by Todd Borg
There was one family photo, Raymond and his daughter Sheila standing in front of a small barn, holding the reins to two beautiful horses. They wore jeans and cowboy hats and boots. In the background on the left was a steep forested slope and to the right was a view of Freel Peak. From the angle it looked like the barn backed up to Heavenly Mountain.
I heard Power come back in behind me.
“I see you ride,” I said, pointing at the photo.
“Used to. We had two Arabians. Kept them up here spring through fall, then boarded them down in Carson Valley for the winter. You know how it is. Sheila was a typical girl growing up, stark raving nuts about horses. Then the equine edge wore off and we sold them. Now the barn sits empty.”
“Good memories,” I said.
“Yes, but sad. I don’t miss the expense, though. With the gentrification of Tahoe, it’s getting harder for doctors to make it, let alone bear the expense of horses. Local homeowners are being displaced by vacation homeowners. All of my Tahoe colleagues have been forced to open up offices down in the valley. Some have even closed their Tahoe offices. I still keep an office here at the lake. But I also have an office down in Reno and I am there more days than I am here.” He paused. “You mentioned the Ramirez girl on the phone.”
“Yes.”
Power pulled a manila folder out of a desk drawer, came over and sat on a chair. “Have a seat, Owen,” he said.
I sat down on a leather couch across from him.
He gave me a somber look. “Where shall I begin?”
“I just came to ask you about her personality, her behaviors, that sort of thing.”
Power shook his head back and forth three or four times. “That poor girl getting kidnapped. And her brother murdered. I never met him. I understood that he was younger by a few years.”
“Three.”
Power shook his head. He was visibly upset. “One of the reasons why Sheila and I moved to Tahoe was to stay away from that kind of crime. I did my residency in New Haven and practiced there for ten years. The crime in New Haven was worse than New York. As bad as Newark. After Mary died it became increasingly clear that New Haven was not the kind of place a single dad should raise his daughter. So Sheila and I got out a map and an encyclopedia – Sheila was five years old then – and we did a little armchair traveling. We developed a scoring system and when we totaled up the columns, Tahoe came out on top. It’s been twelve years. Now Sheila is practically grown up. Of course, as the gods of irony would have it, now she plans to apply to a bunch of New England colleges. And wouldn’t you know it, her first choice is Yale. Right back in New Haven.”
He opened the folder in his lap and flipped through several pages. “Sorry, I digress.”
He continued. “I went over my notes on the Ramirez girl before you came in case I’ve forgotten anything pertinent.” He looked up from the folder, his face open and questioning. “Can you give me a little idea of your focus? From what I read in the paper, a motorcycle gang took her. Of course, I want to help. Anything to catch the monsters who did this. But how is learning about her personality going to make a difference in finding her? I would assume the various county sheriff’s departments are scouring the basin looking into every possible motorcycle group and campgrounds where the bikers are and so forth. My past evaluation of her probably won’t change anything.”
“That may be true. But I’m hoping that some aspect of the girl’s personality might point toward some aspect of the kidnapper. At this point we have almost nothing to go on. Any additional information is helpful. I’m also considering the possibility that she wasn’t a random victim.”
Power frowned at me. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“The prevailing view in town and among local law enforcement is that Silence was taken by an opportunistic gang looking for nothing more than a young woman. Nearly any young woman would have served their purposes.”
“And you think otherwise?
“I don’t know. It’s possible she may have been kidnapped for reasons that are specific to her, her personality, the people she knows.”
“What gives you that idea?
“Partly, a hunch. Partly, an awareness that Silence is very different from ‘nearly any young woman,’ as I phrased it a moment ago.”
“Excuse me,” Power said. “You say, ‘Silence.’ Is that her nickname?”
“Yes. Sorry. Her mother Marlette, and her teacher Henrietta, call her Silence. The kids at school call her that as well.”
“Funny,” Power said, “I don’t recall hearing that before.”
“They sometimes stay with SalAnne in public. Anyway, there isn’t a delicate way to put this – and I could be very wrong – but I imagine that a biker gang would grab a girl who appeared to advertise her wares, so to speak. I think they would pick up a girl who was hitch-hiking or strutting her stuff in front of one of the town’s bars or even just wearing the revealing clothes that are so popular today. Nothing wrong with those girls, but Silence was not one of them. I don’t think she would have been noticed by bikers racing by.
I continued, “The house where she lived was two blocks from Pioneer Trail, the road where the bikers were riding. You can see the yard from Pioneer Trail, but it’s not easy. And according to her mother, Silence had been out in the yard. But it doesn’t make sense to me that anyone on Pioneer would see her at that distance and be enticed.”
“All good points,” the doctor said.
“For example, what if there hadn’t been bikers in the area? If so, few people, cops included, would think she’d been a victim of convenience, chosen because she was a young woman who could be seen from Pioneer Trail. They would instead look at the location off the highway in a quiet neighborhood and the victim covered up in long sleeves and pants, and they’d think there was another reason for the kidnapping. At the very least, they’d give serious thought to the idea that the kidnapper knew Silence.”
Power was frowning. “Interesting. You may be right. I never thought of it that way. Like others, I’m too accepting of what I read in the paper and see on TV. But if your notion is correct, then that places a good deal of importance on what we can glean from our knowledge of the girl.” Power sighed.
“Please tell me about her,” I urged. “Everything you can think of. Even the smallest details can help a case.
Power nodded. “Right. But first, a disclaimer,” he said. “I’m not a pediatric psychiatrist and I’m not an autism specialist. You may want to talk to a pediatric psychiatrist or a pediatric neurologist for more complete information on children with autism.
“Having said that, the school has had me evaluate SalAnne Ramirez once a year for several years. I’ve always been hesitant because Autism Spectrum Disorder is not my specialty. But I was available.
“SalAnne seemed to me quite typical of autistic children. She is what we call a low-functioning child, IQ around sixty or so, completely non-verbal from birth. She has very limited language receptivity, responding to the spoken word in only the vaguest of ways.” He opened the manila folder, pulled glasses out of his shirt pocket, put them on and glanced at his notes. “From what her mother reported when I first saw the child, SalAnne was distant and non-responsive from the day she was born. She didn’t turn to the sound of her mother’s voice, didn’t show interest in human faces, was very slow to acquire even the most rudimentary skills.” Power took off the glasses.
“I should point out that some autistic children go through a period of twelve or eighteen months of steady, albeit slow, development. Then they regress, losing the limited nascent speech they had begun to learn, and become non-verbal. But SalAnne displayed all of her limitations from the beginning. The variety of tests I administered failed to reveal much aptitude in any area. She can eat and wash and dress herself, but not much more.
“The most interesting thing about the Ramirez girl is her remarkable ability to draw. I remember observing her here in my office. I found there was little or nothing that
I could do to take her out of her private world. But when I gave her some paper and a pen she quite amazed me with her rendering of her surroundings. And she was, I believe, only about seven years old.”
“What did she draw?”
“Simple things. The lamp. My desk. The view out the window. It actually was disturbing to watch. Here was a child who acted as if you didn’t exist. As if her own mother didn’t exist. Yet she could draw like a genius.” Power turned and stared out the window. “A long time ago I looked through a monograph on Picasso. We all think of him as the innovative painter, always pushing the limits of spatial understanding and so forth. But what most amazed me in the book were reproductions of drawings he’d done as a young child. They were masterful renditions of his subjects. Accurate right down to the smallest details of the scene, and with perfect perspective. He was clearly a prodigy. A genius.”
Power turned back from the window and looked at me. “SalAnne’s drawings were like that,” he said.
“But you don’t think her drawing ability indicates any substantial level of intelligence.”
“In this case, no. I think she merely has a remarkable ability to record the three-dimensional world on two-dimensional paper. Like a camera. Nothing more.”
His phone rang. He answered it, then covered the mouthpiece and said, “Sorry, I have to take this call. Can we talk again tomorrow? I’ll call you when I know what my schedule is.”
I nodded, handed him my card and said, “Thank you for your time,” then left.
SIXTEEN
Henrietta Johanssen gave me directions over the phone. She lived on Gardner Mountain, one of the older neighborhoods in South Lake Tahoe. I drove west through town, watching roiling gray clouds race over the top of Mt. Tallac. I took a right on Emerald Bay Road. A few blocks down I turned left on 13th, went up the big hill, turned again and found her cabin looking tiny and toy-like under a stand of five or six giant Jeffrey pines. A single Incense cedar, even larger than the pines, rose just behind her house. Its furrowed trunk had the soft sienna-tan glow of a Sequoia and, at four feet in diameter, made Henrietta’s cabin look like a doll house.
She answered the door holding two mugs of steaming tea.
“I saw you pull up, and I thought, I bet he drinks tea. You are Owen, correct?”
“Yes to both,” I said.
She handed me one of the mugs. It smelled strong. A floral scent.
“Thank you,” I said as I followed her into a small cozy living room with knotty pine walls.
A small fire sparked and popped in a cobblestone fireplace. She gestured me to an out-sized upholstered chair with worn leather that looked like it had been made in the Nineteenth Century. Henrietta sat on the stone hearth, her back to the flames. With her long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail and her little wire-rimmed glasses, she too would have fit into the Nineteenth Century milieu had she been wearing a long dress instead of white coverall-style painter pants over heavy hiking boots. Under the coverall straps was a thick red wool shirt.
She reached a plate off the mantle and held it out to me. “Would you like a homemade chocolate-chip cookie?”
“Thank you.” I took the plate, lifted a big cookie, gave it a significant chomp and almost choked. It tasted like a combination of bitter chocolate mixed with cilantro and jalapeno peppers. My mouth was electrified. I grabbed the tea and tried to wash the chemicals away.
“Do you like the cookies?” she asked, eager anticipation in her smile. “That recipe is my special secret.”
“Yes, very inventive,” I said as I set the remaining bit of cookie down on the plate. Stick two paper clips into Henrietta’s clay-like chunk of electrolyte and they would spark with measurable voltage.
“You don’t like it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I misjudged.”
Before I could protest, she stood and picked up the plate of cookies. “Henrietta’s Secret Herbal cookies,” she said. “No wonder I get so many marriage offers.”
“Marriage offers aren’t a measure of someone’s worth.”
She looked at me without moving. Then she set the cookies down again and slowly sat down on the hearth. After a moment she looked away and blinked her eyes hard. “I can’t believe they killed Charlie and kidnapped Silence,” she said suddenly, closing her eyes against the thought.
“I’m hoping you can help.”
“Of course. Anything. I’d do anything for her.” Her eyes searched mine. Her hands gripped the edge of the hearth.
“I want to know more about them,” I explained.
She nodded slowly. “I didn’t really know Charlie. I only met him when he would come to fetch Silence.”
“Silence, then. Her likes and dislikes, her personality quirks, her special abilities.”
Henrietta’s hands gripped one another. “You’ve spoken to her mother?”
“Yes. Marlette told me about Silence, showed me her drawings, gave me a disc of videos that Marlette took over the years. But a mother has a mother’s perspective. A teacher, especially a teacher close to a student, can see another side.”
Henrietta nodded. “I understand, but I don’t know where to start.”
“For example, Marlette told me that you believe Silence is bright. Is that so?”
Henrietta smiled. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You can’t imagine.”
“What makes you think this? I spoke to Dr. Power. He said she is quite retarded.”
“No offense, but he is wrong. Very wrong.”
“It sounds like he has tested her several times over the years.”
Henrietta shook her head. “Let me explain something. You know how tests can miss the obvious? Like the way Edison or Einstein did poorly on tests? Well, Silence has been through them all. Woodcock-Johnson, Brigance, CARS, Kaufman. They all suggest that she is profoundly disabled, and to an extent that is true. They don’t reveal her intelligence because they are not designed that way. You’ve heard of Autism Spectrum Disorder?”
“Yes.”
“It’s called that because there is such a wide spectrum in how autism presents. Well, Silence is at the very end of the spectrum.”
“She’s not like other autistic kids?” I said.
“In some ways she is. Her lack of speech, her lack of emotional involvement with other people, her awkward, mechanical movements. But in other ways, she’s one in a thousand. One in ten thousand. Tests don’t reveal Silence’s knowledge or ability. And I think the main reason that doctors and others can’t see past the test results is her lack of verbal ability. People are understandably focused on speech. It is the very essence of how most of us function. So when a person doesn’t have speech, we have a hard time believing that anything substantial is going on inside. But I’ve seen it in Silence. There is a lot going on. She just can’t express it. It’s hard to articulate, but after working with her it becomes obvious.”
Henrietta pointed to a small bookcase against one wall. “For example, you see those books? One spring day after class – it was maybe two years ago when Silence was fifteen – I brought her over here. This neighborhood is just down from the high school, so we walked. I wanted to show her my little wildflower garden. The buds were just coming up.” Henrietta pointed outside the living room window at several wine barrels that had the remnants of what had been robust flowers in the summer. “Silence loves flowers. But I couldn’t get her to even notice the plants. We were outside, but she kept looking in through the window at these books. So I finally asked her, ‘Silence, do you want to go inside to see my books?’ And she gave me a little push toward the house, meaning yes. I should explain that when she meant no, she’d pull you away instead of pushing.
“So I took her inside and she went and knelt down in front of the books and pulled them out one by one. She ran her hands over them, opened the pages and then put them back on the shelves. I thought it was a tactile thing, like picking up toys. It didn’t seem that she noticed what was printed on the pages, just the way the paper felt. But then she stoppe
d on one book. She touched the pages, flipped forward and touched some more, then went back as if searching.”
“Which book was it? Do you remember?”
“Of course, I remember,” Henrietta said, looking at me as if I were a dim child. She went to the bookcase, pulled out a large volume and brought it to me. “My college math text. Very dry and boring, I must say, even if I am a teacher.”
I took the text and opened it. To a mathematician, it would perhaps hold interest. For the rest of us, I agreed with Henrietta. Numbers and formulas and exercises that seemed to have no purpose beyond pursuing a rigorous mind or preparing one for working at NASA or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
I closed the book. “Did you get a sense of what interested her about the book? Was there something specific, or did she just seem to connect to pages with numbers on them?”
Henrietta’s eyes got wide. “There was definitely something she was interested in. Here, I’ll show you.” She reached over and took the book from my hands. She sat back down on the hearth and flipped through the book. When she got close, she licked her middle finger and turned the pages one by one. Forward, then back. Here we are.” She handed the book back.
“Fibonacci numbers,” she said.
I glanced over the introduction to a kind of number series discovered by a Thirteenth Century Italian mathematician named Leonardo Fibonacci.
“I don’t really know about it,” Henrietta said, “other than you take two numbers and add them to get a third. Then of those three numbers you ignore the first and add the second and third together to get a fourth. You keep on going that way. Apparently, it’s an important kind of series that is used in lots of areas of math. You start with one and one, always adding the last two numbers in the series.”
“One and one is two,” I said. I’d never been very good at numbers, so I had to go slow and visualize. “Then, out of the sequence of one, one and two, you add the last two, correct?” I said.