If Looks Could Kill (18 page)

I spent the rest of the morning organizing all my notes and files so I could begin my Marky outline in the afternoon. If I
was going to make my new deadline, I was going to have to write at light speed.

Finally it was time for lunch with Dr. Jack Herlihy, child psychologist and poltergeist exposer. I hate doing interviews over
a lunch because it always entails a messy, awkward routine of eating, writing, and napkin dabbing, but he’d seemed to be pushing
for a meal. Maybe the food stipend for visiting professors left a lot to be desired. “Pick a spot,” he’d said. “You know the
Village.” There’d been a slightly bossy quality to his tone, typical of a lot of shrinks I’d interviewed.

I had suggested we meet at a little café on East 9th Street with an outdoor courtyard. I changed out of my sweats and T-shirt
into a short denim skirt I hadn’t worn since last August and a pair of red slingbacks. I know this sounds very un-PC, but
cute clothes do wonders in interviews with male members of the species.

As I hurried out of my apartment building, I glanced up and down the street. Nothing ominous. Just the usual Village types.
I was two minutes late, and I was relieved to see that the shrink was late, too. Or, at least I thought he was. There was
one solo person in the courtyard, a guy in jeans, a white T-shirt, and an unstructured navy blazer who hardly looked the part.
But when he glanced up from his
New York Times
and spotted me, he raised his hand in a greeting. I couldn’t believe it was him—though obviously he’d gotten a brilliant
read on me over the phone.

Whereas I’d expected someone bearded, possibly balding, rumpily professorial, and over forty, he was clean-shaven, sophisticated,
no more than thirty-four or thirty-five, and extremely good-looking, if your preference is the non-rugged-looking type with
high cheekbones and smooth skin, which isn’t exactly
my
type, but I can appreciate what works about it.

“Hi,” he said, standing as I walked toward the table. “Jack Herlihy.” He was at least six feet two.

“Bailey Weggins,” I said. “I see you found the place okay.”

“It’s not what I expected over here,” he said as we both sat down. “I’d always heard the East Village was this fringe area
with lots of very strange street people.”

“I think it was that way in the sixties, but now it’s charming in its own way,” I said. “I live right on the border of the
East and West Village, so I’ve got to be loyal to both. You said you were on Mercer?”

“Yeah, they’ve got me in a furnished sublet in some university-owned housing. It’s not bad—from what I hear, I’d be paying
way over two thousand a month for a one-bedroom place down here, so I shouldn’t complain—but the furniture looks like something
out of an Adirondack lodge, circa 1940. I feel like I should get a CD of loon calls to play as a backdrop.”

“You don’t have a moose head over the bed, do you?”

“Not that bad.” He laughed, brushing his hand through his sandy brown hair. “But at least forty percent of the furniture seems
to be made of birch bark.”

Personalitywise he wasn’t what I’d imagined, either. On the phone he had sounded cerebral and no-nonsense, more than anxious
to give me a piece of his mind about the so-called science of parapsychology. I felt slightly discombobulated by his easygoingness.
I suggested we order first, which we did, and then I quickly fished out my tape recorder from my bag, explaining that I liked
to use a tape recorder and take notes as backup. When I pressed down the play and record buttons, he leaned back in his chair
with his arms against his chest and watched me with a slightly bemused look in his eyes.

“As I mentioned to you on the phone,” I said, trying not to sound as awkward as I felt from having those blue eyes on me so
intently, “I’m doing a piece about a family who’s had some crazy things happen in their house. A lot of people have suggested
they have a poltergeist. From reading the two papers you did, I take it you don’t believe that it could be a ghost or spirit.”

“You know as well as I do,” he said, “or at least I assume you do, that there’s no such thing as ghosts or evil spirits. Though
I’ll confess that I saw
The Exorcist
on a sleep-over when I was twelve and it scared the hell out of me. I think I slept on the floor of my parents’ bedroom for
six months after that.”

“I interviewed a couple of parapsychologists for the story,” I explained. “Though these guys, by definition, believe in the
paranormal, they don’t think there’s anything supernatural going on in this particular case. They say it’s Marky’s telekinetic
energy that’s creating all the commotion.” No question. I just let the comment hang there.

“Does that make sense to you?” he asked.

“I’m interviewing
you.”

“Okay,” he said, smiling. He put his hands together like a steeple in front of his face and pressed them into his lips, holding
them like that for a few seconds before speaking.

“I know all about these Ghostbuster-type guys. They sound scientific. And in these kinds of cases—the ones involving adolescents—they
sound like the voice of reason, because everybody else is yelling poltergeist and they come in saying, ‘No, no, don’t be ridiculous,
there’s not a poltergeist. It’s this troubled child’s energy run amok.’ But the idea that a kinetic force can be emitted from
a child’s brain is preposterous.”

“Then who’s creating all the havoc?”

“Who do you think?”

“Stop that. I’m asking you.”

He smiled again, staring at me intently. I realized something fascinating at that moment about his looks. The whole was greater
than the sum of the parts. His pale blue eyes were nice but not amazing (and his eyebrows were so pale that you almost couldn’t
see the outer ends); his mouth was full enough but not anything you’d melt over; and his nose was just okay, straight and
proportional but a little on the large side. There was not a single drop-dead gorgeous feature, yet it all came together to
form one drop-dead gorgeous face. No wonder he’d decided to focus in his practice on kids. He was too good-looking to be the
kind of shrink who counseled adults—half of his patients would have ended up stalking him.

“It’s the kids themselves who do the dirty work,” he said finally.

“But how?” I asked. “I know that’s what you found in the cases you observed, but in this instance I can’t see how this girl,
Marky, could have pulled everything off—or why she’s going to all the trouble.”

“Well, first, let me talk about the kids for a second. In almost all of these cases the child is an adolescent—or a preadolescent.
Generally it’s a girl. And they’re always either very angry or troubled. In some cases she’s been adopted or there’s been
some terrible disruption in her life. She fakes the phe-nomena in order to get the attention she craves—or it’s a passive-aggressive
expression of anger.”

I told him a little bit then about Marky. The criteria fit, most definitely. Though it seemed that Marky’s family cared about
her, she was not actually the parents’ natural daughter, but rather their niece. The wife’s sister, the town tramp, had given
birth to Marky illegitimately and had died of ovarian cancer when Marky was four.

The waiter arrived with a large bottle of Pellegrino and two goblets that he carried with the stems through the fingers of
one hand. He poured us each a glass and set the bottle on the table.

“It’s just hard for me to imagine that Marky’s capable of
all
the mischief that’s gone on up there,” I said. “Some of the furniture that’s been moved has been heavy.”

“These kids have their ways. Even if you’re not strong, you can move a big piece of furniture across the floor if you get
the right momentum. I videotaped a kid doing that when he thought no one was looking. And some kids are even more sophisticated.
They’re like little magicians.”

I asked him if there was a chance anyone else could be doing it—like the parents, in an attempt to turn Marky into a minor
celebrity, or one of the brothers, in an attempt to create problems for her. He said that anything was possible, but he would
put his money on Marky.

Our sandwiches arrived and it seemed an okay moment to take a break and eat. The day was exquisite, one of those afternoons
when the air feels like a soft cloth against your neck and you want it never to end. In spite of everything that had been
happening, I felt oddly relaxed.

As we fumbled with our food, I inquired about his background. After college, he explained, he’d gotten his doctorate and counseled
kids for a couple of years before deciding that he’d prefer to teach, though he said he occasionally consulted in special
cases. He liked his job at Georgetown but had ac-cepted the summer gig at NYU because he was toying with the idea of relocating
one day.

“How did you get interested in poltergeists?” I asked.

“A graduate supervisor of mine asked me to look into a case involving a ten-year-old kid whose mother had run off with a guy
and left him behind with the grandmother. Everybody thought their house was haunted by the ghost of a farmer who had been
bludgeoned to death there years before.”

“I take it you didn’t suspect a ghost?”

“I didn’t know what to think at first, but I kept a low profile and spotted the kid making a chandelier swing with a ruler.”

When we were done with our sandwiches, we ordered coffee and he asked for a tiramisu.

“Two forks?” he asked, glancing toward me.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said, flustered. God, what a date-y thing for him to do. What was his situation? I wondered. He didn’t
seem gay. He wasn’t wearing a ring, and it was sort of clear from the way he talked earlier that he was living alone. There
was probably some chick pining hard back in D.C., counting the days until his return in September and totally wigged out over
the fact that he was flirting with the idea of relocating.

“Will you be going back to Washington on the weekends?” I asked.

“Not really. Maybe once or twice to check on my place. That’s a town that really shuts down in the summer. I’ve got friends
coming up here, though.”

He glanced at his watch, and I realized I’d better hustle things along. I waved for the check. He tried to wrestle me for
the bill, but I insisted, explaining that it was against journalistic ethics for me to allow him to pay.

We said good-bye on the sidewalk and then experienced that awkward moment that occurs when you discover you’re going the same
way and must restart a conversation you’ve just wrapped up.

As we walked west, he asked me about my job, about how I’d gotten started as a writer and what kind of pieces I liked to work
on and what a typical day was like for me. His questions were thoughtful, and it was delicious to have a guy be so curious—though
I chalked it up to his shrink training. All of a sudden he grew slightly distracted, as if he were trying to converse and
simultaneously handle some minor mental task, like recall where he’d left his passport. I felt a weird urge to engage his
attention fully again. I blurted out the story of Heidi’s murder.

“How chilling,” he said. “Do the police have any suspects?”

“Not that I know of. Cat seems to have annoyed lots of people over the years, and it may take a while to sort through all
of them.”

“The thing about premeditated murder—and I don’t know a heck of a lot about it, but I do know this—is that it almost always
involves some pretty intense self-interest and emotion. No one is ever going to plot your demise because you gave a boring
dinner party. There’s got to be something very intense behind it—like jealousy or greed or revenge. And then there’s thwarted
love—always a biggie.”

He stopped suddenly, in the middle of the sidewalk on Broadway and 9th, and I realized that it was because he was about to
turn south, back toward NYU.

“Well, look,” I said, sticking out my hand, “I can’t thank you enough for all your insight about Marky. It’s been very helpful.”

“I’m glad I could help,” he said, smiling. “Call me if you’ve got any other question—and don’t talk to any more parapsychologists.
They’ll start making telekinetic energy shoot out of
your
brain.”

I laughed. “I probably will need to ask you a few more questions over the phone once I’ve gone over my notes. Thanks again.”

He strode off, south on Broadway, the back of his jacket flipping up as he walked, headed toward his office or his Adirondack
cabin in the sky, to prepare a lesson plan or find his passport or call his girlfriend in D.C. and demand that she shuttle
up this weekend and satisfy the desire surging through his loins. Why was I thinking these things? I wondered. Lookswise,
he was not really my type, and I couldn’t imagine dating a shrink.

My apartment house was only thirty feet away, but instead of going into the building, I headed west on 9th Street. My body
was craving more caffeine, and I also wanted to sit in the fresh air and think through how I would work the information Jack
Herlihy had given me into my article. I’d bought everything he said, but I wasn’t sure yet how to weave it in. I could be
straight with the reader up front or make the story more of a mystery.

On University Avenue I picked up a double cappuccino to go and walked over to Washington Square Park. It was packed, with
people pushing strollers, Rollerblading, or just lolling about in the sun. I found an empty bench near the bocci court and
parked myself on it.

With my cell phone, I checked my voice mail at work. Two messages. My editor at
Travels
had called to say she was faxing over more background material for my trip to England and Scotland in July, and my friend
Mitch had left a message reminding me that his sister would be singing in a club on the Upper West Side tonight and I’d better
show. I’d forgotten all about it.

Next I tried home, hoping Detective Farley and Cat would have made contact. No messages in the two hours I’d been away. But
two hang-ups. My heart jumped, as if someone had come up from behind and given it a shove.

Tossing the cell phone back into my bag, I pulled my legs up onto the bench, careful not to give the entire park a view of
my granny panties. As several mangy squirrels scampered around me, I took a careful sip of cappuccino and tried to concentrate
on my article.