by Tom Grace
“May I see his chart? I’m his doctor, and I have privileges here.”
Lang handed over the chart, and Deena reviewed the notes on her patient’s treatment.
“He regained consciousness roughly three hours ago?” Deena asked.
“Yes,” Lang replied. “Once I removed the patch from his neck, whatever was keeping him under started to wear off. Do you know anything about that?”
“No,” Deena replied, still reviewing the chart. “As far as I know, he wasn’t on any medications.”
“Patch?” Redding asked. “Like one of those things smokers use to break the habit?”
Lang nodded. “I sent it down to the lab to see if they can figure out what’s in it.”
“His head CT looks normal,” Deena said.
“Yeah, that’s why we’re looking for chemical causes for his unconsciousness. The rest of his injuries are just cuts and bruises. If he was wide awake, we would have discharged him.”
“Have you given him anything?”
“Just a saline IV in hopes it would help flush his system.”
Deena bent down close to Nolan’s face. “Grant, can you open your eyes?”
Nolan’s eyes fluttered for a moment, then opened. A familiar face hovered close, filling his field of vision. Slowly his mind put a name to the face and recalled that she knew him by a name other than his own. She saw the recognition in his eyes and smiled. He then drifted back to sleep.
“It’s Saturday morning. You’re in a hospital. You’ve been injured, but you’ll be fine.”
Deena pulled a note from her pocket and handed it to the detective.
“This is his wife Maggie’s cell number. Please let her know he’s here and recovering.”
Redding nodded and stepped out of the exam room.
“Doctor Lang,” Deena continued. “Any idea what kind of sedative was used on him?”
“Nothing like our lab has ever encountered. It appears to be slowly wearing off.”
“Some interesting research is being done using intravenous methylphenidate to accelerate patient recovery from the effects of anesthetic. Are you familiar with it?”
“Only what I’ve seen in the journals.”
“I know one of the teams looking into it, and the results of their human trials are quite promising. It might be just what your patient needs to clear the fog, so to speak.”
Lang considered the suggestion and stepped out of the exam room. He returned a moment later with a small vial and syringe.
“What’s the dosage?” Lang asked.
“Not much, given that he’s already started to recover.”
Deena checked the concentration of the drug in its injectable form and quickly did the math.
“I’m going to give him a low dose, roughly half of what a typical adult using the pill form would use to treat ADD. That should give his brain the jolt it needs to reboot.”
She located a port in the IV line and injected the stimulant.
“I’ve given you something to help you wake up,” Deena said.
Deena took his hand and placed two fingers on his wrist, checking his pulse. His heart beat at a steady, resting rate. After little more than a minute, Nolan’s eyes fluttered open and she felt his pulse quicken.
“Welcome back,” she said.
“Water,” Nolan croaked.
Deena held a plastic cup filled with crushed ice and water close to his face and angled the straw to his lips. Nolan took a tentative sip and felt the fluid rejuvenate the parched regions in his mouth. He took several more sips, regaining his ability to swallow and cooling his throat.
“I got ahold of his wife,” Redding said. “She was greatly relieved and should be here shortly. I’m going to take your clothes into evidence—see if we can get anything off them that isn’t you.”
Lang handed Redding a sealed plastic bag containing the transdermal patch. “This is what knocked Mr. Egan out. Our lab couldn’t identify the agent, but it’s powerful. You’ll want a top-notch lab handling this.”
Redding nodded and slipped the small bag into his coat pocket.
“How do you feel?” Deena asked.
“Terrible,” Nolan replied. “What happened?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Redding replied. “Do you remember anything?”
“Outside the restaurant. You left by cab,” he said, looking at Deena. “Something touched my neck and—now I’m here.”
“Nothing about the attack?” Redding asked.
“That’s all garbled. I can’t really make sense of it.”
“Where did you eat last night?”
Nolan looked to Deena to reply.
“Café Joul near Sixty-Fourth and Broadway. We were there from eight-thirty to almost ten.”
Redding nodded as he checked his notebook. “We got some reports last night of a mugging near there. A guy got dragged into an alley by a lone assailant. A couple other guys chased him off and took the victim away in a gray van. Security cameras show you being dropped off here by a gray van—couldn’t read the license plate. Timeline fits. We’ll take a look at the alley and the surrounding area, see what we can find, and check any security cameras near the restaurant. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Redding placed his business card on Nolan’s bedside tray and picked up the large bag containing his clothing.
“If you jar any memories loose, give me a call.”
“I’ll stay with him until his wife arrives,” Deena said.
“That’s good of you. I’ll be in touch if we learn anything or have any other questions.”
Lang quickly rechecked Nolan’s vital signs and tapped the data into his tablet computer.
“We treated your injuries while you were out,” Lang said. “And now that you’re out of the woods, so to speak, you can rest up and wait for your wife to arrive. I’ll unhook you from the IV, and we can switch you over to oral meds for any pain you may be experiencing.”
“I got a couple tender spots.”
“I noticed,” Lang said. “I’ll get the paperwork moving, but no rush. You can check out as soon as you feel up to it.”
Lang departed. A moment later, a nurse escorted Roxanne to the exam room. She had an overnight bag slung from her shoulder and a look of genuine concern on her face.
“You had me so worried,” Roxanne said.
She dropped the bag on the floor as she moved to Nolan’s side. She clasped his hand and placed a gentle kiss on the top of his head.
“Rough night?” Nolan asked.
“Insane. Since you’re an able-bodied adult, the police view you as a low-priority missing person if you’re only missing for a few hours. You were totally off the grid. And believe me, Grin checked.”
“That’s my little lady,” Nolan said, before suddenly growing pensive. “Lady.”
“What is it?” Roxanne asked.
“Something, I’m not quite sure. I think I was cold and wet. There’s this flash, this snippet of memory—something I think I heard.”
“What?”
“A man’s voice, at the back of my head. Angry. Something like, The lady is spoken for.”
“The lady is spoken for?” Roxanne repeated. “What could that mean?”
The color drained from Deena’s face and her eyes widened.
“It can’t be,” Deena said.
“What can’t be?” Roxanne asked.
Deena ignored the question. She pulled the phone from her purse and selected a number from her contact list. She tensed nervously waiting for someone to answer.
“I’d like to check on the current custody status of an individual,” Deena said, then slowly recited from memory a string of letters and numbers. She turned from Nolan and Roxanne as she awaited the answer to her query. Then she shuddered.
“You’re certain?” Deena asked.
Another pause.
“Thank you.”
Deena dropped into a side chair and drew her legs protectively up into her chest. Her
eyes glistened as tears welled up and her lips quivered. Roxanne left Nolan’s side and moved to comfort the distraught woman. She sat on the arm of the chair and placed her arm around Deena’s shoulder.
“What is it?” Nolan asked.
“The lady is spoken for. Are you sure that’s what your attacker said?”
“As sure as I can be. Why?”
“This happened once before, and I was the lady.”
“What happened?” Roxanne asked.
“An attack very similar to this one. I was doing postdoc research in Boston when I first met him. Brilliant, intriguing, wealthy, and eccentric. Lord Byron he liked to call himself—in homage to the brilliant English poet who may or may not have been mad. There’s little doubt about that with the Byron I knew. It’s said there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and Byron Palmer had one foot planted firmly on each side.”
“Were you involved?” Roxanne asked.
“Romantically? No. We were colleagues and perhaps friends, as much as any of us lesser beings can be friends with someone like Byron. We went out casually, but never dated, which seemed to suit us both. Or so I thought. Then I met Ferris D’Argent and fell in love.
“One night, after Ferris had dropped me off at my apartment, Byron attacked him. He beat Ferris savagely, and throughout the assault repeated that phrase like a mantra: The lady is spoken for. He left Ferris for dead and came after me. Byron raped me that night, though in his mind we were lovers. Ferris died several days later as a result of his injuries. The Palmer family provided Byron with the best attorneys money could buy. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized. I just learned that he was released six months ago. I guess it took him that long to find me.”
“If Byron is repeating history, he may go after you again as well,” Roxanne said. “We need to inform the police of this possibility and arrange for your protection.”
FORTY-FOUR
10:30 AM
“I can take it from here,” Nolan announced.
The orderly piloting the wheelchair toward the taxi stand outside of the hospital’s entrance stopped to allow him to rise before turning back inside. Deena queued up for a cab while Roxanne offered Nolan an arm for support. With Roxanne on his left arm, Nolan used his right hand to fish Detective Redding’s card from his pocket.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Nolan asked. “Mine’s gone missing.”
“Read me the number” Roxanne said. “I’ll dial it.”
After she punched in the digits, Nolan pocketed the card and took the phone from her. It rang four times then bounced from Redding’s desk phone to his cell.
“Redding.”
“You asked me to call if anything rattled loose,” Nolan said.
“Mr. Egan? That’s got to be some kind of record. What did you remember?”
“Not so much what I remembered, but what that recollection meant to Dr. Hawthorne. My mugging may actually have been an attack by a jealous stalker.”
Nolan briefly relayed Deena’s story, then put her on to provide specific details about Palmer and the previous attacks.
“Always good when you can put a name on a suspect,” Redding said when Nolan resumed the call. “We’ll get right on this. I’ll give you a call once we have a protective detail arranged for Dr. Hawthorne.”
“We’ll keep her at our hotel until then,” Nolan promised.
A Nissan minivan cab pulled up to the curb and they stepped inside. Roxanne gave the driver the address of their hotel, and they were quickly on their way.
“I am so sorry about this,” Deena said. “So sorry that this horror from my past has hurt you. The more I think about what happened to you, how you were drugged—Byron is more than smart enough to pull that off.”
“So you’re sure it’s him?” Nolan asked.
Deena nodded. “I just wonder how he found me.”
“Just how smart is Palmer?”
“Off the charts brilliant and with a wide field of expertise. Languages, science, technology, art.”
“A Renaissance man. Does your phone have a mapping app?”
“Yes.”
“He might be stalking you the old-fashioned way, or he could be tracking your movements through your cell phone. With the number of cell towers in this city, it would be very easy to locate a person precisely within any building.”
“That’s frightening,” Deena said.
“A smartphone is really just a tracking device with a phone app,” Nolan said.
“Regardless, we should all be looking over our shoulders until he’s caught,” Roxanne added.
Deena pulled her arms tightly against her chest, terrified at the thought of Byron Palmer stalking her again. The video screens mounted in the passenger area of the taxi cycled through the local human-interest stories and returned to the breaking national news.
The top story remained the successful return of the Sandman’s eighth victim in Tennessee. The report contained the closing moments of a press conference that included FBI and local authorities, the physicians who treated the recovered child and her very emotional father.
“ . . . love our daughter Jesse very much, and God answered our prayers with her safe return,” Ed Mersino gushed. “My wife and I are so overwhelmed with joy—not since we adopted our children, brought our beautiful babies home for the first time, have we felt such happiness.”
The screen shifted to a recent portrait of the Mersino family.
“The reason behind this series of bizarre child kidnappings continues to baffle investigators,” a reporter said in a voice-over. “But thankfully, as in the other seven child abductions attributed to the Sandman, this terrifying ordeal had a happy ending with eleven-year-old Jesse Mersino safely reunited with her family.”
Deena reached out and pressed the mute button on the small screen. Tears ran down her face.
“What’s wrong?” Roxanne asked.
“That child—the one who was kidnapped—she was adopted.”
“Yes?” Roxanne replied, uncertain of the relevance.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s crazy. My imagination must be running wild.”
“What’s crazy?”
“Eight children have been taken and returned unharmed, and no one but the kidnapper knows why. The girl they just found in Tennessee was adopted, and she’s eleven. And last night you were attacked after having what a jealous psycho might think was a romantic dinner date with me. Oh, this just can’t be.”
“What can’t be?” Nolan asked.
“Weeks after Palmer raped me, I learned I was pregnant.”
“Oh my,” Roxanne gasped.
Deena nodded. “I told no one and secretly hoped that Ferris was the father. When I learned I was having a son, I named him Benjamin. Ferris and I had talked about children, and he wanted to name a son after his father.”
Roxanne recalled Hawthorne’s password and realized it wasn’t an expression of avarice, but hope. And the newborn child that greeted the doctor every time she logged onto on her computer was, in her heart, Benjamin D’Argent.
“At twenty weeks, I had an amniocentesis test done to determine paternity. I compared the DNA results to those taken from the scene of Byron’s attack on Ferris. How I prayed Ferris was the father.”
“But it was Byron,” Nolan said, already certain of the result.
“Yes.”
“And you still had the baby,” Roxanne said.
“I considered all of my options, but beyond the moral, political and scientific justifications, what swayed my choice in the end was hypocrisy.”
“Hypocrisy?” Nolan asked.
“I love children, and I hope to have a family of my own,” Deena explained. “Professionally, I have dedicated myself to helping couples overcome obstacles to having children. To my patients, every fertilized egg is a new life, something precious and full of innocence and hope. How could I ever face those women who would come to me for help in one of the most important aspects of
their lives knowing that I had ended a perfectly healthy pregnancy? Ending my pregnancy would have also ended my career. So I carried my son to full term and immediately placed him for adoption. I wanted my child to live free of his biological father’s shadow. I took a leave of absence after the attack, which I extended to conceal the pregnancy—Byron could not know about the child. I even changed my own name to distance myself from the notoriety of Byron’s crimes. I thought that only my father and I knew about my son, but now I’m not so sure.”
“You think Byron is kidnapping these children?” Nolan asked. “Why?”
“If he knows that I had a child—his child—he may be searching for it,” she replied. “What he’s put those families through. . .”
“If it is Byron,” Roxanne said. “What is he doing with the children?”
“Exactly what I did,” Deena answered. “Testing to see if the child is his.”
FORTY-FIVE
10:50 AM
The taxi arrived at the hotel, and Deena accompanied the couple she knew as the Egans to their suite. Though sore, Nolan was quickly recovering from the effects of the chemical used to incapacitate him. He led the way with Roxanne protecting their rear and Deena in between. All three said nothing as they moved through the corridors of the hotel, mentally grappling with the idea that a jealous, kidnapping rapist-murderer may well be stalking them. Roxanne unlocked the suite door and waited as her companions went inside. The two women each found a seat while Nolan slowly paced.
“If I got this right,” he began, “the theory is Byron Palmer attacked me because he’s a jealous S.O.B, and he’s kidnapping random children across the country to find the one that he fathered with you. I get the jealous stalker thing, but why would he go after the kids?”
“Byron is extraordinarily possessive,” Deena explained. “He felt, and likely still feels, that he owns me. I am his woman. And any child that he fathered with me is both his possession and his blood link to me. Finding that child is a step toward reacquiring me. In his mind, he probably envisions a teary, happy reunion like the one that child in Tennessee just had with her family. Any sane person would recognize this as a deluded fantasy, but Byron Palmer is not sane.”