We followed Father O down the narrow hall to his office. “How did you know we were out there?” I asked him.
“There’s a motion sensor in the vestibule,” he replied with a slight smile. “I don’t lock the doors, but I do take certain precautions.”
“Modern technology? I’m shocked, Father, shocked.”
“Forgive him, Father,” Sylvia intoned, “for he knows not what he does.”
“Are you two ganging up on me?” I said.
“You had that one coming, Mark,” Sylvia told me, taking her tiny tape player out of her purse as she sat down. “The sound quality’s surprisingly good, Father,” she said. “I brought a couple of my edited tapes so you can compare the different voices with what you heard in the confessional.”
“Aren’t we bending a fairly important rule here?” I asked them. “I’ve heard about the sanctity of the confessional, but I’m not very clear about just how far that goes.”
“We’re in the clear, Mark,” Father O assured me. “I won’t be revealing any details about Renata’s confession—just the different voices.”
“You’re the expert, Father, and you’re the one who’s going to get into trouble with your bishop if we’re out of line.”
“Isn’t he the darlin’ boy?” he said to Sylvia, exaggerating his brogue.
“He’s a clown,” she replied. “You’ll hear my voice first on these tapes, Father. I injected dates and times when I deleted the random conversations that didn’t have any bearing on Renata’s problem. It was a little tricky right at first; we’re trained to take notes, not sound recordings. The first time I tried this, I left out dates and times, and it didn’t make much sense at all.”
“Did you bring the one you recorded that morning when she was all flipped out?” I asked.
“Of course,” Sylvia replied. “That’s the most important one I’ve got so far.” She looked at the labels on several of her miniature tapes. “I think this one might be the best,” she said. “The differences in her voice really stand out.”
She inserted the tape in the little player and turned it on. “Thursday, November sixth—Three thirty P.M.” Sylvia’s voice came from the player.
“Sometimes it’s awfully frustrating, Sylvia.” Twink’s voice was pensive. “The sorority girls talk a lot about ‘the good old days’ when they were in high school. I don’t have any ‘good old days.’ Somehow I got cheated out of my childhood, and I don’t think that’s very fair at all.”
“Wednesday, November twelfth. Ten fifteen A.M.” Sylvia’s voice came in.
“It’s something I absolutely have to do, Sylvia. Nobody understands it, and everybody tries to get in my way, but they can’t stop me. It has to be done, and I am going to do it, no matter what it takes.” It didn’t even sound like the same person talking.
Sylvia stopped the tape. “Are those two entries close to the voices you’ve been hearing in the confessional, Father O’Donnell?” she asked.
“Absolutely identical,” he replied. “That last one raises the hackles on the back of my neck. It doesn’t make much sense, though. Did she ever tell you what this thing is that she feels compelled to do?”
“Not even a peep,” Sylvia replied ruefully. “It drives me wild every time she does that.”
“I’ll check with Mary,” I said, “but I believe Twink had one of her ‘bad days’ on Thursday of that week.”
“Yes,” Sylvia agreed, “she did. I’ve been keeping track.”
“That nails it down, doesn’t it?” I said. “The voice switch was on Wednesday, Twink had the usual nightmare that night, and she was climbing the walls on Thursday. There is a connection between the voice change, the switchover into twin-speak, and the nightmares.”
“Maybe,” Sylvia said. “I’d like to have a little more in the way of confirmation before I start the victory celebration, though.”
“Why don’t you play the tape you cut that morning when Mary called us?” I suggested. “Let Father O hear what she sounds like when she’s full-bore nutso.”
“Good idea,” she agreed, sorting through her miniature tapes.
Father O’Donnell seemed a bit awed by the intensity of Twink’s voice on the tape, and when she switched over to twin-speak, he slapped his hand down onto his desk. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “That’s the language I’ve heard her speaking in the confessional. The lisping is a dead giveaway.”
“They were teething when they invented the language,” I explained.
“Doesn’t that language suggest that Renata is aware that she used to have a twin sister?” Father O suggested.
“Only when she’s gone bonkers,” I replied. “She drops twin-speak when she goes back to being a normie.”
“You might want to speak with Dr. Fallon about the possibility that this change in Renata’s voice might precede—or even trigger—her nightmares and the relapses into psychosis,” Father O suggested to Sylvia. “And it probably wouldn’t hurt if you started bringing her to confession regularly. That other voice doesn’t crop up every time she comes to confession, but if it is an advance warning, we’d better not let it slip past us.”
“Good idea, Father,” Sylvia agreed.
My freshman class on Wednesday afternoon had their heads pretty well turned off, so there wasn’t much point to trying to teach. I took the roll, cautioned them to drive carefully, and turned them loose.
“That was quick,” Twink said, after the classroom had emptied out.
“They weren’t really in there anyway, baby sister,” I told her. “Why waste my breath? Let’s hit the bricks before the traffic starts piling up.”
“Do we really have to spend Thanksgiving with Les and Inga?” She sounded a little plaintive.
“Yup,” I told her.
“They get so antsy when I’m around.”
“Pitch in and help Inga in the kitchen, Twink,” I suggested. “Act like a normie. That might calm her down, and if Inga’s calm, it might settle Les down, too.”
“I don’t know beans about cooking, Markie.”
“Here’s your chance to learn. Your mother’s a good cook, so she’ll clue you in on all the tricks of the trade.”
“You’re going to insist, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“I wish you’d get off that ‘yup’ stuff, Markie,” she said crossly.
“Cool down, Twink. We’re going home for Thanksgiving, and that’s final. It’s not going to hurt you to be nice to your parents, so quit trying to weasel out of this.”
“Oh, all right,” she gave up.
There’d been a break in the weather, and it was actually sunny and bright as Twink and I drove north that afternoon. Maybe it was a good omen—or maybe the rain god was just resting up so he could unload on us at Christmastime.
My bullying finally got through to Twinkie, and she was at least civil to Les and Inga. She even took my advice and helped Inga in the kitchen. That gave me the opportunity to fill Les in on how we hoped to use those voice changes as an early warning system, and maybe even head off the nightmares.
“There might be some hope for her after all, then,” he said. “I wasn’t too optimistic about that. To be perfectly honest, Mark, I was right on the verge of pulling her out of Seattle and bringing her back home.”
“I don’t think that’d work out too well, boss. If you did that, she’d stay semibonkers for the rest of her life, and she’d probably end up back in the bughouse. If we keep her in Seattle where Sylvia can stay right on top of her, we’ll have a lot better chance of finding a real cure and turning her into a normie. That’s what we’re really after, isn’t it?”
“You’re probably right, Mark,” he admitted.
I heaved a sigh of relief. That one had been closer than I’d realized. The boss had the key right in his pocket, and he’d been ready to take it out and lock Twink away for the rest of her life.
Classes resumed on Monday, December 1, and now the holiday season was turning into a major
distraction. Of course, the holiday season starts right after Labor Day, as far as the stores are concerned. Jumping the gun is a peculiarly American characteristic. Everybody wants to get there first. The Brits can elect a new government in six weeks; it takes us two years.
I coasted through Monday. I guess everybody’s entitled to a goof-off day now and then. I did caution my freshman class about the dangers of the season, though. A semiserious student can blow some fairly good grades right out the window if the approach of Christmas shuts down his head. Of course, the ones who’ve been majoring in parties almost always decide at that point that they’ve already blown the fall quarter anyway, so they don’t even bother to come to class after Thanksgiving.
At supper that evening, James told us that Mrs. Perry’s doctors were certain that they’d caught her cancer in time and that her recovery would probably be total.
James, Charlie, and I were going back upstairs to boy country after supper, and Charlie suggested a quick trip to the Green Lantern to find out if his brother had anything new on the Slasher front. “None of us stayed here in town during that four-day weekend, so we might have missed a few things. If we’re going to keep playing our knights in shining armor game, we’d better stay on top of developments.”
“He’s got a point,” I told James.
“I think I’d better beg off,” James replied. “I’m running a little behind right now.”
“No biggie,” Charlie told him. “Mark and I can fill you in when we come home. Are you up for it, Mark?”
“Sure. I’ll grab a coat and we can go see what Bob’s got to say.”
There weren’t too many people in the tavern when we got there, and Bob West was sitting on a stool at the bar.
“What’s cooking, big brother?” Charlie asked as we joined Bob.
“Leftover turkey, most likely,” Bob replied. “I get so damned sick of turkey after a holiday.”
“Don’t buy the great big ones,” Charlie suggested. “Is there anything new and exciting about our local cut-up?” he asked then. “Did he maybe carve up another junior hoodling on Thanksgiving and then eat him—complete with cranberry sauce?”
“No new carcasses,” Bob replied, “but we got the word on Finley from the Kansas City police department.”
“The Gas Works Park guy, wasn’t he?” Charlie asked.
Bob nodded. “Finley had a police record, right enough, but there weren’t any dope deals or burglaries involved. He was busted several times for sexual molestation and a couple of attempted rapes. He’s listed in their records as a sex offender. He was supposed to register when he came here, but evidently it slipped his mind.”
“Convenient,” I said.
“It happens quite a lot. That sex offender label doesn’t work very well. All the guy has to do is cross a state line and keep his nose fairly clean. The Kansas City cops might have been trying to keep an eye on Finley, but once he got west of Denver, he was home free.”
“That’s one of the drawbacks of a democratic society, isn’t it?” Charlie suggested.
“We can usually work our way around them, kid,” Bob said.
“A thought for the day, huh, Bob?” Charlie said.
I concentrated on my Milton paper for the rest of that week, more to get it off my back than out of any great enthusiasm. Since John-boy and I didn’t see eye to eye on much of anything, my paper was mostly a polite tip of my hat in his general direction as I moved on past him.
Sylvia got a call from Doc Fallon late Thursday afternoon, rescheduling Twinkie’s Friday appointment for ten o’clock in the morning rather than the usual afternoon get-together. Sylvia was a little grumpy about that, so I offered to fill in for her.
“Thanks all the same, Mark,” she replied, “but I’d better take care of it myself. There are some things I need to talk over with him, and I think they’d be better face-to-face than over the phone.”
I shrugged. “You can’t say I didn’t offer,” I told her.
“You’re all heart, Mark,” she said dryly.
I finished up my Milton paper about noon the next day, and my final read-through confirmed my suspicion that it wasn’t going to set the world on fire. It’d have to do, though. It was too late in the quarter to go back to square one.
“Nobody’s perfect,” I muttered, setting the paper aside. Then I went down to cobble a couple of sandwiches together. Erika was there, though, and she intercepted me before I could get into the refrigerator.
“Sit down,” she ordered. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Sure,” I said, “and thanks. Could you clear your books out of the way this afternoon? I’ll take the measurements today and build your bookshelves tomorrow. I should be out from underfoot before suppertime.”
“That’ll be nice,” she said.
After we’d eaten, I took my tape measure into her room and started writing down the numbers.
Sylvia came home about two-thirty.
“How’d it go this morning?” I asked her.
“About the same as always,” she said. “Have you got anything earthshaking on the fire for Monday?” she asked.
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“Dr. Fallon’s going to be attending a conference at the university, and he wants to meet Father O. I think he might have a Renata seminar in mind—you, me, Mary, and Father O’Donnell. We’re all getting bits and pieces of what Renata’s been doing lately, and he’d like to put them all together and see what turns up—I think Fallon’s worried about this voice-change business.”
“You’d better check in with Father O,” I suggested. “If we’re going to set up the kind of meet Doc Fallon seems to want, the church might be the best place for it.”
“I sort of thought so myself,” she agreed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After breakfast on Saturday morning I went down to my little workshop in the basement and sawed boards to the measurements I’d taken in Erika’s room Friday afternoon.
“This might be a little noisy,” I warned her when I carried the first load of boards into her room. “If you want to concentrate, maybe you’d better go to the library.”
She shrugged. “I don’t have anything too important to do today, Mark,” she said. “It’ll give me an excuse to goof off—unless having me watch is going to bug you.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll try to keep the swearing to a minimum.”
“I’ve heard people swear before. It doesn’t bother me all that much.”
I got the uprights in place first, and as luck had it, the settling of the house hadn’t torqued the studs too far off plumb, so it went fairly fast.
“Speedy,” Erika observed.
“I’ve done this five times before,” I replied. “I’ve pretty much got it down pat now. I’ll give you some extra room on that bottom shelf for any oversize books, and you can put paperbacks on that top shelf—assuming that you even want to use the top one. You’ll need a stepladder if you do.”
“I might at that,” she told me. “I’ve got several boxes of books down in the basement. It’ll be nice having them all here where I can get my hands on them.”
“I take it that you’re not all that hot for computerized books.”
She made an indelicate sound.
“What a thing to say,” I kidded her. “I’m shocked, Erika. Shocked.”
“Computer nerds make me want to throw up.”
“I’ll float my stick with yours on that one.” I banged the side of my fist on the uprights to make sure they were all firmly in place. “Good enough,” I said. “I got lucky for a change. I hit a couple of problems with the uprights in Sylvia’s room.”
“How much further have you got to go on your doctorate, Mark?” she asked me then.
“A couple more years at least. Why?”
“Just curious. We’ve turned into a fairly tight little group here, haven’t we?”
“The kitchen might have something to do with that. People who eat together a
lways seem to get close.”
“The feeding trough, you mean? I think it goes a little deeper than that, Mark.” Her tone seemed almost wistful.
“Are we having some sort of problem, Erika?”
“I’m going to miss this place when we all move on, and I’ll probably miss the group as well.”
“We’ll keep in touch.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I don’t know if Trish has mentioned this, but she was telling me that she’s been getting some inquiries about possible vacancies. We seem to be getting quite a reputation on campus. The party boys aren’t very interested, but there are people on campus who aren’t majoring in parties. If all six of us come out cum laude, you might get a long line of people waiting to sign on.”
“Not until after we’ve finished. I don’t want any strangers moving in to mess up what we’ve got going for us here.”
“Sentimentality, Erika? I thought you were the ice cube in the bunch.”
“That’s a pose, Mark. It keeps guys who drool at arm’s length. If I pretend to be Iceberg Erika, they don’t pester me. I get the same urges everybody else does, but I keep them to myself. That’s one of the things I like about our arrangement here. The ‘no hanky-panky’ policy puts the guys here off-limits, and I don’t even have those kind of thoughts about you or James or Charlie—well, not too many, anyway.”
“Erika!”
She grinned at me. “Gotcha!” she said triumphantly.
“Smart aleck.”
“Why, Mark, how can you say such a thing?” She gave me one of those wide-eyed vapid looks that seemed all too familiar.
“Have you been taking lessons from Twinkie?” I asked her sourly. She’d caught me off guard. I’d almost come to believe that Erika was one of those all business girls with nothing even remotely resembling a sense of humor. I’d obviously been wrong about that. There was a lot more to her than I’d even imagined.
Sylvia’d made all the arrangements for our little get-together at St. Benedict’s, and we homed in on Father O’Donnell about seven-thirty on Monday evening.
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