"In his prime, he was compared to a matinee idol. His eyes were the color of aquamarine. Sparkling. Charismatic. People felt hypnotized by him."
Rick gave the missing-person report back to Balenger and indicated a yellowed page from a newspaper. "I've got one of the murders. The thirteen-year-old boy who took a baseball bat to his father's head while he was sleeping. Hit him twenty-two times, really bashed his brains in. Happened in 1960. The boy's name was Ronald Whitaker. It turns out his mother was dead and his father sexually abused him for years. His teachers and the kids he went to school with described him as quiet and withdrawn. Moody."
"A common description of sex-abuse victims," Balenger said. "They're in shock. Ashamed. Afraid. They don't know who to trust, so they don't dare talk to anybody for fear they might blurt out what's being done to them. The abuser usually threatens to do something awful-kill a pet, cut off a penis or a nipple-if the victim tells anybody what's going on. At the same time, the abuser tries to make the victim believe that what's happening is the most natural thing in the world. Eventually, some victims feel everybody's an abuser in one way or another, that the world's all about manipulating people and they can't rely on anyone."
Rick pointed at the document. "In this case, the father took Ronald to Asbury Park on the Fourth of July weekend. A so-called summer treat. A child psychiatrist tried for several weeks to get Ronald to talk about what happened next. Eventually, the words came out in a torrent, how Ronald's father accepted money for another man to spend an hour alone with the boy. The stranger gave Ronald a ball, bat, and cheap baseball glove as a bribe. After the man left, the father came back to the room drunk and fell asleep. Ronald found a use for the baseball bat."
"Thirteen years old." Cora was sickened. "What happens to someone like him?"
"Because of his youth, he couldn't have been tried in a regular court," Balenger replied. "If he'd been of age, he'd have probably been found innocent by reason of temporary insanity. But in the case of a minor, a judge likely sent him to a juvenile facility where he received psychiatric counseling. He'd have been released when he was twenty-one. His court and psychiatric records would have been sealed so that no one could learn about his past and use it against him. Then it was up to him to try to move ahead with his life."
"But basically, that life was ruined," Cora said.
"There's always hope, I guess," Balenger said. "Always tomorrow."
"You sure know a lot about this." Rick studied him.
Is he questioning me again? Balenger wondered. "I was a reporter on a couple of cases like this."
"This hotel soaked up a lot of pain," Vinnie said. "Look at this report." The aged paper rustled in his hands. "The woman who owned the suitcase with the dead monkey in it. What was the name on the suitcase tag?"
"Edna Bauman," Cora said.
"Yeah, it's the same. Edna Bauman. She committed suicide here."
"What?"
"August 27, 1966. She took a hot bath and slit her wrists."
"Cora, your instincts are finely tuned," the professor said. "Remember you asked Rick to look in the bathtub? You were afraid something might be in there."
Cora shuddered. "Almost forty years earlier.''
"August twenty-seventh," Rick said. "When was the date of the obituary for her ex-husband?"
"August twenty-second," Balenger answered.
"Five days. As soon as the funeral was over, she came back here to where she and her then-husband spent their last vacation the previous summer." Vinnie thought a moment. "Maybe that summer was her last happy memory. That's when the photograph of the two of them and the monkey was taken. One year later, her life was in ruins. Surrounded by better memories, she killed herself."
"Yes," Cora said, "this hotel soaked up a lot of pain."
"But wouldn't the police or somebody have removed the suitcase with the dead monkey in it?" Rick wondered. "Why did they leave it behind?"
"Maybe they didn't," Balenger told him.
"I don't understand."
"Maybe Carlisle took it before the police arrived. Later, he returned it."
The group became silent. Balenger thought he heard the wind outside, then realized that the sound came from an upper level.
"The room that has the Burberry coat," Conklin said. "When I was in there, Vinnie thought to search the pockets."
"I found this." Vinnie handed a letter to Rick and Cora.
Cora read the heading and the date. "The Mayo Clinic. February 14, 1967. 'Dear Mr. Tobin: Your recent chest X rays indicate that the primary tumor has spread from the upper lobe of your right lung. A secondary tumor has appeared on your trachea. A new course of aggressive radiation needs to be scheduled at once.' "
"Tobin." Rick sorted through the pages Balenger had given him and found another yellowed newspaper clipping. "Edward Tobin. Philadelphia stockbroker. Age forty-two. Suicide. February 19, 1967."
"Right after he received that letter."
"February?" Vinnie asked. "Even if he was suicidal, winter's an odd time to come to the Jersey shore."
"Not if he intended to walk into the ocean and freeze to death before he drowned." Rick pointed toward the newspaper article. "The guy was wearing only a shirt and trousers when his body was found iced-over where the tide brought him in."
Again, Balenger was conscious of the shriek of wind above him. "Odd to have two rooms next to each other, both associated with a suicide."
"Not if you think about it," Conklin said. "Thousands and thousands of guests stayed here over the Paragon's many years. A changeover in each unit every few days. Decades and decades. Eventually, every single room would have been associated with a tragedy. Heart attacks, miscarriages, strokes. Fatal concussions from falls in bathtubs. Drug overdoses. Alcoholic rages. Beatings. Rape. Sexual abuse. Marital and business betrayals. Financial disasters. Suicides. Murders."
"Cheery," Rick said.
"A small version of the world," Balenger said. "That's why Carlisle was fascinated with his guests."
"A Calvinist God watching the damned, capable of intervening but choosing not to." Cora rubbed her arms in distress.
"If we're going to finish this tonight, we'd better keep moving." Rick gathered the pages they'd been reading. He put everything inside the file and zipped it into a slot on the back of his knapsack.
"We'll need to remember to return it to the file cabinet when we leave," the professor said.
"I don't know what the point would be," Vinnie said. "This hotel will soon be a pile of rubble."
"But that's a rule," Rick told him. "If we break it even once, eventually we'll break others. Then we'll merely be vandals."
"Right." Vinnie's tone became flat. "When we leave, we'll put the file back."
22
Flashing their lights around them, they left the balcony and headed up the stairs.
"Feels solid," Cora said. "But after what happened to Vinnie, to be safe maybe we should go up in single file. That way, there's less pressure on the stairs."
"Excellent idea." The professor was always ready with praise for Cora, Balenger noted. "Keeping a slight distance between each of us would be useful, too."
Forming a line, they climbed higher through the shadows. On occasion, the stairs creaked, making Balenger tense, but the wood remained steady, and he decided the sound wasn't any different from the normal sounds that old stairs made when someone climbed them.
The professor gasped as a bird on an upper banister panicked, bursting into the air, desperate to escape their intrusion. It slammed into a wall and swung away in greater panic. Blinded, it circled their lights, its wings thrashing. At once, it veered down the stairs, disappearing into the darkness.
"Well, that certainly got the old heart racing," Conklin said.