The Room of White Fire

by T. Jefferson Parker

  So: two men, armed, equipped, polite. They had seen John Vazquez’s pickup truck parked by the house and figured the rest of the family was gone. They’d parked in the open barn to be out of sight—where I’d seen their leaked coolant—and knocked on Vazquez’s front door. Guns drawn or friendly? Either way, they’d gone inside and bound him. Why? For transport? Interrogation? To scare something out of him? To wait for . . . what?

  All good, until Laura and Michael came home and walked through their front door.

  Then a sudden memory from grade school—“The Highwayman,” a poem in which the bound heroine warns her approaching lover of the ambush waiting for him. Warns him with her death.

  So who were these men and what did they want that was worth killing for? No obvious signs of drugs or other illegal business going on here. My quick background check of Vazquez—just before leaving for the Fallbrook Airpark—had come up clean. A family man.

  From Laura’s description, the two men weren’t local bangers or junkies looking to fund their next fix. They were professionals of some kind—trained, prepared, and purposeful. Whose arrival here, at the same time as Clay Hickman’s arrival, was no coincidence. One link was Briggs Spencer, owner of Arcadia, owner of Vazquez’s home and livelihood, former operator of White Fire, a secret prison in which Clay and Vazquez had worked. The man to whom Clay was going to bring something unbearable. A man connected to some of the more ruthless organizations in the republic.

  Which led me to the white Range Rover and the black Charger, whose drivers had tailed me to the Waterfront and, later, to the Fallbrook Airpark. And planted a GPS locator in my car. Specifically, Alec DeMaris and an associate. I also considered Rex Hickman’s private security team. Trying to intercept Clay? Leading to a dispute with Vazquez, who was apparently armed? I circled back to “The Highwayman”: Had Vazquez been shot while trying to warn off Clay Hickman and Sequoia Blain?

  Three Mendocino County prowl cars barreled onto the property, funneling in from the entry road, lights flashing but running silent.

  I knew I’d be there for a long time.

  I quickly texted Sequoia.

  7:48 PM

  You know they killed Vazz.

  7:50 PM

  They wanted Clay.

  7:50 PM

  Why did Clay go there?

  7:51 PM

  For part 2 he says

  7:51 PM

  Of WHAT?

  7:52 PM

  He won’t tell. He trusts me, then doesn’t.

  Through a window I watched one of the Mendocino Sheriff cars stop down by the barn, and two deputies jump out. The other two vehicles slowed and crept toward us.

  7:52 PM

  People are dying! Bring me to Clay. Do the right thing.

  7:53 PM

  What is the right thing?

  7:54 PM

  Turn himself over to police or me. He’ll be safe.

  7:56 PM

  I DON’T WANT SAFETY, MR. FORD. I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW THE TRUTH.

  A strong but surreal sensation, to be communicating with Clay Hickman for the first time. Before that moment he had seemed only partial. Now I felt his full perilous presence. I responded quickly:

  7:56 PM

  Tell me your truth and I can help you tell the world.

  7:57 PM

  That is a crude trap. Sequoia said you were a good man.

  Outside, the two patrol cars stopped on the driveway, well apart from each other, and well short of the Vazquez home. No lights now, no sirens. Four deputies fanned out and came toward us, one of them carrying an assault shotgun. Behind them I could see two deputies trotting from the barn back toward their vehicle.

  7:57 PM

  Tell me your truth, Clay.

  7:58 PM

  Don’t you understand? It isn’t my truth to tell. The world must hear it from the God of Terror.

  7:59 PM

  Bad things happened in Romania. I get that. But you need help.

  Through a window I watched the deputies converging on the front porch. Laura and Michael sat in silence, holding hands and watching them, too.

  7:59 PM

  You have no idea, amigo.

  8:00 PM

  You are responsible for S.

  8:00 PM

  I will protect her with my life, as Vazz did for me.

  8:01 PM

  Meet me tonight.

  Silence.

  An idea came to mind. A way to get Clay to want to meet me. It wasn’t quite legal and it could backfire spectacularly. But now was not the time. Right now, he’d smell it out. Missing persons are good at smelling things out, no matter how desperate and confused they are. Though I wasn’t sure that Clay was either of those things.

  I exchanged a look with Laura Vazquez, then walked toward the sharp rapping on the front door.

  20

  Hours later, one of the sheriff’s detectives dropped me off at a motel in Ukiah on his way back to headquarters. His name was Polson. He had conducted my crime scene interview, certain that I was withholding information, which in fact I was, due to my contract with Arcadia and my ethical obligations to Clay Hickman and Sequoia Blain.

  None of which meant anything to Polson or the law. I did tell him the basics of what I’d been hired to do. I referred him to Alec DeMaris. I told him I’d call him if I thought of anything else that might help them identify John Vazquez’s killers and I meant it. Polson said he’d charge me with obstruction of justice if I didn’t. He said incompetents didn’t belong in law enforcement and the San Diego Sheriffs deserved better than me.

  Now I sat at a small table in my room at the Days Inn in Ukiah, having forwarded my images of Clay Hickman’s formulary to Paige Hulet before calling her. I didn’t tell where I’d gotten them. And I said nothing about John Vazquez.

  The silence at her end was a long one. I heard the ice clinking in her glass. Finally, she spoke. “This is not Clay’s formulary. These are not the drugs I’ve prescribed for Clay. Some go back before my time at Arcadia, but . . . What is this? Where did you get it?”

  It took me a second to get my brain around that idea. If the drugs on the dispensary computer tablet were not prescribed by Clay’s physician, who were they prescribed by? “What are you giving him now?”

  Another silence. I poured a second light bourbon. Through the crack I’d left between the heavy curtains, I saw a Mendocino Sheriff’s prowler moving down State Street.

  “Two years ago,” she said, “when I joined Arcadia and took over Clay’s treatment, I thought his diagnosis of schizophrenia was questionable. There were manic episodes that didn’t fit, and his responses to the meds were erratic, so I reclassified Clay as schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. He was exhibiting sustained bursts of goal-oriented hyperactivity. To answer your question, I went to lithium and paliperidone, antipsychotics. His anxiety was very high. The benzodiazepines are often a good answer for anxiety. They seemed to work for a while. Clay stabilized. His anxiety subsided, the manic phases shortened. The risk was mood cycle acceleration or medication-induced psychosis. Clay showed neither for, well, a while.”

  “How long a while?”

  “One year. Then his paranoia and anxiety came back again, especially pronounced just prior to a visit from his family. Those visits were a huge stressor. So I moved him to aripiprazole. The danger there was extrapyramidal symptoms—tremors, restlessness, akathisia.”

  “Akathisia?”

  “Literally, akathisia is the inability to sit. In the medical sense, it’s a compelling need to be in motion. It’s a common side effect of many antipsychotics.”

  “What did you make of his behavior, given those meds?”

  “Overall? It was somewhat bewildering. So I tried another approach. I discontinued paliperidone and aripiprazole in favor of olanzapine. It’s a good medication but you’ve got to watch for w
eight gain and increase in blood sugar. I took Clay’s blood twice a week. When his psychosis became treatment-refractory I went textbook—clozapine, which has less side effects and is also indicated for suicidality. As I told you before, Clay ideated suicide—but never acted. Your turn, Roland. Where did you get this bizarre formulary I’m looking at?”

  I told her it came from the computer tablet assigned to one of the staff dispensers, Donald Tice, who was almost always assigned patients with last names beginning with H.

  “But these are not Clay’s prescriptions,” said Dr. Hulet. “I write his prescriptions.”

  “What do they do, these drugs?”

  A pause. “I’m only familiar with some of them. Others, I’ve never known to be compounded and are not commercially available.”

  “Lysergic acid diethylamide is LSD.”

  “Yes—still manufactured for research. Experimental microdosing to aid in creative thinking.”

  “Jesus, Paige—he’s been taking acid, just for starters.”

  “No! They are not his prescribed meds. He cannot have been taking them.”

  “Don’t you get it? It’s why his responses were so wrong. You thought you were treating Clay but you weren’t. Someone else had complete control over his meds. And some of them were drugs you’ve never even heard of.”

  “Impossible. Arcadia has checks and bal—”

  “I saw it with my own eyes. Tice got every pill and dose straight off his computer tablet. That’s where I got the formulary. What are you people trying to do to Clay Hickman?”

  I hung up, went outside, and lit a cigarette. Felt my heart knocking against my ribs. The night was cool and damp and I thought of John Vazquez lying on his kitchen floor while his wife and son covered him in a blanket. I was angry at Paige Hulet and whoever was drugging Clay behind her back. I was also tired and hungry and mean. Felt like hitting somebody who deserved it, eating a decent dinner, and getting a good night’s sleep.

  Ten minutes later I was back inside and Paige called. “I’ve read through Donald’s formulary,” she said. “Unacceptable. I was prescribing Clay’s medications while Donald was dispensing others, and I failed to understand what was happening. But it tracks. For instance, in April of last year, when Clay began to trust me in therapy, Donald commenced twice-weekly doses of LSD. And if you look back at the last two Aprils—which coincides with visits from Clay’s family—Donald had been giving him four hundred micrograms of LSD every day! Thirty doses in April of last year. Not only that, but Donald suspended Clay’s antianxiety meds for the whole month. It’s as if Donald is trying to make Clay anxious and hallucinatory just before his parents arrive. As if Donald doesn’t want Clay to see his own mother and father.”

  I wondered if Donald Tice had also told Clay that his parents wanted to put him in a state institution. Parents who still believe that their son was an aircraft mechanic in Iraq, I thought. Who might not even suspect that Clay was in a black-site torture chamber for two years, working under Briggs Spencer and Timothy Tritt—Deimos and Phobos, gods of terror and fear.

  When Paige spoke again, her voice had risen and I heard the bitterness in it. “Roland, I ran scores of scans on Clay. I did EEGs and blood work, sometimes twice a week, just trying to figure out why my medications weren’t helping him. I tested him for drug allergies, food allergies, pollen allergies—you name it. I made sure he had good vitamins and herbal teas, for god’s sake. I’ve been deceived. I feel sick. Truly sick.”

  I thought back to my conversation with Evan Southern as we watched Morpheus dispensing his potions at Arcadia. “Did you know that Donald Tice was with Clay and Briggs Spencer in Romania?”

  “Donald in Romania?”

  “Spencer-Tritt recruited him. Along with other loyal young men who would do what they were told and keep their mouths shut. Like Clay Hickman and John Vazquez.”

  All she offered then was silence. So I improvised a little. “Briggs Spencer knew what Donald was doing with the meds behind your back, Paige. He knows everything that happens at Arcadia, through Alec and his security people, and the cameras and microphones. Briggs Spencer probably created Clay’s formulary himself. Donald is just his employee. Still.”

  I listened to her breathing. And the hum of the mini-refrigerator in my room. “Roland, could I count on you to testify to having seen Donald Tice dispensing from his computer tablet?”

  “It wouldn’t matter. I didn’t see him give Clay anything.”

  “But it might give the state medical board enough to open an investigation. Or even the San Diego district attorney. Who knows what Tice would tell them? They damaged my patient while he was under my care. I can testify that Clay’s behavior was not what it should have been, had my prescriptions been used. Would you do it? Would you testify to what you’ve seen?”

  I had to think on that. For the first time since I’d set foot in Arcadia, I saw that Clay Hickman—the missing lunatic with violence in his past—was a victim as well as a menace. “I’d consider.”

  “I’m taking that as a yes. Now do you see how important it is, Roland? That you call me first when you find Clay? Not Alec or Briggs?”

  “How well do you know Spencer?”

  It took her a while to answer, and she commenced at the end of a long sigh. “After hiring me he professed a . . . romantic interest. I professed none back. He was separating from his wife. We talked, often and sometimes long. I noted that he did not seem to have genuine emotions for things and people outside himself. He presented as a sociopath—what we call antisocial personality disorder. Subtly at first, then not. As many of them do. He patched his marriage back together. He totally shut me out. I was thankful for that. The only reason I stayed at my job was my partners.”

  Another long silence. When she spoke again it was no more than a whisper. “I’m very, very tired.”

  “Then sleep.”

  “Do you think of your wife before you fall asleep?”

  Again I listened to the slow in and out of her breath. I wanted this woman to know my wife’s name, but had been ready to shoot Briggs Spencer for even saying it. “Her name was Justine.”

  “How beautiful. Do you work hard and constantly to avoid thinking about her?”

  “I think of her anyway.”

  I heard the ice hit her glass again. “That is a healthy thing. Roland? There’s something I’d like you to know about me. I was married once. His name was Daniel, though he preferred Dan. A beautiful man. I loved him. Cancer, age thirty-four. Five years ago.”

  That rocked me. “I’m sorry. Why did you lie to me about him?”

  She had to think about her answer, which seemed odd. “He is hard for me to talk about. I know. A shrink who doesn’t want to talk can’t be a real shrink. But his death was a long and sometimes brutal thing. It colored the way I consider the world, and love. I wanted not to be colored for you. For reasons I don’t yet fully understand.”

  I heard the glass and ice again, but no words. We let the time pass in our connected distance. “I enjoyed our dance,” she said.

  “Let’s add music next time. A waltz or two.”

  —

  Briggs Spencer answered on the first ring. “What were you doing on my property?”

  “Trying to get there ahead of Clay,” I said. “Vazquez was shot dead in your kitchen. What do you know about it?”

  “Why would I know anything about it?”

  “Because I’m not the only one you’ve recruited to find Clay Hickman, am I? You also sent idiots who played it heavy. DeMaris and his sidekick? Whoever it was, it blew up when Laura Vazquez and her son came home.”

  “That’s not the narrative.”

  In the ring, I was never much of a believer in feeling out an opponent. Just wanted to get right into it. “How’s this narrative? You were Clay’s superior in Romania. You know from his emails that Clay was talk
ing to Vazquez about bringing you a dose of something you don’t want—white fire. What you do want is Clay back in his psychotropic haze at Arcadia, where he can’t bring anything to anyone. I know about Donald and the formulary. Clay wasn’t taking Paige Hulet’s prescriptions, he was taking yours.”

  “Stirring!” he yelped. “Except Paige Hulet is the medical director at Arcadia and prescribes for Clay. I’m a mere psychologist. I can’t prescribe drugs in the state of California. It’s against the law.”

  “You’ve been letting Hulet prescribe medications for Clay for two years,” I said. “But behind her back, Tice has been giving him other drugs the whole time.”

  “Utter fabrication. Do your job and find him.”

  I considered resigning my commission. Letting Clay bring white fire to Deimos. Whatever white fire was, Briggs Spencer deserved it. But I couldn’t let Clay go back to Arcadia. I needed to know if he was a menace or a victim. And, menace or victim, I wasn’t going to abandon Sequoia to him—in love with Clay or not. Briggs Spencer heard my thoughts.

  “Thinking of quitting? Maybe doing a tell-all with that reporter who gave you a copy of Hard Truth?”

  “If you didn’t send those men to Redwood Valley, who did?”

  “Find out.”

  He clicked off.

  I thought a moment, declined another drink from the bartender who follows me everywhere, then pulled Clay’s printed address book from my briefcase. I wrote Timothy Tritt a brief text explaining my position and requesting an interview as soon as possible.

  21