Skull Session

  64

  PAUL STARED AT THE WALL OF Dempsey's guest bedroom, numb from fatigue. Friday night. Vivien was probably already on her way to New York. Dempsey and Elaine had sent him to bed, cleared the dishes, and now the house was quiet except for the faint sound of wind in the eaves. He'd gone to the Corrigans' for what was intended as a quick, late dinner but had nearly fallen asleep at the table. In his exhaustion, he'd been unable to contain a set of mimetic tics that aped Dempsey's hand gestures unflatteringly, and was relieved when Dempsey gave him a wink of understanding.

  "Stay here tonight, Paul," Elaine had said. "A comfortable bed, a hot shower. I'll cook you a great breakfast."

  "No. Got to get more work done tonight." Paul groaned, tried to rouse himself. His back ached from hours of stooping, of carrying pieces of furniture to the terrace railing and tossing them into the Dumpster he'd had brought up, of boxing up salvageable stuff.

  Dempsey shook his head. "Paul, face it—you're beat. The amount of work you'd get done tonight won't make much of a difference with Vivien. Better you should be rested when you sit down with her to figure out what you need to do to finish up. You'll need a clear head more than another square yard of floor cleaned up. Think of Mark too—he doesn't need a father who's a smoldering hulk. Stay here."

  Paul's elbow had slipped off the dinner table, bringing his head with it, startling him awake. Dempsey had stood him up and herded him into the bedroom. "No arguments," Elaine said firmly.

  And now, paradoxically, he couldn't quite sleep. Despite his exhaustion, a current of anxiety ran through him, a relentless nervous energy.

  On the bright side, he tried to remind himself, he'd made almost enough progress. When Vivien came, the lodge would have electricity, and glass in the windows. And maybe even heat: Becker had agreed to work Saturday and thought he'd be able to get the new furnaces running. The house would have intact plumbing, with running water in the kitchen and one functional toilet. Her papers would be sorted into file boxes. The downstairs rooms would be mostly cleared and swept, the salvageable stuff sorted for repair or disposal. The upstairs rooms would be still heaped with rubble, but that wasn't so bad: It would give her a better idea of what he'd been up against. Vivien would pay him what she owed him, and he'd be gone. He'd let her find someone else to do the rest of the work.

  Dimly visible outside the windows, the trees swayed in a rising wind, and a fine windblown sleet hissed against the glass. Paul stood up, paced in a circle in the little room, his thoughts spinning. Lia and Mark. Got to tell them not to come down from Vermont. Lia, he'd say, Royce is returning, there's a cycle here and it's coming around, there's a window of afew daysfor Royce to act to keep Vivien out of here, Mo's convinced people are getting killed over this. There's a weird neurological condition that—No. Keep it simple: I don't want you or Mark anywhere near Highwood.

  Paul left the bedroom, walked through the darkened house to the phone on the kitchen counter, dialed the number of the farm, got a busy signal, hung up.

  Still pacing, he went to the hallway, thumbed the rheostat switch for the ceiling lights, bringing them up just enough to look over Dempsey's little gallery of fight posters and handbills. Young Dempsey with the sloped, muscle-corded shoulders, the banded long muscles in his thighs, the lethal eye. He'd been one tough customer, a brawling Irish kid with a famous right hand. The secret to a good punch is converting, Dempsey had told him once. At the last instant you put the entire weight and strength of your body into it, from your toes on up you're rigid as a plank of wood at the microsecond of contact. Boom, your guy goes down, every time. One of the great lessons I learned from fighting, applies to any project: Learn to focus all your mental or physical energy into a single point, into the job at hand.

  Good advice, Paul thought, wondering how he could bring to bear his own mental energy. There was a pattern in it all, if he could just see the whole picture. At times it seemed close to resolving. So close. And it had nothing to do with the scenario Mo believed in. That's why he'd had to stall Mo. That's why the solutions Mo envisioned wouldn't work. That's why Paul couldn't just walk away from it.

  Farther down the hall, he stopped in front of a little collection of framed photos. Most were of the very early days: Dempsey building his house, Dempsey and Ben and Aster, other people Paul didn't recognize. There was even a small portrait of Paul and Kay.

  Paul stared at the ones of Ben, searching the face of his father, looking for whatever insight might be found in his level gaze, his square chin, the lines of his mouth. One photo showed Ben and Dempsey standing proudly on a massive tree trunk they'd just felled. Ben smiled a cocky grin and held one end of a seven-foot two-man saw.

  Paul cut the lights and tried Lia again. Still busy.

  The problem of the nature of the violence was that Mo's theory relied on two completely different motivational forces. Royce did it, or instigated it, because he's got plans for the estate. Yet there was a rhythm to the intervals of violence, a serial or cyclical pattern such as would result from a psychopathology. Royce's coming back right on schedule reinforces the serial theory; the serial theory, in turn, implicates Royce because he's returning just when another cycle is due.

  No. It wasn't just bad psychology. It was bad logic, a tautology: Proposition A is proven by proposition B, which is proven by proposition A.

  No anyway. His gut told him otherwise.

  He needed to sleep, but his thoughts festered and gnawed and wouldn't quit. Severe akathisia. Maybe it was the coffee he'd been drinking. His nerves were jangled. He needed to do something physical, yet he was too tired, it was almost midnight. He paced in circles in the living room, rotating his shoulders, trying to get the tension out of them.

  Why couldn't he quite choke down Mo's theory about Royce's motives, despite the evidence for it? Because Paul's instincts told him unequivocally that the root of it all lay in personality. The Hoffmanns were too wealthy and too complex to bother being involved in anything for purely material reasons. They were connoisseurs of mind games, of the kind of warfare of attrition and subterfuge that only families waged. Whatever or whomever this game involved, the key was to be found in the psychology of the players.

  And how did Erik III fit into the equation? Did he? Was he dead, as the law had officially declared, or was he . . . what? Out in the woods. Half wild, living like the Leather Man, hugely strong, deeply angry, full of raging sorrows like the wind outside now, prone to explosive violence. To HHK/HHD. When his cycle came around, coming down to the lodge like a winter-starved bear, ripping and rending. Paul's neck hairs rose at the thought. It would explain a lot—Vivien's interest in neurology, her desire to draw Paul into her affairs, her curiosity about Mark, her contact with Stropes. Her willingness to stick it out year after year at the lodge. Yes, and her resistance to bringing the police in: still trying to protect her beloved but demented first son.

  And Ben. Was the mystery of Ben's suicide connected? Had Royce killed Ben—was that what he'd been hinting? Unlikely: Royce would be too smart to let something like that come out. More likely it was just Royce's sadistic, manipulative impulse of the moment, finding what he knew would be a sensitive nerve in Paul. Or wanting to expose the tip of Vivien's affair with Ben, turn Paul against her.

  Abruptly too tired to stand, he went back to the bedroom, sat on the bed again, listening to the wind noise rising in the trees, the thousand tiny creaks and groans of the house shifting minutely under the pressure of moving air.

  The issue of instrumental versus emotional violence: Was the damage at Highwood the aftermath of the periodic explosions of some violent psychotic, or the carefully devised plan of someone who wanted the house or something in it? The question wasn't necessarily that simple. There was a precedent for the two combining, he realized. He'd just been talking about it with Dr. Stropes: the riddle of the berserkers. The same problem applied. Berserkers could plan to be in a battle, knew in advance how they'd respond, could enter their hyperkinetic, hyperdynam
ic killing mode at will. They'd put on their pelts, they'd stare crazily through the eyeholes of a bear skull, and they'd chop anyone who resisted them into squirming guts and chunks of bone.

  Yes. And with that came several inferences. In his mind's eye he held up the possibilities and examined each one. He followed out his meandering thoughts until he jerked suddenly upright, aware that he'd started to fall asleep, had crossed the vague line between reflection and dreaming.

  He stood and went back to the telephone, clumsily punched the number of the farm, got the busy signal once more. Maybe the lines were screwed up in some way, he was thinking, and suddenly he realized he'd been listening to the signal for a full minute or more. Too tired to stay up any longer. He'd call her first thing in the morning, tell, her not to come down. It would be better then anyway: He'd be better able to explain when he wasn't so exhausted.

  Back in the bedroom, he turned out the lights, lay back on the pillow, feehng his own weight pulling him down, irresistible. August 6th, he thought, September 19th, November 2nd. Yes. A clotted warm darkness began to blossom inside him, consuming his mind, blotting out the swirling thoughts.

  His last thought had to do with railroads. What was her name? Priscilla something. Train tracks. Getting hit by a train. That was one of the keys. And then he was asleep.

  65

  MO 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.