The Singing Bone (41 page)

“Trina after she killed the babies.”

“Are you talking about the Smith twins?”

Alice's lips were chapped. She bit at the dried skin. She scratched her arms and put her fingers in her mouth. “It's pay day!” she said brightly. “It's your day to pay!”

Detective Simon lit another cigarette and passed her the pack. “Your mother's here,” he said.

“My mother?” Alice looked around the room. “Where?”

“She's waiting outside.”

Alice motioned with her thumb to the door. “Is she coming in?”

“No.”

“Should I go get her?”

“That's all right.”

“I don't want to go with her.”

“Where would you like to go?”

She shrugged. “California?”

“Can you tell us what happened on the night of February second?”

Alice stared at him. “What's today?”

“It's the eighth.”

“Oh. Maybe. If I go backwards.”

Any evidence Alice gave, Detective Simon reasoned, would be thrown out. Her mind was gone. He'd asked her mother, “Did your daughter have any problem differentiating between reality and imagined events before?” And Alice's mother didn't know what he meant. She had circles under her eyes. “I ask”—Detective Simon went on—“and excuse me for saying this, but your daughter doesn't seem to be on the same page as the rest of us.” Alice's mother drew her eyebrows together and shook her head.

“Alice.” Detective Simon leaned forward. “Were there a lot of drugs around?”

“Oh, brother,” she said. “Around and around again.”

“Did you take drugs while you were staying with Jack Wyck?”

“Did I ever.”

“Did you have anything to do with the Smith murders?”

“Murders?” She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I wasn't in that scene. Is that how it ended?” She looked at Detective Simon. Her eyes were nearly black, he saw, and her hair tangled around her pale face, her lips tinged blue. She was shaking.

“Are you cold?”

“Is that how it ended?”

“How what ended?”

“The play.” Alice's teeth began to chatter. The doctor in the emergency room had said she was severely underweight. Anorexic, the doctor said.

Detective Simon reached for another cigarette. “We have someone we'd like you to talk to.” Without Alice's full account, they'd never get Jack Wyck. Stuart's statement was all they had to prosecute him with, and a child's testimony wouldn't go far unless it was corroborated.

“My mother?”

“No, though she wants to see you, too. A doctor.”

“A doctor? Wasn't I just in the hospital?”

“Yes—this is a different kind of doctor.”

“Oh, I see.” She shrugged and pulled her knees up to her chest. “All right.”

For a long time, Alice and Detective Simon sat that way, in silence. Detective Simon watched Alice. She wasn't like the other girl—Trina. She didn't cry or yell or call out for Jack Wyck. Sometimes Alice propped her chin in her hands and looked into the two-way mirror that obscured a psychiatrist, a police officer, and Alice's mother. She stared into the mirror, her dark eyes fastened on nothing. “What are you looking at?” Detective Simon asked.

Alice pointed to the mirror. “That girl,” she answered. Detective Simon looked where Alice was looking. He saw Alice pointing to herself in the mirror.

“That's you,” Detective Simon said, and Alice tilted her head to one side and folded her arms on the table in front of her.

“Oh.” She brought her hand to her forehead. “I guess it is. I thought it was someone else.”

  •  •  •  

They put Alice under observation. She liked that phrase. “I'm under observation,” she told her mother when she visited on Sunday evenings. They sat in the TV room together. Her mother held her hand and pulled her close in a shaky hug. “It's okay, Mom,” Alice said. “I'm under observation.”

“You're right where you need to be, honey.” Her mother combed Alice's hair with her fingers and patted her cheeks.

Alice had been there for three weeks. Next week, she would begin coming and going. She knew she wasn't in a play—or she was almost sure she did—and she knew Molly and Stover were dead. She knew that Trina was in jail, and Mr. Wyck and Lee. All in jail. Everyone but Alice. Alice was in the nuthouse.

“I'm not surprised that you believe you're responsible for Molly's death,” Alice's psychiatrist told Alice.

“I really don't know,” Alice said. “I mean, I don't remember. I remember being with Molly in the woods. My brain—” Alice said. She brought her hands to her temples. “It's not working right.”

“You've said there were a great many drugs at Jack Wyck's house. That might have something to do with the lapses.”

“Maybe.”

The psychiatrist wasn't very old. She wore glasses and a gold sweater and wouldn't let Alice smoke in her office. When she crossed her legs her wool trousers made a shushing noise. She wore a silk scarf tied like a belt. Her hair was parted neatly down the middle. Alice thought she was pretty. “Mr. Wyck would like you,” Alice said.

“Why is that?”

“Because—” Alice hesitated, thinking. It wasn't because she was pretty. It was something else. She was confident. “He'd want to break you open and see what was inside.”

“Do you mean he'd want to hurt me?”

“He breaks people open. He takes possession of their souls.”

“Alice, no one has that much power. No one can take a soul.”

“He can.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

She nodded.

“He can't hurt you anymore.”

“Can't he?” Alice demanded. She was sure he could. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror she thought he looked back at her. It was like that time they switched bodies, but the psychiatrist said that hadn't really happened, either.

“Absolutely not.”

“I loved him, though,” Alice said.

“He was the first man you cared about.”

“I never met my father.” Alice jiggled her foot as she spoke. She thought about the only photo she'd ever seen of her father. It might be the only photograph of him anywhere. It was black and white. He wore a pale shirt, a dark tie. He stood in front of a shingled house that, by some trick of the camera's lens, seemed to be sliding downhill behind him. His face was obscured by a shadow, but Alice always imagined that he was smiling, that if you could see his face, he would be looking straight at the camera.

“What happened to him?”

Alice shook her head. “My mother never talks about him. He left her when she got pregnant.”

“That's unfortunate.”

Alice looked up at her. “Unfortunate,” she repeated. “I am unfortunate, but Molly and Stover are dead.”

“It's very sad.”

“It's horrible.”

They convinced her. They convinced her that she didn't kill Molly. They said she felt guilty, and that was why she said that in the police station about killing Molly's character—that she was brain-damaged from drug use and couldn't recall things properly just yet. But she would. She would in time for trial.

Alice had a lawyer. “You're only seventeen,” her lawyer said. “You're a juvenile. He'll be prosecuted for sex with a minor. You never should have been there. I'm going to ask for full immunity in return for your testimony.”

“Does that mean I'm innocent?”

“Guilty, innocent, we don't really talk in those terms unless we have to. You're not going to be put on trial for anything. You will not see the inside of a jail cell. You will never be convicted of any crime.”

So Alice told them everything they wanted to know. Detective Simon smiled at her. “How are you feeling?” he said. “You look a heck of a lot better. I see some color in those cheeks. Someone just needed a good meal and a week of sleep.”

“A month of Sundays,” her mother said. Alice wasn't used to so much attention. She smiled and looked down.

“I want to show you some pictures today, Alice.” Detective Simon laid out a row of photos in front of her. One was of Allegra. Alice pointed to it and said, “That's Allegra. She lived with us for a while.”

“Do you know where she is? We'd like to talk to her.”

“No—I don't know. I was pretty out of it by that time.” Alice remembered standing at the screen door holding a kitten and watching Allegra disappear into the row of trees that lined Mr. Wyck's property. “He was so angry when she left,” Alice said. “He broke everything in the house.”

“So he didn't know she was leaving?”

“No.”

“What about these other women? Take a look at them.” He set the picture of Allegra aside. “Do you recognize anyone?”

Alice studied the photos. Some of the girls were Alice's age. She recognized two girls—not because she'd ever seen them, but because their photos had been in the newspaper for a long time. They were the two that had disappeared. Alice looked up at Detective Simon.

“Do you know them?” he asked.

Alice shook her head. “No. I mean, just from the newspaper.”

“Look again,” he said.

Alice did. One of the girls was wearing a striped V-neck sweater. Alice studied the necklace she wore—a little gold key. She leaned over the photo and then picked it up and brought it closer.

“What is it?”

“The necklace—” she said, pointing to the necklace. “This looks ­familiar.”

“Have you seen that?” It sounded like he was holding his breath.

Alice bit her lip. She remembered the toes of the black boots she'd found in the crawl space peeking out from beneath the bed. She thought of the way the sole came up on one side and how on that side she always felt a pain in her foot.

Creeper, what are you looking at? He was behind her. One boot lay on its side—and the key, the small golden glow—winked at her. It had slipped out and dangled there. He might see it, too, she thought frantically. The key was hers. She found it.

Alice put her hands on her face, covering her eyes.

He'll take it away! She couldn't let him see. Nothing, she said. You. And she turned his face towards hers gently. These were the kind of kisses he liked. So she could keep the key. Because even though it was disobeying—

“What is it, Alice?” Detective Simon leaned towards her and she was about to tell him, but then her mind closed up. She had the sense that she forgot what she'd just been looking for. It happened a lot. The doctor had a name for it—what was it called? Trauma-related psycho—psycho-
something
.

Psycho. Alice, you're fucking psycho.

“Psych-o-gen-ic,” she whispered. “Psychogenic amnesia.” She stared at Detective Simon. “I don't know,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

“We need you to try to remember, Alice,” Detective Simon said.

Alice looked at her hands. The nails were bitten down. Alice's brain was like a house where doors kept slamming shut. Entire rooms were off limits.

Tell me what happened, Alice.

Detective Simon sighed. “It's all right. You have the big picture. You have the major events. There's plenty that you do remember, just keep trying.”

It was reasoned by the professionals that as long as Alice could piece together the major events and the timeline and place Jack Wyck at one murder scene—they could put him away for a very long time. He'd already been charged with fraud and conspiracy to commit murder. Trina had admitted to everything, but she refused to implicate Jack Wyck. Alice had seen a picture in the paper of Trina on the witness stand, her mouth a straight closed line, like it was stitched shut, like the lips were sucked in and sewn from the inside. Maybe Mr. Wyck did it while Trina slept, switching bodies, arriving in the form of a doctor, holding a big black leather medicine bag pregnant with tricks.

But everyone said she had to stop thinking Mr. Wyck could do things like switch bodies. It was physically impossible. No one could. Still. Enough things were possible that people used to say were impossible. That's what Allegra always said. So why not?

Trina got the possibility of parole. Twenty years to life. That was what Trina Malik got. She didn't look up at Alice when she testified. She let her hair hang in front of her face. Every day she came into the courtroom with it pulled back in a neat ponytail and at some point, though everyone could see her lawyer telling her not to, she began working the rubber band out of her hair, letting the dark strands gradually fall in front of her.

After Alice testified, Detective Simon patted Alice on the back. He brought her a Coke. “You did a terrific job in there, Alice,” he said. “One more to go. How are you feeling?”
One more to go
meant Mr. Wyck.

“Okay, I guess,” Alice said, taking small sips of the soda. It burned her throat, which closed a little each time she thought of Mr. Wyck, like he was inside trying to strangle her or stitch her mouth shut. The week before Mr. Wyck's trial, Alice hardly slept.

When the day finally came, Alice looked down the courthouse hallway to the open window. Her hair was clean and hung in a single heavy braid down her back. It was spring. The trees outside the courthouse were turning green. The flowers were opening. She felt the breeze from the open window on her cheeks. Someone—a stagehand—had opened it.
No,
Alice thought.
There are no stagehands here.
Perhaps a janitor—or maybe another witness—opened it. These old buildings could get stuffy and Alice could feel that the heat was still on.
This is not a play
. This is a courtroom, not a theater. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she saw Stuart Malloy standing there, his hands in his pockets, looking out. He was taller—as tall as his sister. He turned and began ambling his way towards her, face down, stepping one foot in front of the other as if he were on a tightrope.