The case psychiatrist's name was familiar. He stared at the wall and projected the page of a psychiatric journal dealing with papers on gifted children.
This reading from blank walls was one of the traits which had unsettled and alienated his cleaning woman. Once, Mrs Ortega had hovered in his peripheral vision, watching his eyes moving rapidly back and forth, scanning lines of a text which only he could see. She had jumped up on a kitchen chair and tried to prize his mouth open, having only the best intentions of pulling his tongue clear of his air passage, in the belief that he was having a fit. Humiliation had taught him to be more careful in his public behaviors. But Mallory had long ago uncovered this gift. She would understand and not try to force his mouth open.
According to the critical article recreated on the wall, Dr Glencome was a famous popularist. He'd written several books on the socialization stages of children, forgetting ever to mention that each child was a special case, an individual. Apparently, he had diagnosed the gifted and reclusive young Henry Cathery as socially unbalanced, and committed the child.
The records detailed each passing month of the boy's imprisonment in the private hospital. Henry had gradually become more introverted, spirit all but killed and threatening the body. He had been wasting away on forced feedings until Glencome had no choice but to let Henry go free or see him wither and die, thus killing the ungifted doctor's reputation for being so very good with children. After the incarceration, the child chess master had entered no more matches.
Charles closed the folder. Mallory was getting more ruthless in her computer raids. This invasion of a child's life was too intrusive. But he could not forget what he had read. So the old woman had inherited the boy when his mother died. First Henry had grief to deal with. Then this gifted child had to contend with a grandparent's perception of normal, coupled with the authoritative opinion of an ass with a PhD.
"This isn't a valid diagnosis. It doesn't mean Henry Cathery was mentally unbalanced, that he'd be dangerous to himself or others."
"I think I guessed that," she said. "But the old lady and the shrink couldn't leave him alone, right? Suppose he held a grudge all these years? Suppose he snapped? So first he kills his grandmother, and then he learns to like it and he can't stop."
He was trying to imagine what it had been like for the Cathery boy, to be locked away from his chessboard, forced into a different mold, thwarted like a Bonsai tree.
"I thought you liked money motives," he said. "Hated mental disorders."
"I'm trying to be open-minded. Here, look at this."
He took a sheaf of papers from her hand. Telephone-company records of calls between Anne Cathery and the private clinic which the boy had escaped from nine years ago.
"Maybe she was going to commit him before he hit his twenty-first birthday and came into his trust fund. His birthday was two weeks after his grandmother's death. Interesting, huh?"
"You're not going to give these records to Coffey, are you? This is so brutal. I can't see him standing up to Coffey, not in the face of this, a history he had every right to believe was private."
"No. I'm not turning the files over to Coffey."
"Good." He was looking at her with new hope. She might eventually become altogether civilized.
"What's Coffey ever done for me?"
The buzzer went off in a short burst, the minimum intrusion, and Charles opened his door to the ever polite Dr Ramsharan. It must be urgent. She had not changed into the soft, worn blue jeans. She stood on his threshold dressed for the office in a crisp white shirt and a linen suit of pale blue. When he stood back to allow her to enter the room, Mallory had disappeared.
"Herbert again?"
She smiled and nodded as she walked into the front room of Charles's apartment. She sat down in the chair closest to the door.
I'm sorry to bother you with this. I suppose I could've gone to Edith. She's known Martin and Herbert for such a long time. But she's getting on in years. I'm sure you don't want her exposed to this nonsense, and neither do I."
"Wise," said Charles. "How can I help you?"
"Herbert definitely has a gun. It makes quite a bulge under his jacket. Did I tell you he's taken to dressing in an army fatigue jacket? Scary, isn't it?"
"Did you have any better luck with Martin?"
"You know how chatty Martin is."
"Hmm. I'm not sure anymore which one of them set the other one off. Maybe Martin got the vest when he saw the writing on Edith's wall. And it could have been just the sight of Martin's vest that set Herbert off. That's all it would take."
"I haven't been able to find out who mentioned my gun to him. Some of the tenants are out of town. I've had that gun such a long time, I thought Herbert knew. He makes it his business to know everything that goes on in this building. Once, I caught him going through the trash."
"That seems a bit paranoid, doesn't it?"
"No. He's just a garden-variety control-freak. He's something very common in any community of humans. There's one of Herbert in every crowd. And all of us have some weak point, some fracture. Herbert's fracture is widening. I need to know why."
She sank back in the upholstery and looked up to the ceiling. With added focus, she seemed to be staring through the plaster and into Edith Candle's apartment on the third floor. Her next words were predictable. "I wish I knew what was written on the wall in Edith's apartment."
"Maybe we should talk to Edith."
"Not a good idea. She was the house mother for all the years she owned the building. Old habits die hard. She'd want to take care of it herself. I don't even want her in the same room with Herbert. I told you, he's ripe for an explosion. You can trust me to know my explosives."
Charles tilted his head to one side as he listened to what Henrietta was not saying. She was not saying it might be dangerous to bring Edith into the problem; she was tap-dancing all around it. Dance was not her forte. She was not saying that Edith was the source of the problem. She knew the relationship of family, and danced wide of it, and danced badly. It spoke well of Henrietta that she was no good at subterfuge. She didn't have the face to hide a bold-face lie, and neither did she have the dishonest agility to lie by omission.
He was surprised. He had always believed he knew Edith Candle so well.
"All right," he said. "I won't mention anything to Edith."
The tension about her mouth relaxed into an easy smile. Henrietta was her straightforward self again, done with dancing.
When he had closed the door on Henrietta, he turned to face Mallory, who was inches away from him. He'd never heard her coming up behind him. He wished he could put a bell on her neck.
Margot covered her eyes with one hand as she smashed the window leading into her bedroom. She cut her hand on the glass and never noticed. She slipped to the floor and into a deep sleep, not minding bare wood and the cold draft from the broken window. As she rolled in her sleep, the knife with the dried blood on it slipped from her pocket and thudded onto the floor. She slept on without dreams.
Riker picked up the old woman at her Gramercy Park apartment. More detectives had been sent to pick up the other three seance ladies, per Coffey's orders to keep them separated. Damn waste of time. The woman was silent on the ride in. Her round face was a mask of white powder. Her eyebrows had been drawn with a shaking hand. She had not asked to see a lawyer, but neither had she asked why he was dragging her into the police station. That was interesting enough to make a note at the next stop light. He jotted down the word scared.
When they arrived at the station he ordered a uniformed officer to round the women up from the separate corners, offices and cubby holes of the unit and put them all in the interview room together.