Model Child_a psychological thriller

by R. C. Goodwin

  They lapsed into another silence as they walked slowly around the tank. They walked past fish that looked like silver pencils and rocks and butterflies, past sea anemones and sea horses and sea cucumbers, past lumbering fat groupers and sleek fast eels, past skates and stingrays with their undulating leaf-like bodies. Past archer fish, sticklebacks, and puffers, past sharks and turtles. Gottlieb let his eyes wander, his thoughts wander, as he let himself be drawn into the intricate beauty of the world before him. He glanced at Cassandra, who seemed similarly enthralled. The last vestiges of his adolescent self-consciousness disappeared. He reached for her cool, smooth hand, which she offered without resistance.

  In all, they spent half an hour strolling around the tank. Then

  they made their way to the smaller exhibits on its periphery, laid out like the spokes of a wheel. She laughed at the scallops, which she’d never seen before as living creatures in their natural habitat; she said they reminded her of swimming dentures. He pointed out the catfish, with their unkempt whiskers probing along the bottom of his tank: his candidates for the fish most in need of a cosmetic makeover. They walked past gar and walleyed pike and speckled trout.

  He watched her recoil as they stopped in front of an octopus. “They’re quite timid, even the larger ones,” Gottlieb said.. “Usually they’re more frightened of us than we are of them. They’re actually very interesting creatures.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for one thing they’re probably the smartest invertebrates. They’re capable of learning and remembering. There’ve been experiments in which they’re trained, so to speak, using food as rewards and electrical shocks as punishment. They also have considerable dexterity—they can unscrew a jar with their tentacles. And they have a complicated, highly developed eye.”

  “They’re related to squid, right?”

  He nodded. “They’re both cephalopods. Beaked head and highly dexterous prehensile tentacles.”

  Her grip on his hand tightened. “When I was little, I read this story about a giant squid. I don’t remember if it was fact or fiction, but that doesn’t matter. It was about shipwrecked US sailors in the Pacific during World War II. They were in a lifeboat. A giant squid came up to the surface. It plucked several of them from the boat, one by one. That has to be one of the worst things I’ve ever read, as bad as anything about the Holocaust. I tried to imagine what it would have been like, trapped in that boat, waiting to find out if you’re next.”

  She shuddered, paused a moment and went on. “I’m fascinated by how people find it in themselves to face horrific deaths. How they faced things like crucifixion, or being torn apart by wild animals in the Coliseum. In one of his novels, Kurt Vonnegut wrote about what the Southwestern Indians used to do sometimes. They buried a man in the desert, poured honey over him, and then the ants would come. How can someone face a death like that?”

  “It’s possible,” he said slowly, “that the parts of the brain which deal with pain and fear are overwhelmed, so there’s a kind of shutdown. Dissociation, it’s called. It’s what happens in conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Well, it’s nice to think that something like that happens. I hope it does. But what if it doesn’t?”

  His hold on her hand tightened. “You have a terrible imagination.”

  She looked at him. Even in the dim light, he took note of her widened pupils. He imagined her as a little girl reading about the doomed sailors as they waited for the giant squid to pick one, her pupils widening in the same way. “Tell me, Doctor, is there a cure for that?”

  “Yes and no. I believe that if you’re blessed or cursed with it, take your choice, you’re stuck with it. But you can get around it by learning to live in the here and now. You learn to allow yourself to take the good of life at face value and put the rest aside, at least temporarily.”

  “That works for you?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Sometimes. To a point.”

  She looked at him with quizzical respect. “You must hear the worst things imaginable.”

  He turned his head away from her. “I’ve heard some things I’d never tell another person. No one else should have to hear them. I shouldn’t have had to hear them.”

  “I want to hear them. Not now, but sometime.”

  “No, you don’t. Trust me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He turned towards her again. “For God’s sake, why?”

  She weighed her words before answering. “Because I think

  that’s part of a historian’s sacrament. To bear witness. To honor those who’ve suffered by remembering them, by passing on their stories.”

  “All right,” he acknowledged, “but there has to be a balance. You have to remember the Sistine Chapel as well as Auschwitz. You have to remember Shakespeare and Mozart as well as Hitler and Goebbels. Otherwise you’ll get lost in the darkness. You have to . . .”

  “Shh.” She cut him off in midsentence. Then she lifted up her head to his and kissed him, kissed him so softly that he could scarcely discern her mouth against his lips, kissed him in front of an octopus who watched them shyly, half-hidden behind a rock, an octopus who watched them with his extraordinary, almost-human eyes.

  CHAPTER XVI

  L ATER THAT AFTERNOON GOTTLIEB SAT in his office, his mind churning. He sank back into his desk chair, threw his feet onto a hassock, and prepared to focus on the patients who’d fill the balance of his day; the first one was due in fifteen minutes. Cassandra kept intruding. Cassandra, in her peach-and-plum blouse, standing before him whenever he shut his eyes. Cassandra’s cool smooth hand in his. Cassandra, reaching up to kiss him.

  He tried to distract himself with images of fish of every size and shape and hue as they glided around the coral fans and rock formations. The fish diverted his attention, but only for moments at a time. Cassandra crept back into his mind with a raw, insistent power.

  He tried another tactic, forcing himself to wade through the inevitable pile of papers on his desk. Unopened mail, insurance forms he had to dictate, reprints of articles he meant to read. Amidst the clutter, he spotted James Shannon’s journal. On the back of its front cover he’d jotted down the number of Christina’s camp in Wisconsin.

  He picked up the phone on an impulse and slowly dialed the number. Even as he listened to the dial tone, he still wasn’t sure of what he’d say.

  “Good afternoon, Green Lake Camp for Girls,” a woman answered. Gottlieb discerned the friendly, slightly sing-song twang of the upper Midwest.

  “Hello. I’d like to speak to the camp director.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s off grounds until this evening. But Ms. Harvey, the assistant director, is here now if you want to talk to her.”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Who may I say is calling?”

  “Dr. Harold Gottlieb.” His twitchy legs bounced on the hassock while she put him on hold.

  A few seconds later, another voice broke in. “This is Alice Harvey speaking.”

  “Hello, Ms. Harvey.” He introduced himself again. “I’m calling about one of your campers.”

  “Are you her doctor?”

  “No—”

  “A relative?”

  “No, but . . .”

  Her tone remained polite, but a firm and not unduly friendly edge came into it. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but we don’t divulge information about our campers over the phone. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Let me explain.” His own tone became firmer, more authoritative. “She’s not a camper now, and she hasn’t been at Green Lake for several years. But she has recently been the victim of a violent crime, and we’re wondering if anyone at the camp could help with our investigation.” Gottlieb discovered long ago that we and our carry much more weight than I and mine.

  “Are you with the police?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he lied blithely. “I’m a psychiatrist in Illinois, at a facility called the Greater Chicago Forensic Institute.
We work closely with the police.”

  Ms. Harvey became more respectful. “How long ago was the girl a camper here?”

  “About three years ago.”

  “I wasn’t here then. But Anita Pierce, that’s the woman who used to run this place, lives near you. At least she did.” Harvey named a small community about thirty miles northwest of downtown Chicago.”

  “Would you be good enough to give me her number?”

  “Let’s see, I should have it in the Rolodex. Here it is.” She paused. “What’s the name, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The name of the girl who was victim of a violent crime.”

  “Shannon. Christina Shannon.”

  Gottlieb thought he heard her click her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Figures. I figured it might be her.”

  “I, uhm, thought you said you weren’t here when she was.”

  “I wasn’t. But you could say she’s become a kind of legend at this place.”

  He thanked her, hung up, and immediately dialed the number she had given him. A male voice had left a no-frills announcement on the answering machine. Gottlieb detected the rasp of a heavy smoker. “You’ve reached the Pierces. Leave a message at the beep.” It was the weak, dry voice of an old man who hoped you wouldn’t leave a message.

  Unnerved, Gottlieb hung up. He took a moment to think about his opening gambit, wondering how much to tell her. The bare minimum, he decided. He dialed again. “My name is Dr. Harold Gottlieb. I’m trying to reach Anita Pierce. I wonder if you could call me tomorrow morning, anytime between eight forty-five and noon.” He left the main number of GCFI and his extension there.

  “If that’s not convenient,” he went on, “please leave me a voice mail message telling me when I might call you.” He left a second number and thanked her in advance for her courtesy.

  Three to one I never hear from her, he predicted to himself.

  ⸎

  She didn’t call the next morning, nor did she leave a message in his voice mail. He decided to try again on Thursday night. This time a man picked up. The same voice he’d heard on their answering machine, reminding Gottlieb of cinders being swept from a fireplace.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hello. I’m trying to get hold of Anita Pierce.”

  “Who are yah, mister?”

  “My name is Harold Gottlieb. I’m a doctor—”

  “Never heard of yah. Yah ain’t her doctor.” The smoker’s rasp was much in evidence. Every few words he had to stop to catch his breath.

  “No, but I need to talk to her about a patient. It’s important.”

  A long pause followed. “Hold on, mister.” Gottlieb heard the old man call out, “Anita, some fella—wants to talk—to yah. Says he’s—some kinda doctor.” Another pause, this one accompanied by wheezing.

  “I’m Anita,” a woman spoke finally. She sounded wary, tired.

  “Hello, Ms. Pierce.” He gave his name again. “I apologize for calling you at home, but it’s the only number I have for you.”

  “What is it?” The voice of a woman who expected the worst from strangers, and possibly from friends as well.

  “I understand you used to be a camp director. One of the girls who attended your camp has been the victim of a violent crime.”

  “Christina Shannon,” she said without hesitation.

  “That’s correct. You may be aware of this already, but she was murdered a few weeks ago.”

  “Hard not to be. She’s been in the news nonstop.”

  “I take it you remember her?”

  “No one who knew her will ever forget her. Ever.” The statement came out as an absolute truth, as unarguable as the law of gravity.

  “I, uhm, gather she made quite an impression on people.” Pierce let this pass without comment.

  “Why are you calling me?”

  Gottlieb enjoined himself to keep it simple, keep it truthful. “I’m a psychiatrist who has gotten involved in the case. I’ve been asked to evaluate and treat the man accused of killing her.” He chose his words carefully. “In the course of this evaluation, we’re trying to learn as much as we can about Christina herself. We know she attended Green Lake Camp, and we know she left under strange circumstances. We’ve no idea what happened there, but we’re wondering if it had some bearing on the case.”

  There were several seconds of dead silence, at the end of which he heard her sigh. “I knew she’d come into my life again. I hoped to God I’d never meet her, or hear about her, or have to talk about her, but I knew I would. All right, mister . . . Doctor . . . all right.”

  He pressed ahead before she had a chance to change her mind. “When can I meet with you?”

  “Tomorrow night’s okay. You’ll have to come here, though. I don’t leave the house too often. You’ll understand.”

  They agreed upon a time, seven thirty and he jotted down directions to her home. He was anxious to talk to her directly. Perhaps, he hoped, some of the mystery about Christina Shannon would finally clear up.

  ⸎

  The latest heat wave was on the wane. A light breeze rustled through the trees as Gottlieb made his way from the driveway to Anita Pierce’s modest wood-and-red-brick house. As soon as he rang the bell, a tallish woman in her fifties came to the door. Her salt-and-pepper hair framed a round plump face.

  She nodded without smiling. “You must be Dr. Gottlieb. Come on in.”

  When he did, he stopped in her narrow hallway. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.” He extended a hand to her, which she ignored. While glancing in his general direction, she had a way of looking past him.

  It dawned on him that she was blind.

  “We can talk in here.” She indicated the living room with

  the sweep of an arm. The room was filled with old-fashioned overstuffed chairs with frilly coverings on the arms and lace doilies on the backs of them. He tried to remember the name for the doilies. Antimacassars, that was it. He hadn’t seen one in decades.

  A pleasant room, notwithstanding the acrid aftermath of tens of thousands of cigarettes smoked there. Very little decoration, chiefly a scattering of family photos on the walls and tabletops. The wallpaper featured vertical rows of rosebuds against an off-white background. The hum of a window air conditioner filled the room. From another room came the sound of a baseball game on TV.

  Gottlieb shied away from an immediate discussion of Christina. “So, Ms. Pierce, how long were you involved in the camping business?”

  “Most of my life, on and off. I always loved Wisconsin. I was a camper there myself for three or four summers. In my teens I became a junior counselor. Counselors-in-training, or C.I.T.s, they called us. When I went to college, I became a full-fledged counselor. The money wasn’t much, but I didn’t care. I got to spend the summers in my favorite place, doing what I loved. I taught swimming and canoeing.”

  “And you kept coming back?”

  She nodded. “Summer after summer. I became a teacher, third and fourth grades, which meant I had the summers off. I never married, so I wasn’t tied down with a husband and children. In time I became the head counselor, and then the assistant director. I got more involved with the business end, hiring and purchasing and whatnot. Then I began to do more in the off-season, mainly talking to prospective campers and their families. Marketing. People don’t realize how much goes into running a summer camp. It’s a complicated business.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Well,” she went on, “it turned out I had kind of a knack for it. I don’t know why. I don’t have a background in business, but I loved the work. And then the original owners wanted to retire. That would have been fifteen years ago, give or take. The camp was doing well. I had the opportunity to buy it for a pretty good price, so I took a chance on it. Quite a gamble for me. Took just about every penny I could scrounge up or borrow.”

  Gottlieb crossed his legs in one of the overstuffed armchairs and folded his hands
on his lap. “So you finally had your own camp.”

  “Uh-huh. They were happy, those first years of running Green Lake. The happiest years of my life. I put together a good crew. We expanded our activities, made changes in the way we marketed. And I liked working with the campers. Nice girls, most of them. You’d be surprised how many of them still send a Christmas card, or a wedding or birth announcement.”

  Gottlieb felt she might be ready to talk about the murdered girl. “Perhaps you could tell me about Christina Shannon.”

  Anita’s expression changed when he mentioned Christina’s name. Her facial muscles contracted, she chewed briefly on her lower lip, her sightless eyes narrowed. She took a few moments before responding. “I remember my first reaction, which is probably the reaction most people had towards her. What a pretty child! I’m sure you’ve heard all that before, about her blonde curls and her blue eyes and so on. Suffice it to say, she was one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. Those kids you see on TV, those child actresses, they haven’t got a thing on her. The way she looked, it took you by surprise. It caught you off guard. It left you unprepared for the way she really was.”

  Gottlieb recalled that James Shannon himself had written similar things about Christina in his journal. “And how was that?”

  “Detached. Above all else, detached, from everything and everyone. Impossible to engage, unreachable. And something else, amoral. It’s funny, but I never knew exactly what that meant until I met her.”

  She went on, slowly and deliberately. “From the day Christina started camp, things started happening. Small things, odd things.”

  “For instance?”

  “We noticed a lot of petty theft. You didn’t see too much of that at a place like ours. For one thing, there isn’t much to steal. No valuables, and the clothing’s strictly sportswear, and there’s no cash in the cabins. Campers’ money is kept in the girls’ accounts. But now, all of a sudden, there was theft. And this was striking, too, the things stolen made no sense. Photos, letters, and cards from home, books. Things of no value except to the owners. One girl lost her rosary beads.”