I said, “Did you have some brush with crime that led you to arm yourself?”
That amused him. “No, this was an ounce of prevention. Where I grew up- rural Wisconsin- guns are a part of any household, just like salt and meat and butter. No doubt you advocate gun control.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Being liberal- most mental health people are liberal, aren’t they? Stubborn believers in the basic goodness of humanity. In any event, I’m not apologetic about keeping arms, and the suggestion that somehow I’m to blame for what happened is absurd. Besides, Holly never shot at anyone- never would, never could. She didn’t know how to handle firearms. That’s why none of what they’re saying makes sense. Unless she was corrupted.”
“The night before the shooting,” I said, “did you hear her leave the house?”
“No,” he said. “I go to bed early. I’m an extremely sound sleeper.”
“Does the house have an alarm system?”
“Yes,” he said. “Though you’ll notice there’s no console pad in the entry hall. My system’s a good deal more subtle.”
“Did Holly know how to operate it?”
“Of course. She wasn’t imprisoned.”
“And she switched it off before she left?”
“The alarm never went off, so obviously she did. But she switched it on again- it was set when I woke up. I had no idea she’d left.”
“Was that typical of her when she left at night?”
“Leaving at night wasn’t typical.”
“Mr. Burden, Holly was seen taking walks around the neighborhood at night.”
More genuine surprise. “Well… she may have stepped out from time to time- to chase away a cat, or take some air. But by and large she stayed in her room. She had everything she needed right here.”
His stare was fierce. He looked at his watch. “I suppose that’s it for today.”
A statement, not a question.
I said, “Sure.”
He walked me to the door.
“So,” he said, “How’re we doing? What do you think?”
“We’re doing fine.”
He took hold of my sleeve. “She was an innocent, believe me. A naïf. IQ of eighty-seven. You, more than anyone, know what that means. She lacked the intellectual capacity to plot. And violence wasn’t in her nature- I didn’t raise her that way. She’d have no reason to shoot anyone. Certainly not children.”
“Would she have reason to shoot a politician?”
He shook his head, exasperated. “I can’t help but feel, Doctor, that you’re still not grasping who she was, the way she lived. She never read the papers, never cared a whit about politics or current affairs or the outside world. She slept late, listened to her radio, did her dances, cleaned the house. Scrubbed it until it sparkled. At the proper time, she prepared simple meals for both of us- cold food. I did all the cooking when cooking was called for. She liked her routine. She found comfort in it.”
He removed his glasses, held them up to the entry light and peered through them.
“It won’t be the same without her. I’ll be doing those things for myself now.”
During the time I’d spent there, the sun had set and I walked out into darkness. It enhanced the feeling of having been away for a long time. Having been on another planet.
An unsettling man. The portrait he’d painted of his daughter was bleak. But instructive.
Living in a cell.
Talking to herself.
Scrubbing everything spotless.
Not autistic, but aspects of her behavior had an autistic flavor: self-absorption to an extent that implied mental disorder.
Creating her own world. Like father, like daughter.
But he’d willed his isolation. Channeled it lucratively. The New Age Entrepreneur.
Had she encased herself in a bubble only to be trapped within? A victim of genetic insult? Environmental accident? Some incalculable combination of both?
Or had she taken on her father’s life-style of her own free will?
Had she been capable of free will?
She enjoyed doing things for me.
Had the purveyor of gadgets manufactured himself a house-cleaning robot- efficient, mechanical, like some high-priced toy out of his catalogue? Adapted her inadequacies and pathology to his needs?
I’ve done my reading on child psychology… know all the theories of child abuse… She wasn’t imprisoned…
A little too quick on the draw?
Or was I just letting clinical guesswork get the better of me because he wasn’t a likable man?
I reminded myself he was a victim, wanted to feel more sympathy, not the resentment that had grown within me during my incarceration in that cold, empty house.
I realized I was thinking of him, instead of Holly. Taken in by his narcissism.
I forced myself back to the main subject.
Whatever her motivations, an image of Holly Lynn Burden had emerged from the murky ground of the interview.
Early childhood loss.
Repressed anger.
Mental confusion.
Low intelligence.
Low achievement.
Low self-esteem.
Social isolation.
A young woman with no external life and a flood of unknown fantasies swimming through her head.
Dark fantasies?
Stir in a parental attitude that disparaged authority. Disparaged all schools, and one school in particular.
Add a sprinkling of new friendship, snipped cruelly by violence. Buried rage that buds anew. And grows.
Night walks.
Guns in a closet.
Mahlon Burden couldn’t have come up with a better profile of a mass murderer had I dictated it to him.
A profile of a time bomb, ticking away.
19
I got home to a dark, empty house. Over the last few months- the post-Robin months- I’d worked hard at learning to consider that soothing. Worked hard under the tutelage of a kind, strong therapist named Ada Small. Ever the conscientious pupil, I’d applied myself, gaining an appreciation for the value of solitude- the healing and peace that could come from moderate doses of introspection. Not that long ago, Ada and I had agreed to cut the cord.
But this evening, solitude seemed too much like solitary confinement. I switched on plenty of lights, tuned the stereo to KKGO, and cranked up the volume even though the jazz that blared out was some new wave soprano-sax stuff in a bloodcurdling-scream-as-art-form mode. Anything but silence.
I kept thinking about my meeting with Burden. The shifting faces he’d shown during the course of the interview.
The shifting attitudes he’d displayed toward his daughter.
There’d been an introductory display of grief, but his tears had dried quickly in the sanctuary of his computer womb, only to be followed by a shallow lament: I’ll be doing those things for myself now.
He might have been discussing the loss of a cleaning woman.
Once again I told myself not to judge. The man had been through hell. What could be worse than the death of a child? Add to that the way she’d died- the public shame and collective guilt that even someone like Milo was quick to assign- and who could blame him for retreating, gathering whatever psychological armaments he had at his command?
I let that rationalization settle for a while.
His behavior still bothered me. The detachment when he’d talked about her.
An IQ in the Dull Normal range…
It was as if her weaknesses, her failure to be brilliant, had been a personal insult to him.
I imagined a Burden family crest. Crossed muskets over a field of Straight A’s.
A man used to having his way. She’d upset his sense of organization, had been an affront to his system.
Using her to clean house. Prepare cold food.
Some sort of punishment? Or simply an efficient allocation of resources?