The Room of White Fire

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “I don’t think it would work on you. I use it on Alec because it helps keep him on task. Something to do with his Marine training?”

  “Carrying out orders is what we do.”

  “You don’t seem like a Marine.”

  “I’m pretty ex, to tell the truth.”

  She sat back in her black padded chair and looked at me for what felt like the first time since giving me Clay’s medical diagnosis the day before. I watched her gaze drift to the scar on my forehead, then lower. “As far as Evan’s claim about Clay being in Romania, that goes against all of the DoD information I was given. Of course, Evan Southern is delusional. He’s from Pasadena, California, not from the Alabama hill country. His name was Edward Frizell until he changed it. His accent and manners, the whole Civil War fixation—it’s imaginary. He probably didn’t have time to tell you about his great-great-great-grandfather who died at Antietam Creek.”

  “No.”

  “Evan has other identities, too.”

  “This is a confusing and maddening place.”

  “I love your choice of words. One of the longest discussions in mental health treatment is whether our help does more harm than good. Whether we’re just making them worse in places like this. I wrestle with that. I really do.”

  “Clay Hickman told a lady friend of his that he received electroshock therapy here.”

  She gave me a long, frowning look. “A lady friend? Someone outside Arcadia, then? So you’ve actually seen him?”

  “Not yet. Back to the electroshock, Dr. Hulet. It isn’t mentioned in Clay’s file. The one you gave me.”

  “It’s called electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. It is a modality we use. Sparingly and judiciously. And generally with success. Dr. Spencer demands unilateral placement of the electrodes, never bilateral. Far fewer side effects.”

  “Did you personally conduct the ECT on Clay?”

  She stared at me. “Yes, of course. It’s not in the treatment history for reasons of confidentiality.”

  “Clay also told his friend he’d built up resistance to the shocks.”

  Paige Hulet looked hard at me again, then closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. She opened her eyes and I saw the moisture on them. “Very unlikely. Maybe Clay was just trying to . . . impress his lady friend.”

  “What is it between you and Clay?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You seem inordinately focused on him.”

  She fixed me with her dark, no longer moist eyes. “I am his doctor and I am ordinately focused on him, Mr. Ford. He’s a wonderful, troubled man. And though it is absolutely none of your business, I’m going to share something personal with you. I live for my partners. They are what I have and what I want. I have never married and have no children. When I hired you, I’d hoped you’d see my passion for my work. And respect it. I’d hoped you’d prove to be more than a base-model hominid just up from the mud.”

  I thought about that a moment. “No. That’s me. But I meant no offense, Doctor. I like it that your voice rises slightly in volume and you blush and your blood pressure probably goes up when you talk about Clay Hickman. I like it that you like him and he moves you and you seem to want what’s best for him. Maybe I’m even envious. Maybe I want a doctor like you.”

  Slowly, very slowly, Dr. Hulet’s look went from staunch defense to acceptance. I wasn’t sure just what she was accepting. Whatever it was it took a while. She sighed. “You come at me from so many directions. And are much closer to being fired than you seem to know.”

  “Well, why not just get it over with?”

  “I want you to succeed. Yes, okay. I am wound rather tight, Mr. Ford. I understand that. And I meant no offense, either, about your ape likeness.”

  “I couldn’t handle working here for long.”

  “There are, well, rewards and punishments.”

  I hesitated. In for a penny. “Have you given any thought to my invitation to dance?”

  “None. I’m so sorry, but when I said I would think about it, I was trying hard to be polite but not leading. It’s a difficult balance with men.”

  Ouch. But never with women. “No apology needed, Dr. Hulet, but you were the one who brought up five years of dancelessness.”

  It was the first time I’d seen her smile. A ray of sunlight in a cloud. “That’s not even a word.”

  I shrugged. “We both know what it means. What do you think Clay Hickman’s paintings mean?”

  “Your mind jumps from thought to thought.”

  “Who cares what my mind does?”

  A shadow of gravity on her face. “I find the paintings disturbing. Those same two figures, trapped over and over in varying postures. Their pointed heads. They made me think of hell. You?”

  I stood. “The same. Can I ask you a question about this place?”

  “Of course.”

  “How much do people pay for their loved ones to get treatment here?”

  “I’m not authorized to discuss costs. That’s a very personal thing for the families, Mr. Ford. You understand.”

  “You told me that Arcadia’s goal was discharge and reintegration.”

  “When possible.”

  “What percentage of partners go back into normal life?”

  “It’s in line with other institutions like ours.”

  “Can you ballpark it for me?”

  “Again, not my information to give.”

  “So, Arcadia is more of a residence than a treatment center.”

  “Words can be slippery.”

  “So let’s use the right ones.”

  A hard, brown-eyed stare, analytical but not unkind. “Like ‘dancelessness’? Now I have a question for you, Mr. Ford. Have you given any thought to calling me first when you find Clay? Not Alec. Not Dr. Spencer. Me?”

  “I’m still considering. Your signature is on the contract but Briggs Spencer is your superior.”

  “It would be in Clay’s best interest.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “You must do the right thing for Clay. I’m banking on you.”

  “You’re smart to. Because I’m Roland Ford, the go-to hominid.”

  8

  A knot began forming in my throat as I walked toward the Waterfront Bar and Grill in downtown San Diego. The knot tightened as I climbed onto a familiar stool. I knew the odds were small that Clay Hickman and Sequoia Blain would just come strolling in, arm in arm, but Evan Southern had vouched for Clay’s enthusiasm about this place before he was committed to Arcadia. So maybe Clay would show up and make my job easy. Maybe, now free after three years of confinement, he wouldn’t be able to resist his favorite drink at his former favorite watering hole.

  Sergio, one of the Waterfront’s senior bartenders, was on duty that evening. He’s an easygoing, quick-to-smile man, well fitted to a place that is often crowded and rowdy. He made me a light bourbon and soda and we talked Padres until he got busy. The TV news was speculating on who would be the new secretary of Homeland Security. Springtime, I thought, and like everything else in spring, our new president is moving and shaking. New policy. New people. New words. Then a brief story on the latest bloodshed in Fallujah. Nothing new there, I thought. All that flesh and blood. That belief. Wasted. Forget.

  But remember: I had spent more than a little time here at the Waterfront the first year after Justine died. Some of it on this very stool. It had seemed important to be out of my depressing house, somewhere out in the open, where I couldn’t overdrink and hide from a world I wanted no part of. Another life. I felt that knot in my throat again. I realized that Clay Hickman’s time here in the Waterfront wasn’t that much earlier than my own. He had checked into Arcadia a year before Justine had died and I had checked into my own private, inner asylum. According to delusional Evan Southern, on good authority from possibly d
elusional Clay Hickman, this had been Clay’s downtown haunt. And mine. We’d barely missed each other.

  Sergio was twisting a white towel inside a beer glass as I held up the picture that Paige Hulet had given me. The towel stopped. “Rick Sims,” he said.

  “Seen him lately?”

  Sergio’s brow furrowed as the towel started up again. “Six hours ago.”

  I tried to sound casual. “With a girl?”

  “Yeah. I carded her and she made an excuse and ordered an Arnold Palmer. What’s up with him? Haven’t seen him in three years. The day Tony Gwynn died. Big Tony fan. Nice guy. Serious.” Sergio looked down at me, nodding, his brow furrowing again. “Is he all right?”

  “Not fully.”

  Sergio shook his head quickly and unhappily, as if shaking off a bad thought. “Today I didn’t think so. Too happy. Too loud. Not like he was. The girl kind of pulled him out of here.”

  “Any clue where they were going?”

  “None. I just served them drinks while they waited for a table and he talked at her. Is he in trouble?”

  “Headed for that neighborhood.”

  “Where’s he been the last three years?”

  “Back east. I’d appreciate a call if you see him again. An immediate call, Sergio.”

  “Sure, okay.”

  “How about a table and a menu?”

  —

  The table was just big enough to hold another bourbon and Paige Hulet’s file on Clay Hickman.

  The Hickman family had its roots in nineteenth-century Boston banking, then migrated west and branched into railroads, lumber, and construction. Damon Hickman, a Navy lieutenant, had settled in San Diego after World War II, going into residential and, later, hotel development. By 1953, Hickman Homebuilders was Southern California’s fifth largest contracting company, and later, when Damon’s son Rex became chairman of the board at age thirty-five, it had risen to third place in the hottest homebuilding market in the country. Clay was Rex and Patricia Hickman’s third child, born prematurely and with a faulty left ventricle, not expected to survive. No pictures of baby and mother after birth. No announcement.

  But Clay Hickman survived not only his early birth but an early heart surgery, too. He grew healthy. In junior high school he was a scholar athlete in spite of his short stature and light weight (five feet three inches tall; one hundred and five pounds). He graduated from high school with honors and lettered varsity in four sports. He had added six inches of height and fifty-five pounds by graduation. A middleweight.

  Three weeks later he joined the United States Air Force.

  According to my DoD file, Clay Hickman had undergone basic training, then trained for a year in tactical aircraft maintenance. He was then deployed to Ali Air Base in Iraq to work on AC-130U “Spooky” gunships. I knew from my own tour of duty in Iraq that the Spooky is very spooky and more, a menacing nightmare belching out six thousand machine-gun rounds per minute through electric Gatling guns. From the air it is both deafening and surreal, but from the ground it is very real, and the last thing many people hear or see. It also carries a 105mm Howitzer cannon and a 40mm armor-piercing machine gun. It was known in Vietnam as “Puff the Magic Dragon” because its dense exhale of lead could rain down death on so many humans at once. Clay had serviced and maintained the Spookies, apparently with neither distinction nor demerit, during 2007. But as I noted in the poorly lit Waterfront bar, Clay’s final two years of service had been blotted out by half a page of heavy black ink, from which Clay did not emerge until late 2009, honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force, as Dr. Hulet had told me. So, almost two missing years.

  I sipped the bourbon and called my flight instructor at Oceanside Airport. He taught both Justine and me to fly—Justine first, years before I met her. Chuck Graff was Air Force back in Vietnam, piloting F-16s. He had spent his last three active decades with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in Washington. Then he’d retired and come west to teach people how to fly for pleasure. He was crushed when Justine’s plane failed. They had spent a lot of hours together in the blue. We’re not friends, but I’d done him a favor during the divorce of a friend of his.

  We caught up just a little, then I told him who I was looking for and the reason why, and what the DoD file on 2A3X3 Clay Browne Hickman had said. “What it didn’t say is what I’m most interested in. Two years gone. Blacked out. I’m just after the basics, Chuck.”

  “I can’t help you with that,” he said. “They redact those records for good reasons.”

  I waited a beat. “I understand. But would you look over his file anyway?”

  “With an eye for what?”

  “For helping me find him.”

  “I’d do you more good flying search over those mountains.”

  “He’s out of the mountains by now.” I told him about Sequoia Blain, letting my worry about her come through.

  A long wait. “Well. Don’t expect much, if anything, Roland.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Call me in an hour.”

  I called him a dinner and a bourbon later. I had to put the file on the seat across from me while I ate. Chuck told me that no Clay Hickman had been deployed in Iraq as an aircraft mechanic by the USAF during the years in question.

  “Was Clay Hickman deployed to Iraq as something else?” I asked.

  “Not deployed to Iraq at all.”

  “Then I have a falsified file?”

  “Correct.” Chuck went silent. I could almost hear his brain whirring. “Clay Browne Hickman was part of the aircrew protection program—survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. SERE. It may ring a bell. It’s based at Fairchild AFB outside of Spokane. He graduated from the program and immediately went to work as a Fairchild trainer. I’ll deny telling you that until the end of time.”

  I knew that SERE prepared at-risk airmen for survival, capture, and interrogation. “Was he still at Fairchild in 2008 and 2009?”

  A long pause. “I hit the same block you did.”

  “Redacted into the great black yonder?”

  “Sorry, I tried.”

  “Thanks, Chuck.”

  “Roland, little bit of advice? Clay’s file tells me that he probably stepped into something that’s hard to step back out of. Trespass at your own risk. Better yet, don’t trespass at all.”

  I said nothing for a long beat.

  “Roland? Who gave you that document?”

  “It came from Arcadia. A private sanitorium out by Palomar Mountain.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It tries hard not to be heard of.”

  “Forging military records is a felony.”

  “I’ll point that out to them.”

  “Good luck. Come out to Oceanside and we’ll have lunch.”

  I hung up, paid up, waved to Sergio, and got out. I walked half a block down Kettner, stopped and lit a smoke. The promised rain had not come but the fog was thick enough to wrap the streetlights in gauze. A white Range Rover and a black Charger came down Hawthorn, passed Kettner, headed toward the harbor. There are hundreds of such vehicles in San Diego County, but few of them travel in pairs, and this was the second time in two days I’d seen two of them doing just that. The windows were all blacked out and the windshields darkened so I could see nothing of who was inside. I walked half the block toward Grape, changed sides of the street, and finished my cigarette. Sure enough, a moment later the happy white Range Rover and black Charger came rolling east on Grape, making me the approximate center of their rectangle.

  Back at my truck I knelt both front and rear, scanned my phone flashlight across the undercarriage, found no radio transmitters that might account for my company. Tomorrow I’d get under it and really look. I cussed myself for letting myself be tailed. Once from Fallbrook to Lazy Daze, once from Fallbrook to downtown. The last ti
me I’d been tailed was during my Internal Affairs interviews regarding the shooting of Titus Miller, an erratic but nonthreatening, armed black nineteen-year-old citizen. My partner had killed him with five shots and I had chosen not to fire. Back then, the tails were fellow Sheriff’s Department deputies trying to harass me. It worked. Followed me everywhere, it seemed. Made me angrier and more spooked than usual. Trouble sleeping. Bourbon and regret. During that harassment I relearned my most important lesson from Fallujah: To stand by me. To watch my own back. Be my own ally and friend.

  After the transmitter check I sat in the cab of my truck, blasting the heater and defroster. Based on what Sergio had said, I decided it was safe to text Sequoia. A gamble, because if my text set something bad in motion, it was all on me.

  I thought for a minute and came up with:

  7:21 PM

  Just saying hi . Primate Palace misses U. Call me when U feel like it. Bye 4 now

  9

  Back in my heavily draped, ponderously furnished, Justine-haunted home office I poured another drink and began hunting down the basics of the survival, evasion, resistance, and escape program of which Clay Hickman had apparently been a part.

  SERE had been created by the United States Air Force during the Korean War to help airmen who might get shot down over enemy territory. The Air Force suspected that Koreans, like Japanese, would use hideous tortures to get what they could out of the captured U.S. airmen, and reasoned that the airmen’s best chance was to be prepared. Later, the program was adopted by the Navy, Army, DoD civilians, and private military contractors with a “high risk of capture.”

  SERE was mostly what you might figure: wilderness survival in various climates, emergency first aid, land navigation, camouflage methods, communication, and how to improvise tools. Former prisoners of war taught the resistance and escape classes, based on their own hard-earned wisdom. Just as Chuck Graff had said, it was headquartered at Fairchild AFB.

  Early rumors held that resistance to “Chinese brainwashing” was the main focus of SERE’s “psychology of captivity” training, though Air Force spokesmen denied this. Details of the training were, of course, classified. SERE’s broadly stated purpose was to “provide students with the skills needed to live up to the U.S. Military Code of Conduct when in uncertain or hostile environments.”