Side Effects (1984)

by Palmer, Michael

  She dressed and then stretched, sorting out the route they would run, mixing low spots and high hills and straightaways along five miles of back roads. Wearing a gold watch cap and a high-visibility red sweatsuit, she trotted out the front door and whistled for Roscoe. He was almost at her side before she could see him.

  “A fiver this morning, dog,” she said, as they moved up the sloping driveway and out of the fog. “Think you’re mutt enough to handle it?”

  At the end of the drive, she turned right. Had she mapped their route to the left, she might have wondered about the BMW, parked not particularly near anyone’s house, and perhaps even noticed the blue Metropolitan Hospital parking sticker on the rear window.

  It was near perfect air for running, cold and still. To either side of the narrow roadway, the fog covered the forest floor like cotton batting.

  “Race pace, today, Rosc,” she said. “Eight-minute miles or less. And I’m not waiting for you, so keep up.” In reality, she knew Roscoe could maintain her pace all day, and still stop from time to time to sniff out a shrub or two. After a quarter of a mile, they left the pavement and turned onto a plowed dirt road meandering along an active stream named on the maps as Martha’s Brook. Kate loved crossing the picturesque, low-walled fieldstone bridges that spanned the water; in part, she had chosen this route because of them.

  By the end of the first mile, her thoughts had begun to separate themselves from the run. For the next two or three miles, she knew, her ideas would flow more freely, her imagination more clearly, than in any other situation. Following a kaleidoscope of notions, a kind of sorting-out process, her mind settled on the breast biopsy. Perhaps under the stress of exhaustion, Ellen’s deteriorating condition, and the rest of the chaos in her life, she actually had made a mistake. For a time, the grisly thought held sway, bringing with it a most unpleasant tightness in her gut. Gradually, though, the truth reappeared, emerging like a phoenix from the ashes of her self-doubt. The cells she had read had been, she was certain, cancerous. But if they had been, then somewhere a switch had been made and later reversed. But how? who? The broken cryostat was, she decided, part of the puzzle. Sheila? Possible. But why? The images led into those of other tissues, other cells—the ovaries of Beverly Vitale and Ginger Rittenhouse. Ever since the discovery of anthranilic acid in her own vitamins, Kate had, several times a day, been checking herself for bruises and wondering if pockets of scar tissue in her ovaries had already made a mockery of their discussions about having children. She had to find out. The answer, almost certainly, lay in the Omnicenter, and more specifically, in the data banks of Carl Horner’s Monkeys.

  Kate was heading down a steep grade toward the first of the fieldstone overpasses when the blue BMW crested the hill behind her and accelerated. Immersed in the run and her thoughts, she lost several precious seconds after hearing the engine before she turned to it. The speeding automobile made a sharp, unmistakably deliberate swing to the right and headed straight for her. There was no time to think. There was only time to react. The waist-high wall of the bridge was only a few feet away. A single step, and she dove for the top of it. She was in midair when the BMW hit her just below her right knee. The impact spun her in a horizontal pinwheel. She struck the edge of the wall midthigh and then tumbled over it. As she fell, she heard the crunch of metal against stone and the agonizing cry of her dog.

  The fall, twelve feet from the top of the wall, was over before she could make any physical adjustment whatsoever. She landed on her back in a drift of half-frozen snow; air exploded from her lungs, and a branch from a rotting log tore through her sweatshirt and her right side, just below her ribs. Desperately, she tried to draw in a breath. For five seconds, ten, nothing would move. Finally, she felt a whisper of air, first in the back of her throat and then in her chest. She tried to deepen her effort, but a searing pain from her side cut her short. She touched the pain and then checked the fingertips of her tan woolen gloves. They were soaked with blood.

  Frantically, she tried to sort out what had happened. She had been hit. Roscoe had been hit, too. Possibly killed. It had not been an accident. Whoever was driving had tried to run them down. Gingerly, she tested her hands and then her legs. Her right leg throbbed, and her right foot, which was dangling in the icy water of the brook, seemed twisted at an odd angle. Please, God, don’t let it be broken. There was pain, but, gratefully, there was full movement as well.

  At that moment, overhead, a car door opened and closed. She turned toward the noise, but could see nothing. It took several seconds to realize why. She was quite literally buried in the fog. From somewhere above and to her left, a branch snapped; then another. The driver of the car was making his way down the steep embankment, more than likely to check the completeness of his work. Could he see where she was? Possibly not. The fog might well be concealing her, at least from farther away than ten feet or so. Carefully, she slipped off her gold cap and stuffed it into the snow. The burning rent in her side was making it hard to concentrate. Should she try crawling away beneath the fog? Would her battered legs even hold weight? Her back was hurting. Should she test it, roll to one side? Could she?

  From farther to her left, she heard still another snap and then a soft splash and a groan. Her pursuer had stepped or slipped into the brook. It was definitely a man, or perhaps there were two. She thought about Roscoe. Was he still alive? Was he helpless? in pain? The images sickened her.

  For a time, there was silence. Kate peered into the mist, but could see nothing. The pain in her legs, back, and side sent chilly tears down her cheeks. Then she heard it, a soft crunch, still downstream from where she was lying, but almost certainly moving in her direction. She swept her hand over the snow, searching for a rock or a stick of some sort. Her fingers touched and then curled about a dead branch, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter. She drew it toward her. Was it too long, too unwieldy, to use? She would get one swing, if that, and no more. Again, she jiggled the branch. It seemed unentangled, but she would not know for sure until she made her move.

  Suddenly, she saw movement to her left, the legs and gloved hand of a man, not ten feet away. Dangling from his hand, swinging loosely back and forth, was a tire wrench. Kate drew in a breath, held it, and tensed. At any moment she would be seen. The legs were just turning toward her when she lunged, rising painfully to her knees and swinging the branch in the same motion. Her weapon, three feet long with several protruding wooden spikes, came free of the snow and connected with the side of the man’s knee. He dropped instantly to the water, as much from the surprise and location of the blow as from its force.

  Ignoring the pain in her legs and side, Kate stood up, readying the branch for another swing. It was then she saw her attacker’s face.

  “Bill!” she cried, staring at the wild-eyed apparition. Her hesitation was costly. Zimmermann lashed out with his feet, sweeping her legs out from under her and sending her down heavily against the rocks and into the shallow, icy water. The wrench lay in the snow, just to his right. Zimmermann grabbed at it and still on his knees in the brook, swung wildly. Sparks showered from a small boulder, inches from Kate’s hip. She rolled to her left as he swung again, the blow glancing off her thigh. Another spin and she was free of the water, scrambling for footing on the icy rocks and snow. Zimmermann, still clutching the wrench, crawled from the brook and dove at her ankles. He grabbed the leg of her sweatpants, but she was on her feet with enough leverage to jerk away. Before he could make another lunge, she was off, stumbling along the bank and then under the fieldstone bridge.

  The ground fog, once her shield, was now her enemy. Again and again, she slipped on rocks she could not see and tripped over fallen logs. From the grunts and cries behind her, though, she could tell that Zimmermann was encountering similar difficulties. Still, the man was coming. She had been so stupid not to have considered that he might be involved in the evil at the Omnicenter, so foolish to think that he didn’t know what was going on.

  She glanced o
ver her shoulder. Zimmermann, visible from the chest up, was bobbing along not thirty yards behind her. He was over six feet tall, and the deep snow was, she feared, more difficult for her to negotiate than it was for him. In addition, she was hobbled by the tightness and pain in her leg where the fender of Zimmermann’s car had struck. She had only two advantages: her conditioning and her knowledge of the area. If the man caught up with her, she knew neither would matter. She risked another check behind her. He was closer, unquestionably closer. The snow was slowing her down too much. She cut to her left and into the brook. There, at least, Zimmermann’s longer legs would be no advantage, possibly even a hindrance. The frigid, ankle-high water sloshed in her running shoes and bathed her lower legs in pain. Could she outrun or at least outlast him? It was possible, but one slip, one misplaced branch, and it would be over for her. She had to get back to the road. Either back to the road or … or hide.

  She slowed, casting about for familiar landmarks. Somewhere nearby was a culvert, a steel tube, perhaps three feet across, running fifty or so feet through the high embankment on which the road had been built. If she could find it, and if it were not blocked, she could crawl inside, hoping that Zimmermann would not see her or, even if he did, would be too broad across the shoulders to follow.

  She glanced downstream just as the man fell. In seconds, however, he was on his feet and, arms flailing for balance, was again beginning to close on her. If she was to do something, anything, it had to be soon. At that moment, she saw what she had been seeking. It was a huge old elm, sheared in two by lightning, its upper half forming a natural bridge across Martha’s Brook. Fifty yards beyond it, if her memory hadn’t failed her, the stream would bend sharply to the left, and just beyond the bend, at about knee level, would be the culvert that Roscoe had discovered two or three years before.

  She ducked beneath the elm and ran low to the water, her eyes barely above the fog. At the bend, she dropped to all fours, and began crawling along the icy embankment. Please, be there. Be there. Frozen chunks of snow scraped her face, and rocks tore away the knees of her sweatpants. She felt a fullness in her throat and coughed, spattering the snow beneath her with blood, more than likely, she knew, from a punctured lung.

  She crawled ahead, sliding one hand along the slope at the height where she remembered the culvert. Her hopes had begun to fade when she saw it. The diameter was even less than she had thought, nearer two feet than three, but it was still wide enough for her to fit. A fine trickle of water suggested that the small pond on the other side of the embankment was lower than her exit point. From somewhere in the fog, not far back, came a splash. Zimmermann was close. Kate ducked into the dank, rusty pipe; inches at a time, she began to pull herself toward the faint, silver-gray light at the other end.

  The culvert, coarse and corroded, was painfully cold. With the exertion of her run now past, Kate was beginning to freeze. Her feet, especially her toes, throbbed, and the sound of her teeth chattering like castanets was resonating through the metal tube. Again she coughed. Again there was the spattering of blood. She was, perhaps, a third of the way along when she heard him, crunching about in the snow behind her. Fearing the noise her movement was making, she stopped, biting down on the collar of her sweatshirt to stop the chattering.

  “Kate, I know you’re hurt,” he called out. “I want to help you. No more violence. We can work things out.”

  Did he know where she was? Dammit, why couldn’t she stop shaking?

  “Kate, you want to know about the drugs, about whether or not you are sterile, about how you can stop your friend’s bleeding. I can answer all your questions. I can get you someplace warm.”

  Frightened of the bleeding in her chest and numb in those areas of her body that weren’t in merciless pain, Kate found herself actually considering the man’s offer. Warm. He had promised she would be warm. Warmth and answers. Maybe she should try and reason with him. She forced her mind to focus on the wrench and bit down on her sweatshirt all the harder.

  “You know,” Zimmermann called out, “even if you make it back, no one is going to believe your story. I have my whereabouts at this moment completely vouched for. You’re crazy and a pathological liar. Everyone knows that. You’re the talk of the hospital. Half the people think you’re on drugs, and the other half think you’re just plain sick. I’m the only person who can help you, Kate. I’m the only one who can save your friend. I’m the only one who can get you warm. Now come on over here, and let’s talk.”

  Twenty feet away from where Zimmermann stood, Kate buried her face in the crook of her arm and struggled against the insanity that was telling her the man meant what he was saying about no violence.

  “Suit yourself,” she heard him say. “It’s your funeral. Yours and your friend’s.”

  Steaming coffee. Crackling, golden fire. Sunshine. White beach. Flannel. Down comforter. Fur slippers. Stifling her sobs in the sleeve of her sweatshirt, Kate fought the fear and the pain and the cold with images of anything that was warm. Cocoa. Wood stove. Jacuzzi. Tea. Quartz heater. Electric blanket. Soup. Behind her now, there was only silence. Had he left? She strained to hear the engine of his car. Had he found the culvert and crossed over the road to wait by the far end? Her legs and arms were leadened by the cold. Could she even make it out? Damn him, she thought, forcing herself ahead an inch. He knew how to save Ellen. Damn him. Another inch. He even knew whether she herself had been sterilized or not. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. The silver-gray hole grew fainter. Her eyes closed. Her other senses clouded. Seconds later, what little consciousness remained slipped away.

  It was as if a decade had melted away. Jared faced his father as he had so many times during the confused years of Lisa and Vermont, struggling to remain reasonably calm and maintain eye contact.

  “Kate is sick, son. Very sick,” Samuels said. “I would suggest we make arrangements for her hospitalization as soon as possible, and as soon as that is done, you should begin to separate your career from her. She will bring you down. I promise you that. Martha Mitchell did it to her husband, and I assure you, Kate will do it to you—if she hasn’t already. I’ve contacted Sol Creighton at Laurel Hill. He has a bed waiting for her, and he says we have grounds for commitment if necessary. With some time, and perhaps some medication, he assures me that even the worst sociopathic personality can be helped.”

  “Dad, stop using that word. You have no right to diagnose her.”

  “Jared, face the facts. Kate is a lovely woman. I care for her very much. But she is a liar, and quite possibly a liar who completely believes her own fabrications. I know she looks perfectly fine and sounds logical, but the hallmark of a sociopath is exactly that physical and verbal glibness. The only way to realize what one is dealing with is to catch her in lie after lie.”

  “But—”

  “Do you really think someone other than Kate sent that letter to the papers about Bobby Geary?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And the chemist, and the Ashburton Foundation, and the nurse at Stonefield. Do you think they were all lying?”

  “I don’t—”

  “And what about the biopsy? You tell me everyone in Kate’s department says she made a mistake. The truth is right there in the slides. Yet there is Kate, insisting she did nothing wrong.”

  Samuels withdrew a cigar from his humidor, tested the aroma along its full length, and then clipped and lit it. He motioned for Jared to have one if he wished.

  Jared glanced at his watch, made an expression of distaste, and shook his head. “Christ, Dad, it’s only eight-thirty in the morning.”

  Samuels shrugged. “It’s my morning and it’s my cigar.”

  Jared looked across the desk at his father, trim and confident, wearing the trappings of success and power as comfortably as he wore his slippers. Unable to speak, Jared stared down at the gilded feet of his father’s desk, resting on the exquisite oriental carpet. A secret weapon, that’s what Kate had called him. A source of strengt
h for her. She had spoken the words to his father, but they were really meant for him. With tremendous effort, he brought his eyes up.

  “I hear what you are saying, Dad. And I understand what you want.”

  “And?”

  “I can’t go along with it. Kate says she’s innocent of any lying, and I believe her.”

  “You what?”

  Jared felt himself wither before the man’s glare. “I believe her. And I’m going to do what I can to help clear her.” There was a strength in his words that surprised him. He stood up. “I’ll tell you something else, Dad. If I find that she’s telling the truth, you’re going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

  Samuels rose, anger sparking from his eyes. “I seem to recall a conversation similar to this. We were in that matchbox office of yours in Vermont. I warned you not to marry that rootless hippie you were living with. I told you there was nothing to her. You stood before me then just as you are now and as much as threw me out of your office. Two years later your wife and daughter were gone, and you were crawling to me for help. Have you forgotten?”

  “Dad, that was then. This is—”

  “Have you forgotten?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Have you forgotten the money and the time I spent trying to find that woman despite my own personal feelings about her?”

  “Look, I don’t want to fight.”

  “Get out,” Samuels said evenly. “When you come to your senses, when you discover once again that I was right, call me.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “I said get out.” Samuels turned his back and stared out the window.

  As Jared opened the door, he nearly collided with Jocelyn Trent, who was standing up and backing away at the same time. Quickly, he closed the door behind him.