Isolation Ward

by Joshua Spanogle

  The greater sin would have been to let the son of a bitch back into the world, but that betrayal seemed to shine a bright light on my deepest flaws. Maybe a moral man would have figured an honorable way out of the situation with the Surgeon. Maybe, as I said, I am a cheat and a liar. When the chips are down—when my career is on the line, when I want to protect a mentor’s honor, when I want to save us from a murderer—maybe the only way I can do it is through obscuring and neglecting the truth. And if you examine the odds, you’ll see I tend to screw up anyway: I wrecked on my career path; all the papers detailing Harriet Tobel’s involvement with the Chimeragen fiasco would soon be in the hands of the police. At least the Surgeon would go to jail.

  What a fantastic stand-up guy you are, Nate McCormick.

  I pulled into the parking lot at Chimeragen. My head was really spinning now with pain and apprehension. Plywood covered the hole on the front door where I’d broken out the window. Guess scheming and double-crossing didn’t give you time to call the glass company.

  I popped the clip from the gun and counted four bullets, five with the one in the chamber.

  Under the eaves of the building, a camera blinked. I didn’t need my buddies inside to know that it was me, and not the Surgeon, come to pay them a visit. I steadied the gun on my left arm, aimed, and shot into the camera. Amazingly, I hit it. In its death throes, the thing threw out some sparks and smoke. Satisfying.

  I pounded on the plywood with the butt of the gun.

  After thirty seconds or so, I heard motion on the knob. I raised the pistol, stiffening my arm as much as I could, gripping the life out of the slippery handle. I would be goddamned if I’d let these guys see me shake.

  The door opened.

  “Hello, Ian,” I said.

  Carrington had a pistol in his hand, which he promptly dropped. Maybe it was the gun in my hand, maybe it was how I looked—bloodied, bandaged, the cuffs giving me an S & M flair. Whatever the cause, Carrington was more Nervous Nellie than I and lost his advantage.

  Reflexively, he tried to regain advantage and reached down. But I was looped on pain and adrenaline and was feeling kind of Charles Bronson at the moment; I stepped forward, jabbing the gun into his chest. “Don’t even think about it,” I warned as I kicked the gun away from him. The Surgeon would have been proud.

  Carrington stood straight and backed up a step, surprised, I suppose, at the hardass in front of him. The man looked as though he’d slept as little as I had; bags hung under his eyes, and the muscles on his face sagged. Plotting to destroy your fiancée really takes it out of you, I thought.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

  “Where is she?”

  Carrington didn’t move. I jabbed the gun again, felt it bite into the flesh. “Stop that,” he said.

  “Where is she?”

  Carrington kept his eyes on mine and backed up through the door. He looked at the gun on the floor, and I felt like he was considering another jump for it, but he managed some wisdom and turned slowly, led me through the inner door to the offices behind. A light was on in the conference room ahead where Otto Falk had given me his sermon and tried to involve me in his plan to save thousands, his plan to cover up the terrible costs.

  “He’s here?” I heard Falk say from the room ahead.

  Quietly, Carrington answered, “Yes, he is.”

  I jammed the gun hard between Carrington’s shoulder blades. He stumbled forward into the room, swearing. I followed.

  The shock on Falk’s face was, to say the least, gratifying. I could really get into this gun thing, except that firearms made me so anxious it was all I could do to keep mine from swinging back and forth like a blind man’s cane. And there was the problem of the other guys’ guns. Weapons were like rats—where there’s one . . .

  Anyway, Alaine was there and, thank God, not lying in a pool of blood on the floor. She sat in a chair at one end of the conference table, arms crossed in front of her. Same outfit I’d seen her in earlier. The gloss of tears was still on her cheeks. She seemed neither surprised nor happy to see me. She seemed already to have left for that South American beach.

  Falk stood at the other end of the conference table from Alaine, holding, of course, a gun. He raised it inexpertly at me, elbow bent, pistol at waist level. Again, I was struck at how silly this was, all these guns in the hands of folks who’d probably never touched one before. I mean, Carrington dropped his at the first sign of trouble; Falk looked like he was holding a used air-sickness bag.

  This was not our world. And we were all making a hash of things.

  I suppose Falk was trying to think his way out of the hole he was in, and his lips pulled taut. “Dr. McCormick—”

  “Stand over there,” I snarled at Carrington, jerking the gun toward Falk, a move I’d learned from too many childhood hours in front of the TV. Ian shuffled over and stood next to the surgeon, the two of them in front of a rosewood magazine rack filled with business and medical journals.

  “Richard Craw,” I said.

  “Who?” Falk asked, so obviously playing dumb it was embarrassing.

  “Richard Craw is with the police now,” I said. “Put the gun down, Dr. Falk.”

  “Why on earth would I do that?” His voice was steady, but I could see the end of his gun begin to jiggle. He gripped the butt with two hands.

  “Because this is over.” I took a step toward the older man. “Because Mr. Craw is going to help himself. He’s going to tell them everything that will save his own skin. You know that. And you know what he says will not help you.” I added, “He told me you were here.”

  I took another step. Falk raised the gun a few inches.

  “The police are on their way here now.” Lies, lies, lies, McCormick.

  All was quiet for a moment, until Falk, suddenly furious, exploded. “You cannot do this,” he said. “You cannot destroy everything I’ve accomplished. I will not allow you to do so.”

  “You’ve destroyed it yourself. I want to give you some advice: Save what you can. Accept responsibility. I will do what I can to see the research finds a home.”

  I glanced at Alaine. She watched the happenings with that same serene, detached look on her face. Eerie. She’d always been good at that, at shutting down in fraught situations. It had been her MO during our breakup. Christ, she’d done it only a few hours before, as we walked through the campus. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on behind those eyes. Maybe she was thinking that despite being given something of a reprieve by her old boyfriend, she was going to spend a good amount of time in jail. Maybe she was thinking that betrayal is a bitch.

  She shifted her eyes to her fiancé. Maybe she was thinking she’d like to cut the balls off the venture capitalist. If so, I’d pass her the scalpel.

  “What do you want, Nate?” Ian Carrington said.

  “What?”

  “You want a million dollars? Two million?”

  “Shut up,” Falk said. My sentiments exactly. But Carrington plowed ahead.

  “We can get you—let’s see—probably two and a half million, maybe three. We can do that, can’t we, Otto? We could do it tomorrow, first thing.”

  Alaine was looking now at Carrington; her face wasn’t blank anymore, but settling somewhere between fury and disgust. At least he’s rich, right, Alaine?

  Anyway, the drama playing out between Ian and Alaine was not really my concern at that moment; ending the botched standoff was. “Alaine,” I said. Her head swiveled slowly toward me. “There’s a gun next to the receptionist’s desk outside. Get it.” Like a zombie, she rose from the chair and left the room.

  All was silent but for the spinning of gears in Otto Falk’s head.

  Ian again, continuing some conversation in which he was the only active participant: “Three million. I can make some calls tomorrow and have three million dollars wired to your account—”

  Falk sighed loudly. “It is over. You are right, Dr. McCormick.” He placed the gun on
the table.

  “What are you doing?” Carrington squeaked.

  Ignoring him, Falk said, “Work with me to see that what I’ve done is not lost.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “It would be a tragedy if all this”—he waved his hand around—“if all of it were to be wasted.” And like the air from the Surgeon’s chest cavity, tension left the room. I couldn’t help but admire this man—a man who’d both saved lives and taken them—just a little, just for a second.

  “Bill Steadman at the University of Pittsburgh has been interested in this,” he said.

  “Bill Steadman. I will call him.”

  “Good.”

  Carrington made a move for the gun on the table. I raised mine. “Don’t.”

  He froze. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he breathed. “Three million dollars. I can get more if you give me time.”

  I wanted to shoot the guy in the mouth just to get him to shut up. At that moment, though, I heard something behind me and turned. Alaine. She held the gun in front of her, more expertly than I would have thought. Perhaps we watched the same TV shows as kids.

  “You can put the gun down,” I said to her. “And get that one.” I nodded toward the pistol on the table. She didn’t lower her arm as she reached across the table and took Falk’s weapon.

  “Call the police, Alaine.”

  She didn’t move.

  “So, the police weren’t on their way,” Falk said.

  I shrugged and he nodded. He seemed exhausted and—I might have been reading into things—relieved, as if finally all this was over and he could let events take their course. I repeated, “Alaine, call the police.”

  She stood next to me, one gun raised, the other dangling from her left hand.

  “They were going to kill me,” she whispered.

  “Maybe,” I said, “but now they’re not. Get the phone.” She didn’t stir. “Alaine!”

  Volume seemed to break the spell. She lowered the weapon and walked to the phone.

  “Don’t, Alaine.” It was Carrington again. “What do you want, sweetie? All my money? Everything? You have the gun now, love. Make him let us go, and you can have everyth—”

  “Shut up!” I yelled.

  “Ian . . .” Falk said.

  Alaine didn’t even look up.

  She dialed the phone, spoke with the 911 dispatcher. Too calmly, I thought. Like an android. I heard her replace the receiver.

  “You bitch,” Ian whispered.

  “Shut up,” I said. I looked over my shoulder and saw Alaine held only one of the guns. “You can put that down,” I said.

  “Are we going to prison?” She asked it in a faint voice, as if she were very far away. In a way, she was.

  “I don’t know. You helped me. That will . . . I’m sure they’ll take that into consideration.”

  She made no acknowledgment she’d heard me. She said, “My life is over.”

  “No it’s not. Come on. Put down the gun.”

  “They were going to kill me, Nate.”

  “And now they can’t touch you. Put the gun down.”

  “We were suppose to go away and he was going to kill me.”

  “Alaine, put down the goddamned gun.”

  “Why did he do this to me?” She brought her other hand to the handle of the gun. “They wanted to blame me for everything.”

  “What are you doing?” Carrington barked, adding to the poison in the room.

  “Shut up! Alaine, put down the—”

  “They wanted to kill me.”

  “Alaine!”

  She pulled the trigger twice.

  Ian Carrington’s head jerked from the bullet’s impact. I yelled, dropped my gun, and swung around.

  Falk blurted, “Wha—?” as a bullet tore into his chest, knocking him into a chair.

  “Alaine!” I swung around to see her staring at me, really staring, aware. Her eyes were wide; breath caught in her throat as she sucked air in tiny gasps. She looked terrified.

  Things were happening too fast. I raised my arm, opened my palm, handcuffs swinging, trying to be as gentle as I could, trying to break through and stop her from doing what she was going to do. Nothing I’d ever learned—nothing in med school, nothing in residency, nothing in life—helped me out here. I stepped toward her. She drew up the gun, slid the barrel under her chin. “Nate . . .” she said.

  I screamed “No!” and leapt at her.

  The gun went off.

  We landed in a tangle, like the lovers we’d once been, my body on top of hers. I felt the softness of her belly on my arm, the angle of her elbow in my gut. But we were no longer lovers; this was no longer that more innocent time. The woman underneath me betrayed no movement of breath, no life.

  The bullet had ripped off the top of her head, leaving a mash of blood, brain matter, hair. The beautiful face was wide-eyed and staring, her pale skin spattered with crimson. The lips that I’d kissed a thousand times made small smacking motions, reflexes only. Her leg jerked with little spasms. Urine stained the khaki pants.

  Otto Falk had been thrown back into a chair, slumped, his arms splayed wide in a mockery of a crucifixion pose, a red splash in the middle of his chest. Ian Carrington lay twisted on the floor. I couldn’t see his wound, but I did see pieces of mortality sprayed across the magazine shelves, mixed with the glossy print.

  The white ceiling above Alaine was red.

  I sat, coughed, spit some bile onto my pants. I put my head into my hands to block out images I knew I’d see for the rest of my life. I breathed slowly, trying to get some control, but it was no use. I wept.

  CHAPTER 101

  Three funerals occurred over the next week. Otto Falk’s in Pittsburgh, Ian Carrington’s in Cambridge, and the last one in a tiny town between San Francisco and San Jose, where Alaine’s family lived. I attended only the last.

  It was a small affair in a Chinese Catholic church, understandably not well publicized. Alaine’s parents, brother, and sister were there, but we didn’t speak. They’d been suffering through questions from the FBI and the county detectives and anybody else who could get their hooks into such a sordid case. Perhaps they felt embarrassed. Perhaps they blamed me for their daughter’s death. In any case, I didn’t care. The Chen clan could deal with whatever emotional weather Alaine’s suicide had churned up. They didn’t need my help.

  As it wasn’t far to go for the funeral, and as we were now something of an item, Brooke Michaels accompanied me. We must have made quite a pair: Brooke on crutches, me with a lump of bandaged hand dangling at my side. I thought of those 1918 pics of wounded soldiers back from the trenches in France, parading.

  Brooke swore as one of the crutches caught on a crack in the sidewalk. The bullet had cut an artery, but had missed major nerves, so her leg would return to one hundred percent after a few months and some hard therapy. I was happy about the leg and, well, about the surrounding regions.

  Unfortunately for me, my situation was more uncertain; it wasn’t clear if I’d regain full function of my left hand. The surgeon hadn’t given the appendage a death sentence, nor could he say everything would be okay. Only the outcome of my reconstructive surgery and months of physical therapy would tell.

  As for the organs of government, well, they can move fast when they want to. And in the few days after the bloodbath at Chimeragen, they wanted to. The night of Alaine’s death, I had only a few moments to struggle with my grief before the fire hose of law enforcement was turned on Chimeragen, spraying what seemed like a thousand officers and techs into the building. I watched them like I’d watch a movie: camera dollies back, revealing Nate McCormick wrapped in a blanket, sitting in one of the offices, snot dripping from his nose, answering inane questions that really didn’t matter anymore. Drifting through my fugue state, I wondered if this was how Alaine had felt that last night. Maybe. At least until the bullets had already torn through flesh and she looked at me with that last terrible, terrified face. But by then it
was too late.

  Goddamn you, Nate McCormick. If there is a Hell, you’ll be in it, a special circle reserved for the stupid, for those who can’t see “all the angles,” for those who can’t move fast enough, for those who try and fail to be the hero. When you need a rest, you’ll vacation at a bubbling lake of lava reserved for liars.

  Later that evening, I spent hours at the police station, giving my fiftieth account of the incidents. They asked me about the Surgeon, and I told them to ask the Surgeon. They asked me about Harriet Tobel and I told them to ask her. They either didn’t get it or didn’t appreciate my wit or both. I might have been shirking my civic duty by being a pain in the ass, but it really didn’t matter, did it? Everyone was dead or in custody. Dead, mostly. Justice had been served in a perverse sort of way.

  The FBI had split the seams of the Chimeragen corporate offices, the organ farm in Gilroy, the Tobel and Falk labs. The forensic geniuses from Quantico had managed to salvage quite a bit more than the scattering of papers I’d left in Dr. Tobel’s office. Computers were pulled apart, hard drives anatomized. They even rescued some evidence from the Surgeon’s bonfire. These guys—with their toothbrushes and X-rays—really were good. I only wished they’d been good a few days earlier; it might have spared some bloodshed. But I didn’t know what the evidence would do for them. I mean, who was left to prosecute? Maybe Bill Dyson, the vet. I hoped not.

  It turned out there were quite a few people left to prosecute. Randall Jefferson, for one. I’d gotten a call from Detective John Myers that the good doctor had been arrested and arraigned and was out on bail, contemplating life’s big questions on his estate north of Baltimore. Myers assured me that the fraud case against him looked strong, and in perfect Myers-speak, he said the conspiracy and accessory-to-murder charges against Jefferson had “foundational promise to deliver.” In any case, the state had stepped in to take over Jefferson’s group homes.