Elliot raised his eyebrows. “Michael’s your ex-husband?”
“Yes.”
“And he blames you for Danny’s death?”
“He says I never should have let him go with Jaborski. But this isn’t Michael’s dirty work.”
“He sounds like an excellent candidate to me.”
“ No. ”
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely. It’s someone else.”
Elliot tasted his cognac. “You’ll probably need professional help to catch him in one of his tricks.”
“You mean the police?”
“I don’t think the police would be much help. They probably won’t think it’s serious enough to waste their time. After all, you haven’t been threatened.”
“There’s an implicit threat in all of this.”
“Oh, yeah, I agree. It’s scary. But the cops are a literal bunch, not much impressed by implied threats. Besides, to properly watch your house… that alone will require a lot more manpower than the police can spare for anything except a murder case, a hot kidnapping, or maybe a narcotics investigation.”
She stopped pacing. “Then what did you mean when you said I’d probably need professional help to catch this creep?”
“Private detectives.”
“Isn’t that melodramatic?”
He smiled sourly. “Well, the person who’s harassing you has a melodramatic streak a mile wide.”
She sighed and sipped some cognac and sat on the edge of the couch. “I don’t know… Maybe I’d hire private detectives, and they wouldn’t catch anyone but me.”
“Send that one by me again.”
She had to take another small sip of cognac before she was able to say what was on her mind, and she realized that he had been right about the liquor having little effect on her. She felt more relaxed than she’d been ten minutes ago, but she wasn’t even slightly tipsy. “It’s occurred to me… maybe I wrote those words on the chalkboard. Maybe I wrecked Danny’s room.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Could have done it in my sleep.”
“That’s ridiculous, Tina.”
“Is it? I thought I’d begun to get over Danny’s death back in September. I started sleeping well then. I didn’t dwell on it when I was alone, like I’d done for so long. I thought I’d put the worst pain behind me. But a month ago I started dreaming about Danny again. The first week, it happened twice. The second week, four nights. And the past two weeks, I’ve dreamed about him every night without fail. The dreams get worse all the time. They’re full-fledged nightmares now.”
Elliot returned to the couch and sat beside her. “What are they like?”
“I dream he’s alive, trapped somewhere, usually in a deep pit or a gorge or a well, someplace underground. He’s calling to me, begging me to save him. But I can’t. I’m never able to reach him. Then the earth starts closing in around him, and I wake up screaming, soaked with sweat. And I… I always have this powerful feeling that Danny isn’t really dead. It never lasts for long, but when I first wake up, I’m sure he’s alive somewhere. You see, I’ve convinced my conscious mind that my boy is dead, but when I’m asleep it’s my subconscious mind that’s in charge; and my subconscious just isn’t convinced that Danny’s gone.”
“So you think you’re — what, sleepwalking? In your sleep, you’re writing a rejection of Danny’s death on his chalkboard?”
“Don’t you believe that’s possible?”
“No. Well… maybe. I guess it is,” Elliot said. “I’m no psychologist. But I don’t buy it. I’ll admit I don’t know you all that well yet, but I think I know you well enough to say you wouldn’t react that way. You’re a person who meets problems head-on. If your inability to accept Danny’s death was a serious problem, you wouldn’t push it down into your subconscious. You’d learn to deal with it.”
She smiled. “You have a pretty high opinion of me.”
“Yes,” he said. “I do. Besides, if it was you who wrote on the chalkboard and smashed things in the boy’s room, then it was also you who came in here during the night and programmed the hotel computer to spew out that stuff about Danny. Do you really think you’re so far gone that you could do something like that and not remember it? Do you think you’ve got multiple personalities and one doesn’t know what the others are up to?”
She sank back on the sofa, slouched down. “No.”
“Good.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Don’t despair. We’re making progress.”
“We are?”
“Sure,” he said. “We’re eliminating possibilities. We’ve just crossed you off the list of suspects. And Michael. And I’m positive it can’t be a stranger, which rules out most of the world.”
“And I’m just as positive it isn’t a friend or a relative. So you know where that leaves me?”
“Where?”
She leaned forward, put her brandy snifter on the table, and for a moment sat with her face in her hands.
“Tina?”
She lifted her head. “I’m just trying to think how best to phrase what’s on my mind. It’s a wild idea. Ludicrous. Probably even sick.”
“I’m not going to think you’re nuts,” Elliot assured her. “What is it? Tell me.”
She hesitated, trying to hear how it was going to sound before she said it, wondering if she really believed it enough even to give voice to it. The possibility of what she was going to suggest was remote.
At last she just plunged into it: “What I’m thinking… maybe Danny is alive.”
Elliot cocked his head, studied her with those probing, dark eyes. “Alive?”
“I never saw his body.”
“You didn’t? Why not?”
“The coroner and undertaker said it was in terrible condition, horribly mutilated. They didn’t think it was a good idea for me or Michael to see it. Neither of us would have been anxious to view the body even if it had been in perfect shape, so we accepted the mortician’s recommendations. It was a closed-coffin funeral.”
“How did the authorities identify the body?”
“They asked for pictures of Danny. But mainly I think they used dental records.”
“Dental records are almost as good as fingerprints.”
“Almost. But maybe Danny didn’t die in that accident. Maybe he survived. Maybe someone out there knows where he is. Maybe that someone is trying to tell me that Danny is alive. Maybe there isn’t any threat in these strange things happening to me. Maybe someone’s just dropping a series of hints, trying to wake me up to the fact that Danny isn’t dead.”
“Too many maybes,” he said.
“Maybe not.”
Elliot put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Tina, you know this theory doesn’t make sense. Danny is dead.”
“See? You do think I’m crazy.”
“No. I think you’re distraught, and that’s understandable.”
“Won’t you even consider the possibility that he’s alive?”
“How could he be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could he have survived the accident you described?” Elliot asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And where would he have been all this time if not… in the grave?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“If he were alive,” Elliot said patiently, “someone would simply come and tell you. They wouldn’t be this mysterious about it, would they?”
“Maybe.”
Aware that her answer had disappointed him, she looked down at her hands, which were laced together so tightly that her knuckles were white.