Complicit (20 page)

“But I didn't have depression to start with! And I don't know what that means. Psycho whatever you said.”

“Psychosomatic. It means the mind is capable of impacting the body. For some people, when they're sad or anxious, they feel that way. But for other people, sometimes their sadness or anxiety is expressed physically. Like getting a headache or a stomachache.”

“So a conversion disorder means getting a headache or a stomachache?”

She frowns. “That's what psychosomatic means. Physical symptoms manifested by psychic distress. Conversion disorders are more specific in that the patient displays severe or dramatic neurological symptoms, often linked to a past trauma. Say a woman tried to yell out to her husband before he was hit by a car, but wasn't able to; she might have bouts of muteness when triggered by things that remind her of the accident. She would literally be unable to speak. Sort of like a physical echo of pain. Think of it like a stuck memory.”

“Is that what's wrong with me, then? Do I have a stuck memory?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“My hands keep going numb.”

“It's happened again since I last saw you?”

“Three times in the last week.”

“Since you stopped taking your Prozac.”

Since Cate came back.
“Yeah, I guess.”

“And you think what happens to your hands might be the result of a conversion disorder? Not cataplexy?”

“My cataplexy isn't normal in the first place. And you're told me before it could be a stress reaction, not a real nerve thing.”

She blinks. “True. Well, is there an event in your past that your numbness might be connected to?”

“Yes,” I say. “There is.”

Dr. Waverly leans forward. “What is it?”

I suck in air and think of fate. I think of bloody hands digging in the dirt to bury my sister's secrets. Of raw skin and even rawer emotion. It's on the very tip of my tongue to tell Dr. Waverly what I did, burying Cate's stuff like that and the phone and the texts and the whole murderous truth of what I know about my sister and why I feel so
bad
about it.

But I don't.

Because what I'm also thinking about is:

Does Cate know what
I
did?

Oh, God.

“I'm sorry,” I say, and I get to my feet. The back of my heel bumps against the chair and comes close to tripping me. I grab for my backpack. “I need to go.”

“Jamie, please. I don't think—”

“I'm sorry,” I say again, but now I'm walking away. I have to leave. Dr. Waverly calls my name again, but I'm already at the door and there's nothing she can do to stop me.

FORTY-SIX

Cate knows.

Cate knows I have a conversion disorder.

Cate knows I buried evidence of what she did.

Cate knows I know she tried to kill Sarah.

Back out on the sidewalk, I march away from Dr. Waverly's office and the neat rows of Victorian cottages with all the grace of an ungreased windup toy. My limbs jerk and twitch and resist any sort of harmony. I don't understand this. I don't understand anything. When I buried Cate's things, I was so careful. No one saw. I made sure of that.

So how does she know?

The way she knows everything, I guess. Magic. Persuasion. Brute force.

But what does it mean?

That's a question I don't have an answer for.

I pull my hands from my pockets and stretch them out in front of me.

“Are you really all in my mind?” I ask them. “Is that what this is about? Because yes, yes, I know I did something wrong. God, do I know that. But I am so, so sorry—”

“Who the hell are you talking to, kid?” Someone bumps my shoulder as they pass by. I shy strongly to my left, cheeks burning, then skitter forward with my head hunched down. I don't turn to see who it was. I don't care. I know I look crazy.

You're talking to your hands.

Yeah, okay. That
is
crazy.

But maybe, just maybe, all this time, they've been talking to
me.

 

 

Next thing I know, I'm in my Jeep.

I'm driving toward the Ramirez ranch and my phone's ringing. The syncopated rhythm of “Evidence” fills the car, only it's no longer mournful and no longer beautiful. It's taunting now and I refuse to answer it. I won't talk to her. Not yet.

Instead I focus my attention on the breathing exercises I've been taught. The ones that are meant to keep me from snapping when my anxiety spins out of control. Like now.

Inhale for four.

Hold for four.

Exhale for eight.

Repeat.

There's an almost physical ache pulling at me as I head farther and farther into the valley. And away from Jenny. More than anything, I want to see her, feel her, experience more of her solace. But there's something I need to do first. Something I've needed to do for the past two years. Because if Cate knows I have a conversion disorder, then she
knows
I'm the one that took her bag.

So maybe this has all been about her needing to confess.

The muscles in my neck stretch catgut taut. Because the truth is Cate might feel guilty about a lot of things. Because giving me a book of Greek tragedies and having me unearth her buried secrets might only be the beginning of what she has to say. Because my sister could have more in common with the matricidal Electra than just a bad temper and a flair for the dramatic.

Just so you know …

The ranch is up ahead. I twist the wheel to park Dr. No on the shoulder, but the Jeep's moving too fast. It jolts into the underbrush, leaves slapping against the windshield, before coming to rest not far from where I left my bike all those years ago. I get out and look around. I still can't walk up to the front door and announce my arrival so I'll have to cut through the woods on my own. Light rain starts to fall. I pull the hood of my jacket up over my head.

I jam my keys into my back pocket. Then I start hiking.

 

 

I don't know what I expect to find when I get there—an empty hole in the ground. Cops with their guns drawn. Cate waiting in the shadows, plotting an ambush.

Anything.

What I
don't
expect to find is nothing—an undisturbed patch of rain-soaked earth nestled amid swirling mist at the foot of a leaning eucalyptus tree I'd discovered the day I'd come across the monstrous truth about my sister. I'd run through the woods with evidence of her crimes in my arms, panting, past flora and fauna, leaping over trickling streams, trying to get as far off the beaten path as possible.

Then I'd ended up
here.
Among swaying trees on the far side of a meadow filled with briar bushes and three-pronged poison oak leaves that glistened wet with oil and the promise of pain. One of the trees stood stunted and malformed. Its branches didn't grow up toward the sun, but instead twisted and turned back in on itself so that the whole structure looked like a sick kind of maze, one that bowed and barely cleared the ground, ruined by the weight of its own mass.

The perfect place to bury my sister's sins.

Lazy rain comes down harder. I fall to my knees and begin to dig. Like then, the only tools I have now are my own two hands. The dampness of the earth aids me, but rocks and grit bring up blisters and tear my skin. I break off a stick from the leaning tree and poke around with it to loosen up the clay pack beneath the topsoil.

Then I dig more.

About two feet down my mud-caked, bleeding hands strike nylon. I pull the bag out, wiping it down as best I can. After two years the fabric itself has rotted; the fibers frayed and blackened. But the waterproof lining still protects the contents. I rifle around. Everything's still there: the damning cell phone, long dead, the scorched gloves, the silver lighter, Cate's journal. The three books on hypnosis.

Deep Trance Hypnotism.

Induction.

Self-Hypnosis: A Guide to Mindful Self-Control.

I squint. Well, that last title is strange, considering Cate didn't hypnotize
herself.
Her inductions were meant for others. Schoolgirls. Me, even. I mean, she was kind of brilliant that way.

Curious, I crack the spine and hunch forward over the pages to keep them from getting soaked. Water streams down my nose and chin. The ink is smeared slightly and the paper stock holds a musty smell, but I have no problem seeing the passages that have been highlighted, the notes scribbled in the margins.

unable to validate mem. recovery; sstr uncooperative

per freud, repression as defense mech.

induction attempt per tx protocol

brain abnormality possible?

I'm confused. The handwriting's foreign and the language in these notes isn't Cate's. It's too full of sophistication, too void of emotion. I flip back to the inside cover of the book and that's when I see it—a stamp, not unlike the purple one marking Cate's stolen Sophocles as belonging to the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility. Only this one reads:
Property of Janette Waverly, MD.

My jaw drops.

Apparently the Sophocles isn't the first book Cate has stolen.

I jam the books back inside the rotting nylon bag, ready to stuff everything into the backpack I've brought with me. A small object slips through a hole in the frayed threads from one of the front pockets. It lands at my feet, splattering mud across my shoes. I bend at the waist to pick it up. It's not something I've seen before.

It's a statue. A small one. Of a tiger.

Or a tigress.

I stare at the carving for a long time. Long enough that my legs begin to tremble and a tingling creeps into my gut, because the cheap craftsmanship and the small chips of crystal in the eyes are familiar. Very familiar. Not only is this Cate's power animal, but it's also a match to another animal statue I know. One I've seen on a regular basis for, oh, the past ten years or so.

The stone carved owl from Dr. Waverly's office.

What the hell is going on?

I push my hair back from my eyes.

My phone rings.

I answer it this time.

FORTY-SEVEN

“Cate?” I bark, leaning up against the base of a pine tree with the phone wedged into the hood of my jacket to keep water from dripping on it. “Cate, I found it all. I found everything.”

“What's that, Jamie? What did you find? I can barely hear you.”

I nearly choke.
“Mom?”

Maybe she can't hear me, but Angie's words come through loud and clear. “James, where are you?”

I glance around at the mud-splattered bag, my mud-soaked clothing and shoes. “I'm nowhere. Just … out.”

“Well, come home. We need to talk.”

“Is this about leaving therapy early? Because—”

“You left therapy early?”

I pause. “Isn't that what you're calling about?”

“I am calling about the fact that the police showed up at the house this afternoon. Asking for you.”

“The
police
? Why?”

“They're looking into something that happened out in Berkeley. Somehow your name came up. I told them they had the wrong person, but they insisted on talking to you.”

“In Berkeley?”

“Something about a store being vandalized. There was
a fire.
”

Something goes off in my head. Very faintly. Like an alarm bell or some other sign of danger. “A fire? I have no idea what that's about.”

Angie's voice slips past high-keyed into the well-tuned register of
don't you dare humiliate me.
“Well, I don't, either. That's why you need to come and get it cleared up. The officer said someone reported your Jeep in the area during the night, right near where the vandalism happened.”

“What store are you talking about?”

“A pet store, I think. On College Avenue.”

That's when my ears begin to ring, loudly, a bright swelling of discord that mirrors my own confusion and drowns out Angie. Drowns out everything except my own recollection of the words Cate spoke to me the day after my date with Jenny.

Things got kind of heated up there last night, didn't they?

“Mom, who called in the tip to the police?”

“They didn't tell me that.”

“Was it Cate?”

“Don't use that tone with me, James.”

“Was it?” I whisper.

“I don't know.”

“I didn't
do
anything. Whatever it was, I didn't do it.”

There's a pause.

“Mom? You believe me, right?”

She sighs. Deeply. “All I know is I can't go through this again. I can't. Neither can your father. So you need to fix whatever this is. You need to—”

I hang up on her.

 

 

In the silence that follows I'm unable to move. Or reluctant to. Maybe it's the thought of the stunned look on Angie's face or the fact that she's more worried about her own mental state than she is about believing in me, but either way, for what seems like forever, I stand sculpture-still in the middle of the woods as rain streams down my face and from my eyes.

I could stay like this all night, I think. Inertia suits me. The prior righteousness that fueled the rush to dig up my sister's secrets now feels more like folly than relief. I'm no match for Cate in mind or motive. I don't know how she does it or why, but she's always one step ahead of me. For all I know, her setting me up with the cops about this pet store thing could be her twisted way of asking for my help. That would be Cate logic all the way.

Eventually, I force myself into motion and begin the long walk back out of the woods. My legs feel weak, drained, and it's a good twenty minutes before I reach the spot of road where I left Dr. No. By the time I get there, darkness has settled over the valley and the rain's trailed to a soft drizzle that makes it feel like God's spitting on me, or on everyone really, since nature's not something I like to take personally. I walk around to the back side of the Jeep, and lift the hatch with a groan. I go to heave the messenger bag inside, right next to Cate's offending window-breaking brick, and that's when I see it.