Regina's Song

by David Eddings

  “Was that more or less the way things have gone every time she’s had these nightmares?” Sylvia asked Mary as they came out of the bedroom.

  “Not always,” Mary replied. “It’s a little different each time. Sometimes she’s already switched over to gibberish before I get home. There doesn’t seem to be much pattern to it.”

  Sylvia frowned. “That’s odd,” she said. “Disturbed people almost always repeat these incidents in exactly the same way every time.”

  “There are some things that stay the same,” Mary told her. “There’s always talk about wolves and blood and cold water.”

  “The bit about ‘blood’ is fairly obvious,” Sylvia said. “These nightmares are almost certainly a reliving of that night when her sister was murdered. When she’s awake, her amnesia has all memory of her sister totally blotted out. At the subconscious level, though, she’s aware of her sister and of what happened to her. Every now and then it surfaces in the form of a nightmare.”

  “Then she’s repeating that night over and over again?” I asked.

  “Probably so. She doesn’t understand it, though. Dreams are filled with symbols. ‘Blood’ probably really means blood, but the wolves and the cold water could be symbols for something else. Dreams are filled with symbols that don’t make much sense when we wake up. Dr. Fallon might recognize them. He had Renata under observation for quite a while at the sanitarium, so he might have cracked the code.” She patted her purse. “I think this tape’s going to be worth its weight in gold. Up until now, all we’ve been able give Dr. Fallon have been some rather vague descriptions of what Renata says during these incidents. The tape will give him everything she said. I think maybe you should go with us tomorrow, Mark. You probably know her better than anyone else, and I’m sure you caught a lot more of what just happened than I did.”

  “She’s got a point, Mark,” Mary agreed. “This might just be the break Fallon’s been looking for. We don’t want to let it slip past.”

  “You’re probably right,” I conceded, “and we might want to go up there a little earlier than usual. I’ve got a hunch that Fallon might need more than an hour to sort through this.”

  I wasn’t able to get very much done the rest of that day. Mary had always glossed over what Twink went through on a “bad day.” Now that I’d actually seen one, I couldn’t imagine how she was able to bounce back so fast. Evidently, she was a lot tougher than she looked.

  We kicked it around at the boardinghouse that evening, and Sylvia let the others hear what she’d recorded.

  “That’s one sick baby,” Erika observed, after we’d heard the tape. “Have the other days been like this one?”

  “Mary says that this one was fairly standard,” Sylvia said. “We’ll see if she can recover fully by tomorrow, the way she has up ’til now.”

  “If she can bounce back in twenty-four hours after something like that, she must be made of cast iron,” Charlie noted.

  “Oh, by the way, Trish,” James said then, “I’ll have to beg off on fix-it Saturday this week. I have to pick up a friend at Sea-Tac—family emergency.”

  “Something serious?”

  “Well, we hope not. I’ve got a friend up in Everett whose wife is very sick. His son’s taking a leave from law school at Harvard, and I promised to pick him up at the airport.”

  “He’s walking away from Harvard in the middle of the autumn term?” Trish asked incredulously. “Isn’t he taking an awful chance?”

  “I didn’t get the details,” James admitted, “but I guess the dean bent a few rules for Andrew—that’s the young man’s name, Andrew Perry. As I understand it, though, he’s doing very well there—and, of course he’s a black student, so Harvard doesn’t want to make waves. He’ll be able to make up after he goes back.”

  “What’s his mother’s condition?” Erika asked.

  “Ovarian cancer,” James replied. “The doctors at the hospital in Everett think they’ve caught it in time, but you never really know with something like that.”

  I hit my Milton seminar on Friday morning, and Sylvia was waiting for me when I got back to the boardinghouse.

  “Everything’s set,” she told me. “Fallon wants Mary to sit in, too. She’s been through all of these bad days, so she knows more about them than either you or I could possibly know. Fallon wants you and Mary to go up early and give him the tape. He says he’ll need all the details before I deliver Renata. I’ll take her shopping or something while you two fill him in. Then you and Mary should leave before Renata’s appointment, because he doesn’t want Renata to know what we’re doing.”

  “More sneaky stuff?”

  “Not entirely. He just doesn’t want Renata to realize that we’re ganging up on her. If she catches on, she might clam up, and that’d make things difficult.”

  “No worse than if she starts answering all his questions in twin-speak,” I added. “I’ve got a hunch he’d go wild if she did that to him.”

  “I called Mary and set everything up,” Sylvia said. “I’ll pick Renata up early, and we’ll dawdle around in the Northgate Mall before we go on to Lake Stevens. Give me about ten minutes, then pick Mary up. That’ll give you two time to fill Fallon in on what happened yesterday and take off again. He wants everything to seem run-of-the-mill and ordinary.”

  Sylvia was a little sweetie, but she did tend to belabor the obvious sometimes. I gave her about fifteen minutes to get Twink out from underfoot, and then I picked Mary up.

  “Do you think Fallon’s still all torqued out about my sleeping pills?” she asked me as we drove north.

  “I haven’t heard any screaming from him lately. I think he finally realizes that you’re not popping Twink every five minutes.”

  “I think I’ll nail that down when we get there. People who treat me like some brainless amateur irritate me, for some reason.”

  “You’re just oversensitive, Mary,” I kidded her.

  “It’s a failing of mine,” she replied sardonically.

  Mary and I got along very well. She was one tough cookie sometimes, but that’s probably what Twinkie needed.

  It was about ten-thirty when we were ushered in to Dr. Fallon’s office. “This is Twink’s aunt Mary, Doc,” I introduced them.

  “We meet at last,” he said.

  “It’s probably overdue,” she agreed. “Mark has the tape Sylvia made yesterday. Do you want to listen to it before we get down to business?”

  “Maybe you should fill me in first on exactly what happened when you came home,” he suggested.

  Mary shrugged. “It was pretty much the way it’s always been on one of Ren’s bad days. It’s happened often enough before that I wasn’t particularly surprised. I got home from work about quarter to eight, and I could hear her raving as soon as I opened the front door. I knew what was going on, so I called Mark before I even went into her bedroom. Ordinarily, when I come home and find her like that, I just tap her out with a sleeping pill—I know you don’t like the idea, Dr. Fallon, but I do know what I’m doing. I’ve seen enough hysterical people to know that if we don’t do something, they’ll go off the deep end. It usually takes a good strong sedative to get them past the crisis. Anyway, there’s nothing on the tape that I haven’t heard before. Ren’s always hysterical when I come home on one of those days, and she’s always going on about animals howling, blood, and cold water. And then she launches into that made-up language of hers. I’ve learned not to let that go on for too long. Once she gets wound up, it takes quite a while for the sedative I give her to take effect.” Then she looked him straight in the face. “I’m a police officer, Dr. Fallon, and we’ve got access to some fairly heavy-duty sedatives. Every now and then we need something to deal with violent prisoners.”

  “Is that legal?” He seemed a bit startled.

  “We don’t broadcast it, so it doesn’t come up in court very often. There are a few alternatives, but they’re fairly direct and not very pleasant. People start frothing at the mouth abou
t ‘police brutality’ if a few bones get broken while we’re subduing a violent prisoner. A good strong sedative gets the job done without anybody getting hurt.”

  “We more or less follow the same procedure with violent patients,” he admitted.

  “I’m sure you do, since chaining people to the wall’s gone out of date. Anyway, Ren usually goes through the same routine every time she has one of those nightmares. I’ve heard it often enough to know just about how far along she is when I get home. First she rambles on about animals howling; then she talks about having blood all over her; and she winds up whimpering about cold water. After that, she switches over to the private language she and Regina invented when they were babies.”

  “Is she talking to you in that language?”

  “I don’t think she is. I get the feeling that she’s talking to Regina.”

  “Sylvia’s fairly sure that the nightmares Twink keeps having are a rerun of the night when Regina was murdered,” I added. “Evidently she’s going to play that over and over until somebody finds a way to turn it off permanently.”

  “I don’t think we want to do that, Mark,” Fallon disagreed. “It’s in the open right now. If we put a lid on it, it’ll keep seething around in her subconscious, and sooner or later, it’ll boil over again. If that happens ten years from now, it could be an absolute disaster. I’ve seen things like that happen before, and it usually turns the patient into a vegetable and a permanent resident in some custodial institution.”

  “That’d be a clear win for the other side, wouldn’t it?”

  “It sure would,” he agreed, his eyes troubled. He looked at Mary. “How did Renata behave this morning?” he asked her.

  “Pretty much the same as always,” Mary told him. “She usually seems a little silly on the day after one of these spells—bright, bubbly, and neck deep in cute. Then she settles down and seems more or less normal for a week or two. Then another nightmare comes along, and she goes through the whole thing again. It’s almost like a cycle. After the first time or two, I thought her period might have something to do with it, but the numbers don’t match up at all.”

  “Let’s run that tape,” he suggested. “I’d like to hear it all the way through once. Then we’ll play it over a few times, and you two can tell me exactly what Renata was doing at each stage.”

  Mary and I got back to Seattle about one-thirty. I dropped her off at her place, went back to the boardinghouse, and fought with Milton for the rest of the day. By now I’d pretty much resigned myself to producing a pedestrian paper at the very best. I’d come up against the same sort of thing when I’d tackled Spenser in my undergraduate years: some writers—poets for the most part—just don’t click for me.

  It was about four o’clock when Charlie came up the stairs. “The Slasher strikes again!” he announced in a grossly overdone tone of voice.

  “Gee!” I replied. “I wonder if he’s been sick or something. It’s been—what?—three whole weeks since Gasworks, hasn’t it?”

  “Maybe he took a vacation—went to Disneyland or something.”

  “Where was this one?”

  “Way down south—Des Moines.”

  “The Slasher’s gone to Iowa?”

  “No, this Des Moines is west of Kent, right on the edge of Saltwater State Park.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that park. Is it one of those rinky-dink half-acre places?

  “Not hardly. It’s a big one that fronts on Puget Sound. It’s just north of Federal Way, so it gets more traffic out of Pierce County than from Seattle.”

  “How far is that from here?”

  “Eighteen, maybe twenty miles. We sure as hell ain’t talking walking distance.”

  “Our cut-up seems to be branching out—and switching his time schedule. He’s never taken anybody out on a Friday before.”

  “It didn’t happen this morning, Mark,” Charlie said. “That park’s a biggie, and it doesn’t get much traffic in winter. The body was stone cold before anybody found it. It’s going to be a while before the medical examiner can pinpoint the time of death. The TV folks are all excited about this ‘change of venue,’ but I think that all it really means is that the Slasher’s having trouble finding anybody to carve up in north Seattle. Everybody in this part of town’s pretty well spooked about parks, so they’re all staying clear of them after the sun goes down—and, of course, the cops have been patrolling this end of town pretty regularly. A guy can’t do a truly artistic job when there’s a cop hiding behind every tree.”

  “Have they come up with a name for the victim yet?”

  “The cops haven’t released it. Bob probably knows, though. I’m betting on another small-time hoodling. The TV guys interviewed a sergeant from that district, and he didn’t seem very worked up about it. If it’d been a bank president, that would have been a real excited cop.”

  “That’s out of Bob’s jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

  “Probably, but I’m sure he’ll get filled in. It’s still in King County.”

  The girls seemed relieved by the news that our local boy was branching out and finding new hunting grounds, so supper was fairly relaxed.

  After we’d eaten, Charlie and I took off for the Green Lantern. James begged off because he had to pick up the young fellow from Harvard at about three-thirty on Saturday morning.

  Bob West was sitting in that back booth when we got there. “What kept you guys?” he asked, when we joined him.

  “Feeding time,” Charlie told him. “The girls at the boardinghouse are pretty obsessed with schedules. What’s the scoop on this latest killing?”

  Bob shrugged. “He was another small-timer with an extensive police record of assorted low crimes and misdemeanors. His name was Phillip Cassinelli, but don’t start jumping up and down and screaming ‘Mafia.’ He wasn’t in that class. Most of his arrests were for shoplifting or breaking into cars to steal the radios.”

  “Hardly a master criminal,” I observed.

  “You’ve got that right,” Bob agreed. “I wish the goddamn reporters would find something else to babble about. The head-shed downtown’s right on the verge of cobbling together one of those silly task force things, and since I’ve been involved in the investigation of a couple of the killings in this part of town, I don’t think I’ve got much of a chance of squirming out. “Task force sounds impressive, but it’s mostly just a form of damage control. It’s supposed to make it sound like we’re right on top of things, but all it really does is keep the reporters off our backs.” He made a sour face.

  On Saturday morning I moved Operation Bookshelves to Sylvia’s room, and that didn’t make her just too happy. She was in the process of editing her Twinkie tapes, and I was getting underfoot.

  “Use your earphones, Sylvia,” I suggested. “That way you won’t have to listen when I start swearing.”

  She grumbled a bit, but she eventually gave in and did it the way I’d suggested.

  By now I had the procedure pretty much down pat, and I was finishing up by midafternoon.

  “Have you got a minute, Mark?” she asked, as I was bolting the top shelf in place.

  “Sure, I’m due for a break. Is there a problem?”

  “No, it’s just that I’m running into something a little peculiar, is all. Renata’s voice isn’t always the same. It isn’t obvious on the raw tapes, but once I delete all the silly girl talk, the differences are fairly obvious.”

  “Are you putting several days’ worth of talk on one tape?” I asked her.

  “Of course. Renata and I ramble sometimes, but my editing’s taking out the rambles and concentrating on the significant things she says. Her voice is usually light and clear—almost girlish. Every so often, though, it gets richer and more vibrant.”

  “I wouldn’t make a big thing out of it, Sylvia. Nobody’s voice is exactly the same every day—particularly not here in soggy city. The barometer goes up and down like a yo-yo around here, and just about everybody in town is either
coming down with a cold or just getting over one. You’ve got a bouncing barometer and a humidity level that slides all over the scale. These voice changes might be the result of clogged-up sinuses. Why don’t you check it out with Erika before you make a federal case out of it?”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.” She laughed a bit ruefully. “I was right on the verge of saddling up the multiple personality horse again. If it’s just a change in the weather, I’d have felt pretty silly. Thanks for suggesting it, Mark.”

  “Buddyship in action, Toots. We’re morally obligated to cover each other’s buns.”

  “I won’t tell Trish if you don’t.”

  “Are you and Twink going to church tomorrow?”

  “Probably. We missed confession, but I think we’ll go anyway. Renata’s getting very attached to Father O’Donnell. It might have something to do with the Irish brogue of his.”

  “Say hi to him for me.”

  “Has he been trying to convert you?”

  “I don’t think so. We get along well, is all.”

  I finished driving in the screws on that top shelf. “It’s all yours now, Toots,” I told her.

  “How am I supposed to reach anything on that top shelf?” she demanded.

  “Eat lots of Wheaties. Maybe they’ll make you grow.”

  “Up your nose!”

  “You don’t really have to use those top shelves, Sylvia. Put teddy bears or Barbie dolls up there and use the lower ones for your books. I just build ’em. Filling them up is your responsibility.”

  I woke up early on Sunday morning for some reason, and when I went downstairs, Erika was sitting in the breakfast nook communing with her coffee and the Sunday paper. She automatically got up and fixed me a cup of coffee.

  “I can do that for myself, Erika. You don’t really have to jump up every time I come into the room.”