by Sandra Block
“Maybe he’s a limousine driver,” I suggest.
“This case is so screwed up, who in holy hell knows at this point. But I’ll send some people out to lean on the limo companies.”
Dr. Berringer jogs in then and looks down at Candy asleep in the bed. “What happened?” he asks.
“Oh.” I stand up from the chair. “Candy got pretty agitated last night. We had to sedate her.”
He looks startled. “On whose order?”
“Mine.” I sound defensive. “I tried to call you, but nobody could reach you. And she was getting violent toward herself.” I swallow. “It’s only ten of Valium, a one-time order.”
“It’s okay. You did the right thing.” He lifts his hands up, immediately conciliatory, and walks over to the foot of the bed. “I’m sorry about last night,” he adds, not looking at me. “I was exhausted. I ended up crashing hard, and my phone was on vibrate.”
Translation: He was drunk as hell. “Do we know what got her so upset?”
I explain what happened with the pictures and how it turns out she has a sister.
“A sister?” he asks, his voice stricken.
“We don’t know for sure. But it sounds like she might. Janita.”
Dr. Berringer puts a hand out to lean against the desk. “A sister,” he repeats. “This is just horrible. Now we’ve got a missing girl and a sister?”
Detective Adams turns to him, nodding. “I’ll admit I was thinking the same thing.” He frowns. “But on the other hand, if it’s true, it gives us more to work with. This could be just the break we needed in this case.”
“I was thinking—could we add a reward?” I ask. It hit me last night: Why was there no reward?
He slaps his notebook shut. “I can try, but I’ll tell you, there’s barely money on the books to pay for coffee at the station right now. Usually the family does that.”
“Obviously that’s not going to happen.” I grab the arm of his blazer. “Come on. It’s a young girl’s life at stake here.”
“They might have some stashed away at the FBI branch,” he grumbles. “I’ll try, Zoe. It’s the best I can promise you.”
* * *
Chloe hasn’t eaten in three days. I’ve been so focused on Candy and Daneesha that I barely registered this. She told the nurse she’s on a hunger strike, though I’m not sure what she’s protesting. Herself maybe.
“If you lose any more weight, you’re not going home. You understand that, right?” I ask as patiently as possible.
Chloe shrugs, her collarbones jutting out with the motion. “My insurance only pays for three months. I’ll get out of here one way or another.”
“Maybe not,” I point out. “You don’t eat, and it’s a transfer to the medical floor for a feeding tube. Brand-new insurance mandate, Chloe. No maximum on that one.”
She blinks her eyes and pulls her blanket up. I can tell this got her thinking.
“I don’t understand. You were doing great. You were participating in group, gaining some weight…What happened?”
She stares out the window, brooding. “‘Great’ is a relative term.”
I flip through the notes over her last week. Slow weight gains on her log. Less “hostile” in share therapy. First family visit. “Was it the family visit?”
“No.”
“Sometimes that can bring up difficult emotions, set people back a bit.”
“It’s not that,” she mumbles.
“Okay. Maybe something you heard from a friend?”
“No.”
I close the chart. It feels like we’re playing Twenty Questions. “Anything you can think of?”
She chews on her lip. “Yes,” she answers, to my surprise. She does not meet my eyes.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
Her breath quickens, her cheeks turning a blotchy red, and she bites her lip harder. The teeth gouge into her bottom lip. A tear falls onto her nose. “No one will believe me.”
I lean in another inch and put my hand on her shoulder, her birdlike, bony shoulder. She doesn’t flinch. “I’ll believe you.”
“They didn’t believe me last time.”
“It’ll be different this time, I promise. But you have to tell me. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
She moves in her bed, and the gown twists, revealing four bruises on her arm. Four circle, blue-gray bruises in a row. A handprint?
“Is someone hurting you?” I ask, trying to hide the shock in my voice. I lightly touch the bruise, and she jerks her arm under the covers.
“No,” she barks out. “I’ve got a million bruises. The nurse did that to me the other day getting my blood.” She sticks her other arm out of the sheets to prove this, and indeed there are bruises and pinpricks all over.
“Okay, but what did you want to tell me?” I ask.
She pauses. “Nothing. Forget it.”
* * *
The psych ward is up in arms. More Demerol has gone missing. Police are wandering around interviewing people.
“Drama, drama, drama!” Jason says to me as he walks into the nurses’ station, squeezing his hands together in mock excitement. Or real excitement, hard to tell.
Dr. Berringer walks in next, past the buzzing cluster of nurses. “What’s going on?”
“Demerol. Someone’s stealing from the Pyxis,” Jason says.
“Wow.” He glances around the room. “There really is a war on drugs.”
“Yeah, they’re talking about urine-toxing everybody,” I say.
“I’ll pee in a cup anytime,” Jason says, grabbing for a chart. “This boy’s clean as a whistle.”
I pause. “Is a whistle clean really? I’ve always wondered about that phrase. You know, with all the saliva.”
“How’s your kiddo doing?” Dr. Berringer asks Jason, ignoring my linguistic musings. He sits down and leans back in the chair with his long legs crossed. His tan buck shoes are rimmed with brown scuffs from the light snow lining the streets this morning. An early-season snow already melting outside into irregular patches.
“Stable,” Jason answers. “Off one-on-one. I think the Prozac’s finally kicking in.”
“Good, good. And Zoe, what’s your status?”
I give him the update on Chloe and my suspicions about abuse of some sort.
“Very common in these cases, unfortunately. You think it’s someone in her family?”
“It seems coincidental. She just saw them, and then she suddenly changes.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s not very open to discussing it right now.”
“Too bad,” he says, grimacing. “She may need a medical transfer if she’s still not eating tomorrow. Get one of the GI nurses to come in and show her the feeding tube. That might change her mind at least.”
I nod, impressed. “That’s a good trick.”
He gives me a wry smile. “Been in this business a little while now. Got a few up my sleeve.”
Just then, a portly policeman walks inside the room. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“Yes.” Dr. Berringer stands up.
“I was just hoping you guys could take a look at this guy, see if he looks familiar at all.” He hands us paper copies of a black-and-white image taken by one of the floor cameras. It’s a priest, on the heavy side, with a close-shaved white beard. The image is fuzzy and shaded.
“I think so,” Dr. Berringer says. “Maybe. I might have seen him a couple of times on the floor.”
“Great.” The policeman pulls out a pad. “Can you describe him?”
“I guess.” He taps his fingers in concentration. “I didn’t pay that close attention to him, though. Figured he was just a priest. I don’t even think we said hello.”
“I understand, but anything you remember could be helpful.”
Dr. Berringer nods. “Okay. Let’s see, he was kind of…overweight,” he says, not wanting to insult the overweight cop.
“Okay.” The policeman writes this
down. “Anything else?”
He looks over the picture again. “I remember the gray beard, too.” He shrugs. “He looked like a priest. Honestly, that’s all I really remember.”
“Thanks,” he says, handing Dr. Berringer a business card. “How about either of you guys? Recognize him?”
“No,” I say. Jason shakes his head. I don’t recall seeing any priests on the floor either.
“Okay, thanks.” He turns back to Dr. Berringer. “You think of anything else, just let us know.”
“Sure, of course.” He sits back down. “Do they think he’s stealing Demerol?”
“Well,” the policeman says, scratching a bushy eyebrow. His eyebrows are so thick they look like two centipedes stuck on his face. “I don’t want to get into it too much, but one of the cameras caught him near the medication dispenser. So he’s a primary suspect right now.”
“A priest?” Dr. Berringer laughs.
“Well, that’s the thing. We checked with Human Resources, and he’s not listed in the clergy personnel. So they think he might be impersonating a priest.”
“A drug-dealing priest,” I say. “Clever.”
The cop gives me a look like he doesn’t think it’s so clever. “Thanks again.” He shakes Dr. Berringer’s hand and walks back out into the hall. I stuff the priest’s picture into my satchel.
“Okay, back to the grind,” Dr. Berringer says. “How is Candy and the mysterious sister?”
“She is still Candy,” I answer. “Coming around a bit now.”
“Has Daneesha been back yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You know,” he says, stretching his long arms above him in a yawn. His sky-blue boxers peek out in the process. “I’ve been thinking about this one. We really don’t know if she even has a sister.”
“True,” I admit.
“And either way, I think we’re finally making some progress.”
“How so?”
“No Daneesha. And maybe Candy’s confusion means she’s getting closer to her true self.”
“Maybe,” I say, doubtfully.
“So I say we keep the Risperdal on and start some Effexor. See if we can get to a breakthrough.”
I scratch my head. “She did seem pretty drowsy, though.”
“Her defenses are down,” he answers. “Seventy-five BID. If she’s too tired, we can back off.”
My text quacks, and I grab my phone.
$500 reward. It’s from the detective.
“Five-hundred-dollar reward for Candy,” I announce.
“Huh,” Dr. Berringer says. “Seems kind of low to me.”
“Yeah, me too,” I admit. I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Thanks, I text back.
Jason starts cleaning his teeth with a toothpick. “Would have been five K if she were a white girl.”
* * *
I hold up a music box that just about fits in my palm. “What about this one?” I ask, opening it. The box lets out a few twangy beats, then stops, the dancer bent over like she’s got lordosis. I remember buying this at the mall in fifth grade for Mother’s Day.
“Put it in the maybe pile,” Scotty says. Everything so far has gone in the maybe pile.
“I don’t know. I might keep it.”
He shrugs. “You could get it fixed.”
We’re in his stuffy walk-in closet, sorting out Mom’s belongings. Most of the big stuff we already divvied up when we moved her into the nursing home. Scotty took the dresser, and I got her cherry rolltop writing desk. All that remains are five extra-large boxes. A life stuffed into five boxes. He lifts up a ratty, red blanket from the nursing home.
“Toss,” we say at the same time.
“So I’ve been putting together a few photos for your website.”
“Oh, good.” He shoves a damaged boom box in the toss pile without asking. “Kristy and I looked everywhere for those fucking bonds by the way.”
“Kristy?”
He rips the tape off a box. “The girl from the Coffee Spot?”
“Oh, right.” Must be the girl he wooed while I was talking to him. “Sorting through Mom’s stuff—sounds like a fun date.”
He picks up a little nightstand clock. “Keep?”
“Sure.” I sort through the maybe pile. “So Jean Luc keeps texting me about his damn wedding. That’s fun.”
“That guy’s such a fucking douche bag.” He throws knitting needles in the discard pile. They clink together and roll off. “What’s up with Mike?”
“Nothing really. We’re fine.”
Scotty burrows arm-deep into the next box. “That ‘fine’ sounded hesitant.”
My brother would make a good psychiatrist. “No, we are fine. It’s just figuring out next year. Kind of weighing on me. On us, I guess.”
“What are the options?”
“Your basic ‘should we stay or should we go’ scenario. If we stay, it could be trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah. And if you go, it could be double.” He tosses another item in the maybe pile. “You got a job lined up here?”
“I could. With the university maybe. But I don’t know. I was thinking about a fellowship maybe. But then again, maybe I should go private and start paying off loans. I don’t know.”
“Sounds like a lot of maybes.”
I finger the little heart pillow that Mom made at the nursing home. Purple with crooked black stitching that says “I love you.” Definitely a keep. “And Mike’s basically got an offer here already and a couple of leads down in North Carolina. So that’s the debate.”
“Hmm.” Scotty folds over a recalcitrant box flap. “You’re smart. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He cleverly doesn’t offer his own suggestion.
I brush off a dusty Venetian-glass paperweight, deep blue with gold spirals reaching into the center, flanked by koi fish and orange flowers in dizzy rows. Like a kaleidoscope or a happy LSD trip. Mom and Dad brought it back from a trip to Italy. We stayed home with a babysitter, an elderly woman with only half a pinkie, which fascinated me beyond all reason. “You mind if I take this?”
“All yours.”
I move on to the next box and start ripping tape. “Scotty, did you ever think maybe she was mistaken about those bonds?”
Scotty throws out an old pack of playing cards. My mom was a poker superstar, oddly enough, until she forgot how to play. “Yeah.” He rolls up the sleeves on his T-shirt. “I’ve pretty much come to that conclusion.”
“Toss?” I hold up a couple of old cookbooks.
He takes one to examine it and hands it back. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Oh, by the way,” I say, hurling some pantyhose onto the pile, “I might need to make use of your world-renowned computer prowess again.”
He rolls his eyes. “For Jane Doe? Or Candy or whatever her name is?”
“How’d you guess?”
He shakes his head, combing through the next box with me. “I already tried the facial recognition stuff.”
“Yeah.” I grab some frayed pink ribbons and throw them out. “But I had another thought. If I send you the photo of her scar, could you do a search on it?”
“What kind of search?”
“I don’t know. Just on the Internet? It’s a really weird scar. Maybe if we could figure out what caused it, it would help us figure out who she is.”
“That’s a reach,” he says, his voice echoing in the box. He tosses out an old skein of almond-colored yarn.
“It is. But would you do it?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When I walk into Candy’s room the next morning, my heart falls. She isn’t any better. She’s worse. She’s catatonic.
“Candy!” I call out.
No answer. Her big brown eyes stare out, dead, her dazzling smile gone. “Candy!” I jog over to the bed and take her hand, which is warm though not feverish. Squeezing it, I get no response. I run my hand across her field of vision. No blink, no response. Her vitals sheet reports nothing new. Fever is gone, though the tem
p is up just a little. Heart rate up, but not abnormally so. I lift her arm, expecting it to stay up in the pose, but her arm is stiff. It resists me. I try the other side, and it’s the same. I run into the nurses’ station, and Dr. Berringer is already there.
“Did you see Candy yet?”
“No, I just got here. What’s up?”
“She’s catatonic.”
His face crumbles. “Really?” He starts toward her room, and I follow. Immediately, he begins the same testing, checking visual fields, the tone in her arms. “These things do recur,” he says. “It’s not that uncommon unfortunately.”
“But she was getting better.”
“I know.” He sounds as disappointed as I am.
“Should we get an ID consult?”
“What for?” He glances over her vital sheet. “She’s not feverish.”
“No. But she was. And she’s diaphoretic.”
“You can see that with Effexor, though.” He pinches her nail bed to check for any response. She doesn’t even moan. It seems cruel, but it’s part of the exam. “I spoke with a few colleagues about her again yesterday.”
“Okay?”
“They couldn’t think of anything else we weren’t doing. Said we should be thinking ECT.”
I move a lock of hair from out of Candy’s eyes. “You think we’re there?”
He stares at her. “I think we’re almost there. We got her out of it before. Maybe hitting her with some more Ativan could do it again.”
“God, I hope so.” I close her chart, which is getting heavier by the day.
“How’s Chloe?” he asks, washing his hands.
“Eating,” I answer. “Minimally, the nurses said. To avoid an NG tube.” I wait for him to move from the sink and run my hands under the faucet. “You were right. The NG demo worked.”
He winks at me, ripping some paper towels off. “Always does.” We head back to the nurses’ station. “Got to wrap up some stuff in my office. See you in a bit.”
Settling down at the table, I start plowing through Candy’s chart for some clues, anything that could lead me back to catatonia. But there have been no changes. Ativan same. Effexor same. Risperdal same. Jason saunters into the room, whistling.