“My uncle chose the best of the breed. He mated only exceptional dogs. But sometimes things happen. A dog overstrains a tendon. It gets lazy. The inbreeding, it sometimes causes problems. When he had dogs that started underperforming, my uncle would take them and bash their heads in on a concrete block in front of all the other dogs. He had a wooden mallet especially for the job that he would carry around on a string attached to his belt. Usually it took only one blow.”
“So the Cline family is full of psychopaths,” I said. “I think that’s the least surprising thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“I had to cut my numbers down,” Cline said. “Replenish my stock. You demonstrated for me that I didn’t have performers in my collection—I had pretenders. You, Robinson. You forced me to reevaluate. This is all on you.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? Is that how you sleep at night?”
“You know I’m right,” Cline said. “You’ve got the guilt. I know you’re thinking of walking away now, Robinson. That’s why you haven’t handed that money back yet.”
“Of course I thought about taking the money,” I said. “It’s a lot of money.”
“There’s more where that came from.”
“Well, I hope you drop the rest of it at the police station in Gloucester,” I said. “Because that’s where I dropped mine this morning. I wonder what the state will do with it. I hope they put it into rehab clinics. You might have just contributed to the demise of your own business, Cline.”
“I don’t think so, chump. The Gloucester police department was exactly where you shouldn’t have taken that money.”
“Why, because all the cops there are on your payroll?” I asked. “That’s the very reason I chose to go there. I sat down and made them count it all out. Watched them enter it into the evidence logs under the cameras. The whole station came to take a look. They’ll know that’s your money, Cline. They’ll know your bribe didn’t work.”
An announcement calling for doctors to respond to a code on the eighth floor blasted over the PA system above me. I covered the phone mike with my hand, adrenaline dumped into my veins.
“Don’t panic,” Cline said. “I know exactly where Russ is. He can recover there with his bodyguards. I’ll get him when the time is right.”
I wondered if Cline was bluffing. It made me decide to try it myself.
“Let me tell you something that I know,” I said. “I know why you won’t do prison time.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Really.”
There was a pause while Cline assessed my words. I hoped my tone was convincing. I could hear nothing in the background on his end. He was somewhere quiet, collecting himself before he went into battle again. The seconds ticked by, and I bit my tongue, waiting for him to call or fold on what I’d said.
“They need me,” he said. “You might think you’re doing them a favor, but they need me.”
I smiled. Nick was walking down the hallway toward me. I hung up on Cline and grabbed his arm.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I think I’ve hit on something.”
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
NICK WAS SILENT as we walked from the hospital to the car. He sat with his feet on the dash and his seat reclined as I drove close to Cline’s house, then stopped in the street beyond his. I could just make out a slice of Cline’s driveway beyond the neat hedges, but as I watched, the man appeared; I saw a flash of black trousers, shiny shoes, a pin-striped shirt as he headed for the Escalade parked out front. I’d spooked him.
“I knew it,” I said. “I knew it.”
Nick didn’t respond. I did a slow U-turn and waited for Cline to get out into traffic, then followed him at a distance.
“So what did she say?” I asked. “The shrink?”
“How do you know it was a woman?” he said.
“Because they’re smarter than us.” I kept my eyes locked on Cline’s big black car. “Susan makes me feel like a dope with a single sideways glance.”
“You’re talking about her like she’s your girlfriend,” Nick said, putting his arms behind his head. Maybe it was the excitement of being on Cline without his knowing I was there or the rush of trying to obtain the upper hand, the gathering hope that I could bring him down, remove him from my life, my friends’ lives. Whatever it was, I wasn’t paying attention to Nick’s mood. I gripped the steering wheel, took a deep breath.
“We …” I glanced at him. “Before everything that happened last night. You know. We might have taken things up a notch.”
“That’s nice. So sorry a psychopath leaving us a corpse and me being a crazy freak ruined it for you.”
“You’re not a crazy freak,” I said. “And no number of corpses could take the shine off Susan Solie.”
“That should be on your Valentine’s Day card to her,” Nick said.
“It just sort of happened. I’d been wondering if … if it was going to happen. We’d kissed. But I didn’t know if it was just the moment and something that struck us both. We were on the beach and the moon was over us and I’d been so consumed worrying about everyone and the plan with the boat,” I said. “But I think there’s something there with Susan. Something between us. I mean, I know there’s something there, at least on my side. But maybe she—”
I looked at Nick. He hardly seemed to be listening.
“Sorry,” I said. I burned through a yellow light to keep on Cline. “So what did the shrink say?”
“It was bullshit.” Nick snorted. “Total bullshit. I don’t think I’ll go back. You sit with a person for more than an hour and they can’t even give you a solid diagnosis. Can you believe that? She wants to consult with her supervisor. Why would you license someone to be a shrink if she can’t even give you a proper diagnosis without having to run to her teacher? ‘Congratulations, madame. You sort of know how to do your job but not really.’”
“She has to talk to her supervisor to decide if you’ve got PTSD?” I asked.
Nick licked his teeth, watched the cars ahead of us.
“Nick?”
“She knows I’ve got PTSD,” he said.
We sat in silence. Nick took his feet off the dashboard, clasped his hands, and looked at them in his lap. I listened to him taking a deep breath, trying to find the words, failing, and trying again.
“I’m pulling over.”
“Don’t pull over,” he said. “We need to stay on Cline. We need to get this guy.” He folded his arms, a barrier of muscle and bone over his heart. “She thinks I’m also schizophrenic.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
THE CAR AROUND me seemed to shrink. Suddenly it was hard to stay on the road. I looked at my friend.
“What do you mean, she thinks that?”
“You can’t just diagnose it in an hour,” he said. “See, this is the bullshit I was talking about. She needs to get her supervisor to sign off on me having schizophreniform disorder, which is what you have if your schizophrenia symptoms haven’t been going on longer than six months. And then when the supervisor signs off on that, that becomes your day one. So you have to be observed for six months like a fucking rat in a lab until they can figure out if it’s the full version or one of the sub-versions. I mean, what the fuck? It was all so wishy-washy. She wasn’t listening to me properly. Most of the time she was just taking notes. She’s the one who’s nuts if you ask me.”
“So you don’t think she really got what you were saying?”
“No.” Nick straightened in his seat. “I mean, one of the symptoms she was talking about was catatonic stupor. I know what that is. I’ve read about it. That’s what she didn’t get—I’m not an idiot and I checked out this stuff before when I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Catatonic is when you’re there but you’re not really there, like you’re a robot. In a trance. I’ve never experienced that.”
I thought about the sleepy, dreamy state Nick went into after his episodes, the almost automatic way he moved and talked. Like some
one who wasn’t fully present. I opened my mouth to say something and then closed it.
“She wanted to know about my delusions.” He shrugged. “That’s when you’re imagining rainbow elephants prancing around the fucking sky and lizards crawling on your skin and shit.”
“Well.” I cleared my throat. “Those might be hallucinations, which are different from delusions, I think.”
“Whatever.”
“I mean last night … ” I cleared my throat again, glanced at him. “You seemed to be sort of … reenacting a scene, maybe? Talking to people who weren’t there. Someone named Rickson?”
Nick turned away from me to look out his window.
“You said you did bad things over there while you were deployed. You said to Rickson that this guy wasn’t going to give you anything, and then you shot—”
“I don’t want to talk about this. It was my mind playing tricks. It means nothing.”
“Yes, but were they memories you were reliving, or was it just—”
“Cap, fuck!” Nick said. “Would you listen to yourself? You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about!”
“That’s the point!” I said. “Look, I know war is hard. But I’m starting to wonder whether there was … maybe there was more to it. Who was Rickson? Were you asked to do things that were …”
Nick didn’t answer.
“You can trust me, Nick,” I said.
“It was just the regular stuff,” he said slowly. “Just the fucked-up nature of war. I don’t know any guys named Rickson from back then. I didn’t do anything criminal.”
I didn’t say you did, I thought.
Silence fell between us, hot and heavy. He sniffed, then spoke again in a softer voice, trying to ease back into the conversation. “So maybe it is hallucinations.” He shrugged. “Whatever. Fine. But if I’m having hallucinations, how am I supposed to know they’re hallucinations? What are we saying here? Like, is Cline not real? Are we not following a dude who’s been messing with us, who killed Marni, who sent guys to our house? Are you even real?” He poked me in the shoulder, too hard to be a friendly jab.
“I’m real,” I said. “And we’ll figure it out together. Whether it’s PTSD or schizophrenia or whatever the hell it is.”
“Well, she thinks I’ve got both, which is just fantastic,” he said. “Whoo-hoo! What a catch I am. A crazy, messed-up freak who doesn’t even know what’s real and what isn’t.”
“You’re not crazy,” I said. When he didn’t answer I put my hand on his arm. “You’re not crazy.”
“She thinks the PTSD kicked it off.” He shrugged my hand away. “It can bring out symptoms of schizophrenia you might have had lying dormant under the surface. She said it was like the thunderclap that sets off the avalanche. She was full of stupid metaphors like that.” He snorted, clumped his big boots up onto the dashboard again. “See, these people at the veterans hospitals, they diagnose you with whatever condition because they need the funding. Putting me on a program of observation, feeding me pills, x-raying my brain—that all costs money. Someone has to pay for that, and they charge whatever they want. They’re as bad as Cline.” He gestured out the windshield. “It was all bullshit, Cap. I’m not going back.”
“Nick,” I said. “I just want to say that I—”
“I know, I know,” he snapped. “You’re here for me. Well, if you’re here for me, Cap, you better go get yourself a crowbar or a fucking metal file or something, because they’re going to lock me up. That’s how it works. They say you’re crazy, that you’re a danger to yourself and others. Then they commit you to an institution, and they keep you there and rake in the insurance money.”
“No one is going to commit you, Nick.”
“If they do, you’re going to break me out. You said it yourself. You’re here for me. Well, if you’re here for me, that’s what it’s going to take, man.” He snorted angrily. “How ironic. Just when we get Cline behind bars, they’ll stick me there too. Only it’ll be padded walls for me.”
I watched the road, tried to think of what to say. “I—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Nick waved at the car in the distance. “Speed up. We’re losing him.”
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
NICK AND I had followed Cline to a quiet street in a neighborhood north of Boston but not far from the central business district. The brownstone building had three floors; flowerpots bursting with red flowers hung in every window. It looked like there was a kid’s bedroom on the second floor because a teddy bear was sitting in the window and a hockey stick leaned against the glass.
I took in all these meaningless details with my mind consumed with Nick’s problem. It sounded to me as though his psychiatrist knew exactly what was going on, but I didn’t want to try to convince my friend of this. He was in pain, and pushing him right now would only add to that.
Cline sat in the car texting someone, and then he went to the red-painted front door of the home.
“See? See?” I nudged Nick. “I had a hunch he was coming to meet his boss. He must have a partner or at least a distributor, someone who handles the business on the Boston end.”
“How did you know he’d come to see him?” Nick asked.
“Cline’s guy told me he wouldn’t go to jail. It didn’t matter who stood in his way, he’d stay out of prison at all costs. I told Cline I knew why. It’s because he’s just a puppet. He’s working for someone more powerful, someone who will clean his house if Cline is ever arrested.”
I tapped the window beside me, anxious. I knew I’d spooked Cline with my bluff, that coming directly to Boston after my call must be connected to his business. The fearful, razor’s edge to his words as he’d spoken told me there was something at stake here, and I thought it meant there was a boss in play. Maybe there was more than one. They need me. You might think you’re doing them a favor, but they need me, Cline had said. But what did that mean, exactly? Could they be his bosses?
“You think he’s come here to warn the guy?” Nick asked.
“Yeah. I’m almost sure of it. He’s come to tell the boss that he’s gotten in over his head with us.” I nodded, folded my arms. “It’s probably hard, admitting he needs help. But we’ve got the upper hand now. The element of surprise. We’re going to find out who this guy is, what we’re really dealing with.”
Cline knocked, and the door opened. I don’t know what I expected to see. Cline in an older form, harder, more scarred, a kind of father figure sending my nemesis out into the world to spread the virus he’d created.
But when the door opened there wasn’t a man but a very beautiful woman. Two children rushed from behind her and into Cline’s arms.
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
“WHAT THE HELL is this?” Nick asked.
“I … have no idea,” I said. The woman on the stoop seemed angry with Cline. She held a hand up, palm out, like she was trying to keep him from entering. But Cline picked up and carried the two boys, five or six years old, under his arms and barged his way in. I had been wrong about Cline. He was not working for someone else. They need me, he’d said. He didn’t mean his bosses; he meant his family.
“I don’t understand this.” Nick shook his head. “The guy has kids? He spends every ounce of his energy poisoning other people’s kids. Giving them free samples. Trying to get them hooked. How does he do it?”
“Same way he wipes out his whole crew after saving them all like rescue dogs,” I said. “He can turn the care on and off like a faucet. He cares when it’s convenient.” I popped my door as soon as Cline’s clicked closed. “Let’s go,” I said.
“What? Where?”
I jogged across the street and ducked down the narrow alleyway beside Cline’s house, squeezing between two large garbage cans. Nick was close behind me, gripping the bricks as he crouched by my side. There was another flowerpot hanging from a low kitchen window, which was open. Nick and I watched each other as the voices from outside reached us.
> The sound of the children was like happy dogs barking, their small feet stomping on the boards.
“Daddy, I want to show you my class project!”
“No, I want to show you my—”
“Come to my room, Daddy. Come to my room first.”
“Frankie, Jamie, I want you to go upstairs to your room,” the woman said.
“But we—”
“Go upstairs to your room!” the mother snarled. I recognized immediately the terror, fear, aggression in her voice. Women had turned on Malone and me as patrol cops when we came knocking after we got reports of screaming in apartments. They snapped at us, pushed us out of their homes, but I’d heard the fear rattling through their words, seen the relief in their eyes at the presence of another focus for their husbands’ rage.
There were small, mournful footsteps on the stairs and then a long, hard silence.
“The court order says you have to give me forty-eight hours’ notice before you come here,” the woman said.
“Teri, I did give you notice. You just never answer your phone.”
“A text from the fucking car thirty seconds before you knock on the door is not notice!”
“I don’t like that tone,” Cline said quietly. His voice was low, coiling, like a snake about to strike. “You know I don’t like it, and you use it anyway. I come to my own house and you treat me like a criminal in front of my own sons, my blood.”
“I just want a warning. That’s all I’m asking for. The judge said you have to give me that.”
“All I want is a bit of respect,” Cline said. Something clattered on the kitchen counter. “You wear the clothes that I paid for. You live in the house that my hard work built. I gave you those two beautiful boys. I can take all of those things away from you in an instant, and you don’t even have the decency to look me in the eye. Look at me. You understand what I’m saying?”
His voice was closer to hers now, inches away from Nick and me, on the other side of the window. I heard a whimper, and Nick flinched at the sound of it, his eyes distant and wide.
The Inn Page 21
