Gone

by Jonathan Kellerman

  She wasn’t at her desk. Or in one of the soft white patient chairs.

  When I said, “Allison?” no one answered.

  This felt wrong.

  Before I could process that thoroughly, the back of my head exploded in pain.

  Hammer-on-melon pain.

  Cartoonists are right; you really do see stars.

  I reeled, got smashed again. Back of the neck this time.

  I sank to my knees, wobbled on Allison’s soft carpet, fought for consciousness.

  A new pain burned my right flank. Sharp, electric. Was I being cut?

  Heavy breathing behind me, someone straining with effort, blur of dark trouser leg.

  The second kick to my ribs took all the fight out of me and I went down on my face.

  Hard leather continued to have its way with bone. My brain rang like a gong. I tried to ward off further blows but my arms were numb.

  For some reason, I counted.

  Three kicks, four, five, six for good meas—

  CHAPTER 34

  Gray soupy world, viewed from the bottom of a stockpot.

  I drowned in my chair, blinked, trying to clear eyes that wouldn’t open. Someone played a trombone solo. My eyelids finally cooperated. The ceiling swooped down, changed its mind, soared miles above, a white plaster sky.

  Blue sky. No, the blue was off to the left.

  A smudge of black on top.

  Pale blue, same exact color as the burned cork smell in my throat.

  The black, Allison’s hair.

  The pale blue, one of her suits. Memories flooded my head. Fitted jacket, skirt short enough to show a nice bit of knee. Braiding around the lapels, covered buttons.

  Lots of buttons; it could take a long, sweet time to free them.

  The pain in my skull took over. My back and my right side—

  Someone moved. Above Allison. To the right.

  “Can’t you see he needs help— ”

  “Shut up!”

  My eyelids sank. I blinked some more. Turned it into an aerobic activity and finally achieved some focus.

  There she was. In one of the soft white chairs where she hadn’t been before...how long ago?

  I tried to look at my watch. The face was a silver disk.

  My vision cleared a bit. I’d been right: She was wearing the exact suit I’d pictured, give the boy an A for...

  Movement from the right.

  Standing over her was Dr. Patrick Hauser. One of his hands had vanished in her hair. The other held a knife pressed to her smooth white throat.

  Red handle. Swiss Army knife, one of the larger versions. For some reason, I found that ludicrously amateurish.

  Hauser’s clothes clinched it. White golf shirt, baggy brown pants, brown wingtips.

  Hard-toed wingtips, way too dressy for the outfit. White was the wrong color if you wanted to avoid those stubborn bloodstains.

  Hauser’s shirt was sweat-splotched but free of red. Beginner’s luck. No sense rubbing it in. I smiled at him.

  “Something funny?”

  I had so many snappy comebacks. Forgot all of them. Gong. Gong.

  Allison’s eyes shifted to the right. Past Hauser, toward her desk?

  Nothing else there but a wall and a closet.

  Closet blocked by the door when you opened it.

  Deep blue irises moved again. Definitely the desk. The far end, where her purse sat.

  Hauser said, “Sit up and get that pen.”

  I was already sitting. Silly man.

  I spread my arms to show him, hit an arm of the wooden desk chair.

  Not sitting at all. Slumped, nearly prone, head tilted back, spine in an odd position.

  Maybe that’s why everything hurt so bad.

  I tried to straighten, nearly passed out.

  “C’mon, up, up, up,” barked Hauser.

  Every inch of movement heated the toaster coils that had replaced my spinal nerves. It took years to reach a sitting position and the ordeal robbed me of breath. Inhaling was hellish, breathing out, worse.

  A few more centuries and my eyes got clearer. I gained a sense of context: Allison and Hauser fifteen feet away. My chair pushed up to Allison’s desk. The side where a new patient might sit, seeking consultation.

  Therapy charts and Allison’s desktop doodads on the pale oak surface. She’d been doing paperwork when he’d—

  Hauser said, “Get the pen and start writing.”

  What pen? Ah, there it was, hiding among the noise and the color. Next to a clean, white sheet of paper.

  Some comical guy’s voice said, “Wri-whuh?”

  I cleared my throat. Licked my lips. The rephrase came out: “Wri...tuh whuh?”

  Hauser said, “Cut the theatrics, you’re fine.”

  Allison moved her left shoe. Mouthed something that looked like “Sorry.” She winced as the knife blade pressed into her skin. Hauser didn’t seem to be aware of his own movement or her reaction.

  “Write, you sonofabitch.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Bun cun you crew— cue me in?”

  “You’re going to retract everything you told that bitch lawyer, label the other bitches for the malingering bitches they are, sign and date.”

  “Ah theh?”

  “Then what?”

  “Whah happahs aftah I chew thah?”

  “Then we’ll see, you unethical asshole.”

  “Alethical.”

  “Once you’re exposed,” said Hauser, “life will be cream and sugar.”

  “For who?”

  His glasses slid down his nose and he flicked his head to right them. The movement distanced the blade from Allison’s neck.

  Then it was back.

  A low sound fluttered his lips. “Shut up and write or I’ll cut her and set it up like you did it.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Do I look as if I’m kidding?” His eyes watered. His lower lip vibrated. “I was doing just fine until everyone started lying. All my life I’ve done for others. Now it’s time to take care of number one.”

  I managed to pick up the pen, nearly dropped it. Heavy little sucker— were they making them of lead nowadays? Wasn’t lead bad for kids? No, that was pencils. No, that was graphite...

  I flexed my right arm and its mate. No more numbness. The pain hadn’t abated but I was starting to feel human.

  I said, “For this to be cruda— credulab— cred-i-ble shouldn’t it be notary publicked?”

  Hauser licked his lips. His glasses had slid down again but he didn’t try to adjust them. “Stop faking. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But the question is still...revelant...”

  “You write, I’ll worry about what’s relevant.”

  The pen had stopped trying to escape my hand, settled awkwardly between ring finger and pinky. I managed to roll it into writing position.

  Allison watched me.

  I was scaring her.

  A pen made of lead; what would the EPA think of that?

  I said, “So I write. Now. How?”

  Hauser said, “What do you mean, how?”

  “What words do I tell?”

  “Start by acknowledging that you’re a pathological liar unfit to practice.”

  “Should I use first person?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” Hauser’s jowls shook with rage. His arm did, too, and once more the knife danced away from Allison’s skin.

  Not a good multitasker.

  His right hand dug in and twisted Allison’s hair. She gasped, closed her eyes, and bit her lip.

  I said, “Please stop hurting her.”

  “I’m not hurting her— ”

  “You’re pulling her hair,” I said.

  Hauser looked down at his hand. Stopped twisting. “This isn’t about her.”

  “My point.”

  “You don’t have a point,” he said. “You owe me. If I wanted to hurt you, I could’ve used a club or something. All I did was suc
ker punch you with my bare hand. Same way you did me. I hurt my knuckles doing it. I’m not a violent person, all I want is justice.”

  “Kicked me in the ribs, “ I said, sounding like a petulant child.

  “When you punched me at that restaurant, you escalated the level of violence. All I wanted to do was talk rationally. Blame yourself.”

  “You scared me at the restaurant,” I said.

  That brought a smile to his lips. “Are you scared now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then harness the fear— sublimate. Start writing and we can all go home.”

  I knew he was lying but I believed him. Tried another smile.

  He stared past me.

  Allison glanced at her purse. Blinked several times.

  I said, “How ’bout I start like this: My name is Alex Demlaware, I’m a crinical psychologist licensed by the state of California, my license number is 45...”

  Droning on. Hauser followed with choppy movements of his head. Warming to the recitation because it was everything he wanted to hear.

  “Fine. Write.”

  I leaned over the desk, shielding his view of my right hand with my left arm. Lowering the nib of the pen to just above the paper, I made writing motions.

  “Oops,” I said. “Out of ink.”

  “Bullshit, don’t try— ”

  I held up the pen. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  Hauser thought. The knife drifted. “Get another one out of the drawer. Don’t agitate me.”

  I struggled to my feet, holding the chair for support. “Should I lean over the desk or go around?”

  “Go around. That way.” Pointing to the right.

  Circling toward the front of the desk, I grazed Allison’s purse with my sleeve. Opened the drawer, took out several pens, rested for breath. No act; my ribs felt like bonemeal.

  On the return trip, I touched the purse again, hazarded a look.

  Unzipped. Allison’s bad habit. I’d given up lecturing to her about it.

  I pretended to bang my knee against the desk corner. Cried out in pain and dropped the pens.

  “Idiot!”

  “My balance is off. I think you knocked something loose.”

  “Bullshit, I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  “I passed out. Maybe I’ve got a concussion.”

  “Your head was stationary and if you had a rudimentary knowledge of neuropsych you’d know that severe concussions result most often from two objects in motion colliding.”

  I looked at the carpet.

  “Pick them up!”

  I bent, collected the pens. Straightened and made my way back as Hauser watched.

  The knife had shifted a few inches from Allison’s throat but his right hand kept a firm hold on her hair.

  I met her eyes. Edged to the right, farther from Hauser. That relaxed him.

  Allison blinked.

  I said, “One thing...”

  Before Hauser could answer, Allison struck out at his knife arm, twisted away, and slid out of his grasp.

  He shouted. She ran toward the door. He went after her. I had the purse, groped with tingling fingers, found it.

  Allison’s shiny little automatic, perfect for her small hand, too small for mine. She’d oiled it recently and maybe some of the lubricant had made its way to the grip. Or my motor skills were shot and that’s why my shaking arms bobbled the weapon.

  I caught it, used both hands to steady my aim.

  Hauser was a foot behind Allison, flushed and huffing, knife held high. He made a grab for her, caught another handful of hair, yanked her head back, chopped down.

  I shot him in the back of the knee.

  He didn’t fall immediately so I blew out the other knee.

  For good measure.

  CHAPTER 35

  I’d spent ten years working in a hospital. Some smells never change.

  Robin and Allison sat across from my bed.

  Next to each other. Like friends.

  Robin in black, Allison still in the baby-blue suit.

  I remembered pokes and probes and other indignities but not being transported here.

  The CAT scan and X-rays had been boring, the MRI a bit of claustrophobic fun. The spinal tap was no kind of fun at all.

  No more pain, though. What a tough guy I was.

  Robin and Allison— or maybe it was Allison and Robin— smiled.

  I said, “What is this, some kind of beauty contest?”

  Milo stepped into view.

  I said, “I redact and retract and refract any former statement vis-àvis aesthetic compete-tition.”

  Smiles all around. I was a hit.

  “At the risk of utterly bonanzal banalistical cliché, where the bleep am I hospital-wise?”

  “Cedars,” said Milo in a slow, patient way that suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d answered the question.

  “Didja get to see Rick? You really should, you guys don’t spend enough time together.”

  Pained smiles. Timing, it’s all about timing. I said, “Ladies and germs.”

  Milo edged closer. “Rick says hi. He made sure they did all the necessary crap. No concussion or hematomas and your brain’s not swollen— at least not more than it usually is. You do have some bruised disks in your cervical spine and a couple of cracked ribs. Ergo, King Tut.”

  “Ergo. Pogo. Logo.” I touched my side, felt the stiff swaddle of bandages. “Rick didn’t get to operate? No unkindest cut?”

  “Not this time, pal.”

  He was blocking my view. I told him so and he retreated to a corner of the room.

  I looked at the girls. My girls.

  So serious, both of them. Maybe I hadn’t said it loud enough. “No unkindeness cutaroo?”

  Two pretty attempts at sympathy chuckles. I was dying up here.

  “Just got in from Lost Wages,” I said, “and boy, is my vertebral discography tired.”

  Robin said something to Allison, or maybe it was the other way around, making sense of all this was a pretzel, a pretty girl pretzel, mustard and salt, who the hell could untangle it...

  “What?” someone who sounded like me shouted. “What’s the conversational thread being woven into the warp of the contestants?”

  “You need to sleep,” said Allison. She looked ready to cry.

  Robin, too.

  Time for new material...“I slept just fine yesterday. Girls!”

  “They sedated you,” said Robin. “You’re under sedation right now.”

  “Demerol,” said Allison. “Later, you can take Percocet.”

  “Why’d they do that?” I said. “I’m no doper, I get low on life.”

  Robin got up and moved bedside. Allison followed, hanging slightly behind.

  All that perfume. Whoa!

  “You wearing Chanel?” I demanded of Milo. “Come on over, dude, and join the olfactory celebration.”

  Allison caught my eye. No purse to look for now, she was holding it. “Where were you?” I said. “When I came into the office you weren’t.”

  “He had me in the closet.”

  Robin said, “Poor thing.”

  I said, “Her or me?”

  “Both of you.” Robin took Allison’s hand and squeezed.

  Allison looked grateful.

  Everyone, so sad. Utter waste of energy, time to get dressed and have juice and coffee, maybe an English muffin and be out of here in no time...where were my clothes...I’d get dressed in front of all of them, we were all chums.

  I must’ve said something to that effect, maybe with a bit of vulgarity, because both of the girls— my pretty girls— looked shocked.