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10.

He told her everything, not because he wasn’t worried she’d think he was crazy, but because he wanted to know he wasn’t. Everything except the downbelow: there didn’t seem to be any reason to tell her about that. But the voices, the noises, the music box — leaving out where he’d found it — and what he’d seen through the telescope while on the phone to dead air: those he told her about.

Katrine gave him a searching look, and he didn’t know whether she was trying to figure out if he was pulling her leg, or weighing how safe she felt around him. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in the blue room, where he’d gone after the phonecall to wait for her to come back. “Maybe you’ve been in here too long,” she said finally. “You know, like cabin fever? Like in the Shining?”

“Except it wasn’t cabin fever that drove Jack nuts in the Shining, it was, you know, ghosts.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, and frowned. “But things like that. Caretakers in the winter. The elderly.”

“The elderly?”

“In nursing homes. Why do you think old people are always half-nuts? It’s because they’re in that nursing home all the time. Haven’t you ever visited one?”

He shook his head. “We’re rich,” he said absently. “Our old people stick around. But listen. What did happen at the neighbors’?”

“We fake-bonded. I told her you and me’d had a fight, we commiserated, I got her drunk, and we fooled around before she got all weird about it and kicked me out. I thought I’d give you a show.” She smiled a little, but it wasn’t the easy smile it could have been.

“The question is, do you think I’m crazy? And be honest, because I’ll tell you the truth, Katrine: I want to be crazy here. Crazy can be fixed. And I promise I’m not a psychotic kind of crazy. I won’t flip out on you if you tell me that I’m balls-to-the-wind delusional on this.”

She shook her head slowly. “I think, you know. I think that it’s probably a combination of paranoia — cabin fever, jitters, you know — and something else. I think probably it’s a mountain from a mole hill. But that doesn’t mean there’s no mole hill, all right? I told you, I heard voices too. And this music box, you have that, although granted, all that is is something kind of creepy. But still: it’s real. You didn’t imagine it. I saw it downstairs when you let me in, it’s on the endtable just outside the foyer. Big red circus tent with a clown head on top. Also, that phone call –”

She paused, tapping a finger against her lower lip.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, I guess that could be either way, right, Creepy Shit or Imagining Things.”

“Yeah,” he said, and leaned back against the pillows. “Do I seem crazy? Not about this. In general.”

“Look –”

He sighed, and held up a wait-here-I’ll-be-right-back finger, trumpling down the hallway to one of the safes before coming back and tossing a bundle on the bed. “I don’t know how much that is. It’s probably about a hundred grand, give or take a dozen. No matter what you say, the money is yours. I can’t be buttered up, and I’m not some pansy-ass rich boy who’ll get horrified you don’t think I’m perfect. Okay? I know you’re basically paid to be nice, but tonight, I’m hiring your honesty.” He leaned against the doorframe, tired and cranky and afraid. He’d taken a triple dose of some of Dr Williams’s pills after the phone call.

She stared at the money. “Wow,” she said.

“I don’t mean to insult you.”

She grinned. “What, are you kidding? A hundred grand? Oh yeah, I’m insulted. I’m going to take a really offensive two weeks off in Bermuda this Christmas.”

“Bermuda’s tired,” he said. “Go to New Zealand. It’ll be summer there, the resorts are gorgeous and the wine is nice, and everyone you meet was an extra in Xena or Lord of the Rings. Now, about my craziness.”

“Look,” she said. “You’re a nice guy. You haven’t done anything that seems crazy. That’s why I really don’t think you’re delusional, because I think I’d see some kind of evidence of it. I’ve spent time with crazy people before — not psychos, but I mean, people with … problems. Sometimes, somebody’s buddy will hire me, because he’s just not going to get laid otherwise. Guys who think they’re Napoleon, you know, stuff like that? You’re so not that.”

“However.”

“However and but. You seem a little off. Not psycho off, not loose grasp of reality off. More like shaky. Sometimes it seems like anxiety, like stress, you know. Sometimes it seems like anger. And that’s the thing, it’s what I’m saying, I think you need to get out of here for awhile. You should call your mother or something, maybe they’d — let you out for a bit. Shit, even prisoners get to go out in the yard.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see what they say about that.”

“I just think you need to blow off some steam. I think you’re just way too tense. Sometimes, the way you fuck –”

He gave her a look. “Don’t tell me I bought too much honesty.”

“No no, I was just going to say, you get really intense.”

“Yeah. All right. Thanks, Kat.”

She nodded, bobbing her head and holding her ankles as she wobbled back and forth a little on the edge of the bed, a gesture that looked slumberpartyish and made her seem even younger. “I’m new to this. How long do I have to wait before I can count the money without being rude?”

“Go ahead.” He grinned a little. That’s what he liked about her, he supposed, when he liked her: that mix of cynicism and innocence. He guessed probably most people had it. But he could see hers.

#

June 22, 1921: Lot purchased by Mr Glen Copland of Weymouth, MA.

August 27, 1921: Building commenced, supervised by architectural firm Gould & Boyer.

April 10, 1923: Building completed; Mr Copland moved into Domino over course of next two months.

January 2, 1924: Domino put up for auction following Mr Copland’s arrest for racketeering. Purchased by Mr Michael Van Der Linden.

August 1, 1975: Domino deeded to Trimalchio Trust in accordance with Mr Van Der Linden’s will.

December 4, 1987: Trimalchio Trust dissolved, Domino passed to Patricia Nicholls.

And so to you, Mr Finch. Copies of the relevant documents shall be FAXed to you shortly.

Reynolds’s email was terse, which was probably the point, but it did cover the basics. Except the basics didn’t tell him anything — except that Michael Van Der Linden lived to a healthy age — and told him less about the downbelow. Who were the Trimalchio Trust, and who was Patricia Nicholls?

Did it matter?

It seemed Copland had probably built the downbelow, which would explain the lengthy construction time. Castle wasn’t completely sure how long a house usually took to build, much less how long it’d taken eighty years ago, but nearly two years sounded like a long time, especially in a boom economy. He forwarded the email to Ricky Tremaine, a private detective he’d used before — except he’d hate to be called a private detective, and had never tailed a car in his life, working more with records and computers and surveillance — and added some annotations: “Find out everything and everything about all entities mentioned. Possible hanky panky re: 1921-1923 construction, look into permits, records, backgrounds of officials in contact. Top priority, Ricky, top dollar, bribe whoever you have to. Wiring 20K advance against expense.”

Money.

He’d explained it to Saman–

He stopped, mid-thought. He was about to call her Samantha, for some reason. Not even a mis-speak: he’d been about to think of her as Samantha. He couldn’t remember having made that kind of slip before. Maybe she looked like a Samantha. Maybe he was going a little nutty trying to rationalize every little thing.

In any case, he’d explained it to Katrine before she left — just in time for the electrician, who was now fiddling around in the downbelow, to get a good look at her ass: money was like a superpower. Money was something he could use like a crowbar, a lockpick, a truncheon. Money had bought him and his family out of scandal and out of danger before. It had bought him Domino. So it could fix Domino.

He bypassed Teddy altogether this time, rather than risk the grapevine. Maybe it didn’t matter if Jonathan knew he was de-poltergeisting the house. Maybe it did. Secrets never hurt, as long as you kept them yours. Neither neck nor teeth.

He’d grabbed the books that had been the least crappy, from Teddy’s Introduction to the Supernatural pile, and did searches on the names of some of the authors, or the investigators they mentioned, that sort of thing. Did a few other searches. Shot a couple of queries out to friends and friends of friends. Got Ricky on the case to find out who’d handled the Winchester House. Emailed Madonna to get the name of that guy she’d gone on about before she got into Kabbalah.

While the electrician tinkered downstairs, Castle emailed a few likely candidates back and forth, paid a consultant five hundred dollars to make equipment recommendations, ordered security and surveillance devices to be overnighted, and assembled a shortlist of people to hire for “house cleaning services.” Much of what he found — most of what he found — he immediately dismissed as ridiculous, from special vitamins he was supposed to take to ward off the influence of evil spirits, to specially energized crystals that would repel negative energy the way magnets repelled like-minded poles.

He wasn’t interested in positive actualization. He wasn’t interested in spiritual enlightenment, the balance of the soul, the calming of the spirit, or sending the energies of the dead on to the next level of their existential journey. He just wanted the fuckers out. Whatever was wrong with Domino, whatever was living here with him, he wanted it evicted, whether it was something dead, something evil, something borrowed, or something blue.

And if there was nothing to evict, he wanted whatever was going on to be fixed.

His mother had once spent all day and an ungodly amount of money — an amount even Castle had recognized was entirely out of proportion — arranging a beautification project for Northampton, because she was sick of looking at a city littered with concert-and-protest flyers and cigarette butts when she visited Smith College, her alma mater. She could have bought a house with the amount of money she donated, albeit not a house she would have deigned to live in; she committed to two years’ worth of social functions and alumna fundraisers in order to get her way, tacky weekends with sweater-wearing would-be social climbers.

But whenever she visited Northampton, she saw nothing but the most pristine, quaint little winding New England streets and immaculate — but not overly modern-looking — brick buildings, as the city sloped up towards the college. And however she’d done it, whatever strings she pulled, the local lesbian population became a lot more lipstick-oriented.

That was what money did. Dollar by dollar, as the cash register rang it up, money made the world more to your liking.

When the flow of email slowed because of overlapping lunch hours and lectures among the participants of a “conference call” he set up among the faculty of various universities, men accepted by the mainstream of the academy but nevertheless interested — as more than mere debunkers — in the occult, he took his wallet to the cell phone and dialed a lengthy series of numbers after the international prefix for the Vatican City.

“Romaglio,” he said after maneuvering around various secretaries. “Yes, it’s Castle. Come stai, you old sodomite?”

“Castle, you magnate of sin, are you in Rome? I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“No, I’m afraid the city will have to do without me for just a moment longer, Monsignor. But I thought you might see fit to do me a solid.”

“It’s actually Eminence now, Castello, but tell me of this solid that I, a humble man of god, might do for you, a far more humble man of gold.”

Castle wandered to the far end of the house from the corridor to the downbelow — the garden room, with the door open so he’d hear if the electrician tromped back up. “Yeah, I heard about that, congratulations. I sent you a present, you get it?”

“Marzipan candies shaped like little naked boys,” Romaglio said dryly. “I got it. Thank you ever so much, as always. My mistress was thrilled with them. Just wait till you see what I get them to tattoo on you the next time I find you passed out. Now, what’s wrong? Are you still in some kind of trouble? Do you need me to speak to Jonathan again?”

“No. No, I need an exorcism performed,” he said. “And whatever else you’ve got along those lines. Holy water, some kind of big time blessing, you know. Big God lasers. Whatever it is you’ve got in the shack. I know your boys usually work the other end of things, investigating crying virgins and all.”

“Yes,” Romaglio said. “That is our sacred charge, given us by God. I don’t perform exorcisms, my friend: I’m empowered to, as any priest is, but that’s a duty that falls to others, on those rare occasions –”

“Rommy,” Castle said. “I’m not asking you to do it. I’m asking you to get it done. All right?”

“This isn’t the sort of thing one does for a party game,” Romaglio said, sounding less and less friendly. “We may joke about your lapses, but this is beyond joking. I would no sooner put exorcists at your disposal for some cocaine-fueled party than I would wipe your ass with the Host. As you do not take this seriously, let me attempt to convey to you how offensive –”

“It’s not a party,” Castle said. “Dammit, are you listening? I need this done. Okay? The house I’m living in, something’s wrong with it, something’s broken. In that way. I don’t know if it’s –”

“Evil?”

“Yeah. Or Satan or whatever. I’m calling ghostbusters in on this — ghostbreakers, you know, paranormal investigator guys –”

“Atheist frauds,” Romaglio said simply.

“Then put your crucifix where your mouth is, Your Eminence. Help me out here. I’ve got weird voices, I’ve got things moving around in the dark, I’ve got things talking to me, giving me visions. And other people have seen it too.” One other person, anyway. A whore who heard a couple noises after having a lot to drink.

Romaglio paused. “This would take a great deal of doing. I assume you want me to circumvent the usual channels, or you simply could have consulted your local parish priest.”

“I’d like it done within a week, yeah.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Castle! How am I supposed to justify that? Cardinal or not, you’re talking about me ordering someone else’s charges around. I might have to go to Patrick on this, and if Ratzy gets a whiff of it, I’m going to spend the rest of my life photographing stigmata stains in east Texas.”

“Then if somebody asks, you tell them Jacob Finch called in his favors. All right?”

Romaglio paused, and Castle could hear him breathing. “You know you can only use your father once with us.”

“This is the once.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Castle sat down on the bench and thought about the question for a few seconds. “No. Thanks, though. This is probably not something that surprises me as much as you.”

“Mm. In any case — a week will be difficult. I cannot promise it, your father notwithstanding. You understand? Resources are limited, personnel limited. It is not a matter of arranging priority: it is a matter of physical possibility.”

“All right. But do everything you can, is what I’m saying.”

“Yes. This will be, you understand, twice the usual fee.”

“Rommy, I’m nothing if not rich. It’s fine.”

“I assumed as much. Is there anything else I can do for you?” He paused, cleared his throat. “Have you given confession recently, Castle? If you’re worried about this sort of thing –”

“Uh, no. Not lately. Actually, I was hoping you could hear my confession.”

“No, no. Go to your local priest –”

“Can’t.”

“Castle, for God’s sake, you don’t have to go to Mass –”

“No, really. I can’t. It isn’t an option. It isn’t a possibility. I’m locked up. Okay? So it’s you or it’s nothing.”

There was a long, long silence, and Castle started to wonder whether he’d lost the connection. “Very well,” Romaglio said finally.

“Bless me, Father,” Castle said quietly, “for I have sinned. It has been thirteen months since my last confession.”

“Why so long, my son?”

“Circumstances have prevented me from finding a church.”

“You could have convinced a priest to come to you.”

“I was compelled not to — first by my family, and then by my guilt and fear.” He swallowed. “It is that guilt and fear I now wonder about, whether it might be responsible for my current difficulties.”

“And so you wish to confess, and be forgiven, in order to lessen the consequences of your sins.”

Castle coughed. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Which is exactly why I had to. Go on, my son: enumerate your sins.”

“In the time since my last confession, I have fornicated many times. I have had countless lustful thoughts, even about women I’m not attracted to.”

“Ah yes,” Romaglio said. “We of the cloth are forgiven frequently for that one. Go on. None of this is serious by your standards, Castle.”

“I have taken my wealth for granted, and believed it gave me a greater entitlement than it did. I have relished excess, and given in to my addictions to cocaine, amphetamines, and ecstasy, and I have used my family name and status to get away with things no one else could have. I spent most of that last year waiting for things to happen. Waiting for consequences, waiting for other people to please me, waiting for other people to hate me.”

“Castle,” Romaglio said warily, “have you been doing drugs? Is that why you’re calling for an exorcist? Are you hallucinating?”

“No. Not in a few months now. I mean, I don’t know for sure that I’m not hallucinating: but it isn’t from anything illegal. Other than a few prescription medications for anxiety and depression, I swear to you I’m clean, Rommy. On my father’s name.”

“All right. Go on. You sound — more solemn than usual.”

“I committed … the sin of Cain,” Castle said, choosing his words carefully. “The sin of Judas. And I enjoyed it.”

“How did it happen?” Rommy asked it immediately, skipping over any shock he may have felt.

“Not on the phone. If I ever see you again –”

“Ever?”

“It’s like that.”

“What did you enjoy about it?”

“The power.” It wasn’t something he needed to think over. He’d thought about it for months before pushing it away — forever, he’d thought, until Domino came upon him. “The power over someone else. It’s like respect. You must feel that, at least sometimes: the way someone treats you, because you’re a priest — or the way other priests treat you, because you’re a Cardinal, or even because you’re Italian. There’s a rush from that. They’re showing you neck, the way wolves do: letting you bite down if you want. I bit too hard. But I liked it. And I liked that I got away with it. I liked being untouchable.”

“Castle –” Romaglio’s voice wavered. “How many times?”

Castle closed his eyes. “Three times. The first was an accident. The next two weren’t. My family found out. That’s all that’s safe to tell you. Give me my penance, Your Eminence.”

“Only God can give penance for murder, my son. Only God can touch Cain. For the rest of your sins: one thousand Hail Marys, one thousand Our Fathers.”

“One — thousand?” The enormity of it suddenly shook him out of reverie.

“It’ll put you right for calling in those favors, you little bastard.”

Rommy was covering up with jokes, which was what he did. So be it. “All right. Thank you, Father.”

“I’ll let you know when things are arranged. Be careful, Castle. You’re in a deep world, and the bottom is far below.”