Death Watch

by Elizabeth Forrest

  He looked down at his hands, now swollen and puffy, fingernails bitten to the quick. The mark of an overcritical, anxious, and analytical person, he told himself.

  A person who could feel life grinding him down, bit by bit.

  What could he do?

  He reached for the phone, but his trembling hand went astray and, instead, he punched the radio news line button on his intercom. Voices flooded the office, overriding the thunder of his heartbeat and the tortured, sobbing gasps of his breathing.

  “... extent of the damage to Walker is unknown at this time. His doctors say it will be another day or two before neurological tests can be conducted to determine if the stroke will leave him permanently incapacitated. No interim replacement for Mr. Walker has been named to the council yet, but committees are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss this latest development. To recap, news at eleven thirty reports, from the wires and hospital sources, that Councilman Ibrahim Walker has suffered a major stroke during the night and is now resting comfortably at Mount Mercy Hospital....”

  Hotchkiss jabbed a finger hastily at the radio line, deadening it. He reeled back in his chair, struck by the news. He could feel the heat of the overhead light, beating down on the back of his neck as if it were the sun. He could smell the coconut tanning oil, hear the swish of the waves, feel the ache in his throat for a beauty few understood....

  We know who you are. You will be called, and you will serve, and you will remember that we know who you are....

  All the years of discretion and service, none of that availed him now. They knew that he and his party had been hoping to quietly jockey him into position for Walker’s post in a year or two, when surely the old man would be precipitously close to retirement anyway. They knew that Walker had been struck down.

  He put the back of his hand to his mouth. His lips, salty with perspiration, were swollen.

  He had to get out, even if just for a day or two. Get away and think. Out of town, out of the heat and smog, somewhere where he could just think. Destroy the disk ....

  He stiffened his back. Destroying the software would be a start. He picked up his phone, left a message on his secretary’s voice mail. “Cancel my appointments for the next few days. I’ve been called out of town. Put everything on hold. You’re not to give out the information, but I’ll be at my condo at Lake Arrowhead. Do not forward any calls or messages to me, no matter how urgent they appear to be.”

  He hung up and took a deep breath. There. He was gaining control again. Thoughts, which had started to fall like dominoes, began to stack up neatly. He would be in charge again.

  He shoved himself away from the desk and chair and stood. His knees wobbled, then caught. His suit, horribly wrinkled at the knees, fell away from his legs. He had been sitting in a daze for, what, hours? No more time to waste.

  A sudden thought furrowed his brow. He leaned over and made one last phone call, then left his office to pack.

  Moreno looked in on the girl before he left the hospital. After talking to the husband, he wouldn’t normally have made a trip back, but something pulled him. As Carter had reminded him, he was all too familiar with domestic violence. She lay with her eyes to the window, lids hooded, unresponsive as he toed open the door. The nurse behind him, the same one who’d let him interview her earlier, leaned close. She wore Jean Naté splash, like his Margo used to, and he found the citrus scent overwhelming. He cleared his throat heavily. The young woman lying supine in the hospital bed flinched, but otherwise seemed totally unaware of him.

  “She’s sedated,” the nurse said.

  “Thought you didn’t do that with possible concussions.”

  “We don’t. Preliminary tests show that her head injury is mild. The sedation is light, should wear off in an hour or two. Dr. Craig in psychiatric thought it advisable. Once the case physician concurs, we’ll be moving her there for observation.” The blonde’s face smoothed slightly, sympathetically. “Sometimes anyone can just snap, y’know?”

  Moreno pushed on into the room, to get away from the perfume as much as anything. He looked at the bank of windows. “This go down to the same verandas?”

  “Where she said her husband jumped? No. That’s on the other side of the building. If he’d been here, if he’d jumped from here, you’d have found him smashed like a ripe watermelon down in the courtyard.”

  Moreno’s stomach clenched slightly, not at the imagery but because he’d seen scenes like that before, and did not like the memory. He ran his tongue over his teeth, wondering if he had indeed talked to Jack Trebolt or not. After all, who was to say?

  Her right hand rested on top of the sheets, fisted over something. He looked down, saw a corner, golden and fuzzy. He picked up her hand, turned it over, and carefully loosened the fingers. A scrap of something rested on her palm. He looked at it thoughtfully, then took an evidence baggie from his pants’ pocket and slid the object into it.

  “Find something?”

  Nurses. Bossy and curious, like surrogate mothers. Moreno cleared his throat of the perfume again. “Probably not,” he answered. His voice had gone gravelly.

  “Catching a cold?” She smiled cheerfully at him, one patient forgotten, her attention quickly transferred to another. “I can get you something for that?”

  “No.” He scratched the corner of his mouth. “It’s the smog. Give my office a call when she’s transferred over, will you? I’ll be needing to speak with her again.”

  The ponytail bobbed as the woman nodded. Moreno brushed past her as he pocketed the baggie. He did not take it out to look at it more carefully until he was alone in the elevator, doors closed after him. There he pulled it out and opened it, running a fingertip curiously over. At first, he had thought it a scrap of material, a patch of mohair from a teddy bear or some such. Women, young women, were as crazy about stuffed animals as they were about flowers. He couldn’t figure it, but Margo had told him that when the two of them first started dating. Anything, she’d said, any little sentimental gift. A card, a rose, a little stuffed bear....

  But this was not fabric. For one thing, it had a definite odor which he could now smell in the confines of the elevator, an odor of rotting. Moreno pinched the piece gently between his thumb and index finger, getting a real feel for it. Soft, silken on both sides, fine golden hairs, ragged edges....

  And then, suddenly, he knew what it was, and the thought sickened him so much that he nearly vomited. He bit off the gorge behind his throat, resealed the baggie and thrust it back into his pocket. When the elevator doors opened, he left them as though he had been launched.

  What in God’s name was she doing with part of a dead dog’s ear in her hand?

  Chapter 14

  Susan sat going over the new patient’s chart again, looking at the synaptic anomalies. She had already highlighted them with a dry pen, so that the paper would not bleed, and she sat now with the same pen in hand like a weapon, as if she might find another spike or curve to color. Miller had long since gone home, but it wouldn’t help even if he were there. He didn’t know the virtual reality program, he hadn’t helped design it, he barely knew how to utilize and score it.

  She rested the tip of her pen upon the paper. The ink bled immediately into the fiber, glowing apple green in response, like a dot at the base of an exclamation point. She couldn’t fault Miller there, for all his shortcomings. He had done almost as well at scoring as she would have.

  So the anomalies weren’t his fault.

  She dropped her pen and shoved her chair back. The noise screeched in the quiet lab, and the boy in the far corner, head helmeted, avid in front of a colorful monitor, jumped as if the sound had gotten through to him. Dr. Craig watched him for a moment to see if he made any more disruptive responses, but the boy did not, and so she pushed the chair back a little more, softly, and stood up.

  The spare helmets, there were only two others besides the one currently in use, sat on a Formica counter, cables neatly wrapped beside them. Miller’s ob
session for orderliness superseded almost any other work drive he had. Craig smiled thinly in response as she reached up and took down the equipment. He had marked the patient as being tested in helmet C. She grasped it between her hands, turning it over and over. The leads seemed fine. The 64K processor would have to be removed, and the chip tested elsewhere, but she was willing to bet it was all right as well. With the kind of usage she gave it, what could have gone wrong?

  Only the software and the patient herself could be suspect. Craig turned the helmet over again, teeth nibbling against her lower lip as she thought. It was a given that her program was experimental. Yet, although she had not offered it up to FDA testing because she was still com-piling her own results, she knew that it could not have produced the synaptic responses graphed from the patient.

  Therefore, it was the patient herself who was responsible for the aberrant reading.

  Susan would have to test her again to confirm that, of course. Tomorrow morning, when the young woman was transferred over, she would have ample opportunity.

  She tossed the helmet back on the shelf, loosening the clip which held the neatly coiled cable, and watched it snake loose, striking at her, like a moray eel from the depths of the ocean. Absentmindedly, Craig pushed the cable back as well, and returned to her table and report. Before she could sit, there was a sound from the corner.

  Brandon had finished the program and was calling for her, his thin eleven-year-old voice muffled by the helmet. She’d almost forgotten she’d planted him there earlier. The wiry wrists were both bandaged lightly, hiding the newly healing scars of a suicide attempt. As she stood up, she noted the body language, the vulnerable and uncertain way he sat at the console.

  Some people should never be allowed to have children. Licenses for bearing and rearing offspring ought to be more important than fishing licenses. Susan shrugged into her lab coat, then put her chin up.

  Briskly, she joined him, and began to unclip the various leads. His freckled face, when it emerged from the visor’s cover, was pale but excited.

  “Did you see my score?”

  “Why, no.” Craig bent over and examined the monitor, trying to muster enthusiasm.

  He had his hand on the monitor screen, ignoring the faint static crackle, saying, “All the way to level nine!”

  “That’s good. That’s very good. But remember what you promised me. An hour of game, a half hour of biofeedback, right?”

  His face went slack, hazel eyes deadening.

  “It’s important,” she told him. “Or I wouldn’t ask you. You need to know how to handle all those knots that tighten up inside you. This will help. Besides, we made a deal, right?”

  Then, he nodded. “I promised.”

  “Right.” Susan wrapped the helmet up. “But you don’t have to do it now. I’ll wheel you back to your room, you can have afternoon snack, and maybe I’ll see you after dinner. Okay?”

  Some of the enthusiasm and color returned to the boy’s face. “Okay!”

  She toed the brake off the wheelchair and brought the boy around, but her mind, as she took him out of the lab, was somewhere else entirely. When she returned, she sat down at one of the several computers.

  Her fingers played elegantly over the keyboard, as if awakening a piano. She watched herself type, not because she did not know the keys, but because she liked to watch the interplay of her hands. She thought of Holly Hunter in her award-winning role, her hands so elegant, so work-strong, so emotive.

  >Hello.<<

  After a moment, the screen responded. There was no real reply, there could not be, but a synaptic grid came on. She watched the grid avidly.

  A spike jumped. Susan caught her breath, watched it closely. A second spurt followed. Awareness. A stirring of awareness, flaring into kinetic thought. She responded without thinking, coaxing.

  >I’m here.<<

  The screen exploded into a frenzy, spikes and valleys. She watched the grid as whatever it measured fought its containment.

  >Dream.<< She rested her hands on the wrist board, watching the lines oscillate, REM patterns like that of sleep. Always dreaming. The matrix could not do otherwise until she awakened it.

  But it seemed fitful, and that worried her.

  She hastily switched on a second computer. The hard drive whirred into lazy life. “Come on, come on!” In the corner of her eye, the first monitor continued its starburst of activity.

  She opened up the modem line and began to type a rapid string of commands, her hard acrylic nails staccato on the keyboard, leaning over from her chair to reach it. Fine beads of sweat dotted her upper lip. She licked them away, tasting salt and makeup.

  After long moments, the activity on the first monitor began to soften, to slacken, to lapse back into somnolent readings. There was one last hiccup of a spike.

  Susan Craig sat back in her chair. She found herself breathing, spent, as if she’d just run a 5K. After long moments, she felt confident enough to shut down the second terminal.

  What had she done?

  Susan flung herself back in her chair, face hard for a moment. Then she forced herself to lean forward, out of the morass of self-doubt which threatened to envelop her.

  “Soon,” she said soothingly, her fingertips brushing the terminal as if she stroked a patient’s hand. “Soon.”

  The phone rang. Susan answered it and listened, and felt her face grow cool. She put a fingertip to the corner of her mouth, as close to chewing a nail as she ever got now, her tongue tickling the hard acrylic edge. For a second, she felt her teeth bare as if she would not be able to resist a bite.

  She cleared her throat gently to intone, “That’s no problem. Thank you for calling.”

  Her hand tightened about the receiver as she hung it upon, her fair, pale skin going to dead white about the knuckles.

  She punched out a number quickly and, when the party answered, said without preliminaries, “Hotchkiss thinks he’s going to run. He’s canceled all his appointments. But I know where he’s going. We’ve discussed it before. I want you to drive up to Arrowhead and let him know just how serious we are.” She paused. “No, I don’t want him hurt badly. I just want his attention.”

  She smiled tightly at the response.

  Carter returned home, filed a backup story, and was signing off when Dolan caught him on-line. The editorial assistant “sounded” much the same on a computer screen as he did in person.

  >Hey, kiddo! Some story.<<

  Carter leaned back toward the terminal with some regrets. >>Thanks. Right place at the right time.<<

  >Some people have all the luck. How’s it look for Ibie???<<

  >Nobody’s saying. Guess it depends on him.<<

  >Wow. The boss says to check your voice mail once in a while. And the Feds came by to say hello.<<

  >Thanks for the warning. Did I miss anything important?<<

  >There’s a GIF for you to download. Want me to stand by in case you need help?(g)<<

  Dolan needn’t have shorthanded a grin at the end of his query. Carter could pick up voice mail, download and upload files on his computer, but graphics were another matter. >>Guess you’d better.<<

  >I keep telling you, it’s just point and click.<<

  “Ha,” Carter muttered. He pulled down his message menu and located the flag which told him there was a file waiting. The mouse did not seem to want to run smoothly as he tried to position the cursor to download the file. Then, when he thought he finally had it, his drive rattled at him, reminding him that he hadn’t put in a disk. Finally, he had it.

  The phone rang. Eyes fixed on the screen, as he now tried to load the GIF from his floppy, he answered the phone one-handed.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s me, Windy. I had to get off the net. How’s it goin’?”

  “Sorry to keep you hanging, Dolan. I’ve got it now. It’s just coming up ...” Carter paused, watching the screen as the pixels began to give him an incredibly clear picture.

  “Don�
��t need my help?”

  “No, I, ah....” Distracted, Carter fell into incoherence.

  “Good goin’, big guy. See you around.” Dolan hung up with scarcely any reaction.

  Carter sat in front of his screen for a good five minutes, telephone receiver in hand, staring at what he had. As the phone began to beep at him, he set it back in its cradle without tearing his eyes away from the monitor.

  Nelson must have uploaded it for him. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t make it with the file, or maybe he was just farther along in computer technology than Carter was, or maybe it was his best way of sneaking the information out of the Bureau.

  He’d never know, now.

  He stared at the newspaper photo, with its Bureau stamp on the corner, knowing it was out of Bauer’s files, that it had to have come from Nelson because no one else would have left it for Carter.