Regina's Song (15 page)

“Why?”

“There’s a law or six about recording conversations on the sly, Mark. Everybody knows that.”

“I thought that only involved recording phone conversations.”

“The laws are a little murky, but we might need a court order to stay out of trouble.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted. “Doc Fallon can probably persuade some judge to go along, but a Snohomish County court order might not be valid here in King County.”

“It’s not like we were going to take it to court, Mark,” he said, “but you’d still better bounce it off Trish and see what she has to say. Bending a few laws now and then doesn’t bother me too much, but if Sylvia’s going to try to float an M.S. degree on this, those recordings had better be strictly legal. If they aren’t, her department might throw her thesis in the garbage can. Then she’ll come after you and me with a baseball bat.”

“We’ll clear it with Trish before we take it any further,” I assured him.

I had a certain sense of accomplishment when I went to bed, and I slept very well. I was feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I went down to the kitchen Wednesday morning. The crew was all clustered around that little TV set on the counter, though.

“Not another one?” I demanded incredulously.

“Oh, gosh yes,” Charlie replied. “It’s getting to be a habit in this part of town.”

“Anywhere near here?” I asked.

“Gas Works Park, down on Lake Union,” Erika replied. “It’s about ten blocks from here.”

“Gas Works?”

“Don’t ask,” she replied, rolling her eyes upward. “Seattle sprouts parks almost like dandelions. I haven’t checked a map lately, but there’s probably a Garbage Dump Park and a Sewage Treatment Plant Park somewhere.”

“Did we lose another junior hoodling?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” James told me. “This one was forty-seven years old, and he evidently doesn’t have a police record—at least not around here. He moved to Seattle from Kansas City about a year ago, and the local police are checking him out with the authorities there.”

“It shoots Burpee’s theory—and several others as well—full of holes,” Charlie added. “This Kansas City guy hasn’t really had enough time to hook up with any local dope dealers, and he had a regular job as a nighttime janitor in a big office complex over in Ballard.”

“What was he doing in a park on Lake Union, then? Wasn’t he supposed to be working?”

“I’ve worked nights a few times,” Charlie said. “The boss doesn’t come around much after midnight.”

I frowned. “He doesn’t have much in common with the ones who got sliced up before, does he?” I asked.

“Not even a little,” Charlie agreed. “This Slasher guy seems to be spreading out. It’s starting to look like we’ve got an ecumenical killer out there.”

“There has to be some sort of connection,” I protested.

“Maybe so,” James said, “but the police haven’t figured it out yet.”

“The strange thing is that nobody ever hears anything,” Erika added. “Not one of the victims died instantly. There should have been a lot of screaming, but nobody ever seems to hear it.”

“That’s bugging my brother, too,” Charlie told her. “He mentioned it right after the Windemere killing. It’s really got him baffled.”

“What was this guy’s name?” I asked.

“Finley,” Trish replied. “Edward Finley.”

“Maybe the Muñoz killing was a fluke. Andrews, Garrison, and Finley obviously weren’t Chicano dope dealers. There has to be some connection, but the cops haven’t spotted it yet—or if they have, they aren’t talking about it.”

“I’m still leaning in the direction of ‘targets of opportunity,’ ” Charlie said. “Once our cutter gets all wired up, he’ll take out the first guy he sees.”

“I don’t buy it,” Sylvia disagreed. “Everything we’ve heard so far says ‘psychotic,’ and psychotics don’t function that way. The reason may be so warped that we wouldn’t understand it, but there has to be some kind of connection. Maybe all four victims used the same aftershave lotion, or maybe they were all whistling the same tune, but there’s something that connects them in the Slasher’s mind. The police won’t solve this until somebody makes that connection.”

“And as soon as he does, the media folks will all go into deep mourning,” Charlie added sardonically. “Someday—someday—some TV personality’s going to announce that nothing significant has happened lately, then tell everybody to turn off the TV set and read a good book—or clean up the garage.”

Twink didn’t make it to class the next day. That was starting to get out of hand. I’d been putting off talking with her about it, but I decided that I’d better not procrastinate anymore. I assigned another paper that day, and the groaning wasn’t too loud this time. I’d pretty well thinned out the goof-offs by now, and the survivors were all fairly competent. At least they were past the “Run, Spot, run” stage, and we could get into the more complicated stuff—like subject-verb agreement and dangling participles.

After supper that evening, Charlie, James, and I made our customary “after the killing” visit to the Green Lantern to get Bob West’s views on this latest crime.

“I thought you guys might show,” Bob said, as we joined him in one of the back booths. “You’re starting to get predictable.”

“We’re still in the war zone, Bob,” Charlie reminded him, “and we’re sure not getting much in the way of truth from the newspapers or the TV. Did the head honcho at the cop shop clamp the lid down or something? All that’s coming out of the media is name, rank, and serial number. What’s the scoop on the Gas Works Park thing?”

“We don’t have much in the way of scoop to work with, kid. The Gas Works Park killing torpedoed just about everything we had to go on. About the only break we got this time was an earwitness who claims he heard some noise, but he’s a wino who was up to his eyebrows in Mogen David and Thunderbird. He claims he heard dogs howling at the time of the killing, but he doesn’t have a watch, so he might be off by several hours. That park’s in a commercial district—various little shops and whatnot—so we can’t find anybody to verify his story.”

“If it’s not a residential area, why would there be any dogs in the vicinity?” James asked.

“There shouldn’t be,” Bob admitted. “We’re following up on it, but it’s altogether possible that the dogs came out of the same bottle our wino’s pet pink elephants do.”

“I think we’d better clamp down on our girls,” James said. “It’s starting to get dangerous out there. The Slasher seems to be killing people at random, and that throws everything up in the air.”

“Way up in the air,” Bob agreed, “and there are girls running around alone all over this part of town. Half the student body at the university is female, and college girls do strange things sometimes. The only real human being our wino saw last night was a girl on a bicycle riding past the park.” He leaned back in the booth. “We’ve had four murders in the last month or so, all within five miles of the university campus. That raises the possibility that our Slasher might be a student. So far, all the victims have been guys, but if James is right about the Slasher branching out, I don’t think anybody’s really safe. In spite of that pepper spray, I’d say that it might be time to enforce your ‘nobody goes out alone after dark’ rule stringently. Lie to your ladies if you have to—tell them that you have to go pick up a book, or you need a pack of cigarettes—whatever. It’s dangerous out there now, so do what you have to.”

“You’re just loaded with good cheer, aren’t you, Bob?” Charlie said.

“You guys asked me,” Bob replied. “If you don’t like the answer, tough.”

So we started using the buddy system for each and every after-dark excursion. Fortunately, the girls barely complained at all, and we made it to Saturday without any untoward incidents.

Early Saturday morning, I moved Operation Bookshelves into Charlie’s room. That black ceiling of his really bugged me for some reason.

“Don’t look at it,” Charlie told me, when I started to complain.

“What’s that you’re reading?” I asked curiously. He seemed to be deep in a rather slender book.

“Kierkegaard,” he said. “He sure comes up with snappy titles, doesn’t he? This one’s
The Sickness Unto Death
. Great reading for a gloomy day, huh?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working on Erika’s car?”

“The part I need wasn’t on the shelf at the auto supply place. They had to order it.”

“Convenient.”

“I thought so.” He set his book aside. “A little bit of that goes a long way,” he noted.

“You’re a hard-science guy, Charlie. What the hell are you doing reading philosophy?”

“James mentioned existentialism. The notion that only a few people are qualified to make the choices for the rest of humanity sort of got my attention.”

“It’s a dirty job,” I noted, “but according to the existentialists, somebody’s got to do it.”

“Maybe I ought to volunteer,” Charlie said. “We’ve got all these earthshaking choices out there—which team we should root for in the World Series; which girls are prettier, blondes or brunettes; whether Fords are better than Chevys—you know, all that earthshaking crap.”

I shrugged. “Your choices would probably be as good as anybody else’s,” I said. “Grab the other end of my tape, would you? I want to be sure I’ve got this measurement exact. This job would be a whole lot easier if the damn house hadn’t settled so much. Nothing in the whole building is precisely plumb and square.”

“Not even the people who live here,” Charlie added. “We’ve all got our little off-center peculiarities, but that’s what makes life so interesting, isn’t it?”

“As long as we aren’t too far off center, old buddy. If somebody’s leaning thirty-seven degrees to the right or the left, he starts moving into Twinkie territory, and that’s a quick ticket to the bughouse.”

“How’s she doing, by the way?”

“I haven’t got a clue, Charlie. Some days she’s just fine; other days, she seems to be heading back to the loony bin.”

“Everybody has ups and downs, Mark.”

“True. But if Twink flies apart again, it’s a clear win for the other side.”

“Then we’ll all have to concentrate on keeping her bolted together, won’t we?”

“All we can do is try, I guess.”

SECOND MOVEMENT

DIES IRAE

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sundays were always pretty laid-back at the Erdlund house. It was the one day of the week when we could sleep late if we really wanted to, and breakfast was pretty much when we got around to it.

It was about ten o’clock when I finally shambled on downstairs, drawn by the smell of Erika’s coffee.

“Hey, sack-rat,” Charlie said, grinning at me, “we thought you might sleep ’til noon.”

“Don’t pick on him,” Erika scolded, pouring me a cup of coffee. “At least not until his eyes are open.” She handed me the cup, and I took it gratefully and sat down in the breakfast nook.

“I feel like pancakes this morning,” Charlie said hopefully to Trish.

“You don’t look at all like a pancake, Charlie,” Erika told him without even cracking a smile. “Corned beef hash, maybe, but hardly a pancake.”

“Make her stop that, Trish,” Charlie complained.

“Be nice, children,” Trish told them. “Don’t fight.”

“It’s Sunday, Mama Trish,” James rumbled. “The children always play on Sunday.”

Trish sighed, rolling her eyes up. “I know,” she said.

“Where’s Sylvia?” I asked, looking around the kitchen.

“She’s getting ready for church,” Erika told me. “She’s going to take Renata to noon Mass.”

“Sylvia’s case history project’s taking a lot of heat off you, isn’t it, Mark?” Charlie suggested.

“You don’t hear me complaining, do you?” I answered. “Did we get an OK on that bug?”

“I checked with Mr. Rankin,” Trish told me. “He’s a senior partner at the law firm. He didn’t see any problems with it from a legal standpoint. He added one stipulation, though.”

“Oh?”

“He said that if Sylvia wanted to be strictly legal, she’d have to get Renata’s permission to tape their conversations.”

“Ouch!”

“Rankin’s one of those ‘dot the i’s and cross the t’s’ sort of lawyers,” Trish said. “He wins a lot of cases, though.”

“Sylvia’s already taken care of the problem, Mark,” James said. “She came right out and told Renata that the tape recordings would be a substitute for the notebooks that seem to cause Renata some serious problems.” He smiled faintly. “There
was
a certain amount of subterfuge involved, though,” he added. “The recorder was right out in plain sight when Sylvia taped Renata’s permission, but our sneaky little housemate sort of neglected to mention the hidden microphone that’s going to be catching
most
of their conversations.”

“Is that legal?” I asked Trish.

“It’s probably close enough,” she replied. “Sylvia’s not going to be taking the tapes into court.”

“Where did you put the bug?” I asked Charlie.

“
I
didn’t,” he replied. “I offered, but Sylvia told me to keep my hands to myself. I had to shield the back of the microphone, though. It’s fairly sensitive, and it kept picking up her heartbeat.”

“I don’t think we need to pursue that much further,” Trish told us. “Go watch television or something, gentlemen. Get out from underfoot.”

James led Charlie and me through the dining room to the parlor, and we sat drinking coffee while the ladies made breakfast. “Isn’t that tape recorder going to be kind of bulky and cumbersome for Sylvia to carry around, Charlie?” I asked. “If they’re out roaming around in a shopping mall and Twink says something that’s significant, Sylvia could miss getting it on tape.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of miniaturization, Mark?” he asked me with an amused expression. “They’ve got recorders now that’re about the size of a cigarette pack, and Sylvia’s microphone—the bug—is a sort of tiny radio transmitter. There are some alternatives, but she wanted it up and running in a hurry, so I kept it fairly basic.”

“Whatever works for her, I guess,” I said. Then I scratched my chin. “I wasn’t really all that happy about Sylvia’s case history scheme at first,” I admitted, “but it’s sure going to take a lot of chores off
my
back. She’s more or less volunteered to make those weekly trips to Lake Stevens on a permanent basis, and now she’s taking on the religious chores as well. Of course, if her case history thing works out and she can expand it, she’ll get her master’s degree out of it, so I’m not really imposing on her all
that
much, am I?”

“Just keep saying that to yourself, Mark,” James suggested. “If you say it often enough, you might even start to believe it.”

We were all fairly well settled in by now. A student’s schedule’s not at all like doing honest work: I just kept fighting with John Milton, grading freshman papers, and watching out for Twinkie.

Then on Wednesday she came apart again. She missed my class, so as soon as I dismissed the students, I made a quick run up to Mary’s place in Wallingford.

“She had another one of those damn nightmares,” Mary told me when I got there.

“I thought she was starting to outgrow them.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it,” Mary said. “I hit her with a sleeping pill again, and it put her right out. You don’t necessarily have to mention that to your little housemate. If she rats me off to Fallon, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“He
does
get a little worked up about that, doesn’t he? You’re looking beat, Mary. Why don’t you grab some sleep? I’ll keep an eye on Renata.”

“I’ll be all right, Mark. My schedule got juggled this week, so I’ve got tonight off.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine. What’s the deal on these tape recordings Ren told me about?”

“It came up last week,” I told her, explaining about the recordings Sylvia was making—with Twink’s permission. “But I don’t think she realizes that Sylvia’s wearing that bug,
or
that Fallon’s getting copies of the tapes.”

“Slick,” Mary said. “We’ve had some cases thrown out of court because some eager beaver planted bugs without a court order.”

“Yeah, we’re trying to get it all nice and legal. Plus, Sylvia’s making things a lot easier for you and me, taking over the Friday trips to Lake Stevens and the Sunday-go-to-church stuff.”

“You noticed that,” Mary said slyly. “Les called me on Saturday, and he told me that he and Inga got quite a kick out of your little friend.”

“Hey, the more, the merrier.” Then something sort of clicked together for me. “Oh, hell,” I said.

“What?”

“I just had an idea, Mary. Maybe that bug’s a way for us to get to the bottom of these damned nightmares that keep zonking Twink out of action.”

“I’m all for that. Once we clear those up, I think Ren’s going to be OK. What’s this idea of yours?”

“The next time Twink comes unraveled, hold off on the sleeping pill. Give me a call instead, and I’ll bring Sylvia over. She’ll be able to get everything Twink says down on tape.”

“She’s not very coherent, Mark,” Mary replied a bit dubiously.

“It might not make sense to you or me, but Doc Fallon should be able to figure out what it means. If Sylvia’s right here with her bug, she can tape the whole thing. Then we’ll pass it off to Fallon. It’ll be almost like he’s sitting here in person, and once he gets some details, he might be able to pinpoint what’s sending our girl up the wall.”

“I think you might have earned your pay today, kid,” she said then. “If Fallon’s got a ringside seat—on tape, anyway—maybe he can turn off these nightmares, and once those damn things are out of the way, Ren’s home free.”

“It’s worth a try. I’ll kick it around with Sylvia, and she can bounce it off Fallon and see what he thinks. Are you going to be all right, Mary? I’ll stay if you want me to.”

“Run along, Mark. Ren’s dead to the world, so she doesn’t need a baby-sitter.”

I tapped on Sylvia’s door when I got back to the boardinghouse.

“You rang?” she said, opening the door.

“Twink’s down with nightmares again,” I told her.

“Maybe I should go over to her aunt’s place.”

“What for? Mary put her down with a sleeping pill, so all you’d get would be snores. Mary and I came up with a plan, though, and we’d like to have you bounce it off Doc Fallon and see what he thinks.”

“Whip it on me,” she said with a vapid smile.

“The
next
time Twinkie takes a run through nightmare alley, Mary’s going to call me instead of zapping her with a pill. Then you and I’ll bag on over to Mary’s place, and you can get Twink’s ravings down on tape. About all we’ve been able to tell Doc Fallon so far is that Twink has nightmares now and then. We’ve never been able to give him any specifics. If you can nudge Twink for details about those dreams that wipe her out, Fallon might be able to get to the bottom of it and come up with a cure—hypnosis, maybe, or some kind of tranquilizer.”

“That’s a
very
good idea, Mark,” Sylvia told me. “You’ve got a feel for this sort of thing.”

“Not really, babe. It’s just that I’ve been majoring in Twinkie for the past several years. Mary and I kicked it around, and we think that getting rid of those nightmares would probably solve most of Twink’s problems.”

“It might be a little more complex than that, but it’d be a big step in the right direction.”

“Then it’s worth a try. Keep a supply of batteries for your recorder on hand, Sylvia. These nightmares pop up without much warning, so we’ll need to be ready.”

Twink showed up for class on Thursday, and she seemed to be pretty much OK again. I was almost positive that if we could get her past those damned nightmares, she’d be on the road to normal.

My supply of scrap lumber was starting to run low, so on Saturday Charlie and I ran up to Everett to raid Les Greenleaf’s scrap heap again. Now that I’d gotten used to them, these Saturday workdays had become almost a form of relaxation for me.

We got back to the boardinghouse, and I took my tape measure and notepad into Trish’s room to get down the exact numbers I’d be working with.

“Is it going to take very long?” she asked me. “I hate having my room all torn up.”

“I’ll probably be able to knock them out next Saturday,” I told her. “Your law books are all the same size, so I won’t have to juggle the shelves around. That’ll make things go faster. I’ve got a suggestion, though.”

“Oh?”

“Take a little time when you pull your books. Stack them over against that far wall, but keep them in order. They’re all the same color as well as the same size. If you jumble them all up, it’ll take you a month to get them squared away. I’m
still
trying to find a couple of my books.”

“I’ll be careful, Mark.”

Midterm examinations rolled around at the university during the week of November 3. Older heads on the teaching faculty always look forward to midterm week, since the freshman class noticeably diminishes after that one. When dear old dad finds out that junior’s been goofing off for six straight weeks, he’ll usually close the checkbook and tell his vagrant son to go find an honest job.

I dumped my favorite test on my freshmen on Wednesday—“Correct the grammatical errors in the following paragraph.” It’s a rotten thing to drop on just about anybody, but it exposes the incompetent, and it’s easy to grade. If I’d had my wits about me when I first came up with the idea, I’d have copyrighted the damn thing and lived on easy street for the rest of my life.

At supper that evening, Sylvia told me that she had an appointment with her faculty advisor on Friday afternoon. “I’m going to spring the ‘planted bug’ idea on him,” she explained. “I want to be sure that he doesn’t have any objections. We tape just about every conversation in the various psycho wards we visit, but I’m going to be taping Renata out in the real world, so I want to clear it with him before I take it much further.”

“That makes sense. Always cover your buns.”

“I’m glad you approve. But that means I’m going to be tied up on Friday afternoon. Could you take Renata to Lake Stevens for me?”

“Sure, no problem. How many hours of tape have you recorded so far?”

“Fifteen or so. A lot of it’s nothing but random conversation, though. I’m going to have to do a lot of editing to get down to the real meat.”

“I don’t envy you on that, babe. Trimming out the deadwood can be moderately unfun.”

“You’ve noticed. How clever of you.”

“Be nice,” I told her.

I caught Twink right before class on Thursday and told her that I’d be taking her to see Fallon Friday.

“Sylvia’s not sick, is she?” she asked, clearly concerned.

“No, it’s nothing like that. She has to talk with her faculty advisor, is all.”

“That’s a relief. I’m getting attached to her. Girls need other girls to talk with sometimes. You’re nice enough, Markie, but I don’t think you’re ready for girl talk—not yet, anyway.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“Don’t bother, Sylvia’s already got it covered.” Then she giggled.

“What?” I demanded.

“Never mind,” she said with a wicked little smirk.

On Friday morning I turned in my proposal for a paper on Milton’s prose works and their relation to his poetry. This wasn’t going to be a barn-burner paper, I realized. Milton irritated me, and I was hoping that it wouldn’t show. I didn’t want to offend our gentle professor, but Cromwell’s Puritan theocracy during the seventeenth century had a strong odor of the assorted absolute dictatorships that have so contaminated the twentieth century. Some things never change, I guess, and that “My God’s better than your God” crap keeps floating to the surface, doesn’t it?

I was at loose ends after class, so I called Twink and suggested that we might as well bag it on up to Everett that morning. “We’ll beat the noon rush, Twink,” I told her, “and I’ll buy you lunch someplace.”

“Just like a real date, Markie?” she demanded in that empty-headed voice she dumped on me when she was practicing her cutesy-poo routine.

“Why not?”

“I don’t have a
thing
to wear.”

“Cool it, kid.”

“I’ll behave,” she promised.

“
Sure
you will.”

It was one of those cloudy, blustery autumn days, but at least it wasn’t raining—yet. I parked in front of Mary’s house and went around to the back door to avoid waking Renata’s aunt. I tapped lightly, and Twink opened the door immediately.