Chapter II
The social worker, shrink was a young woman with curly dark hair that she constantly ran her fingers through as if trying to pull the curls straight. She had pretty hazel eyes with green and amber flecks in them, dark tanned with Mediterranean features, skin tone and a magnificent Roman nose. Her teeth were white and she smiled rarely so that when she did, it was as if the sun came out. She introduced herself but did not offer to shake my hand and she had a broad New England accent. She told me her name was Connie Cavaliero.
“I know, I know,” she grumbled. “My Yankee accent.”
“I like it. Pak the cah,” I teased and she smiled at me.
“Do you know Dr. Deleon, too?”
“No. Why?”
“You sound alike.”
“He’s from Boston. I’m from New Hampshire.”
“Both Yankees.”
“But not damned,” she returned swiftly. “What’s going on with you? Want to talk, play video games, role play and play with toys?” I gave her a look. “Some kids your age like to play with toys,” she defended.
“Fuckups, maybe.” I watched to see if she would correct me for cursing. I looked around her room, it was a big one with lots of windows, low bookshelves and small tables set with kids’ stuff and carpet on the tiled floor that invited you to crawl or spread out. There were computers on the desk with flat screen monitors that went horizontal or vertical and high screen resolution.
“Tell me what you remember, Cale? May I call you Cale?”
I shrugged. “They say it’s my name.”
“They?”
“The doctors, the police and the man who says he’s my uncle.”
“It is your name. Cale. Cale Austin Snowdon, son of Parker Hurst Snowdon and Silmarra Tremarric Snowdon, brother of Curt, Delilah and Leah, Travis and Boone. Your family was noted for being all twins, even your parents.”
“Seventh son of a seventh son for seven generations and all that hokey. People always wanted séances from my mom.”
“You remember that?” she questioned.
“No. Someone told me. I don’t remember them, the murders or the accident. I remember waking up in the ICU three weeks ago with a ton of plaster on me and a really bad headache.”
“You had two broken legs, fractured your pelvis, arm and had a severe head injury. You were in a coma for two months. You look like you’re healing well externally. How are you inside?”
“I didn’t have any internal injuries,” I said deliberately misunderstanding her.
I pushed my wheelchair over to the window and looked out at the tops of other office buildings some floors down. A perfect one-way drop to oblivion if someone hadn’t designed the windows not to open.
“Thinking about jumping?” She asked softly and I gave her a startled look. She had read my mind but then, Dr. Deleon had said she was intuitive.
“You think that would end everything, Cale? What if it just frees your mind to experience everything more openly? Ever wonder why there are so many ghosts still around? Why they don’t move on when they die?”
“I don’t see the dead,” I returned. “Just those that are going to die.”
“Does it scare you?”
“It used to.”
“Did you see your mother and father before they died?”
“I told you, I don’t remember them.”
She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a silver bowl, which she filled with water from her Oasis jug and set it down in front of me. The water rippled as if alive and I stared at it uneasily. I looked back at her but she was staring out the window, looking at the skyline of nearby Dallas/Ft. Worth.
“Tell me what you see,” she coaxed and I fell into the well like a stone down a cenote.
Images swirled through the mirror but they came so fast and fleeting, I could not decipher them and with my cry of alarm, she snatched the bowl away, splattering cold water on the desk, her arms and me.
She wrapped her hands on my shoulders and they were cold and wet but the contact warmed quickly and her mind was shielded like the SAC agent where I could not read her.
“You’re clairvoyant, a seer and a psychometric reader?” She asked in disbelief. “Were you as gifted before your head injury, Cale?”
“Don’t call it a gift,” I snapped. “It’s a curse. What good is it if I couldn’t use it to prevent my own family’s murders?”
“Do you blame them for dying and leaving you alone?”
“NO!” I yelled at her. “I blame myself. If I hadn’t been goofing off--” I paused and gave a reluctant laugh. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Do you think that you, as a thirteen year old boy could have stopped a grown man who’s made a career of serial murders of families? Yours wasn’t the first, Cale. Not even the second. He’s done this seven times that we know of.”
“Seven? How come nobody’s caught him?” I was horrified.
“Each one is different, different MO, different weapon, forensics. The only thing that is the same is that it is always a family and always different. Dr. Deleon is the one who has connected them all, from Florida to Maine, from California to New York, on interstates, off back roads, big cities, tiny villages, even on Indian reservations. No one knows how he picks them just that he does.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re supposed to worry about getting better. There was nothing you could have done to prevent the murders and no way for you to stop it even if you had been there. You want to blame someone; blame the psychopathic monster that slaughtered your family.”
“I was afraid, maybe, that it was me,” I whispered into the window ledge.
“What?”
“I was afraid this thing in my head drove me crazy and I killed them. That would explain why there was no DNA or forensics.”
“You were unconscious in a sinkhole three miles away when it happened, Cale. You had a watch on; it broke when the ATV landed on you. Date and time stamped at your accident. The murders happened late in the evening. It wasn’t you.”
I heaved a sigh of relief, even though I didn’t remember any of it that had been one of my great fears---that I had gone berserk and killed them all.
“What are your hobbies, Cale? What do you like to do?”
“I don’t even know what I like to eat, lady. My past is a blank.”
“You were in the band in grade school. Art class where you did very well. You were on the archery team. Got good grades---A’s and B’s mostly. Good in computer science, both you and Curt. Only class you two shared. Did you do the twin thing---share papers, take tests for each other, drive the teachers crazy?”
I had no memories of any of that, only a blank white wall with nothing scribbled upon it, only a black spot that sucked away at everyday memories until they too, disappeared.
I felt suddenly, as if a monumental mountain sat on me, covered with a hurricane of despair whose winds lashed me flat. I gave an inarticulate sigh and laid my head down on the window ledge while slow tears oozed out of my eyes to puddle on the heater vents.
“When the sadness gets too heavy, try to remember the good things,” she suggested. “You’re healing without serious damage to your arms and legs, your head injury, although severe, has not caused any major neurological changes. You have had no seizures since you were brought in and no infections.”
“They told me my memories would probably never come back.”
“After having seen your X-rays and MRI, probably not. You had a severe crush injury; they had to remove pieces of your skull. It’s a miracle you didn’t have to relearn how to walk, talk, etcetera. You weren’t expected to survive and even the doctors had told the papers you would most likely die from your injuries. That’s what they reported and the FBI encouraged it. They didn’t want any chance of the serial killer learning you were still alive.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my mother?”
“You said you don’t remember her. Besides, I’m more interested in what you’re going to do, how you’re going to cope with all this?”
“I thought you were going to tell me what to do about this? Or medicate me.”
“If I give you drugs, what happens when you stop taking them? You want to kill yourself; you’ll find a hundred ways to do it where we can only find a few ways to stop you.”
I was surprised and showed it. “You wouldn’t stop me?”
“I didn’t say that,” she returned swiftly. “I just pointed out that I couldn’t prevent you. Sometimes, the pills don’t work, you vomit them up and someone finds you, pumps your stomach. Bullets miss and blow off your jaw so you eat through a tube and drink through a straw. Or you lay in bed a vegetable for years with people changing your diapers. I’ve even seen people survive jumping off bridges. They lived in constant pain from broken bodies that never healed right. Most of them regretted it afterwards. Those that lived, those that died never came back to tell me. Sometimes, you can almost sense them hovering where they died. Do you feel their regrets, Cale?”
“I told you,” I mustered a feeble anger. “I don’t see the dead.”
“What do you want to do, Cale? You have any ideas? You want to go back to the ranch?”
“NO!” My denial was vehement and swift.
“Ah. Genuine emotion. Can’t say I blame you but you’re only thirteen. Your uncle wants you but he’s willing to relocate to Alpina if that’s what you want.”
“No,” I shivered. “I never want to go back there again. Dallas is fine.”
“You don’t mind living in the city?”
“I don’t care.” As an afterthought, I asked, “Where does he live?”
“In a nice subdivision, gated with a pool, tennis court and a mini golf course. He makes a very good living as an insurance agent. He’s married with twin daughters. Do you remember them---Ruby and Crystal?”
I shook my head. “Are they pretty?”
“Very. Blondes with blue eyes.”
“Not---violet?”
“No.”
“Then they’re safe,” I whispered but the feeling of doom persisted when I thought of them. “If I don’t go there, where can I go?”
“To a rehab center for a couple of months. I’m recommending that, anyway. You need extensive counseling. After that, we’ll see. You might feel differently by then.” She looked at her watch. “Want anything to drink? Are you hungry?”
“No.”
She got up and pushed my chair to the door, opened it and waited for Dr. Deleon to get up and meet me. They spoke over my head without using words but I caught the gist of their conversation. They were worried that I was going to attempt suicide if given the chance and I would.
“Bring him back in three days. 11 a.m.” she said. “We’ll see how he feels then.”
The SA pushed me back down to the elevators and to my hospital room. When we reached it, I noticed that all the mirrors had been removed and anything else I could break or was sharp was gone. No ropes, ties, shoe laces; although they had left my sheets.
There was a nurse waiting on us and she transferred me back to the bed and pulled up the rails like I was a kid. Planting her bottom in the corner, she sat in the chair making herself comfortable.
“Your dinner’s coming,” she told me and folded her arms. She didn’t look happy to be there.
“You’re not to be left alone, Cale,” the FBI agent told me. “Sorry, but it’s this or a locked room on the Psyche Ward.”
“Put me there,” I spat. “At least, I’d be alone.”
I lay back and covered my eyes, did not open them even when the dinner cart came in. Minus any real utensils, only a plastic spoon.