Brain Child

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Come in with me.”
Bob Carey couldn’t see Kate’s face in the darkness, but the tremor in her voice revealed that she was frightened. His eyes moved past her silhouette, focusing on the house beyond. Everything, he thought, looked normal. Except for the gate.
The patio gate stood open, and both he and Kate clearly remembered closing it when they had left earlier in the evening.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he assured her, trying to make his voice sound more confident than he was actually feeling. “Maybe we didn’t really latch it.”
“We did,” Kate breathed. “I know we did.”
Bob got out of the car and went around to open the other door for Kate, but instead of getting out, she only gazed past him at the ominously open gate. “Maybe … maybe we ought to call the police,” she whispered.
“Just because the gate’s open?” Bob asked with a bravado he wasn’t feeling. “They’d think we were nuts.”
“No they wouldn’t,” Kate argued. “Not after …” She fell silent, unable to finish the thought.
Bob wavered, telling himself once more that the open gate meant nothing. The wind could have done it, or Mrs. Benson might have gone out herself and left the gate open. In fact, she might not even be home.
He made up his mind.
“Stay here,” he told Kate. “I’ll go see.”
He went through the open gate into the patio and looked around. The lights flanking the front door were on, and the white walls of the patio reflected their glow so that even the shadowed areas of the little garden were clearly visible. Nothing seemed to be amiss, and yet as he stood in the patio, he sensed that something was wrong.
Bob told himself the growing uneasiness he felt was only in his imagination. As soon as he rang the bell, Mrs. Benson would come to the door and everything would be all right.
But when he rang the bell, Mrs. Benson did not come to the door. Bob rang the bell once more, waited, then tried the door. It was locked. Slowly he backed away from the door, then hurried to the car.
“She’s not here,” he told Kate a few seconds later. “She must have gone somewhere.” But even as he spoke the words, he knew they weren’t true. He started the car.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to call the police, just like you wanted to. It doesn’t feel right in there.”
Fifteen minutes later they were back. Bob parked his Porsche behind the squad car, then got out and went to the patio gate.
“Stay in your car,” one of the cops at the front door told him. “If there’s a creep in here, I don’t want to have to worry about you.” Only when Bob had disappeared did Roscoe Finnerty reach out and press the bell a second time, as Bob himself had done only a few minutes earlier. “She probably just took off somewhere,” he told Tom Jackson, “but with these two, I guess we can’t blame them for being nervous.” When there was still no answer, Finnerty moved to a window and shone his flashlight through into the foyer. “Shit,” he said softly, and Tom Jackson immediately felt his stomach knot.
“She there?” he asked.
Finnerty nodded. “On the floor, just like the other one. And if there’s any blood, I don’t see it. Take a look.”
Tom Jackson dutifully stepped to the window and peered into the foyer. “Maybe she’s just unconscious,” he suggested.
“Maybe she is,” Finnerty replied, but both men knew that neither of them believed it. “Go ask the Lewis girl if she’s got a key, but don’t tell her what we’ve seen. And when you ask for the key, see how she reacts.”
Jackson frowned. “You don’t think—”
“I don’t know what I think,” Finnerty growled. “But I sure as hell know Alan Lewis didn’t do this one, and I keep thinking about the shit that came down in Marin a few years back when that girl and her boyfriend killed her folks, then went out and partied all night. So you just go see if she has a key, and keep your eyes open.”
“Is she all right?” Kate asked when Jackson approached the car.
“Don’t even know if she’s here,” Jackson lied. “Do you have a key? We want to take a look around.”
Kate fumbled in her purse for a moment, then silently handed Jackson a single key on a ring. “Stay here,” Jackson ordered. He started back to the house, wondering what he was supposed to have been looking for. Whatever it was, he hadn’t seen it—all he’d seen were two kids who’d had a horrible experience only a few days ago, and were now very frightened.
“Well?”
Jackson shrugged. “She just gave me the key when I asked for it. Asked if the Benson woman’s okay.”
“What’d you say?”
“I lied. Figured we should both be there when we tell them.”
Finnerty nodded, and slid the key into the lock, then pushed the door open and led his partner into the silent house. One look at Valerie Benson’s open eyes and grimace of frozen terror told him she was dead. He called the station and told the duty officer what had happened, then rejoined Jackson. “Might as well tell them.”
From then on, the long night took on a feeling of eerie familiarity, as Finnerty replayed the scene he’d gone through less than a week earlier when the same two kids had found the body of Martha Lewis.
The dusty road wound steadily up the hill, and Alex looked neither to the left nor to the right. He knew every inch of these hills, for he’d ridden over them with his father ever since he was a little boy. Now, though, he walked, for along with his father’s land, the gringos had taken the horses as well. Indeed, they’d taken everything, even his name.
Still, he hadn’t left La Paloma—would never leave La Paloma until finally the gringos had paid with their lives for the lives they had taken.
He came to a house, opened the gate, and stepped through into the patio. Not too long ago he’d been in this patio as an honored guest, with his parents and his sisters, attending a fiesta. Now he was here for another reason.
For a few centavos, the new owners would let him take care of the plants in their patio. Idly he wondered what they would do if they knew who he really was.
As he worked, he kept a watchful eye on the house, and one by one the people left, until he knew that the woman was alone. Then he went to the front door, lifted the heavy knocker, and let it fall back against its plate. The door opened, and the woman stood in the cool gloom of the foyer, looking at him uncertainly.
He reached out and put his hands around her neck.
As he began squeezing her life away, he felt her terror, felt all the emotions that racked her spirit. He felt her die, and began to sweat.…
He woke up with a start, and sat up. The dream ended, but Alex could still see the face of the woman he’d strangled, and his body was damp with the memory of fear.
And he knew the woman in the dream.
It was Valerie Benson.
But who was he?
The memory of the dream was clear in his mind, and he went over it piece by piece.
The road hadn’t been paved. It had been a dirt road, and yet it hadn’t seemed strange to him.
And he didn’t have a name.
They’d stolen his name.
He knew who “they” were, just as he knew why he’d strangled Valerie Benson.
His parents were dead, and he was taking vengeance on the people who had killed them.
But it still made no sense, for his parents were asleep in their room down the hall.
Or were they?
More and more, the line between what was real and what was not was becoming indistinct.
More and more the odd memories of things that couldn’t be were becoming more real than the unfamiliar world he lived in.
Perhaps, that very night, he had killed his parents, and now had no memory of it. He glanced at the clock by the bed; the fluorescent hands read eleven-thirty. He had been in bed only half an hour. There hadn’t been enough time for him to go to sleep, then wake up, kill his parents, go back to sleep, then dream about it.
He went back over the evening, step by step, and all of it was perfectly clear in his memory, except for one brief moment. He’d parked across the street from Jake’s when María Torres had spoken to him.
Spoken to him in Spanish.
The next thing he remembered was going into Jake’s, and that, too, was very clear: he’d gotten out of the car, locked it, and walked from the parking lot into the pizza place.
The parking lot.
He distinctly remembered parking his car on the street across from the pizza parlor, but he also remembered entering Jake’s from the parking lot, which was next to the restaurant.
The two memories were in direct conflict, but were equally as strong. There must, therefore, have been two events involved. He must have gone to Jake’s twice.
He was still trying to make sense out of his memories, and tie them to the dream, when he heard the wailing of a siren in the distance. Then there was another sound, as the telephone began to ring.
Alex got out of bed and put on his robe, then went down the hall to his parents’ room. Though their voices were muffled by the closed door, he could still make out the words.
“They don’t know,” he heard his father say. “All they know is that they’re bringing her in, and that they think she’s a DOA.”
“If you’re going down there, I’m going with you,” his mother replied. “And don’t try to argue with me. Valerie and I have been friends all our lives. I want to be there.”
“Honey, neither of us is going anywhere. I’m not on call tonight, remember? They called because they knew Valerie was a friend of ours.”
Slowly Alex backed away from the closed door and returned to his own room.
Valerie. He searched his memory, hoping there was another Valerie there, but there wasn’t. It had to be Valerie Benson, and she was dead.
Then, though he had no conscious memory of it at all, he knew why he had arrived at Jake’s twice.
He’d gone there once, and then left. After María Torres had spoken to him in Spanish, he’d driven away and gone to Valerie Benson’s house, and he’d killed her. Then he’d gone back to Jake’s, and sat down at the table with Kate and Bob and Lisa, and talked for a while.
And then he’d come home and gone to bed and dreamed about what he’d done.
But he still didn’t know why.
His parents were still alive, and he’d hardly even known Valerie Benson. He had no reason to kill her.
And yet he had.
He got back in bed, and lay for a while staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Somewhere in his mind he was sure there were answers, and if he thought about the problem long enough, he would figure out what those answers were.
He heard a door open and close, then footsteps in the hall. It was his mother. He heard her going downstairs, then, a little later, he heard his father following her.
For a few minutes he toyed with the idea of going downstairs himself, and telling them about his dream, and that he was sure he’d killed Valerie Benson, and probably Mrs. Lewis too. But then he rejected the whole idea. Unless he could tell them why he’d killed the two women, they surely wouldn’t believe he’d done it.
Instead, they’d just think he was crazy.
Alex turned over and pulled the covers snugly around him. He let his mind run free.
And, as he was sure they would, the connections began to come together, and he began to understand what was happening to him.
A few minutes later, he was sound asleep. Through the rest of the night his sleep was undisturbed.
“I’m telling you, Tom, the kids did it,” Roscoe Finnerty said as he and Jackson sat in the police station the next morning.
Neither of them had had any sleep, and all Tom Jackson really wanted to do was go home and go to bed, but if Finnerty wanted to talk—and Finnerty usually did—the least he could do was listen. In fact, with Finnerty, listening was all he really had to do, since Finnerty was as capable of posing the questions as he was of coming up with the answers.
“Lookit,” Finnerty was saying now. “We got two killings, same M.O. And we got the same two kids discovering both bodies. What could be simpler? And don’t tell me there’s no previous record of trouble with these kids. They were both up at that bash last spring, when the Lonsdale kid smashed up his car, and they were both drunk—”
“Now, wait a minute, Roscoe,” Jackson interrupted. “Let’s at least be fair. Did you give any of those kids a test?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then don’t tell me you’re going to stand up in court and tell a judge they were drunk, ’cause you ain’t! Now, why don’t we just go home and let the plainclothes guys do their job?”
Finnerty stared at his partner over the edge of his coffee cup for several long seconds. “You think we ought to just forget it?”
Jackson sighed, and stretched his tired muscles. “I’m not saying to forget it. I’m just saying we’ve got a job to do, and I think we oughta do it, and not butt in where we aren’t invited.”
“And leave that poor drunken slob locked up for something he obviously didn’t do.”
“Whoa up, buddy!” Jackson said, deciding that enough was enough. “You forgetting that the two events might not be connected at all? That we just might have two different perps here?”
“Oh, sure. Both of them apparently let into the house by the victims, and both of them strangled. And both of them discovered by the same girl, who happens to live in the houses where the crimes are committed. You ask me, that’s just a bit too much.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Jackson asked, knowing full well that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to involve going home and going to bed.
“For openers, I think we might have a talk with the other kids that were down at Jake’s last night, and see if they noticed anything funny about their friends.”
Her eyes puffy from lack of sleep, Carol Cochran stared at the two policemen on the front porch, then glanced at her watch. Though it was a few minutes past seven, it felt much earlier. But despite her exhaustion, she was sure she knew why they were here.
“It’s about Valerie Benson, isn’t it?” she asked.
The two officers exchanged a glance, then Finnerty nodded. “I’m afraid so. We … well, we’d like to talk to your daughter.”
Carol blinked. What on earth were they talking about? What could Lisa have to do with what had happened to Valerie? “I … I’m sorry,” she stammered, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jim, she thought. Call Jim. He’ll know what to do. As if he’d heard her thought, her husband emerged from the kitchen.
“Something wrong, honey?” she heard him ask, and managed to nod her head.
“They … they want to talk to Lisa …”
Jim Cochran stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind him. “Now, what’s this all about?” he asked. As briefly as they could, Finnerty and Jackson explained why they were there.
Reluctantly Jim invited them into the living room and asked them to sit down. “If she wants to talk to you, it’s all right,” he said. “But she doesn’t have to, you know.”
“I know,” Finnerty replied. “Believe me, Mr. Cochran, we don’t suspect her of anything. All we want to know is if she noticed anything last night.”
“I find it impossible to believe that Kate Lewis and Bob Carey would kill anyone,” Jim said, his voice tight. “Let alone two people.”
“I know, sir,” Finnerty said. “But I’d still like to talk to your daughter, if you don’t mind.”
“What is it?” Carol asked when Jim came into the kitchen a moment later. Jim glanced around the room, but only his wife and older daughter were there. Kim was nowhere to be seen. “I sent Kim up to her room and told her not to come down again until I came up for her. Now, what do they want?”
“It’s crazy, if you ask me,” Jim replied. “For some reason, they think maybe Kate and Bob killed Valerie, and they want to talk to Lisa about what happened last night. They want to know if she noticed anything strange about either one of them.”
“Oh, God,” Carol groaned. She sank into a chair, her fingers suddenly twisting at the tie of her bathrobe. Lisa, her eyes wide, was shaking her head in disbelief.
“They think Kate killed Mrs. Benson?” she asked. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Jim said. “It doesn’t seem possible, but apparently that’s what they think. And you don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to.”
But Lisa stood up. “No,” she said. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to them. And I’ll tell them just what a dumb idea they’ve come up with.”
She went into the living room, and the two officers rose to their feet, but before they could speak, Lisa began talking.
“Kate and Bob didn’t do anything,” she said. “And if you want me to say they were acting funny last night, I won’t. They were acting just like they always act, except that Kate was a little quieter than usual.”
“Nobody’s saying anyone did anything, Lisa,” Finnerty interjected. “We’re just trying to find out what happened, and if the kids could have had any part in it at all.”
“Well, they couldn’t,” Lisa replied. “And I know why you’re asking questions about them. It’s those kids in Marin, isn’t it?”
Finnerty swallowed, and nodded.
“Well, they were creeps. They were doing drugs all the time, and drinking, and all that kind of stuff. And Bob and Kate aren’t like that at all.”
“Honey, take it easy,” Jim Cochran said, stepping into the room and putting his arm around his daughter. “They just want to ask some questions. If you don’t want to answer them, you don’t have to, but don’t try to keep them from doing their job.”
As Lisa turned to gaze into her father’s eyes, her indignation dissolved into tears. “But, Daddy, it’s so awful. Why would they think Kate and Bob would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” Jim admitted. “And maybe they don’t. Now, do you want to talk to them, or not?”
Lisa hesitated, then nodded, and dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief her father handed her. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “But nothing happened last night.”
“All right,” Finnerty said, taking out his notebook. “Let’s start with that.”
Slowly Lisa reconstructed the events of the evening before. She’d gone to Jake’s by herself, and, as usual, a lot of the kids had been there. Then, when Bob and Kate came in, the three of them had taken a table together, and sat sipping Cokes and talking about nothing in particular. Then Alex Lonsdale had joined them for a while, and eventually they had all left.
“And there wasn’t anything odd about Kate or Bob? They didn’t seem nervous, or worried, or anything?”
Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “If you mean did they act like they’d just killed someone, no, they didn’t. In fact, when they left, Kate even wondered if they ought to call Mrs. Benson and tell her they were on their way.” Then, when she saw the two policemen exchange a glance, she spoke again. “And don’t try to make anything out of that, either. Kate always called her mom if she was going to be late. She always said her mom had enough to worry about with her dad being a drunk and shouldn’t have to worry about her, too.”
Finnerty closed his notebook and stood up. “All right,” he said. “I guess that’s it, if you can’t think of anything else—anything out of the ordinary at all.”
Lisa hesitated, and once more Finnerty and Jackson exchanged a glance.
“Is there something?” Jim asked.
“I … I don’t know,” Lisa replied.
“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Finnerty told her, reopening his notepad.
“But it doesn’t have anything to do with Kate and Bob,” Lisa said.
Jackson frowned. “Then what does it have to do with? One of the other kids?”
Again Lisa hesitated, then nodded. “With … with Alex Lonsdale,” she said.
“What about Alex?” Jim asked. “It’s all right, honey. Just tell us what happened with Alex.”
“Well, nothing, really,” Lisa said. “Ever since the accident, he’s so strange, but last night he said he was getting better, and for a while I thought he was. I mean, he was smiling, and he laughed at jokes, and he seemed almost … well, almost like he used to be.” She fell silent, and Finnerty finally asked her what, exactly, had happened.
“I don’t know,” Lisa confessed. “But finally Bob started teasing Alex about something, and Alex didn’t blush.”
“That’s all?” Finnerty asked. “The strange thing was that he didn’t blush?”
Lisa nodded. “Alex always used to blush. In fact, some of the kids used to say things to him just to watch him get embarrassed. But last night, even though he was smiling, and laughing, and all that, he still wasn’t blushing.”
“I see,” Finnerty said. He closed his notebook for the last time and slid his pencil back in his pocket. A few minutes later, when they were outside, he turned to Jackson. “Well, what do you think?”
“I still think we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Jackson replied. “But I guess we might as well have a talk with the Lonsdale boy.”
“Yeah,” Finnerty agreed. Then he rolled his eyes. “Kids amaze me,” he said. “They spend a whole evening together, and the only odd thing the girl can remember is that her boyfriend didn’t blush. Isn’t that something?”
Jackson frowned. “Maybe it is important,” he said. “Maybe it’s very important.”