Tygers Read online

  Katie groaned as if she was in pain and glanced up at the doorway. “Hi, Mac. Do you ever sleep?” she asked.

  Mac allowed the door to swing shut behind him and leaned against it. “I could ask you the same thing. Still doing that?”

  “Don’t blame me. Carol added the sound effects for me. Oh, and I slept,” she glanced at her watch and groaned again, “almost five hours.” Katie looked to the bed. “Good morning, Kyle. Feeling better?”

  Carol stared at her son, waiting for his response—if there was one, though Katie addressing him so calmly suggested there would be.

  Kyle looked at his mother in confusion then at Katie. “Aunt Katie, why are you here?”

  “Just stopping by on the way back home,” she lied as she stretched her legs and folded her arms across her chest.

  Kyle scrunched up his nose in distaste. “It’s not nice to lie, Aunt Katie.”

  “No, it’s not. Truth? Someone told me my favorite nephew needed me.”

  “Who?”

  “Grandma Dianna.”

  He scowled at her. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Yes, she did. The fact that I was at the airport was a fortuitous circumstance.”

  “Bat guano!”

  Carol watched in amazement as Katie collapsed laughing.

  “Whoever said you needed me was lying, chum. Maybe I should go home to New Hampshire.”

  “No! Stay with me. Now that Daddy’s gone, you can. Right?” he finished uncertainly.

  Katie’s eyes widened in shock.

  When no one spoke for several long beats, Mac cut in. “Where did your Dad go, Kyle?”

  “I don’t know. He was hurting me and yelling at me, and Ty made him go away.”

  Katie’s eyes glittered with an angry fire that she seldom showed around Kyle, but she didn’t speak.

  Mac looked to her and then to Carol. “Who’s Ty?”

  Carol sighed. “A toy. One of his stuffed tigers. You’ve seen them.”

  Mac nodded.

  “He’s Kyle’s friend,” she continued.

  Mac rolled his eyes. “Did you see what happened to your Dad, Kyle?”

  The child nodded. “Ty and the other tigers hurt him, and then he walked away.”

  Mac looked confused by that explanation. “How did they hurt him?”

  “They scratched him with the claws on their forepaws. Their forepaws have five claws, so it hurts when they scratch you. Then, Ty took him down like large prey—but just to scare him. He let Daddy go.”

  “Large prey?”

  Katie looked up with cold eyes. “Suffocation by a bite to the front of the neck. The prey is then dragged off and loosely buried in leaves and undergrowth to be eaten later. Small prey is taken by a quick bite to the back of the neck at the base of the skull.”

  Mac shivered reflexively at her clinical analysis of feline killing styles. “Oh…” He looked back to Kyle. “Where did your Dad go when he left your room?”

  “I don’t know. Ty told me to stay where I was. He just left.”

  “Was your Dad,” he looked heavenward and sighed raggedly, “bleeding when he left?”

  Kyle looked at him in confusion. “A little from the scratches, I guess.” He furrowed his brow. “I don’t remember.” Then, he looked at Mac in annoyance. “You don’t believe me! It’s the truth.”

  Mac grimaced. “I believe you, buddy. It’s just—”

  “You’re lying. I’m not going to talk to you, cause you’re lying.”

  Kyle crossed his arms over his chest, looking like a little, fair-haired version of his aunt. Both of them stared into space with their jaws clenched angrily. Carol had seen this before, but it was obvious that Mac had never encountered the phenomenon.

  He looked from one to the other then turned to Carol and raised an eyebrow.

  She waved him toward the hall. “I’ll be back in a minute, Kyle,” she called to him cheerfully. “I’m going out to talk to Mac for a minute. I’ll bring you back a treat from the machines. Keep Aunt Katie busy for me, okay?”

  Katie and Kyle both shrugged at her as she left. Overall it was a better answer than Carol expected from them.

  Outside, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry, Mac. He’s in a foul mood, I guess. Who can blame him?”

  “I guess. I’d like to have one of our pediatric psychologists work with him. This is highly irregular. Kids are resilient, but non-responsive almost to catatonic to foul-tempered four-year-old overnight? And that story—” He shook his head.

  “You think he’s blocking out what he really saw by creating that story?”

  Mac shrugged. “Maybe. Possibly. I don’t know what to think, Carol. What was with Katheryn in there? She looked disturbed and furious at the same time.”

  “Ty. Think about it, Mac.”

  “I got it, but my question is, where did Kyle get it?” She could see the barely leashed fury he was trying to hide.

  Carol shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

  “Right. I’ll send the psychologist up later. I have to go. Do me a favor and send your sister to bed.”

  “Sure thing, Mac. You get some sleep, too.”

  Mac grunted in quasi-agreement as he walked away. Carol watched him go and shook her head as she turned toward the food machines to get Katie a pop and Kyle his treat.

  Carol wished she knew where Kyle heard the name. God knows the entire family had tried to convince him to change it. Katie’s reaction to it was always startling. Her muscles would bunch in suppressed anger, and she would withdraw emotionally. If Kyle was perceptive to his aunt’s moods any other time, even when she was thousands of miles away, he had a definite blind spot where Ty was concerned.

  Her son needed the sense of security his imaginary friend afforded him, but that name… It only bothered Carol for the upset it caused Katie and Dianna. Carol had no memories of what they feared, and she thought Katie had no memories either, until someone mentioned that name.

  * * *

  Julian MacRey had seen a lot in thirty-seven years on the force. He had seen and heard a lot in his dealings with O’Hanlon’s family, but this case took the cake. Peter Thompson looked like he had been through a food processor, and Mac was still confused by his discussion with the ME.

  Thompson exhibited one hundred and fifteen separate self-inflicted cuts, not counting the ones on his hands where the razorblade, undoubtedly wet with his blood, slipped in his grip. The cuts were laid out perfectly in twenty-three sets of five cuts each, all roughly the same distance from each other—uniform placement.

  To add to the confusion, the ME showed him pictures of the wounds. There were welts below the cuts, some imperfectly traced so the welt itself was clearly visible. It was the ME’s opinion that the welts were inflicted first, but he was clueless as to how or by whom. Kyle’s nails were clean, and Thompson’s seemed to have little more than his own blood and grease beneath them.

  In addition, there were four deep, fingertip-sized bruises on the man’s neck. The ME wasn’t even capable of hypothesizing on a cause for them. It seemed unlikely that they were self-inflicted, but nothing else was logical. Okay, nothing was logical in this case.

  Mac checked the house again. He counted the stuffed tigers in Kyle’s room. Eight. His mind was making horrible connections. If all eight attacked twice, and seven attacked while the eighth had Peter by the throat… Mac growled at the ridiculous train of thought he was following and threw the toy against the wall. This is insane! So, why is it all so damned believable?

  He and O’Hanlon had been young men together, idealistic patrolmen just past being called green. O’Hanlon and his partner, Phillips, both changed after Dianna and her daughters came into their lives. Half the force watched Katheryn go from a traumatized child to a happy one to an angry teen and a restless loner of a woman. They watched as O’Hanlon went from a quiet loner to a proud family man and loving husband, an open, friendly man who bore little resemblance to the man he once was. They watched as Phillips became a
more wary, protective man, never far from his own children as if he feared a similar fate for them as had befallen Katheryn. He was always watchful, even at play. They watched Dianna, a cop’s widow, marry another cop against her own better judgment and create a strange family unit where a great love affair bound two children—both hers by birth, but one bound to her husband as strongly as the other was bound to her.

  They watched, and as they watched, they realized that Katheryn had caught the eye of every officer without effort. The dark-haired pixie had a hundred blue-shirt uncles, and God help anyone foolish enough to lay a hand on her ever again!

  Mac had seen a lot in his years as an O’Hanlon uncle. Princess Pan? No, Katheryn had always been older than her years. Older than time it seemed when she was that angry teenager after O’Hanlon died. She looked right through you, and Mac believed there was nothing Katheryn couldn’t do if she tried hard enough. For some reason, he found himself hoping she hadn’t done the impossible. Years or no years, even Katheryn O’Hanlon wasn’t above the law.

  * * *

  Katheryn stood under the hot spray of the hotel shower and sighed as her muscles unknotted. One thing hotels had in their favor was limitless hot water. The other thing was freedom from staying with her mother.

  Dianna meant well, but she always rubbed Katheryn wrong. For as long as Katheryn could remember, it had been that way. Her mother’s nagging was only part of the problem, though it never helped matters. There was just something wrong with their relationship that neither of them understood.

  The hotel was eating into her savings, but Sherry’s place was too far away, and it was immeasurably better than staying at either her mother’s or grandmother’s—Carol’s house, she reminded herself. She shuddered at the thought of spending the night in that house. Even with no memories, the idea filled her with a nameless panic.

  They told Katheryn some of what happened, of course—over the years as she overheard snips of enough conversations to get curious. The problem was that they didn’t know much, and she knew they weren’t lying about that. Apparently, the only one who knew what really happened that night was Katheryn, if she could access it in the quicksand inside her head.

  Even the damn nightmares were no help! Katheryn had shattered images, mostly what she had already been told, which made them suspect at best. The one that always snapped her awake was his face—Ty. Until she asked for more, Tiberius Monroe Matthews was just a name on a page. Katheryn had no memory of him. Even after her father died and she nearly lost her sanity believing herself haunted by Ty, the dreams told her not a thing about what plagued her. She knew she banished the attacks and freed herself from Ty’s haunting by closing off a door painfully—physically painful for some reason, but she had little memory of that, either.

  Katheryn did it alone, as she did most things alone. If she had asked for help, it would be like admitting to the world that she was the complete head-case she knew she was. The one time after her father died that Katheryn felt like she belonged somewhere had been a lie, and she’d stayed alone after that.

  She wasn’t physically alone. Katheryn had been surrounded by people and their thoughts and feelings, which she successfully or unsuccessfully filtered out, but though they might touch her physically or even emotionally on some level, there was no place in her closed heart for them until Kyle.

  Kyle broke all the rules she set for herself. He touched her emotionally, but then he moved on. He connected with her mind and heart. Being tied to her nephew was enchanting when he was a baby and toddler, even from time to time in the last few years. Then he turned two, and the link had a tendency to be disturbing, anger inducing, or even frightening with a frequency that Katheryn didn’t care for.

  Explaining to Carol what needed done to correct the situation was impossible. With no common frame of reference, her sister couldn’t understand Katheryn’s drive to re-order Kyle’s life into a more idyllic one that wouldn’t turn Katheryn’s life upside down with his.

  Katheryn assumed Peter was the sole cause of Kyle’s distress, but now she wasn’t so sure. Hearing Kyle talk about his Ty stirred cold panic in her. She remembered the panic. When Katheryn was driving herself crazy believing she was haunted, she felt that panic. When the bright light attacked her mind in the dreams, she felt that panic. The panic was Ty—for no better explanation.

  Here’s a novel idea for you, Katie-girl. What if you’re not crazy? What if you’ve never been crazy?

  She turned the water off and stared at a point on the steam-blurred mirror until she shivered from the chill gathering in the room. Katheryn switched on the heat light while she dried herself. Then, she pulled on a nightshirt, turned up the heat in the room and curled under the blankets with a notebook and pen.

  If she wasn’t crazy, ghosts really existed and Ty was a ghost intent on haunting her family. Were only she and Kyle sympathetic to the ghost’s emanations? Well, that part would make perfect sense. Or maybe Kyle had steeped in her mental horrorscope so long that he was projecting it onto his reality. Was Katheryn driving him crazy along with herself?

  Either way, how could she stop it? Remember… Katheryn did it before, and there certainly wasn’t a real, live Ghostbusters team waiting to step in and save the day. She stopped her own descent into madness. Katheryn liked to believe that, though at times like this she wasn’t so sure, but she couldn’t remember how she did it. She did remember that it hurt. Could she live with inflicting that pain on Kyle? If it would save his sanity, could she do it to him? She’d have to.

  Katheryn yawned deeply and set her notebook aside. Carol sent her here to sleep. That wasn’t a bad plan, overall. After some sleep, she might have some idea of what to do next.

  * * *

  Carol watched Kyle while the doctors and nurses poked and prodded him. Her son was stir crazy. All the more so since Katie left. She couldn’t blame him, but his attitude was so frustrating that Carol considered calling her sister back to calm him.

  She nixed that idea almost immediately. Mom dropped Carol home and forced her to get adequate sleep. Katie deserved the same consideration. After all, despite her sister’s strange connection with her son, Kyle was not Katie’s problem to deal with. If anyone should be losing sleep over him, it should be his mother.

  The psychologist was little help. He agreed that Kyle’s reactions were unusual and that he was a very angry child. Other than that, all he could suggest was continued sessions. Kyle balked at that idea. Carol understood the need for it, but it only added to her apprehension.

  When there was a knock on the door at two, Carol expected to see Katie, tousled and tired but unable to sleep any longer. To her surprise, it was Keith Randall. Keith had been her friend since high school, and he looked as clean-cut as ever, making her feel underdressed even though he was in a pair of dress pants with his shirt sleeves rolled up. His blonde hair fell across his forehead as always, making Carol wonder if he had it cut that way on purpose—or if he ever really had it cut.

  “Uncle Keith,” Kyle yelled as he bounced from the bed and grabbed the laughing man by the arm to be swung back and forth while they talked excitedly.

  Save the lighter, straighter hair, Keith could be mistaken for Kyle’s father, and he certainly lacked no love for the child.

  Carol smiled and shook her head. “I’ll never understand it, Keith. He sees you for a few hours every few months, and you’re his second favorite person in the world.”

  Keith smiled the same boyish smile he had been using on women for the last seventeen years. It still worked, she noted. On almost everyone, anyway.

  “I like kids. They can tell, you know.”

  “I like kids, too. He doesn’t like me this much.”

  “That’s the Mommy curse. Don’t sweat it. He’ll outgrow it by the time he’s thirty, I hope. They usually do.” He shrugged.

  “Gee thanks! Mommy curse…Is that a proper psychological term?”

  “Speaking of favorite people,” Keith changed the su
bject smoothly, “how’s the other one?” He asked it lightly, but Carol knew it was serious business to Keith, though he would never admit it.

  “Katie is fine. She spent the half the night awake with Kyle, so I sent her to the hotel to get some sleep.”

  Keith faltered in his swing, and Kyle squealed in delight at the sudden change. Keith’s smile was gone when he glanced back at her. “She’s here?” he asked in disbelief.

  Carol nodded. “At the hotel. Sleeping, I hope.” She grimaced. Probably not. Katie never did what was good for her.

  He seemed to consider it carefully. “I should probably go before she comes back.” He looked at Kyle and nodded. Keith didn’t want a scene in front of her son. That much was clear.

  “You should stay. You never know. She might be happy to see you.”

  “She never is.” He sighed and shook his head. “No, seeing me will just put her in a foul mood.”

  “When’s the last time you tried?”

  Keith looked at her sheepishly. “When I was twenty-one.”

  “You’re basing Katie’s reaction on how she acted twelve years ago. Doesn’t that seem just a little extreme?”

  “Three years only made the reaction worse. I imagine she’ll shoot me on sight after another twelve. Face it. Katie is the definition of extreme.”

  “Then, why do you keep asking?” Carol raised an eyebrow at him suggestively, and he had the good sense to blush.

  He shook his head. “Okay, I care, but she doesn’t, Carol.” He set Kyle back on the bed. “I faced that a long time ago.”

  “Then, why aren’t you married and having kids to drive you nuts with the Daddy curse?”

  Keith shrugged. “Never met the right woman.”

  “Or can’t forget the right woman?” she suggested.

  His eyes were suddenly sad. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Physician, heal thyself,” Carol quoted in annoyance. “Speaking of which, what do you know about Evan Carter?” she changed the subject. Keith had as much of the Katie push as he could stand for one day.