Regina’s Song

After I’d dropped Twink at Mary’s place, I went back to campus to continue my examination of the connection between Whitman and the Brits. I hung it up just before five o’clock and actually got home in time for dinner.

“I’m supposed to tell you that Charlie’s going to be late, Trish,” James rumbled, as we gathered in the dining room. “I guess that something came up at Boeing, and the head of the program Charlie’s involved with called an emergency meeting.”

“That sounds ominous,” Erika said. “When Boeing starts calling emergency meetings, it suggests that we might all need to go find bomb shelters.”

“He wasn’t too specific,” James added, “but I got the impression that something fell apart because some resident genius at Boeing neglected to convert inches to centimeters on a set of fairly significant specifications. Charlie was using some very colorful language when he left.”

“That might just make it difficult to hit what you’re shooting at,” I noted. “A millimeter here and a millimeter there would add up after a while.”

“Particularly if you’re taking potshots at something in the asteroid belt,” James agreed.

“Have you got anything serious on the fire this evening, Sylvia?” I asked our resident psychologist.

“Is your head starting to come unraveled, Mark?”

“I hope not. I’d like to get your reading on something that happened today, is all.”

“Whip it on me,” she replied.

I let that pass. “The Twinkie twin I was talking about did something a little out of character today. Evidently, she’s not quite as fragile as we all thought she was. She seems to be breaking out in a rash of independence. She even gets offended if I offer to drive her anyplace because she’s got that ten-speed bicycle. Rain or shine, she wants to bike it.”

“That’s probably a reaction to the time she spent in the sanitarium, Mark. People in institutions usually aren’t allowed to make many decisions.”

“Rebellion, then?”

“Self-assertion might come a little closer,” Sylvia replied. “In a general way, we approve of that—as long as it doesn’t go too far. Could you be more specific? Exactly what did she do today that seemed unusual?”

“Well, she’s auditing a course I teach—freshman English—basically pretending to be a student to get the feel of the place.”

“Interesting notion,” Erika said. “All you’re really doing is moving her from one institution to a different one.”

“Approximately, yes,” I agreed. “Well, I assigned a paper today. She knows she doesn’t have to write one, but she says she’s going to do one anyway, and then she promised me that it’d be so good that it’ll blow me away.”

“You assign a paper on the first day of class?” Trish demanded incredulously. “You’re a monster!”

“Just weeding out the garden, Trish,” I told her. “It’s the best way I know of to scare off the party people. Evidently, Renata took the assignment as a challenge, and now she’s going to jump on it with both feet.”

“She’s making a pass at you, Mark,” Erika said bluntly. “She wants to write her way into your heart.”

“Get real,” I said. “There’s none of that going on.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Mark,” Sylvia said thoughtfully. “It’s not uncommon for a psychiatric patient to have those kinds of feelings for the therapist.”

“I’m not Twink’s therapist, Sylvia,” I objected.

“Oh, really? You worry about her all the time, you do everything you possibly can to make her life easier, and you get all nervous if she does anything the least bit out of the ordinary. You’re trying everything you can think of to make her get well. In my book, that makes you her therapist.”

“I think you might be missing something, Sylvia,” James said thoughtfully.

“Oh?”

“Mark’s been a brother figure for Renata since she was a baby, and he’s the only person she recognized when her mind woke up. Isn’t it possible that this ‘I’ll write a paper that’ll blow you away’ announcement is an effort to gain Mark’s approval?”

“He’s a father figure, you mean?”

“Something along those lines, I suppose,” he rumbled.

“Thanks a bunch, gang,” I said sarcastically. “Now we’ve got a toss-up. Is she aggressively showing off, or is she just yearning for approval?”

“It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?” Erika suggested.

“I’ve got to meet this girl, Mark,” Sylvia said. “For right now, though, maybe you’d better talk with Dr. Fallon about it. He knows her, so he’ll probably have some idea of what’s really going on. It might not be anything very significant, but on the other hand…” She left it hanging.

I began to wish I’d kept my mouth shut. Twink was my problem, but now I’d opened a door that maybe I should have left closed. My housemates all seemed very interested in Renata’s behavior, and I wasn’t sure I wanted them to start muddying things up.

On the other hand, I didn’t really have any idea of what was going on in Twink’s mind, and maybe one of the inmates here could come up with a clue. At this point, I’d take all the help I could get.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_e7045438-fad4-524c-9ff6-48e32122fbd6)

I didn’t sleep very well that night, and when I finally drifted off, I had some peculiar dreams involving Milton, Whitman, and Twinkie. For some reason, they were all ganging up on me, and the green chain kept turning up to complicate things all the more.

Anyway, I was a little foggy when I stumbled downstairs the next morning. James, Charlie, and the bathrobe brigade were clustered around the small television set on the kitchen counter, watching and listening intently.

“What’s up?” I asked, homing in on the coffeemaker.

“A small-time hood got himself wasted last night,” Charlie replied. “The TV reporters say it’s a rerun of the Muñoz killing a couple weeks ago.”

“Another one of those carve-up jobs?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of Erika’s coffee.

“Was it ever,” Charlie said. “Some of the reporters looked green around the gills. I guess there were body parts and guts all over the place.”

Trish made a gagging sound. “Do you mind?” she snapped at Charlie.

“Sorry, babe,” he apologized. “Anyway, this one was even closer to home than the Muñoz killing. They found the carcass along the shore of Green Lake in Woodland Park, only about a mile from here.”

“Evidently the killing was close enough to the zoo to upset the animals,” James added. “A couple of reporters mentioned that earlier. I guess everybody who lives in the vicinity heard lions roaring, elephants trumpeting, and the wolves howling up a storm. Somebody put in an emergency call to the zookeepers, and it was one of them who found the body and called the police.”

“Anyway,” Charlie continued, “the cops and the reporters are all sagely stroking their beards and announcing that there might just possibly be some connection between this murder and that one two weeks ago down on campus. Isn’t that astounding? Two guys get gutted out in the same part of town within a couple of weeks, and the cops suggest that there might be a connection? Well, goll-lee gee!”

“Quit trying to be such a clown, Charlie,” Sylvia scolded.

“People who announce the obvious with a straight face always bring out the worst in me,” Charlie replied. “These reporters are all trying to look grim and serious while they go on and on about a ‘serial killer,’ but there’s nothing like a few messy murders to fill up the blanks in the day’s news.”

“They’ve already come up with a name that I’m sure we’ll have to listen to over and over for the next month or two,” Trish told me. “They’re talking about ‘the Seattle Slasher’ as if it’s something of international significance instead of a turf war between a couple of rival gangs. You know how reporters can be.”

“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “I’m waiting for the day when one of the weather guys has a grand mal seizure—on camera—because there’s a fifty percent chance of rain tomorrow. Was this latest dead guy another Chicano dope dealer?”

“Not with a name like Lloyd Andrews, he wasn’t,” she replied. “He seems to have had a fairly extensive police record, though, and drugs were involved in a few of his arrests—along with the usual low crimes and misdemeanors.”