Voodoo Moon

THREE

The press was there at seven-fifteen that morning.

At their knock, Tandy started groaning, still asleep.

I crept from bed on tiptoes and went to the curtained window and peeked out.

Two of them. Ken and Barbie. Knocking on the door. Behind them, sweeping over half the parking lot, was an array of vans and trucks and dish antennas. Our story had gone national.

Barbie I recognized as a CBS reporter. Not first-string. But with enough airtime to be taken seriously.

Bright, lovely day. Early sun burning off late fog in the piney hills. Curious small-town dogs already prowling sniff-nosed the parking lot. Who were all these interesting new folks and what was all this odd, bulky equipment? Gee, sometimes it was just so much fun to be a dog. The rewards were so unexpected. And wonderful.

"Tandy." Barbie. Then, "Tandy, it's CBS."

"And NBC," Ken said.

"We'd like to buy you breakfast."

There had to be twenty reporters and twice as many techs in the parking lot.

"Tandy. Please. We know you're in there."

"Don't you want to send some kind of message to your fans?" Ken.

"We talked to your boss, Mr. Kaplan. He said it was fine if you talked to us."

"What bullshit artists," Tandy said from bed. "Kaplan died three months ago in a car accident. They just got his name from some book."

"You'll probably have to face them," I said as I walked back to the bed.

Wan smile. "I was thinking that this'd all make Laura very happy."

"I was thinking that myself."

"CBS and NBC pounding on the door. Begging for an interview."

"This is a national story now You finding the bones. The murder-suicide."

She swung her slender legs out of bed. Ragamuffin hair. Sleep-scarred right cheek. Tiny yawn. Tight quick stretch of tight quick arms.

"I should take a shower first."

"Probably a good idea."

"Look good, I mean."

"Right."

She looked at me seriously for the first time this morning. "You all right with this?"

"Sure."

"I'm not being cynical? My sister's dead and I'm doing promo?"

"Well, it isn't promo exactly. You're grieving for your sister and you'll convey that. Whatever the show gets in publicity is extra."

She padded over, stood on tiptoes, and kissed me. "I'll bet my breath is bad, isn't it?"

"Tandy, everybody has bad breath in the morning."

"Yeah. But mine is really bad. And I probably smell, too, don't I?"

"Something terrible." Then, "You took a shower about six hours ago. How bad could you smell?"

"I got up to tinkle in the middle of the night. I'm starting my period. I smell when I start my period."

"Not to me, you don't."

"Really?"

"Really." And she really didn't.

She started to the bathroom door. "So I'm not being cynical, talking to the press?"

"You're not being cynical."

"I really loved her, Robert."

"I know you did."

She smiled. "I just keep thinking how happy she'd be with all this promo."

"Take your shower."

I tugged on my clothes and went to the door. "Tandy'll meet you at the coffee shop in forty-five minutes."

"Are you a friend of hers?"

A group of ten other reporters now encircled Barbie and Ken. Bobbing up and down like apples in a barrel.

I said, "Something like that."

"Had Laura and Noah Chandler been arguing before last night?"

"Tandy will answer all of your questions. And that's about it for now. See you in forty-five minutes."

While Tandy dressed, I took a quick shower. Her old clothes looked better than my old clothes. I changed into a white button-down shirt and chinos. The clean clothes felt good.

She looked sweet. I led her down to the coffee shop, escorted her inside. Her celebrity had doubled in the last few hours. Yesterday, she wouldn't have fetched a half-dozen stares. Today, virtually everybody in the crowded coffee shop glanced and stared at her.

Her sister was killed. Last night. Right over to the motel.

That handsome guy who used to play a cop on TV, he killed her. Noah Chandler, his name was. Remember?

I saw an attractive woman with the word MANAGER on her plastic ID tag. I told her the circumstances and asked if there was a small party room where we could set up. She said there was.

There was a small banquet table. They set their mikes up on it and stashed Tandy in the middle.

There was only room for a half-dozen camera people.

The manager personally brought Tandy a large breakfast, two eggs over easy, hash browns, toast, orange juice, coffee, Diet Pepsi.

When she finished breakfast, the questions started. And that's when I slipped out.

Am lead me to Susan Charles's office.

Susan said, "Thanks, Am." Then, "Coffee, Robert?"

"Thanks."

She walked over to the Mr. Coffee, poured us each a cup. "You owe me one," she said, serving me.

"Oh?"

"The press wanted to start knocking on your door at five-thirty. But I insisted they hold off for another hour or so."

"I'll send you a yacht."

"I'd appreciate that."

I sipped the coffee. It was actually not too terribly bad. I said, "You still thinking it was murder-suicide?"

She seemed surprised. "Yes. Aren't you?"

"I guess not."

She sat back in her chair. "This should be interesting. Why not?"

"I'm not sure."

"There's a convincing argument."

I shrugged. "Why now? They'd been having this argument-whether she'd marry him or not-for months. Why would he suddenly decide to kill her?"

"I doubt he 'decided' to kill her, Robert."

"No?"

Shook her head. "Argument starts. Heat of the moment. Kills her accidentally. Or in such a blind rage that it's almost accidental. Sees what he's done and feels so much remorse that he kills himself, too. Happens all the time."

"That's true. But I still don't buy it. Just my gut is all." Intercom. Am. "City council meeting in ten minutes, Chief."

"Thanks." Susan Charles shrugged. "Maybe you're right, Robert.

But we really won't know anything until we get the lab stuff back." I stood up. "I'll walk you to your car."

The Greyhound station was as worn out as the people it served, shadowy, chilly, vaguely ominous. Bus travel used to be respectable. Not anymore. There were still just the good plain folks who took the short rides from one small town to another but there were also the kind of sad and crazed felons who were either just out or just headed to prison-small-time con artists, would-be political radicals, men expert with knives, gun, burglary tools, and how to move an amazing amount of drugs in a short time. Last year, something like eight Greyhound drivers were killed by their passengers. The old days were long gone.

The lockers were four wide, six deep. Several of them looked as if somebody had taken a crowbar to them from time to time. The lock gave me some trouble. It was just a plain Yale but it wouldn't open without a lot of wiggling and waggling. I picked up what was inside, shut the door, and took off.

All this was watched by a lean, pale man who could have, in the right light, passed for an albino. He wore a cheap Cubs jacket and a shirt opened to his sternum. He inhaled his cigarette so deeply you suspected he was trying to get lung cancer. He grinned at me with bad teeth and said, "Enjoy it, man. Wish I had a stash like that."

They're everywhere these days, even in small towns, the shadow people, all crazed vaguely threatening grins and obscure words and that terrible burden of sorrow in the soft insanity of their eyes. I got away from him as quickly as I could.

There were maybe two dozen sheets of paper in the package. It'd been a long fax. The logo on the cover said ST. JUDITH'S PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL.

I was sitting on a park bench in the town square. Two squirrels in front of the Civil War memorial were busy digging up nuts. The angling sunlight was warm as only autumn sunlight can be warm. Not burning hot, but nourishing, preparing us for the winter soon to come.

I was just getting a start on the faxed pages inside when I saw her across the street. On her trusty bicycle. She was sliding a letter beneath the driver's-side windshield wiper on my rental car.

Emily Cunningham. The cousin of the girl Rick Hennessy had supposedly killed.

I just watched her. She didn't see me. Didn't even look around, really. Just shoved the letter between blade and windshield and took off pedaling fast. As if moving fast and not looking around at all somehow made her invisible.

I gave her a few minutes and then got up and walked over to the rental car and picked up the envelope.

It was business-sized, white, a number ten.

PAYNE was written on the front of it in blue ballpoint.

It was not only sealed, it was also Scotch-taped.

I carried the envelope back to the park bench where I'd been sitting. The two squirrels were still busy digging up what proved to be acorns.

I was just about to slit open the envelope when somebody said, "Hello, Robert. I snuck out the back door."

Tandy, looking young and revitalized in a way I would have thought impossible a few hours before, sat down next to me.

"Wow. All these papers. Studying for a big test?"

She was jaunty, as she could sometimes be. The media attention had been good for her.

"Kibbe left these behind at a copy shop."

"You looked through them yet."

"Just started."

"You take half, I'll take half."

They divided ten, ten evenly.

The faxes I had dealt with one Dr. Wayne DeVries. His medical degree had come from the University of Washington, he'd interned in New York City, and he'd spent his first thirteen working years at St. Judith's, on whose letterhead this was written. In 1981, while on a fishing vacation, he drowned. There were no witnesses to the drowning. The body was found washed up downriver three days later. An autopsy confirmed drowning as the cause of death. There were several bruises on the doctor's throat, face, and upper arms, but the meaning of these was inconclusive.

There were other letters citing his brilliant psychiatric career. He'd twice received special awards from the American Medical Association. And once received a presidential citation for his work in dealing with posttraumatic disorders, notably those of Vietnam veterans.

"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.