Larry King asked him right off about the book he was promoting. Black was at ease with the camera—articulate, urbane, with a well-masked accent I detected but couldn’t quite place. It sure as hell wasn’t Kansas City.
“Does he know about the murder yet?” Harve muted a toilet tissue commercial with little puppies sliding into four-roll packs.
“Miki Tudor, his assistant down here, said she told him. But I notice he’s handling his grief rather well.”
Dottie came in with a tray of coffee and cherry cheesecake. My stomach said, Oh yeah. She said, “You’d think he’d act more upset, or even cancel the show, since she’s his patient.”
I took a sip of the coffee. Decaffeinated. Yuck. “Yeah, if Black’s upset, he’s hiding it pretty good. Wonder what else he’s hiding?”
“You’ll have him in your gun sights soon enough. I almost pity the guy.” Harve smiled at Dottie when she poured his coffee. “Why don’t you record your interview with him and let me listen to you grill him?”
“I bet he uses a bunch of psychobabble stuff to throw you off,” said Dottie, finally sitting down with her own coffee and cheesecake. “If you can remember your name when he puts those killer eyes on you.”
Harve laughed. “Interesting use of words, Dot.”
“I’ll be forearmed by then, thanks to Harve’s dossier. Maybe I’ll ask him his take on the killer, since he’s a psychiatrist.”
“Good point,” Harve said. “I forgot to mention he assisted the FBI on one case. He testifies in court sometimes, too. You’ll read all that tonight.”
“I’ve had some truly sad news today,” Black said on-screen, instantly drawing all our attention back to the tube. “Shocking, terrible news.”
I felt my muscles tense, and Larry King leaned forward, pleased as punch about the shocking, terrible announcement going out live on his show. Ratings, ratings, my kingdom for ratings.
“I hope to hell he’s not thinking of telling—” I stopped midsentence when Black spoke again.
“The wonderful young actress Sylvie Border, a very close friend of both of us, Larry, died last night at my resort in Missouri.”
King looked as stunned as I was. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?” I jumped up, rattling my coffee cup. “This is going to whip up a frenzy around here.”
“Oh, my God. Sylvie was on this show not a month ago.” King glanced off camera, presumably at his producer. “I can’t believe it. She’s so young…how…”
Black looked the picture of sorrow now. “It’s a terrible tragedy. I can hardly believe it’s true, either. I spoke to her parents early this morning, and understandably, they’re taking this extremely hard. I want to encourage the press to leave them alone, give them some time to grieve in peace. That’s why I’m bringing this up now. I’m making a plea for privacy for the family.”
Larry King shook his head and said, “What happened to her, Nick? Are you at liberty to tell us anything more?”
“She was found murdered,” Black said. King’s sharp intake of breath was caught on air. “I don’t know all the details. I was on my way up here already. I’m leaving that to the police. I understand the Canton County sheriff is handling the investigation. I know Sheriff Charles Ramsay personally, and I have every confidence he’ll find Sylvie’s killer.”
“Thanks for nothing, Black.” I was so angry, my voice shook. “You’ve just sent every frickin’ camera crew in the country down here.”
Dottie said, “Why’d he announce it on the air? He ought to know better than that.”
“He probably did it to get publicity for this new book, and if he did, he’s gonna regret it. I’m gonna make sure he doesn’t talk about it on any more television shows or at book signings, unless he wants me riding his back night and day until this case is over.”
LIFE WITH FATHER
The mother was in excruciating pain, but she pulled the child by the hand across the upstairs landing. The embalmer had beaten her again with the strop because she’d objected to the child going down into the cellar, where the corpses were. She had been terrified, but the child had come upstairs from the cellar for dinner, all covered in blood and stinking of embalming fluid. The father kept the child in the cellar all day now, away from her. He called the child Brat now, all the time, and the child refused to talk and had eyes that were empty and haunted. She had to escape, had to get the child away. She packed one suitcase for their things, and as soon as the child was sent upstairs to be readied for dinner, she got the suitcase and pulled Brat along the upstairs hall. The embalmer had kept Brat down there until five-thirty, and she didn’t have much time to flee. They had to get out now. She held her side where he must have cracked her ribs when he kicked her two nights ago. It hurt to walk, even to talk.
She whispered to the child, “Hurry, hurry, before he comes…”
But he was standing at the bottom of the staircase, waiting. She screamed in utter horror, and the child awakened from a stupor because screaming was against the rules. She ran for the back stairs, dragging the child with her, but the father took the steps three at a time and caught her by her long blond hair before she could slam the door. He jerked the child from her hand and flung the child against the wall. Breath knocked out, the child slid limply to the floor and watched the parents fight. The mother went wild then and attacked the man with all her remaining strength. She clawed at his face and eyes and screamed until she couldn’t scream anymore, and he hit her hard with his fist and knocked her to the floor. He grabbed her up like a rag doll and forced her back against the wall. He held her off the floor, his fingers clutching her throat harder and harder. The child struggled up and screamed for the first time ever and ran and jumped on the father’s back. The father shook the child off and rammed a fist into the child’s stomach.
Gasping and coughing, the mother fled for the front stairs, but he reached her and held her with one hand while he hit her with his other fist; then he flung her down the staircase with all the force of his rage. She screamed, but it died when she hit the stairs and tumbled over and over until her head hit the floor below with a loud thud.
“This is your fault,” the embalmer raged, jerking the child off the floor. At the bottom, the woman was moaning, and the child said, “Momma, momma,” and the father said, “Go ahead and die, you whore.”
Then he picked up the struggling child in one arm and dragged the mother by her left foot down the cellar stairs, her head hitting each step along the way. Thump…thump…thump…He went to the cold room, where he kept his corpses. He tossed the screaming child down the steps into the darkness, then picked up the mother and threw her down beside the child.
“Nobody leaves this house,” he said, so angry his voice was breathless in a way the child had never heard before. “If I have to keep you down here forever, you’ll learn not to break my rules.”
The embalmer slammed the steel door shut, and the child cradled the mother’s head and held it still and listened to the wheezing sounds coming from her chest. The cold, black darkness surrounded them like a dank and malignant blanket, and the child sat shivering in the dark until the mother’s breathing stopped, and the child was alone with the dead.
The next morning the father opened the steel door, and light slanted into the cold room. The child was too chilled to move. The father draped a blanket around the child and, once they were upstairs in the house, sat the child down beside the roaring fire. The father was no longer angry. He sat in a rocker and watched the child shiver uncontrollably. Then he said, “You shouldn’t have made me knock your mother down the steps. Now she’s dead, and it’s all your fault.”
The child looked at