South Of Hell lk-9 Read online

  Dr. Sher nodded. “Jake said her mother might have been murdered by her husband,” she whispered.

  Joe let out a small sigh. “We don’t know that for sure. And Amy’s memories are too vague. I’m not even sure they are real.”

  “Do you think she was abused?” Dr. Sher asked.

  “She said once her father hurt her.” Joe hesitated. “She seems to be afraid of men.”

  But even as Joe said that, she had a new thought. Amy didn’t seem to be afraid of Jake Shockey. This morning, when Shockey had come to the hotel to check up on her, Amy had been calm. She had even shaken Shockey’s hand when Joe introduced him.

  But Amy still didn’t seem to want to be around Louis. Every time he was near, Amy’s eyes would grow wary. It struck Joe suddenly: Was Amy responding to Louis this way because he was black? The school in Hell… that playground was filled with only white kids. Any school Amy went to in Hudson was probably the same, and she had left school early to take care of her aunt. Before that, she had been isolated on the Brandt farm. Was it possible the girl had never seen a black man before?

  She heard the plink of the piano and looked over at Amy. She was running her fingers lightly over the old ivory keys.

  “Amy? Could you come over here, dear?” Dr. Sher said.

  Joe looked back at Dr. Sher. “You want to start now?”

  Dr. Sher gave her a gentle smile. “No reason to delay. Why don’t you take a seat over by the piano, Joe?”

  Amy came forward. Joe rose, and Dr. Sher motioned for Amy to sit down on the settee. Joe retreated to the piano bench.

  “I like your piano,” Amy said.

  “Can you play the piano?” Dr. Sher asked.

  Amy nodded, smiling. “With my feet.”

  “Your feet?”

  Amy began pumping her feet up and down.

  “There is a player piano in the farmhouse,” Joe said from her corner.

  “Ah,” Dr. Sher said.

  “My legs were too little to reach, but I saw Momma do it,” Amy said.

  Dr. Sher leaned forward. “Do you remember much about living on the farm, Amy?

  Amy’s feet stopped moving. “Sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  “My memory isn’t very good,” Amy said softly. “I can’t always tell the real stuff from the dream stuff.” Her eyes seemed to be searching the doctor’s face. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Dr. Sher nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  “And sometimes…” Amy’s voice drifted off.

  “Go on, dear.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if I am crazy.”

  She had been speaking so quietly Joe had to lean forward.

  “Are you a doctor?” Amy asked suddenly.

  Dr. Sher glanced at Joe, then looked at Amy. “Yes, I am.”

  “Can you help me get better?” Amy asked.

  “I think so,” Dr. Sher said.

  Amy sat back in the settee with a sigh. For a second, Joe wondered if she were going into one of her sleep episodes. But Amy just seemed to be deep in thought.

  “Can we talk about the dream you had last night?” Dr. Sher asked. “The one about the barn?”

  Amy looked up. Then she nodded slowly.

  “Did that feel more like a dream or a real memory?” Dr. Sher asked.

  “It was the first time I had that one,” Amy said. She suddenly sat up straighter, again searching the doctor’s face. “But I don’t think it was a dream. I think it was real, and I want to remember it better.”

  “It might be hard. You were probably very young.”

  “I want to remember,” Amy said, her voice growing agitated. “I need to remember so I can help her.”

  Joe was waiting for Dr. Sher to say “Your mother,” but the doctor was quiet, studying Amy. Maybe confronting the memory of her mother’s murder was too much to put the girl through right now. Joe was about to suggest that they bring the session to an end when Dr. Sher rose, came over to Joe, and bent low.

  “Jake told me that Amy trusts you,” the doctor said quietly.

  Joe nodded.

  “I might be able to access her memories under hypnosis,” Dr. Sher said. “How do you feel about that?”

  Joe was impressed with how Dr. Sher had handled things so far. “I’m okay with it, if Amy is,” she said.

  Dr. Sher nodded and went back to sit down next to Amy.

  She reached over and took her hand. Amy didn’t resist, didn’t even jump at the contact.

  “Would you like me to help you remember things better?” Dr. Sher asked.

  Amy nodded quickly.

  “Do you know what hypnosis is?”

  Amy shook her head.

  “It’s like going to sleep but being awake enough to tell me what you are dreaming about.”

  Amy looked to Joe and then back at the doctor. “Okay,” she said softly.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  “I know,” Amy said.

  It took only minutes for Dr. Sher to hypnotize Amy. Joe had thought there would be swinging pendulums and hokey words, but the doctor had used only her voice to coax Amy into a sleep state. Joe had read that certain people were more susceptible to hypnosis than others. And she knew that doctors themselves didn’t even agree on its validity. For every doctor who claimed it was a true altered state of consciousness, there was another to discount it as just heightened focus.

  Watching Amy now, lying on the red settee, Joe wasn’t sure what to believe. At least, the girl looked peaceful.

  “Amy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like you to go back to when you were little. Can you remember that?”

  “Yes.”

  Joe could see the deep and even rise of Amy’s chest through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.

  “Where are you?” Dr. Sher asked.

  “Farm… in my room. It’s pink.”

  Joe remembered Louis describing a bedroom with pink wallpaper.

  “Can you see anything else?”

  “A kitten. I have a kitten.”

  Suddenly, Amy gave out a small cry.

  “What is it, Amy?” Dr. Sher asked.

  “He killed it.”

  “Killed what?”

  “My kitten. I found it in the barn, and I wanted to keep it, but when I brought it into the house, he… he…”

  “It’s all right, dear. It’s all right.”

  For a moment, there was no sound in the room except Amy’s breathing. Gradually, it returned to normal.

  “Can you tell me about the barn?” Dr. Sher asked gently.

  “The barn,” Amy whispered.

  “Can you go into the barn?” Dr. Sher asked. “Can you go there and tell me what you see there?”

  The girl’s brows knitted slightly.

  “Are you in the barn, Amy?” Dr. Sher prodded.

  “I don’t want to go in the barn.”

  Joe sat back and stifled a sigh.

  “That’s all right,” Dr. Sher said. She glanced over at Joe and gave a subtle shake of her head.

  “Ohhhh…”

  Joe’s eyes shot to Amy. She had her hands over her face and was moaning.

  Dr. Sher leaned closer. “Amy, what is it?”

  “No, don’t… no, don’t…” Amy said.

  Joe rose from her seat.

  “Amy?”

  “Momma! Momma! Oh, no… don’t hurt Momma! Stop! Stop!”

  “Amy, it’s all right.”

  “No! No! I don’t wanna go! I don’t wanna go in the hole!”

  Joe came forward quickly. “Get her out of this,” she said.

  Dr. Sher looked up. “She needs to go through this.”

  Joe turned away.

  “Where is he putting you, Amy? What’s the hole?”

  “Outside, outside… it smells so bad… dark. And if I cry again, he’ll throw me down the hole. I have to be quiet until Momma comes to let me out. Be quiet…”

  And suddenly, Amy fell quiet. Joe looked back.
She had brought up her knees and was lying on her side, curled into a ball. Dr. Sher had her hand on Amy’s forehead. She looked up at Joe with questions in her pale blue eyes.

  “Doctor?” Joe said quietly.

  Dr. Sher turned.

  “Can you ask her about the barn again?”

  Dr. Sher turned back to Amy. “Amy? Amy, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to you go into the barn. Can you go in there?”

  Joe had moved closer, and she watched Amy’s face. Her eyelids were fluttering, like she was trying hard to see something.

  “What do you see in the barn, Amy?” Dr. Sher asked.

  “Horse. Brown horse.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Cow… just a cow.”

  Amy fell quiet. Joe was watching her face for any sign of distress, but there was nothing.

  Then a soft sound. Amy was humming. Joe came up to stand behind Dr. Sher’s chair.

  Amy was hugging herself and singing. She was singing the same nonsensical song that she had sung last night before falling asleep.

  Amy sang the song over and over, until her voice finally tapered off into soft, even breathing.

  Dr. Sher sat riveted, a stunned look on her face. She switched off the small tape recorder she had set on the table by Amy’s head. Finally, she leaned forward and took Amy’s hand.

  “Amy, I want you to wake up now,” she said evenly. “We’re going to count back from ten together, and when we get to one, you’ll wake up, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  At one, Amy opened her eyes. She looked first at Dr. Sher and then at Joe. She smiled shyly.

  “Did I do okay?” she asked.

  Dr. Sher smiled back. “Yes, dear.”

  “I sang the song,” Amy said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “But this time, I sang the whole thing. I never did that before. I can remember it now.”

  Her smile widened. She swung her legs to floor and sat up, suddenly very alert. She focused on Joe.

  “I’m hungry. Can we get a pizza?”

  That morning, back at the hotel, Joe finally had persuaded Amy to try a slice of the leftover pizza, telling her that while it may not have been on Aunt Geneva’s list of edible foods, it was on Joe’s. Amy had readily agreed to try it, willing to move on. Seeing how well Amy looked now, Joe wondered if she might be ready to move on in other ways as well. Maybe Dr. Sher was right. Maybe there was no way through this for Amy except by facing the ugliness head-on.

  “Yes, we’ll stop and get a pizza,” Joe said.

  Amy’s face lit up with a smile.

  Joe turned to Dr. Sher. “I’m sorry I tried to stop you. I should have trusted you. It’s just that I don’t know what I am seeing here.”

  Dr. Sher was watching Amy put on her jacket. “I really think I need to see her again. You can’t expect much from just one visit.”

  Joe nodded.

  “That song she was singing,” Dr. Sher began.

  “She’s done it before. It seems to calm her.”

  “But you don’t know what it means to her?”

  Joe shook her head. “I’ve asked her. She doesn’t remember it when she’s awake.”

  “Apparently, she was able to retrieve it during the hypnosis. The song must be a good memory, something she goes to when the bad memories get to be too much.”

  “The song’s nonsense, though,” Joe said.

  Dr. Sher was watching Amy and looked back at Joe. “What?”

  “The words. They don’t make any sense.”

  Dr. Sher’s eyes locked on Joe’s. “They make perfect sense. She’s singing in French.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was an advantage to working as a cop in a college town for almost fifteen years, Louis decided. Shockey not only knew the best doctors, but he knew lawyers and judges, too. One in particular, an arthritic old judge named Herman Fells. Fells, whose own daughter had been murdered twenty years ago, agreed to fit them in on his family court calendar between two other pending cases. Shockey had been forced to allow an agent from Family Services to attend the hearing, but because of his contacts, he had managed again to get someone sympathetic to keeping Amy out of the system.

  Louis glanced at his watch. They had been inside the courtroom for more than an hour now — Joe, Shockey, and Amy. At first, he had been miffed that Joe had asked him to stay out in the hallway. Amy would be more relaxed — and lucid — if Louis was not in the small courtroom, Joe had told him. Louis hadn’t asked Joe why she thought Amy didn’t seem to mind Shockey being close.

  It bothered him — but not enough to get in the way of things.

  He looked at the doors. Shit, what was taking so long?

  Maybe they didn’t have enough information. Dr. Sher had suggested that Amy get a routine exam to rule out any physical problems, and Amy had passed. And Dr. Sher’s own written assessment declared Amy competent to tell the judge how she felt about her father, Owen Brandt, and why she didn’t want to be with him. That had to be enough to get her into a custody hearing.

  The other things — her memories or dreams, the strange blackouts — those were like defense mechanisms, Dr. Sher had said, the brain’s way of blocking out pain until it was ready to handle it.

  He could understand that. He might not understand Amy, but he sure could understand the shield the brain brought down over some things. It had been only recently, on his last trip up to Michigan, that some of his own memories — the bad ones — had shoved forward. Like the time he had locked himself in a closet to avoid a belt whipping from one of his foster fathers.

  But at least he knew that memory was real. Some of this stuff with Amy, like the smelly hole, the ropes, the dead kitten, he wasn’t so sure about. He supposed they could be based in reality, maybe filtered though an overactive imagination.

  But Amy being able to sing in French — something she couldn’t do when she was awake — was one thing he didn’t understand.

  He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the paper Joe had given him last night. Dr. Sher, who had lived in Paris and spoke fluent French, had written out some of the words she had heard Amy singing. The English words he and Joe had heard had been only their own ears hearing the phonetic version. But Dr. Sher, listening to the tape over and over, had come up with a transcription of what she believed Amy was singing:

  Caches dans cet asile ou Dieu nous a conduits

  unis par le malheur durant les longues nuits

  nous reposons tous deux endormis sous leurs voiles

  nous prions aux regards des tremblantes etoiles

  His own college French wasn’t good enough to read it, so he called Dr. Sher that morning for a translation and had written it beneath the French:

  Hidden in this sanctuary where God has led us,

  united by suffering through the long nights

  we rest together, rocked to sleep beneath their

  cover we pray beneath the gazes of the trembling stars.

  He stared at the words, shaking his head. There was a logical explanation behind it. There had to be.

  Joe had been the one to bring up the idea that Amy might have a split personality. But Dr. Sher had discounted it as too rare. And even if it were true, it still meant Amy had to have learned French somewhere.

  That morning, Louis had made a phone call to the Hudson police and asked one of the cops to take a more thorough look inside Geneva’s home. The cop had called back a while later and told Louis he had no found no foreign-language books, no keepsakes from places afar, and no brochures, photos, or magazines that suggested that Amy had ever ventured far from home. The cop also said there wasn’t even a television in the home. And school records confirmed that Amy had stopped attending in the third grade.

  As for the neighbor, Mr. Bustin, the one Amy remembered for his Go Blue room, the cop found out that Amy had visited him only a few times, that he did not speak French or any other foreign language, and
that he had nothing in his home that Amy could have picked up.

  A soft tapping drew his attention down the hall. A family was huddled at the end, a black woman and five children. One of the kids, a girl who looked about six, was banging on the wall with a broken Barbie doll.

  Louis folded the paper and put it back into his pocket.

  He had almost bought Amy a doll that morning. Joe had sent him to Kmart to pick up things Amy would need for her court appearance. He had walked around the store for a long time before he actually started putting things in the cart.

  His only experience shopping for kids was with Ben Outlaw. That was easy. Boys were quick, picking out T-shirts usually based on the cartoon graphic on the front. If things didn’t fit perfectly, Ben never cared. He’d just roll up the sleeves or cut off the cuffs.

  But Joe’s list for Amy had been very specific.

  Plain, not hip-hugger, blue jeans, size two. T-shirts with a minimum of a half-sleeve and no printing on the front, size small. A parka with a hood. Plain white underpants, no bikinis, size three. A pair of sneakers, size five. A plain white training bra, size 32A, no padding.

  The bra had almost done him in. He finally found a clerk who helped him with that one.

  Before he left the store, he had decided that he wanted to get Amy something personal, something Joe hadn’t put on the list. After ten minutes of walking around among the toys, he gave up and headed toward the checkout. As he passed the jewelry counter, he saw a display of cheap necklaces. He settled on a small heart-shaped locket on a silver chain.

  He hadn’t shown it to Joe or Amy at the hotel room, because he wanted to give it to Amy in private. He hoped it would help him make a connection that Amy hadn’t yet allowed him to make.

  The courtroom doors opened with a soft bang. Louis rose quickly as Shockey came toward him.

  “What happened?” Louis asked.

  “The kid was great,” Shockey said. “Judge Fells said he believed her stories about Brandt’s abuse, but he didn’t completely buy the fact that she may have seen Brandt murder her mother. He wasn’t willing to dismiss it totally, either. He wants Dr. Sher to dig deeper.”

  “How long did he give us?”

  “Ten days,” Shockey said. “In the meantime, Family Services will notify Brandt that he has a hearing coming up. Brandt will have to get a lawyer and fight to get her back. He still might be able to do that if we don’t come up with something to prove him unfit.”