“You tell good stories, kid,” Mary said dryly.
“That’s for sure,” Charlie said. “I’d say that the next thing on the agenda is coming up with some way to get Twink off the hook. Does anybody have a problem with that?”
“It’s gonna take some fancy footwork, kid,” Bob told him. “If Fergusson had been the only guy she’d taken out, a jury might go for ‘justifiable homicide’ or ‘diminished mental capacity.’ But there are all those other carcasses littering various parks around here. This is a high-profile case, so the media will go into a feeding frenzy. That means that the DA’s going to have to play hardball if he wants to get reelected. If things were a little more low-key, ‘insanity’ might slip by, but this one’s gonna be front-page all the way.”
“You almost sound like you’re on our side, Bob,” Mary said.
“If Mark’s right about what’s been happening around here since last September, just about anybody with a shred of decency’s going to be on the Greenleaf girl’s side. That’s off the record, of course. Mary, do you think your brother can afford a top-notch lawyer?”
“You bet your bippie he can, Bob,” she replied with a broad smile.
I’d deliberately avoided any mention of the apparition—vision? miracle?—that Father O and I had seen in the church before we’d called the ambulance. Now that the hypo with traces of curare and the linoleum knife with Fergusson’s blood all over it had come out into the open, things were obviously headed for serious legal proceedings, and whether I liked it or not, I’d probably be the star witness for the defense. If I got up on the witness stand and started telling ghost stories, things would start to fall apart—real fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I overslept the next morning, probably because things were unnaturally quiet around the second floor of the Erdlund house. James and Charlie must have been tiptoeing around, whispering to each other to avoid rousing me. Tired or not, though, I could only sleep for so long at a stretch. We get programmed after a while, and most students hit the deck fairly early. So it was nine or so when I finally woke up, showered, shaved, and brushed my teeth. I gave some serious consideration to hiding in my room until the gang had all left. I wasn’t ready for another question-and-answer session.
I really needed some coffee, though, so I went downstairs. I could hear Charlie in the kitchen when I reached the foot of the stairs, filling the others in on the story I’d told his brother just a few hours before. “If Mark hadn’t been so rattled, he’d probably have remembered to get that belt-on purse away from Twinkie. That’s what blew the whole thing.”
I went into the kitchen at that point.
“We didn’t wake you, Mark, did we?” James said. “We were trying to be quiet.”
“It’s Erika’s fault,” I said with a faint smile. “The smell of her coffee would wake the dead.”
“I’ll fix you a cup, Mark,” Erika told me.
“I know how to pour coffee, Erika.”
“Shush!” she told me. She pointed at my usual place at the breakfast table. “There,” she commanded. “Sit. Stay.”
“Woof-woof,” I replied and sat down.
“What are we going to do about this, Mark?” Sylvia asked in a worried tone.
“I don’t know, babe,” I answered truthfully. “I think we’ll just play it by ear. The next move is up to Bob West.”
“I’ll talk with Mr. Rankin,” Trish told me. “If any lawyer in Seattle can possibly get Renata off, it’ll be Rankin. He’s the absolute best.”
“I’ll pass that on to Renata’s dad, Trish,” I promised.
It was about eleven o’clock when Bob West called me. “Are you busy, Mark?” he asked. “I mean, have you got classes or appointments or anything right now?”
“No, I’m free. What’s up?”
“I need to pick up the Greenleaf girl’s car. You know where it’s parked and what it looks like, so I thought maybe you could come along.”
“No problem, Bob. I need to pick up my own car anyway—it’s still parked over there. You can save me a bus ride.”
“We’re big on public service,” he said. “I’ll come by in about a half hour.”
“I’ll be here.” This was peculiar: Theoretically, Bob and I were supposed to be on opposite sides of the Twinkie fence. But over the past several months we’d gotten to know each other fairly well, and now I found myself hoping that buddyship would step over the fences between us.
I went back upstairs to grab my jacket.
“What’s up?” Charlie asked me when I passed his open door.
“Bob wants me to show him where Renata’s car’s parked,” I replied. “My car’s there, too, so I’ll be able to pick it up.”
“I’ll come along,” he said. “I’ve got an equation that’s fighting me, and maybe some fresh air would help clear my head.”
“And there’s that crime scene, too, huh?”
“I’m big on scenery, Mark,” he said, grinning.
Bob picked us up a little later. It was misty-moisty out, but at least it’d warmed up a little, so the windshield wasn’t icing over.
“What I can’t figure out is how the Greenleaf girl was able to buy a car without anybody knowing that she’d done it,” Bob said while we were waiting for a traffic light to change.
“Her dad’s got lots of bucks, Bob,” I told him. “She had a fairly beefy checkbook.” Then I remembered something. “Oh, hell,” I said. “I must still be a little foggy in the head. Just before Christmas I stopped by Mary’s place, and Renata was having a wrestling match with her checkbook. She couldn’t get it to balance, and it was off by about six hundred bucks! That Honda she had parked on a side street was a junker—six hundred would probably have been the sticker price. This is just a guess, but evidently her other personality cropped up now and then during the daytime—at least long enough on one occasion to go out and buy that car. Renata obviously didn’t know about it, so the alternate identity was keeping it a secret from her.”
“I don’t entirely buy this ‘other personality’ business, Mark,” Bob said then. “It sounds like a put-up story to get this girl off the hook.”
“Her headshrinker thinks it’s valid, Bob,” I told him. “I didn’t really understand it myself right at first. Abnormal Sylvia says the scientific term is ‘fugue,’ which suggests something composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, if you ask me. In music, it involves counterpoint—two or more parts played at the same time. That’s probably why psychiatrists used the term. Renata doesn’t know what the other side of her is doing—buying cars, sneaking out at night to burglarize drugstores, cutting assorted guys all to pieces after midnight—the fun part of life.” Bob gave me a stern look. “Sorry. But this split-personality stuff does happen, though, and it’s not some put-up job. Doc Fallon might not agree with me, but I’ve got a gut feel that the alternate Renata is her twin sister—Regina—and Regina’s the one who’s been cutting guys to pieces around here since last September. Right at first, I guess she’d carve up any guy who hit on her. But once Mary told Renata who owned that pickup truck, Regina had a specific target—and Fergusson was the guy she’d been after right from the start.”
“This fugue thing’s a one-way street, then?” Bob suggested. “The nighttime girl knows everything the daytime girl knows, but the daytime girl doesn’t know the other girl even exists.”
“She gets hints once in a while,” I told him, “and those hints are what trigger her crazy days.”
“It’s fairly obvious that Fergusson was number one on her hate parade,” Bob said. “She did an extra special job on that poor bastard—the coroner looked sick after he finished the autopsy. Fergusson definitely went out the hard way.” He looked sort of apologetically at me. “I have to take her into custody, Mark,” he said. “I’m not going to yank her out of the hospital or anything, but if I don’t do something official before Burpee gets wind of it, he’ll dash on over to the hospital, slap the cuffs on her, and drag her off to jail
. If she’s in my custody, I can lay down the rules. I’ll keep her in that hospital for as long as I can. We might have to wing it, but I think I can keep her out of the slammer.”
“Thanks, Bob. That’s all that really matters.”
Bob parked near Fergusson’s apartment house, and the keys he’d found in Renata’s purse unlocked the tan Honda. My theory about Renata’s alternate personality was pretty much confirmed by the registration slip, which listed the owner of the car as Regina Greenleaf.
Bob called for a tow truck to haul the car away, and I went around the corner and got my car. Then Charlie and I went home.
There was one of those yellow Post-it notes stuck to the door of my room when I went upstairs. “Father O wants you to call him,” it said. I heaved a tired sigh and went back downstairs to use the phone in the living room.
“It’s me, Father O’Donnell—Mark,” I told him when he answered the phone. “What’s up?”
“I think you’d better come by, Mark,” he said. “Something’s come up that we need to talk about in strict privacy.”
“I’ll be right over,” I promised him. Lucky I had my wheels again, I mused.
There was actually a brief spell of sunshine as I drove to the church. It didn’t last long, but it was nice to know that the sun was still out there. I was starting to get a real bellyful of fog.
Father O was puttering around near the altar when I reached the church. His face had a bleak, apologetic look. “Come on back to the office, Mark,” he suggested. “This is something we don’t want anybody to overhear.”
“You’re making me nervous, Father,” I said, following him through the small door off to the side of the altar and down the hall to his office.
He led the way inside, then firmly closed the door behind him. “How’s Renata doing?” he asked, after we’d sat down.
I brought him up to speed—the pneumonia, the plastic purse, and the police. “What it all boils down to is that the cops have an open-and-shut case against Renata. She’s definitely the Seattle Slasher. Our only hope now is the insanity defense. Father, I’m not sure if what you and I saw the other night—whatever that was—is going to play any part in that.”
“You’d better not count on it, Mark,” he told me gravely. “I reported the incident to my bishop, and there are some rules about things like that. You and I both know we saw something extraordinary—but my bishop has forbidden me to talk about it.”
“You said what ?”
“Church policy, Mark. We’re not permitted to discuss any supernatural incidents that occur in or near a church. In most cases these apparitions are nothing more than cases of mass hysteria, and the clergy isn’t supposed to get involved in things like that. If you stop and think about it, I’m sure you’ll be able to see why.”
“I guess it does make sense, Father. But dammit, you and I both know what we saw.”
“I wouldn’t make an issue of it in court, Mark, because I won’t be permitted to confirm anything you say about it. Have you mentioned it to anybody?”
“Not yet. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, to tell you the truth.”
“Good. I’d keep it that way, if I were you. Are the police going to arrest Renata?”
“I don’t think so, Father O’Donnell. She’s completely out of it. They’ll probably put her in protective custody, but if we can float mental incompetence past a judge, this won’t ever go to trial. They’ll just quietly lock her up in some insane asylum and throw away the key. It’s not a good solution, but it’s probably about the best we can hope for.”
He got that shrewd, squinty-eyed look that every Irishman comes up with now and then. “I think there might be an alternative to that, Mark. Let me work on it a bit. I’ll have to call in a few favors, but there’s nothing new or unusual about that, don’t y’know.”
I went home for supper, then back to the hospital. Les and Inga were in Renata’s room, and they both looked pretty haggard. I took Les off to one side. “Why don’t you let me take the night shift, boss?” I suggested. “You and Inga ought to get some sleep.”
“You don’t look too good yourself, Mark,” he replied.
“It’s been a couple of pretty rough weeks, boss,” I told him, “but I’m an expert at sleeping in Renata’s hospital rooms, remember?”
He glanced over at Inga. “Maybe I should get her out of here for a while,” he conceded. “She’s taking it hard.”
“She’s not alone, boss. Lots of people are upset about it.”
“Will this never end?” he demanded in a choked-up voice.
“All we can do now is hope, boss,” I said. What a silly thing that was to say. I wanted to bite my tongue after that absurdity came rolling out. “Mary’s probably awake. Why don’t you give her a call, then get Inga out of here until tomorrow?”
“I’ll do that. Thanks, Mark.”
“It’s no biggie, boss.”
After Les and Inga had left, I pulled a chair over to Renata’s bedside, grabbed another one to prop my feet on, and assumed a very familiar position. Renata had an IV plugged into her arm and an oxygen mask covering the lower half of her face. I could still hear her talking, though. The mask muffled the sound, but enough came through to let me know that she wasn’t speaking English.
I’m not sure exactly why I did it, but I reached out and took her hand. She probably wouldn’t even know I was there, but it made me feel a little better.
About seven o’clock the next morning, the doctor came into the room, and Bob West and a uniformed police officer were with him. “How’s she doing, Mark?” Bob asked me.
“I don’t see much change,” I told him.
“This is Officer Rauch,” he introduced the burly policeman. “He’ll take the day shift guarding the door. We need to put together a list of people who’ll be allowed into this room. So far I’ve got you, her parents, and Mary. Who else should we include?”
“Hell, Bob, I don’t know—the boardinghouse gang, I suppose—Sylvia and Erika certainly, and probably James and Trish, too.”
“What about Charlie?”
“Yeah, we might as well.”
“Write down their names for me, OK? Anybody else?”
“I’ve got to talk with Les—her dad. Trish thinks he should hire a partner in the law firm where she works. His name’s Rankin. From what she says, he’s a heavy hitter.”
Bob nodded. “I’ve heard of him.”
“And we’d better put her psychiatrist on the list, too. His name’s Wallace Fallon—oh, we’d probably better include Father O’Donnell as well. He’s her priest.”
Bob nodded. “Put him on the list.”
The doctor had been checking the progress report hanging from the foot of Renata’s bed. “Excuse me,” he said. “Is she still going on in that peculiar language, Mr. Austin?”
“I haven’t heard her say anything in English yet.”
“That might be the result of her high fever,” he said thoughtfully, “but if she doesn’t switch over into English pretty soon, I’d strongly suggest that she be transferred to the psychiatric ward here. It’s fairly obvious that she isn’t ready to deal with reality yet.”
Bob put on a perfectly straight face. “We can live with that,” he replied. “What do you think, Mark?”
“Sounds OK to me,” I agreed. This would put us one jump ahead of Burpee and all the reporters who were drooling over the prospect of a lurid criminal trial. If the staff of the medical center put Renata in the psychiatric ward, it’d add some weight to the insanity defense and point this whole business in the direction we wanted it to go.
Les came back to the hospital at noon, but Inga wasn’t with him. “She’s pretty upset, Mark,” he told me. “Mary’s been slipping her tranks on the sly.”
“That’s Mary for you. She likes to keep everybody nice and calm. Listen, boss, I’m supposed to bounce something off you. One of the girls at the boardinghouse—Trish Erdlund—is in law school here at the university and she work
s part-time in a downtown law firm. One of the senior partners there is John Rankin, and from what she says, I guess he’s the real thing. We’ve got to get somebody sharp enough to float an insanity defense past a judge. Renata’s obviously totally out of it, but the prosecuting attorney’s likely to fight a sanity hearing tooth and nail. This is one of those big-time cases that gets lots of attention, and the district attorney’s hoping for a splashy criminal case that’ll get him reelected.”
“Have you met this Rankin, Mark?”
“Not personally, no, but I’ll take Trish’s word for it. She’s almost as smart as her sister is, and Erika’s so smart she scares me—but never mind that. What do you think about talking to Rankin?”
He shrugged. “Whatever seems best to you, Mark. My head isn’t working too good right now.”
“I’ll get one of his business cards from Trish and drop it by so that you can get in touch with him.”
“Whatever you say.”
That really surprised me. Les Greenleaf wasn’t the kind of guy who shrugged things off this way. This mess was obviously hitting him very hard.
The TV set in the kitchen was going full blast when I got back to the boardinghouse, and the gang was camped on it.
“How’s she doing, Mark?” James asked me.
“She still seems pretty much out of it,” I told him. “Her fever’s down a little, but she’s still talking to herself in twin. Bob came by this morning with a uniformed cop who’s going to pull the day shift in the chair outside her door. Her doctor wants to move her to the psychiatric ward once she recovers from this bout of pneumonia. Bob pretty much went along with him on that one. He won’t come right out and admit it, but I’m fairly sure that Bob’s on our side. Oh, one other thing. I talked with Les Greenleaf, and he says he’ll hire Mr. Rankin as Renata’s lawyer.”
“That’s a big win,” Trish said enthusiastically. “If any lawyer in King County can persuade a judge to go along with a sanity hearing, it’ll be Mr. Rankin. We’ve got to keep this case out of criminal court.” She pursed her lips and squinted slightly. “I think Rankin’s first move will be to go for a preliminary hearing so that he can point this whole case toward determining if Renata’s mentally competent to aid in her own defense. If it comes out the way we want, that’ll be the end of it right there. Renata will go straight from the psychiatric ward at the university medical center to a mental institution—preferably Dr. Fallon’s place up at Lake Stevens. Fallon will obviously be the star witness in any competency hearing, but Mark and Sylvia will probably testify, too.”
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