„So, Kathy,“ said the doctor, absolutely fearless in this forbidden use of her first name, „what have you done to Charles Butler?“ Predicting her trademark line, I didn’t do it, he gave her no time to answer. „I saw Charles downstairs a few minutes ago. He all but slammed me up against a wall and demanded a prescription for Valium. And so, of course… I thought of you.“
Mallory’s only response was to fold her arms, shutting him out and making it clear that she was not going to play games with him today.
Slope’s expression was more suspicious than usual, and he was puzzled, too, as if he knew he had caught her at something; though, as yet, the doctor could have no idea what her most recent wrongdoing might be. „Nothing to say for yourself, Kathy?“
„Mallory,“ she said, correcting him as she always did, and her eyes were promising payback for breaking this rule.
Did the doctor care? Not at all.
Slope handed an envelope to Riker. „That’s the report on your corpse. Are we still calling him a John Doe burglar?“
„Yeah,“ said the senior detective. „We can’t afford any leaks to the media.“
„I can keep Willy Roy Boyd in paperwork limbo indefinitely,“ said Slope. „But it’s just a matter of time before somebody recognizes the corpse as Mallory’s lady-killer. I examined the wound to his heart. The sewing shears masked everything but the tip of another object, something sharper, narrower. It wouldn’t be inconsistent with an ice pick.“
„And what about the comparisons?“
„To Stick Man?“ The doctor took a bundle of yellowed papers from his medical bag. „Here – your grandfather’s notes. I must compliment him on that signature strike. Superb police work. I also read his summaries on the other autopsies. However, in this case, there was so much damage done by the scissors, there’s no way to find any sign of it on Boyd’s corpse. And nothing stood out in the old autopsy reports on the Winter House Massacre. Of course, with an exhumation, the absence of any chips to the bone would – “
„No way,“ said Jack Coffey. „I’m not spending money to dig up people who died back in the forties.“ He looked up at his senior detective. „I can’t believe you expected a Stick Man signature on Mallory’s perp.“
„I did,“ said Riker, „for about six minutes. But now I think Nedda was – “
„Nedda Winter?“ Slope stared at Riker. „That was the name Charles wanted on the Valium prescription.“ The doctor turned to Mallory with a fresh accusation on his face, though he could not name it – not yet.
Riker wished he could call his words back. So little got by Edward Slope. He could tell that the doctor was putting it all together now: the passage of time, a recent murder in Winter House, the old massacre investigation, an elderly woman he had met downstairs, someone with Mallory’s interrogation footprints all over her face and the doctor’s best guess at that woman’s age – Red Winter’s age.
„Oh, my God. You found her.“
Charles Butler’s mood had improved, perhaps due to drugs. After filling the Valium prescription at the pharmacy, Nedda Winter had insisted upon sharing it with him, rightly suspecting that his morning had been nearly as bad as hers.
He had already begun the work of undoing Mallory’s damage while collecting Nedda’s belongings at Winter House, and now he had provided a safe refuge for the woman so that she could do further mending. And, in part, he supposed that Mallory’s doomsday warning had spooked him. And Nedda, too? It had come as a surprise when she had accepted his offer of sanctuary so readily. He set her suitcase down inside the door of his guest room, and, upon turning around, noticed that his houseguest had been misplaced. He walked down the hallway calling out, „Nedda?“
„In here,“ she said.
He entered the library and found her seated in the circle of new club chairs. She seemed quite at home in this setting, but then, by her account, she had spent most of her life inside of books – a secondhand life she had called it.
„Is this where you do group therapy?“
„No,“ he said, „I’ve never had a patient practice. This is where I play poker.“ Charles sat down beside her and stretched out his long legs. „Now, in this big empty space, try to imagine a gaming table made in 1839.“
„Should I imagine the cards as well?“
„No, I’m not that far gone. I gave away my old card table so I’d have room for one I bought at an auction. The very next day, the antique table was destroyed in a warehouse fire.“
„An antique. You take your poker seriously.“
„And I always lose, but I love the game – and the company. When my friend Louis Markowitz died, I inherited his chair in a floating weekly poker game. Tonight will be the first time it’s ever been canceled.“
„Because of me?“
„Oh, no. I wasn’t the one who canceled the game.“
Nedda smiled. „Well, not to waste these wonderful chairs – if you can’t find the right table, you might open up a private practice. You’re a natural. I’m something of an expert in therapists, and I say you’ve got the gift.“ She looked around at the other chairs, which did indeed resemble a therapy group arrangement. „This was my life for decades, one hospital after another and more doctors than I care to remember.“
„Could’ve fooled me,“ he said. „You don’t strike me as someone who’s been institutionalized. But then, I suppose it makes a difference that you were never insane.“
„As I said, you have the gift.“
And now he picked up the threads of their earlier conversation. „So you believed that you could never go home again. But then you did.“
„Thanks to my niece. But now I think it would’ve been better if I’d never come back.“
„Well, a few criminal intrusions, a violent death – that’s quite a bit of trauma. But that’s not what you meant, is it?“
„No. You’re a good listener, Charles. You can hear things between the words. I meant that it would’ve been better if my brother and sister never had to set eyes on me again. I’m the intruder at Winter House.“
In this unguarded moment, there was more sadness in her eyes than he could bear.
Empathy was his strength and his weakness; it was what suited him to a therapist’s role and what prevented him from ever treating a patient. He would never be able to affect the professional detachment so key to the well-being of a therapist’s own mind. He was already dying by degrees, imagining every shock that Nedda Winter had born, the cost of every death – all the pain that she was feeling now and her terrible sense of isolation. And then he pulled back, emotionally and even physically. He rose from his chair and unconsciously rubbed his hands together, as if in the act of washing them clean of this woman. „Well, what you need now is rest.“
This was what he also told himself – this lie. In reality, he had just shut her down and shut her out. He knew it, and she knew it. Nedda was all alone again.
Mallory sat in the front room of Winter House, sipping coffee and becoming acquainted with Nedda’s siblings. Riker had begged off on this interview, and she had only thought about his possible reasons in every other minute. And now she made her final judgment on her partner: he was losing the stomach for this case – and for her company.
„I don’t understand,“ said Cleo Winter-Smyth. „Why should Nedda be staying at Charles Butler’s house?“
„Was that your doing?“ asked Lionel Winter.
„No.“ Mallory put down the teacup. The time for good manners was fast passing. „It was Dr. Butler’s idea. He didn’t say why. Do you think he might have some reason to believe that Nedda wouldn’t be safe in this house?“