then looked away, having difficulty saying what she intended. "It has to do with Paul, actually."

  His heart was pounding. There was a time to think and hold back, and there was a time when you mustn't think, when you had to let go. You couldn't think this dance through. You let go, found the moves as you went. Your brain was too stupid. You let other parts of you take over.

  "Yes. I want to know about you and Paul," Mo said.

  "What about us?"

  "I mean where do you stand. Married? What's happening? What does he think is happening?"

  "Not married. Paul and I live together in Vermont."

  "So where does that leave you and me, Lia?"

  She rocked back in her seat. Then she put a hand to her chin, looked out the window for a moment before she turned back to him. "You're an amazing man, do you know that, Mo? I knew from the moment I first saw you. Sexy as hell. Incredibly observant. Smart. And you and I have a lot in common. We think so much alike it sometimes scares me."

  "Me too. I look at you and I say, God, she, she fits, she's perfect. So help me, I've never felt like this. Lia, what's going to happen here?"

  She continued as if he hadn't said anything. "You like danger, and I do too. You make decisions like I do. And you make me laugh, and I think I make you laugh too."

  "Yeah. Yes."

  Lia took his hand, working her thumb across the back of it, holding his eyes. "And you need to be absolutely clear that I am in love with Paul Skoglund. He's a lot of things you and I are not, and that's one thing I love about him. That's why I keep learning things from him, why I need to be with him. I like you immensely, Paul does too, I could love you like my brother. You're so . . . so competent, I'd trust you with my life. I mean that. But Paul—I trust him with my whole life. Do you see the difference? I'm with him for the duration. I'm not available, Mo. I am terribly, terribly sorry if anything I've done or said gave you the idea it could be otherwise."

  Mo sat. Neither of them said anything for a full minute.

  "I meant that about sexy," Lia said.

  "Don't."

  She grinned ruefully.

  The waiter returned with their sandwiches, and they each took a bite in silence. Mo breathed in and out, chewing but not tasting the food. He kept his eyes on his plate: Lia was too beautiful to look at. She'd handled it with a lot of class, he'd give her that. Of course she had.

  So much for trusting your instincts. How many times do you have to get the same lesson? Don't shoot yet, asshole. Don't shoot your mouth off, dickbrain. Show a little restraint, hotshot.

  He sighed. "Okay," he said. "I'm clear. I'm clear on that."

  "I'm sorry, Mo."

  Mo reached into his pocket, feeling vastly weary. He got his notebook out, flipped it open, clicked his pen. "So tell me what's on your mind."

  59

  THERE ARE PARTS ofa woman's body, Paul thought, that are perfection. Lia stood in the middle of the room, shaking out her hair, brushing it. After she'd come back from her supply run to Mt. Kisco, she hadn't said much all afternoon and evening. Something was on her mind. Now, with the gas heater in the carriage house front room turned on, she was wearing only her blue jeans, her shirt off, her feet bare. Paul lay with his arms behind his head, admiring her.

  Draw a line from the bottom of a woman's jean pocket in back, around the outside of her thigh to the double-seamed crotch: that circle, if there's the right strength and fullness and delicacy, it's inexpressible.

  No poets have ever gotten it. That circle of thigh didn't just awaken desire, although that was certainly there, so much as a nameless tenderness. Maybe reverence was the better word for it.

  That line on Lia was perfect.

  And then there was the line of the breast, the slope from her collarbone, forward and outward, trim and yet somehow generous, beckoning. Culminating in her two different nipples and then tucking back in the soft, shadowed undercurve. Suggesting nurture and compassion as much as erotic possibility. The softest and warmest place in a hard, cold world. Worshipful grace.

  Too bad the current climate of gender relations discouraged talking or even thinking about that beauty, the real feelings it awakened. You couldn't even explain to one woman how beautiful she was: These feelings didn't fit in short phrases, even making love wasn't enough. The only way was to let her know it over a long period of time, let a thousand gestures and words add up until she knew. Over many years. Maybe if you were lucky she'd feel some female equivalent toward you.

  Lia finished her hair and sat down on the bed next to him. "I ran into Mo in Mt. Kisco today," she said. "We had lunch together."

  "Great. How was he?" Something was coming. Lia wasn't smiling.

  "Pretty good. We talked about things."

  She was stalling. Paul gave her time.

  "Among . . . other things. . . we talked about you," she said quietly.

  "I told him I was worried about you. That you're exhausted and you're getting into this in ways I'm not sure are good for you. That I feel there are a lot of things you're not talking to me about. That some of the papers we've been finding indicate some history of violent pathology in the past of this place, which you have avoided talking about. Mainly that you've been different, and I'm not sure I feel good leaving you here alone for the next three days."

  "Oh, for God's sake! What, you wanted Mo to take care ofme? Christ!"

  "You're getting secretive and morbid and paranoid, Paul."

  "I thought our hero Mo had it all figured out, anyway—Royce, Rizal, Vivien's continuous occupancy, a neat package."

  "But you don't believe it. What do you believe?"

  He looked at her and away. "I've got a few thin
gs I need to work through. Give me a couple more days."

  She nodded and was quiet for a time. "I guess there's something else you should know," she said at last. "Concerning Mo."

  So here it was. They'd made more progress, faster, than he'd have imagined. The sharp, sensitive-tough detective, and brilliant, beautiful Lia. He felt impaled on a spear of pain.

  "He basically told me he was in love with me."

  "I know. Can't blame him. I am too."

  Lia knelt on the bed, facing him, still tense. "I told him I wasn't available."

  Paul couldn't look at her. "Why not? He's good-looking, employed, doesn't have Tourette's. He's got a nice, high-risk job—"

  "Paul, you look at me, right now. Stop this! I told him I am in love with you, and that I valued our relationship beyond anything I—"

  "So? All the better. I'd think you'd like the element of risk. You value it, you risk it, you get off on the tension there, right?"

  Lia jumped forward, straddling him, pinning his arms with incredible strength. "You cut that out! Don't you fucking dare, Paul! I'm telling you something." She was shouting, on the verge of crying. "That wouldn't be risky, that'd be just stupid. I'm not stupid, Paul!" Then she did let the tears come, lowering himself against him, wrapping around him.

  She had released his arms, and he stroked her sobbing back, loving the feel of her.

  "Sunday? At Break Neck? The only reason I was right about why you wouldn't jump off was that you showed me about those feelings in the first place—the way you feel about Mark. I don't have a kid of my own to love that much. When I was caught on that rock in the cave, and afterward, I realized, these risks, it's not just me I'm risking. If all I cared about was me, it wouldn't matter so much if something happened, but it's—there's you too. And I, I wouldn't—you're the only person I've ever loved that much."

  There didn't seem to be any adequate response. He tried hard to believe he was enough for her, to believe he could draw all of her, even her dark places, to him. But despite the sincerity of what she said, the worm still squirmed in his soul: He couldn't quite open himself and accept her love. He'd been Plodding Paul, Predictable Paul, Play it Safe Paul too long. Pathetic.

  As if she saw it in him, Lia pressed herself against him so forcefully he could hardly breathe, as if she wanted to rub away their skin and merge their flesh and bones.

  60

  LIA'S LEAVING ON WEDNESDAY MORNING left a hole in Paul, as if his heart had been wrenched from his chest. Only three days, he kept reminding himself, she'll bring back Mark, it'll be wonderful to see them both. The people you love most, under the same roof again, at last. He turned to look at the lodge. But not under this roof, thanks. The three of them would stay at Dempsey and Elaine's for the final few days as he finished the job. Vivien would come, they'd work out some closure, and good-bye. The sooner he was done with this place, the better.

  With the library papers done at last, the books stacked, the floor swept, he went to Vivien's bedroom and began digging through the rubble, scanning papers, setting some aside. It took less than an hour for him to realize that this was the gold mine. She'd kept these papers close to her, here in her always-locked room. By noon he took what he'd culled to the smoking room to go over in detail.

  These were in worse shape than the papers in the library, as if like everything else in her bedroom a particularly intense frenzy or rage had been directed at them. Many were ripped, wrinkled, stained. Rain had been blowing in the blasted windows. No document was complete. But what he found was enough.

  Paul set the stack of papers on the game table, then went to the library and returned with several volumes: a medical dictionary, a Physician's Desk Reference, a beat-up DSMIV. He should have seen it before: That Vivien possessed several editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was in itself suggestive. In the Manual, the American Psychiatric Association listed and described in detail 187 psychological disorders. So many ways to go crazy, Paul thought. So much that can go wrong.

  He was familiar with the DSM, having referred to it many times in his quest to solve Mark's problems. Now he needed it to help decipher some of the papers he'd found in Vivien's bedroom. Most of these were disordered pages of psychiatric diagnoses, using a lot of technical terms. Letters from doctors, dealing with psychological diagnoses. Bills for services and payment receipts.

  Just the range of diagnostic records, what remained of them, was full of implications. Paul recognized several tests: the Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior, the Psychopathology Inventory for Mentally Retarded Adults, the Apperceptive Personality Test. Not evaluatory procedures administered to just anybody.

  Poor Vivien. Everyone had a different answer, another name for it, didn't they? And none of them helped at all.

  Turning back to the DSM IV, he looked up the diagnostic requirements for Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Criteria for IED included multiple episodes of uncontrolled aggressive impulses "resulting in serious assaultive acts or destruction of property," "behavior that is grossly out of proportion to any provocation or precipitating psychosocial stressor." The listing went on to note that the "spells" or "attacks" of explosive behavior were "preceded by a sense of tension or arousal" and were "followed immediately by a sense of relief."

  Close but no cigar. Another letter spoke of Psychotic Trigger Reaction. PTR was a lot like IED, with the twist that while a specific stimulus may trigger the violence, the violence may be directed toward inoffensive persons "at which time the aggressor is apparently reliving past experiences."

  Almost, Paul thought. Any one of these could describe part of the condition, but none grasped the whole picture.

  Ultimately, it was one of the bills that gave him what he needed. For a long time, he stared at the two photos of the strange child. Then he went into the kitchen to call Morgan Ford. He and Mo had some unfinished business anyway.

  "His name was Erik Hoffmann III," Paul told Mo. "He was my aunt's first child, Royce's older brother. I suspect he was born in the

  Philippines when they lived there, probably around 1949. Maybe good medical care wasn't readily available in the islands then, maybe there were problems with the delivery. I say this because the type of neurological problems he suffered from often result from oxygen deprivation or other birth trauma."

  "Exactly how would you describe his, uh, condition? His problems?" The detective was looking over the array of tattered papers Paul had assembled. With Lia gone, the issue of her hanging between them, Mo seemed tense, uncomfortable, stiff. Paul thought of bringing it out into the open, then decided that it was Mo's job to bring it up. He could sweat a httle until he did.

  "Sounds like a combination of conditions. He was able to do basic things for himself, like go to the bathroom, wash himself, and eat, had basic verbal skills, but was profoundly asocial, was never expected to live on his own. Most important, he had periodic outbursts of explosive violence. That he was extremely, unmanageably violent I can deduce from the level of supervision they assigned him, the occasional use of isolation and restraints—they obviously considered him a risk for his caretakers or other patients. Then there are the drugs they gave him: metoprolol, for example. Basically blocks the body's ability to use adrenaline. You can't get cranked up with that stuff in your veins."

  Mo looked up. "How come you know so much about this stuff?"

  "My own son has had some . . . problems," Paul said, turning away. "I've got a neurological problem myself—Tourette's syndrome. Done a lot of reading.

  "Tourette's—I've heard of that." The focus in Mo's eyes sharpened with unabashed interest. "Fascinating. I've never met . . . one of you before."

  "We' are a pretty diverse bunch," Paul said stiffly. "I can't claim to be representative."

  Mo cracked a grin. "Okay. No stereotyping." He picked up some bills from several long-term psychiatric care facilities, which Paul had arranged in chronological order. "These—obviously he was institutionalized. It looks like they moved him sev
eral times. Any idea why?"

  "There could be a lot of reasons, but I have a theory, sure."

  "Which is?" "Personally, I don't think he was safe around his brother, Royce. I think we'll find that the Hoffmann Trust consisted of Erik III and Royce. Maybe their father was old-fashioned, traditional—he couldn't stand to disinherit his oldest son. If Erik had periods of comparative normahty, his father may have held out hope he'd recover." Like the rest of us. "So Hoffmann set up the trust in both of their names. It would make sense anyway, a way to provide for Erik Ill's medical care."

  "Which must have added up. What—forty, fifty thou a year? Over twenty, thirty years—" Mo scratched his head, calculating. "Erik III was spending a lot of trust money. And as long as he was alive, he stood between Royce and a lot more. Is that what you're saying?"

  "If I'm right that Erik III was the other beneficiary of the trust, yes," Paul said. "One other consideration. If Erik was legally mentally incompetent, my aunt as custodial parent would retain his power of attorney. And at least some influence over the trust."

  "Which, if I'm understanding the, uh, family dynamics, your cousin probably wasn't thrilled about." Mo chuckled at his own understatement.

  "I tried to call my aunt today, to ask her about Erik III, but she didn't pick up the phone. I'm pissed because she's keeping things from me. I'd like to know why. I'll try her again later, but I'm not confident she'll tell me anything."

  "So what's next? Where do you want to take it?"

  "I want to know where Erik is. Whether she feels like telling me or not."

  "I can see," Mo said, "how that would be nice to know."

  "While we're at it, we should also figure out why the trust reverted to Royce alone."

  "An excellent point, Inspector," Mo said.

  "I mean," Paul went on, "what are the options? A timetable built into the trust from the beginning. Or a successful legal challenge by Royce, based on something like technical failings in Hoffmann's will or the way the trust was set up, or maybe on Erik Ill's mental competence.