“What about Holly?”
“My sister was the worst kind of prisoner.”
“Solitary confinement.”
He looked startled.
I said, “It’s the phrase that came to me when I saw her room.”
His eyes moistened. “Yeah. A fucking life sentence. At least I had the ability to get myself out of there. She didn’t- no skills. She’s-was- one step above retarded. Which was perfect for him. Soon as she finished high school, he fired the maid, used Holly to clean the house.”
“Did Holly object?”
“Holly didn’t object to anything.”
“Was he ever… inappropriate with her?”
His eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”
“Sexually inappropriate. Overtly abusive.”
He shook his head. “You guys have that on the brain.” Then his face tensed with anger. “Why? Do you know something?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Nothing at all.”
“Then why’d you ask that?”
I phrased my words carefully. “They lived an isolated life, which is consistent in abuse situations. He used her as a cleaning woman. It seemed almost… marital.”
“Don’t go smearing us,” Burden said. “We’ve been through enough.”
“I wasn’t planning to-”
“Let me make one thing clear: If my name or the name of anyone in my family shows up in any report you write for him or anyone else, I’ll fucking sue you with the full weight of this corporation behind me. And if you mention anything to him that gets him hassling me- about anything- I’ll personally take it out of your hide. I may look like some fat fuck, but I can bench-press two hundred, okay?” He raised his shoulders and pounded the desk for emphasis. “That clear?”
I said, “I’m not writing anything up. And I came here to talk about your sister, not you.”
That shook him. He rolled his knuckles on the desk, gorillalike, then sank low in his chair. Several moments passed before he spoke.
“Before you showed up I told myself I was going to give you diddly, maintain my dignity, and here I go pushing the me-buttons.” He gave a sick smile. “God, I’m turning into him.”
“I doubt it,” I said, looking pointedly at the photos on the wall. “What you’ve created for yourself looks a hell of a lot different from what you grew up with.”
He covered his eyes with one hand. “They’re the best,” he said in a choked voice. “I can’t let this affect them.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Do you know what it’s like for a six-year-old to walk out of her house and have reporters scream at her? To have kids at school taunt her about her aunt shooting at children? I had to move both of them out of town. I was just thinking about bringing them back. I can’t let this change them- can’t let him into our lives.”
“Of course not,” I said. “The narcissism would be destructive.”
He nodded. “That’s exactly what my therapist called him. Narcissistic personality disorder- sees himself as the center of the world. Like a three-year-old who’s never grown up. Incurable- I shouldn’t expect him ever to change. My choice was either learn to accept him or stay away from him. At first I thought I could learn, get some kind of casually friendly thing going. But after I met Gwen and her family, saw the way families should be, it made me realize what he’d done to all of us. How truly fucked he’d been. It made me hate him more.”
I listened to all of it, but two words rang in my ear: my therapist.
Burden saw my incredulous look, smiled, and shrugged.
“Mine’s different,” he said. “One of the good ones. Straight shooter. I started seeing him back in college- the counseling center. I was having stomachaches, thought I was going to die the way my mother did. He was doing volunteer work, never earned a cent. Took him two years to fix me up; then he booted me out into the real world. He’s retired now. Lives down in Del Mar, plays golf. Once in a while I get down there. Dr. George Goldberg.”
I didn’t recognize the name.
“He didn’t know you either. I called him and asked him about you. He asked around, looked you up, said your credentials were good, you seemed to have a decent reputation. Otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to see you, blood pressure or no blood pressure.”
“Did Dr. Goldberg ever meet your father?”
“No. The bastard never knew I was seeing anyone- otherwise he would have done something to stop it. Or take it over. Now he’s hired you. Pretty funny, huh? Sweet fucking ironies of life.”
“I don’t know what he told you,” I said, “but I’m not working for him, haven’t taken a penny from him, and don’t intend to. I got involved because the police asked me to help the kids at the school cope with the aftermath of the sniping.”
He said, “Yeah, the kids. How’re they doing?”
“They’re doing all right, but the idea of a total stranger- a girl- shooting at them is still baffling to them. So when your father offered me the chance to learn something about Holly, I took it.”
“Holly,” he said. He stared at his desk and shook his head. “I know what she did was evil. If my kid had been out in that yard I’d have wanted to kill her myself. But I still feel sorry for her. I can’t help it.”
“That’s understandable. Do you have any idea why she did it?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been racking my brain- Gwen and I both have. I mean, Holly was weird- she was always weird. But never violent. Not that I knew her well- so many years between us, we never had a damn thing in common. Never had any kind of a relationship. She didn’t cling the way other little sisters do- she always went her own way, doing her own thing. And he was always comparing us- holding me up to her as an example, driving a wedge between us.”
“What was her own thing?”
“Sitting in her room listening to the goddam radio and dancing in circles. Crazy-looking. I used to be embarrassed about her. She was… dull. I didn’t want anyone to know she was my sister.” He gave a sick smile. “Now it’s out, huh?”
I smiled and nodded.
He said, “Gwen has four brothers. She’s very close to all of them. She couldn’t understand how a brother and sister could be total strangers. Then when she met him, she understood- how he kept us separate, always had. To control us. The hell of it is that recently, we were trying to change things. Gwen initiated it. She invited Holly over, tried to get to know her better. Also to get Holly away from him. Gradually. Out of her shell. She was willing to put the time into Holly. In some ways, what’s happened has been harder on her than me.”
“You had Holly over to your house?”
“Yes. Just a few times- maybe three or four.”
“When was this?”
“This summer. August, September. We made sure to invite her when he was gone. He travels a lot, visiting his suppliers. The business is his fucking life- his real kid. That fucking asshole Graff he created- his own personal Frankenstein doll. We knew if he found out he’d try to fuck it up, and on top of that, Gwen refuses to have him anywhere near Amy. We didn’t even want to call, because for all we know, he’s got the phones tapped- he’s a real gadget freak, loves all that paranoid high-tech stuff. Still reliving his spook days in the army-”
“He was a spy?”
“Some sort of Intelligence work. Supposedly. He’d hint around at it, then if I asked him, refuse to talk about it. ‘I can’t get into that, Howard.’ Sadistic. Always on a fucking power trip.”
“He told me he was in cryptography, demographics.”
“Like I said, he lies. Maybe he made all of it up, was a fucking latrine cleaner. Anyway, Gwen drove by the house until she caught Holly out in front, taking out the garbage. She tried to strike up a conversation, told Holly to call us next time he was out of town. A few weeks went by- we didn’t think she’d follow through. But then she did. We had her over for Sunday dinner. Turkey. Chestnut stuffing. One thing I did remember is she’d always loved turkey.”