I try to read the body of the note, which is in smaller font, but I can’t get my eyes to work in synch. The letters are dancing apart and bunching together like ants at a barn dance. I can only make out isolated phrases. Still, the few chunks of text I am picking up, in those floating bits and pieces, are suggesting something horrifying and impossible.
A wave of nausea overtakes me. My knees buckle and I fall to the floor.
The feel of the hard floor is bliss. I want very badly to sleep—for a long, long time. I come perilously close to giving up the fight right then and there, but I manage to tap into some unsuspected reserve of mental toughness and force myself to my feet again. I try to read the words on the computer screen again, but something inside me screams, “No time! Get moving! Now!”
I obey. I stagger heavily to the front door, then out onto the porch. I plunge down the front steps, across the sidewalk and into the street. No neighbors anywhere in sight. I turn and see a yellow step van with a cartoon face painted on it bearing down on me from the upper end of Bell Street. I drop to my knees and use the last ounce of my strength to throw my arms up.
And that’s the last thing I remember.
Chapter 3
“This release-form states that you are leaving the hospital against the advice of the treatment team,” says the social worker in a voice so slow she must be going for comedy.
“Understood,” I reply, my knee dancing a feverish jig. I’m sitting in the day room of Saint Dymphna’s, the psych ward of Calvary Mercy Hospital, signing my discharge papers.
“Before you sign the release, Mr. Carroll,” labors the social worker, “I’d like you to read this document and initial that you understand it.”
She hands me an information page detailing the perils of the particular combo of benzodiazepines and alcohol I ingested (I vaguely remember hearing the ER doctor refer to it as “the full Whitney Houston”). The paper lists two dozen possible symptoms, side effects, and disastrous consequences, including:
Confusion
Slurred speech
Disorientation
Stumbling
Dizziness
Loss of consciousness
Brain damage
Muscle weakness
Difficulty breathing
Hallucinations
...and of course, that grande dame of all side effects:
Death
I speed-scan the rest of the document. Fine. I need no convincing that the chemical cocktail I ingested is a bad idea. After getting my stomach pumped in the ER, receiving activated charcoal treatment, and undergoing sixteen hours of vital-sign management under glaring fluorescent lights, I’m all set on that.
Following my medical treatment, I was shipped, FedEx Express, to the psych ward upstairs. Having stayed there once before, I knew the ropes a bit. Rope number one: when you come in on a “voluntary,” you cannot be held for more than seventy-two hours without a commitment. Technically, my admission was voluntary, so one of the first things I did, after sleeping for almost twenty-four hours straight, was sign a so-called “three-day note.”
And now I fully intend to honor it. I don’t need suicide counseling and I don’t need protection. From myself, anyhow. What I need is to go home, stat, square things with my job, and try to figure out what the hell happened at my house last Friday.
During my four-day stay at happy valley, I said as little to the counseling staff as I could get away with. I didn’t tell anyone about my encounter with deranged masked assailants or the fact that my suicide attempt had not exactly been voluntary.
Why not?
Because if the staff thought I was having paranoid delusions, they might have extended my stay. And if they thought I was telling the truth, they would have brought the police in. I don’t want anyone going through my house—or my computer. Not till I’ve had a chance to do so.
I sign the warning/information page and the release form.
“This is your discharge summary and treatment plan,” the social worker’s voice slogs on through snow and rain and gloom of night. “Counseling sessions twice a week are recommended. This page has your prescriptions.” No, thanks. “And here are your personal items.”
She hands me a large reusable manila envelope containing my wallet and my belt.
“Mr. Carroll... May I call you Finnian?” Not a lecture, please. I didn’t pack a lunch. “This is your second stay with us. When patients come back a third time, the staff starts to refer to them as ‘regulars.’ Don’t become a regular.”
“I won’t,” I say. I mean it too.
The truth is, despite the circumstances, I feel more alive than I have in years.
. . . . .
I’ve only been away for five days, but as I step out of the cab, my parents’ place looks a bit alien to me—shrunken, dark, angular. I try the front door. Unlocked. Handy, since I don’t have my keys; they were inside the house last I saw them. I step into the entry hall, flinching involuntarily. No attacker grabs me by the throat. Still, the silence feels fraught.
“Hello?” I shout. Hidden assailants, as we all know, are rendered defenseless by the shouted hello. Needless to say, no one responds.
I do a quick walk-through of both floors to see what sort of tracks my “visitors” left behind. Did they sack the place? Take anything? I make a pass through my upstairs bedroom, which I am still treating as temporary quarters four years after moving in. It’s clean. Which is to say filthy, but in the customary way.
I check my mom’s room, which, since her death, I’ve been using mostly as storage space for crap I don’t want to deal with. Nothing’s been moved.
It isn’t till I step into the kitchen, downstairs, that a chill creeps across my skin. All the kitchen chairs are arrayed neatly around the table—not how I left them—and there is no trace of the vodka bottle. No spilled booze on the floor, no stray pills. It is as if nothing untoward has taken place here.
Which can mean only one thing. Trooper Dan and his buddies returned to the scene of the crime. Finding no body, they cleaned up the “suicide” traces. Why, I don’t know. But one thing’s for sure: the bad guys know I’m still on the sunny side of the grass.
Therefore, I am unsafe in this house.
I find my keys splayed on the kitchen counter where I always leave them, along with my cell phone. The phone is a surprise. I figured, for some reason, my assailants would have kept it or destroyed it. Why? Suddenly I’m Jason Bourne?
I turn the phone on. No recent activity except a few missed calls and a text from work. I’ll give my boss a call in a minute.
My computer. I’ve been saving that for last.
I step tentatively into the den where my workstation is set up and roll the mouse to awaken my Mac. Only my desktop wallpaper (a painting I did of Fish Pier on Musqasset Island) appears on the screen. No suicide note. Where the hell did it go?
My captors must have deleted the note when they returned to the scene. I sit in my eighty-dollar HomeGoods office chair and open Microsoft Word. Moving the cursor to the File menu, I select Open Recent. A blank list pops up. Someone has cleared the Recent files list. Not I. I click the Trash icon to see if the deleted document is there. The Trash has been emptied. Again, not by me.
What other ways are there to find a recently created and deleted document? I do a Spotlight search. Nothing. I go into Finder, click All My Files, and arrange them in order of date. Nothing on the date of my assault. I check the folder where AutoRecovery files go. No joy. Maybe my booze-and-drug-addled mind dreamt the note up.
My anxiety is mounting. If Trooper and company came bac
k here at some point—and obviously they did—then they’re no doubt aware I was hospitalized and probably also know I’ve been discharged. They might be planning to swing by for a visit at any moment.
They might be here right now. It’s not out of the question.
I listen again. Nothing.
I need to vanish, pronto. But go where and do what?
Wait. Better TCB first. Call work. Check my emails. But hurry.
I work for a computer game company in Cambridge, creating artwork for animated adventure games for the iPad. It’s an okay gig, though miles from my former dream of becoming a museum-level oil painter. Being a puzzle-minded guy, I pitch in on the game designs too. I’m a 1099er, not a salaried staffer. The pay is tragic, but the freedom agrees with me. I show up at the office once or twice a week for design meetings. The rest of the time, I patch in from home.
I call Rajam, my boss, and tell her I’ve been dealing with a medical emergency but I’ll make up the work later. She says fine and she hopes I’m blah-dee-blah.
I consider calling the police, but what would I tell them? My visitors left no traces, and I can’t identify any of them except to say that one of them had a reddish beard and small, even teeth. But of course, the larger issue is that until I know what happened to that “suicide note” I saw—and until I read its full contents—I don’t feel too jazzed about bringing in the cops.
I check my emails. There are several from the programming and design teams at work regarding concept art for a new game called “Monty Zuma’s Revenge” (don’t ask). They can wait. I also find a note from my sister Angela, saying she’s worried about me. The hospital must have called her. I gave her name as next of kin.
Angie lives in Wentworth too. She helped me with the Mom duties whenever she, Ange, was sober. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all too frequently, and she and I haven’t talked a lot since Mom went to her big Parish Bingo Night in the sky. Complicating matters is the fact that Mom bequeathed the house to me, not Angie, which is a touchy spot between us. I briefly consider asking Ange if I can stay at her apartment for a couple of days, but I don’t want to put her in danger, and I really don’t want to deal with her drinking.
I need to find that deleted suicide note before I leave. Supposedly it’s hard to fully delete a file from a computer; it can almost always be recovered. But I have no idea how. For a guy who works in a technical field, I am astoundingly low-tech.
A muffled thump issues from somewhere toward the back of the house. I freeze. Small mammal or assassin? I don’t think Trooper Dan and company are hiding in the house right now, but still, my urgency to vacate the premises shoots into the red zone.
Screw it, I’ll look for the Word file later.
I run upstairs to my bedroom, dig out a mid-sized backpack, and throw in a few haphazard changes of clothes, some toiletries, a few books, and a phone-charger cord. Grabbing my all-weather jacket, I make a quick trip out to the car, then head back inside to fetch my iMac.
As I’m reentering the house, though, a powerful intuition tells me to turn around and get the hell out of there as fast as I can. I heed it, leaving the computer behind.
Chapter 4
I pace the floor of my sad single standard at the Oak Crest Motel (nary an oak to be glimpsed), trying to ignore the thick smell of bleach—I hope it’s bleach—in the air. I chose this place because of its off-the-beaten-path location and its rear parking lot. I don’t want my car to be seen from the road.
I haven’t come up with a plan beyond “house bad, motel good.” The anxiety in my chest feels like a physical mass. I long to talk to someone I trust but realize, tragically, I have no one to call. Angie, whom I love dearly, is probably hammered to the nines by this hour and, alas, is also physically incapable of listening. I don’t want to argue about the house either.
There was a time I would have called my friend Miles in a situation like this. He’s a pretty good listener, or at least pretends to be. But we had a “cooling off,” shall we say, when I left the island, and he and I have some ground to cover first.
Besides, if that note said what I thought it said, my relationship with Miles has just taken on a troublesome new twist. I still have a few other friends on Musqasset, but we don’t really have “chat on the phone” relationships, and besides, I’d rather they thought I was painting in a loft in Bruges.
That damnable suicide note is eating at my mind. There should be some trace of it that can be reconstructed. I regret having left my iMac behind. I wish I could tool with it right now. With darkness approaching, though, I don’t feel safe going home to get it.
If only I had some way to tap into my computer remotely. I know this is possible theoretically, but I have no idea how. I rack my brain to come up with a solution, but low blood sugar has turned my skull into an ever-tightening vise. I’ve got to put something in the ol’ Twinkie-hole.
. . . . .
I’m sitting at the bar at J.B.’s Pub, a rural roadhouse with poor self-esteem and a truly frightening jukebox lineup, scarfing down a Cowboy Burger and watching a cornball old movie starring George Segal and a fresh-out-of-acting-school Denzel Washington. Segal discovers he has a black son he didn’t know about, hilarity ensues. The movie is called Carbon Copy. Each time the title comes up I feel a tickle in my gut, but I can’t nail down why.
Then, mid-burger-bite, it hits me. There’s an online service called CarbonCopy—it provides remote backup of personal computer files. I have it on my iMac; its icon sits there between Dropbox and Plaxo in the upper right corner of my screen.
My skin prickles with excitement. CarbonCopy makes daily backups of your files and archives them! That means even if my home invaders eliminated all traces of the suicide note from my computer when they came back to my house, there’s a chance a copy exists on my backup. And I can access my backup from any computer.
My burger instantly loses all its scant appeal. I need to get into my CarbonCopy account. That means I need to get my hands on a computer. My phone won’t do. Technically, it’s an Internet portal, yes, but it’s a Barney Rubble iPhone with a tiny, banged-up screen. I need to get my hands on a real computer. Where can I find one at seven forty-five on a Wednesday evening?
Wentworth Public Library has a slew of them, as I recall. What time does it close? Going online with my phone, I learn the library closes at eight tonight. Not helpful. Where else can I access a public computer? Do Internet cafés still exist? I google “cyber café” and find there is, indeed, a brew-house in nearby Haverhill that rents computer time. It is open till eleven and only about nine miles away.
I inhale a few more bites of my Cowboy Burger, slap a twenty on the bar, and head out the door to saddle up my trusty Hyundai. Yee-ha.
. . . . .
Brew Moon is a wannabe-hipster joint that suffers from a pronounced dearth of hipsters. Other than the requisitely goateed and eyebrow-impaled barista, who crafts my iced Vietnamese Cà Phê Dá with studied indifference—ten bucks says his name is Bennett or Django—the rest of the tiny night-crowd is woefully unhip and borderline desperate-looking. All but one of the computer stations are available. I pay for my Cà Phê Dá, which comes with a free hour of computer time, and settle into a Mac station in the darkest corner of the room.
I google CarbonCopy and go directly to its website. I am quickly able to access my account and view the mirror image of my home hard drive. After a bit of clicking around, I learn that CarbonCopy lets you restore any folder to an earlier version by date.
I go to all the obvious folders where a Word file might have been saved, and restore them to their state of five days earlier. Nothing.
Then I remember good old AutoRecovery. Even if the bad guys didn’t save a named copy of the document anywhere on
my hard drive, Word might still have auto-saved a copy. I checked the AutoRecovery folder at home, but I want to see what that folder looked like five days ago.
I do the restoration process and—I can’t believe my eyes—something pops up. At the top of the AutoRecovery file list is a Word file created on August 23, the date of my home invasion. The file has a generic, auto-generated filename. I double-click on it and hold my breath as the pre-Obama-era computer churns away, trying to open the file.
Holy crap. There it is: a document with the heading, “Finnian Carroll’s Absolutely Final (This Time I Mean It) and Incontestable Suicide Note and Last Confession.” With my brain now free of toxic chemicals, I can read the text quite easily. I wish I couldn’t.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen,
I, Finnian Carroll, have opted to “put in for early reincarnation,” i.e., terminate this failed attempt at an earthly existence. I do this because I can no longer come up with a defensible reason to crawl out of bed each morning. Thus have I swallowed a large quantity of the very pills intended to keep me alive, along with enough vodka to kill a Russian game programmer (or at least get him mildly buzzed). I apologize to whoever discovers the “results” of my actions—hope it wasn’t too grisly a scene (unless it was you, Clyde Gilchrist, then I hope it was straight out of Battle Royale).
They say confession is good for the soul. I hope that’s true, because my soul is going to need all the help it can get.
Suddenly the tone takes a less smarmy turn.
Eighteen years ago, on May 12, 1999, the night of my college graduation, I made a lethal mistake, which I failed to atone for.
I pull in a breath, stand up, and walk away from the computer, blowing air from my cheeks. I’m starting to hyperventilate. I need to calm down. I don’t want to call attention to myself. I take a slow breath from my diaphragm, then sit back down and continue reading...
Fishermen's Court Page 3