City of Masks Read online

  Lila stopped, panting shallowly. She sat curled slightly forward, hands tight over her stomach, knees pushed together hard. A defensive posture held so hard the whole bed vibrated with her tension.

  The sudden silence startled Cree. Jack's face had flushed red and his eyes bulged as if there was a huge pressure inside him.

  Cree gave it a full minute, but Lila didn't move. "And - ?" Cree prompted gently.

  "And that is all I am up for today," Lila said flatly. She wasn't speaking to either Cree or Jack, just telling it to the world at large: Enough. Still she held herself rigid. The way a hunted rabbit freezes, Cree thought, hoping it will disappear into the background.

  And then Lila exploded: "Isn't that enough? I mean, doesn't that give you the general idea? You want more? What is the point?" And she broke suddenly, a tree going over in a gale. She folded over her knees, crying wrenchingly.

  Agonized for her, Cree almost went to her side. But some instinct told her to wait. And after a moment Jack took the initiative.

  He bent and held her shoulders and rocked her tenderly. "Come on now. Let's get out of here. Let's go home. Come on, darlin'."

  For a long time Lila stayed bent double as if her back had cracked under the strain. And then she unfolded without a word and numbly let him lead her out of the house.

  9

  CREE GOT BACK TO HER hotel room feeling sticky and nauseous. Lila's wrenching tale had shaken her. The tension was contagious, and when they'd emerged from Beauforte House into the baking heat of daylight, Cree realized that she'd been sweating heavily the whole time.

  Throughout Lila's narrative, Cree had picked up her feelings, resonated with them to an unprecedented degree. And Lila's experiences were fantastic. They didn't jibe with anything Cree had encountered in her own work or with accounts from any other legitimate researchers of parapsychology.

  If Edgar were here, he'd ask her to put words to the feeling - both a good friend's curiosity about her special talents and a scientist's recommendation to try to articulate even the most subjective experience.

  The only thing she could compare it to was the one time she'd seen a tornado. She and Mike had been driving to visit his parents in Southern Illinois and had heard the warning on the car radio, telling them that funnel clouds had been sighted nearby. Cree thought it would be fun to witness one of nature's most powerful phenomena. So despite Mike's misgivings, they pulled over and got out to sit on the hood of the car, where they had a good view of seemingly endless wheat fields beneath a troubled sky. First the light turned a sick yellow as the clouds clotted at the horizon, fraught with occluded lightning. Around the car, sudden turbulences followed pockets of calm so still they felt airless. The scattered trees along the road alternately shivered and then sagged submissively, and the grain fields dimpled and cratered and went still again as if some gigantic, invisible creature had landed and rolled and bounded up again. Then an obscene nipple formed in the overcast and suddenly a snake of cloud was there, groping toward the earth a couple of miles away. And as the funnel vortex solidified and began to rove, Cree had recognized her own arrogance: That mindless hunger and power wasn't fun or interesting or anything but terrifying, and there was nothing in her thoughts but a prayer the rooting snout wouldn't turn her way.

  That's how Lila's psychic "weather" felt.

  And the scariest part was that she knew Lila had quit before recounting the really bad stuff. Lila had a lot more to tell.

  The three of them had driven back to the Warrens' lakeside house, where Cree recovered the polygraph harness and other gear. Lila clearly needed to rest, so they didn't discuss anything, but Cree made an appointment to meet them at their residence again later in the afternoon. On the way back to the hotel, she had stopped at a restaurant and stared at the lunch menu for ten minutes before realizing she couldn't eat anything.

  Now it was just one o'clock and she felt used up, shaky, sick.

  She was about to take a shower, try to scrub away the feeling, when the phone rang.

  "I'm just checking in to see how our cash cow is doing." Joyce's pragmatic-sounding New York voice, so good to hear. "Do you think there's something there for us?"

  It took a moment for Cree to decide what to say. " I 'm not sure. We've got a really traumatized witness. So far, I'm thinking this is probably psychological. But we were just at the house, and I did, you know . . . pick up that . . . there might be something . . ."

  "You're sounding very faint, Cree. I can hardly hear you."

  Cree made an effort to speak into the receiver: "I think this might be a case where the witness has other issues, maybe even a brain disorder. We were just at the house . . . I haven't looked at her tapes yet."

  "You don't sound too good. You taking care of yourself?"

  "I'm okay."

  Joyce made a skeptical sound. "So is New Orleans as terrific as they say? Hint, hint - don't you need me to come help with research?"

  "Not yet. We'll see, maybe I'll have a better handle on this by tomorrow."

  "All right. In the meantime, I've got that list of research resources you asked me to compile. New Orleans is very into its history and architecture, so there's quite a bit - historical societies up the proverbial ying-yang, universities, museums - "

  "Great. Well, e-mail it to me. Also, Joyce, there's a murder case I'd like to know more about. Took place two years ago - a New Orleans TV news anchor, Templeton Chase. Can you do a search on that and prepare me a brief?"

  "Love to," Joyce said. And she meant it: Joyce loved the forensic dimensions of their cases and was very expert at digging. Cree didn't look forward to Joyce's reaction when she found out the murder was unsolved but figured her love of investigation would bring her around in the end.

  "Look for something in your mail tonight," Joyce said. "Let's see . . .in other news, Ed called, he's excited about the situation there. I gave him your hotel number, so you'll probably hear from him. Your sister called, ditto. Oh, yes, and that Mrs. Wilson left a message while I was away from the desk. What're we going to do about that, Cree? I mean, I know this is a weird field anyway, but - a dog?" She signed off with a wet-sounding kiss.

  There was a lot to do before meeting Lila and Jack at four. Cree made a mental list. Several times since touring the house with Lila, Cree had caught herself gripping her own wrists and anxiously kneading them, a gesture of Lila's she'd unconsciously appropriated. Yeah, you needed to identify with the client, but you couldn't do any good for a person who was going to pieces if you went to pieces along with her. So, first on the list, very definitely: Get shit together.

  That meant taking a shower and spending half an hour naked on a towel on the floor. Deirdre was the one who had suggested she try yoga as a countermeasure for the dangerous confusions of her work, and it had proved a real help. Cree's routine began with pranayama, breathing exercises that focused her mind on the simple act of drawing air deep into her body and exhaling completely. Now she was able to shed some of the whirlwind thoughts and emotions, and after a few minutes a glow of energy began to burn in her stomach, just below her belly button. Once the breathing rhythm and the tummy-ckfera glow were well established, she segued into neck rolls and other basic stretches, and then moved through a series of asanas, holding each position until the warmth spread up into her chest, her neck and scalp, out her limbs and into every muscle and nerve. She finished by sitting in lotus position, hands held on her lap in the dhyana mudra, mind just hovering. A vast silk banner rippling gently in boundless space, buoyed in the subtlest uprising breeze, she thought. Then she let go of that, too. Found a timeless time of no words, no images at all.

  And after a while she was back. By the time she unhooked her ankles from her thighs, her skin had goosebumped from the hotel room air-conditioning, and she felt pretty sure she could handle the rest of the day. She got up and put on some comfortable clothes.

  She cleared the desk of tourist literature to make room for the polygraph register and tape recorde
r. Then she turned on her laptop and plugged in the portable roll-paper fax machine Edgar had adapted. When the computer had booted up, she opened a program that imported data from the register's tape and exported it as digital data the fax printer would convert to graphic images. The little machine began its stuttering mumble and started spooling out paper. A quick glance at the first foot or so told Cree that everything was working as it should: five jagged lines superimposed on an index grid measuring intensity levels against the passage of time.

  They'd been in the house for just over half an hour, so it would be a long scroll; Cree figured it would require about fifteen minutes to print. As the paper folded loosely back and forth on the floor, Cree rewound the audiotape and reviewed the notes on her pad. She drew an approximate floor plan of the whole building from memory, then traced the route the three of them had taken through the rooms, blocking out the places where Lila had seen the shoes, the smoke snake, the wolf, the pig-headed man. It was a good enough schematic to make some sense out of Lila's data, but as soon as possible it would be essential to locate accurate architectural plans for the house.

  When the scroll finished printing, Cree ripped the paper free, creased the rounded bends, and set the haphazard zigzag stack on the right side of the desk. She unfolded the first three feet. Along the bottom of the paper, the time was printed out in five-second intervals, showing that she had pushed the start button at 11:04:32.

  At first the scroll seemed to verify Cree's earlier expectations of general, increasing agitation across all indicators, with the lines breaking into earthquakelike jagged spikes when Lila told of the really harrowing stuff, or when they'd entered the rooms where she'd had those experiences. But she quickly got a surprise: Lila had experienced some kind of crisis of subconscious unease barely three minutes into their tour of the house.

  11:07:20. Cree turned on the audio recorder and listened to the first few minutes, matching the recorder's digital clock readout with the times on the polygraph scroll. From the speaker came the rustling of Cree's clothes as she adjusted the fanny pack, the echoey sound of their footsteps in the front hall. Lila: "I'm not sure where to start." Cree reassuring her. More noise of movements. Then Jack's voice, explaining about the chandeliers.

  Lila's first period of acute agitation occurred as they stood in the front parlor. The episode lasted only a couple of seconds, and then Lila's signs had stabilized again as she reminisced about her childhood.

  What had caused it? Cree puzzled over it briefly, then listened to that section of the tape again. No great inspiration came to her, but still she felt a growing buzz of excitement: These anomalous readings were often the most revealing. The problem was to figure out what caused them. Sometimes, yes, the witness's signs responded to what someone was saying, but the stimulus could as easily be the part of the house they were in, or something in the room that their eyes happened to fall upon. Or even the subliminal perception of some other presence.

  Cree jotted a note on the scroll, underlining the moment for future reference, and then jumped as the phone rang. She paused the audio playback and answered.

  "This is Cree."

  "Ms. Black," a man's voice began, "I'm Paul Fitzpatrick, the psychiatrist who's working with Lila Warren — perhaps she mentioned me? Do you have a moment?"

  "Of course." Somehow, Cree wasn't at all surprised. She knew what was coming.

  "I'll get right to the point. Jack Warren just called me, very upset. He tells me you are some kind of spiritualist or medium who — "

  "No. I'm a psychologist who does parapsychological research."

  "Fine. In any case, he says that Lila is having a crisis and that you're going to meet with them later today?"

  "That's correct."

  "The Warrens requested that I be there. Frankly, Jack thinks your involvement is damaging to Lila. And I'm inclined to agree with him."Despite the potentially hostile content of what he was saying, Dr. Fitzpatrick kept an even, moderate, professional tone. He had a nice voice, Cree decided, warmed with only a hint of a Southern accent.

  "And what does Lila think?"

  A pause. "That's a fair question," Fitzpatrick admitted. "At this point, I'm not sure. But I intend to help her sort it out. I wanted to talk to you now to enlist your cooperation, as, I hope, a person of conscience. To assure that there is not any kind of an upsetting . . . scene . . . if we decide - "

  "If who decides to get rid of me?"

  Another pause. "You've made your point, Ms. Black - "

  "Excellent," Cree said. "Then I'll see you at four. I look forward to meeting you. And thank you for calling." She hung up.

  Maybe it was some lingering high from the yoga session, but Cree didn't feel particularly pissed off at Jack or Dr. Fitzpatrick. You couldn't blame people for being dubious; Cree herself had been a lifelong skeptic until that day with Mike nine years ago. And when the change had come it was a painful, wrenching epiphany, neither expected nor welcome, that she wouldn't wish on anybody. Fitzpatrick was simply doing his job: Lila's problems could very well be purely psychological, and the intrusion of a supernatural theory could derail a therapeutic process big time. And Fitzpatrick really hadn't come across as too much of an asshole.

  In any case, Cree reminded herself, you had to develop a thick skin for skepticism, or parapsychology wasn't the field for you.

  She put it out of her mind and focused on Lila's tapes, unfolding sections of scroll and listening to the audio, sometimes rewinding and listening again, jotting notes as they occurred to her. It took over an hour, but when she was done she felt she'd identified several features worthy of further attention.

  The first was the high level of agitation in the front parlor, when Lila had outwardly seemed relatively calm. The kitchen itself stood out because neither Lila's verbal narrative nor vitals showed any particular escalation of tension - the readings suggested that whatever Lila subconsciously knew or felt or perceived, it wasn't obviously connected with the Chase tragedy. Of course, conclusions were premature at this point.

  Cree picked up another anomalous peak that had come when they were in the former slave quarters, though Lila had not recounted anything important there. Why would Lila react to this space — what did she remember or sense about it? Or were her signs unconnected to the place and simply responses to something she was thinking about?

  In the hallways and rooms where she claimed to have seen things, Lila's readings showed classic features of fear, anxiety, panic, confusion. By the time they'd gotten to the master bedroom and she was telling about the pig-headed man and the awful changelings, her signs had become chaotic, wild and ragged to a degree that would frighten a cardiologist, let alone a psychologist - extreme but appropriate responses to remembered trauma.

  Given what this data was telling her, Lila had shown amazing determination and strength to do as well as she had. The woman did indeed have a core of great resilience and self-control. How to get her to trust it, take assurance from it?

  Cree checked her watch and realized it was time to head over to the Warrens'. She refolded the scroll and put her notes away for further review. One thing she knew for certain, though: Whatever else the scroll might reveal, it had already proved that Lila Beauforte Warren really had experienced something deeply, profoundly disturbing. Now it was up to Cree to determine just what that was.

  10

  CREE ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE a few minutes before four to find a black Jaguar parked carelessly and nearly blocking the end of the Warrens' driveway. She was just parking on the street when another car approached and also paused in front of the house, an older BMW with a vanity plate that read SHRINK. It didn't take much to deduce that the driver was Dr. Fitzpatrick. They both parked, got out, and approached each other warily.

  Fitzpatrick was a long-limbed man around Cree's age, with thick brown hair and a congenial face that reminded her faintly of Alan Alda. He wore white linen pants, a white shirt with its sleeves turned back on his forearms, and an unruly blue
tie.

  They met at the end of the driveway and stopped to look each other over.

  "Dr. Fitzpatrick, I presume," Cree said.

  "Hello, Doctor Black." He smiled at her surprise and explained "After we talked on the phone, I took the liberty of doing a bit of on-line detective work on you. I'm very impressed with your credentials. And relieved."

  He extended a hand, and Cree shook it, thinking that his doing research in advance was better than their getting inside, going territorial, and having to lay out their resumes side by side to see who had the longer list of honors and degrees.

  "Relieved?"

  "Yes. That you have sufficient background to understand why multiple approaches - conflicting approaches - to therapy can be injurious to the patient."

  The unspoken conclusion being, and will therefore back out of this without an embarrassing tussle. Still, Fitzpatrick's tone was amiable and respectful. It was hard to take much offense.

  They started walking up the drive. "How much has Lila told you about what happened to her at Beauforte House?" Cree asked.