“I’m fairly certain this little fella is none of the above.”
“You can never be sure. Sometimes they can trick you. Did you know that sometimes spiders can try to trick you?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I think that maybe we should go around to the back door.”
“Not necessary. I’ll take care of it.” I raised my foot, hovering over the offending obstacle.
“No!”
Darcy fairly screamed. He raised his hands, flapping them in the air. “Don’t kill it!”
“I thought you were afraid…”
“I don’t like to hurt things. I don’t think anyone should hurt anyone, do you?”
“But… it’s a spider.”
“It’s still alive. Isn’t it still alive?”
“But eventually we need to get inside. Don’t we?”
“Maybe you could just… just…”
“Capture and release?”
“That would be good.”
I picked up a fallen leaf, slid one edge under the spider, and tossed it into the hedges.
“Will he be all right there?” Darcy asked.
“That’s its natural environment,” I assured him. “It’ll be like a kid in a candy store.” Judging from Darcy’s nonresponsive expression, I needed to modify my cliché. Abstract language was lost on him. “It’ll be like-what’s your favorite room in the house, Darcy?”
“The library.”
“It’ll be like you with a good book in the library.”
“Oh.” His head twitched a couple of times. “Good.”
“Can we go in now?” I looked back at the front door and found O’Bannon standing there, watching. “Chief.”
He pushed open the screen door. “Come on in. Darcy, why don’t you go finish your book?”
“Oh.” He seemed reluctant to leave. “Okay.”
Once we were alone, O’Bannon showed me into his den.
“Sweet boy you’ve got.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Wouldn’t even hurt a spider. That’s pretty endearing, in this day and age. Most guys his age spend the evening pretending to blow people to smithereens in video games.”
“He’s always been like that. Entirely nonaggressive. Doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Kids at school used to rough him up pretty bad. But he never struck back. Never did anything to anyone. Practically a saint.” He stopped by his desk and gave me a searching look.
“You going to sniff my breath?”
“Don’t have to.”
“Because you trust me?”
“Because I’ve been on the police force thirty-four years, which unfortunately gives a man a lot of experience with alcoholism. I can spot a drunk at ten paces.”
“Ooh. Scary.” I jerked my thumb toward the other room. “So, that boy of yours. Autistic?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not bad, Pulaski. Most people think he’s retarded. Or just weird.”
“Well, I am a trained professional. I’ve worked with autistic children.”
“I guess that gives you an advantage.” I could tell this wasn’t something he talked about often. At the same time, I got the impression that while he was accustomed to keeping it private, it might be a comfort to talk about it with someone who had some understanding of the condition. “Most people, all they know about autism is what they got from that Dustin Hoffman movie, where he acted all weird and twitchy-but not particularly autistic. People looking for a hyperactive toothpick counter aren’t going to peg Darcy.”
“He must be very high-functioning. He’s obviously smart, and he speaks clearly enough. He interacts. He’s in our world, at least to some extent.”
O’Bannon nodded, dropping onto the large sofa. “It wasn’t always that way. At the age of three he was profoundly autistic. Didn’t answer questions, showed no emotions, was totally withdrawn. Took years of aggressive behavioral intervention programs to get him where he is today. Worked with a guy named Dr. Lovaas out in L.A. for years. Made a huge difference.”
“That’s controversial therapy, isn’t it?”
“It shouldn’t be. Got too many damned romantics trying to pretend that there’s something special or magical about an autistic kid’s private world. He’s in his own little paradise, they say. Why do we have to force him to conform, to live in our world? What bullshit. Anybody who’s ever spent time with a seriously autistic kid knows better. They’re confused, frustrated, unhappy, isolated. Bringing them into our world, trying to make it possible for them to interact, to be productive, is a gift.”
“I’m sure you’re right. He seems very knowledgeable.”
“Well, he remembers everything he ever read. Wish I could say the same for myself. Autistics are known for their prodigious memories. When Darcy’s focused, he’s incredible. The trouble is getting him to focus, getting him interested, giving him the proper incentive. He’s flooded with stimuli. His head is like a radio receiver getting messages from fifty different places at once. It takes a lot of concentration to sift through that, to focus on one particular line of thought.”
“Aren’t there drugs that could help him?”
“No. Everything his docs ever tried just made him listless. Dreary. I’d rather have an autistic boy than a zombie.” He drew in his breath. “I’ve had to face facts. He’ll never be normal, no matter what I do.”
“Well,” I said, depositing myself on the sofa, “normal is overrated.”
O’Bannon’s gaze turned inward. “You can’t imagine how hard it was on Connie and me. Our first child. By the time he was two, he was reading. Honest to God. Knew the alphabet, could count as high as you want, remembered everything you told him. Sang, even played the piano a little. Had perfect pitch. We thought we had a little genius on our hands. Then somewhere around his third birthday, it all started to go south. He didn’t come when called. He disappeared, hid. All his incredible speech disappeared.”
“That’s frequently the way neurological disorders work. At first they manifest as prodigious intellectual abilities. Then the other shoe drops.”
“Yeah.” O’Bannon kept his face stoic; everything I got, I got from the eyes. He did a good job of keeping it in. But I suppose he’d had a lot of practice. “He does have some special abilities. Memory. Math. Reads fast. Plays the piano-and he never had lessons. Does the whole puzzle page in the
Courier
in less than five minutes.”
“Okay, now I’m starting to hate him.”
O’Bannon grinned. “He really tries to get along in the world, to understand what’s going on around him, hard as it is for him. He’s done a hell of a lot with the hand he’s been dealt.”
“But I notice he’s still at home. What is he, twenty-one, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-six. It’s the angelic countenance that throws you off. Autistics are renowned for their sweet good looks. As for moving out, I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to live independently. He sure isn’t now. Most autistics end up in some kind of home, but… I don’t know. I couldn’t bear it. He’s my only family.”
“I get that.”
“I had hoped that one day, with enough therapy, he might be able to do some kind of work. But that’s probably not realistic. He helps out at a day care center. He loves to work with small children. I think he’s comfortable around them in a way he’ll never be with adults. But…” His eyes wandered. He was feeling uncomfortable. I could tell he wanted to change the subject. “So what’ve you got on this case? Solved it yet?”
“Give me another ten minutes.”
“Have you at least got a working theory?”
“Guy’s hard to get a grip on. A lot of the information I’ve received is contradictory. And it doesn’t fit the standard profile of a psychopathic sexually motivated serial killer.”
“Are you sure that’s what this perp is?”
“I can’t imagine anyone burying a woman alive, or tearing out all her teeth, for any logical reason. Can you?”
“But does he have to be sexually motivated? Neither of the girls was molested.”
“He’s probably impotent. That’s not uncommon. They can’t get off the normal way. They get gratification from killing and torturing the helpless. Any progress on identifying the victims?”
He shook his head. “Nothing so far. Eventually someone will miss them. But it might take a while.”
“If we knew how the killer was selecting his victims-or why-we’d be better able to protect the populace. This has already gotten a lot of press-”
“And it’s going to get a lot more.”
“Right. So we need to be able to tell them something about the man.”
“Are we sure it’s a man?”
“Serial killers almost always are. Comes with the testosterone.”
“But you said this killer doesn’t fit the standard patterns.”
“True enough.” Leaning back, I noticed that Darcy was crouched in the entryway. How long had he been there? “Need something, Darcy?”
“W-W-Would it be okay if I sat with you guys? I think that would be fun. Wouldn’t that be fun?” He walked over to the sofa and sat between us, brushing shoulders.
His father grunted. “Darcy, we’re talking about a case. You should go to your room.”
Darcy was crestfallen.
“I don’t see any reason he can’t stay,” I cut in. “Maybe he’ll inspire us.” I don’t know why I did it, except that I could see that he really wanted to be there with us. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Shaggy.
O’Bannon spoke as if he weren’t there. “He isn’t usually this social. Especially with strangers.”
“But we are not strangers,” Darcy said, looking at me. “Are we strangers? Don’t I know you?”
“Yes, of course you do.”
“That’s what I thought. Then we are not strangers. What are we talking about?”
I suppressed a smile, then leaned forward so I could see the chief. “I don’t suppose any of your experts have had any luck on the coded messages.”
“No,” O’Bannon grunted, reaching back for one of the two photocopies. “They don’t think they are messages. Which of course is the obvious response when you aren’t able to decode them.”
“I took them to a geek friend of mine. I’m hoping he’ll figure something out. I’d really like to know what they say, but-”
Darcy jumped in. “W-W-Would it be okay if, do you think, could it be okay if I took a look at them?”
“Darcy,” his father said, “this is police business. It might be better if you watched one of your videos.”
“Please,” he said. “I want to read them.”
Read them, I noticed he said. Not solve them. Read them. “Why don’t we give him a shot?” I took the copies and handed them to Darcy.
O’Bannon’s face was pained. “Susan…”
“You said he was good at puzzles. Maybe he’ll see something the experts missed. Maybe he’ll spot some clue that will make it possible for the experts to-”
Darcy cut me off. “ ‘Deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.’ ”
O’Bannon and I both looked at him. “What?”
He repeated it.
“What?”
his father said, irritated. And then his voice softened: “Is that a poem or something?”
Darcy looked up nervously. “I-I-I-I think that’s, what you were, you were, can’t you read it?”
I took the photocopy he was holding, the one that had been stuffed inside the coffin with the girl who was buried alive. “You’re saying that’s the translation of this message?”
“That’s what it says.”
“You decoded it?”
He gazed at me with that deceptively vacant expression. “That’s what it says.”
“Darcy…” His father sighed. “We could all make up something that could be the message. Sometimes it’s fun to pretend-”
“I-I-I-” I noticed his stuttering became much more pronounced when he was speaking to his father. “I read it.”
“That’s impossible. You looked at it for, what? Twenty seconds?”
“Does Darcy normally make things up?” I asked.
“Well… no.”
“Does he tell lies?”
“I don’t think he knows how.”
“Is he given to flights of fancy?”
“He wouldn’t understand what a flight of fancy was.”
“Probably never engaged in imaginative play as a child, right? No make-believe. No cowboys and Indians. That would be typical for kids with his… situation.” I turned back to Darcy. “Say it again. Read it.”
He glanced down at the paper. “ ‘Deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.’ ”
“Sounds like something that belongs in a coffin, doesn’t it? Darcy, is it a substitution code?”
“What?”
“Does one letter-or symbol-stand for another?”
“I guess-I mean, no, not really. Well, sort of.”
I resisted the urge to pound my head against the wall. “Darcy, can you explain to me how you can read this?”
“Can you, do you-I mean-I just read it.”
No cheese down that tunnel. “I wonder what it means. Maybe if I went on the Internet-”
“It’s from a book.”
I gaped. I mean, it was incredible enough that this kid might solve the puzzle the experts couldn’t. But now he was going to identify the quotation?
He jumped off the sofa and raced to the wall behind the desk, one that was covered with books. It was as if someone had flipped the ON switch; suddenly, he was alive, more than alive. His eyes darted back and forth, his hands flapped frenetically. His fingers brushed against the spines of the books as if they were his friends.
It didn’t take him long. He pulled down a large black volume, crouched on the floor, and began rifling through the pages. O’Bannon stood to the side, watching.
“Here it is,” Darcy said, barely a minute later.
I knelt down beside him and read the passage he indicated. There it was. Verbatim.
“Darcy… how did you find it so quickly?”
“I-I read it once.”
“Recently?”
“No. But I remembered.”
I flipped the book around and looked at the spine.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,
it said. The subtitle was:
The Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
The quote he had found was from one of the stories: “The Premature Burial.”