Ms. Clay continued. 'There was a waiting room outside my office.
Chairs, magazines, toys for the younger children. I came through the door just as Willy dropped a magazine and bent to pick it up. My phone rang. I said, 'Don't move, I'll be right back.'
Her fingertips twitched over the folder. It shivered toward me, it quivered back. 'The call took twenty minutes. When I came back he was still bending over to pick up the magazine.'
I said, 'You told him, 'Don't move.'
'He looked like a statue. I said, 'It's all right, Willy,' and he picked up the magazine and placed it in the rack as if nothing had happened.'
Mrs. Benoit stomped her foot and moaned. She began jabbing the air with her phantom cigarette.
'Sorry,' Ms. Clay said. 'She's disturbed about something. We rarely travel. It's so hard on '
'What else, ma'am?'
'The next time I saw him was in high school. He seemed to not have changed at all, a bit stouter. But still a tiny boy with the same eyes and the same expression. Blank one moment, engaged the next. Like a switch going on and off.'
'Abuse?'
'He had marks on his wrists and ankles like he'd been bound. He claimed he'd gotten wrapped in the ropes of a tire swing, playing jungle boy or something. It was a very elaborate excuse, coached, I felt. I tried to broach the subject of sexual abuse, but at any mention of the body or genitalia he'd grab his abdomen and start moaning, saying he had to go to the bathroom. Then he'd just turn mute.'
Almost imperceptibly, Ms. Clay's hands began moving the file toward me. 'I had authority to inspect living conditions and went to his home and told his mama I needed to look around inside. I'd seen the woman in town, of course, spoken to her a bit during the first sessions.
Always quiet and polite. It was a mask. She went crazy when I asked to come inside. The foulest language I've ever heard, every form of violent threat. She was like a rabid animal that spoke English.'
'What was Lindy doing all this time?'
'Ya-hhhh,' Mrs. Benoit said. She looked around the room as if noticing it for the first time. 'Y-ahh,' she moaned again, balling her fists and striking the air.
Ms. Clay said, 'I saw him through the door. Just sitting in front of the TV, nose right up to it. No sound, but it was like he was hearing the TV just fine, but not hearing the to-do at the door. I noted his fascination with TV during office visits, preferring to stare at the screen in the waiting room instead of interacting with other children.'
'You went inside the house?'
'It took a sheriff and three big policemen to carry her away.'
I said, 'It was strange, wasn't it? The house.'
The folder crept the remaining distance across the table. 'The police took pictures. I asked for copies, so I'd always know, you know. What might make a kid act like Willy Lindy.'
'The bows,' Mrs. Benoit whispered. 'Bows.'
I slid the folder from beneath Ms. Clay's fingers and opened it.
Twenty photographs, numbered sequentially. The first was of a simple white frame two-story. Nothing behind but flat fields going out of focus, cotton. A heavy tree line in the distance, bordering the Tombigbee River, judging by what I took to be a couple of broken-down boats hauled up between the trees.
The photographer took us inside, documenting his passage. Furniture was sparse. Two hard folding chairs in the living room. One faced a television in the corner. The TV was on, a cartoon judging by the bright color. We moved into the dining room. A square wooden table, one chair pulled to it. The same in the kitchen. A dog's bowl sat on the floor of the kitchen, newspaper beneath it.
'What kind of dog?' I asked.
'They didn't have one,' Ms. Clay said, avoiding my eyes. Another photograph, a pantry off the kitchen. Stripped bare of shelves. Nailed into the wall were various lengths of rope, tag ends friction-taped against fraying. The walls were gray. I saw the shadow of a small boy pass the wall. When I blinked the shadow disappeared.
'There wasn't anything upstairs,' Ms. Clay said. 'Empty.'
I tucked the photo of the pantry at the back of the stack. The next photograph was a small wooden outbuilding.
'Out back,' Ms. Clay said. 'About twenty feet from the house.'
A white door with two heavy locks.
The next photo took me into a small room with deep shadows and a stained concrete floor. Black tape covered the windows. In the middle of the floor was a banquet table drilled every few inches near its edges, rope threaded through the holes. Above the table a single hooded light, like a mechanical flower. Two pink snakes dangled from somewhere above with their heads compressing to stubby points.
'What the hell are those tubes?' Harry whispered.
The next photo followed the snakes to the rafters where they joined heavy bladders, one still distended with water.
Ms. Clay's soft sounds were damped by a tissue. 'Poor Willy Lindy, poor, poor little boy.'
'Bows!' Mrs. Benoit wailed.
'Excuse me,' Ms. Clay said, dabbing her eyes and going to her aunt.
'Bows, bows, bows,' Mrs. Benoit repeated, striking out with her fist as if she were trying to nail a shifting image into her mind. We excused ourselves and progressed to the next station in our pilgrimage of horror.
Lindy's house was a small, neat Craftsman cottage in midtown, tucked into a miniature forest of palmettos and ferns and wild grasses. Rain had started falling. We waved to the slickered cops on guard, passed the tape cordon, and entered. There was a wooden chair in the high-ceilinged living room, a TV in front of it. That was all. A small table and another wooden chair sat in the dining room. The decor had been foretold by the folder beneath Ms. Clay's fingertips.
Lindy's sleeping bedroom had a mattress on the floor. His clothes were in precise stacks in the closet, the hanging garments spaced to not touch.
There was a second bedroom and a large Master Lock hung open on the door. 'Not locked when we came in.' Harry said. 'Like he was scooting fast.'
I walked in. A wall-long table supported several electronic devices, including a computer and video monitor. Two of the devices had tape slots and I took them to be VCRs. A video camera on a tripod sat in the corner. There were two lights on stands, reflectors clamped beside them. Cables snaked everywhere.
'Videotaping and editing equipment,' Harry said. 'Amateur but decent.
Computer-controlled editing, special effects. Least that's what Carl Tyler said, he's the department's resident tech-brain.'
Four tapes were stacked on the table. 'You or Carl look at these?'
'No. I just wanted Carl to make sure this stuff wasn't booby trapped or any other weirdness.'
'You're aces, bro. Let's rack 'em up.'
Harry put a tape in the player. The monitor screen turned to blue-gray snow. A voice issued from speakers below the table. Harry fumbled with buttons on the monitor and the volume elevated.
'… the stomach is tubular and empty, indicating several hours since the last meal…'
'Ava's voice,' I said, staring into the snow. 'See if you can find tracking.'
Harry jiggered a knob and the picture resolved into a close-up of bloody, gloved hands lifting a stomach from an open abdomen. The camera zoomed out, framing Ava as she worked, her hands inside the body. I recognized it as Deschamps's corpse.
'… contents sparse, gruel like indicative of…'
'What the hell is going on, Cars? What would anyone want with tapes of people getting cut into?'
I fast-forwarded. Deschamps's body, different angle; nothing more than the same autopsy shot from a different camera. I popped a second cassette into the player. Same thing, Nelson's body, not yet into the cutting.
'This guy gets off on autopsy movies?' Harry said. 'Is that what this is about? Killing people to watch them get cut up?'
'There's more, Harry. The words mean something in all this.'
