"Did she what, suffer?"
"Skip it-I guess it was my turn to say something stupid."
"A hideous couple of months-but the end was peaceful."
"What"s his name, Lyssy, promised me Carson never even knew what hit him."
"Thoughtful little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, ain"t he?"
"That"s the weirdest part," said Mama Rose. "How careful and gentle he tied us up, like he was a f.u.c.king nurse or something."
"Makes sense when you think about it," Pender told her. "The hospital is all he knows-who else does he have as role models?"
Time ticked by slowly-but not as slowly as it had before they were able to converse. "How long do you think it"ll be before somebody finds us?" Pender asked eventually.
"Depends. Normally n.o.body would bother me and Car until late afternoon-they know we usually sleep in. But he would have missed an important meeting last night, so somebody might be by to check about that. Then there"s L"il T., the guy who got shot on the patio? His wife Dennie is like twelve months pregnant; this"d probably be the first place she"d come looking for him."
While Pender was thinking that over, his stomach gave out with a long, loud grumble. "Quiet down there," he said.
"How long since you ate last?"
"Lunch yesterday-I had a chili dog," said Pender-then he chuckled.
"What"s so funny?"
He told her Mick"s story about the Jersey sh.o.r.e diner: EAT HERE AND GET GAS. "How about you?"
"I had dinner in town with Dennie, and a piece of mud pie at the coffee shop before you guys showed up." Then, after another minute or so: "s.h.i.t."
"What?"
"I wasn"t hungry until we started talking about food-now it"s all I can think about."
"Let"s change the subject-what"s your favorite song?"
"It"s kind of obscure-you probably never heard of it," said Mama Rose.
Pender grinned. "Care to make a little wager about that?"
4.
After driving hundreds of miles, when as far as he could remember he"d never driven a car before, navigating via the onboard GPS, and solving a zillion other quotidian mysteries along the way-the self-serve gas pump, the coin-operated vending machine, the hot-air restroom hand-dryer-Lyssy was not about to be deterred by the misgivings of one stubborn psychiatrist.
"Just fix her."
"And if I refuse?" she asked stiffly.
She was all but daring him to frighten her into cooperating. Same as Mama Rose. He remembered the knife on the bed, the terrifying flashback-and suddenly he realized something he must have known all along, deep down: to frighten somebody else, you first have to frighten yourself. You have to plumb the depth of your own fear and haul up the worst horror lurking down there. "Then you get what everybody gets when they cross me," he said, as harshly as he could manage.
"And what would that be, Lyssy?"
"Kinched. You get Kinched."
Lyssy was half-right, anyway. In the end, it wasn"t his threat, but rather the fear she read in his eyes that persuaded Irene. He looked like a little kid who"d just dropped the F-bomb on his parents-proud and apprehensive in equal measure. Look what a big boy I am; please don"t punish me.
Irene also knew enough about Maxwell et al., however much the system had evolved (or was it devolved?) over the last few years, to understand that it was to her advantage, and Lily"s as well, to do all she could to reinforce Maxwell"s relatively benign original personality.
Besides, the psychiatrist didn"t really believe what she"d said about not doing Lily a favor by bringing her back to consciousness. Irene had seen this unnamed autistic alter only once before, when Lily was first brought to her for a consult by a pediatric psychiatrist who was sharp enough to recognize that autism didn"t just pop up full-blown at the age of four, however textbook the symptoms.
It hadn"t taken Irene long to diagnose dissociative ident.i.ty disorder, especially as Lily"s parents had recently been convicted of child abuse in its ugliest form-the standard marker for this particular dissociative disorder. And happily, the symptoms of autism had disappeared, along with the unnamed alter, as soon as Irene put the girl under hypnosis.
But now Lily was once again in her own little world. True, it was a world without fear or pain, but also without joy or understanding or volition, and Irene could no more have left her there than she could have lobotomized her.
Still, hypnotizing an autie was a tricky proposition. Irene turned to Lyssy. "Help me bring her downstairs to my office."
Gone like magic was the pasted-on scowl. "Great, great, thanks. C"mon there, honey, let"s take another little walk." He wrested the coin sorter from the girl"s grasp and lured her out of the bedroom as though she were a donkey, and the toy a carrot.
Irene preceded them into the office and quickly cleared her desktop, on which she placed a small wooden metronome from her drawer. "Pull that chair over to the desk," she told Lyssy. "Now sit her down...good, good."
"I just want to tell you, I"m sorry about, you know, threatening you before, I just-"
Irene cut him off. "Never mind that now-let"s focus on the job at hand, shall we? I want you to take the coin sorter away from her now.... It"s okay, dear, it"s okay, look here, look what Dr. Irene has for you." She turned on the metronome, set it to the highest speed-tick tick tick tick. The girl ceased her squirming and mewling and leaned forward, focusing her attention, her very being, on this new and fascinating object. She wasn"t just watching it, she was becoming it. Breathing rapidly, eyeb.a.l.l.s following the rapid motion, pulse racing, tick tick tick tick.
Irene waited a full minute, then slowly began lowering the metronome"s speed, one setting at a time, and with it the girl"s breathing. And as her breath rate slowed, her heart rate slowed...and slowed...and slowed....
"Lily?" whispered Irene. "It"s all right, dear, everything"s okay, you"re safe now, it"s safe to open your-There you go, that"s my girl. h.e.l.lo, Lily."
5.
"Anybody home?" a female voice called from the living room. "Carson, Mama Rose?"
Lying on their backs, their hands cuffed through the headboard railing, Mama Rose and Pender exchanged complex, profoundly meaningful glances. We made it! was the primary message in both sets of eyes, but a sincere acknowledgement of the ordeal they"d gone through together was also in there someplace, along with a mutual recognition that their lives were about to get seriously complicated again. "Back here, Dennie!"
Footsteps; then a mahogany-skinned, pie-faced, burstingly pregnant woman, shirtless under faded overalls, appeared in the doorway, staring in horror from the denim-and-tie-dyed-clad body on the floor to the mummified couple on the bed. "Mama Rose? Mama Rose, what happened?"
She doesn"t know, thought the older woman. Doesn"t know L"il T."s dead. Doesn"t know she"s a widow, doesn"t know that kid inside her is never gonna see his father. "Cut us loose, then I"ll tell you all about it," she croaked through dry, cracked lips.
It wasn"t quite as simple as it sounded. Big-bellied and awkward, Dennie had to kneel and go through the corpse"s pockets until she found the universal cuff-key in the watch pocket of his jeans, then climb onto the bed and lean across Pender to reach their handcuffs, her swollen, blue-veined b.r.e.a.s.t.s swinging free inside the overalls. Ever a gentleman, and unable to avert his glance, he closed his eyes until she had finished.
It took several minutes for sensation, in the form of a thousand agonizing pinp.r.i.c.ks, to return to their unused limbs. In the meantime, it was Dennie who cut through their linen mummy wrappings with a pair of shears, and Dennie who held a gla.s.s of water to Mama Rose"s parched lips, tenderly cradling the back of Rose"s head on what remained of her lap while the older woman sipped noisily, greedily, water dribbling down her chin.
Then Dennie eased Mama Rose to a sitting position, propped her up with the bed pillows, rolled up Mama Rose"s pant legs, and began ma.s.saging her calves with both hands to restore the circulation. "Now will somebody please tell me what"s going on around here?" she asked. "Teddy never came home last night and he"s not answering his cell phone."
Rose glanced imploringly at Pender, who was busily chafing his crossed wrists with his tingling hands. He refused to acknowledge her unspoken plea: You tell her. She turned back to Dennie. "Worse than that," she said.
"Is he...is he hurt?"
Tough-talking Mama Rose, who had always scorned euphemisms, found herself unable to get the d-word out. "Teddy"s...he"s gone, Dennie. Carson, too-they"re both gone."
Dennie kept working, head down, rubbing the life back into Rose"s legs. Mama Rose thought for a minute the pregnant girl hadn"t heard her, or had misunderstood; then the tears began plopping down onto her bare shins, and she remembered something Dennie had told her once: that Eskimo babies were taught to cry silently.
She longed to take the younger woman into her arms, but they weren"t working yet; she longed to cry for Carson-and for herself-but somehow the long night of horror had robbed her of tears. Which was just as well, because with a cry of surprise Dennie suddenly left off ma.s.saging Rose"s legs, and pressed her hands to her own great belly.
"What? What is it, honey?"
"I think I felt a contraction," said the newly widowed mother-to-be.
"Well that f.u.c.king figures," said Mama Rose. "That G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.king well figures."
6.
Daylight crept reluctantly through the cracks in the blinds. Outside the darkened office, the small town stirred to life. A newspaper thudded onto a front porch; a neighbor"s dog barked to be let out; a crow on the back fence angrily greeted the new day.
Inside, despair. "It"s not fair," Lily moaned, rocking back and forth on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chin and her hands clasped around her shins. "I never did anything wrong, I never hurt anybody."
Lyssy sat next to her, his hand resting lightly on the nape of her neck. "We know, believe you me, we know," he murmured soothingly. His posture and manner, his facial expressions, even that believe you me, were so eerily reminiscent of Al Corder that if Irene hadn"t known better, she"d have sworn there was a family resemblance.
The rocking slowed; Lily turned her tear-streaked face toward Irene, who was sitting in a side chair drawn up in front of the sofa. "What happens next, Dr. Irene? Where do we go from here?"
"You don"t need to go anywhere, dear. If what Lyssy just told us is true-and if Lilith was telling him the truth-then you haven"t committed any crime. Quite the opposite, in fact: Alison says you saved her life. So whatever Lyssy decides to do-keep running, turn himself in-there"s no reason you couldn"t stay on here with me."
"And you won"t send me back to the Inst.i.tute?"
Irene smiled ruefully. "I promise you, dear, that"s one mistake your uncle Rollie and I won"t be making again." She turned to Lyssy. "As for you, Lyssy, I strongly recommend you give yourself up before anybody else gets hurt-including yourself. But if you do decide to keep running-"
Lyssy cut her off in mid-sentence. "Dr. Cogan?"
"What is it, Lyssy?"
"Could I talk to you alone for a second?"
She glanced around the tiny office. "Yes, of course. Lily, will you be all right by yourself for a few minutes?"
"I guess."
Irene led Lyssy out into the hallway, leaving the office door open so she could keep an eye on Lily. "What is it?"
"What I told you before, about how Lilith said it was Max and Kinch who did all the killing back at the director"s residence?"
"Yes?"
"What if it wasn"t true? What if she told me she"d killed one of them herself? Like maybe the psych tech you found upstairs in the bathroom."
Irene felt her hopes sinking. "Is that what she told you?"
"Just say she did-do you think there"s any way the police would be able to tell?"
"There"s something called forensics, Lyssy. Fingerprints, fibers, transfer evidence-they"ve got it down to a real science. So I"d say yes, if Lilith committed one of the murders, there"s a good chance they"d be able to figure it out."
"And if they did, what would happen to her? Would they still let her stay here with you?"
Irene recalled her brave speech to Pender in the airport yesterday morning: I don"t care what she"s done or how involved she was, I won"t let them put her away again. "Probably not," she said, sick with longing for the good old days-say, five minutes ago, when her options had seemed so straightforward and uncomplicated.
7.
What to do, what to do, what to do? Pender"s initial instinct was to grab a phone and call 911-then he remembered what MacAlister had told him about Carson yesterday: dirty as can be, fingers in everything from meth to money laundering. And no doubt Mama Rose was up to both wrists in the same illicit pies. If he summoned help, the cops would be swarming all over the place in a matter of minutes-he pictured Mama Rose being led away in handcuffs.
But why, he asked himself, should that make a difference to him? So what if he"d grown fond of her? He"d been a lawman his entire adult life-he should have been jumping at the chance to help put her and what was left of her gang away. Besides, if he didn"t make the call, he"d be helping Maxwell escape, or at least extend his head start, which was already close to twelve hours and counting.
So why was he feeling so G.o.dd.a.m.n guilty, as if he were about to do something dishonorable? Which instinct should he turn his back on, the professional or the personal? Was it once a cop, always a cop, or did being retired give him some wiggle room, ethically speaking?
The answer, he already knew, was no, it didn"t. But having come to that conclusion, Pender found himself asking: Do I give a flying f.u.c.k? Then he realized he already knew the answer to that question as well.
Rather than use his own or one of the house phones, he knelt down next to MacAlister and went through his pockets-rigor mortis was just beginning to loosen its hold on the stiffened limbs-until he"d found Mick"s cell phone, which he used to dial the FBI tipline from memory.
"Listen carefully," he said. "Ulysses Maxwell left Shasta County around eleven o"clock last night driving a red, late-model Cadillac convertible with white upholstery and California plates. The owner"s name is MacAlister, first name Michael or Mick. He"s not with Maxwell though. The DeVries girl is with him, but she"s a hostage, not an accomplice-she seems to be in some sort of trance state."
"Sir?" said the tipline operator. "Sir, don"t-" Pender pressed the End Call b.u.t.ton.
"Good choice," said Mama Rose. "For a second there, you had me worried."
Pender looked up, saw her holding a handsome nine-millimeter Colt with a blue-steel barrel and a fine-grained hickory grip. His eyes went from the gun to the phone in his hand, then back. "Likewise," he said.
"Are you going after him?"