But Patrick refused to let me touch him. With unexpected energy, he kicked at me, then punched me with balled-up fists. I caught his wrists, but he continued to kick.
"Patrick! What is going on?"
"I won't go with you! I won't!"
"You have to."
"You're pig snot," he said. "You're a bucket full of pig snot."
I let go of him. It was one of Ashley's expressions, a description she had used for Joseph.
"Why don't you ask him what color it is?" Joseph remarked dryly.
I had asked Ashley that more than once.
"Green swirled with pink," Patrick said.
Joseph grimaced at the "correct" answer. "It is creepy, Katie. It's as if she's inside him."
"I know." I reached for Patrick again. He squirmed away and lurched toward Joseph, who caught him. "Will you let Joseph carry you?" I asked.
Joseph's eyes widened. "You're trying to give me a heart attack, aren't you."
"At least, this time, you're headed down."
Patrick finally agreed, and Joseph helped him put on his shoes, since he wouldn't allow me. We used Joseph's belt and a sheet to tie Patrick onto Joseph's back, in case he let go.
"Now he's secure, but my pants aren't," Joseph complained.
Opening the room's door, I looked both ways and led them down the hall. I climbed down the fire escape first, testing it for safety. When I reached the bottom, Joseph slowly descended with Patrick on his back. Each time Joseph's foot felt for a rung, I held my breath. I kept checking the back windows of the hotel to see if anyone was watching us. So far, so good.
The fire escape ended several meters off the ground. I argued with Patrick about letting me catch him. Finally, I pushed a pile of garbage bags and boxes over to the spot to soften his fall, then stepped in and caught him at the last moment.
He wrenched himself away from me. "I hate you!" he said. "You're goose poop."
I bit my lip. It was another of Ashley's descriptions of Joseph, inspired by our experience of walking through fields fouled by Canadian geese. As funny as the expression sounded, Patrick was deadly serious, his eyes angry-angry and scared.
"All right, take Joseph's hand. Let's walk as quickly as possible."
Patrick's behavior didn't make sense, I thought, as we hurried up the alley then backtracked down the front street. If Patrick was tapping into the record of Ashley's thoughts and feelings, why didn't he act this way toward Joseph?
Suddenly I realized my mistake. At the beginning, when Patrick had described Ashley's hair and clothes, I had thought that he was seeing a talking image of her, seeing her the way people are supposed to see ghosts. But Dr. Parker had said that he was experiencing her emotions and thoughts, nothing more. Ashley had been proud of her curly hair and had loved the coat and shoes that Patrick described. He knew what she looked like not by seeing some kind of image, but simply through her thoughts about herself.
Even after talking with Dr. Parker, I had imagined that Patrick "heard" Ashley's thoughts the way one might hear a ghost-as if Ashley were narrating her story, as if she were an actress delivering lines for his benefit. But he was experiencing her thoughts and feelings as if she were inside his head. Perhaps the more he connected with her psychic trace, the less able he became to distinguish her thoughts from his own. Immersed in her thoughts, he had transferred her feelings about various people to people in his own life.
Patrick wouldn't recognize Joseph by Ashley's thoughts about his physical appearance, for Joseph looked nothing like he did twelve years ago. But if Patrick experienced her negative thoughts about "my tutor," he might apply those thoughts and feelings to his own tutor-me. If Patrick "heard" Ashley's thoughts as if they were his own, then his belief that his father had killed November made sense: Ashley would have thought, "Daddy hates November.
Daddy wants to get rid of him," meaning Trent; but to Patrick, "Daddy" was Adrian.
"This is it, Katie," Joseph called out to me, trying to catch my attention. "You're not leaving me alone with this kid, are you?"
I turned around and saw that I had walked past the S.U.V. "Sorry."
Patrick got in the back of the vehicle and I in the front. When I checked to see if his seat belt was fastened, he glared at me.
Joseph must have read the pain on my face. "Don't take him so seriously, Katie. His brain has been scrambled by whatever Trent gave him."
But I knew it wasn't the effect of the sedative. Patrick had begun to pull away from me the night I discovered him playing the piano the same way Ashley had played to annoy Joseph. And the look on his face now-defiance and fear-I had seen that two days ago when rescuing him from the pond.
A new thought occurred to me, one so strange and chilling, goose bumps rose at the back of my neck. At the pond I had been trying to get Patrick to tap into the moments when Ashley was lured onto the ice, hoping she saw who was responsible and that he could learn the murderer's identity from her. What if he had learned that it was "my tutor"?
I turned slowly toward Joseph and watched him drive, popping Life Savers into his mouth, wiping the sweat off his brow, looking like a normal, overweight guy on a warmish day in March. Joseph? Impossible.
But he had been there the day Ashley had died. And he knew I was taking Patrick to the pond after school in an effort to learn about her death. He knew about the reappearance of November, but I hadn't told him the cat was killed-our conversation at Tea Leaves was cut short when Trent and Margery arrived. It wouldn't have been hard to find an orange tabby that resembled November from a distance. Had Joseph hidden among the trees that day? Had he called me on the cell phone, disguising his voice, baiting me, knowing the one reason I'd leave Patrick for a moment was to protect him from a furious Robyn?
"What is it?" Joseph asked, suddenly aware that I was gazing at him.
We were stopped at a red light, and his brown eyes looked steadily into mine, a small frown forming above them. "Is something wrong?"
I shook my head and looked away. "No, I was just thinking."
How well did I know this man? No better than I knew Trent, or Robyn, or Brook-l only thought I did because he seemed to be on my side.
The light changed, and Joseph drove on.
He had no reason to kill Ashley, I told myself. He had no reason to bait Patrick. People, sane ones, don't murder people they simply don't like. And even if there was some motive sufficient for deadly revenge against the Westbrooks, something I knew nothing about, why would a person who hated them that much suddenly help me rescue Patrick? It didn't make sense.
I wished I could talk to Sam. I could count on Sam to say what he thought, to argue with me till we were blue in the face, till we got to the truth. Sam was the only one I could really trust.
Joseph pulled into the empty lot at the front of the auction house. The long building was closed up tight. I don't see Adrian," he said, sounding a little miffed.
"He's probably in the back. He said he would take care of the alarm and the dogs, then meet us at the front door."
Joseph glanced in the rearview mirror, then climbed out and opened the door for Patrick. Dizzy from the ride, Patrick grasped Joseph's hand as he walked toward the building's front entrance. I watched them a moment, then checked the driveway that circled the building for fresh tire tracks. As mad as my suspicion of Joseph seemed, I didn't want to be here alone with him.
Two sets of tracks scarred the sandy road. Someone has followed Adrian, I thought. Trent?
The auction house door opened. Relief shone on Adrian's face.
"Patrick!"
Patrick ran to his father, but his feet were clumsy and his balance off. He tripped and fell. Adrian rushed out the door, picked up his son, and carried him into the auction house. Joseph and I followed, Joseph quietly closing the door behind us.