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.A decision.Made.“There's something you don't know about Bo,” she explained.“It's hard to know where she's gone, because, well.Bo's different.I mean her mind works.different.”LaMarche was puzzled.Under a purple cashmere sweater Estrella's shoulders squared above a deep breath.“Bo's a manic-depressive,” she stated finally.“Nobody knows except me, and Henry.She'd lose her job.You can't tell anybody.”“Mon Dieu!” LaMarche breathed.He knew little about the major mental disorders.One course years ago in medical school.He was a pediatrician, not a psychiatrist.“Lithium.” The word rose into consciousness from some long-forgotten textbook.“She takes the lithium when she has to,” Estrella explained.“When it starts to get bad.She knows what to do.She's taking it now, but she just started and it takes.”“Three weeks.About three weeks,” LaMarche finished the phrase.It was coming back, the minuscule information he'd memorized for an exam, and then forgotten.How had she managed to rescue the boy, under those circumstances?Henry Benedict had phoned the police.“A patrol car'll be here in five or ten minutes,” he told them.“They'll take a report.But there won't be a detective on this case until Monday.”LaMarche made a dive for the phone.He knew a dozen good psychiatrists in San Diego, but there was somebody better.“Elizabeth?”His sister was, fortunately, at home.“This is Andy.I don't have time to explain.It's an emergency.Just give me an idea of what a manic-depressive might do, running from a life-threatening situation.”“In a manic or a depressive episode?” she asked quickly.He remembered green eyes, clear and intense, flashing at him in anger only yesterday.Bo had shown none of the telltale signs of depression, only an abundance of affect.“Manic,” he decided.Estrella confirmed it.“Bo gets manic, mostly.She told me it only went the other way once, after her sister committed suicide.She had to.you know.go in a hospital.She said the depression's the worst, like a poison that doesn't have the decency to kill you.”LaMarche was sure Bo had said precisely that.The gift for drama, the creative flair.“Your manic will do what anybody else would do, only in an exaggerated way,” Elizabeth explained.“Look for the person's—is this a man or a woman?—symbol system.What do they care about? What's important to them? What belief system keeps them going? You know.like a manicky priest might run to the church where he was ordained, or a nature lover might run to a favorite spot in the woods.”LaMarche handed the phone to Estrella.“You know the answers,” he urged her.“Talk to my sister.She's a psychologist.See if you can figure out where Bo’s gone.”LaMarche poked randomly though the ravaged apartment.He had no idea what he was looking for.Beside an overturned easel was an unfinished painting.A bighorn sheep, rendered in primitive, stick-figure form.Around the sheep were smaller figures—spirals, mandalas, humanlike images with rectangular bodies and heads that looked like targets wearing round earrings.All the figures appeared to be emerging from a pile of rocks.Or caught in a pile of rocks.LaMarche couldn't tell which.The painting's source of light was the moon.A full moon, on which close inspection revealed more of the figures, hundreds of them buried in the shine of gray-white paint.Were the moon-figures calling the rock-figures to life, or merely reflections of them? He stared dizzily into the painting thrown atop Black Watch plaid sheets on the bed.The answer to where Bo Bradley would go, he realized, lay in the picture.But it might as well have been a blank canvas.“Bo doesn't exactly have a belief system, like your sister said,” Estrella explained, approaching the painting.“She's not, you know, religious or anything.She likes to tell these Irish stories, folk tales or something.And lately this has been her main thing, these Indian paintings.”“What Indians?” LaMarche asked.“Where did she learn about these figures?”“She goes out in the desert someplace,” Estrella answered.“She told me where, but—”“Look at this,” Henry mentioned, holding up a book he'd found under the bed.“It's about Paiute Indians in Owens Valley up around Lone Pine.Pictures of these rock-drawings.Some of the pages are torn out.”“Lone Pine! That's it! Bo's been up there,” Estrella cried.LaMarche scanned the book.“There's something else,” Estrella thought aloud.“Bo told me the old Indian woman who found the little boy and then remembered the license number was going up there today—to Lone Pine.Your sister said Bo would try to get to somebody she trusts, somebody that seems like a part of the symbol system.”The figures in the painting.The interest in folklore.It all came together for LaMarche: Bo was fleeing with the boy to the Indians in Lone Pine, to one Indian who'd already saved the child's life.An old woman, a powerful symbol in the Celtic tales she'd undoubtedly heard as a child.It made sense.He glanced at his watch.Bo had been gone for almost two hours.He could never catch up with her.Not in a car.“Listen to this,” Henry yelled from the living room.“My name is Delilah Brasseur,” a black voice in the patois of the deep South filled the room as Henry upped the volume.“Until two weeks ago I was the housekeeper for the Rowes.”When the message was over they stared at the machine.“Who in hell are the Rowes?” Henry blurted.“Bo's on to more than we knew,” LaMarche decided [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]