"Now you stay there, sir, and keep your fucking mouth shut."
Towle removed Melody's T - shirt. Her chest was concave and white, the ribs twin grilles of gray - blue shadow.
"Now the pants. The panties. Everything."
"Why are we doing this, Gus?" Towle wanted to know. To my ears, which were far from perfect, one being ripped and bloody, the other filled with watery echoes, his speech sounded slurred. I wondered if stress could break through the biochemical barrier he'd erected around his damaged mind.
"Why?" McCaffrey laughed. "You're not used to seeing this type of thing firsthand, are you, Willie? You've had a sanitized role up until now, enjoying the luxury of distance. Well, no matter, I'll explain it to you."
He raised an eyebrow at Towle contemptuously, looked down at me and laughed again. The sound reverberated painfully in my injured skull. The blood continued to run down my face. My head felt mushy, loose on its stalk. I began to grow nauseated and dizzy, and the floor rose up at me. Terror gripped me as I wondered if he'd hit me hard enough to cause brain damage. I knew what a subdural hematoma could do to the fragile gray jelly that made life worth living… Crazily, fighting for strength and clarity, I pictured my brain in an anatomist's tray, pinioned and splayed, and tried to localize the site of the injury. The gun had smashed against my left side - the dominant hemisphere, for I am right - handed… that was bad. The dominant side controlled logical processes: reasoning, analysis, deduction - the stuff to which I'd grown addicted over thirty - three years. I thought about losing all of that, of fading into dimness and confusion, then remembered two - year - old Willie Junior, struck down in much the same way. He'd lost it all… which might have been merciful. For had he survived, the damage would have been great. Left side right side… the tides…
"We're going to put on a little stage play, Willie," McCaffrey lectured. "I'll be the producer and director. You'll be my assistant, helping me with the props." He swung the camera in an arc. "The stars of the show will be little Melody and our friend Doctor Alex Delaware. The name of the play will be - "Death of a Shrink," subtitled "Caught in the Act." A morality play."
"Gus - "
"The plot is as follows: Doctor Delaware, our erstwhile villain, is well - known as a caring, sensitive child psychologist. However, unbeknownst to his colleagues and his patients, his choice of profession did not arise out of any great sense of - altruism. No, Doctor Delaware has chosen to become a kiddy shrink to be closer to the kiddies. To be able to fondle and abuse their genitals. In sort, a deviate, an opportunist, the lowest of the low. An evil and gravely sick man." He paused to look down on me, chuckling, breathing hard. Despite the chill, he was sweating, his glasses sliding low on his nose. The top of his kinky head was a halo of moisture. I looked at the38 in Towle's hand, and measured the distance between it and the spot where I lay. McCaffrey saw me, shook his head, and mouthed the word no, showing me his teeth.
"With these same depraved motivations in mind, Doctor Delaware applies for membership in the Gentleman's Brigade. He visits La Casa. We show him around. We screen him and our tests reveal him to be unsuitable for inclusion into our honorable fraternity. We reject him. Furious and frustrated at being denied a lifetime supply of hairless pussy and tiny little pricks, he simmers."
He stopped the narration and made loud slurping noises. Melody stirred in her sleep.
"He simmers," he repeated. "Stews in his own juices. Finally, at the height of his sick rage, he breaks into La Casa one night and roams the grounds until he finds a victim. A poor orphan girl, defenseless, alone in her dormitory because she is sick in bed with the flu. The madman loses control. Rapes her, virtually tears her apart - the autopsy will show uncommon savagery, Will. Takes pictures of the ghastly deed. A hideous crime. As the child cries out, screaming for her life, we - you and me, Will - happen to be passing by. We rush to her aid, but it is too late. The child has succumbed.
"We take in the carnage before us with horror and disgust. Delaware, discovered, rises up against us, gun in hand. Heroically we wrestle him to the ground, struggle for the weapon and in the process the murderer is fatally wounded. The good guys win, and there is peace in the valley."
"Amen," I said.
He ignored me.
"Not bad, eh, Will?"
"Gus, it won't work." Towle stepped between us again. "He knows everything - the teacher and the Nemeth boy - "
"Quiet. It will work. The past is the best predictor of the future. We have succeeded before, we will continue to triumph."
"Gus - "
"Silence! I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Strip her!"
I propped myself on my elbows and spoke through aching, swollen jaws, struggling to make sense out of what I was saying even as I told it.
"How about another script? This one's called The Big Lie. It's about a man who thinks he's murdered his wife and child and sells out his entire life to a blackmailer."
"Shut up." McCaffrey advanced on me. Towle blocked his way, aiming the .38 at the half - acre of green - clad fat. It was a Mexican standoff.
"I want to hear what he has to say, Gus. Things are confusing me. Things hurt. I want him to explain…"
"Think," I said, talking as fast as the pain allowed. "Did you ever check Willie Junior's body for signs of life? No. He did. He told you your boy was dead. That you'd killed him. But was the body ever found? Did you ever actually see the body?"
Towle's face tightened with concentration. He was slipping, losing his grip on reality, digging his nails in, fighting to hold on.
"I - I don't know. Willie was dead. They told me. The tides…"
"Maybe. But think: It was a golden opportunity. Lilah's death wouldn't have brought a charge greater than involuntary manslaughter. Domestic violence wasn't even taken seriously in those days. With the lawyers your family would have hired, you might have gotten off with probation. But two deaths - especially with one a child - would have been impossible to brush off. He needed you to believe Junior was dead to be able to hook you."
"Will," said McCaffrey, threateningly.
"I don't know - such a long time…"
"Think! Did you hit him hard enough to kill him? Maybe not. Use your brain. It's a good one. You remembered before."
"I used to have a good brain," he muttered.
"You still do! Remember. You hit little Willie on the side of the head. What side?"
"Don't know - "
"Will, it's all lies. He's trying to poison your mind." McCaffrey looked for a way to silence me. But Towle's gun rose and nudged the spot where a normal person would have had a heart.
"What side, Doctor?" I demanded.
"I'm right - handed," he answered, as if discovering the fact for the first time. "I use my right hand. I hit him with my right hand… I see it… He's coming at me from his bedroom. Crying for Mommy. Coming from the right, throwing himself at me. I - hit him - on his right side. The right side."
The pain in my head turned the act of talking into torture, but I bore down.
"Yes. Exactly. Think! What if McCaffrey hoaxed you - you didn't kill Willie. You injured him, but he survived. What kind of damage, what kind of symptoms, could be caused by trauma to the right hemisphere in a developing child?"
"Right hemisphere cerebral damage - the right brain controls the left side," he recited. "Right brain damage causes left - side dysfunction."