Serpents Rising

by David A. Poulsen

  I looked at her and tried to form a question.

  “How … old …” I couldn’t think of how the question was supposed to end.

  She was watching me.

  “Are you all right, Adam?”

  “Yeah … I … no …”

  “Adam?”

  “I just … Gerard, that’s it, isn’t it … you said Gerard, not … that other name.”

  “Yes, Adam, that’s what I said.”

  She was smiling now and I knew. But what did I know? There was something wrong. Something wrong with me. She’d done … what? I was so tired, so dizzy, so …

  It was right there. Right there. I knew what she’d done and I knew it was too late for me to do anything about it. The coffee. She’d put … something … in the coffee. I tried to get up. But my legs wouldn’t help me. If I could just sleep for a minute or two, just a few minutes, but no, I can’t sleep now, not now or —

  I tried again to stand up. And almost made it.

  The woman … I couldn’t think of her name either but she was right there, looking at me. The smile … that damn smile was bigger now. Her face was closer to me. And she was speaking to me. But it wasn’t making sense.

  “You are a Goddamn fool. Did you really think I’d stand by and let you destroy what I’ve spent my life building and creating? Northern Horizon Academy is a wonderful place of learning. And it’s a wonderful place of learning because of me.”

  Why is she…? Sleep, just for a minute …

  “You aren’t going to ruin my life’s work. Those pathetic women tried to do that and they paid the price for their interfering. Not all of them. Not yet. But they will. They all will. Just like your wife and that other little bitch. They got what they deserved.”

  What’s she holding … a needle … hypodermic … what is she…?

  “All of them will pay. But there’s no hurry for them. You, on the other hand, made yourself more of a priority, didn’t you, Adam?

  I tried to focus, felt my head, no, my whole body wanting to lean forward and just …

  “How does it feel to know you are dying? I’m sure someone as stupid as you are thinks you’ll be joining your wife in some blissful state of eternal joy. Well, good for you, you pathetic bastard. Good for you. You just hang on to that. While you die.”

  I forced my body to a half turn and looked back at the stove. It was so far away.

  I have to turn the burner off … the mussel stock will burn. I have to … move … have to.

  That was the last thought I had as a black curtain settled over me. So … heavy.

  And all was darkness.

  Twenty-Four

  I opened my eyes. She was still there. Still smiling. Looking down at me and smiling. But …

  No, it wasn’t her. It was Jill … looking down at me.

  “If you didn’t want to have dinner with me you could have just said so.”

  I blinked at her.

  “Oh, and by the way, you owe your life to a lemon pie,” she said.

  I tried to shake my head but I don’t think it moved. What it did was ache. Badly.

  “Lemon…. Where am I?”

  “Foothills Hospital. You’ve been out for …” she looked at her watch, “almost thirty hours.”

  “Out … thirty hours … lemon pie … what … what’s going on?”

  “We were hoping you might be able to tell us.”

  Different voice. Other side of the bed. I turned my head. Not a good idea. It hurt like the worst hangover in the history of alcoholic beverages. I forced my eyes to focus on the speaker.

  Cobb was wearing a Cleveland Browns ball cap. I thought I must be okay if Cobb’s hat could register with me. If I could just get my head to stop hurting and if someone would be kind enough to remove whatever it was that was in my mouth that was making it taste like compost, I’d be a hell of a lot better.

  “Why aren’t you in Saskatchewan?”

  “I’ve been and I’m back.”

  That was just one more thing that made no sense. I’d get back to that later. I turned my head very slowly back to Jill.

  “You want to explain the lemon pie thing? No, on second thought, start with the thirty hours part.”

  “You’ve been unconscious, out, zombie-like for thirty hours, give or take.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “And technically it wasn’t the lemon pie, it was the whipped cream that saved you. I came to your apartment early because I wanted to get it in the fridge before it went all scoodgy —”

  “Scoodgy,” I repeated.

  “Nobody likes scoodgy whipped cream,” Cobb said.

  Jill smiled. “The ambulance guys said another half hour and you’d have been dead. But maybe they were just being dramatic. To make me feel good.”

  “Dead,” I repeated.

  “Drug overdose. When you didn’t come to the door I knew there was something wrong. I tried it and it was unlocked. Lucky. I guess it’s a good thing we were having dinner.”

  No one said anything for a minute. I was trying to sort it all out … to remember.

  “You a user, Adam?”

  “What?”

  Cobb set the paper down, leaned forward.

  “You’ve been through some bad shit, pal,” he said. “I get that, but you damn near died. You would have if anyone but Jill had been the one to find you. And if the paramedics had been more than five minutes away. She knew to keep you breathing. She knew to —”

  “Stop.” I tried to hold my hand up. It wanted to fall back down but I made it stay there. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about heroin,” Cobb said.

  “No.”

  “You OD’d on heroin, Adam.”

  I tried to shake my head.

  “You’re wrong. I didn’t take anything. I mean, I didn’t … myself.”

  They were looking at me. I couldn’t tell if they believed me. I tried to get the words sorted out … the words I needed to explain … to make them understand …

  “She had a syringe,” I said, the memory of Delores Bain coming slowly into focus.

  I felt rather than saw Cobb lean closer still. “Who Adam? Who had a syringe?”

  “Delores Bain. The principal at Donna’s school. She’s the one. She set the fire, she killed the other girl, and she wanted to kill me.”

  “You know this?”

  “She told me … all of it.”

  “Can you take us through it?”

  “Yeah, I think so. It’s a little fuzzy but I think I can remember a lot of it. Is there anything to drink?”

  “They brought some juice a while ago,” Jill said. “You want to try it? They said it might be hard to keep anything down for a while.”

  “I need to drink something.”

  Jill passed me the juice and helped me sit up. I gulped down half a glass or so of the best orange juice I’d ever tasted.

  I lay back on the pillow and thought for a minute. I needed to get this right.

  “She came to the apartment a little after three, I guess. Just after Lorne Cooney, a guy I’ve worked with, just after he left. In fact, I thought it was Lorne coming back for something but it wasn’t. It was her.”

  I looked at Jill. It was important to me that she understood.

  “Keep going, Adam,” she said.

  “She told me she’d remembered one of the teachers, a guy who died a year ago, I think she said … some guy who was so obsessive about the school’s reputation that she thought maybe it was possible that he could hurt people to protect the school from further scandal.”

  I took another drink of the juice. I was feeling slightly better, like after you come out of anesthetic and things start to make sense again.

  “But it was bogus. It was all bogus … an act. And I was already wonky … losing consciousness. She drugged me. Must have put something in my coffee. Then injected me with…”

  I turned my head toward Cobb.

  “It was her. She was the
one who hated the people she thought had hurt the school. Once she knew I was too far gone to do anything, she told me … told me she’d killed Donna, and the other girl, Elaine Yu, and that she’s going to kill the others. But she wanted to get me first … saw me as a more immediate threat.

  “I realized she’d done something and could feel myself getting woozy and I tried to get up and do something but I couldn’t.”

  “Probably one of the date rape drugs or something like it,” Cobb said.

  “Whatever it was I was as helpless as a baby. Pretty sick feeling.”

  “That and the heroin,” Cobb said. “You are a lucky S.O.B.”

  I was starting to feel almost human. I sat up on my own and smiled at Jill.

  “Enter the lady with the lemon pie.”

  “And whipping cream,” she said.

  “That she didn’t want all scoodgy.” Cobb grinned.

  She laughed. “Uh-huh.”

  “You … you said thirty hours. I’ve been out that long?”

  She nodded her head. “Pretty close.”

  “And you’ve been here the whole time?”

  “Not quite. I went home for a few hours. I wanted to be there when Kyla got home from her friend’s house. I slept a little, then came back.”

  “Wow,” I said. Which didn’t come close to covering what I was feeling. But it was all I could come up with, given the state of my brain cells.

  A doctor who looked barely old enough to be out of high school came into the room. He was tall, fit looking, and smiling. He stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me.

  “Well, you’re looking a whole lot better. Feeling better too, I bet.”

  “Maybe not ready to run a half marathon, but I think I’m going to live. If I don’t starve to death.”

  He came around to the side of the bed and bent down to get a better look at me. “If you’re hungry, that’s a good sign.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Mr. Cullen, you took a massive overdose of drugs tonight and almost ended your life. Clearly there’s a problem that needs to be addressed and …”

  I might have laughed if I could have been certain it wouldn’t hurt. I settled for shaking my head.

  “Thanks for the concern, Doc, but it turns out that someone drugged me and shot the stuff into me. I’m not a user.”

  He looked up at Cobb. “Is that true?”

  Cobb nodded. “Yeah, it is. And I checked his arm when I first got here. No tracks. He’s telling the truth.”

  The doctor frowned and looked back at me.

  “I guess that’s good and bad. Good that you’re not an addict, bad that someone tried to do you harm. We need to report this to the police.”

  Cobb spoke. “I’m a private detective, Doctor. This happened as the result of an investigation we’re involved with at present. The police will need to be brought into this but we can handle making that happen. For now, it’s not something that you need to worry further about.”

  “The law in Canada requires physicians to report any admittance of harm by one person to another. I have no choice.”

  Cobb nodded. “I understand, Doctor, but we’ll be reporting the incident to Deputy Police Chief Capuano. I’ve worked with him — and for him — and I’ve already texted him to say we’ll be in as soon as Mr. Cullen is able.”

  The doctor didn’t answer right away. “You’re sure this man isn’t in immediate danger?”

  Cobb said, “The person who did this is, we think, unstable. And clearly diabolical. But the danger is manageable.”

  “Who will manage it?”

  “I will,” Cobb said.

  The doctor turned back to me. “I’d like to keep you in overnight just to make sure everything is as it should be. You’ve taken a double hit and it might be best —”

  “Thanks, Doctor, but I’m feeling a whole lot better and I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  He looked at Jill. “I’ll be honest, it’s nuts in here tonight and we could use the bed, but I’m a little reluctant …”

  “We’ll watch him like a hawk, Doctor. I’ve had experience with overdose situations.”

  “As your actions tonight clearly showed.” He turned back to me. “In that case, how about you just take it easy for a little while longer. We’ll check your vitals in a while and if everything’s good I think we can get you out of here. But if you start feeling worse —”

  “I’ll get my butt back here in a hurry. Promise.”

  An hour and a half later Cobb, Jill, and I stepped through the hospital’s main entrance and into the cool evening air. Air, like the orange juice earlier, had never tasted so good. I took a couple of deep breaths.

  “What time is it anyway?”

  Cobb glanced at his watch. “A little after nine-thirty.”

  “You still hungry?” Jill asked as she took hold of my hand.

  I looked at her.

  “Okay, dumb question.” She looked over at Cobb. “I think we better get him some food.”

  Cobb grinned at me. “What’s your preference? I’m buying.”

  “I’d like to say steak and lobster but I don’t think I’m up to a dining experience tonight. Maybe something pleasantly plebeian.”

  “I have the answer.” Cobb was still grinning.

  We were sitting on three plastic moulded chairs around one of the Formica-covered fibreglass tables that are a design feature at Tim Hortons restaurants from sea to shining sea. Pleasantly plebeian.

  I had finished off a toasted BLT, two old fashioned plain donuts, and was nicely into my second large double-double before serious conversation resumed. Since the two of them seemed to be waiting for me to give some kind of cue, I set my cup down, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and looked first at Jill, then at Cobb.

  “So, what happens next?”

  Cobb shifted around on his chair. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m worried that a good lawyer could get her off.”

  “Are you nuts?” I was a little louder than I meant to be. I leaned forward, set my elbows on the table. “I’m an eyewitness and the intended victim. And she confessed the whole thing to me. Okay, maybe confessed isn’t the right word, bragged is closer to what she did, but the point is she told me all of it.”

  Cobb nodded. “I get that and I know it sounds crazy, but think about it. You didn’t actually see her put anything in your coffee, or stick the needle in your arm, and all we’ve got is your recollection of her telling you she was the killer while you were in a reduced state of consciousness.”

  I stared down at my coffee.

  “I could see her walking away from this,” Cobb said again.

  “That stinks.” Jill’s voice wasn’t as loud as mine had been but she clearly felt the same way about Cobb’s revelation as I did.

  I leaned back in my chair. “Which I suppose brings us back to my earlier question — what happens next?”

  “I’m thinking it might be time for me to get back on the surveillance regimen.”

  “You can’t watch her twenty-four hours a day,” I said.

  Cobb regarded his coffee cup. “I can’t. But I have a couple of colleagues I can call on for help.”

  “What’s she likely to do next?”

  Cobb flicked his thumb against his chin several times. Thinking.

  “I’m not sure. We’re okay until she learns that you survived her attack. Which, of course, she will, eventually. The big unknown is what will she do then? This is someone who is psychopathic, sociopathic, and clearly capable of great violence. Factor in that she’s also very intelligent and unpredictable and what we’ve got is the potential for some bad shit.”

  Jill and I mulled that over for a while. I drank more of my double-double while Jill stared out the window.

  “And she’ll realize that since no one has shown up to arrest her that you haven’t given her up to the cops yet. She’ll also know that you’re out there and that you know she’s the one. If I’m her I’m thinkin
g I can’t just let this guy that I tried to kill wander around out there until he does decide to go to the police.”

  “She’ll want to silence me. Permanently.”

  Cobb nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  I nodded. “But for right now, I’m okay. She thinks I’m dead.”

  Cobb nodded.

  “For now,” he said.

  I tried to think of something to say to lighten the mood a little but couldn’t come up with anything. I looked at Jill. She was pale and worry had drawn her eyes into narrow slits. I reached over and covered one of her hands with one of mine.

  “Hey,” I said. “Mother hen. Take it easy. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

  She jerked her head up to look at me. “Oh, crap,” she said so suddenly I actually jumped and spilled a little of the coffee on my jacket.

  “What?”

  “That reminds me — I forgot to tell you when we were at the hospital. Your mom called three times wondering how you were. One of the nurses told me that while you were still unconscious. You better call her and let her know you’re okay.”

  I set my coffee cup down and took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

  “That’s going to be a little tough,” I said. “My mother passed away in October of 2006.”

  Twenty-Five

  There was silence around the table for several seconds. All of us knew what this meant but it was Cobb who put it in words.

  “Looks like Ms. Bain already knows you survived her attack.”

  “But how?”

  Cobb shrugged. “Maybe she hung around, watched your place for a while. Saw the ambulance take you away. Maybe followed it to the hospital. I’m guessing, but it has to be something like that.”

  I felt like I did after a horror flick — the kind where you come home after the movie and check under the bed and in the closets. I actually looked around the Tim Hortons at each of the people sitting at tables. There were six. None of them were Delores Bain. Two more people, a man and woman, were at the counter ordering. Neither of them were Delores Bain either. I stared out the windows at the parking lot and the residential streets beyond. Was she out there?