Fragments

by James F. David

  “Can’t you smell it?”

  Wes sniffed the air—something smelled foul.

  “It’s coming from the hole Ralph made,” Elizabeth said. “It smells like something rotten.”

  Karon, who had been sitting quietly on the stairs, got up and stepped forward, looking at the broken bricks at the bottom of the wall. “It smells like something died,” she said. Suddenly Gil turned and ran up the stairs.

  Wes took the sledge from Ralph and pounded away at the bricks. “Get me a flashlight, will you, Len?” Len went up the stairs without making a joke. While he was gone Wes pulled the broken pieces of brick out of the wall, making a small opening. Len returned, handing the flashlight to Wes, who had to lie down to peek in the hole. The beam lit up the opening, and there on the other side of the wall was the remains of a hand—the skeletal frame lay palm up, bits of dried flesh still clinging to the bones.

  17

  TOMB

  Wes watched the police work from the stairs. Bricks from the wall littered the basement floor, and strobe flashes lit up the hidden room, the police recording the grisly find for posterity. When they removed the remains, Wes set up a fan to air the basement, but the air still had a putrid taint. Elizabeth sat next to Wes, offering a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks.”

  “Have you gotten inside yet?” she said.

  “No. I’m not sure I want to. There might be more bodies in there.”

  “No. I shared some coffee with a nice officer upstairs. There’s only one body—actually a skeleton.”

  One of the officers separated from the others and approached Wes and Elizabeth. His insignia identified him as the chief of police. He was a barrel-chested man of about fifty, with thick salt-and-pepper hair closely cropped on the sides.

  “I’m Roy Winston. You’re Wes and Elizabeth, right? Ralph talks about you all the time.”

  Isn’t there anyone Ralph doesn’t know? Wes wondered.

  “My wife works down at the Dairy Queen, and your Ralph’s a regular customer.” Then, nodding toward the opening, he said, “You want to tell me how you found this place?”

  Wes told of Yu’s arrival and his need to pace off buildings and compute square footage. Elizabeth explained it as a defense mechanism—a psychological security blanket. The officer took notes as they talked.

  “We’ll want to talk to everyone in the house,” Winston said.

  “Some of our savants are noncommunicative,” Elizabeth said.

  “Not Ralph. I hear you’re psychologists or something? Say, maybe you could help us out. Come on, I want you to look at something.”

  When Roy led them toward the room Wes hesitated, but Elizabeth fell in at his heels. They ducked through the opening and Wes found himself standing in a chalk outline. His nose flared as the stench overpowered him. Swallowing hard, Wes held back his nausea. When he was sure he wouldn’t regurgitate he looked around at the bizarre interior.

  A thick layer of dust covered everything, but otherwise the room looked neat and tidy. There was a bed in the corner with a flowered bedspread folded open as if someone had just gotten out, a small nightstand sat next to it, and there was a dresser against the far wall. On the nightstand were a lamp and an old-fashioned radio. On the dresser a comb, brush, and mirror sat—all neatly lined up ready to use. On the floor was a pile of sketch pads. Two cigar boxes held a variety of chalks, drawing pencils, and colored pencils. But overwhelming the simple furnishings were the walls. Every surface was covered with sketches—beautiful yet horrifying pencil etchings. There was talent displayed on those walls—also pain.

  Many of the sketches showed a young woman walking in open spaces—fields, plains, even arctic tundra. The skies were mostly clear and blue, the only clouds small and puffy. The night skies were sprinkled liberally with stars. The woman in the sketches walked through these scenes, eyes opened wide, a look of wonder on her face. Other sketches portrayed a far different woman, often in a fetal position, her face covered in tears. Most disturbing were sketches of the same young woman with her face contorted in rage, her body tensed, and her fists clenched.

  Mixed with the sketches of the young woman were those of other people. Most were of a man; others showed the man and a woman, sometimes with children. As they lifted up layer after layer of sketches they found one of the house. On its porch were the man and woman, and sitting on the steps were four little girls in frilly dresses.

  “Her family maybe,” Elizabeth suggested. “These are remarkable sketches. She had real talent.”

  “You’re sure it was a she?”

  “You can tell by the art, Wes. Most of these are self-portraits. Besides, the policeman upstairs said the skeleton was wearing a nightgown.”

  “What do you think?” Roy asked. “These pictures tell you anything?”

  Wes wanted to protest that he was a neuropsychologist, not a clinician, but Elizabeth jumped right in with an instant analysis.

  “She was a very talented woman, who was deeply disturbed—possibly suffering from a dissociative personality disorder.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She might have had multiple personalities. Notice the distinct views of herself—innocent in these outdoor scenes, angry in these, and hurting in these sketches. These aren’t simply different emotional states, either. These different portraits include different emphases on physical features. Notice also that the happy pictures are less complex, lacking the detail and sharpness of the others. Those showing rage are much more complex, much bolder. The angry drawings are so different it could almost have come from a different person.”

  Wes listened, and marveled. Elizabeth’s analysis suggested expertise Wes didn’t realize she had. Officer Winston was equally impressed.

  “What do you make of this layout?” he asked. “You think this was her room and someone just walled her up in it after she died?”

  “No, I think it’s clear she was walled in long before she died. Look at the sketches—notice the recurring theme of openness. This poor woman was trapped in here for a long time. Long enough to drive her mad. Notice the anguish in these, and these. Someone cruelly tortured this woman by walling her in.”

  Roy was writing Elizabeth’s comments on a pad. “This helps a lot. There’s no obvious evidence of murder—no holes in the skull, no broken bones, no knife or gun. Her clothes were intact and there are no bloodstains on the floor. It could be someone walled her in and then kept her alive—maybe a love slave or something.”

  “I don’t think so, Officer . . . Roy? That’s not reflected in her sketches. Someone kept her alive in here, but they did it with some care. It was a horrible thing to do, but I don’t think she was otherwise abused.”

  The rest of the police had finished packing and were disappearing up the stairs. When Roy thanked them and turned to follow, Wes stopped him.

  “Aren’t you going to remove the sketches and the other furnishings?” he asked.

  “What for?”

  “Evidence.”

  “We’ve got samples of everything we need. Leave the rest until we can find out who she is and if she has any living relatives.”

  Wes didn’t like the idea of an open tomb in his basement. He was about to suggest that they brick it back up when someone pounded down the stairs. Wes was shoved aside by Yu, who quickly paced the new room and the perimeter of the basement. Then he visibly relaxed, and went softly up the stairs, followed by Karon.

  Wes turned to see Elizabeth in the hidden room studying the sketches. Wes joined her for a few minutes, then asked if she wanted to go up for a cup of coffee.

  “No thanks, I want to stay a little longer.”

  She was sitting on the bed staring at the walls when Wes left.

  Stretched out on his bed, Gil was clearing his mind to search for the voice, but it’s hard to relax when you’re afraid. He was afraid of what the voice had been. Was it a ghost from the walled room? He had to know, so he went through the routine again, seeking clearness.
<
br />   No voice came, but was he relaxed enough? Gil repeated the routine, and still no voice. His fear diminished, then disappeared with repeated failure. It was truly gone. Opening the wall had liberated whatever it had been. Things were at last back on track.

  18

  QUESTIONS

  Adjustment didn’t come easily for Yu. After pacing the newly discovered tomb, he spent the next two hours straightening and restraightening his room. One by one, everyone in the house came to watch, looking for the imperceptible disorder in his belongings, and failing. Yet he flitted from object to object, moving them minutely to fit some criteria only he could discern. Even Daphne came to watch, occasionally lifting her head to see what he was doing. Finally satisfied with his room, Yu paced the house, inside and out, again and again. Finally, Yu went to bed.

  Yu was just as restless the next day and the next, so Wes didn’t bother attempting to map his cognitive functions. Instead, he and his team spent the day working with the results of the last integration. Shamita was fixated on an unusual brain-wave pattern that she had picked out. Wes examined it, then dismissed it as spurious and submerged himself in refining his program. Shamita and Karon tried matching the pattern to digitized records, with no success. Deciding the pattern was a hardware anomaly, Len spent the rest of the day disassembling the equipment and adding to the clutter of the experiment room.

  On Wednesday Ralph convinced all the savants to go down to the Dairy Queen for ice cream. Wes was irritated and frustrated, not wanting to go out in the bad weather, but Elizabeth encouraged him by pointing out that Yu seemed interested in the trip.

  They left between rain showers, and Mrs. Clayton was there across the street, raking leaves, not bothering to hide her stare and shaking her head in disbelief. Ralph led the way, of course, his long loping strides soon putting him ahead of the others. Daphne trotted along behind him a few steps, followed by redheaded Archie in his Mickey Mouse sunglasses, and Luis’s blobish figure. Yu trailed the others, walking head down, with leaden steps.

  Ralph met few people on the way and ducked into only two stores to say hello to those working. When he did, his entourage followed, garnering stares from customers and employees. Elizabeth remained amused but Wes couldn’t shake his embarrassment.

  At the Dairy Queen Ralph introduced Yu to Ellen and Jean, and then they took orders from the savants. Only Archie and Daphne responded to Jean, but Ralph said he knew what Yu and Luis wanted, and that was a chocolate-dip cone.

  When Wes took his cone from Ellen, he asked if her husband had found out who the dead girl was.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about his cases, but just between you and me he’s got an idea. You might be hearing something pretty soon.”

  Once back at the house, Elizabeth paused on the porch, holding Wes back.

  “Wait for Yu.”

  A few minutes later Yu came through the front door with Ralph following and began pacing the perimeter. After one circuit he went back inside, Ralph pausing long enough to say, “I bet he says it’s all there.”

  When Wes started in, again Elizabeth stopped him.

  “Yu will straighten his room now and the others are happy. Why don’t we use the time to play detective?”

  “Is that anything like playing doctor?” Wes regretted saying it immediately.

  Elizabeth frowned but went on. “You want to know who the girl in the basement is, don’t you? Well, who’s most likely to know the history of this neighborhood?”

  Perplexed, Wes stood silent.

  “Mrs. Clayton! She’s still over in her yard.”

  Reluctantly, Wes followed Elizabeth across the street and along the side of Mrs. Clayton’s house to where she was raking leaves from under her rosebushes.

  “Hello, Mrs. Clayton. I’m Elizabeth and this is Wes. We’re your neighbors across the street.”

  “I know who you are. Ralph’s told me all about you. You’re the one doing the experiments, aren’t you?”

  “Ralph makes it sound so mysterious—it’s just testing, really,” Wes said. Because of Ralph, Wes found himself constantly apologizing for his work.

  “Well, come in for a cup of coffee and you can tell me about it.” As she led the way to the front door, she started pumping them about what was going on in their house.

  “Who’s the new one?”

  “That’s Yu Tran,” Wes said. “He’s a very gifted young man.”

  “I thought they were all retarded.”

  “They are retarded,” Wes began.

  “They are all intellectually challenged,” Elizabeth corrected. “But each has a very special ability.”

  “I know what Ralph’s is,” Mrs. Clayton said. “He’s got the gift of gab. Is that why they’re part of you’re experiment? Because of their gifts?”

  Old, gray, and bent, Mrs. Clayton still had a sharp mind, and Wes found himself liking her directness.

  “Yes. Each has an ability far beyond even the brightest scientist. It’s as if to compensate for their retardation—their challenges—they developed what few abilities they did have to unheard-of levels.”

  They followed Mrs. Clayton through a neat little living room to the round dining-room table. A vase of flowers sat in the middle on a crocheted doily. In a minute she was back with a glass coffeepot and three cups.

  “So what are you doing to them?”

  “I’m not doing anything to them,” Wes said defensively. “I’m trying to piece together their abilities—combine them into one intelligence—a very great mind.”

  Mrs. Clayton’s wrinkled face showed interest, and she pumped Wes for more and more information, nodding knowingly even when his explanations became very technical. Two cups of coffee later, Elizabeth found an opening.

  “Have you lived in this neighborhood long?”

  “We were newlyweds when we moved in. Richard and I borrowed from his parents to buy this house. We were house poor for many years after that. We raised three kids here, and now I’ve got seven grandchildren.”

  “Is Richard your husband?”

  “My one and only. He died in 1982. Are you two married? No, well you ought to be. I’ve watched you with those retarded kids over there. They’re harder to handle than normal children. I bet you’d make wonderful parents.”

  Embarrassed, Elizabeth rushed on. “Have you heard about what they discovered in the basement of our house?”

  “Oh my, yes. I saw the police arrive. The body was in that plastic bag, wasn’t it? Was it really just a skeleton? How awful it must have been. Is it true one of the retarded boys discovered it?”

  “Yes, the new one, Yu.”

  “Is that name Vietnamese or something?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth confirmed. “The police are trying to identify the person in the basement. It was the body of a woman, and someone had sealed her into a room. She lived in there for years.”

  “Someone must have hated her very much to do that to her.”

  “But loved her too,” Elizabeth said. “They fed her and gave her art materials to sketch with. They kept her as happy as they could in that little room.”

  “Sounds horrible to me,” the old woman said, then sipped her coffee.

  “We were wondering, since you’ve been in the neighborhood so long, if you might have some idea who the girl in the basement might be?”

  Mrs. Clayton stirred her coffee and looked smug, enjoying the prestige her years of snooping had earned her.

  “Well, many years ago the house was owned by Mr. Watson. Theodore Watson, but everyone called him Ted. He was a nice man, his wife too. Millie, that was her name. They had four beautiful daughters, but such a tragic life.”

  Warming her coffee from the glass pot, she let the tension build.

  “Their youngest died of polio—she was only three. It was such a tragedy. She was the cutest little thing. Of course, in those days lots of children died of polio. I didn’t think anything worse could happen to the Watsons, but then the worst thing of all happen
ed.”

  Another pause, and a sip of coffee. Elizabeth and Wes knew she was playing them like an audience.

  “Mrs. Watson had her two younger daughters in their Buick—coming back from a Girl Scout meeting, as I remember. A drunk man ran a red light and crashed into them. It was a horrible wreck, but worst of all was they didn’t die right away. They were trapped in the car when it caught on fire. People who saw it said they could hear them screaming. Mr. Watson, he took it real hard, but that wasn’t the end of his misery. He had one living daughter left, and he doted on her. She was a pretty thing, but after her mother died she started running with a wild crowd down at the high school. It led to all kinds of trouble. One night he had to bail her out of jail—drunk, you know! That night I heard them across the street yelling and screaming. What fights they used to have.”

  “This is very interesting,” Wes interrupted. “But I don’t see what it has to do—”

  “Go on, Mrs. Clayton,” Elizabeth said, glaring at Wes.

  “Well, as I was saying before I was interrupted, they had some terrible fights. Then something changed. The fights stopped and the house got real quiet. The next thing I heard she had run away. Someone said she had gone to Seattle. Maybe, but maybe not. I never saw her come home again—never. You would think after a couple years they would have made up, but they never did. But maybe she never did run away. Maybe that was her they found down in that basement.”

  “What happened to Mr. Watson?” Elizabeth asked.

  “He lived there a long time, then ended up in a nursing home. That’s what will happen to me, I suppose. I met one of the nurses when she came to pick up his things. A while later he died. I went to the funeral. It’s a good thing too, there were only a handful of people there.”

  “Did anyone live in the house after him?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Three families—all with little kids. Then the fraternity bought it. Those boys were too rowdy—had all those parties. I called the police seventeen times on them. Didn’t seem to help a bit until last year.” A sip of coffee, and then, “The Watson girl is the only one I know of that disappeared from that house.”