“I told her of course not. There was no reason to lie.”
Ann Marie was shocked by his disclosure but did her best to hide her reaction. Dade didn’t seem perturbed in the least by the discussion. He was more focused on attaching the electrodes to his skin with sufficient pressure so they wouldn’t detach and float away in the tank. “You’re unique, Dr. Harkenrider.” She told him. “That’s for sure. I admire it, actually.”
“What’s to admire?”
“All that self control,” she said, “all that focus in your life.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he told her. “For me, it’s not a matter of self control. I’m just not that kind of being. It’s a language that I’ll just never speak. The thoughts and urges that normally torture men and women for most of their lives...I’ve never known them. I’ve never known that cruel joke. Thank goodness.”
“How can that be?”
Dade considered the question carefully. The look on his face suggested that the answer was troublingly unclear. “It’s something Bernard did to me when I was young,” he said. “It’s the one thing he gave me that I’m grateful for.”
“I’m a virgin too,” Ann Marie said to him. “Never even been close.”
“Good for you,” said Dade. Most of his attention was centered on attaching a sensor pad to the side of his neck and he acted as though her admission was trivial.
“Boys have liked me, I guess,” she went on. “But when they’re around me a lot, it seems to change. I don’t know what it is.”
For the first time in the conversation, Dade looked at her attentively. Then he laughed. “Who cares what it is,” he told her. He shot a look over to the tank, which was steaming a little as it reached body temperature. “We’re scientists. We have more important things to think about.”
“I see the way my mom is with men,” Ann Marie said, “and I don’t want it. It’s not for me. I think it’s demeaning.”
“It is,” he said. “Now can you help me with this sensor?” He needed help placing one of the sensor pads on his lower back.
Ann Marie was already used to seeing him three-quarters naked in the lab and the request didn’t seem that strange. She stood behind him and pressed the adhesive sensor into the skin at the bottom of his spine. It occurred to her that she had never been so close to a man’s naked body. “That woman you saw today,” she started to ask, “what did she look like? Was she pretty?”
“Humans aren’t attractive to me.”
She ran her fingers and palm over the adhesive sensor on his back to make sure it was secured. “Looks like you’re good one that one,” she said. “Do you need help with any others?”
“No. I’m ready.”
She nodded and Dade climbed the ladder to the tank. He said one last thing to Ann Marie before sinking into the liquid. “I’m going to concentrate on that woman and see what I can find out.” He added, “I forgot to tell you that she mentioned you.”
...
The following day, The Sheriff was wearing his reading glasses and paging through a paperback romance novel. With perfect light under the trees in the courtyard, The Palos Verdes Rehabilitation Center had become his favorite reading spot over the years. Every few minutes, he would look up from the page to check on the person he was watching.
The woman the Sheriff was guarding was in a persistent vegetative state and had been that way for the last fifteen years. Elaine Harkenrider, Dade’s mother, sat the way she did everyday, looking out toward the ocean in total blankness.
The Sheriff had owned this responsibility for the last decade and a half. His knowledge of the hospital went back further than that of most of the staff. Late that afternoon, as he peeked up from his book, he saw something that bothered him. For the first time in his fifteen year vigil, something was wrong.
A woman, who was perhaps in her thirties, didn’t belong there. Her skin was pale and freckled like an albino but her hair was jet black. Under her jacket, she was wearing pink nursing scrubs. She hadn’t spoken to anyone the entire afternoon and it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was not visiting friends or family. The Sheriff had caught her numerous times watching Dade’s mother and even taking a few pictures of her with a digital camera.
The Sheriff had been taking his time, waiting for the visitors and family to begin to clear out, before making his approach. Tucking his paperback under his arm, he walked across the garden area and sat down next to the strange woman.
“Afternoon,” said the Sheriff, without looking at her directly. She just nodded back and continued to gaze straight for Harkenrider’s mother in the wheelchair. “You got friends or family in the hospital here?” The Sheriff asked. The woman didn’t respond and seemed to focus even harder on Elaine Harkenrider. He went on, saying, “It’s OK. Don’t say a word. Just listen. I don’t know who you’re working for. I don’t know if it’s the corporation, the CIA or if you’re one of those people into something crazy. I don’t care. All I can tell you is you’re in the wrong place, young lady. You’re not old enough to know what you’re getting into. If you knew what my employer was like, if you knew how seriously he takes the security of that woman over there, you would be doing something else with your life. I don’t know if you looked into Dade Harkenrider before you started messing with his family, but the internet rumors don’t do his cruelty justice. Whatever you’re being paid or whatever your motivation is, girl, you need to smarten up.”
The woman stood up and walked away.
Chapter 10
The Pink Pelican by the Sea
After Dade’s session in the tank one evening, Ann Marie drove down the hill to meet her mother at the Pink Pelican. The place was empty, even for a weeknight. Lori Bandini was cozied up in a booth with a somewhat handsome, middle-aged guy in a suit. He looked pleasant enough, certainly less rough and sleazy-looking than the usual men she seemed to attract. When Ann Marie made it inside the bar, the man was holding the edge of his martini glass up to Lori Bandini’s lips and encouraging her to drink. The sight made Ann Marie’s heart sink and race with anger at the same time.
“Hey!” she shouted to the man. His eyes showed that he was quite sober.
“Hey yourself!” the man shouted back. He wrapped his arm around Lori’s lower back as though he intended to scoop her up and carry her out of the bar.
“That’s my daughter, you jackass!” Lori told him playfully, while lightly slapping him on the shoulder. Her eyelids drooped so low that she looked like she was fighting off a sleeping pill.
Ann Marie marched toward them and glared at the man. “Can’t you see how drunk she is?” she asked him. “We’re leaving.”
The man tightened his grip on her mother. “Come on,” he said, “don’t be such a party pooper. We’re having a great time. In fact, I think you should join us.” He put his other arm around Ann Marie’s waist and started to pull the three of them together. “Now this is what I’m talking about,” he said as he started to cackle.
Ann Marie pushed back so hard that the man had to catch himself to keep from slipping out of his chair. “Get your fucking hands off of me!” she shouted. It was so loud that it immediately caught the bartender’s attention. “And get your hands off my mother!”
“Hey, hey,” the man in the suit said, “I’m sorry.” He held up the palms of his hands and backed away from them both.
The bartender, a dark-skinned Italian man of rather short stature but with massive, muscular arms crowded with veins, shot the businessman a threatening look. “What’s the problem, Lori?” He asked. “This guy bothering you and your daughter?”
“I was just having a drink and not bothering anybody,” the man started to plead to the bartender. “The kid here is crazy and just started yelling at me. I don’t know what’s wrong with this kid.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my daughter,” said Lori Bandini, looking both drunk and cross at the same time. “Don’t call my daughter cra
zy. Don’t ever call my daughter anything!”
“OK. OK. Fine,” the man said, taking a few steps away from Ann Marie’s mom and toward the door. His expression made him seem harmless enough and, at that moment, he seemed to be genuinely apologetic. “I didn’t mean anything.” He continued to back up, until he was nearly at the door.
“Yes, you did,” said Ann Marie who was scowling at him.
“Get the fuck out of here,” said the bartender.
The moment the man’s hand hit the doorknob, he let a menacing expression take over his face. “Fine,” he said as he opened the door and turned to face them. “What do I need with some sloppy alcoholic bitch anyway?”
Ann Marie charged at him but the bartender kept her from getting very far. As he held the back of her collar, she started to shout at the businessman. “Shut up peanut-dick! Why don’t you come over here and I’ll kick your fucking ass!” The bartender held on to Ann Marie’s shirt collar as she fought to get loose.
“Keep walking!” shouted the bartender to the man, who finally left.
After the man slunk out the door, the bartender laughed heartily to Ann Marie. He told her, “Damn, kid. I thought I had a bad temper. That prick is lucky I held you back.”
After the two and a half tall glasses of water that her daughter just about forced her to drink, Lori Bandini’s buzz was beginning to give way to fatigue. She started to fall asleep in one of the booths by the bar. The bartender told Ann Marie that he had done his best to make sure that her mom hadn’t gone too crazy with the cocktails, but that the man she was with kept pouring them down her throat when he wasn’t looking. Just like back in Philadelphia, her mom was already starting to become a celebrity at the local bar.
The place was just about empty except for a few of the fishermen locals when Ann Marie helped her mom into the car. When she shut the passenger door, her mom was already well on her way to being fast asleep.
Just as the door closed, Ann Marie heard someone in the parking lot behind her.
“You’re old enough to drive,” said the businessman from earlier. “Too bad.” From about a car’s length away, he stared at her like she was something he wanted to rip to pieces.
“Really?” said Ann Marie without looking scared. “You are such a tough guy that you’re gonna wait outside for a teenage girl who yelled at you? What are you going to do? Beat me up?”
The blonde-haired businessman smiled and his blue eyes seem to glisten in menace. “You should be careful,” he said, “who you talk to. What is it with bitches? They think they have the right to say whatever they want, to whoever they want, whenever the damn well they please. I’m not the kind of man you can just scream and yell at.”
“I think I’m gonna call the police,” said Ann Marie. She was starting to show how afraid she was.
The man took a step forward and swiped a wisp of blonde hair from across his forehead. “Perfect,” he said. “Let’s bring the police down here. My company owns the fucking police! I’ll tell them you tried to steal my wallet.” He took another step toward her and stopped again, saying, “You little bitches should be careful how you talk to an important man like me.”
“Oh, should we?”
“Trash,” he said as though the word contained venom. “You and your slag mother. Trash. I could buy and sell you a thousand times over.” He slung his eyes over to Lori Bandini, who was completely passed out and had the side of her face pressed flat into a pancake against the car window. “Your mom over there is quite the drunk. All night she’s hung all over me so drunk that she can barely talk. If you hadn’t have come along, I would probably have her blowing me in my back seat.”
Anger filled every space in Ann Marie’s body until she felt the electricity around her eyeballs. In the first step she took toward him, she wished to kill him so badly that she wanted to cry. Her fists were clenched and she was breathing so fast through her nose that she sounded like an animal.
“Fuck you,” she growled at him. It had such tone and severity that she sounded like a man-eating tiger lashing out from behind her bars.
The man laughed so heartily that he brought a hand up to his stomach. “I love that,” he said while he continued to laugh at her. “That’s perfect. You and your mom shouldn’t even be anywhere near Palos Verdes. It’s trash like you that’s ruining it. You and your lonely and desperate mom.”
She charged him, grabbing at his collar with one hand and slapping his face furiously with the other. Ann Marie didn’t even hear him laughing over her rage. He pulled at the back of her hair until he had her under control. He was quite strong and it didn’t take long.
“You didn’t like that?” He asked her while she continued to squirm under his grip. “Did you?”
With her scalp burning as she fought, Ann Marie looked around the nearly empty parking lot for someone to help. She noticed the expensive silver Maserati that must have belonged to the man. She also noticed the sticker on the back window that clearly read, Asylum Corporation, Parking Area 2. She realized that he worked in one of the lower buildings.
“You don’t know shit, you asshole! I work up there,” she said, pointing to the beehive Asylum Laboratory high on The Hill. By the way it was lit at night, it looked like a UFO. “Forget the police. I’m calling my boss. I’m calling Dr. Harkenrider. He’s my boss and my friend.”
What mirth there was left the man’s face. The name, Harkenrider, had registered in him like the name of Lucifer. “Yeah, right,” he said. “You just heard that name on the internet.”
She took her security badge from her back pocket and held it up for the man to see. “Did I get this off of the internet?” she asked. The platinum tinged badge matched the hull of the Asylum Laboratory. “Dr. Bandini, bitch!”
“You’re Dr. Bandini?” He immediately let her go.
“Fuck yes I am. My boss is going to hear all about this. He’s going to hear that you threatened me.”
“I didn’t threaten you. I don’t know where you got that idea.”
“I’m gonna tell him you threatened me and he is going to throw you in the ocean like those other people.”
“Listen,” the man went on, “I apologize for what I said about you and your mother but I was upset. Maybe there is some way we could settle this.”
“What do you mean?”
“How about five thousand dollars? I can write you a check right now. Let me just get my pen. I would feel a lot better about things and that way, we can put this whole evening behind us.”
“Your measly five thousand is nothing to us,” said Ann Marie. “Now take your poor ass and get the fuck out of here!”
“Then we’ll consider the matter closed, Dr. Bandini?”
“I said get the fuck out of here.”
The man got into his Maserati and fled.
Ann Marie drove home with her mom not waking or even stirring. Even with her hands shaking on the wheel, she managed to handle the freeways without screaming out loud or crying. At one point during the trip, an eighteen wheeler zoomed by at eighty miles and hour and she thought her heart had stopped. When she reached their driveway, she finally started crying, softly at first, then with a fury that could have easily been heard outside the car.
After a few minutes, she got herself together and tried to wake her mom up. It took a light slap to the shoulder before Lori Bandini finally stirred.
“What happened, baby?” Her mom asked, sounding peaceful and drowsy. “I was just talking to the nicest guy.”
...
Well after midnight that night, Ann Marie couldn’t sleep. Her mom was snoring and fight-or-flight chemicals from her earlier encounter were still slithering around in her veins. Each toss and turn in bed seemed to only make her more frustrated. She even slapped her pillow.
Leaving her mom snoring, she took the car keys and left. At first she thought she would only take a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, but all she could think about was The Asylum a
nd Dade Harkenrider. He hadn’t mentioned any plans about going into the tank or needing her help but he also didn’t say that she couldn’t visit him.
She found him reading in the lounging chair he kept in his lab. It had to be the only piece of furniture he had fit for a human being. Before she got very close, he had already dropped the botanical journal he was reading. “What’s wrong?” He asked her as he rose from the chair like a king cobra.
Taking a moment, she considered lying to him. However, with the way his eyes studied every muscle, she came to the decision that the effort was destined for failure. “How did you know?” She asked.
“Facial expression, redness around the eyes and...”
“And what?”
“The smell. Fear.”
“Yuck,” she said. “Are you telling me I smell bad?”
“No. Stop being silly. It’s a chemical. I detected it.” He asked more forcefully this time, “What’s wrong?”
“Some asshole grabbed me,” she blurted to her immediate relief. She didn’t understand why but it felt like the greatest comfort of her life to tell him.
“I see,” he said sounding almost mechanical. He looked her over. “Are you injured in any physical way?”
“I just got my hair pulled. I’ve had worse happen to me back in Philly. The worst part was that he called us trash and said that my mom was desperate and lonely.”
“You said asshole. Does that mean man?”
“Yes,” she said nodding. “A real flashy guy.”
“I see. Do you have any other information? Perhaps you have a skin scraping or some of his hair? We could get some DNA and do PCR. Everyone’s in the database now. Well, everyone except me.”
She just stood there looking at him because she didn’t know what it would mean to tell him.
“What is it?” He asked her.
“He works for the corporation.”
“I see.”
“There are thousands of employees,” she started to argue. “I don’t think you could ever find him. I just wanted to talk to you about it.”
Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) Page 16
