She's Not There (26 page)

“Poppy, my dear girl, please—” He stopped. Fear again.

“What?”

“Be ever so vigilant.”

*   *   *

I continued my way from one trail to the other, all across the island, eventually skimming the south bluffs, until I came to Joe's cottage. I found a message from Delby to call her. Good. I dialed.

She said, “Auerbach just talked to the histologist. He's getting up a report for you. Him being Pokey Pete, I thought I'd pass along what he's been saying.”

I could always count on Delby. Our histologist was a little gun-shy and therefore overly officious. That's good, though. I'd made clear that a verbal overview coming from him was necessary to prepare me for the coming more thorough written report. Face-saving is always key with some people. Like everyone else, he'd come to see that he could trust Delby as my telegrapher.

“Pokey Pete says even though none of the structural changes in the body tissues could have been caused by disease, many of the samples looked as though they'd
been
diseased all the same. They'd been drained of oxygen, like what happens when blood cells stop working. He says the only thing that could cause that phenomenon other than disease would be strong and relentless physical exertion, like you find in a lab animal forced to run around a wheel till it dies. Such a phenomenon has shown up in victims of a death march. Told me he'd dug up some World War Two studies. He said such exertion, combined with a starvation diet, especially in a victim who was used to an abundant diet previously, could kill the victim and leave behind that particular trail he's found. Then he had some studies of torture, which he said needed to be analyzed.”

I nearly fell over at the next thing Delby reported.

“He said Chinese water torture, turns out, is no myth. Brass helmet covers the head and water's dripped onto it, bigger and bigger drops. What's created is somewhere between a chime and a gong. A chime is sharp and clear like a hammer hitting an anvil, but the brass helmet also has the properties of a gong, which is complex because it has overtones that die away at different rates. So the victim of this torture is getting quite a cacophany, sounds that seem louder and louder to the victim until the water drops start feeling like sledgehammer blows. Bottom line, it becomes so unbearable you'll confess to anything. In the absence of confession, however, even though there are no signs of visible injury, you die because of internal damage to hollow organs, which we already knew something about. But what we have now is the actual cause of death. There is immense pressure to the chest, which ruptures lung tissue, lungs also being hollow organs. When lung tissues rupture, air bubbles are admitted into the arteries that lead to the heart and brain. Air bubbles stop the blood flow, and you get sudden death. Histologist says documented cases show death comes rapidly. Body can't withstand more than a few hours of the torture before it folds up.

“Poppy, he gave me a second scenario that would be easier for him to document. What would take place on the battlefield—we're talking World War One, now, not Two. Continuous guns discharging and explosives going off do all of the above. It was not uncommon. Guys didn't usually reach the point of ruptured lungs, but some did. The cause was mostly the soldiers' own weapons, which they were firing themselves. After World War One, soldiers had to wear sound protectors.

“The rest of the stuff we've got comes directly from Auerbach. You won't believe what he has to tell you, boss, just thought I'd give warning. But I'll say this: You'll sure be wanting a stiff one after you hear it. I know I am.”

“I am already, Delby.”

I usually talk to the back of Auerbach's head while his eyes remain riveted to whatever's on his screen. So I was on speakerphone now. That way he didn't have to unrivet.

“Auerbach, you've got the histology stuff that I just heard from Delby, right?”

“Right. And what you need to know is if we have documented cases of sound killing people so we don't have to wait for histology to do their double-documenting. Well, we do. Weaponized sound.”

“Weaponized sound.”

“Yes.
Weaponized
is not a new adjective like everyone thinks, Poppy. When I came across it, the term roused my curiosity big-time. First I decided to find out if a victim who dies under the Chinese water torture is dying purely as a result of the nonstop sound he's hearing.”

Purely. “And have you been satisfied?”

“Yes. But I had to start with the walls of Jericho.”

Here we go.

“They came tumbling down with the blasts of Joshua's trumpet. So here's what is proven: When the frequency of the matter of rock is known, a correct frequency that is loud enough will cause the rock to disintegrate in the same way a singer's voice can shatter a wineglass. Once the frequency of sound matches that of mass, it causes the atoms to dissociate at the weakest bonds of the whole mass. The weakest bonds in the human body are the heart, brain, and lungs. Ergo, that is what happened to those two girls. Instead of a wall collapsing, their hearts stopped beating. And if they'd been revived, they'd have been brain-dead.”

“This is theory, right?”

“Until half an hour ago.”

“How's that?”

“We've turned up a case. South America. Rio. Woman cheated on her husband, so he says. He'd beaten her many times, injured her badly. But what with the macho culture—honor and all—he never paid. No penalty for defending your honor. So the woman's father threatened the husband, told him he would kill him if he ever laid a hand on his daughter again. The father was a cop. Cops in certain cultures mete out justice. So next time the husband was in the mood to vent, he put the woman in a barrel. Heavy steel. He bashed it with a crowbar for hours on end over the course of the day. Neighbors heard. Saw him. Woman was dead when he took her out. Cause of death determined to be asphyxiation. Father had an autopsy performed. Woman's eardrums were ruptured. Cadaveric contractions. That's all they found. Not much more than what Rhode Island found.”

“And who concluded it was sound that killed her?”

“A professor at Harvard Medical School. He was on vacation in Rio when it happened. In on the autopsy. Noted several other phenomena not unlike what histology is telling us. Professor wrote an article published in
JAMA
. He theorized on four other cases that he documented in his article. Three were similar to what I just told you. The fourth was a case in—speaking of Rhode Island—Rhode Island. And you know all about that one.”

“Auerbach. My God. But—”

“I'm talking to the professor. We're back and forth. So Poppy, give me more as soon as you've got it, okay?”

“Yes. Of course. Auerbach, what happened to the husband?”

“What husband?”

“The one in Rio.”

“Oh, yeah. When I talked to Delby she said you'd probably want to know even if the time required for me to find out would—”

“Live with it, Auerbach.”

“Sure. The father—the cop—strangled the guy. The husband's the one who died of asphyxiation, not the wife. The cop got a commendation for subduing a perp dangerous to himself and others. The culture—”

“Good. That's all I need. Thanks.”

“That's what Delby said.
Good
.”

I said it because now I wouldn't have to worry about Delby heading for Rio and strangling the guy herself.

 

10

That evening it was difficult to be alone with my thoughts. Spike had not shown up, even when I shook his box of kibbles. I was no longer used to being on my own. So many evenings in a row with Joe and the sound of the surf. Even when I spent the night at Joe's apartment in DC, or he at mine, one of us would often wake to the commotion of the other rushing off to answer some call. And besides that, in the evenings in DC, whenever I get home at a normal hour instead of 2
A.M.
, I bring work home. Or, rather, work set up to do at home via a computer hooked into the FBI's system. I don't really sit thinking, I sit in front of my screen computing. Auerbach has taught me a lot.

So I ate. The leftovers in Joe's refrigerator contained a great variety of temptations as he likes cooking, he likes serving food, and he likes eating. He'd made shrimp salad from the extra he bought when he did shrimp and pasta; he'd let the remains of barbecued steaks get cold, whereupon he sliced what was left of them paper thin with a machine you only see behind deli counters and made his own horseradish sauce to go with the slices; and there was a bowl of curried vegetables that was so delicious I had to control my urge to take the whole bowl plus fork out onto the slate terrace and eat the entire contents. Instead, I treated the refrigerator like a buffet table and put a little of this and a little of that on my plate.

Like Esther, I plunked a bottle of wine next to my glass on the table by the chaise.

It was a hot night, hot because there wasn't a breeze, a Block Island rarity. Joe said it happened once per summer. Nothing to be done about it but sit on the terrace and star-gaze. This morning at the coffee shop before Fitzy had arrived, Billy and Mick said we could expect a short spell of heat and then we'd all be rewarded afterward when a twelve-hour front of clouds and showers passing through brought crisp dry air in their wake. “Air clear as a bell, the sky blue as Rebekah's eyes, ocean purple as ink.”

I'd asked, “Who is Rebekah?”

“Statue at the corner of Old Town and Center.”

“Isn't there a stone horse trough at the corner of Old Town and Center?”

“Rebekah used to stand on top of it.”

Mick said, “Rebekah's bein' restored.”

Billy added, by way of explanation: “He means dried out. Some idiot filled the statue with cement after some kids knocked her head off. Figured no kid could knock her over if she weighed two tons. But cement draws water. Rebekah started crumbling from the inside out. Trouble is, the bill for fixin' her up is forty-thousand and something. That was in 1972. Nobody wanted to pay up. Lord only knows what they'd want to fix her now. So Rebekah gets to stay in storage in Jim Lane's garage, right, kid?”

Jim Lane's kid said, “Wrapped in a tarp.”

I asked, “What's the statue made of?”

Billy said, “Whatever statues are made of.”

The kid said, “Cast kettle iron.”

Not all statues.

“So how are her eyes blue, Mick, if she's made of iron?”

“Well, if you want to see Rebekah today, you have to close your eyes and imagine her. If you do, you'll see her eyes are blue.”

I said, “That's very romantic.”

Billy hooted and Mick pulled his cap down over his eyes.

I was really beginning to get a kick out of Joe's Block Island coterie. There was definitely a hidden charm.

Now, tonight, I watched a half-moon, all that was left of it, rise out of the eastern horizon. I could smell the salt of the sea hanging in the air. Suddenly, I was grateful to be alone, though at that moment I actually missed Spike. I didn't miss Joe. Joe would have been talking where Spike would only purr. Sometimes Joe helped me think, but tonight I realized I needed to muse uninterrupted.

It was not meant to be.

I listened to my thoughts, to the waves and the cicadas and then, after the night had drawn on and the moon hung suspended right above me, I listened to something else that didn't belong. Soft footsteps. It wasn't Spike, who would have crept in on little cat feet, i.e., soundless. I sat up straight. I couldn't tell if they were behind me, next to me, or what. A half-moon doesn't give much light. I listened some more but could only hear the pounding of my heart because the footsteps had stopped. I looked over my shoulder. No night creature was standing there. I scanned the cliff top. The bayberry was a murky green carpet, covering all. Beyond the line of growth that ended just a few feet from the cliff edge, I saw someone sitting—a night-loving tourist who didn't realize the danger he was in—his legs dangling over the side.

The drop was eighty feet. Not to mention the fact that, on Block Island, the bluffs are gradually crumbling into the sea. One doesn't sit on cliff edges. Joe told me that in one hundred years his cottage would also crumble into the sea.

The fellow was kind of bobbing. I'd seen the motion before. It was Jake.

I got up, walked across the terrace, and took the path to the bluff edge. I tried to make enough noise for Jake to hear me but not enough to startle him. I was ten yards away when he saw me. He didn't startle. He was calmed by the quiet of the night.

“Hello, Jake.”

He looked over my head. “Hello.” Autistics, Joe said, don't make eye contact. Too intense. It would hurt Jake to look anyone in the eye.

“It's a very beautiful night, isn't it?”

“Beautiful night.”

“Would you like to come and sit with me? Have something to drink? Maybe a snack? Over there at Joe's house.”

“No.”

Okay. “Well, if you change your mind, I'll be sitting outside on the terrace.”

He looked away and I turned back, reached the terrace, sat down again, and poured another glass of wine. I watched Jake swaying a little, bobbing a little, and then he got up. I closed my eyes and waited a minute. If he was going to fall over the edge, I didn't want to see it. I opened my eyes again. He was heading down the path that paralleled Joe's drive, on his way to the road. Then he looked my way. He stopped, turned, and walked toward me. When he reached the perimeter of the terrace, he stood in front of me staring at his shoes and said, “Like chocolate milk.”

“Let me go and see if Joe has syrup.”

“Has it.”

“All right then.” I got up. He didn't move. “Please sit down, Jake.”

He did. Right where he'd been standing. I meant for him to pull up another chaise. He got up and sat down again two more times.