“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, Greg. I had no control over it. Please don’t leave like this,” Oliver pleaded.
As Greg opened the door, the sounds of the awakening church invaded the sanctuary. He hesitated and turned back to face the priest. His emotional energy now spent, Greg seemed to sag back to his usual size. “I need time to work this out, Father. It was bad enough with Amanda.”
“I understand, but there’s something you need to know. If it was Amanda driving down that street, she urgently needs help. I can’t be completely certain, but I think she’s come here with the intention of killing someone. She’s sick. I felt the illness inside her.”
“Amanda would never intentionally hurt anyone,” Greg declared defiantly.Greg was a bad liar, and the flash of concern that crossed his face was plain to see. “I’d like to help,” Oliver said simply.
Greg stared back at the priest, and Oliver could tell that Greg was appraising him from a new perspective. “I’ll talk with Amanda,” he said and then left quickly.
Phil awoke with a start; certain someone was in his room. He clicked on the light but found no tall, dark, deformed man looming over him. His heart was thundering in his chest; it had been a rough night after a rough day. The waitress had caught him staring down her blouse; he had hallucinated a fairy-tale monster brazenly knocking down a woman and then disappearing; and finally, he had alienated the entire office by demanding that he be left alone. Now, after a night filled with tormenting voices and dreams about invisible phantoms, he faced a day filled with menial tasks and a sullen staff. Phil couldn’t relate to his staff any better than to the rest of the world, but their emotional states mattered to him, if only at a professional level. He needed order and consistency in the office, and it was his secretary and the rest of the staff who created it. He would have to make amends today. He would apologize to a few, and to others he would find an excuse to praise some trivial accomplishment, all for the sake of his own inner peace.
He rolled over and found that he still had eight minutes before his alarm would go off and officially start his day. Eight minutes of solitude. He breathed deeply and tried to let his mind float free. It was an ability he was trying to develop, but with little success. It should have been simple, a natural thing; but to him, it was anything but simple or natural, and it never had been. Even as a child, perhaps especially when he was a child, he had never been able to simply sit and daydream. There were the rare occasions in which he could shut down his mind and simply exist outside of thought, but he had never been able to just let go and let his thoughts wander without direction. He had been conditioned to always be focused, always be on guard, lest the unstable, dangerous portions of his fragmented mind seize control. For nearly forty years his mind had been racing, trying to stay ahead of the insanity that matched his every step.
Seven minutes left, he thought. He stared at the dark ceiling, willing his mind to relax. He tried closing his eyes, but all he saw was the dark man kicking a woman’s shoe. He changed his mind’s channel and watched a bead of sweat slowly meander down Dana’s cleavage. He watched for a moment and began to feel an unfamiliar stirring. She stood before him, only now she was naked and beckoning to him; the café had dissolved into a sleazy hotel room. I’m dreaming, he thought, and Dana immediately disappeared. Now all he saw were the blood vessels in his eyelids. I’m awake, he thought, and opened his eyes. He tried relaxing all his muscles, but he still felt the passage of every second.
You’re going to be late, one of his old voices said.
Phil could ignore this one; it dated back to his childhood and instead of growing stronger with time, this one had weakened, making room for the new and more dangerous small voice, the one with the power to destroy his carefully created and insulated world.
As a child Phil and his parents were forced to accept the fact that he would always be different. When he was two his mother noticed that he never cried, and in fact, rarely verbalized at all; when she fed or bathed him he almost never made eye-contact, preferring to stare over her shoulder and track unseen objects. On occasion, however, he would stare at her intensely, following her with his eyes, even crawling and latter walking after her if she left the room, and after finding her he would simply sit down and resume his quiet staring. At first she found it adorable; latter she found it disturbing. When he started stacking his unused toys and the cans in the pantry, his parents sought help. The diagnosis of autism wasn’t much of a surprise, but it was still devastating. Aside from institutional placement, no treatment options were offered. He was still young and required no more care than the average three year old, so the Ruckers made a promise to themselves and to Phil to keep him home for as long as they could safely manage him. Molly Rucker became a full-time stay-at-home mom and slowly coaxed Phil out of his mental prison. Within a year, he had begun to use words, quietly voicing his needs. By age five, his occasional speech was punctuated by verbal outbursts of astonishing clarity and detail. It was clear to the Ruckers and to the pediatricians who examined Phil that while he was emotionally stunted and socially retarded, he was not in the classic sense autistic; whatever was going on was much more complex. By age seven, Phil could pass for a normal child, a strange, intense, and reserved child, but functionally independent. His intellectual development was extraordinary, which only intensified his emotional isolation, both of which intensified the fragmenting of his mind. He explained it to himself in Freudian terms as a lack of self: superego versus id, a constant battle for control. He tried to explain it to his father in terms he would understand; they were at a local swimming pool and the two watched as several boys wrestled over a beach ball in the deep end of the pool. The smallest of the group managed to grab the ball and swim away, but a moment later his bigger and stronger playmates overwhelmed him. They took turns dunking him over and over again; finally, the lifeguard was forced to intervene. Phil took his Father’s hand and pointed at the near-drowned boy, and said simply: “that’s me.”
It doesn’t have to be, the small voice said.
Phil refused to take the bait. This voice was no different from any other; they were all parasites, and if given a chance, they would destroy their host. For thirty years, a pedantic life of discipline and routine had allowed him to live an independent life. He forced himself to remember some of the faces locked behind tall, steel doors. Their screams still echoed in his ears. “That is what happens when control is lost,” Phil said to all of the voices in his head.
The start of a motor made Phil jump, and a moment later his alarm went off. It took him a moment to realize that his neighbor had just started a snowblower. Phil climbed out of bed with unusual agility. His back didn’t seem to bother him. He stood to his full height and waited for the deep, boring pain to settle into its usual place. It had been with him for eighteen years, ever since the car accident that had taken the lives of both his parents and crushed two of his lumbar vertebrae. Except, this morning, it was little more than a muted ache. He slowly arched his back until he felt and heard an audible pop. One of the large bolts that had put his bones back together had broken ten years ago, and his back had popped ever since. It needed to be replaced, but he couldn’t face that ordeal a second time.
He made up his bed exactly as he had for the last thirty years. He didn’t have to be at work for three hours, but two of those would be spent on a treadmill, pushing his body to the limit. Exercise was a constant in his life, serving the dual purpose of minimizing his lower back pain and anesthetizing his Monsters, who had recently developed an unnerving capacity to adapt.
An hour into his run, Phil heard his neighbor’s snowblower abruptly shut down. George and Patsy Van Der had been Phil’s neighbors all his life. He was as fond of them as he was able. George was a retired lawyer, and despite being in his late eighties, was as sharp as he had been half a lifetime ago, and could easily have passed for a man in his early sixties. Patsy, on the other hand, had gone around the bend, as George had said on many occasions
. She was moderately senile, but not so far gone that George couldn’t care for her on his own.
Phil listened for George to restart the blower, but it remained quiet. There was no way George could be finished, and no way he would stop before he was finished. Phil ran for another five minutes, and still there was no sound from George. Concern started to grow in Phil’s mind. If George needed help, no one but Phil could deliver it. He still had fifty minutes to run, but it was becoming obvious that it would have to wait. Phil’s mind may have been ruled by The Routine, but his life was ruled by Moral Responsibility.
He climbed off the treadmill and pulled the curtains back. It had snowed more than anyone had expected. George’s driveway was cleared almost all the way to the street, but his snowblower sat idle in the middle of a drift, and George was nowhere to be seen. Phil couldn’t see all the way up the driveway from his windows, so he quickly toweled off, put on warm clothes, boots, and a jacket, and opened his front door. The snow had drifted several inches in front of his door. It always did that when the wind blew in from the west, and some of it spilled into his entranceway. He poked his head out the door and saw George sprawled spread-eagled across his cleared driveway. A tall, dark figure stood over him.
“Hey,” Phil yelled. Not very eloquent, but it managed to redirect the man’s attention away from George. Phil started to run towards them, but immediately tripped and fell face forward into foot-deep snow. He scrambled up, but the tall man was already striding across George’s lawn, leaving a trail of deep footprints. “What did you do?” Phil screamed after him.
“You are too late again, Phillip,” the man called back.
“Come back here,” Phil demanded, but the tall man continued across the yard, seemingly unhindered by the snow. He reached a Ford Taurus parked and idling at the curb just as Phil reached George. Phil bent over his neighbor as the Taurus pulled into the unplowed street. George was dead, his eyes squeezed closed, his face contorted in a mask of pain and horror. Phil reached to check for a pulse, but the blue, livid face told him he wouldn’t find one. He checked anyway. Nothing. He started CPR with no real hope, and after five minutes, gave up. He sat down next to George, breathing hard from the exertion and the pressure of what would have to come next. Patsy was inside, lost in the bliss of a deteriorating brain. Someone would have to explain to her that George, her husband of sixty-four years, would not be coming back inside to make her breakfast ever again. Unfortunately, she had enough of herself remaining to understand what that meant.
Two hours later, Phil was doing his best to console Patsy Van Der, while the police ran tape all around her front yard. Initially, there had been a considerable amount of resistance from the officers who responded to Phil’s call. George Van Der had obviously died of a heart attack, that was plain to all who had responded, and the opening of a murder investigation based on a neighbor’s report of a man standing over the body was a waste of their precious time—at least, until they found out that the neighbor was the coroner. At that point, the not-so-well-disguised grumbling focused on Phil and his eccentricities. Reluctantly, they sealed off the crime scene and began to process it. They worked slowly, waiting for the detective in charge to arrive and convince Rucker that this was a misapplication of their already strained resources. Phil was uninterested in their problems. He sat with Patsy, waiting for her son to arrive so he could finally get to work.
“I don’t think I have enough eggs for all these nice people, Phil. Would you mind running down to the store and getting a dozen more?” Patsy asked. She had retreated into her mind, refusing to believe that George was gone.
“Why don’t we wait for Patrick to get here,” Phil answered, relieved for the moment that she had stopped asking about George. Dementia was easier to deal with than grief.
A large black man opened the front door and stomped snow off his shoes. The officer at the door immediately straightened, accepted the man’s wet overcoat, and directed him to the couch. The sudden flurry of activity caught Patsy’s attention, and she watched as he approached.
“Are you with the police, young man?” she asked in a soft, grandmotherly voice.
“Yes, ma’am, I am. I am Detective Rodney Patton. I’m here to find out what happened to your husband.”
Phil stiffened, waiting for Patsy to break down again. As far as he was concerned, Patsy was in a good place—cooperative and unaware.
“I appreciate that, Detective,” she said sadly. She was lucid again, and Phil desperately wished that her son Patrick would get there.
“Can I ask you if your husband had any medical conditions, heart disease, blood pressure problems, anything?” He had the well-practiced voice of a veteran cop, and he directed all his attention to Patsy, but it was clear that he was also talking to Phil.
“He had a heart attack about twenty years ago, but he’d been fine since. His blood sugar was a little elevated, but he didn’t have to take any medications for it.” She sounded like the Patsy Phil had grown up with.
“I don’t mean to leave you alone, so I’m going to ask this officer to stay with you until your son arrives.” Patton motioned the uniformed policeman to sit next to Patsy. “In the meantime, I need to borrow Dr. Rucker.” He spoke directly to Patsy, not even acknowledging Phil.
“Oh, you mean Phillip,” she exclaimed with a bright smile. Her mind had gone away again.
“Yes, I need Phillip for a moment,” he stressed the name, but the insult was lost on Phil.
“Go with this nice young man, dear, and when you’re finished, don’t forget my eggs.” She gave Phil a smile.
Phil followed the huge man into the kitchen. At six feet two, he was no taller than Phil, but he was very close to twice his weight, somewhere in excess of four hundred pounds. Two uniformed officers immediately found their way out of the kitchen as Patton approached.
“Dr. Rucker, I’ve been meaning to introduce myself since I arrived in Colorado Springs three months ago, but as you know, things have been somewhat busy.”
The words were cordial enough, but Phil sensed his underlying frustration.
“I appreciate that, Detective, and your attempt at being friendly, but you’re wasting your time. I will not be persuaded to drop this,” Phil said without emphasis.
Patton stared at him, inhaling giant gulps of air. For a moment, Phil thought that Patton was trying to pressure him by sucking up all the air in the room. He almost smiled at that absurdity.
“You told the officers that you saw a tall, dark man standing over the deceased, and that he simply strolled away after you yelled at him.” All attempts at being friendly were gone. “Further, you saw this same man yesterday assault a woman and then disappear down an empty street.”
“That’s correct,” Phil said simply.
“Doctor, please try and look at this from my perspective. Mr. Van Der was eighty-six. He had a history of heart disease, and he was clearing ten inches of snow with a snowblower that was designed for no more than six. As I see it, your neighbor suffered another heart attack, and this man just happened to be driving by as Mr. Van Der collapsed. I don’t see a crime here.” His voice had a subtle, manipulative undercurrent.
Phil would not be moved. “That is one possibility, Detective, but it happens to be the most expedient possibility. Experience has taught me that the most expedient possibility is rarely the correct one.”
“Experience has taught me that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,” Patton fired back with a touch of anger.
“But not always. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need detectives,” Phil said just as quickly.
“I can’t authorize this. I will not pull people off of legitimate investigations to prove that Mr. Van Der died of natural causes.” His voice was now adamant.
Phil hesitated. They both knew that he had the legal authority to compel Patton to do whatever he wanted. Patton’s defiance was curious, and Phil was intrigued by it. But Phil was never intrigued by the motivations of others. The reali
zation played across Phil’s mind, but didn’t change it.
A part of him registered the arrival of Patrick Van Der. “You will continue to investigate this as a crime until you are told otherwise, Detective,” Phil said without emotion. He had no desire to continue this discussion, or to share the grief of the Van Ders’ only child. He retrieved his coat from the back of a kitchen chair and left through the back door.
Phil trudged through the snow to his back door. Several of the police stopped what they were doing and stared, hoping he would fall.
Regency Care Center was half acute-care hospital and half rehabilitation center. Emily Larson didn’t feel she needed either and Amanda found her aunt outside walking in the cool morning air, a heavy coat covering a hospital gown. Amanda quickly parked her car and hurried over to her aunt.
“What are you doing out here?” Amanda asked coming up behind her.
“What are you doing here?” Emily answered back.
“You know you’re not supposed to be out here, and why aren’t you using the cane?”
“The only way they’ll let me out of here is if I can walk, so I’m walking.”
Amanda smiled for the first time in days. Emily was a true force of nature; on the surface, she was a carbon copy of her brother: rude, loud, and opinionated. But whereas he justified his behavior with some fanciful notion of inherent superiority, Emily had earned the right to be loud and opinionated. She had been a sociology professor for more than four decades, and at the center of every academic circle that she had ever found herself within. Even her critics—and she had quite a few—listened respectfully when she spoke. She championed the unpopular view that individuals had become too reliant upon society for their welfare, and now, here she was in subfreezing temperatures living her philosophy. “Aunt Em, it’s cold out here, let’s go inside at least.”
“Might as well, no one has taken the time to properly clear the ice off of these damn sidewalks, and in front of a hospital no less,” Emily said while wheeling around and heading back to the door, a four-post cane tucked firmly under her arm. The pair silently walked back to Emily’s hospital room; along the way, she didn’t spare any of the nurses or aides a good long glare.
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