by Kathy Reichs
Georgia took my pulse. Her fingers felt strong and cool. “Whatever you knocked back left no trace.”
My last conscious memories were fragmentary. The fire. The Aiello interrogation. The Pasquerault file. The heat. The sun tea.
Crap! Might that be it? The jar had remained outside far too long. Might something have contaminated the tea? Might someone have tampered with it? The burglar/arsonist?
“I don’t do drugs.” Absurd, but I felt an overpowering need to convince Georgia of my innocent role in the overdose.
“Whatever. You’re going to live.”
Georgia plumped my pillow and straightened my sheet, then hurried off to spread joy elsewhere.
I lay still, every cranial vessel throbbing. It had all seemed so real. So vibrant. How much was true? How much a wild opera scripted by the wayward little bubble in my brain? By chemicals roaring through my veins?
“Feeling better?” Slidell was again looming, but with a fraction less drama.
I gulped the rest of the water. Put the cup on the table they’d wheeled to my bedside. Sat up and almost gagged. Swallowed.
“I called Ryan. He’s—”
“You didn’t!”
“Relax. He wanted to fly straight home, but I talked him down. Assured him you’re OK.”
“I need my clothes,” I said.
“You gotta stay the night. There’s a nasty lump on your noggin. Docs think you might have whacked your head and got a concussion.”
“I’ll recover faster at home.”
“They say at least twenty-four—”
“I prefer my own bed.”
“I scored some new intel.”
“Seriously? What?”
“You gotta promise to chill till morning. Otherwise, the added stimulation might refry your wiring.”
“Don’t do this, detective.”
“They’re finishing the paperwork to admit you. You’ll get oatmeal for breakfast. Maybe Jell-O. I think you always get Jell-O.”
I glared as hard as I could. Slidell glared back.
Since my head was exploding, I cracked first. Besides, I had to admit, checking the state of my lumpy noggin was probably advisable.
“What’s this big breakthrough?” Petulant.
“Two breakthroughs.”
I lifted an impatient palm. Noticed my nails were crusted with dirt.
“Heavner ran a second, broader tox screen.”
“And shared results with you?”
“With some persuasion.” Slidell rubbed his jaw. Thumb-hooked his pants. “Vodyanov had enough China Girl on board to kill half of New Hampshire.”
Skinny used one of the many street names for fentanyl, heroin’s synthetic cousin and the gold medalist in the current opioid crisis.
A little background. The medical community originally employed fentanyl as an anesthetic but quickly realized its effectiveness as a painkiller. Always open to innovation, the drug-dealer community sat up and took notice. Since fentanyl is one hundred times more potent than morphine, many times more so than heroin, why not use the stuff to lower the cost of doing business? Both drugs exist as white powders. Mix in the cheaper, more powerful fentanyl to cut your product and increase supply.
Tragically, this entrepreneurial vision proved deadly. Hard fact: thirty milligrams of smack can kill you; with China Girl, it takes only three.
Why the difference? Basic chemistry. Both compounds bind to the mu-opioid receptor in the brain. But fentanyl is better at passing through fat, a substance surprisingly plentiful in the head. It arrives faster and, once landed, hugs the receptor so tightly that a minuscule amount triggers the chain of effects so pleasing to the body. End result: Fentanyl is now a ruthless predator roaming the streets of America.
Too much for my mind to compute at that moment. But the bleak facts were in there, stored from previous headlines and research.
“OK,” I said. “Heavner’s got cause. What’s she citing as manner?”
“Undetermined.”
There are only five choices for manner of death: homicide, suicide, accidental, natural, undetermined. Based solely on the tox report, I couldn’t disagree.
I said, “It’s unlikely Vodyanov hid his car at Art’s, hiked out to Buffalo Creek, screwed up, and OD’d.”
“We can talk about this after you rest.”
“Now.”
“Fine. No argument here. So we’re back to square one. The guy probably killed himself, or somebody offed him.”
“If Vodyanov committed suicide, the question is why? If someone murdered him, the question is who?” Also why, but my thoughts were going muddier with each beep of the monitor.
“The other development’s no surprise.”
I’d forgotten there were two. Waited.
“They ran the prints from your place, focusing on the ones lifted in the two studies. Nothing popped. Most were yours, already on file for comparison.”
“No hits in AFIS?”
“Local, North Carolina, surrounding states, nothing popped in any system.”
“The rest will come back as family or friends. Maybe my workers.”
“I’m gonna want to talk to those guys.”
“Right.”
“And, like you said, if it was arson and a B and E, the perp probably wore gloves.”
“You have to admire proper planning.”
Slidell ignored that. “The arson guys found no accelerant other than the paint and turpentine. But they found the distribution pattern odd.”
“Odd.”
“The stuff was really spread around.”
“So our perp is probably bad wiring and a careless painter.”
Did I really think so?
What did I believe?
Twenty minutes later, an orderly rolled me into an elevator, then down a corridor to a room so predictable nothing registered. With his help, I maneuvered the twenty-mile gap from the gurney to the bed. A blanket covered me. Lights dimmed. Footsteps retreated. Air movement suggested a reangling of the door. Sometime later, tubes rattled and fingers touched my wrist.
An IED could have detonated beside me. I would not have reacted. My body was down for the count.
Not so my blood or drug-pummeled brain. Sensing an opening, the questions and misgivings reengaged with undiminished zeal.
Image chased image. Some from the inexplicably missing ten hours. Pulsating walls. A steel tunnel tightening to form a cocoon around me. My fingers searching the inky blackness, desperate for a handle, a lever, a chain. The flesh melting from my hands, baring the bones, yellow and raw.
Like the bones in the face of the faceless man.
Other images sprang from the recent investigation. A trench-coated Vodyanov. A pigtailed Jahaan Cole. A gap-toothed Timothy Horshauser. A belligerent Aiello. A shard-covered study. A burned-out office.
Had I been targeted? Was I being watched? If so, by whom? Why? What danger did I pose? Did it involve government secrets? Dodgy real estate? Missing kids? Murder?
Was the threat a bombshell revelation that Margot Heavner was incompetent or corrupt? Was it Vince Aiello’s exposure as a pedophile? Nick Body’s as a fraud? Vodyanov’s as an enabler? A trafficker?
The discovery of a killer?
Or was it all the product of my faulty circuitry?
And where did Yates Timmer fit in?
Two weeks had passed since Vodyanov’s body was found. Slidell and I had zero to show for our investigation.
In addition to frustration, I felt terrible guilt.
Joe Hawkins had leaked me confidential information. That file may have been viewed, even stolen in the break-in. If there was a break-in. Lizzie Griesser had performed an analysis gratis. Her phenotype report was also destroyed, perhaps viewed or downloaded.
Out of some half-baked mistrust of cyber-security, I’d stored nothing in the cloud. Not a chance Heavner would share her notes, and I wouldn’t place Joe at further risk. I could ask Lizzie for another copy of her report, but that
might put her in jeopardy.
Sudden frightening possibility.
Had Gerry Breugger burgled my home? Had he torched the annex to cover his tracks? To slow me and Slidell in our investigation? Did the reporter want a story that badly?
The implications were horrendous.
If Breugger made everything public, Joe might be fired, his long career ended in disgrace. Would Lizzie suffer the same fate? Would her employer lose clients due to distrust in the lab’s ability to maintain confidentiality?
My career was in free fall. Was I dragging my friends down with me?
I envisioned radiating circles with me at the epicenter. A ripple effect of destruction created by my actions.
Besides hallucinations, could migraines cause panic, paranoia, and feelings of hopelessness? Could the aneurysm or subsequent embolization? Or had I been drugged? Was my heightened anxiety a by-product of a bad acid or Molly trip? Were my fears justified?
Were Slidell and I closing in on someone or something?
A long-hidden government secret?
A real estate scam?
A media fraud?
A child molester?
A killer?
27
FRIDAY, JULY 13
Hospitals are the least restful places on earth.
Nevertheless, I ended up having to stay what remained of that first night and the next. Once my medical history was revealed, my neurologist was notified. He ordered an MRI and MRA, an EEG, and other poking and prodding, “just to be sure.”
Both nights, I was awakened repeatedly by a penlight shining in my eyes. Both dawns, some doctor was paged for some color-coded crisis. Constant summonses followed. Carts rattled. Speakers bonged.
At seven a.m. on Friday, anxious to return home to rescue Birdie from my neighbor Walter’s care, I started agitating for release.
The wheels ground at the pace of tectonic drift.
At eight, I was disengaged from my drip line.
At eight thirty, breakfast was placed on my over-the-bed table. As on my first morning, no Jell-O.
At nine thirty, the tray was cleared. I inquired about my belongings, not disclosing my intention to bolt.
At nine forty, Ryan walked through the door with a bouquet the size of a Hereford. Mixed feelings flooded through me. Happiness? Humiliation? Resentment?
“Wow,” was all I could muster.
“Wow, as in good wow? Or just-shoot-me wow?”
Ryan looked around, finally set the flowers on the windowsill. They were not a good fit. Then he crossed to the bed to kiss me.
“Of course I’m glad to see you. It’s just such a surprise.” We’d spoken early Thursday, agreed it was just a bump on the head and that Ryan should remain in France.
“Staying put didn’t work for me. I had to see your smiling face myself.”
My smiling face did anything but.
“What about Neville?” I asked.
“I set some things in motion. Will head back if one of those leads pans out.” Big Ryan grin. “So. When are you out of here?”
“Any minute. Or we hatch an escape plan.”
Ryan snapped a salute. “I am a police officer. I can condone no illegal maneuver.”
At ten thirty, a plastic bag appeared, T. Brennan, Rm. #1203 penned in Sharpie on the outside. I loosened the drawstring, was relieved to see my keys tucked into one dirt-crusted sneaker. A silent thank-you to Slidell. I was pulling out my jeans when an attending physician appeared. Or a hospitalist. Maybe a plumber. His name tag said Gursahani.
After giving me a cursory once-over and issuing recommendations for my continued well-being, Gursahani informed me that Dr. Bernard, my neurologist, was on his way. And that Bernard would be discharging me.
When Gursahani had gone, I glanced over at Ryan, defiant.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, confiscating the bag and dropping into the room’s only chair.
Arms crossed, I slumped back on my pillows.
“Want to talk about what happened?” Ryan asked after several moments of silence.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said, too snappishly. I wasn’t in a chatty mood.
“Fair enough. How about this?” Gesturing at my eyes. “Lids down.”
“Why?”
“So you can tell me what you remember. It will pass the time while we wait.”
After rolling them, I closed my eyes. Given a little encouragement, a bedlam of disconnected scenes fired like tracer rounds in my head. Fragmented. Disorganized. I sorted briefly, hoping for some semblance of chronology.
“I was reviewing the Pasquerault file when Dorothée appeared and told me I’d made an error.”
“That must have been unsettling.”
“You think?” Eyes still closed. “Dorothée and I drove to the bunker in Cleveland County. Everything was the same, yet exaggerated—the colors too bright, the vegetation too thick and tangled, the heat too oppressive, the shadows too dizzying. It was like picking my way through the frames of an overcolorized film cranking in slo-mo.”
“I get it.”
“Dorothée disappeared through the blast door. Though afraid, I followed. It’s hard to explain why. Somehow, I couldn’t turn back. It was like I was driven by a need to right my mistake.”
I paused. Ryan waited.
“Underground, the darkness was so absolute I had to feel my way by touch. Then, in the distance, I saw this tiny green dot. It seemed to be beckoning. But the more I moved toward it, the farther away it seemed. This is making no sense.”
“It is.” Again wiggling a finger at my now-open eyes. I complied.
“I felt my way through inky-black tunnels into open chasms filled with swirling neon light, pulsating walls, and heaving floors and ceilings.”
I swallowed, nauseated by the recalled tumult.
“At one point, I was in a passageway, at first doubled over, then crawling on all fours, then curled fetal. The space was shrinking, and I knew I had to get out. Or wake up. But I couldn’t do either.”
My lids flew open. I looked at Ryan. “I remember thinking it was like being trapped in an upturned tin of snus. Strange thought.”
Ryan repeated the finger command.
“At one point, I saw Jahaan Cole.” Eyes shut. “She was talking about her bones. Begging me to do something.”
My gut tightened.
“That’s enough,” I said, weary of spelunking through the nightmare.
“OK,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, Bernard came smiling in, all morning cheer and bubbly good spirits.
“How is our patient this morning?”
“Ready to split.”
“And split you shall. All your results look excellent. The aneurysm is not misbehaving. There is no evidence of a TIA or mini-stroke. Nothing unusual turned up in your blood or urine.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not much. The symptoms you described—hallucinations, a seemingly ‘out-of-body experience’—are consistent with the effects of LSD, but acid wouldn’t have been detected by any mainstream drug test. Which is all they did in the ER.”
I started to interrupt. Bernard ignored me.
“And had you ingested LSD, fifty percent of the drug would have cleared your body within five hours, the remainder within as little as fifteen.”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“I understand. Not my skill set.” Meaningful lifting of brows to me, then to Ryan. “Poisoning?”
“Forget the concussion. And the lump. Might the whole thing have been a gorilla of a migraine?” I asked.
“Unusual, but anything’s possible. Did you feel a headache coming on? Had you just taken your current prescription?”
“I don’t recall either.”
“If it was a migraine, what might have triggered it?” Ryan asked.
Bernard shrugged. “It’s hard to isolate one factor.”
This was getting us nowhere. I was anxious to leave.
&
nbsp; “So.” Swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “I’m good to go, right?”
Bernard provided discharge advice similar to Gursahani’s and took his leave. He’d barely cleared the door when I snatched the bag from Ryan and darted into the bathroom.
My clothes hadn’t improved during the hours they’d spent bunched like linguini. Scraping off soil and debris as best I could, I dressed. Then I washed my face and scrubbed my nails. My hands tingled. My vision seemed strange as I watched the final remnants of soil swirl down the drain as muddy runoff.
While rebinding my hair, I caught sight of myself in the mirror.
I couldn’t recall ever looking so haggard. My cheeks were hollow, my lower lids baggy, my skin ashen. My hair was a greasy brown coil wrapping my skull. The combination made me look older by at least ten years.
I stared at my face. It stared back. Me, a decade in the future.
Did I have a decade? If so, what did it hold?
To Ryan’s credit, he’d given no indication that I looked so awful. If he did so now, I swore I’d level him. At least metaphorically.
Ryan made no comment. Wordlessly, he arm-wrapped my shoulders, collected the bovine flora, and walked me out into the corridor.
I declined the mandatory wheelchair ride to the main entrance, a wildly unpopular move. An argument ensued. Catching the orderly’s eye, Ryan shook his head subtly while pushing for an elevator. The man backed off.
At ground level, Ryan called an Uber. Ten minutes later, I let us into the annex. The Pasquerault file was gone from the kitchen table, my shoulder bag from the counter. I found both in the pantry. Another wily effort by Skinny.
To my horror, my iPhone was not in my purse. Red rocket flare in my chest! I’d never had a chance to forward the pics to Slidell. Not quite accurate. I just hadn’t done it. Panicky, I searched everywhere, knowing the reaming I’d endure. Finally gave up, certain it was futile.
Ryan had left three messages on my landline, the final one at six a.m. Thursday morning. Slidell had obviously kept him looped in concerning my disappearance and reemergence. While I listened and deleted, he climbed to assess the damage upstairs.
Birdie was as peeved as expected. And ravenous. After issuing double cat rations, I enjoyed a very long, very hot shower. I was taking a lot of those lately. One difference: Ryan slipped in to join me for this one. Helped with the soaping and spraying. Then, thoroughly clean, we retreated to my bed to assess my injuries and remedy my pain. No mixed feelings about that enterprise.
