Head Case

by Michael Wiley

  The door burst open. Venus Johnson and Dan Peters came in, pistols in their hands.

  The doctor seemed to relax. ‘Hello, officers,’ he said. ‘We’re having quite an afternoon. Can I help …?’

  Then Rodman and Marty came into the room.

  ‘Ah …’ the doctor said, as though the mistake was theirs. He turned and touched the syringe of air to Kelson’s neck again. He held his thumb over the plunger.

  ‘You don’t want to do that,’ Johnson said.

  ‘One of the advantages of age,’ the doctor said, ‘and one of the prerogatives of being an authority in my profession, is I know exactly what I do and don’t want to do.’

  ‘Move away from him,’ she said.

  The doctor dug the needle into Kelson’s skin. ‘You seem to misjudge the situation,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Johnson said, and she shot him in the chest.

  SIXTY

  The X-rays showed the bullet lodged against a muscle in Kelson’s shoulder. A safe little lump.

  ‘We’ll leave it,’ Dr Handa said. ‘You won’t notice the difference when you step on the bathroom scale. But I want you to stay overnight anyway. You’ve been through a lot. Treat it as a mini vacation.’

  ‘Bring me a bottle of Bacardi Limón?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Tonight’s menu is beef stroganoff,’ the doctor said. ‘Open bar but a limited selection – cartons of milk or cartons of apple juice. You can live it up.’

  They put Kelson in the same room they’d put him in after releasing him from the ICU when Gary Renshaw shot him three weeks earlier. They shut the window shade, but Kelson could hear the news vans outside. One reporter got halfway down the corridor, dragging a camera crew, before guards turned him away. Kelson remoted the TV, flipping through the channels. The news showed the front of the hospital, forty or fifty feet from Kelson’s window. The reporters, bundled against the cold, talked into microphones, so close Kelson could throw rocks at them. He turned up the volume when a Clement Memorial spokeswoman went out to give a statement.

  A nurse came in with a dinner tray. Beef stroganoff.

  ‘Look, Ma, I’m on TV,’ Kelson said.

  ‘How’s the pain?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a throb.’

  ‘We can give you something to manage it.’

  ‘I like the throb,’ he said.

  She set the tray in front of him, then produced an airline bottle of Bacardi Superior from a pocket. ‘Dr Handa’s gift,’ she said. ‘We all feel so awful.’

  ‘Open the shade, please,’ Kelson said.

  Instead, she took the remote from him and turned off the TV. ‘No news is good news while you’re recovering.’

  So he unscrewed the cap from the two-ounce bottle, downed the rum, and said, ‘Cheers.’

  As soon as the nurse left, he turned on the TV again, got out of bed, and went to the window. He peered out through the slats. The spokeswoman was talking to the reporters from a platform below his room. If Kelson opened the shade, he could wave like a king.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, and went back to bed.

  Venus Johnson came in while he was eating his chocolate pudding cup. She watched him spoon a mouthful and said, ‘You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?’

  ‘I’ve been told,’ he said.

  She touched her lips. ‘Wipe.’

  He wiped off a smear of pudding.

  ‘You’re like a baby,’ she said. ‘Falling off ledges. Sticking fingers into outlets. Drinking bleach from under the sink.’

  ‘I hate the taste of bleach,’ he said.

  She smiled. He liked her smile more than Dr Jacobson’s. ‘I like your smile,’ he said.

  ‘We visited Jose Feliciano at his house,’ she said. ‘He’s banged up pretty bad, but he won’t talk. He doesn’t like cops. Doesn’t trust us. Would rather suffer than give a statement. I don’t have a lot of patience with guys like him.’

  ‘That could be the problem,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Yeah, that could be the problem.’

  It seemed for a moment that she would tear into him. Instead, she said, ‘Looks like Jeremy Jacobson took Jose. We have a team at the doctor’s house now. We found two pistols in his bedroom. One looks like a good fit for the bullet that killed Frida and the ones we picked up in the Lincoln Avenue alley. We’ll know in a day or two. The better stuff was in the basement – a couple of metal brackets ripped out of the wall. A concrete wall. Someone kicked like a horse to get out of that one. Went out through the window well. Plenty of glass – broken from the inside out.’

  ‘Sounds like Jose Feliciano.’

  ‘That’s the theory. We have prints – and some blood. We’ll figure it out, whether or not he wants to admit what Jacobson did to him.’

  ‘He’s a proud man,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Far as I’m concerned, he’s a fool.’

  ‘What about Rick Jacobson?’

  ‘Yeah – what about him? We have him at the station, and he’s still somewhere between denial and anger. How much did he know about his dad? How much did he participate? How much did he choose not to know? How much did he run away from? We’ll keep him as long as we can. We’ll appeal to his better nature – if he has one.’

  ‘Give him Scott,’ Kelson said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The doctor convinced himself that everything he did, he did out of love for his boys. He protected them because of love. He punished other people because of love. Who knows, maybe in some terrible way it was true. He wanted life to be different for Scott. But instead of creating a better world for him he tried to destroy the one Scott already lived in. Rick has a lot of his dad in him. Give him hope that Scott can have something better.’

  ‘That’s the dumbest suggestion I’ve heard in a long time,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Kelson said, ‘typical of me.’

  At ten p.m. the nurse came and offered him pain medicine again.

  ‘I still like the throb,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever floats your boat.’

  ‘It reminds me,’ he said.

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Of all I probably should want to forget, though I’m afraid that if I did there’d be nothing left of me.’

  She considered that. ‘Personally I prefer Demerol.’

  At 10:30, he turned off the TV. He went back to the window and looked through the blinds. The earlier chaos of news vans and reporters had assumed a kind of order, as if everyone was settling in for an all-night party.

  Kelson turned out the lights and pulled the blanket to his forehead. That reminded him of Frida lying dead under the white body sheet on the parking lot outside his building, and he yanked the blanket down.

  He closed his eyes – then snapped them open. ‘Afraid to dream,’ he said.

  He pulled the blanket to his forehead again, stared at the threads, and breathed the fabric until he started to sweat. He pulled down the blanket. ‘Shh,’ he said. He closed his eyes – opened them when the fear came – closed them again – opened them – and, without crossing a discernible line, fell into a hard, hard sleep.

  During the night, someone opened the shade, and when Kelson woke the next morning, bright sunlight shone into the room. It warmed the bed and made him think of faraway places.

  A new nurse brought a tray of overcooked scrambled eggs, a muffin, a sealed plastic cup of orange juice, and watery coffee.

  ‘No rum?’ Kelson said.

  The nurse frowned. ‘I’ve double-shifted since eight last night – so don’t start.’

  ‘Back to the real world,’ Kelson said.

  Rodman tapped on the door as Kelson finished breakfast.

  ‘Hey,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I brought a pal,’ Rodman said, and Jose followed him into the room.

  The bull rider’s left eye was swollen nearly shut. The skin around it, extending down his cheek, was purple. His right eye matched the left. His lips wer
e scored with rivulets of dry blood. The skin on the bridge of his nose was cracked.

  He grinned through his broken lips. ‘Amigo,’ he said.

  ‘Hey, you look worse than me,’ Kelson said.

  ‘No, amigo, I’m always handsome. Ask Wendy – she’d never marry an ugly cabrón like you.’ Grinning like that must’ve hurt.

  ‘We both got bucked this time.’

  ‘Nah, I rode to the buzzer.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  Jose told him.

  Two days ago, Jeremy Jacobson came to his house and asked to talk with Wendy. ‘When the boss rings your doorbell, you let him in,’ Jose said, ‘even if you think he’s a son of a whore.’ Once inside, Jacobson drew a gun. ‘I’ll fight a fair fight against any man,’ Jose said. ‘I’ll fight an unfair fight against four legs and horns. But I don’t like to get shot – I’m not stupid.’

  ‘What are you implying?’ Kelson said.

  The battered man grinned. ‘Nothing, amigo. Nada.’

  Jeremy Jacobson seemed convinced that Jose had evidence of his secrets. He’d long known that Jose hired Kelson to investigate the patient deaths at Clement Memorial, and he’d learned about Wendy’s records of the events surrounding her firing. So instead of killing Jose, he tore apart the inside of the house, finding only Wendy’s notebook. Unsatisfied that he’d gotten what he needed, he hit Jose in the jaw with the gun butt. Jose spat at him, and the doctor hit him again. The doctor hit him and hit him, but Jose told him nothing. ‘I didn’t know,’ Jose said, and his grin was gone. ‘I didn’t know anything.’

  Jeremy Jacobson forced him out of the house and took him across the city to his basement, where he continued to brutalize him. He seemed sure Jose had something that could either save his family or destroy it. ‘I fought him, man, I did,’ Jose said. ‘But I would’ve given him anything he wanted if I had it.’

  ‘Then you broke free,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Yeah, I did.’ The bull rider didn’t look especially proud of himself for it.

  ‘Did you see Rick Jacobson while you were at the house?’

  ‘Never,’ Jose said. ‘If he was there, he must’ve heard – he must’ve known – but I never saw him. I only saw that son of a puta doctor. If the cop didn’t kill him, I would’ve, my friend.’

  There was another tap on the door, and Venus Johnson came in. She looked at the bright window, seeming to see the same illusion Kelson did, then glanced at each of the men. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, though she nodded only at Jose, the way strong rivals acknowledge each other with wary respect.

  She went to the window and shut the shade. ‘That OK? I thought you deserved an update. It’ll be in the news tonight or tomorrow. You should have it first.’ She frowned at Rodman, but she didn’t ask him to leave. ‘We agreed to release Scott Jacobson into a residential treatment program – in Arizona.’

  ‘That was fast,’ Kelson said.

  ‘We worked out a deal with Rick Jacobson.’

  ‘Ahh … in exchange for?’

  ‘Rick admits he knew much of what was happening. His dad confided in him, and Rick let it happen. He’ll testify that much. He claims he had no active role. We’ll keep digging. Either way, he fills in some blanks.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as Terry Ann Jacobson’s death. Rick says his dad did it because of the abuse. Then he put it on Scott as an accident because Scott was fifteen and could take the blame without a lot of punishment – but, you know, Scott ended up on the lakefront with a razorblade and then a visit to Camp Nutso. So maybe the doctor misjudged.’

  Kelson took that in. ‘Could Rick be lying?’

  ‘Maybe, though I don’t know that anyone gains from it now. Rick says that when Daryl Vaughn was doing jobs for the Jacobsons, he saw Terry Ann touching Scott in ways no mom should touch her son. Jeremy Jacobson wanted to scrub that memory. Vaughn was so far gone by the time the doctor found him on Lower Wacker, it was hardly worth killing him, but Jacobson had other ideas. Patricia Ruddig nosed into everyone’s business. Chances were she didn’t see anything clearly when the car hit Terry Ann, but the doctor wanted to be thorough.’

  ‘Terry Ann Jacobson died six years ago. Why wait so long?’

  ‘I guess Scott was finally growing up and coming into his own. Rick says his brother was tired of being a victim – tired of his dad insisting he act like one. Over the last year, Scott started confronting him about his mom. On the night the Lincoln Avenue alley got shot up, Scott and his boyfriend – Jeffrey Vargas – planned to confront him again. In the meantime, the doctor was heading up Lincoln to take care of another target he saw as a danger to him and his boys. Alex Kovacic. He went from fancy drug cocktails to drive-by shootings. Rick admits sending Scott after him – because, he says, he thought Scott might be able to stop him. Funny, but Rick still swears Jeremy was a loving father. Says he’d do anything for his kids.’

  ‘I guess he did too much,’ Kelson said.

  ‘The doctor planned the deaths of Patricia Ruddig, Josh Templeton, and Daryl Vaughn so no one would connect them and no one would even see that they were killings. But this guy’ – she nodded at Jose – ‘saw it. That’s something.’

  Kelson said, ‘But the doctor’s plans felt apart. So he hit Suzanne Madani and Deneesa Smithson with fentanyl and then whipped out a gun and started shooting.’

  ‘That was plan B, apparently,’ she said. She turned back to Jose. ‘No ribbons for this one, Mr Feliciano. No prize money. The hospital will fight to survive now that one of their top doctors is down. They’ll get ugly – try to throw dirt on everyone else to keep it from clinging to them. They’ll like the look of you for some of that dirt – you know they will. We’ll try to keep you out of it – that’s all we can do.’

  Jose stared at her, cold. ‘Do you expect thanks?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t. Even if I thought I deserved them, I wouldn’t expect them.’

  Jose considered that. He looked like he wanted to fight. But then he thanked her.

  The hospital discharged Kelson at noon. Rodman was waiting for him in his van when a nurse brought him out in a wheelchair. Kelson stood and breathed the freezing air deep into his lungs. He didn’t care if summer ever returned to Chicago.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he told the nurse.

  ‘That might make it easier,’ the nurse said.

  Kelson climbed in on the passenger side, and five minutes later, he and Rodman barreled up Lake Shore Drive toward the northside as a freezing wind buffeted the van.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Kelson said to his friend. ‘For today, I don’t.’

  ‘What difference would it make if you did?’ Rodman said.

  A gust snapped at the van and made it rock.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Kelson said. ‘Or the next day. Soon enough, I will, even if it kills me. But not today.’

  ‘Doesn’t hurt to breathe a little,’ Rodman said. ‘No harm in that.’ He rolled down his window.

  The icy air pummeled the van and stung their faces. It battered their clothes like flags and made their hands hard to grip.

  Kelson rolled his window down.

  He breathed in. ‘Everything’s cool,’ he said.

  Rodman grinned at him. ‘Good for you, man.’

  Kelson exhaled and breathed in again. He had a bullet in his shoulder, another bullet wound inches away from it, and a piece of his brain blown away by a third bullet. In the coming days and weeks – maybe from time to time for the rest of his life – he would cry for Frida, and for himself. But at the moment, he would speed along an icy road in the city he loved, alongside his closest friend, and he would refuse to see or hear the ghosts of the dead or of the man he’d once been. At the moment, he would insist to anyone listening – even himself – that all was cool.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many, many thanks –

  To Julia for reading first, second, and third.

  To Philip and Lukas for all.

  To Kate and th
e great people at Severn House for everything else.

  To Dr K for talking with me about disinhibition. The license I take and any errors I make are my own, not his.

  To Julie, Isaac, Maya, and Elias for putting up with my own less-than-inhibited self.