“Are you sure?”
Katy squeezed her eyes shut like a little kid. “Don’t! Dirty! Dirty bird!”
“Katy?”
“That dirty bird put it in me! He had to be punished!”
Caitlin suddenly realized that Mrs. Regan was sweating profusely. “Who are you talking about, Katy? Are you talking about Pooky?”
The woman nodded, but again the gesture seemed to have been against her will. Then she cried, “Dr. Borgen did it! He put it in me. When the nurses were gone. Every day Katy had to play, or else stay longer in the hole.”
A shudder ran through Caitlin. She wanted to ask for details of what she gathered was sexual abuse by a psychiatrist, but she didn’t know how long Katy would stay coherent. More than this, her first priority remained unshaken: Brody Royal.
“Tell me about your father, Katy.”
Mrs. Regan’s eyes went wide, as though she’d mistakenly opened a door into a theater showing a slasher film. Yet once again the voice that came from her mouth was soft and childlike. “Daddy took care of me. Always. He takes care of us all. When I had the blue devils, Daddy chased them away. When I was alone, he found me a husband. Did you know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Daddy owns the company Randall works for. He owns Randall, too. Bought him a long time ago, right after I got back from Hay—” Katy winked—“from the institute.”
Without Caitlin realizing it, Katy had uncrossed her legs and sunk deep into her chair. If she sank any farther, she would probably slide right out of it. As Caitlin began to despair of learning anything useful, Katy said, “Pooky was so sweet. He sang pretty, too, all the time. Can you keep a secret?”
Caitlin nodded with what she hoped was girlish enthusiasm.
“Pooky wanted to marry me. With the carriage and everything. But all he had was a bicycle and his daddy’s old mule. The night I got married for real”—Katy’s voice dropped to a whisper—“I thought about Pooky the whole time. Poor Poo. I knew he was gone, though.”
“Where did he go?”
Katy shook her head. “It’s too terrible,” she whispered.
“I need to know, Katy. For Pooky’s sake.”
Mrs. Regan looked around the room, paying special attention to the windows and the door, as though she expected to find white-coated attendants peering in at her. “There’s another place like … like the place I was. Another hole in the world. It’s for the dark people. A tree grows over it. A big twisted tree with branches that reach almost to the sky. And it’s filled with bones. The dark people who break the law are taken there.”
“Why are they taken there?”
Katy looked into her lap and spoke in the voice of a two-year-old. “To get punished.”
“Do they ever come back?”
Now Katy’s face held the sober concentration of a child given its first glimpse of human cruelty. “Never.”
Caitlin sensed she was on the verge of a revelation. All she could think about was a place described in Henry’s journals as the Bone Tree—a place where Indians and black men had been murdered for years, and dead bodies dumped to prevent their being found. “Who took Pooky to that tree?”
“I was always going to tell,” she said softly. “But I have to wait until Daddy passes. Then he can’t hurt me.”
“Katy—”
“Shh! He might hear us. Daddy can hear from miles away sometimes. You know … before Henry came and talked to me, all this was blank. Everything had fallen down Dr. Borgen’s hole. But then it started to come back. First the bathtub … Daddy killed Mama in the bath. Did you know that? I thought he was just talking to her—and he was. But later I figured it out. He was holding her head under the water while he talked.”
Every hair on Caitlin’s body was standing erect. She swallowed hard. She couldn’t find her voice.
“Then, when you called a few minutes ago,” Katy said, “I knew.”
“Knew what?”
The woman shook her head again. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.”
“What do you mean? Too late for what?”
Brody Royal’s daughter listed to the left in her chair. “For me. For Katy-Poo.”
“Katy,” Caitlin said firmly. “Whatever you were waiting to tell, you can tell me. Now. No one will hurt you anymore. I’ll make sure of that.”
The woman’s eyes rose and met Caitlin’s with conspiratorial slyness. “Will you promise not to tell?”
“Yes. I promise.”
A manicured fingernail rose to the red lips, its scarlet nail gleaming. “Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Stick a needle in my eye.”
Katy looked right, then left, then finally spoke with the certitude of a courier who had carried a message through miles of bloody trenches. “Daddy did it.”
Caitlin’s heart thumped against her sternum. “Did what? What did Daddy do, Katy?”
The heavy-lidded eyes fluttered. “Like Jesus,” she whispered.
Like Jesus? Caitlin shivered again, though she didn’t know why. “Did your father kill Pooky, Katy?”
The woman nodded once more. “And Dr. Leland. He killed Mr. Henry,” she said softly. “And that colored nurse, too.”
At this, Caitlin’s voice deserted her again.
Katy was listing to the other side now; she looked as though she might fall out of the chair at any moment.
“Katy?” Caitlin said, coming to her feet.
Mrs. Regan opened her mouth, but no sound passed her lips. Then she went as limp as a rag doll and slid to the floor. Her head hit the carpet with a wooden thump.
Caitlin stared, momentarily paralyzed. Then she jumped down and felt for a carotid pulse. It was there, but very weak.
“Katy!” Caitlin shouted. “Katy Regan! Can you hear me?”
The woman gave no sign of having heard.
“How long have you been drinking? Did you take something?”
Katy groaned but formed no coherent words.