by Daniel Hecht
"Maybe we can help," Donny told her.
"There's a sick boy, one of the students. With very unusual symptoms. He's in the hospital now, for the third time." Pause, a prompting look.
Nick gave her an indulgent look of puzzlement. "What does that have to do with the parapsychologist being there?"
"Yesterday we had a conference about it, and I was completely shocked at the way they discussed it. Utterly shocked."
" 'We' meaning you and—"
"Julieta and Dr. Black and her two associates." Lynn took a very feminine sip of coffee. "They flew in from Seattle. An engineer and a woman who as far as I can tell does forensic-type research."
Nick flicked a glance at Donny, and Donny knew what he meant. That Julieta had brought in a whole team of people couldn't be good. And an engineer! Donny felt the churning burn blossom under his breastbone. This was turning into a disaster.
He mastered his face and kept his voice casual as he asked, "So, what did you all talk about?"
"I don't think I'm getting the whole story—they exchanged looks that suggested a lot was going unsaid? But I know something that should interest you. One is, the reason Cree Black wants to talk to you and go to the pit where your father died is because she wants to see if his ghost is there."
"What the . . . ?" Nick bottled up the expletive, choking on incredulity.
"My father? He had a soul? A spirit? First I've heard about it!" Donny chuckled. Saying it gave him great pleasure.
Lynn Pierce bobbed her head, round eyed with concern and disapproval, dramatizing as she savored their attention. "No, really. The parapsychologist wants to see if she can 'experience' something there, where he died. She's also been 'experiencing' something near the school. Over near the big ravine in the mesa."
Donny felt his breakfast move queasily in his stomach, and this time when Nick caught his eye he returned a command: Let me. He mastered his alarm quickly and said disinterestedly, "Hm. I wonder what to make of that." Then he deliberately checked his watch and let himself look a little concerned at what he saw. "You know, Lynn, I've got this killer day today. For one thing, I'm meeting the parapsychologist, then I've got appointments until all hours back in Albuquerque. What else? What does this have to do with that sick boy of yours?"
Lynn looked at them both and asked innocently, "Aren't we going to order something to eat?" She pulled over one of the menus and began to read it with satisfaction.
Nick shifted impatiently in his seat, as if he were going to do something drastic, and again Donny had to give him a look. No sense in letting her know she'd touched a nerve with any of this.
"Sure," he said. "She's right, we should order, Nicko." Donny turned to the waitress, who hesitated over near the counter. "I think we're ready to order," he called. Then he turned back and muttered, "Christ, service in this place is going to hell. We've been here for half an hour and that gal hasn't been near this table!"
Kind of a running joke. Nick thought it was a scream.
Another ten minutes of banter, and then the food came. Lynn had ordered a BLT, Donny and Nick bowls of red chili. When the waitress set Donny's bowl down, the lumpy mass struck him as gory and nauseating—he should have ordered the green. Or a salad. Nick dumped a cellophane bag of oyster crackers onto his and began spooning bites into his big face in a businesslike manner.
Between nibbles, Lynn Pierce used her sandwich as a prop to make meaningful gestures. "If I tell you about the boy, it has to be in strictest confidence. Because on one level it's something of a violation of the patient's confidentiality. And I would hate this to have a negative impact on the school."
"Absolutely," Donny assured her. "Of course."
"Because if it's dealt with in the wrong way, it would really hurt the school. If word got out, it could close it down. And I would never want that to happen. I guess that's why I'm coming to you instead of, you know . . . the education or health authorities."
Holy shit, Donny thought. The look she was giving him told him everything: This is it. The weapon you've wanted. His panicky feeling was suddenly replaced by glee.
The nurse knew she had their undivided attention now, and she couldn't help smiling. She set her sandwich down, leaned forward, and lowered her voice. "They believe this boy is possessed. I'm serious. By a ghost. They think that's what's the matter with him. It's making him have convulsions and do strange things. And Julieta brought in the parapsychologist to, basically, exorcise it. And, though I hate to admit it, Joseph Tsosie is going along with it."
She leaned back and watched their faces with satisfaction, knowing full well what she'd just delivered into their hands. Donny's mind was spinning with the implications. Julieta had to know that what she was doing would kill her five ways come Sunday. If word got out into the Navajo community about a chindi possessing the boy, haunting the school, her staff would evacuate the place like there was a bomb threat. Two days later, the last of the kids would be yanked by their parents. And bringing in a ghost buster? Doing an exorcism? The education people would crucify her! And the rumors, let alone an article or two in the papers, would kill Julieta's fund-raising dead; she'd lose too much credibility ever to recover financially.
It would be so easy. With several hundred Navajos working for McCarty Energy at different sites, it would be a cinch to get word moving in the general population.
Donny almost laughed out loud: For all his toughness, even big Nick had been sitting openmouthed, and all he could manage when he finally found his voice was, "No shit!"
A half hour later, as they caravanned west to the Hunters Point mine, Donny dialed Nick's cell phone number. In his rearview mirror, he watched Nick's broad silhouette put its hand to its ear.
They had milked the nurse for a while more, and she had milked them in return. At last, with Nick flirting and Donny assuring her that she always had a job at McCarty Energy if she needed it, they'd left the restaurant. Donny's mind was in overdrive.
"We have to do lunch more often, huh, Nicko?"
"Oh fuck, Donny. Oh man. I was going to wring her neck if she did any more dancing around, so help me. This close, man. This close." Nick's voice had a broad smile in it. Donny could visualize him holding his thick thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart. "Seriously, I was thinking, too bad her account wasn't closed when good old Vern's was."
"So what are we up against here?"
"Seems like a good-news-bad-news situation," Nick's voice said. Nick would know to keep it reasonably circumspect, given that cell phones were not the most private form of communication.
"Julieta, she's really planning something major. Gotta be, with the engineer, the bogus thing with the mutilations. And the mesa! Jesus Christ!"
"But we've got her by the balls! The ghost buster, the sick kid. If we can keep the nurse's cooperation. We need her to keep us informed. And she'd need to back us up, maybe testify, if it comes out in the open."
"You'll see to that? Keeping her sweet on us?"
Nick groaned at the thought of more sessions with Lynn Pierce. "Yeah. Provided I get a bonus here, Sahib. Call it hazard pay."
They both chuckled and then were silent as they navigated past a slow-moving pickup truck with a goat tethered in the back and about six Navajos crammed into the single-seat cab. Donny frowned, nagged by the sense that something didn't quite compute with this whole thing. If Julieta had brought in the parapsychologist to deal with the kid's problem, why were they talking about the mutes or the mesa? On the other hand, if she'd brought her and her team in to throw a monkey wrench at McCarty Energy, what was the whole business with the kid? But whatever it was, the only workable hypothesis was that it was aimed at his head in some way, and he'd better think about preemption.
When they were past the truck, Nick's voice crackled over the phone again: "So. With the ghost business. We want to start the word circulating among the men right away?"
Donny had made a strategic decision. He hoped it wasn't overly biased by what he had to ad
mit was some trepidation at the thought of an outright war with Julieta. "Nick!" he scolded. "I'm surprised at you!"
"Why not?"
"Think about it. Julieta's planning something—that's the only explanation. It's got to be a major offensive. She's found out something. I don't know what she knows or how she knows it, but there's no other conclusion. If we shoot our ammo now, she'll be even more pissed off and she'll have no reason left not to shoot us down in return. So we hold our fire. We do our homework, we poke around a little more, get our ducks in order. When we know more about what she's trying to do, we go to her and gently suggest she cease and desist because with what we know we can take her down. We preserve what we know as a disincentive for her to give us grief, not use it prematurely to stir up a hornets' nest."
"Right." Nick was silent for a moment, thinking that through, and then chuckled. "You're good with the big picture. I guess that's why you're the boss, huh?"
"It's all just psychology," Donny told him. "Human psychology."
34
BY THE TIME Cree got to Ketteridge Hospital, she was almost in a state of panic. She'd been running on an adrenaline overdose for over an hour as she drove a borrowed Oak Springs School car to Gallup.
Inside, the front desk receptionist rang Dr. Corcoran's office, told her he'd be down shortly, and invited her to have a seat in the lobby. After ten minutes of pacing and fretting, she wanted to scream. Or to run through the halls to find Tommy.
After she and Ed had gotten back from her early-morning hike, she had showered and dressed and found she still had an hour to kill before she had to leave for her appointments. She'd used the time to read through the last of the materials Mason had given her.
And had gotten badly shocked.
It was one of Mason's own papers that made her break into a sick sweat of anxiety. In arguing that some apparent cases of seizure disorders, schizophrenia, or DID were in fact examples of possession, he had cited six cases in which conventional pharmaceutical treatment had not only failed to help the victim but had been directly counterproductive. The medications had made the sufferer worse. The reason was simple: Most antipsychotic medications had a sedative or suppressive effect, which Mason believed weakened the host personality's resistance to the invader. All victims of possession fought the parasitic beings attempting to move in on them, he said; treatments that made the patient lethargic or passive, or otherwise suspended his volition, gave the invading entity free rein. In each of the cases he cited, the damage had proved irreversible. Of the six victims, two had committed suicide and four had gone on to lifetime institutionalization. Of those, one had later been lobotomized and had never come out of a postoperative catatonia.
Cree had dropped the papers as if they'd burned her hands. She'd left a quick message on Dr. Corcoran's voice mail, hurried out to the car, and driven to Gallup like a madwoman, trying to figure out how to forestall any drastic treatment without telling Corcoran the reason why.
When at last Dr. Corcoran arrived, he was accompanied by a short, officious-looking man wearing a three-piece suit and a trim goatee. Dr. Corcoran wasn't wearing his usual benevolent grin, and the other man looked positively dour.
"I've invited Dr. Schaeffer to join us," Dr. Corcoran said curtly. "He's our head of neuropsychiatry, and he's very . . . interested in Tommy's condition. We've been consulting on pharmacological aspects of Tommy's treatment."
Without waiting for a word from her, the two men turned back into the corridor.
She caught up to them at the elevator bank. "Dr. Corcoran," she panted, "I have a rather urgent recommendation for Tommy that we need to—"
"If it's not too much to ask," Dr. Schaeffer chided, glaring at her, "can we at least wait until we have some privacy? We'll discuss this in my office, like professionals." He gestured at a trio of nurses who also waited for the elevator.
They rode up to the third floor in silence. The two men led Cree down a stretch of corridor to an office on the left, where they stopped and gestured her inside. Dr. Schaeffer came in last, shutting the door behind himself.
It was a small room, with one window overlooking the flat roof of a lower wing of the building and the surrounding parking lots. Dr. Schaeffer's desk was piled with folders, and shelves on one wall were stuffed with hundreds more, but otherwise it was a stark room, without the personalizing effect of family photos, art, curios. Cree automatically moved toward a chair to the right of the desk and then stopped as she realized that neither man had sat. Nor invited her to. Schaeffer positioned himself behind his desk, leaning forward and resting his weight on his knuckles; Corcoran stood at the other side of the room in his vulture's hunch, arms folded disapprovingly.
"You were saying? You were going to recommend—?" Dr. Corcoran prompted icily.
"Yes, do proceed," Dr. Schaeffer said. "We're very curious as to why you're here today."
Cree tried to quash her urgency, to sound professional and objective: "I wanted to speak to you about some literature I've encountered that may bear upon Tommy's treatment. In particular, the application of antipsychotic medications."
The two men exchanged glances. This would be Dr. Schaeffer's turf, but he didn't move except to raise an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"It appears that in certain cases the standard treatments can be counterproductive. That they can exacerbate symptoms."
"Cases of what, precisely?" Dr. Corcoran asked.
"If you have reasons to believe Tommy Keeday might have such a reaction, I'd like to hear them," Schaeffer said. "Of course, paradoxical responses are not unheard of. But I'd like very much to hear which specific cases you're referring to." He came around his desk, past Cree, and went to the file cabinet next to the door to fuss with some papers on its top. After a moment he spun back to observe her response.
It put Cree in the awkward position of having to turn her head back and forth to try to address both men. "I just wanted to urge you to allow me to conduct less drastic therapies first. Give talk therapy more time."
Dr. Corcoran cleared his throat. "We are very interested in just that, actually. As to just what direction your therapy is taking. As to just what you and the patient discussed yesterday."
"And I am still waiting to hear about those particular case studies," Dr. Schaeffer put in. "Chapter and verse, Dr. Black. That's how we do things here."
Cree started to reply, then stopped. She'd been in too much of a hurry to pay close attention, but now it hit her in the face: This was a hostile inquisition. Something had changed since yesterday.
A siren broke the silence. Outside, an ambulance sped up to the building and disappeared from view beneath the lower wing. Dr. Schaeffer took the moment to move so that he now stood in front of the closed door, leaning against it with his arms crossed.
"What's going on here?" Cree asked indignantly.
"That's precisely what we expect you to tell us," Dr. Schaeffer snapped. "As you explain why you're here today."
"I need to spend time with Tommy. I'm sure you'll both agree his condition is urgent. I was—"
"His condition is indeed urgent," Schaeffer agreed. "As you no doubt know, he had another crisis yesterday, after your session with him."
"No, I didn't know! What—"
"We were able to observe his symptoms quite closely. Clearly, we're witnessing a very unusual and extreme syndrome. Dr. Corcoran and I agreed that drastic pharmacological intervention was required immediately."
Cree caught her breath. Behind Schaeffer's accusing glare, she recognized the excited gleam of the clinician sensing a rare malady to study and experiment upon. The same hankering for the exotic case had fueled the epidemic of multiple personality disorder diagnoses during the 1980s. An opportunist would see Tommy as material for sensational monographs, book deals, TV talk shows. Instant celebrity in the psych world.
"What, exactly, did you two talk about yesterday?" Dr. Corcoran asked. "What did you tell him about our treatment plans?"
"What?"
&nbs
p; "What did you tell his relatives?" Schaeffer asked. He seemed to huff himself up, making himself bigger, and Cree realized that he was blocking the door. A gesture of control and coercion.
"I didn't meet his relatives. I left before they got here. And I certainly didn't speak to Tommy about—"
"You have very interesting hobbies, Dr. Black. You see, we took the liberty of looking you up. We were most impressed with your credentials. But we were unpleasantly surprised to learn about your—what's the terminology?—'interest' in the paranormal."
"I am involved with Tommy at the request of the patient and his primary physician, and I solicited as a courtesy this institution's permission to help with his treatment. I have in no way prejudiced the patient against your treatment of him, if that's what you're implying."
"We need to know—"
"I need to talk to Tommy. Now. You have my recommendation about antipsychotics." She hesitated as a terrible thought occurred to her. "Or, what, you've already treated him? Is that what this is about? You've already seen some reaction that—"
"Not just yet. We're—"
"Good! Now, unless you've got something else you want to tell me, I'm going to see him. Immediately." She tossed her head imperiously, vaguely recognizing Julieta in the gesture.
"You settle down, Dr. Black," Dr. Corcoran ordered. "I'll call security if I have to."
Cree glared at him and crossed the room toward the door.
Dr. Schaeffer only braced his legs and made it clear he wasn't going to budge. "What's your prescription, Dr. Black?" he growled. "Take him to a Navajo witch doctor? Is that what you're trying to do here? Or is it just that you want this one all to yourself?"
Cree drew up in front of him, outraged. In her peripheral vision, she saw Dr. Corcoran coming toward her from behind. "What I'm trying to do, Dr. Schaeffer," she hissed, "is leave this room. And if you don't get out of my way, I'm gonna kick your balls right up into your friggin' lung!"