“I need to talk to Max,” Gemmell told himself the next day. He said it while mowing a large yard in front of a white-painted, Spanish-style house on Central Street near the city library.
Then he realized he had no idea how to get ahold of Max. He just saw him at CR, nowhere else. He didn’t have an address, cell phone number, nothing. Wait. Maybe he could call Rosalie and ask her. She had his number. She would know Max’s too. What would he ask Max?
“Why did you shoot him?” Gemmell asked himself later at home. The green pill sat on the counter beside the steel sink, waiting for him to swallow. Gemmell wore a wet towel around his waist and dripped water onto the floor. The suspense was too much. It just went around and around inside his mind.
At work, Hector had asked what was wrong. Why were the mowed rows crooked?
Shaking his head, blinking at the pill, Gemmell knew he should either take the thing or drive up to Santa Clara tomorrow. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t gone yet. He was supposed to go when he became agitated. He had been going for treatments every week now for a month.
He reached for the pill, and then he drew his hand back. He’d been dreaming about his wife and daughter, and he’d dreamed about Mexico. There was gunfire in his dream and screaming. He kept seeing a naked teenage girl dead on a rug beside a bed.
Why were all these things swirling inside his mind? Had he watched movies like that? Dr. Parker had told him once that he had an active imagination. If he saw a violent movie, after a few days, he was likely to think that he’d done just what the movie star did.
“You project,” Dr. Parker had said.
The muscleman’s murder wasn’t projection. Gemmell had seen it up close. The man had wanted to warn him.
“It’s just like a movie,” Gemmell whispered. That’s another reason why he didn’t take the green pill. He didn’t want all those walls moving inside his head. He wanted to figure out why the man had tried to warn him. Licking his lips, he tried to reason carefully. If the man had been a friend…that made Max an enemy.
Gemmell stepped away from the counter. He should have seen that sooner. Yet...why would Max be his enemy? What had he ever done to Max?
His cell phone buzzed and it made Gemmell whirl around. He hurried into the bedroom and snatched the cell off the dresser. It was Dr. Parker.
“Hello, Doctor,” Gemmell said.
“I’m sorry if I’m calling too late,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“I read a terrible report today about a murdered man in Sacramento.”
“You did?” Gemmell asked quietly. This was freaking weird. Why would the doctor call him about it?
“By the tone of your voice…I’m guessing that you saw this man murdered, didn’t you?”
Gemmell’s grip on the cell phone tightened and he opened his mouth. He needed to tell Parker what had happened. He needed to tell someone, to get it off his chest.
Be careful, the voice in him said. It had been silent since Wednesday. Now it spoke because it sensed danger. Gemmell could feel that much from it. He closed his mouth as the voice cautioned him to listen to the doctor before he started blabbering. He had two ears and only one mouth. So he should he use his ears twice as much as he did his mouth.
“Are you still there?” Dr. Parker asked.
“I-I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“I’ve never told you about CR,” he said.
There was a pause. Dr. Parker chuckled afterward. “You just don’t remember telling me. You realize that sometimes you’re forgetful, right?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“So you have told me about CR. Actually, you’ve spoken about it often.”
Gemmell frowned. Was that true? No, the voice inside him said. She’s lying.
“I don’t think I ever told you,” he said.
There was another pause from the doctor, longer this time.
She’s worried. She’s thinking about what to say.
“I should have told you this before,” Dr. Parker said. “It’s unconscionable that I’ve kept this from you. I had hoped to cure you of it before having to say anything.”
“What do you mean?” Gemmell asked, worried now.
“You have split personalities. Does it feel sometimes as if another person inside you is saying things?”
Gemmell’s jaw dropped. How could she know that?
“You have a vicious side,” Parker said. “Do you ever feel like doing violent things?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Gemmell, you need to take two green pills. You must do it right now.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you the doctor?”
“No,” he said, sounding petulant.
“I am the doctor, aren’t I, Gemmell?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve gone to school for many years and have studied these things. I have been in this practice even longer than that. I know what I’m talking about.”
Gemmell listened, and he would have agreed, but the voice sneered at her words.
“Do you trust me?” Dr. Parker asked abruptly.
“I have…” Gemmell said.
There was a pause again, and Dr. Parker cleared her throat. “You’ve been an excellent patient. Have I ever told you that?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“I should have, Gemmell. It was a mistake for me not to have said it before. And…I care about you.”
He stared out the window at the dark, waving corn. There was a breeze tonight, a cooling thing. If the doctor should have told him, and she hadn’t until now, it meant she’d made a mistake. She’d just admitted to making a mistake. Yeah. That meant she could be wrong about taking two green pills. The voice inside him approved of his logic.
“Will you take the green pills?” Parker asked.
“I’m not sleepy yet. When I take them, I get too sleepy.”
“Yes. That’s a problem, isn’t it?”
Ask her about Max, the voice whispered. See what she says to that.
Gemmell shook his head. That would be too embarrassing. He didn’t like asking silly questions.
It’s not silly. Ask her!
“Ah…” Gemmell said. “Do you happen to know Max?”
“Excuse me?” Parker whispered.
“Max is a trucker. He goes to CR. I saw him shoot the muscleman. I just wondered if you know Max.”
“What would make you connect our conversation to Max or to me?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You do know, Gemmell, and you must tell me.”
He stared at the corn, at the big waving leaves. It was harvest time. The top leaves weren’t soft and green anymore, but turning brittle and yellow.
“This is more serious than you realize or than I first imagined,” Parker said. “I want you to get in your car and drive here tonight. I don’t usually stay in the office this late, but this time I’ll make an exception.”
“The murdered man was trying to warn me,” he said.
“Oh,” Parker said, and her voice sounded strange as she said that.
“He seemed worried about me. Then Max shot him. I’m certain it was Max. I wasn’t certain before, but now, taking to you, I am.”
“You must stay put, Gemmell. Don’t come here. It will be too long a drive. I’m going to send someone to you. Tell me you’ll do as I ask.”
He pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it. She sounded worried. She’d never sounded like this before. It was upsetting, and it reminded him of the muscleman—that he had been upsetting, too. It was an…an…
Anomaly, the voice inside him said.
“Gemmell, are you there?”
He put the cell back to his ear. “I’m getting tired, and I don’t like arguing with you. I think I’ll take the pills.”
“Good,” Parker said. “That’s a wise choice, very wise.”
“And then I’ll come
see you tomorrow.”
“Yes. If you take the pills tonight, I don’t need to send anyone. I look forward to our talk tomorrow.”
“Me, too,” he said, amazed that he could lie so easily. “Bye, Doctor.”
“Good-bye, Gemmell.”
He clicked off the connection, setting the cell beside the green pill on the counter.
Could they put him away? He didn’t think so, not against his will. He’d watched a show once about that. Someone named Kenneth Donaldson had been held for fifteen years in a Florida State Hospital. Donaldson filed a lawsuit against the hospital and staff, claiming they’d robbed him of his constitutional rights by confining him against his will. It had gone to the Supreme Court. In O’Conner v. Donaldson in 1975, the Supreme Court had upheld an earlier court’s ruling. “Mental illness” alone could not justify a State’s locking a person up against their will, if they were dangerous to no one and could live safely in freedom.
That was the law, but Gemmell…with a frown he turned around for the bedroom. How did he know about such things? He’d studied these case laws somewhere and had learned to hate the system, hate the Justices especially. Yeah, he hated the Supreme Court Justices. They were the worst.
It was time to pack and go. He didn’t know where yet, but it was time to leave so he could think this through. Besides, he was sure Dr. Parker had just lied to him. She was going to send someone tonight, and he didn’t want to meet that person just yet.
-12-
Gemmell woke up early next morning wrapped in a windbreaker, with his head resting on a rock. He sat up and blinked at the sunlight shining off Turlock Lake. It was bright and it hurt his eyes.
He’d stopped at a 7-11 last night and stocked up on bottled water and granola bars. Then he’d driven here, and using a flashlight, he’d hiked along the shore for over an hour.
The grass on these rounded hills was dull yellow and the trees were green. A speedboat roared across the water. The noise had awakened him.
Gemmell rummaged in his daypack, used his teeth to rip open a wrapper and chewed on a bar. He drank water and later stood up and took a whiz. Then he slid down the hill to the shore and searched for flat stones. After examining each one, he either tossed it aside or stuffed it into his windbreaker’s pocket. Finally he moved to the water, jumping onto a rock half-submerged in the lake. From there, he began skipping stones. It was an art and took the right flick of the wrist. He was an expert, and he counted each skip. After ten tries, his best stone skipped seventeen times.
As he flung stones, he thought about the last few days. The muscleman, Max, Dr. Parker and his meds—something wasn’t right with him. That was obvious. The voice told him something important. It didn’t actually speak right now. It was the fact of the voice being there that was the thing, and that it had warned him at the approach of the muscleman and spoken during Dr. Parker’s phone call.
The anger inside him… Gemmell was beginning to think the anger was the voice and they wanted both quiet. “They” must be the government, right? They supplied the special insurance and through them the meds and his visits with Dr. Parker. They watched him, or Max watched him. Max reported back to Dr. Parker. How else could she have learned what she had? It was the only logical explanation. Gemmell knew he was slow, but he wasn’t stupid.
Why did they want the voice quiet? That was the interesting part. The voice was angry or was the anger inside him. The voice knew about dirty fighting and he suspected that it knew about guns, too. When he jumped rope in the gym…that was the voice remembering the instructor.
“Now I have to remember,” Gemmell told himself.
As he skipped stones, he heard a helicopter, long before he saw it. That gave him time to jump off the boulder and scramble under a tree. He tore off his green windbreaker and stuffed it in his daypack. Shortly thereafter, he saw the chopper. It was a two-man job with a bubble canopy. He bet the passenger used binoculars, searching the ground.
They’re looking for you.
Gemmell cocked his head. How did the voice know that? Another thought struck. How had “they” known to come up here to track him?
That’s easy: your truck is in the Turlock Lake parking lot.
Gemmell watched the helicopter make its sweeps. He needed to decide what to do. Should he stay here, hike elsewhere, what? What did he want? The muscleman had wanted to warn him. He wished the man had said about what exactly before he died.
Lifting his head sharply, Gemmell stared up at the helicopter. Instead of wishing for that, he should wish the muscleman hadn’t died. Having the top of your skull blown away…how awful.
Gemmell put his head between his knees as he sat against the trunk of a tree. He pressed the sides of his knees against the temples of his head. Death was the great enemy. Death was final. Death was remorseless. His wife and daughter—
Gemmell looked up as anger beat in his chest. It was an ugly anger that wished to crush, maim, cut, stomp—
“No,” he moaned, clutching his head. “I don’t want to be angry.” He didn’t want people to die. He just wanted to live in peace, and he wanted his wife and daughter back.
He hugged himself, and he rocked back and forth, trying to sort out his thoughts. He glanced at his tattoos, the ones between his fingers. They were important. If only he was smart enough to decipher what they meant.
It was then he saw the speedboat. It cruised near shore. A woman drove while a man stood up with a pair of binoculars. The black-clad man scanned the shoreline.
“Max,” Gemmell whispered. He froze.
It’s time to fade away, the voice said. It’s time to go back to Mexico and finish what we started.
Gemmell straightened rigidly. Mexico had been a bloodbath. The anger had been unleashed down there. It hadn’t been a vacation as Dr. Parker said. A teenage girl had died a useless death.
She got in the way, the voice said. She was collateral damage, a sad truth.
Gemmell thought about his daughter, what she would have looked like if she had been able to grow up to be a teenager. Tears nearly welled because he couldn’t see her face. That was terrible. It was wrong, damned wrong, horribly wrong—
They must pay for what they did to them.
“No!” Gemmell said, and he jumped up. He raced for the lower shore. He dug the windbreaker out of the daypack and began to wave it back and forth.
The speedboat driver pointed at him. Max swiveled, and he aimed his binoculars at Gemmell. A moment later, the speedboat zoomed toward him.
Gemmell didn’t want to let the anger loose. Not if teenage girls were going to die. That was wrong. It was a sin to murder an innocent.
The speedboat neared and slowed down. With a shock, Gemmell recognized the driver, the woman. She had long brunette hair that fluttered in the breeze. He knew she had long legs and a nice figure. She wore a bikini top. It was the singer from CR: one of the three girls that usually stood on stage. It was the singer Gemmell had fantasized about before, the one he’d said “hello” to at a meeting.
What was she doing here?
Then Gemmell understood, or he thought he did. She worked for Dr. Parker, or for whomever the doctor worked for, likely the government. He waited as the speedboat idled and then the engine quit altogether. The boat drifted closer. Little wavelets struck the fiberglass body and made it rock gently.
“How are you doing, Gemmell?” Max shouted.
Gemmell nodded.
“Imagine meeting you out here,” Max said.
“I want the voice to go away,” Gemmell said.
Max glanced at the woman. He looked back at Gemmell, and said, “What do you mean?”
“You killed the muscleman. I saw it.”
By then, the boat’s bottom scraped against rocks. Max tossed out an anchor. Afterward, he put both hands on the side of the boat and jumped into the water. Max wore sandals, shorts and tee shirt, with a gun on his hip in a small holster. He waded over stones and climbed ashore.
“Ar
e you okay?” Max asked.
“You work for Parker, don’t you?”
After a half beat, Max nodded. “I guess you figured it out.”
“Max,” the woman said sharply.
Without looking at her, Max waved her down, as if he wanted her to keep quiet.
“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, haven’t you?” Max asked.
“Yeah.”
“What have you come up with?”
“You killed the muscleman.”
“That didn’t take much thinking, as you saw me there,” Max said. “You’re probably wondering why I did it. That shouldn’t be hard to figure out either. I’m supposed to protect you.”
“You’re a murderer, and murder is wrong. It’s a sin.”
Max raised his eyebrows and he opened his mouth.
“Max!” the woman said, standing up in the boat. She held a black bag, an old-fashioned medical kit.
“What’s that for?” Gemmell asked nervously.
The woman climbed over the side and waded ashore. She smiled at Gemmell.
It made his heart beat faster, and he felt guilty, too. He held up his hand to show her his wedding ring. She didn’t seem to notice. So he clenched his hand, making a fist, aiming the wedding ring at her. Then Gemmell realized he didn’t have a wedding ring, and that confused him.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked.
“Let me handle this,” the woman said.
Max looked at her again, and he shrugged.
The woman smiled at Gemmell. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Gemmell licked his lips, dropping his arm and taking a step back.
“Do you know why we’re here?” she asked.
“You want to make the anger quiet.”
She stared at him, and she nodded after a moment. “The anger says things to you?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it saying now?”
“It isn’t nice,” and as he said that, Gemmell noticed Max’s gun hand drop onto his pistol. It was a .38, he realized.
“Is the anger saying to hurt us?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t want to?”
I, Weapon Page 8
