Blind Eye; Silent Waters; Janus Effect

by Jan Coffey

  “Five minutes,” Conway told him, already starting to boot up his equipment. “Ten, tops.”

  Ahmad Baer glanced over at the attorney.

  “Okay by me,” Viera said. “I’ll talk to him in the hallway. Call us in when you’re ready.”

  As he stepped out into the corridor, he heard Baer asking Conway what he could do to help.

  Viera went out past the double doors leading to Amelia’s…JD’s hall. He didn’t have long to wait, for Jennifer and their visitor from Pennsylvania were coming down the hall. The introductions were made, but he gave no indication that he was ready to let Shaw in.

  “I appreciate you making the long drive,” he told the young man. Shaw was tall, physically fit. He was clean-cut with pleasant looks. The short haircut indicated his recent tour of duty. Viera had made a call to the York Police Department this afternoon and checked the young man’s references. The captain on duty had spoken very highly of Mark Shaw.

  “More than once along the way I almost turned around and went back,” Shaw admitted. “I kept asking myself what was the point of coming all this way, when I’ve told Ms. Sullivan here everything I know about Marion’s sister.”

  “So you never met Amelia?” Viera asked what he already knew.

  “Never. I never met their family, either,” Shaw said. “I only met Marion the one time, and the whole thing is perplexing. She and I only met this past winter and exchanged numbers. I don’t know how Amelia would know that phone number. Marion told me her sister had been missing for more than eight years.”

  “Eight years?” Viera asked.

  “I’m pretty certain that’s what she said. She told me they’re identical twins and that her sister was never found by the police. Still, Marion knew that Amelia was out there, that she was alive, and that she one day hire some detectives and actively look for her.”

  “How would she know that her sister was alive?” the attorney asked.

  “She said they always had a…I don’t know…a connection between them.”

  The situation was getting more complicated by the minute. Viera couldn’t even guess what some of the explanation might be. He was relieved when Dr. Baer came after them. Mrs. Sullivan made a quick introduction, and Baer explained to Shaw about the brain scan they intended to do when Amelia met him.

  Mark Shaw seemed wary and the attorney didn’t blame him. This whole thing was obviously becoming more involved than the young man had bargained on.

  Viera let Baer and Shaw lead the way. He followed behind with Mrs. Sullivan.

  “What do you think of all this?” he asked her.

  “It’s about time,” she said. “No one deserves to be ignored the way she’s been.”

  Ignored. Lost. Forgotten. There was nothing he could have done about that, Viera told himself. She’d also been imprisoned in her mind for all this time. The attorney wondered if there was an end in sight to that, as well.

  As they neared the room, Baer indicated that Viera and the nurse should go in first. Mrs. Sullivan remained by the door, but Viera moved across the room to the windows behind the computers, where Conway was standing with his fingers on the keyboard. He was trying to work several computers at once. Where Viera stood, he could see one of the monitors. It contained what looked like a multi-colored cross-section of a brain. The colors were changing constantly.

  Viera looked at the patient. While he was gone, they had taped electrodes adhering to a dozen places from her temple and forehead to the base of her skull. The wires led from them to a console on a table beside the bed. Conway stood behind the computers. He was speaking in a low voice to the patient. Her gaze remained on him.

  Baer was standing inside the door and, on Conway’s signal, he gestured for Mark Shaw to enter.

  Shaw appeared in the doorway, staring at the bed.

  “Do you still think she’s Amelia Kagan?” Baer asked quietly.

  “No question,” Mark Shaw answered without a pause.

  Viera thought the young man looked pale, disturbed. If this woman was an identical twin to someone who he knew and possibly cared for, of course, that was understandable.

  “We have visitors, Amelia,” Conway said, glancing at the doorway. “Jennifer, why don’t you bring Mr. Shaw closer and introduce him to Amelia?”

  Viera realized what they were trying to do. Even the use of the nurse, perhaps the one person present that the patient knew best, limited the attention to the new visitor.

  Jennifer touched Shaw on the arm and nodded to him to follow.

  “We believe she is maintaining a partial level of consciousness right now,” Conway explained to Mark Shaw. “She’s had visual fixation on certain people in the past. But today we noticed she localizes sound origin…particularly when she hears her sister’s name.”

  “Her sister’s name and not her own?” Shaw asked.

  “That’s right,” Conway answered.

  “Can she speak?” Shaw asked.

  “We call it vocalizing…and it’s not really speaking. At this point, she only vocalizes when she’s anxious or in distress. She’s had a number of episodes of that this past week.”

  The two were standing next to bed. Jennifer reached down and caressed the patient’s hand. “You have a visitor, sweetheart. Someone who’s come all the way from Pennsylvania to see you.”

  She stepped aside, encouraging Mark Shaw to move in to where she’d stood. He did as he was directed. Amelia’s attention remained on Sid Conway.

  “You can talk to her,” Sid encouraged. “A guaranteed response is the mention of her sister’s name.”

  “Hi, Amelia,” Shaw said in a tense voice.

  The attorney realized he was holding his breath, trying not to be a distraction. The patient didn’t respond to the man’s voice.

  “I’m a friend of your sister Marion…Marion Kagan.”

  The response was immediate. The gaze moved to Mark.

  “Keep going. Keep going. Talk to her,” Sid encouraged, sitting down behind one of the computers.

  “I…My name is Mark Shaw,” he said. He cleared his voice. It was obvious he was trying to relax. “Your sister and I only met once. In an airport in Boston. We were stranded there quite a while. I believe we became good friends. She talked about you a lot. She told me how she missed you and…”

  Her right hand lifted from the bed.

  “Has she ever done that before?” Baer asked.

  “Never intentionally.” Jennifer answered.

  “Keep going,” Sid encouraged. “I’m recording everything.”

  “Somehow, you knew about me…about Marion and me.”

  The hand reached for Mark’s.

  He took it, held it…and she smiled.

  CHAPTER 26

  Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

  He’d come after her. He was there. She held his hand. She could feel the warm strength of his grip. She wasn’t alone.

  Marion opened her eyes, startled and disoriented in the total darkness. Fighting back a wave of panic, she realized she was on the floor, leaning against a wall. She felt around her in the darkness, and her fingers brushed against a hard edge. It was a door, and it moved with the pressure of her hand.

  The maintenance closet door. She’d broken the lock and opened it. She remembered being exhausted and sitting down to rest. That was the last thing she remembered. She must have slept, she thought, or passed out. Her head was aching.

  She’d been dreaming. But it was so real. Mark was there. He’d come after her. She was saved. She closed her eyes, wishing the dream would return. She wanted to go back to where she’d been.

  A feeling of hollow despair was all that she could muster. That and darkness.

  “Please…” she sobbed. “Mark?”

  She searched around on the floor for the penlight she must have dropped. She couldn’t find it.

  The headache was getting worse by the second. Her head hurt so badly that she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She reached into her pockets, se
arched until she found the pills she’d taken out of Andrew Bonn’s desk.

  Why was no one coming after her? They had to know something had happened to them.

  “Mark?” she called into the darkness. He was the only one that she’d seen. He knew there was something wrong with her. Reality and imagination had woven a tight strand in her head. She couldn’t distinguish between the two.

  She put her hands on either side of her forehead.

  Marion was in too much pain. She didn’t bother counting pills. She had to stop the pain in the back of her head. She popped whatever was in her hand into her mouth. They stuck in her throat, and she started gagging. They wouldn’t go down. The bitter taste filled her mouth.

  She rolled onto her hands and knees, trying to cough the pills out.

  CHAPTER 27

  Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility

  Connecticut

  “What is she doing?” Mark asked as he saw Amelia start to struggle.

  Jennifer Sullivan pushed him aside. “She can’t catch her breath.”

  The two doctors were beside the bed in a second. Mark moved back to a place near the door. The attorney came and stood next to him. Viera seemed as stunned at the turn of events as Mark was. One second she’d been holding his hand, smiling. The next second, she’d stopped breathing.

  There was something uncanny about the whole thing. Mark knew the two women were identical twins, but for a second he thought he might have been looking into Marion’s face, the eyes he remembered so vividly.

  “There’s something stuck in her throat,” Conway said to the other doctor.

  “She’s on a feeding tube,” Dr. Baer answered. “There should be nothing. Maybe mucous. Make sure her air passage is clear.” He started firing directions at the nurse.

  “You two will have to wait outside.” Jennifer ushered them both to the door as she went to get whatever they would need.

  Mark looked over his shoulder at Amelia. She was gasping for breath. And she was crying. Right before he was pushed out of the room, he saw her lift her hand in his direction and look at him.

  Jennifer closed the door behind them and called to one of the nurses as she moved quickly across the hall to an emergency station.

  “You can find your way back to the front lobby,” she said over her shoulder to the attorney. “The receptionist will take you to the conference room. They’ll join you when they can.”

  She disappeared back inside the room.

  Mark was stunned. He looked at the door, wishing he could go in. Amelia needed him; he’d seen that in her look. But he didn’t know how he could help.

  “I wish I knew what happened in there,” Attorney Viera said quietly. “From all the reports I’ve received over the past six years, she’s never been like this. Something has happened.”

  He preceded Mark through the double doors leading toward the front of the building.

  Mark looked over his shoulder through the small windows of the door as a nurse rolled a piece of equipment into Amelia’s room.

  “Has it been just this week?” he asked. “The changes in her…have they all happened this past week?”

  The attorney looked at him curiously. “I believe so.”

  Mark remembered some of the conversation he’d had with Marion. She talked a lot about her twin sister. She believed that there was a special connection between them. Being an only child, he hadn’t been able to identify with any of what she’d been saying at the time. But she’d been adamant about one thing…she knew her sister was alive, despite the fact that she hadn’t seen her or heard from her for so many years.

  “Has something occurred to you?” Attorney Viera asked.

  Mark didn’t want to sound crazy. There was so much that he didn’t know about what was science and what was myth.

  “Just something about twins. Something Marion said to me,” he replied finally. “That young woman back there lost her twin sister this week. Maybe that loss has something to do with the sudden change in her condition. I don’t know. Even if the events are connected, maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  If the lawyer thought Mark was crazy, he didn’t give any indication of it.

  The detective from the Waterbury PD was standing at the receptionist’s desk when they walked into the front lobby. Mark knew she was a cop before they were within ten feet.

  Attorney Viera recognized her and introduced her as Rita Ricci.

  “Officer Shaw,” she said. Ricci had obviously done her homework on his background.

  “Just a civilian at the moment, Detective.”

  She smiled. “From what we hear, not for long…if your Chief has his way.”

  Attorney Viera showed them the way to the conference room. He and the detective carried on some small talk as they walked. Mark’s mind was still on Amelia Kagan, though, and what happened in her room. He tried to think of why his cell phone number was the one Amelia knew. And why it was that she seemed to know him.

  Mark followed the other two people inside the conference room. Attorney Viera closed the door.

  “We really appreciate the long drive from Pennsylvania on such a short notice,” the detective started right away. “Perhaps if I could get a statement from you, then you won’t have to stay around longer than you need to.”

  “No problem.” Mark looked at the attorney. “Before I go, though, I’d like to see her again. Dr. Conway was doing a brain scan when I introduced myself to Amelia. I’d be interested to know if something showed up. She seemed to recognize me.”

  The attorney sat down on the same side of the table. “I have no problem with that. You stay as long as you want. I assume you feel the same way, Detective Ricci?”

  “Happy to have him in town,” the detective said as she sat herself across from them and took out a pad and a small tape recorder.

  Viera looked thoughtful as he turned his gaze to Mark. “This has all become 22nd century to me. We’ll talk to Baer and Conway after this. I’m certain they’ll let you know to what extent your visit might be beneficial to the patient.”

  Mark nodded.

  “I’d still like to begin this statement,” Ricci commented. “Also, any information you might have as far as next of kin, Officer…Mr. Shaw, would be helpful.”

  “Sure…and Mark is fine.”

  “All right.”

  Mark actually had very little to share. He told them what he knew of their last name and the town and state where Marion had said they were from. Beyond that, though, he could only suggest that Ricci contact the university where Marion was a grad student. They would have information on file.

  “Were you able to go back in the files and see if there was ever a missing person’s report filed on Amelia Kagan at some point or other?” the attorney asked Detective Ricci.

  She leafed through a folder she was carrying and took out a sheet. She slid it across the table to the two of them.

  “Yes. She was reported missing eight years ago in Deer Lodge, Montana. That matches what Mark has just said. And the descriptions match the patient identified as Jane Doe.”

  The photo on the page really wasn’t a good copy. The description was vague and included physical appearance and where she was last seen.

  “Do we have fingerprints, anything more concrete as far as identifying her?” the attorney wanted to know.

  “She had no records at the time she went missing. No fingerprints. But we do have a much better photo.”

  She took an eight by ten black and white copy of a photograph out of her file and slid that in front of them. The face of a teenager smiled up at them.

  “We’re pretty certain that the Jane Doe is Amelia Kagan.”

  Amelia or Marion, Mark thought. It could have been either one of them.

  CHAPTER 28

  Waterbury, Connecticut

  Attorney Viera decided if he were the parent, waiting even one extra hour would be too long a delay. It wouldn’t matter how many years had gone by. He’d want to know. So he dec
ided to make the call tonight.

  By the time he got home, it was 9:55. He double-checked the time difference for Deer Lodge, Montana. They were two hours behind Connecticut. Just about eight o’clock on Saturday night. The time was right, but he wasn’t looking forward to making this call.

  Mark Shaw didn’t have a phone number for the family, but he had been able to tell them that Amelia’s mother lived with the girls’ elderly grandfather in Deer Lodge. The old man was a widower, Mark thought Marion had said. As far as finding the last name of the family, Detective Ricci had all the information on the missing-person’s report filed on Amelia eight years back.

  The phone number was listed under the name Kim Brown. He assumed she’d gone back to her maiden name sometime after the divorce. Detective Ricci was also able to double check with the University of California for confirmation of next-of-kin for Marion. Their record listed Kim Brown, as well. No one else’s name was on file.

  Prior to going to the long-term care facility tonight, Viera had pulled Amelia’s files from his office. He’d read over everything. There was very little there. He knew it all by heart.

  “Wish me luck,” he told his wife.

  “Good luck, sweetheart,” Ellen said, handing him the cup of decaffeinated coffee she’d brewed after he’d arrived home. She knew JD’s history. He’d told her everything that had happened over the past couple of days. Ellen wasn’t only his wife, friend, and the mother of his children. She was also his most trusted sounding board for his law practice in issues like this. Arriving home tonight, she’d agreed wholeheartedly that Juan should make the call to the mother in Montana tonight.

  Viera gathered everything he needed and closed the door to his study. He dialed the number.

  He was undecided if he should leave a message if an answering machine picked up. There was no way he could leave a coherent message conveying the kind of news he had to share. At the same time, he wanted to make contact with the family.