Voodoo Moon (25 page)

"How you doing?" I said.

"I don't understand why all this stuff about this Dr. Williams is here."

"Neither do I. Not yet." I took several pages from Tandy to compare with my pages.

Three pages later, I began to see the connection between
DeVries
and Mentor, the psychiatric hospital here in Brenner.

When you put the records of Dr.
DeVries
and Dr. Aaron Williams side by side, you saw remarkable similarities. They'd had virtually identical careers, right down to receiving presidential citations for their work in posttraumatic stress disorders.

In fact, with only a few minor derivations,
DeVries
could have been a clone of Williams. Or, more properly, Williams could have been a clone of
DeVries
.

"Look at this," I said, and handed her the pages I'd been examining.

She looked them over. "Wow."

"No kidding."

"How could two people have the same identical record like this?"

"The short answer is, they couldn't. Not this close, anyway."

"So what does it mean?"

I told her Noah Chandler's theory about Paul
Renard
still being alive.

"Then Dr. Williams is
Renard
?"

"It's possible. Plastic surgery. Faked credentials, using this
DeVries
history as his own."

She smiled. "The inmates running the asylum."

"The most psychotic inmate of them all. The cannibal?"

"And now he's in charge of the whole hospital."

The sunlight seemed to dim suddenly, the way it does when a cloud passes chilly and gray across a summer afternoon. A portent, a symbol. I kept remembering the journals
Renard
had left behind. The prospect of his being alive—and even worse, disguising himself as Williams—both amused and sickened me. All the degrading filth he'd subjected others to. And he was still alive.

"So now what?"

"I drive out and see Williams."

"Just confront him?"

"At least make him explain the similarities."

"But how would that prove that he was
Renard
?"

And then
Kibbe's
approach finally made sense to me. The papers and the paperweights he'd stolen from
Williams's
desk. "
Renard
had been in the Army briefly."

"So?"

"So his fingerprints would be on record somewhere."

"I'm still not following you."

"Remember when I told you that
Kibbe
snuck into
Williams's
office one day and took some stuff?"

"Right."

"That's what he was doing. Looking for something with
Williams's
fingerprints on it. Then he could send the things in and have them checked. He could tell right away if Williams was
Renard
."

"Can't we do that?"

"We can. But it'll take longer than we have. And anyway, I want to see how Williams responds to this in person. That'll tell me a lot right there."

"He can always refuse to talk to you."

"He can. But I don't think he will when I tell him what I've got. At the very least, he'll be curious and want to know everything I know."

She touched her head. Her entire body
spasmed
.

"You all right?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. Another spasm. A couple walking by looked at her. Junkie, they probably thought. I slid closer, put my arm around her.

"What's going on?"

Still silent. A final body jerk then.

A deep sigh. A whimper caught in her throat. She touched fingers to her head again.

"It started right after breakfast."

"What did?"

"You know how I used to make drawings sometimes?"

"Sure. That's how we found where the second body was buried."

"There's a face—a shape of a face, actually. Ever since breakfast. It's kind of spooky. Like a ghost, I mean. I can see it but I can't see it. It needs to come clearer."

"You think it's the killer."

"I honestly don't know, Robert." She took my hand in hers and then raised it to her cheek. "I'm sure glad you're here."

"You want to give me your sorority pin?"

She laughed. "Asshole."

She sat back on the park bench. Looked around. "Norman Rockwell. You remember his paintings?"

"Sure."

"He was before my time, but my folks had this big book of his cover paintings for the
Saturday Evening Post
. And that's what this park is like. 1948. Everything's just so peaceful and laid back. Not all the city bullshit. I'd love to live in a town like this again."

"Then why don't you?"

She laughed again, but this laugh was a sad one. "Because for right now I'd rather have the fast lane. I'm really starting to enjoy it. The cable people have called me three times this morning. They wanted me to know that they're picking up fifteen more episodes and increasing the production budget at least twenty-five percent. I can't resist that, Robert."

"Sure you can. What you're saying is you don't want to resist that."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. I don't want to resist it."

I stood up. "I'd better go see about setting up an appointment with Dr. Williams."

"You're not scared?"

"Of what?"

"Of just confronting him, I guess."

"No. Not really. I'm more curious than anything. I want to find out if Paul
Renard
is alive."

"God, if he is," she said, "this is going to be some show."

I tried hard not to notice that she hadn't mentioned Laura as yet today. Maybe she was temporarily cried out. We all get that way around death. But she had changed. Subtly, true. But unmistakably.

She was going away. And I guess I understood it, how the celebrity had hooked her and all, but I felt lonely nonetheless. I missed the troubled but relatively simple young woman she'd once been. Maybe I wanted her to remain part child so I could remain part child, too, the oddly protective but youthful part of me—the silly part—she'd always brought out in me in our first affair. Maybe she was growing up and I resented it.

She stopped talking abruptly, putting her hands to her face and then shaking her head as if something had just shocked her. "My God, will you listen to me? My sister's dead and all I can do is blather on about myself." She looked at me and said, "I loved her."

"I know you did."

"Oh, God, Robert, look what I've become."

"People don't always go into hysterics when somebody dies. Maybe you're just in denial."

"You'd think I could at least mention her fucking name once in a while."

"You're doing fine."

She was pacing in little circles. Frantic. Crazed. So many thoughts and feelings bombarding her. "Don't you think I should at least cry?"

"You'll cry later. There's no timetable."

"Or scream? Or throw things?"

"Maybe a drink would be better."

"And you know the worst thing?"

"What?"

"I keep worrying about the show. Here my sister's dead—my sister who raised me—and I'm worrying about the show. Isn't that incredible? I can't fucking believe myself sometimes."

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that when he went to visit his father for the last time, he was deeply moved by the man's suffering—and yet a part of Fitzgerald's brain, he later admitted in his notebooks, was wondering how he was going to write this scene in a novel.

I suppose we're all capable of being distracted that way. Maybe it's just another form of denial. One more wall to put up against the terrible truth.

She said, "I'm such a cold-hearted bitch, Robert. I really am."

My role here was to agree with her. Being a gallant kind of guy, I said, "No, you're not. You're a warm, loving woman and you know it."

"Oh, God," she said, and now the tears came full and hard as she flung herself rather dramatically into my arms, "Oh, God, I hope you're right, Robert!"

But I had to wonder who the tears were for—her sister or herself and the realization that she really had lost something valuable in her rush to become a star.

I
sat in the car reading the note Emily Cunningham had affixed to my windshield.

You need to talk to Claire in the attic. Ask her to get you the baby picture. She'll know what you mean. Sandy told me about this.

There was no signature.

And just how was I supposed to get to Claire-in-the-attic? It was unlikely her parents would let me go upstairs and visit their daughter.

I took out my cell phone and called the number on the card Iris Rutledge gave me earlier. Iris answered the phone herself.

"I got a strange note from Sandy's friend Emily Cunningham."

"I'm happy for you, Mr. Payne."

"You talk to her?"

"Yes, I did."

"I don't suppose you'd tell me what you talked
about
?"

"I certainly wouldn't."

"She tell you about the baby picture?"

Pause. "What do
you
make of it?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I, actually." Pause. "She said that Sandy used to watch Claire when her parents would drive over to Cedar Rapids for the day. She said Sandy told her she'd seen something very weird one day."

"The baby picture?"

"Right."

"What was so weird about it?"

"All Sandy said was, 'I've seen that before.'"

"That same picture?"

"I guess so. Emily wasn't sure. She said she was over at Sandy's and her dad came along to pick her up and take her home. She said Sandy never talked to her about it again."

"'The same baby picture.' I don't understand."

"That's all Emily knows, Mr. Payne."

"But she did say that Claire would understand?"

"Yes."

"So Claire does speak sometimes?"

"That's my understanding."

"I got the impression that she never speaks."

"Her parents are strange people. Especially her stepfather. And those snakes of his. I hate snakes."

"Me, too."

"I've got to get ready for a client, Mr. Payne. Good luck to you."

I got in my car and drove out to Claire's house.

I
t was a two-story frame corner house with the kind of junky garage behind that seemed common in this area. Isolated from its neighbors by half a block on both sides. The garage doors hung awkwardly, seeming about ready to fall off. The backyard was littered with pop cans and beer cans and paper scraps, as well as some gray clumps that might have been boxes that had collapsed when they were left out in the rain. A defeated-looking dog dragged himself from one end of his cage to the other. He barked once but it was a pathetic performance. You could see where somebody had tried to scrape dog poop off the front sidewalk. Maybe they were going to have a party.

The garage was empty.

So their car was gone and I had to make a decision. Should I risk trying to get inside, upstairs to where Claire rocked back and forth and sat silhouetted in the attic window?

The baby picture.

Claire might be the only one who could help me with that.

I got out of the car and started across the sidewalk. Three kids on the tricycles sat two doors down, watching me and whispering to each other. I waved to them. They didn't wave back. I didn't blame them. Earthmen should never humble themselves by waving at Martians.

No sounds from inside as I mounted the three paint-shorn steps. I walked across the age-slanted porch and knocked on the screen door. I angled my ear to the door. No sounds from inside, either.

The shellacked pine door behind the screen door was relatively new. As was the lock mechanism. It was a cheap one.

"Hey," somebody said, and I spun around, scared. I'd been so involved in appraising the lock—seeing how much trouble it represented—that the voice had startled me.

"Hey," I said back.

The mailman was chunky and gray-
sideburned
and suntanned.

His near-empty bag said he was near the end of his route.

"Nice day," he said. "Sure hope this keeps up. Maybe we can slide by until December."

"Wouldn't that be nice?"

He jammed the mail into the rusted black box on the pillar connecting porch floor with porch ceiling.

Then, "Be even nicer if the
Hawks'd
have a good season."