Delirious

by Daniel Palmer

  He walked up the wooden stairs to the front entrance and peered into the only window that was not obscured by a curtain. He couldn’t see anything inside. Knowing Rudy lived on the first floor, Charlie walked over to the left-most door of the two-family home and reached for the doorknob.

  Then he froze. Pulling down the sleeve of his jacket, Charlie created a crude, makeshift glove, surprising himself. He was already assuming guilt for something that he wasn’t even sure had happened. It’s just a precaution.

  The doorknob turned with ease, and the latch clicked open. Unlocked, Charlie thought. He slipped off his shoes.

  “Rudy?” Charlie called. “Are you here?”

  There was no response.

  The apartment was dark and drab, similar in layout to an apartment he had lived in with his mother and father in Belmont. To his right was an archway leading into the living room. Peeking inside, Charlie saw no signs of Gomes. Only a brown leather chair, a ratty yellow sofa, and a forty-five-inch plasma T V. In front of him was a short hallway leading to the master bedroom. There was a door halfway down, which Charlie assumed opened to a bathroom. He stood outside the door and heard the rushing of water from what sounded like the shower.

  Using his jacket sleeve to conceal his fingerprints again, Charlie slowly turned the bathroom doorknob. The moment the door opened a crack, steam spilled out into the hallway. Charlie stood in the doorway and waited for the steam to dissipate. As the air cleared, he could see hot water spewing from the silver showerhead above a leopard-patterned shower curtain, which was pulled closed around a claw-foot tub. Water vapor that had condensed on the tile floor soaked the bottom of Charlie’s feet. Since he’d left his shoes outside, only his socks shielded him from the dampness.

  “Rudy?” Charlie called out. “Are you in here?”

  Instinct told Charlie that the only surprise would be if Rudy responded. Inching forward, Charlie reached for the shower curtain, ignoring the precautions he had taken earlier about his fingerprints. Pulling the curtain toward the wall, Charlie let out a loud gasp as he staggered backward.

  Rudy Gomes lay dead in a pool of water. The water from the showerhead cascaded downward and pelted Gomes, turning the clear liquid into crimson drops as it mixed with his brownish blood. Gomes’s throat had been cut. Fatty tissue and frayed ligaments exploded outward from the dark, crescent-shaped gash. Had it been any deeper, Gomes would have been decapitated. Charlie quickly pulled the shower curtain closed.

  As the blood rushed from Charlie’s head, his stomach churned and roiled inside. Falling to his knees, Charlie slid across the damp floor and vomited into the toilet, his body shuddering and convulsing with each gag and expulsion. The shower curtain covered most of Gomes’s corpse, but from his kneeling position on the bathroom floor Charlie could still see his legs and those cobalt blue feet sticking out at the end of the tub. He spent the better part of a minute on his knees, listening to the dreadful sound of water as it fell on a dead man.

  After regaining enough strength, Charlie stood and stared down at Gomes’s lifeless body. The gaping wound was no less repulsive than when he’d first laid eyes upon it.

  Backing out of the bathroom, Charlie was again mindful to keep his hands from touching any objects or walls. It was bad enough that he had grabbed the shower curtain with his bare hands. He hoped that the steam would act as some sort of a masking agent. A sickening thought then occurred to him. What if I did kill him? Who knows what other evidence I might have left behind? The idea that evidence pointing to him could be anywhere in the house was no less terrifying than the body in the tub.

  Putting the thought aside, Charlie left the apartment and walked toward his car. His hands were shaking as he put the key in the ignition. His stomach hadn’t yet settled.

  He took his time leaving, the cliché of trying to behave inconspicuously not lost on him. He searched for signs that somebody might have witnessed him entering Gomes’s apartment. A front door ajar. A light or TV on in a living room. The street was thankfully deserted. Every window he looked at was either dark or had the shades drawn. There were no pedestrians in sight or cars coming down the narrow street.

  As he settled in his car, terrifying thoughts took hold and would not let go.

  “I killed him. I must have killed him. But I don’t remember anything. Oh, God, please help me. Please …” Charlie muttered the words as if in a trance. The mantra lasted minutes before he realized he had to drive away from there as fast as he could. Nobody had seen him come out of Gomes’s apartment. It wouldn’t help if someone saw him loitering in his car outside the home of a murder victim. He didn’t know where to go. He knew only that he had to distance himself from the crime scene.

  “Pull it together, Giles,” Charlie muttered. “Whatever crazy thoughts you have, you better pull it together now.”

  Charlie drove five miles down Route 2 and took the 95 North exit toward Burlington. There was a Barnes & Noble at the Burlington Mall. Without any protection from the driver’s side window, the car was frigid in the midmorning sun. He blasted the heat to help warm his hands. He pulled into the parking lot of Barnes & Noble and shut off the engine.

  They’ll find the glass on the sidewalk, Charlie thought. I need to get this window fixed. I’ll pay cash. I can’t leave a trace that I had any work done.

  He kept vacillating between covering his tracks for a murder he had no memory of committing and refusing to accept the possibility that he had.

  If I did kill him, why wasn’t there any blood on my clothes? I woke up in the same clothes I went to sleep in. Did I wake up in the middle of the night, change, drive over to his house, kill him, and then drive home? If so, what did I do with the weapon?

  None of it seemed possible to Charlie, but he could think of no other explanation. He had left the notes for Joe and himself. One down. Three to go.

  Frozen with fear and anxiety, he felt lost, displaced, and without any idea of what to do next. It was inconceivable. The perfect, organized, meticulously planned Charlie Giles might be the most out-of-control beast imaginable.

  The one gnawing need was the desire to know the truth. Even if it proved what he feared most, he had to know if it was even within the realm of scientific possibility.

  Charlie picked up his cell phone. He scanned through his contacts. Then he dialed Rachel Evans. She answered on the fifth ring.

  Chapter 21

  “This is Rachel.”

  Charlie’s spirits lifted at the sound of Rachel’s voice. It was angelic, like a heavenly gift. Charlie couldn’t even speak. He just kept the phone pressed tight against his ear.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” Rachel asked.

  “Rachel,” Charlie managed to say. “It’s … it’s Charlie Giles. Joe’s brother.”

  Rachel gave a laugh. “I know you now, Charlie. You don’t have to qualify yourself as Joe’s brother anymore.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” Charlie felt rushed. His thoughts came in disjointed spurts. He still had flashes of Gomes lying dead in the tub, the grotesqueness of his gaping wound. His agitation must have come through over the phone.

  “Charlie, you sound distressed,” Rachel said. “Is everything okay?”

  Breathing deeply, Charlie tried to collect himself. “I need to ask you something, Rachel.”

  “Professional or personal?”

  He wished it was personal. If only this were just a friendly, flirtatious call. He traced her image in his mind—first those green oval eyes, then her willowy frame, her gentle, feminine allure combined with an inner strength and aura of ruggedness. So much of his life he had devoted to his ambition. It had cost him Gwen. And might very well have pushed him into madness.

  “It’s professional,” Charlie said. He thought he heard a sigh of disappointment but couldn’t be sure.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Please, it’s important. I need to know something. Something very important.”

  Another sigh. �
�What is it?”

  Her icy tone did nothing to deter him.

  “Could a person …” Charlie paused. “Could a person do something, something horrible, and have no memory of committing that act?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I just need to know,” Charlie said.

  Rachel hesitated. “It’s possible,” she said. “It’s certainly not common. In cases of amnesia a person could suffer from transient global amnesia, which is a temporary loss of all memory. But this is rare, and mainly seen in older people. It generally dissipates within forty-eight hours.”

  “But what about specific events? Not all memory.”

  Charlie heard Rachel take a deep breath.

  “Then we’re talking about some sort of dissociative identity disorder.”

  “What’s that?” Charlie asked.

  “At least two personalities are at work, and the subject often has a sense of lost memory that goes far beyond normal forgetfulness. But missing time is still a controversial theory in DID cases. It’s been linked to UFO and abduction phenomena—not exactly hard science. There are certainly clinical cases of this sort of missing time in patients with DID, though.”

  Charlie didn’t speak. All he needed to hear was that it was possible. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and recoiled at what he saw: his dark haunted eyes, bordered by deep gray circles. Raccoon eyes—eyes of death. How could something like this have stayed hidden for so long? Why is it happening to me now?

  “Joe’s condition, my father’s … could … they … Is it possible that they have multiple personalities?”

  “Charlie, you know I can’t speak to you about your brother’s condition. And I never worked with your father. I’ve only seen his file, which is confidential information as well. Why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”

  Charlie didn’t know how much to tell. If he told her about Gomes, he might be the instant target of a manhunt. But he also wanted her to confirm that he could have committed the crime. Whether his behavior was a result of multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia or both, he had to dig for the truth. The fact that memory loss and dissociative identity disorder were linked wasn’t enough proof for him.

  Charlie decided to test the waters. “What if I told you I wrote a list of names of people who I thought needed to die. And then I slipped that note into an envelope, put it under the sofa, and left another note for myself to go look under the sofa to find it—”

  “Did you do that?” Rachel asked.

  “—because I had no memory of writing the kill list in the first place.”

  “Were there specific names? Did you put down names of real people you wanted to harm, Charlie?”

  Charlie disliked her tone. It was disconcerting how quickly she could turn from friendly to clinical; she was on the job now, doing what she did best.

  “Yes,” Charlie said. “There were specific names.”

  “Who, Charlie? I need to know the names.”

  “There was only one name,” Charlie said, feigning confidence in the lie.

  “Can you tell me the person’s name?”

  Charlie hesitated. “Simon Mackenzie. He was my boss at Solu-Cent.”

  Through the receiver, he could hear Rachel scratching something down on a piece of paper.

  “Where are you, Charlie?” Rachel asked.

  He hesitated. “I’d rather not say. Rachel, I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  A silence followed. Charlie could hear the softness of her breathing through the receiver. It was calming to know that she was still on the line with him—that she hadn’t hung up, or the call hadn’t been dropped. He needed her to stay with him right now. He found her silence to be unsettling. He figured she was deciding how best to proceed. He knew it was her professional training at work, but the sound of her words alone was enough to slow his racing heart a few beats. He was ready to listen and act upon whatever she had to say.

  “Charlie, I believe that to answer your questions and continue this conversation would be medically and ethically irresponsible.”

  He tried to hide his disappointment. “I understand,” Charlie said. “I never meant to bring you into this, Rachel. I just didn’t know where else to turn.”

  “Listen to me, Charlie. You need to go to a hospital,” Rachel said. “It is my strong professional opinion that you require immediate medical attention. I cannot diagnose what may be happening to you over the phone. When you get to an ER, you can have me paged. My number is on my card. Do you still have my card?”

  Charlie fumbled through his wallet.

  “I have it,” he said.

  “Good. I’ll get one of my colleagues, someone who doesn’t have a conflict of interest, to come down and see you. Where are you now? Which hospital can you get to?”

  Charlie thought a moment. “I’m not sure I can do that, Rachel.”

  If Rachel was thrown off by his defensiveness, it did not show.

  “Charlie, the kill list you said you wrote … Tell me, do you want to hurt anybody right now?”

  In answering this question, Charlie didn’t hesitate at all. “No.” It was affirming to feel confident in his response and in control of his emotions. He had no desire to hurt anyone. He couldn’t remember a moment when he had. If a monster was lurking inside him, it remained well hidden.

  “Charlie, do you own a gun?” Rachel asked.

  Charlie didn’t, but his father did. If he knew his mother, his father’s .38 Special would still be in a shoe box in the attic, behind a floor fan. Dust-covered, for sure, but still there.

  “I don’t personally own a gun,” Charlie said.

  “Do you want to hurt yourself, Charlie? Are you thinking about that? You can be honest with me right now. It’s extremely important that you are.”

  Did he want to hurt himself?

  How could he live with himself if he were some sort of monster capable of that brutal murder? But to take his own life would mean accepting responsibility for acts that he had no memory of committing. In his heart and soul he did not believe he was a murderer. Until proven otherwise, he would never consider violence against himself.

  “No,” Charlie said. “I’m not going to do that. But I am lost, Rachel. I’m so totally lost right now.” For the second time in a week, tears welled in his eyes. A sob caught him by surprise, as if it had come from someone else.

  “I gave you my opinion, Charlie.”

  “I understand,” was all he could manage.

  “I need to tell you something else, Charlie.”

  “Yes?”

  “The law requires that I contact Simon Mackenzie. That I warn him of the threat you’ve made against him.”

  Charlie’s blood went cold. “You have to what?”

  “I have a legal obligation to contact Simon Mackenzie and inform him of your written intentions. That you have made a threat against his life.”

  “But I didn’t threaten Mac directly,” Charlie said.

  “You wrote his name on a list with the intention that those named should die by your hand. Under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter One-twenty-three, Section Thirty-six B, I have to take reasonable precautions.”

  “What precautions?”

  “I’m legally obligated to warn any person who you might harm of the threat against them.”

  “But I’m not going to hurt Mac,” Charlie said. “I told you that already.”

  “It’s an obligation of every mental health professional, the duty to warn if a patient presents a physical danger to a named individual.”

  “But you said yourself that I’m not a patient. You can’t be my provider, because of your professional relationship with Joe.”

  “That’s a semantic I’m not entirely certain is worth my risk taking, or that would even withstand legal scrutiny.”

  Charlie’s heart rate jumped, and he felt light-headed. He knew exactly how the scenario would play out. First, Mac would be alerted to the
threat Charlie had allegedly made against him. The police would go looking for Gomes, too. The kill list would be evidence tying him to Gomes’s murder. He had a motive and no alibi. Worse still, he couldn’t be certain he had left the crime scene completely clean of his DNA. With the technology available today, it was impossible to be that careful. It wasn’t a big leap to predict a grand jury verdict against him. And that would be only the start.

  At all costs, he couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’ll go to a hospital, but under one condition,” he said. His mind worked quickly to find some negotiating position with Rachel. It was how his business background had trained him to think—analyze the situation with computer-like speed, determine all possible outcomes, and make a move.

  “What’s the condition?” Rachel asked.

  Charlie assumed she was accustomed to thwarting all types of stall tactics. The next moment was crucial. If Rachel didn’t believe in his sincerity, he was doomed.

  “I go to the hospital right now, on the condition that you don’t call Mac.”

  “I can’t make that deal, Charlie. I wouldn’t if I could.”

  “Listen, Rachel,” Charlie said. “I honestly don’t know what is happening to me. I admit some extraordinary behavior, but I have no anger or hostility toward Mac or anyone else. I swear to you this is the truth. If you go to Mac now, it will destroy my reputation forever. Any chance I have of rebuilding my life since all this insanity began will be gone. You have to give me the opportunity to prove one way or another who or what is behind all this—even if the ultimate answer lies within me. Please, Rachel. Give me that chance. Let me go to the hospital. Let me get evaluated before you sound the alarms.”

  “The law, Charlie … how can I …”

  “Rachel, listen to me, please,” Charlie said. His mind kept working in hyperdrive.

  “I don’t see how …”

  “That law!” Charlie shouted the words loud enough for shoppers entering Barnes & Noble to turn and stare his way. He imagined he had startled Rachel as well. “Can you read it to me?”