Speaking in Tongues, Page 3

  He brushed at his unruly black hair, plastered around his face by the rain, and glanced at his watch. A half hour until Bett and Megan arrived. Again, the uneasy twist of his stomach at the thought.

  He glanced once more over his shoulder--toward where he'd seen the wisp of the ghostly soldier gazing at him from the cluster of vines and kudzu and loblolly pine. Tate returned to the damaged pipe, recalling what his grandfather--born Charles William Collier but known throughout northern Virginia as "the Judge"--had told him about the Dead Reb.

  A young private in the bold experiment of the Confederacy took a musket ball between the eyes at the first battle of Bull Run. By all laws of mercy and physiology he should have fallen dead at the picket line. But he'd simply dropped his musket, stood up and wandered southeast until he came to the huge woods that bordered the dusty town of Manassas. There he lived for six months, growing dark as a slave, sucking eggs and robbing cradles (the human victuals were legend only, the Judge appended in a verbal footnote). The Dead Reb was personally responsible for the cessation of all foot traffic after dusk through the Centreville woods that fall--until he was found, stark naked and dead indeed, sitting upright in what was the middle of Jackson's Corner, now a prime part of Tate Collier's farm.

  Well, no ghosts here now, Tate reflected, only a hundred feet of pipe to be replaced . . .

  Straightening up now, he wiped his watch crystal.

  Twenty minutes till they were due.

  Look, he told himself, relax.

  Through the misty rain Tate could see, a mile away, the house he'd built eighteen years ago. It was a miniature Tara, complete with Doric columns, and was white as a cloud. This was Tate's only real indulgence in life, paid for with some inheritance and the hope of money that a young prosecutor knows will be showered upon him for his brilliance and flair, despite the fact that a commonwealth's attorney's meager salary is a matter of public record. The six-bedroom house still groaned beneath a hearty mortgage.

  When the Judge deeded over the fertile Piedmont land to Tate twenty years ago--skipping Tate's father for reasons never articulated though known to one and all of the Collier clan--the young man decided impulsively he wanted a family home (the Judge's residence wasn't on the farmland itself but was eight miles away in Fairfax). Tate kept a two-acre parcel fallow for one season and built on it the next. The house sat between the two barns--one new, one the original--in the middle of a rough, grassy field punctuated with patches of black-eyed Susans, hop clover and bluestem, a stand of bitternut hickory trees, a beautiful American beech and eastern white pines.

  The eerily balmy wind grabbed his rain slicker and shook hard. He closed two buckles of the coat and happened to be gazing toward the house when he saw a downstairs light go out.

  So Megan had arrived. It had to be the girl; Bett didn't have keys to the house. No hope of cancellation now. Well, if you live three miles from a Civil War battlefield, you have to appreciate the persistence of the past.

  He glanced once more at the fractured pipe and started toward the house, heavy boots slogging through the untilled fields.

  Like the Dead Reb. No, he reflected, nothing so dramatic. More like the introspective man of forty-four years that he'd become.

  *

  An enthymeme is an important rhetorical device used in formal debate.

  It's a type of syllogism ("All cats see in the dark. Midnight is a cat. Therefore Midnight sees in the dark."), though the enthymeme is abbreviated. It leaves out one line of logic ("All cats see in the dark. Therefore Midnight sees in the dark."). Experienced debaters and trial lawyers like Tate Collier rely on this device frequently in their debates and courtroom arguments but it works only when there's a common understanding between the advocate and his audience. Everybody's got to understand that the animal in question is a cat; they have to supply the missing information in order for the logic to hold up.

  Tate reflected now that he, his ex-wife and Megan had virtually none of this common understanding. The mind of Betty Susan McCall would be as alien to him as his was to her. Except for his ex-wife's startling reappearance seven weeks ago--with the news about Megan's drunken climb up the water tower--he hadn't seen her for nearly two years and their phone conversations were limited to practical issues about the girl and the few residual financial threads between people divorced fifteen years.

  And as for Megan--how can anyone know a seventeen-year-old girl? Her mind was a moving target. Her only report on the therapy sessions was: "Dad, therapy's for, like, losers. Okay?" And her Walkman headset went back on. He didn't expect her to be any more informative--or articulate--today.

  As he approached the house he now noticed that all of the inside lights had been shut off. But when he stepped out of the field he saw that neither Megan's nor Bett's car was in the drive.

  He unlocked the door and walked into the house, which echoed with emptiness. He noticed Megan's house keys on the entryway table and dropped his own beside them, looking up the dim hallway. The only light in the cavernous space was from behind him--the bony light from outside, filtering through the entryway.

  What's that noise?

  A wet sound, sticky, came from somewhere on the first floor. Repetitive, accompanied by a faint, hungry gasping.

  The chill of fear stirred at his neck.

  "Megan?"

  The noise stopped momentarily. Then, with a guttural snap of breath, it resumed again. There was a desperation about the sound. Tate's stomach began to churn and his skin prickled with sweat.

  And that smell . . . Something pungent and ripe.

  Blood! he believed. Like the smell of hot rust.

  "Megan!" he called again. Alarmed now, he walked farther into the house.

  The noise stopped though the smell was stronger, almost nauseating.

  Tate thought of weapons. He had a pistol but it was locked away in the barn and there was no time to get it. He stepped forcefully into the den, seized a letter opener from the desk, flipped on the light.

  And laughed out loud.

  His two-year-old Dalmatian, her back to him, was flopped down on the floor, chewing intently. Tate set the opener on the bar and approached the dog. His smile faded. What is that? Tate squinted.

  Suddenly, with a wild, raging snarl, the dog spun and lunged at him. He gasped in shock and leapt back, cracking his elbow on the corner of a table. Just as quickly the dog turned away from him, back to its trophy.

  Tate circled the animal then stopped. Between the dog's bloody paws was a bone from which streamed bits of flesh. Tate stepped forward. The dog's head swiveled ominously. The animal's eyes gleamed with jealous hatred. A fierce growl rolled from her sleek throat and the black lips pulled back, revealing bloody teeth.

  Jesus . . .

  What is it? Tate wondered, queasy. Had the dog grabbed some animal that had gotten into the house? It was so badly mauled he couldn't tell what it had been.

  "No," Tate commanded. But the dog continued to defend its prize; a raspy growl rose from her throat.

  "Come!"

  The dog dropped her head and continued to chew, keeping her malevolent eyes turned sideways toward Tate. The crack of bone was loud.

  "Come!"

  No response.

  Tate lost his temper and stepped around the dog, reaching for its collar. The animal leapt up in a frenzy, snapping at him, baring sharp teeth. Tate pulled back just in time to save his fingers.

  He could see the bloody object. It looked like a beef leg bone. The kennel owner from whom he'd bought the Dalmatian told him that bones were dangerous treats. Tate never bought them and he assumed Megan must have been shopping on her way here and picked one up. She sometimes brought chew sticks or rubber toys for the animal.

  Tate made a strategic retreat, slipped into the hallway. He'd wait until the animal fell asleep tonight then throw the damn thing out.

  He walked to the basement stairs, which led down to the recreation room Tate had built for the family parties and reunions
he'd planned on hosting--people clustered around the pool table, lounging at the bar, drinking blender daiquiris and eating barbecued chicken. The parties and reunions never happened but Megan often disappeared down to the dark catacombs when she spent weekends here.

  He descended the stairs and made a circuit of the small dim rooms. Nothing. He paused and cocked his head. From upstairs came the sound of the dog's growl once more. Urgent and ominous.

  "Megan, is that you?" his baritone voice echoed powerfully.

  He was angry. Megan and Bett were already twenty minutes late. Here he'd gone to the trouble of inviting them over, doing his fatherly duty, and this was what he got in return . . .

  The growling stopped abruptly. Tate listened for footsteps on the ground floor but heard nothing. He climbed the stairs and stepped out into the drizzle once more.

  He made his way to the old barn, stepped inside and called Megan's name. No response. He looked around the spooky place in frustration, straightened a stack of old copies of Wallace's Farmer, which had fallen over, and glanced at the wall--at a greasy framed plaque containing a saying from Seaman Knapp, the turn-ofthe-century civil servant who'd organized the country's agricultural extension services program. Tate's grandfather had copied the epigram, for inspirational purposes, in the same elegant, meticulous lettering with which he filled in the farm's ledgers and wrote legal memos for his secretary to type.

  What a man hears, he may doubt. What he sees, he may possibly doubt. But what he does, he cannot doubt.

  "Megan?" he called again as he stepped outside.

  Then his eye fell on the old picnic bench and he thought of the funeral.

  No, he told himself. Don't go thinking about that. The funeral was a thousand years ago. It's a memory deader than the Dead Reb and something you'll hate yourself for bringing up.

  But think about it he did, of course. Pictured it, felt it, tasted the memory. The funeral. The picnic bench, Japanese lanterns, Bett and three-year-old Megan . . . He pictured the cluster of week-old Halloween candy lying in grass, a hot November day long ago . . .

  Until Bett had shown up at his door nearly two months ago with the news of Megan and the water tower he hadn't thought of that day for years.

  What he does, he cannot doubt . . .

  The rain began in earnest once again and he hurried back to the house, climbed to the second floor and looked in her bedroom. Then the others.

  "Megan?"

  She wasn't here either.

  He walked downstairs again. Reached for the phone. But he didn't lift the receiver. Instead he sat on the living room couch and listened to the muted sound of the dog's teeth cracking the bone in the next room.

  *

  Dr. Peters--well, Dr. Aaron Matthews--sped away from Tate Collier's farm in Megan's Ford Tempo. His hands shook and his breath came fast.

  A close call.

  He didn't know why Collier had returned home this morning. He always kept Saturday hours at his office. Or had, every Saturday for the past three months. Ten to four. Clockwork. But not today. When Matthews had driven to Collier's farm--with Megan in the trunk, no less--he'd found, to his shock, that the lawyer had returned. Fortunately he was heading out into the fields. When he was out of sight Matthews had parked in a cul-de-sac of brush beside Collier's driveway, fifty feet from the house, had snuck into the large structure using Megan's keys. He'd tossed the Dalmatian a beef bone to keep it busy while he did what he'd come for.

  He'd managed to escape to the Tempo just as Collier was returning.

  Still, it unnerved him. It was bad luck. And although he was a Harvard-trained psychotherapist and did not, professionally, accept the existence of luck, sometimes it took little more than a shadow of superstition like this to drop him into the cauldron of a mood. Matthews was bipolar--the diagnosis that used to be called manic depression. In order for him to carry out the kidnapping he'd gone off his meds; he couldn't afford the dulling effects of the high doses of Prozac and Wellbutrin he'd been taking. Fortunately, once the medication had evaporated from his bloodstream he found himself in a manic phase and he'd easily been able to spend eighteen hours a day stalking Megan and working on his plan. But as the weeks had worn on he'd begun to worry that he was headed for a fall. And he knew from the past that it took very little to push him over the edge into a lethargic pit of depression.

  But the near miss with Collier faded now and he remained as buoyant as a happy child. He sped to I-66 and headed east--to the Vienna, Virginia, Metro lot--the huge station for commuters fifteen miles west of D.C. It was Saturday morning but the lot was filled with the cars of people who'd taken the train downtown to visit the monuments and museums and galleries.

  Matthews drove Megan's car to the spot where his gray Mercedes was parked then climbed out and looked around. He saw only one other occupied car--a white sedan, idling several rows away. He couldn't see the driver clearly but the man or woman didn't seem to be looking his way. Matthews quickly bundled Megan out of the Tempo's trunk and slipped her into the trunk of the Mercedes.

  He looked down at the girl, curled fetally and unconscious, bound up with rope. She was very pale. He pressed a hand to her chest to make sure that she was still breathing regularly. He was concerned about her; Matthews was no longer a licensed M.D. in Virginia and couldn't write prescriptions so to knock the girl out he'd stockpiled phenobarb from a veterinarian, claiming that one of his rottweilers was having seizures. He'd mixed the drug with distilled water but couldn't be sure of the concentration. She was deeply asleep but it seemed that her respiration was fine and when he took her pulse her heart rate was acceptable.

  Between the front seats of the Tempo he left the well-thumbed Amtrak timetable that Megan had used as a lap desk to write the letters to her parents and that now bore her fingerprints (and only hers--he'd worn gloves when handling it). He'd circled all the Saturday trains to New York.

  He'd approached the abduction the way he once would have planned the treatment of a severely disturbed patient: every detail meticulously considered. He'd stolen the writing paper from Megan's room in Bett McCall's house. He'd spent hours in her room--when the mother was working and Megan was in school. It was there that he'd gotten important insights into her personality: observing the three Joplin posters, the black light, the Marquez book, notes she'd received from classmates laced with words like "fuck" and "shit." (Matthews had written a breakthrough paper for the APA Journal on how adolescents unconsciously raise and lower emotional barriers to their therapists according to the doctors' use of grammar and language; he'd observed, during the session that morning, how the expletives he'd used had opened her psyche like keys.)

  He'd been careful to leave no evidence of his break-in at Bett McCall's. Or in Leesburg--where Dr. Hanson's mother lived. That had been the biggest problem of his plan: getting Hanson out of the way for the week--without doing something as obvious, though appealing, as running him over with a car. He'd done some research on the therapist and learned that his mother lived in the small town northwest of Washington, D.C., and that she was frail. On Wednesday night Matthews had loosened the top step leading from her back porch to the small yard behind her house. Then he'd called, pretending to be a neighbor, and asked her to check on an injured dog in the backyard. She'd been disoriented and reluctant to go outside after dark but after a few minutes he'd convinced her--nearly had her in tears over the poor animal, in fact. She'd fallen straight down the stairs onto the sidewalk. The tumble looked serious and for a moment Matthews was worried--if she died Hanson might schedule the funeral around his patients' sessions. But he waited until the paramedics arrived and noted that she'd merely broken bones. After Hanson had left a message canceling her regular session Matthews had called Megan and told her he was taking over Hanson's patients.

  Now Matthews started the Mercedes and switched cars--parking Megan's in the space his had occupied--and then sped out of the parking lot.

  He took his soul's pulse and found his mood intact
. There was no paralysis, no anger, no sorrow dishing up the fishy delusions that had plagued him since he was young. The only hint of neurosis was understandable: Matthews found himself talking silently with Megan, repeating the various things he'd told her in the session and what she'd said to him. A bit obsessive but, as he'd occasionally said to patients, So what?

  Finally, he turned the Mercedes onto the entrance ramp to I-66 and, doing exactly fifty-eight miles an hour, headed toward the distant mountains. Megan's new home.

  Chapter Four

  The woman walked inside the house of which she'd been mistress for three years and paused in the Gothic, arched hallway as if she'd never before seen the place.

  "Bett," Tate said.

  She continued inside slowly, offering her ex-husband a formal smile. She paused again at the den door. The Dalmatian looked up, snarling.

  "Oh my, Tate . . ."

  "Megan gave her a bone. She's a little protective about it. Let's go in here."

  He closed the den door and they walked into the living room.

  "Did you talk to her?" he asked.

  "Megan? No. Where is she? I didn't see her car."

  "She's been here. But she left. I don't know why."

  "She leave a note?"

  "No. But her house keys're here."

  "Oh. Well." Bett fell silent.

  Tate crossed his arms and rocked on the carpet for a moment. He walked to the window, looked at the barn through the rain. Returned.

  "Coffee?" he asked.

  "No, thank you."

  Bett sat on the couch, crossed her thin legs, clad in tight black jeans. She wore a black silky blouse and a complicated silver necklace with purple and black stones. She sat in silence for a few moments then rose and examined the elaborate fireplace Tate'd had built several years ago. She caressed the mortar and with a pale pink fingernail picked at the stone. Her eyes squinted as she sighted down the mantelpiece. "Nice," she said. "Fieldstone's expensive."