by Paula Munier
She studied the serious boy beside her. “What is it about this one, Henry? Does it have to do with your game? Or is it more than that?” She leaned toward him, willing him to tell her. Elvis cocked his triangular ears at her, feeling her intensity. He placed his handsome head in Henry’s lap, comforting him. Helping him relax enough to answer her questions. At least she hoped that was what the dog was doing.
She pressed on. “Does this have to do with what happened today?”
Henry simply huddled more deeply over the map, his finger stuck on Skellig Michael.
“I want to help,” she said quietly. “I think you know that. But you need to talk to me.”
He lifted his head, lips quivering. He opened his mouth as if to speak.
The doorbell rang, a sonorous rendition of Westminster chimes.
Henry looked up at Mercy, round brown eyes widened. He started flapping his hands. She remembered Lillian saying he hated doctors. And Mercy expected there was a doctor coming right now to the poor kid’s door.
She hoped this shrink would have a soothing effect on him. That no shrink had ever had a soothing effect on her made Mercy somewhat less optimistic.
She got to her feet as Lillian ushered in Dr. Cal Jacobs. Elvis lifted his nose in the air, sniffing the newcomer.
To her surprise, the psychiatrist was a relatively young man, not much older than she was. Early to midthirties, with dark curly hair and the world-weary blue eyes of an older man.
He smiled at her, and he seemed young again.
“I’m Cal,” he said, offering his hand. Tall, he wore jeans and a white button-down shirt open at the neck under a navy wool blazer. His handshake was firm. She found herself liking him in spite of herself. Especially since he meant for her to call him by his first name rather than by Dr. Jacobs. She found civilians who pulled rank even more annoying than their peers in law enforcement and the military.
She led Cal over to Henry. “This is Henry.”
The boy didn’t look at the doctor, just sat there, flapping his hands.
“Say hello, Henry,” said his grandmother. But he ignored her, too.
Silence. Except for the whish, whish, whish sound of stimming.
The doctor waved his own hand as if it were of no account. Lillian excused herself, but didn’t go far, positioning herself across the room in a paisley Bergère chair by the marble fireplace, where she commanded a good view of Henry and the game table.
“Nice to meet you,” said Cal. “May I join you?” He didn’t wait for the answer that they all knew wasn’t going to come, pulling out the chair next to Henry, the one Mercy had just vacated.
In one smooth elegant movement, Elvis stretched to an alert standing on all fours. He remained at the boy’s side, sniffed again, the verdict still out on the good doctor. Henry’s stimming subsided, and he hugged the shepherd’s neck, then sat back on his seat, his little fingers scratching the dog’s ears.
“This is Elvis,” Mercy said.
Cal held out his hand for the dog to smell.
Maybe this guy wouldn’t be too bad. Elvis sniffed him up close and personal, then held up his nose as if to say, You’re okay.
“Great map.” Cal settled next to Henry. “Dungeons & Dragons?”
Henry meticulously rolled up the Sword of Saint Michael line map he’d shown Mercy, carefully placing it under his seat. He cleared the table with a sweep of his thin arm, sending the other maps and the figurines off the table in a waterfall of D&D paraphernalia.
Cal laughed. “Okay, no D&D. How about cards? You like to play cards?”
“You’ll find cards in the drawer of the game table,” Lillian said from across the room.
Mercy opened the drawer and pulled out a pack of cards whose plaid backs featured a large moose, placing the stack on the table.
“Thanks.” Cal retrieved a deck of playing cards from his jacket pocket and held them out to Henry. His cards had backs emblazoned with Darth Vader. “I always bring my own. Shall we use yours or mine?”
Henry took the cards from Cal, turned them face up, and spread them in a perfect fan across the table. Each card showed a scene from one of the Star Wars films. He studied them without a word, then gathered them together in his small hands, and shuffled them.
“Okay, you deal.” Cal smiled at Henry. “What would you like to play?”
Henry didn’t answer him.
“He likes War,” said Lillian.
“War, it is.”
Henry dealt out the cards with precision. Mercy retreated to the paisley Bergère chair on the other side of the fireplace. Together she and Lillian sat and silently observed Cal and Henry quietly playing War, punctuated only by the occasional question from Cal. Henry didn’t answer, whether he was asked about his breakfast or his dad or walking in the woods.
When the doctor asked him if he saw anything in the woods, Henry played on. War takes a long time to win, in cards as in life. Mercy knew that much.
The only time Henry looked up and responded to Cal was when he mentioned Mercy and Elvis.
“Ranger. Bear. Wolf,” he said as matter-of-fact as an engineer. Then he went back to cards.
When he managed to win the game in less than an hour, Henry paused to ruffle Elvis’s shiny coat, burying his head briefly in the dog’s neck.
His way of celebrating his win, thought Mercy.
Elvis barked, his signal bark, and the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “Elvis, stay.”
The dog whined his disappointment.
“Friend, not foe,” she told Henry.
The boy nodded, reshuffling the deck. Preparing to play another game of War with the doctor.
She excused herself and went to the front door. Given Elvis’s reaction, she wasn’t surprised to find Troy and Susie Bear on the porch. Susie Bear lumbered past her and disappeared down the hallway. En route to Elvis and Henry, no doubt.
“Let her go. Henry will be thrilled to see her.” She ushered the game warden into the foyer.
“How’s the little guy doing?”
“Better. He seems to be calming down.”
“Good.” he said. “Is he talking?”
“Not much. The doctor says Henry’s scared, but less scared when we’re around.”
“Nothing we didn’t already know.”
“No.”
“How’d it go with the night hunters?”
He told her about finding the hat with Gil. Shared the photos he’d taken of the fastener and the feathers and the cap before turning it in to Thrasher.
“These feathers are definitely a match for the one Henry found,” she said.
“There were blond hairs on the hat. The lab will let us know if they belonged to the victim.”
“That is Alice’s hat.”
“You seem so sure.”
“It’s her style. And it would complete the outfit.”
“You sound like Gil.” He told her about his friend the ranger and his wife, Françoise, and her penchant for hats.
“Gil sounds like a cool guy.”
“He is, you’ll have to meet him sometime. Henry should meet him, too, so he knows what a real ranger looks like.”
She laughed, and he laughed with her.
Then she thought about what the hat could mean, and she stopped laughing. “Henry was there. He saw Alice.”
“We don’t know how he came to find that feather. Whether she was dead or alive or even there when he found it.”
“We need to know.”
“We could just ask him. Show him the hat. See how he responds.”
Mercy shook her head. “He’s had a very long day, and he’s finally settling down. Can we wait until tomorrow?”
“Wait for what until tomorrow?” Lillian appeared in the hallway. ‘What’s going on?”
Troy handed her the pictures of the hat and the feathers.
“You may as well come on in and show these to Henry now. While the doctor is here. He doesn’t seem
to be getting anywhere, anyway. Maybe this will help.” She looked from Mercy to Troy. “We have to do something. We need to know what happened to him.”
“Okay.”
Mercy and Troy followed Lillian back to the den. Henry and Cal were still playing War, and Henry was still winning. The dogs sat on either side of him, Elvis in erect posture as always, Susie Bear resting her shaggy pumpkin head right on the game table, her nose nearly touching the cards.
Henry looked up at Troy. “Ranger.”
“Hi, Henry.”
“Game Warden Troy Warner, this is Dr. Cal Jacobs.”
“We’ve met,” he said with what she thought might be a trace of disapproval.
“Troy,” said Cal.
Mercy wondered how they knew one another. She couldn’t imagine Troy ever going to a therapist and what business would a psychiatrist fairly new to Northshire have to do with the game warden. But they obviously knew each other. And she suspected they didn’t like each other much. She’d have to ask Patience about that.
“Don’t let me interrupt your game.” Troy backed away from the table. “Go ahead and finish, and then we’ll talk.”
Henry nodded. He and Cal played for another half an hour, the doctor asking questions, the boy refusing to acknowledge them. Only an occasional shrug or a look up at the mention of Mercy or Troy or Susie Bear or Elvis.
Henry won again. He straightened the deck, pushing the stack of perfectly aligned cards over to Cal. Turning his attention back to Troy. Done with War. Done with games. Done with the doctor.
“Thanks, Henry. I enjoyed that. I hope we’ll play again soon.”
“May I?” Troy approached the table.
“Of course,” said Cal, rising to his feet.
“No, please stay,” said Mercy, joining them. “We have some photos we need to show Henry. We’d like you to be here when we do.”
“May I speak to you privately before we proceed?” asked Cal.
“We don’t have time for all that right now.” Troy brushed him off.
Cal frowned.
“Better us than…” She let her voice trail off, hoping Cal would heed her warning.
“Okay.” But the psychiatrist did not look happy.
There were four of them at the game table now. Cal, Troy, Henry, and Mercy. The dogs flanking the boy, Lillian hovering close by.
Troy pulled a small folder out of his pocket and removed the picture of the cream-and–gray-blue feathers with the silver fastener, placing it before Henry. “Susie Bear and I were working in the woods with our friend Gil. He’s a park ranger. Susie Bear found this.” At the sound of her name, Susie Bear thumped her plumed tail against the highly polished wood floors.
The boy petted the Newfie, glancing down at the photo. “Falcon.”
“Yes, Ranger Gil confirmed that these are peregrine falcon feathers.”
“Like the one you hid in your pajamas,” said Mercy.
“Peregrine falcons are birds of prey, the fastest animals in the world, clocked at more than two hundred forty miles an hour,” recited Henry, as if he were reading right from Wikipedia.
They all stared at him, except for Lillian.
“Photographic memory,” she said. “At least for things he’s interested in.”
Of course, thought Mercy. A nine-year-old with a Wikipedia brain.
“Right.” Troy placed another picture down. The one of the hat.
Henry stared at the image of the crumpled yellow Tyrolean. Missing its feathers.
“Do you recognize this hat?”
He didn’t say anything. He sat completely still. Unnaturally still. The color drained from his face.
“I think he’s holding his breath,” said Troy.
“He hasn’t done that since he was a toddler.” Lillian came forward and placed her hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Breathe, Henry.”
“Breathe, Henry,” repeated Mercy.
Elvis put his paws on the seat of Henry’s chair and leaned over to lick the boy’s cheek. Susie Bear followed suit on his other cheek. He blinked, gasping for air. He shook off his grandmother’s hands and dropped from his seat onto the floor, crawling under the table. The dogs went with him, pushing through the tangle of everyone’s legs. Mercy pushed back her chair and squatted down by Henry. The dogs kept on washing his face with their thick tongues. Smart dogs; somehow, they knew he could not hold his breath and giggle at the same time. He ignored Mercy, focused on gathering up the RPG figures he’d scattered earlier with his usual fastidiousness. He was chanting again, too, a tense whispering of prime numbers. But at least he was breathing.
“Would you like a glass of milk, Henry?” asked Lillian. “And some cookies?”
Henry paused in his chanting and tidying up just long enough to say, “Cookies.”
Taking their cue from Lillian, Mercy, Troy, and Cal left Henry in the fine company of the dogs, and they retreated to the marble-topped island that separated the den from the bright yellow-and-blue kitchen. Lillian put a blue crock cookie jar and a pitcher of milk on the island, along with glasses and a stack of blue-and-white plates.
She took her grandson his milk and cookies, and returned to the kitchen, where Mercy and the guys waited on ladder-back stools. Lillian stayed on the other side of the island, where she could monitor them all.
“Now what?” asked Troy.
“He recognized that hat,” said Lillian.
“But he didn’t say anything. We need to know what he saw.” Mercy turned to Cal. “What do you think?”
“He’s not a big talker, and it may take a while to get through to him in therapy.” Cal washed down a cookie with a gulp of milk. “But Henry has other ways of communicating.”
“You mean the stimming,” said Lillian with a catch in her voice.
Not what she wants to hear, thought Mercy.
“Yes.” Cal’s tired eyes were kind. “He obviously saw something because he stimmed when Mercy told me about Troy and Susie Bear and tracking him through the woods to the ice shack. And then again when you showed him the picture of the hat.”
“He held his breath,” said Mercy.
“Yes. An extreme reaction.”
“He hasn’t done that for a couple of years. But when he was younger, he did it a lot. They had trouble keeping him in day care because he’d hold his breath until he passed out. Billie quit her job at the arts center to stay at home with him full time.”
The beginning of the end of Ethan’s marriage, thought Mercy.
“He didn’t pass out this time,” said Troy. “The dogs distracted him.”
“Holding his breath is a regression,” said Cal. “An indicator of his stress level.”
“He likes Mercy and Elvis,” said Lillian. “He feels safe with them.”
“Exactly. I’d advise that you and the dog stick close by until Henry feels comfortable enough to open up about what happened today. If he ever does.” Cal hopped off the stool. “Meanwhile, I’ll plan to drop by tomorrow. The aim is to establish trust and hope that eventually that he will talk.”
“If the hat belonged to Alice de Clare—and we believe it did—then he may have seen the murder.”
“Or not,” said Mercy, seeing the panic on Lillian’s face.
“I think it’s safe to say that something frightened him,” said Cal. “But what that is and when he’ll be able to tell us about it, that’s hard to predict.”
“Very helpful,” muttered Troy.
“I’d better be going,” said Cal. “I’ll just say my goodbyes to Henry.”
“Same for me,” said Troy. “Night patrols.”
They found Henry at the card table, his milk drunk and cookies eaten, napkin neatly folded to the side. The boy was again focused on the Sword of Saint Michael line map.
“Henry’s really into ley lines,” Mercy told Cal and Troy.
“Like in The Da Vinci Code?” asked Cal.
“Yes. But this line stretches from Ireland to Israel.” Mercy noticed that Henry
had covered the part of the map where Skellig Michael was located with his palm. He didn’t want her to tell them about it. She wasn’t sure why, but she figured he had a reason. His little secret, she supposed. Kids liked secrets. And it seemed clear to her that Henry expected her to figure it out. Which she must do, the sooner the better. “Or something like that.”
Henry looked up at her with just a hint of a smile.
“Interesting.” Cal gave a slight bow to Henry. “See you later.”
Henry ignored him, but Cal didn’t take offense. Mercy walked the handsome psychiatrist outside to the crescent-shaped driveway that ran in front of Lillian’s house, where his Range Rover was parked. The night sky was cloudy, the crescent moon just a faint blur in the gloom. The wind was brisk and cold. It felt more like winter than fall.
“I guess there’s not much we can do but wait,” she said. “And try to protect him.”
“He’s really bonded with you and your dog. He may confide in you long before he confides in me.”
“I hope so. Thanks again for coming out.”
“No problem. I’ll be in touch.” Cal paused, and she could see that there was something else he wanted to say. But apparently, he thought better of it. Giving her shoulder a quick squeeze, he climbed into his Range Rover and drove off.
She waited there under the murky sky as the SUV disappeared down the road. She shivered, overcome suddenly by the feeling that someone was watching her.
That someone was Troy. The porch light was off, and he was standing in the dark on the porch, waiting for her.
“What are you doing?”
“Just checking to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Troy said nothing.
“You don’t like Cal very much, do you?”
He shrugged. “He’s all right.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
“You’re shivering. Let’s go back inside.”
She was hoping for an explanation, but she could see he wasn’t going to give her one. She’d have to ask Patience about that.
* * *
THEY FOUND HENRY curled up on the floor of the den in front of the big-screen TV watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The dogs were his body pillows.