Cold Case (33 page)

For a moment he sounded so human, so wounded, I could barely bring myself to renew my demand.

“What do you want,” he snapped, ending the spell, turning from sympathetic frog to arrogant prince in no time flat.

“You owe me a call to the Weston Psychiatric Institute. Tell whoever's in charge that I'm on my way right now, and I'll be visiting your sister on behalf of the family. I'll expect them to welcome me with open arms.”

“You have a lot of nerve.”

“I've got the goods to back it up. You want to hear the ‘or else' part?”

“Why not?”

“Or else I release selected paragraphs of writing attributed to ‘Thea Janis' to every trash tabloid in the U.S.”

“You've got the notebook back! It belongs to me, to my mother.”

“Wrong. It belongs to Beryl.”

The phone went dead.

I listened, but heard no footsteps on the stairs. Hurriedly, I donned gloves, removed all Manley's possessions from my locked desk drawer, shoving them into an envelope. I folded the single sheet of paper, tucked it in my back pocket.

If Manley kept an office at WPI, I intended to dump his stuff there.

I checked the location of the Weston Psychiatric Hospital in the phone book, on a map. Almost as an afterthought, I phoned the city greenhouse, asked for Edgar Barrett. I hummed to myself while I waited, appreciating the lack of piped-in melodies.

“You said the Cuban gardener, the one who worked with your father, told you he was with the CIA,” I said once our respective identities had been established.

“So?”

“Could it have been the FBI?”

“Lady, I was eight years old. He could have been the Man from U.N.C.L.E. He could have said NASA, if they were around then.”

“Could his name have been Alonso?”

“If that's a Cuban name.”

“Thanks for your help.”

“And yours.” He slammed the receiver down.

Before I got out the door, Sleazebag Vandenburg called, demanding to know whether I had a location on our mutual friend. I hung up. So many people had been hanging up on me lately that it felt good to be in the power position.

I should have listened to him more closely, but I was revved for my visit to Weston Psych.

Roz shoved an envelope into my hands as I walked out the door. I assumed it was an itemized bill. Assumptions, they get you every time.

PART THREE

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror cracked from side to side;

“
The curse is come upon me,” cried

The Lady of Shalott
.

A
LFRED
, L
ORD
T
ENNYSON

Man, why the hell didn't she answer the phone? He'd tried five, no six times, and, for sure, she had to be home. Where the hell else would she go? He'd even had the stupid operator check the line
.

Everything had taken a crazy swing and now the motorbike was history. Cops could be after his ass, watching him punch numbers on the stupid pay phone, for all he knew
.

Didn't she say she'd always take care of him? That he could always come home? That he could always call if he was in trouble? That she could handle everything?

His hand rummaged through his jeans pocket. He still had the house key. He could go home. He could start thumbing now
.

Hell, how far would he get? It wasn't the great wide-open road, like it used to be, not like it had been for her, thumb out, thigh out, everybody ready to stop and give you a lift, have a little party. Get high
.

No way
.

He hung up the phone, drew deep breaths into his lungs
.

Stop it, he scolded himself. Panic he didn't need
.

It wasn't like he was alone. And there was the money, that was sure to come through. He had a place to stay. He had a lady. No use making a big deal over the bike
.

He didn't need Seattle, not when he had Boston, a fine lady to care for him
.

It would turn out okay
.

Dumb move, trying to call
.

Dumb move, panicking
.

40

In the parking lot, removed from traffic by distance and high sculpted hedges, it occurred to me that Roz's envelope seemed more stylish, more the thing to carry, than the one into which I'd hastily shoved Manley's wallet and appointment book.

I unfastened its string closing to expose not a bill, but two charcoal drawings, separated by a sheet of tracing paper.
Thea Jams, as she might be, were she not dead
.

Roz is given to extremism, to caricature. She does not consider kindness a virtue in art. The two sketches, the two Theas, if you will, had been executed without romantic illusion. Fifteen plus twenty-four equals thirty-nine, any way you spin it, but I found Roz's efforts almost cruel. Maybe it's our relative ages. From her comfortably twentyish perch, she sees almost-forty as older, harsher, than reality. Approaching thirty-five, I perceive the same age as youthful, vigorous.

I fixed the images in my mind, one heavy-set, one thin, both with small chins, generous mouths, wide eyes. The plump version had short curls; the thin version, long straight hair. One wore glasses. One didn't.

On the back of the thin woman, Roz had scrawled: “Sorry. Consider these freebies. I can't do 'em justice. Too many variables. What if she had her teeth fixed? Bonded? Hair permed? Eyebrows plucked? Everything changes, you know?”

The note echoed my police academy training. Ears and fingers. Ears and fingers stay the same. I transferred Manley's wallet, added the sketches, sucked in a deep breath.

Everything changes.

The Weston Psychiatric Institute could have held instructional seminars on security. They handled it with greater finesse than Walpole, with the thoroughness and precision of machine tools. A cordial man in suit and tie vetted my driver's license, phoned Garnet Cameron and spoke to him personally, guaranteeing that he'd okayed my visit even though three attendants had talked with Garnet concerning my imminent arrival barely half an hour earlier and the shift hadn't changed.

My whites wouldn't have passed muster. My threat evidently had.

I was required to sign a form declaring that I would visit Miss Beryl Cameron and only Miss Beryl Cameron and would comply with physician's orders. Since I didn't see any physicians, just security guys, I signed, deliberately scrawling my signature as illegibly as possible.

I found myself wondering what type of force the guards preferred. No trace of a holster marred my companion's admirably cut jacket. The Windbreaker Man could have picked up a few sartorial pointers. Syringe in the pocket? Taser? Mace or pepper spray?

The institute consisted of three large red-brick buildings and a couple of smaller dwellings. A gymnasium and a swimming pool, enclosed for year-round use, added to the campus illusion. Each major building or “dormitory” seemed to house a different level of illness, a single stratum of madness or aberration. Each had its own dining hall so the categories never mixed. I wondered if one could graduate from dorm to dorm, climbing the invisible ladder, until someone labeled you sane enough for this world.

All residents were housed in splendor; the armor barely showed, like bones under translucent skin.

I was to be accompanied at all times, not by the suit, but by a wardress. She would promptly escort me from the grounds if I upset Miss Beryl or any other “client,” a term all seemed to prefer to patient or inmate. My assigned companion clanked as she walked and it took me a moment to find the reason—keys at her belt, obscured by a white apron and ample stomach.

She had a badge on her chest that said “Jannie.” Nothing that implied credentials. At first, I figured that meant she had none, wasn't even an LPN. When I continued to see people labeled only with first names, I decided they were attempting the illusion of chumminess. All pals together at WPI. Some could leave at the end of the day and some couldn't, that's all.

I've visited state institutions in my work, and this was so far above the best of them it could have existed on a different planet. Fresh flowers were arranged in cut-glass bowls the size of beachballs. The atmosphere and smell sang first-class hotel not medical supervision. Nor did the visible “clientele,” dressed in casual jeans and shirts, look like they were incarcerated for anything more serious than a rest.

I should've taken Donovan's advice, checked in.

If not for the chaos caused by Manley's death, I doubt I'd have caught a glimpse of the wood-paneled records room, disguised to look like a library. Surely I'd never have had the opportunity to glance at Beryl's chart long enough to determine that she'd been a “client” for twenty-seven years. Three years outpatient. Twenty-four residential. A very long interval of rest had carried her through her teens, dumped her at the door to middle age.

“Put that down,” Jannie said. “Follow me.”

Twenty-four years rang the coincidence bell too loudly … Had the already disturbed older sister, jealous of the younger Thea's success, killed her? Had MacAvoy been paid for a cover-up, with the Camerons agreeing to Beryl's perpetual incarceration as part of the price for his silence?

A college-like quadrangle separated the buildings. A pickup volleyball game was in progress.

Inside Hydrangea Court the quiet was broken only by the soothing sounds of classical piano, so acoustically true it could have been live. By this time, a Steinway in each building, equipped with a concert pianist, wouldn't have surprised me. I wanted to see the glossy brochures this place sent out. I wanted to see a “client”'s monthly bill!

An image of Pix, so desperate, so full of life, invaded my skull. Would she wind up in an institution, not an eighth so well run as this one?

The ground-floor rooms were grand, but perhaps the upstairs accommodations were spartan. I'd declined to meet Miss Beryl in the sunroom, insisting that her room would be the only acceptable locale. Garnet Cameron must have okayed it because Jannie unlocked and relocked a door, led me silently to a staircase.

I felt a slight tickle at my back and wondered if I could overpower the robust Jannie in a pinch and run for the gates, scale them. Just a reaction to locked doors. I'd felt it at the prison, too.

Jannie guided me down a wide plushly carpeted corridor. Doors to either side were numbered. Fancy hotel with double-keyed RABB locks.

She stopped at the end of the hallway, clanked her key ring, and entered a corner suite. At first, I thought it was empty. Then I noticed Jannie staring at the bed.

Beryl's hair was pulled back from her face, combed and rolled into a chignon. White as snow. She was slack and plump, with pimpled pallid skin. Her eyes had no sparkle, no light.

Lost, I thought. Her mother said she was lost
.

Beryl didn't look like either aged portrait of “Thea.” Both of Roz's efforts glimmered with intelligence, showed liveliness in their widely spaced eyes. I knew that drugs, especially strong antipsychotics, could dramatically change a person's appearance, adding pounds, puffing features. I tried to see beyond the bloated outline, to find the girl of the early news photos, the one who resembled Franklin more than Tessa. I gave it up.

She had brown staring eyes, shadows beneath them. Darker than Tessa's.

“Hi, Beryl,” I said. “Mind if I sit down?”

Nothing.

Jannie made a noise, a polite snort.

I pulled a chair closer to the bed. Not an institutional chair. Beryl's sunny room was filled with polished mahogany. Her bed had a flowered canopy. There was nothing remotely institutional in the graceful lines of the furniture. Her own? The chair I sat in was deeply cushioned, slightly worn, comfortable.

“Have you seen Garnet lately?” I asked, as though we were continuing a friendly conversation.

Nothing.

“What about Marissa? His wife.”

Nothing.

I gave Jannie a look. If she snorted again, I'd smack her.

“Do you remember your sister, Thea?”

Beryl hummed a little tune. Her voice sounded oddly unused, like a kid's music box opened after years of dusty silence.

“Is she medicated?” I asked.

“Of course,” Jannie responded.

“Sedated?”

“Mildly.”

“Is she always like this? Did Garnet Cameron order extra medication for her today?”

“Mr. Cameron is not a doctor.”

“And she hasn't seen her doctor today.”

Jannie bit her lip. “No.”

“Because her doctor is Andrew Manley.”

I used present tense. I wasn't sure what Beryl absorbed, but I didn't want to be the one to bring her bad news.

What had Andrew Manley said about writing, that writing was the way Thea experienced the world, communicated with it?

Had the two sisters always been so different?

What had happened to Beryl?

I should have begged Donovan to come with me. He'd have known what to ask, where to look. Did reputable psychiatrists condone lobotomies? Had they in the early seventies?

“Has Beryl ever had electroconvulsive therapy?” I asked.

Jannie shrugged. I was getting extremely tired of her matter-of-fact shrug.

If this was Beryl—Beryl as she normally existed—she couldn't have written the new manuscript. Not this colorless woman with dead eyes.

Could she have written the first manuscript? Had Thea taken credit for it? Why? The girl who'd written
Nightmare's Dawn
was sexually precocious. Maybe in another age, in Victorian times, such a child might have been shut away, punished.

I stared down at Beryl. She hadn't acknowledged my presense in any way. She hummed tunelessly, moved her fingers rhythmically, in a way that seemed more indicative of autism than schizophrenia to me, but what did I know about such complex labels?