The Shadow Box (79 page)

Fallon couldn't look. Doyle poked him.

“Anything I just said ring a bell?”

“Brendan . . .”

“She saw him do it, Michael. First she says she was
asleep and then later she says she saw him do it. When
faced with the contradiction, she said she saw him in
her mind.”

Fallon still didn't get it. Doyle turned more pages.
“Read what Larkin says there.”

Eddie Larkin believed her. So, for that matter, had at
least one detective and a psychiatrist at the Virginia asy
lum. But Megan, by the time she was committed, wasn't
sure whether she killed her mother or not. For almost two
years after that, she was essentially catatonic.

Over time, the psychiatrist came to believe that the fa
ther, Warren Anderson, had been systematically drugging
her, and then molesting her,
unknown
to her, for a period
of at least three years.

Fallon was stunned. Doyle took the document out of
his hands.

“This same shrink,” he said, “also asserted that she seemed genuinely clairvoyant. That's how she saw her
mother being murdered. He didn't know whether this was something she was born with or whether it was some acci
dent of circuitry caused by some combination of all the
drugs she'd been fed.”

“Who says she didn't take them herself?” asked Fallon.

“That's the good news. The shrink said that she was
unable to recognize any of the drugs she was supposed to have been taking. When deliberately left alone with them,
she ignored them. Any junkie would have scarfed a few
down but this kid, at that time, would not have known
drugs if they bit her on the ass.”

“Then why was she kept there eight years?”

“You won't like the answer.”

“Brendan, I don't like a single word of this.”

“They wanted to study her.”

“Study what? The psychic thing?”

Doyle nodded. “And a couple of them, they—” He
grimaced.

“Finish, Brendan.”

“It's not important.”

“Brendan
...
a couple of them what?”

“They, um, saw that Megan was a nice-looking kid. They thought maybe her father had the right idea.”

Michael now understood all those showers.

And why sex, as she put it, was not her sport. He might
well have been her first since she was freed. Her first, at
least, in which she knew what she was doing.

He began to understand, just a little, that first night
when she came to the Taylor House. How she could be there, having sex with him, without really being there at
all. Maybe, with all that damage, it was a thing her mind
had taught itself to do. To just not be there when it
happened.

In the end, said Larkin's report, a lawyer got her out.
The shrink had blown the whistle. The lawyer filed suit
against the hospital and against the father who had remar
ried some Richmond bimbo within a year of his wife's
death.

“That bimbo was his Richmond alibi?”

“You got it.”

“His first wife, Megan's mother, caught on to what he
was doing with Megan?”

“That's what Larkin thinks. No way to prove it.”

“What happened with the lawsuit?”

“The father had already sold his drugstores. He skipped
town but the hospital settled. Two male nurses went to
jail. The settlement bought her that boat and a small annu
ity. The shrink taught her to sail it. He got her tutors to
help her catch up. He even taught her how to dance.”

“This shrink . . . was his name Sheldon Greenberg, by
any chance?”

“His name was Waxman. He passed away.”

“Oh.”

“Who's Sheldon Greenberg?”

“No one. Never mind.”

“Brendan?”

“Yeah, Mike.”

”I want to hire Eddie Larkin.”

“You already have. You think I'm paying for this?”

“Fine. I want him to find Warren Anderson for me.”

Doyle told him that Anderson was dead. An automobile accident, six years ago in Denver. And that the bimbo had already divorced him by then. Only the last part was true.
Megan's father was very much alive and he had a new
drugstore. He lived in a town just outside New Orleans.

Doyle had shown the report to Moon. He wanted to
know, in Moon's opinion, whether Michael could handle
this right now or whether they should leave well enough
alone.

Moon said, “Don't keep it from him. He has a right.
And he won't be mad that you know all this. But don't
show him this last page, the one with her father's address.
Leave that last page with me.”

“Hey, Moon . . .”

“Lena has kin down south. She's talked about wanting
to see them.”

“Moon, don't do this.”

“Anderson's how old now
...
my age?”

”A little younger. Middle fifties.”

“I'd say he's lived long enough.”

Lena Mayfield agreed to stay on at the Taylor House. But only if Moon stayed as well, and only if he promised
to eat right and start acting like a gentleman his age. Moon
promised that he would.

But he also pointed out that Lena had been cheated of
her Memorial Day vacation. He suggested a long quiet
drive, just the two of them. Down to Selma, Alabama, for
a start. He said it seemed only proper that a gentleman
such as he should present himself to her kin.

That done, he told her, he would like to push on to
New Orleans. Lena liked that idea. She'd always had a yen, she said, to see the Big Easy, try some of the food
it's famous for. Moon said he had a bit of business to see
to in a town near there. After that, they'd have plenty of
time to visit.

Chapter 49

Mic
hael found
her on the Yucatan in the town
of Campeche.

For three day's he only watched her. Except for the eye
patch she wore, and her hair cut short because so much
had been burned, she looked just as she did on the day
he first saw her. Cutoff jeans, deck shoes, a loose-fitting
blouse tied off at the waist.

She had bought an old boat, it was small, too small to live on but it would do to sail out to the diving grounds.
She had rented a room in an old Spanish house that offered
bed and breakfast at a modest price.

On the evening of the third day, he received the call
he'd been waiting for. The next morning, an hour after sunrise, he walked to the waterfront where she kept her
boat. With his right hand, the other still in a sling, he loosened both of her lines and set it adrift. The tide took it out and westward, roughly in the direction of Texas.

He hurried to the little bodega where she stopped each
morning to buy the bread and fruit that would be her lunch.
It was not yet open. He stood at the door, touching his palms
to the frame. He turned, walked a block away, and waited.

At last, she came. She arrived as the bodega was open
ing. She waved hello to a sidewalk vendor and reached
with that hand for the door. She stopped. She stopped
cold. She stood there for ten seconds, twenty. And now
she turned her head, this way and that. And there it was, for anyone to see. Megan knew that he'd been there, no
doubt in the world.

But now she seemed ready to run. She started back, not
down to her boat, but back the way she came. No, Megan.
Go to the dock. Go see what's down at the dock.

One hand wiped her cheeks as if brushing away tears. She
turned and slowly walked in that direction. He watched as
she reached the old jetty where she'd tied up her boat. She
saw it. It was nearly a quarter mile out. She stood there,
frustrated, hands on her hips as a new and larger boat
dropped sail and luffed into the space that had been hers.

Two young men, deeply bronzed, stood on the foredeck.
One of them had a bow line in his hand. He called her,
asked her to catch it. She did. He hopped into the surf
and approached her.

“Are you Megan?” Michael heard him ask.

She wiped her eyes. A tentative nod.

“All yours,” he said. “Happy birthday.” He and his
companion turned and walked off toward the town.

She stood there, frozen, for what seemed a full minute.
At one point, he saw that she was counting on her fingers,
trying to figure the date. She stopped on four. The Fourth
of July.

Fallon couldn't stand it any longer. He kicked off his
shoes and walked down to the jetty.

“Nice boat,” he said.

“Damn you, Michael.” She wouldn't turn.

“Cheoy Lee ketch. Forty-four. They were out of
thirty-fours.”

“Who was that boy who knew me?”

“He didn't. He delivers boats, that's all. He brought
this one all the way from Miami.”