“And then suddenly,” Cutter said, “you get free.”
Chapter 9
The scent of the delicious supper Helen had prepared — pineapple chicken — was still in the air when Roy met Chief Cutter at the front door. The chief had called and said he had significant information for them, and wanted to come straight over. Roy of course said yes.
Barely inside, a slightly hyper Cutter, Stetson in hand, said quietly, “Is your boy around? I don’t want him to hear any of this.”
“He’s upstairs,” Roy said, frowning, “with your man Jackson, showing him around the work-out set-up...” He dropped his voice to a whisper, not wanting his wife to hear. “...and probably show him how his ‘friend’ is well-positioned to keep an eye on things.”
Cutter managed a little smile. “Glad to get any help in the security department where we can get it.”
Helen took the chief’s windbreaker and hat, then asked if she could get anyone coffee and no one, including herself, took her up on it. She settled again in a straight-back chair with the fireplace — going strong now — at her back and the police chief and her husband on the couch, the two men angled toward each other.
The chief said, “Doctor, does the name Dennis Lee mean anything to you?”
Roy shook his head firmly. “No.”
“Probably a young patient. Possibly a little person.”
“No.”
“The parents, perhaps? Efram Lee? Rosemary Lee?”
Roy sighed, mildly irritated. “No. You have access to my files. My memory is pretty fair, but go ahead and check.”
“We will. And now I have to share some things with you that you may wish you could purge from your memory...”
Roy and his wife listened in shocked silence to the report of what had been recently learned by Detective Hodges about the three murdered doctors, and by Cutter and Hodges at the bizarre crime scene in Timber Lake.
When the chief had finished, Roy asked, “If I’m understanding this, our attacker would be rather young, even now.”
Cutter nodded. “We have the date of birth, which makes him twenty-one. Old enough to vote and to drive and, apparently, to kill.”
Helen, a look of alarm frozen on her features, asked, “Do you think the poor child was born a homicidal maniac, and kept chained up by his parents for their own safety? And his?”
Simultaneously shrugging and shaking his head, Cutter said, “We’re unlikely ever to determine that, unless we capture Dennis Lee and are able to question him. Of course, we don’t even know if he’s capable of speech.”
“Why on earth,” Roy said, appalled, “did these people handle their child in such a reprehensible way?”
“We can only speculate,” Cutter said.
Her brow tense, Helen said, “Well, I wish you would speculate. Frankly, my head is spinning. You can’t drop us into this horror show without some guidance... some professional interpretation.”
“Any educated guesses,” Roy said, leaning toward their guest, “would be greatly appreciated, Blake.”
Cutter was clearly torn. As a doctor, Roy could understand the chief’s hesitance to wade into the kind of conjecture that might come back someday to bite him in the tail.
“Please,” Helen said. She was framed by the glow of flames behind her as she sat forward, her interlaced hands between her knees.
Cutter sighed and nodded. “We know from the medical files of two of the deceased physicians — Carter and Meyer — that the parents did take measures to help the boy. These measures appear to have been radical and ill-considered, and undoubtedly caused the child great discomfort... even agony. But they did try.”
Roy said, “And this torment could have driven Dennis into a state of fury. And madness. Leading to the restraints that at some point were initiated?”
The chief nodded glumly. “My hunch is he was raised for a time in a relatively benign, even normal manner. From the glimpses we’ve had of him on these grounds, and the strength and agility he’s displayed, Dennis must have followed a regular exercise regimen as a child, one he continued throughout his captivity, eventually on his own. It would appear that — later, when they felt it necessary to restrain him at night — he was during the day given more free reign of his little world. With no window and a steel door, why not at least allow him that small freedom?”
Despite the nearby fire, Helen hugged herself as if from the cold. “But a bucket for his... it’s horrible.”
“There was a bathroom on that floor,” Cutter said. “My guess is that for a time he was led there by his nurse. But as time progressed, and he regressed into something less, or perhaps more, than human... he was treated like the caged animal he’d become.”
“Why do you think,” Roy asked, “the child’s very existence was kept secret? Hidden away, like something in a gothic novel?”
A tiny shrug. “I’m afraid the boy’s grandmother was like something, someone, out of a gothic novel — she was vain and valued her place in society, which is fairly pathetic in a town the size of Timber Lake. Why Efram was complicit in all this, I’m afraid we’ll never know. Perhaps he felt the family had a reputation, a respectable facade to maintain. But there you have it.”
“And,” Helen said, a profound sadness taking over her features now, “the boy’s mother was dead. Not there to speak up for him. To defend him.”
“And possibly,” Cutter said, gesturing with an open hand, “to a certain kind of twisted mind, Dennis was the ‘murderer’ of the mother, Lula, who was after all the only child of Efram and Rosemary.”
Helen hunched forward again, folded hands between her legs. “The grandparents got caught up in a vicious spiral of their own creation — the less compassionate and understanding they were of their grandchild, the worse, the more animal he gradually became.”
Cutter nodded. “Again, speculation... though the crime scene speaks for itself. But one thing remains a big, troubling question mark.”
“Which is?” Roy asked.
Head cocked, the chief said, “We almost certainly know why the three doctors were murdered — two of them put the child through hell, and the other one delivered the malformed baby at the cost of the life of Dennis Lee’s mother.”
“Vengeance by definition,” Roy said, “always has a motive.”
“Right.” Cutter looked at him, hard. “So why have you and your son been targeted? You have no connection to the Lee tragedy that we can find or that you seem to know of.”
“‘Seem to know of,’ Blake? You think I’m holding back on you?”
“If you are, now is the time to stop doing so.”
Roy’s laugh was bitter. “I only wish that were the case. Everything you’ve told me is some kind of living nightmare. Nothing to do with me, and sure as hell nothing to do with Richie.”
Helen’s voice came smalclass="underline" “What about... jealousy?”
Cutter looked sharply at her and Roy winced, saying, “What? Why?”
Her shrug arrived in slow motion. “Perhaps he’s jealous of the love and care you take with Richie. Perhaps he’s watched us from a tree or some damn place and resented the normal father-and-son relationship you have.”
Roy said, “That seems crazy to me.”
Cutter, not so sure apparently, said, “And nothing else about this thing seems crazy to you, Roy? But even if Helen’s right about the motive for including Richie in his threat, why is this poor twisted soul looking at you and your boy in the first place? There has to be a connection!”
Roy frowned. Something in his mind sparked. He asked, “What county is Timber Lake in?”