by Dean Koontz
“Schizophrenia?”
“Except there’s no note of the paranoia, the sense of being oppressed, that characterizes schizophrenics so advanced in their delusions as to be contemplating such a radical solution to their suffering. Family, fiancée, fellow workers—did anyone witness him expressing false beliefs, obvious delusions?”
“No.”
“He was in a job requiring communication skills. Did anyone see disorganized schizoid symptoms?”
“Which are what?”
“The most common would be speaking in an apparently normal manner, but his sentences would have no meaning.”
“Nobody mentioned that. It’s not something they’d forget.”
“No, they wouldn’t. It’s an alarming symptom. How did he die?”
“He lived in Manhattan, on the twentieth floor. He jumped.”
Moshe grimaced. “Read another.”
The third decedent on her list had been the forty-year-old CEO of one of the largest real-estate development firms in the country. Married. Three children. “ ‘I’m not supposed to leave a note. But you must know I’m happy to be doing this. It’ll be a pleasant journey.’ ”
“Shared words with the previous one,” Moshe said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Pleasant. Journey. In both, it’s implied they’re following instructions, or at least some kind of guidance.”
Jane quoted from the network executive: “ ‘I have been told.’ ” Then from the real-estate developer: “ ‘I’m not supposed to…’ ”
“Exactly. Was the CEO in New York, maybe in the same circles as the network executive?”
“No. Los Angeles.”
“How did he kill himself?”
“In his garage. A vintage Mercedes. Carbon monoxide poisoning. How likely is it the two notes would be so similar?”
“Odds against are astronomical. Read another.”
This note had been left by a twenty-six-year-old woman, a gifted software writer who had graduated from a job at Microsoft to an entrepreneurial partnership with the company. Unmarried. The sole support of her disabled parents. “ ‘There is a spider in my brain. It talks to me.’ ”
When she looked up from her notebook and met Moshe’s eyes across the table, Jane saw that he had been as chilled by those words as she had been when she’d first read them.
“Three out of four seem to hear voices,” the psychiatrist said. “But in this fourth instance, as in the others, the usual hallmarks of paranoid schizophrenia aren’t as obvious as you might at first think. In a classic case, the patient believes the menacing voices come from outside, from powerful forces that wish to persecute and deceive him. A spider in the brain…that is new to me.”
35
* * *
LATE SNOW FELL in Telluride, the Colorado night breathing softly, so that the storm had no bite, the flakes slanting at the slightest angle, an inch of ermine on the ground, Nature knitting lace on the rough bark of the conifers.
April Winchester shone the flashlight on the massive old hemlock, so tall that the beam could not travel to its uppermost reaches, which disappeared into the dark and snow. It was a tree taller than the night, reaching through the storm, all the way to the stars, a conceit that pleased her and made her smile.
When she brought the light down the trunk, she found their two names, where he had scaled away a section of bark and carved his declaration into the underlying wood. ED LOVES APRIL.
Edward, her Eddie, had always been a romantic. He had carved the same words into the trunk of a red maple in Vermont when they were both fourteen, almost sixteen years earlier.
This latest statement of profound affection had been scored into the hemlock only eleven months ago, when they bought their winter residence outside of Telluride. They were both avid skiers.
Out of season, they lived in Laguna Beach, California. Whether on the warm coast or in the San Juan Mountains, he wrote his novels, and she wrote songs, and the life they had imagined, as teenagers, unspooled with a grace exceeding their most extravagant dreams.
He’d written four novels, all memorable and significant bestsellers. She’d written more than fifty published songs, twenty-two of which, performed by various artists, had risen into the top forty, twelve into the top ten. Four had achieved the coveted number one.
She looked back at the house, a low-profile structure of native stone and reclaimed wood, its exquisite lines harmonizing with the landscape. The first-floor windows were full of warm light, but only Eddie’s study was bright on the second floor.
He was powering through the end of a difficult scene and wanted to finish before they made dinner together.
She had been preparing something for him in the kitchen, just had to get away from it for a few minutes, so she’d come out to the hemlock on a whim. She was wearing high-top trainers, not boots, a pleated white silk skirt, and a thin over-the-hips sweater. This eclectic look delighted Eddie and would bring him to bed in full readiness after dinner, but it wasn’t suitable to a winter storm.
When she had rushed out of the house, enchanted by the snow, she’d been oblivious of the cold. Now she began to shiver. When she acknowledged the chill, it took a firmer grip on her, and she began to shudder violently.
She hurried back to the house, where she pulled off the snow-caked high-tops and left them in the mudroom. In the kitchen, snow fell from her clothes and hair, melting on the reclaimed wide-plank chestnut floor. She felt that she should care about the melting snow, should wipe it up, but in fact she didn’t care.
On the drainboard by the sink was the treat she had prepared for Eddie, to ease him through the final page of the troublesome scene in his novel. On a tray were a plate containing cubes of Havarti cheese and a measure of salted-and-peppered almonds, a wineglass, and a bottle of sauvignon blanc, from which she would pour him a serving after she put everything down on his desk.
Take it to him, take it to him, take it to him….
She enjoyed doing special things like this for Eddie. He was always so appreciative.
Still casting off snow, hair dripping, she carried the tray to the back stairs. She was halfway to the second floor when she made the strangest discovery. She didn’t have the tray. She was carrying a knife. A trimming knife.
She stared at it, bewildered. She had not been at the wine while she put together the treat for him. She did have a tendency now and then to be absentminded, but not to this extent.
No cheese, no nuts, no wine. Just a trimming knife. How silly. Where had her mind wandered? Well, this would not do, would not do at all.
She returned to the kitchen to get the tray.
36
* * *
BEYOND THE KITCHEN WINDOWS, the sky over L.A. and environs was pure peacockery, fanned with iridescent blues and greens and smoky orange, a last bright challenge to the inevitable darkness coming.
The fifth decedent on Jane’s list was an attorney, thirty-six, recently appointed to a judgeship on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Unmarried. His suicide note had been found in an envelope bearing his parents’ names. He had shot himself in the head. “ ‘I love you. You have never failed me. Don’t be sad. I have done this a hundred times in my dreams. It will not hurt.’ ”
“This is somewhat more in the tradition of such notes,” Moshe Steinitz said. “In particular, the assurances of love, the exemption from blame. But the rest of it…I have never heard of anyone who had repetitive dreams of suicide.”
“Could dreams be programmed?” Jane asked.
“Programmed? What do you mean?”
“Say by a hypnotist, someone using drugs and subliminal suggestion? Could programmed dreams be used to somehow make the dreamer actually desire to kill himself?”
“In comic books, perhaps, or movies. Hypnotism is a better stage act than it is a form of behavioral modification or control.”
The sixth example in Jane’s notebook was the message left by Eileen Root, who, before she hanged herself
, suggested that she was somehow fulfilling an obligation to an imaginary childhood friend. “ ‘Sweet Sayso says he’s lonely all these years, why did Leenie stop needing him, he was always there for Leenie, now I need to be there for him.’ ”
“This is the fourth of six who hears voices,” Moshe noted. “And there’s a definite schizoid quality to an imaginary friend from her childhood resurfacing in the present. Did she mention this Sayso to her husband, to anyone, in the weeks before she killed herself?”
“Apparently not.”
“How close were she and her husband?”
“Very close, I think.”
“Did he see any signs of disassociation from reality?”
“No.”
The seventh note had been written by the forty-year-old vice president of the mortgage division of one of the country’s five largest banks. “ ‘I hear the call, it is ceaseless, waking and sleeping, the soft sweet whisper and the smell of roses.’ ”
37
* * *
APRIL IN THE MUDROOM, staring at the high-top trainers caked with melting snow…
She wanted desperately to return to the red maple and see the proclamation of love that Eddie had carved into it. But the maple was in Vermont, almost sixteen years in the past.
The hemlock, then. She needed to see the hemlock that stood little more than a hundred feet from the house, needed to see it with an urgency like none she had ever known before, as though her very life depended on putting her fingers to the trunk and tracing the letters that he had carved into the wood.
She found herself in the kitchen instead, standing at the sink, looking at the tray on the drainboard: Havarti, almonds, wine.
An unpleasant rhythmic electronic tone drew her attention to the wall-mounted telephone. The handset was lying on the counter.
How long had it been lying on the counter?
Had she called someone? Had she received a call?
She put down the trimming knife. She hung up the phone.
Take it to him, take it to him, take it to him….
April picked up the tray and carried it to the back stairs.
Halfway to the second floor, she made the strangest discovery. She wasn’t carrying the tray. In her right hand she gripped a chef’s French knife, much larger than the trimming knife. And sharper.
38
* * *
IN THE DISTANCE, blood pooled in the lower sky, red light as lustrous as the stuff of life, while here on the earth, darkness already pressed at the kitchen windows.
The eighth decedent, a thirty-five-year-old woman serving in the Florida State Senate, mother of four, in an apparent struggle with herself, had missed with the first two shots and had blown apart her neck with the third. Jane read, “ ‘Pick up the gun pick up the gun pick up the gun there is joy waiting in it.’ ”
Moshe was on his feet and pacing. “She’s not writing the note to her family.”
“No,” Jane agreed.
“She’s writing it to herself, arguing herself into doing this terrible thing.”
“Or maybe…”
Moshe turned to her. “Maybe what?”
“Maybe she’s writing down what she’s hearing. The voice in her head. The spider in her brain that talks to her.”
39
* * *
APRIL IN THE UPSTAIRS HALL, at the threshold of the open door, her husband’s study in the room beyond.
She entered quietly, bearing the tray.
He sat at his computer, his back to her. He was deep into the scene, backspacing to erase a phrase that didn’t satisfy, rapidly typing a new line, scrolling backward to the previous page to review what he had written there….
How deeply he fell away into his fiction when he was writing, much the way that the world around April faded when she was at the piano, working on a melody, seeking just the right third group of eight bars in a thirty-two-bar chorus.
His work was as lyrical as he was lovely, and as she watched him work, listening to him muttering critically to himself, she found herself weeping silently, moved by all that they had been through together, all they had experienced, the triumphs and the tragedies, their only child stillborn, their love enduring every loss and setback, as it would endure what came next.
Take it to him, take it to him, take it to him….
Beyond the windows lay the mountains dark, fairies of snow dancing against the glass.
She put the tray on a worktable that was mostly covered with reference books. She picked up the bottle of sauvignon blanc and took it to him and swung it left to right, as if christening a ship, his head the bow. She swung it with such terrific force that the bottle burst, and he tipped over with his office chair, falling to the floor in a shower of fragrant wine.
April pushed the chair out of the way and looked down at Eddie and saw he was conscious but stunned, confused, uncomprehending. He spoke her name, but as if he wasn’t sure that she was in fact April.
She had required both the bottle and the chef’s French knife to do what needed to be done. To ensure it was done right. She took the blade from the tray and turned to Eddie.
“I love you so much,” she said, “so much, so much,” each word a sob, and she fell upon him with the knife.
40
* * *
THE NINTH HAD BEEN a thirty-seven-year-old university professor and acclaimed poet who had thrown himself into the path of a subway train.
Jane read, “ ‘The release from action and suffering, release from the inner and the outer compulsion.’ ”
Gazing at the night through the window above the sink, Moshe Steinitz said, “It sounds like poetry.”
“It is, but not his own. I tracked it down. It’s from ‘Burnt Norton’ by T. S. Eliot.”
She had one more. The tenth decedent was by far the youngest, a twenty-year-old graduate student, so gifted that she entered college at fourteen, received her bachelor’s degree at sixteen, her master’s degree in astrophysics at eighteen, and was working on a doctorate in cosmology. She had set herself on fire.
Jane read, “ ‘I need to go. I need to go. I’m not afraid. Am I not afraid? Someone help me.’ ”
41
* * *
WHEN EDDIE WAS WHERE he needed to be, when he was with the dead, April would have carved a proclamation of her love into her flesh if she could have tolerated living long enough to finish the task, but with Eddie gone, she wanted no more of this dark world. She knelt beside him and held the French knife in both hands and pierced her abdomen with it, nearly to the hilt. Pain struck her like a lightning bolt and cast her into black silence. Not much later, she woke too weak to feel pain any longer and found herself lying on the floor beside him and fumbled for his hand and found it and held it and remembered long-ago Vermont and the red maples in bright autumn dress and young love, and in the last quick moment she thought, What have I done?
42
* * *
NOW THAT HE’D HEARD the ten statements read aloud, Moshe sat at the kitchen table, reading them from the Xerox that Jane provided.
He had put on music that flooded the house through speakers in every room: Mozart’s K. 488, an extraordinary concerto that, scored for clarinets, opened with a robust movement beyond the reach of any other composer, bringing even to this solemn moment in Jane’s life a mood of soaring optimism that she wished she could catch and hold.
Sitting at the table, she listened with her eyes closed, one hand encircling the cordial glass of Dindarello.
In time, Moshe spoke as quietly as ever, but his voice carried through the music. “I am inclined to say that these people—or at least most of them—might have been in some altered state when they killed themselves. I get no sense of suicidal depression, nothing that convinces me the voices they heard indicated schizophrenia, nothing that suggests any classic forms of mental illness. There is something here unique—and damn strange.”
The concerto contained a sequence of a different character
from the music before and after it, an extraordinary slow movement of profound melancholy, which now came upon them. Jane did not respond to Moshe, but kept her eyes closed and traveled with Mozart where he conveyed her, into the heart of deepest sorrow, and she thought of Nick and of her long-lost mother. When that section concluded with a return to thrilling strains of dauntless optimism, she found that she had been moved to the depths of her soul and yet remained dry-eyed. The lack of tears, the control her dry eyes confirmed, led her to believe that she was ready for what might come next, no matter how hard the way ahead might prove to be.
43
* * *
THE PRIMARY RESIDENCE of Dr. Bertold Shenneck and his wife, Inga, is in Palo Alto, an easy drive from his labs in Menlo Park.
They also own a getaway on seventy acres in Napa Valley, in the foothills of the Coastal Ranges, a property of woods and meadows rich with wildlife.
To some, the house seems misplaced in its rustic setting, for it is an ultramodern structure of glass and steel and slabs of granite cladding. Bertold and Inga are both dominant personalities, however, and they appreciate the way that the bold house rises above the land and asserts superiority over Nature.
They sit on the back terrace, each with a glass of Caymus cabernet sauvignon, to watch the sunset and the coming of the wine-country night.
Inga, twenty-one years younger than Bertold, could pass for a lingerie model. Although she is a woman of strong appetites and complex desires, she is not the party girl that she appears to be. She has serious interests, ambition, and a will to power equal to that of her husband.