Puppets

  The culvert loomed, a brighter mass that cast a solid shadow on the standing water. Black in the tunnel. Mo stared at it, trying to shed the echoes of Mudda Raymon's "vision" and focus instead on the hard realities. It wasn't easy. Between his father's lapsed Catholicism and his mother's equally lapsed Judaism, he'd been born into a family environment that was pretty neutral, metaphysically speaking. But like most kids, he'd experienced an almost religious fascination with the supernatural and paranormal. As an adult, he'd worked hard to banish his native superstitiousness but hadn't totally succeeded. Yes, he was susceptible to Mudda Raymon's bullshit. Yeah, the old woman had named a few existential bogeymen: Now hefighthimself, alwaysfighting. Maybe it was just that Carla had talked about his inner conflict, his self-negation and self-criticism, his ambivalence about his job, about the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, about life. But what about the puppet thing? How could old Grannie have picked such a relevant-seeming scary? Maybe Carla had told Mudda Raymon of her own vision of the puppetlike beings with lines of energy from their hands and feet. On the other hand, that left you to wonder how Carla had picked up on it.

  Puppet-puppet watching you. Puppet-puppet gon' come after you. It gave him a chill. Jesus, he hated being scared of things. Every cell in his body rebelled against feeling fear. Fear mastered your mind, your blood, your heart, fear controlled you. He hated feeling controlled. Right now he felt controlled by Pinocchio. Strung on lines, manipulated. Another reason he was here: some ritual confrontation with that. A symbolic breaking loose. It was hard to always be struggling against an invisible, unknown enemy. Sometimes you needed the catharsis of physically fighting back. It occurred to him that cutting the strings was not only necessary to staying human, it was necessary to being an effective investigator. Being able to cut through red tape, shake loose of procedural constraints, come at your opponent from the unlikely angle. Something to remember.

  Mo checked his Glock, took out his flashlight, and slogged deeper into the marsh. Up ahead, the setting sun cut the trees into two distinct parts, orange-bright on top and green-black below the shadow of the ridge. Dark foliage converged on the stream a half mile up, and he instinctively headed toward the embrace of shadow, willing all the bogeymen to come fight him.

  Farther in, the water deepened as the marsh narrowed between wooded hills on either side. The roar of the interstate was more distant here, absorbed by the trees. This is good, Mo thought, / needed this. His head was emptied by sheer nervous alertness, any thoughts coming forward hung clear for him to inspect.

  Carolyn's killer: He'd have to have parked his car along the road. But none of the nearby residents had reported seeing a car near the bridge. Didn't mean anything, maybe nobody happened to notice, maybe he'd pulled it into the bushes. Or maybe he'd walked or ridden a bike from someplace miles away. Or maybe he'd walked from nearby, maybe the police had unknowingly already interviewed the killer—one of the neighbors.

  The sun now lit only the tops of the tallest trees. Here and there, far up the right slope, windows of houses came alight and pierced the darkness, but the marsh was a gloomy flat narrowing between masses of shadow. Still, he resisted turning on the flashlight. Best to save it for the real dark. Best to merge with the darkness, let it enter him, tell him its secrets. Let the animal panic of solitude and dark come up in him, give him some juice.

  Mo trudged on, sometimes in the water and sometimes on the brushy banks. None of the State Police teams had come up this far, although Biedermann's people might have. It was almost night now, but he found he could make out the contours of the land. At one point a pale shape seemed to come forward out of the gloom and momentarily goosed his adrenaline, but when he got closer he could see it was just a washing machine, the old barrel-shaped kind with the ringer on top, rusted and half-buried in streambed silt.

  By the house lights, he guessed he was approaching a residential area, and sure enough, he soon found himself only a hundred yards behind a large house, brightly lit with many windows. An outside spotlight was on at the other side, and he could hear the drub of a basketball. Farther on, the lights of another house were just visible through the trees.

  Suddenly he felt like an outcast, a voyeur among these well-maintained residences, peering at these orderly lives from the disorder of his own. Probably time to turn back. No monsters had come out of the swamp to confront him except the usual inner demons of loneliness, self-criticism, sagging morale. Anyway, somebody might see him, get scared, call the police. Or shoot him: After Carolyn Rappa-port's murder, people's nerves were probably on edge around here.

  He turned and began to slog back. As his fear-fired nervous energy ebbed, he felt disappointment come on. Aside from the initial high drama of confronting his scaries, this had been useless. No great inspirations had come to him, just two nagging questions, both familiar. One was Who was Ronald Parker? Clearly that was a big one, and he'd barely avoided throwing it in Zelek's face during his pep talk. But maybe they could narrow it down when they saw him on Thursday. The other was Who the hell would think of recording and broadcasting the screams of rabbits being slaughtered? No doubt the session at the Reptile House had brought that to the fore again. There seemed to be a connection between those two questions.

  Ten minutes later he emerged from the tree shadows and into the more open marsh, where the culvert materialized out of the darkness again. He stopped to look at it, remembering Carolyn Rappaport's body hanging from its wires. She'd spent her last hours as the puppet of a very sick being. De puppet-puppet, Mudda Raymon had said. Why'd she start saying it twice? Maybe some peculiarity of the Jamaican patois. De puppet-puppet gon' come get you.

  And just like that the sense of it came to him, an answer to the questions. Holy Jesus. It would put a lot of things together seamlessly: Ronald Parker, screaming rabbits, Zelek and Biedermann, human cruise missiles. Suddenly a rage-filled optimism washed through him, the sense that he had put something important together. Yes, he thought, running the scenario through the details of the cases. Yes, yeah. What a fucking nightmare. Oh, holy shit. He had no idea what to do about it, but he exulted bitterly at seeing the pattern. Who should he talk to about it? Not Biedermann, definitely not yet, maybe not ever. Marsden? Maybe, have to give that some thought. St. Pierre, no, let him do the great work he was doing without biasing his judgment, keep him out of the line of fire. Rebecca, no—at least not until they'd had a chance to look at Ronald Parker.

  He had just vaulted the railing at the end of the bridge when another insight hit him: Irene Bushnell had cleaned for the middle-aged banker couple on Monday mornings, leaving—they said—for another job at one o'clock. But the schedule Mrs Ferrara had provided showed Irene working only a half day on Mondays. Where had she been going for the rest of the day? How could he and St. Pierre have missed something so obvious? His instincts told him it was just the very end of a loose thread. Grab it and pull carefully, the whole thing could unravel.

  33

  THE INSIGHT ABOUT Irene Bushnell's schedule was the most tangible idea to follow up on, especially after Mo called Byron Bushnell and learned that, yes, Irene worked Monday afternoons, Byron didn't know where, and came home at around five-thirty. So on Wednesday Mo dispatched Mike St. Pierre to Ossining again to meet with Mrs. Ferrara and the Tomlinsons, try to pin down where Irene had been going after she left the Tomlinsons' house at one o'clock Mondays.

  Mo felt a little better. When an investigation got down to questions this specific, even with a detail this small, it usually meant you were getting somewhere. And by Wednesday night, after hearing what Mike had discovered and having had another tough interview with Byron Bushnell, he was sure they were onto something useful.

  He'd have liked to follow up on it first thing Thursday, but the day would be occupied with something else that couldn't wait: Ronald Parker and the larger issues he'd been advised to avoid, the hidden pattern he had glimpsed during his sunset pilgrimage to the marsh.

  The chief of staff a
t the psychiatric detention facility at the County of New York prison complex at Rikers Island had agreed to give them access to Ronald Parker at one o'clock. Rebecca proposed that they drive over together, but Mo had to attend a BCI staff meeting on unrelated issues at eleven. They decided to rendezvous at the prison at twelve-thirty.

  Mo caught sight of her from a distance as he came into the prison's main administrative lobby: a tall woman with a Hollywood figure that looked out of place in this institutional setting. She took a few steps, paused impatiently, turned, strode again, not seeing him yet. For the interview with Parker, she had dressed in a pinstripe business suit and high heels and had coiled her hair at the back of her head. But the severe outfit only seemed to enhance her femininity, Mo thought. Can't hide the real thing.

  She didn't smile when she saw him, just searched his face with her eyes, and he realized how nervous he was about seeing her again. They'd talked on the phone twice since Sunday, and each time it had seemed a little stiff or awkward. Maybe it was some kind of fallout from his meeting Rachel, maybe he'd flunked some kind of test. Maybe seeing him with her daughter had shown Rebecca what lousy stepfather material he was. Strange, how four days apart could change things.

  "So how you been?" he asked. They shook hands. Professional colleagues.

  "Busy. Too much so. Yourself?"

  "Same."

  "How's Rachel?"

  "Oh, fine, fine."

  Awkward, uncomfortable, stilted, Mo thought.

  They turned toward the admitting desk, signed in, received visitor's badges, and were escorted through a metal detector to a smaller entry room where guards patted them down. Then they waited as one of the guards paged Dr. Iberson, head of the psychiatric unit. The guards stood with hands folded, and nobody said anything. Rebecca opened her briefcase to review a file and check her microcassette recorder.

  Mo sat uncomfortably, feeling the crushing claustrophobia of the prison complex around him. Not a happy place. People arrested in the County of New York were ostensibly held here pending trial, but everybody in law enforcement knew it was where you could send someone for a prison term without them ever getting a trial. Prosecutors convinced of someone's guilt but without enough evidence to convict just stalled, postponed trial dates, and finessed paperwork until the suspect had served a few years anyway. Then they'd release him due to lack of evidence. Due process in the new millennium.

  Dr. Iberson turned out to be a very tall, thin man, the played-basketball-in-college type, with a pink scalp under thinning hair. He shook Mo's hand perfunctorily, but gushed over Rebecca, telling her he had followed her career with interest. Then he led them to an elevator.

  The three of them stepped inside, Rebecca between the two men, and stood facing the doors as the car rose. As Dr. Iberson babbled psychology shop talk, Mo felt his frustration rise. If he were alone in the elevator with Rebecca, he'd grab her and hold her against him and kiss her deeply, maybe she'd like that and maybe she wouldn't,

  but for better or worse they could sort it out from there. He knew where his own awkwardness was coming from. Some of it was the horror of the revelations he'd had in the swamp, the danger it posed. But more it was four days of thinking about her: She had percolated into him, everything felt very important. It was hard to know where to begin. He had no idea what she was feeling, but he knew four days could also let uncertainties and second thoughts creep up on you.

  He startled as something touched his back. Rebecca was nodding interestedly at whatever Iberson was saying, but her hand had come up beneath Mo's jacket and shyly tugged at his shirt. She burrowed two fingers down just below his belt at the small of his back and just held the contact. Hello, it's me. A secret affirmation. Mo smiled as he felt heat spread from her touch.

  "Ronald is in our equivalent of intensive care," Iberson told them as he led them through another sliding steel door. "You'll understand when you see him. His injuries are over four months old, but we're still observing his behavior to monitor his rehabilitation. Also to assess the degree of risk he poses to himself and others. The way the unit is configured, he's under observation by medical staff twenty-four hours a day."

  "Are you seeing any adaptation?" Rebecca asked. For Mo's benefit, she explained, "The loss of brain function due to injury is often reversible. Sometimes the damaged area recovers partial function, and sometimes the brain appears to compensate by reassigning damaged functions to other neural circuits."

  Iberson nodded. "His motor skills are mostly back. Verbal skills, he carries on a private monologue all the time, but his responsiveness to others is intermittent—possibly because he gets temporal-lobe seizures. It's hard to assess, because when he does talk, he's usually pretty dissociative. One problem is that we don't know how much is the result of the brain damage he inflicted on himself and how much was preexisting." Iberson was having the time of his life, Mo thought: medical shoptalk with a gorgeous woman, the best ofall possible worlds.

  They came to another steel door operated by a guard in a glass cubicle. He frowned as he double-checked Mo's identification. Then the door slid open to reveal a big, brightly lit room where a nurse sat at a central desk, doing paperwork. Two walls of the room were made of clear Lexan and heavy wire mesh, beyond which were the individual cells, apparently furnished in standard hospital-room decor.

  "Well!" Iberson said brightly, rubbing his hands briskly together. "Here we go."

  But Rebecca put her hand on his arm. "Dr. Iberson, we may need to request specific medical examinations or tests of Mr. Parker after our interview. Would that be possible?"

  Iberson beamed. "We've done a pretty thorough workover, and you're welcome to see his files, but sure. What're you looking for?"

  "We would also like to interview him in his own quarters. We believe he'll be more at ease, more communicative, and we may be able to learn things from his environment—"

  "Like the arranging? I assumed you would. Ronald is the only resident of the unit just now, so you won't be disturbing other patients—"

  "And we'd like to interview him alone. Just Detective Ford and myself, no staff present."

  Iberson's smile faded.

  Rebecca patted his arm. "It's just that the smallest number of interviewers offers the least disturbance to the subject." She dropped her voice confidingly. "And there are also issues of confidentiality regarding an ongoing investigation that's very sensitive. I'm sure you can appreciate that."

  Iberson frowned in confusion, liking her touch but resenting being excluded. He nodded, led them into the room, pointed out Ronald Parker's cell, showed them how to use the intercom if they needed assistance.

  When he and the nurse were gone, Mo said, "I think you may have just lost a fan."

  Rebecca just squared her shoulders and gave him a look. Then they carried folding chairs to the door of Parker's cell.

  Mo's first impression of a typical hospital room proved to be wrong. Yes, there was the standard adjustable bed, a bank of monitoring equipment, oxygen fixtures, a television mounted on a bracket high on the wall. But the equipment was built in and covered with Lexan, the TV protected by a Lexan box. The bedding was paper of a texture like quilted paper towels, suicide-proof. No windows. There were no drawers for personal effects beneath the enameled counter.

  Ronald Parker sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in loose paper pants and shirt with paper slippers on his feet. Mo guessed he was a little over six feet, broad-shouldered, his dark blond hair short on the sides but long enough in front to fall almost to his eyes. He was leafing through a magazine, his lips mouthing words, head bobbing, body swaying as if he were singing and moving to music.

  When they came close to his cage, he looked up and went still. Round gray eyes. He had a pleasant, almost boyish face, full lips and cheeks. At first glance Mo couldn't imagine him as a guy who had tortured and killed seven people. But looking closer, you could see something haywire. A look of confusion and desperation on his creased, lopsided brow.

&n
bsp; "Hello, Ronald," Rebecca said. "I'm Rebecca, and this is my friend Morgan. Do you mind if we talk to you?"

  For a moment Parker just looked at them. Then his head bobbed, left and right, up and down, could mean anything, but Rebecca took it as an assent. She moved her chair close to the wire mesh and sat down. Mo sat off to the side.

  "Thanks." Rebecca looked around approvingly. "This is a nice room, isn't it? They're very nice here, aren't they?"

  Parker bobbed and nodded, yes or no or maybe.

  "Do you remember seeing me before?" Rebecca asked pleasantly. For the hundredth time, Mo was impressed by her: Her voice was warm with real compassion, but everything about her approach was strategic. She had put her recorder in her jacket's side pocket and started it before they'd come to Parker's cage. He could see where her background in child psychology would come in handy in a case like this.

  Parker's shoulders shrugged, but then they started moving up and down and around, again as if he were moving to music or working out a muscle kink. He did look intrigued by Rebecca, though, his eyes riveted to her.

  "Morgan and I drove up to see if you're happy here. Dr. Iberson says you hurt yourself, and we wanted to make sure you're all right."

  "Hurt everything," Parker said. His voice startled Mo, a smooth, bank teller's conversational voice at odds with his crazed-looking, uneven brow. "You got that right. Everything."

  "I do know what you mean," Rebecca said wryly. Ain't that the truth! Mo knew she was pleased to get a response out of him. They'd gotten lucky, caught him in a receptive moment. Or maybe it was just Rebecca's presence, her skill. Parker's willy-nilly forehead creased in appreciation of her understanding.

  They went on like that for fifteen minutes: the weird, weighted pleasantries, Rebecca's oblique probes, Parker's cryptic responses. Sometimes the murderer would clam up, frown, pull away. Sometimes he'd ramble incoherently. Throughout, Rebecca stayed warm, focused, easy, compassionate. She never pushed too hard, just stuck to the friendly, unassuming tone. Never probed too persistently, never oversteered. Never tried to control Parker. Mo just observed, did his best to disappear.