by Nancy Bush
“You’re not bullshitting me?”
“What do you care if I am?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a lot of crime out there. We don’t have enough investigators on a good day for the type of attack that took place at the rest stop. No manpower. You want in, I’ll meet you all the way.”
“What’s Drano got on you?” Lang asked.
Tanninger laughed.
“Can you give me the info on the guy who found them? The trucker?”
“I’ll get you the file. We checked the license plate of the vehicle that was left on the scene. Stolen truck. It’s in the file, too.”
“And the murder weapon, the knife, was found at the crime scene…? Anything there?”
“No prints that count. Covered in blood and wiped on the grass. Tossed into the nearby bushes.”
“He or she didn’t want to be caught with it.”
Tanninger shrugged. “Maybe. But the doer had to be hit by the blood. There was a lot of it.”
“They weren’t thinking straight.”
“Not that kind of crime,” he agreed.
Lang nodded. “Okay.”
“Tomorrow I’m heading out to interview the other victim. The woman. If you want to join on, your timing’s perfect. Barb was going to head to Halo Valley Security this afternoon, but she’s out sick, so I’m teed up. Jane Doe hasn’t talked, hasn’t even comprehended what’s happened, as far as anyone can tell. It’s wait and see, but we try to keep a finger on the pulse…so?”
Lang absorbed the news about an imminent trip to Halo Valley with mixed feelings. He could feel his pulse speed up. “Is Barb the one who got shot, or…?”
Tanninger nodded. “She didn’t want to go home today. She’s hard to hold down, no matter what.”
“No one’s got in touch about Jane Doe? Or the guy in the morgue?”
“Not yet. Channel Seven’s doing a follow-up.”
“Pauline Kirby?” Lang managed to keep from making a face. Just.
“You don’t like her?”
“Love her.”
Tanninger laughed. “So, do you want to go to Halo Valley?”
Did he really want to take a trip to that hospital? See that monstrous institution and know that Heyward Marsdon was in there, albeit behind the double-locked doors to the restricted half? Have a chance to maybe interview Dr. Claire Norris?
He saw her in his mind’s eye. Quiet. Serious. Slim. Brunette. Maybe a ballbuster.
Exhaling slowly, he nodded.
Tanninger stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the team.”
Claire took the three concrete steps that led to her back door, balancing two bags of groceries. She’d made a quick stop at the market, buying salad fixings and boneless chicken breasts. Once upon a time she’d prided herself on her original meals. But that was when she’d been married. Happily married. Or at least believed she was happily married. A long time ago.
She dropped the bags onto her chipped Formica countertop. The rented bungalow was cute but tired. Its major selling feature was its view of the Pacific Ocean. Not a spectacular view; the homes dotting this hillside above the small hamlet of Deception Bay were built in the forties and fifties, anything but lavish, but they had charm.
Her kitchen window faced north and she could see slices of the jetty past the laurel and camellia bushes that had nearly taken over this side of the house. She could also see Dinah’s cabin, smaller than hers, more of a Craftsman style, though its paint was peeling badly and the roof patches looked like acne, dotted across the whole of it.
She put the chicken breasts in a pan with a spray of olive oil, covered them, and waited for them to finish cooking. Then she tossed together the greens, added garbanzos, chopped walnuts, goat cheese, and blueberries, and pulled a favorite bottle of honey mustard dressing from the cupboard. She’d learned shortcuts since her ill-fated marriage. She’d learned she didn’t have to be a perfect wife in order to matter.
Seeing a flash of color outside the window, she looked out. It was just getting dark and wisps of fog were floating by like a magician’s screens—now you see it, now you don’t—further obscured by fitful rain. The color splash was dullish red and came from her neighbor and friend’s, Dinah’s, tunic. Dinah was walking from the direction of the beach, which, though across the road and down the hill, was part of Dinah’s favorite exercise venue. Walk at dawn, walk at dusk. If Claire’s work schedule permitted, she would be right with her.
Quickly she unlocked and pushed up her window. “Dinah!” Claire called. “Can you join me for dinner? I’ve chicken breasts, salad, and wine.”
Dinah hesitated, holding open her screen door. In the gathering dusk Claire couldn’t see her eyes, which she knew to be light blue. “I’ll be right over,” she called.
Claire hurriedly uncorked the wine, put it in a chilled silver bucket, turned the chicken breasts, then headed into her bedroom to change. The bungalow was two-story: two bedrooms, one bath on the main level; a daylight basement below that faced toward the ocean, its view blocked by houses across the road.
Changing into an oversized cream cotton sweater and jeans, Claire padded back barefoot. It was chilly and getting wetter with another spate of clouds and rain. She’d just placed the chicken breasts on a platter and set out forks and knives wrapped in napkins when Dinah arrived. “Come and get it,” Claire invited and they served up in the kitchen and took their plates to the covered deck, which surrounded the upper level, where Claire had placed the wine, glasses, and salt and pepper on a teak table built for two, one of the few pieces of furniture she’d taken from her marriage.
“If the rain comes again, we can head back in. Fast,” Claire said.
“I like being outside,” Dinah admitted.
“Me, too.”
Dinah was in her midthirties, close to Claire’s age, but sometimes seemed like an older sister, almost a mother, to Claire. “How was the hospital today?” she asked.
Claire peered at her. “Small talk, or do you really want to know?”
“Whichever you prefer.”
Claire poured both of their glasses with the Savignon Blanc she’d recently discovered. Light. Not too astringent. Cheap enough to buy without wincing. “Do you remember that Jane Doe I told you about?”
“The pregnant one?”
“She was transported from Laurelton General to Halo Valley today. Dr. Freeson has taken her on as his patient, with the help of Dr. Avanti.”
“You’d like to take care of her,” Dinah guessed.
“Maybe I’d just like them not to.”
Dinah cradled her glass in her hands and looked out toward the ocean, her blondish hair smooth and straight to her shoulders. Dinah had been there when the incident happened. She’d seen it on the news and was waiting for Claire to get home after all the interviews and checkups and red tape. As soon as Claire wearily stepped from her car, Dinah was there with a basket of chocolate chip muffins and a warm hug.
The warmth Dinah lavished on her foster child she brought to Claire when she needed it most. Without the thousand questions Claire expected, Dinah followed her inside that first night, dropped the basket on the table, and set about making herbal tea. Fresh herbs from her own garden. Claire, spent, sat in a chair at the table and let Dinah take over. And while the tea steeped Claire leaned forward on her elbows, head in her hands, and cried. For Melody. For Heyward. For her own inability to stop things.
Dinah pushed a cup of tea her way and said, “You need to know that this will pass. You won’t be blamed forever. There are changes ahead.”
“Right now, I’ll be lucky to get through tomorrow.”
“You are only guilty of a tender heart. It’s your saving grace, but it’s caused you pain. And you may be too polite. It’s how they’ve used you as their scapegoat.”
“What do you know about it?” Claire asked, surprised.
“What I saw on the news,” Dinah answered, unruffled.
But Claire learne
d that Dinah saw a helluva lot more than was broadcast. She called it her intuition, but Claire had her own intuition about things and she knew this was something else. Just what, she couldn’t say. And as they became friends, she decided she didn’t care. Dinah was her therapist. A therapist’s therapist. Other than her own work with her patients, the evenings she shared tea, or dinner, or wine with Dinah were the real moments where Claire felt connected to the human race.
Now she said, “I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through the last six months without this.” She motioned to Dinah and herself.
Dinah smiled. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“For me? Yeah, right.”
“Sometimes the universe does answer.”
“Mmm.” Claire squinched down in her chair and gazed into the fog. “I didn’t know I’d sent out a question.”
“You didn’t want to send it out. Others did that for you. But the message was received and now you’re getting better. Stronger.”
“You’re a little too woo-woo for me. You know that, right?”
She smiled and leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t drink wine. It dulls the senses.”
“All five, or do you have six?”
Dinah opened her eyes and turned to look at Claire. “You’re such a believer in straight science.”
“Hey, if there’s something more, I’m all for it. Don’t quote me on that. The hospital administration already regards me with suspicion. But I like this.” She lifted her glass to toast Dinah.
Claire had told Dinah how her marriage to Ron fell apart after her two miscarriages. Dinah, in turn, had talked about Toby, about her frustration with Toby’s mother, how she would love to adopt the little boy herself, but it was not to be.
Now they just enjoyed each other’s company, talking about other things, the less important the better. After dinner and several glasses of wine, Dinah headed back to her house and Claire stayed where she was, her gaze on the ocean.
Later, lying in bed and watching rain drizzle down her windowpane, she wondered more about her friend. Dinah seemed to understand Claire’s very soul and yet, beyond Toby, Claire knew very little about the woman next door. Some people were like that, she knew; they could give of themselves wholly without offering up a clue to their own inner workings. Claire had just never met someone so completely like that as Dinah. She felt a little guilty because it seemed sometimes like she was taking, taking, taking and offering nothing in return except an occasional dinner or glass of wine.
She closed her eyes, thoughts of Dinah drifting away to be replaced by other more pressing issues. Tomorrow Claire was going to be bullied by the administration and the Marsdons to give a favorable account regarding Heyward Marsdon III’s rehabilitation and therefore the means of his incarceration. Nobody wanted him on Side B. Not his family, and because of them, not the hospital administrators. She knew they wanted him as an inpatient on Side A.
But was it the right course to take?
The question kept her awake till nearly dawn.
Chapter 4
The hour-long eleven o’clock meeting started on time and ran an hour and a half late. Everyone Freeson had said would be there was there, along with Dr. Zellman, Dr. Prior, and Dr. Dayton from Side B—Dr. Jean Dayton being the only other woman in the room besides Claire.
The meeting was to decide the fate of Mr. Heyward Marsdon III, at least within the hospital walls. There was a lot of detailed data on his psychological state of mind, garnered over the past six months, and the first hour and a half crawled by with each of the doctors from Side B’s recount. Claire was a little surprised that Dr. Jean Dayton’s views coincided so closely with her own.
“Mr. Marsdon is a paranoid schizophrenic,” she wrapped up in her curiously flat voice. She seemed to have next to no inflection in her tone. “He suffers delusions and hallucinations. Off his meds, he believes there are alien beings trying to kill him. That has not changed in six months, nor is it likely to in the future. I believe he should stay where he is.”
“Dr. Dayton,” Avanti answered smoothly, before Radke, whose face had grown tight and grim at her bald assessment, could try to pour oil on the situation himself. This was the first serious voice of dissent in their plan to move Heyward to Side A. “How often do you see Mr. Marsdon, professionally?”
“Daily,” she stated.
“How often do you see other patients?”
“Daily,” she repeated.
“All of them?”
“Most of them.”
“But isn’t Dr. Prior Mr. Marsdon’s primary psychiatrist? Isn’t he the one who should decide the right course of action?”
“I’m Heyward Marsdon’s primary,” Prior affirmed. He was a short man with a rotund stomach that he liked to rest his clasped hands upon.
Dayton said, “I’m one of Marsdon’s doctors as well.” Her voice took on a stubborn tone. “I think he’s a danger to himself and others. Why don’t you tell them what you said about him last week,” she challenged Dr. Prior.
Prior sat up straight as if hit by a cattle prod.” “What?”
“When you and I were talking about Heyward after our weekly session together.”
“I said he was doing fine,” Prior declared.
“Actually, you said, ‘Thank God he’s on his meds. That’s the only time he’s fine.’”
“We all agree Heyward should stay on his meds,” Avanti broke in. “But when he’s on them, as he is now, he’s in complete control.”
Claire glanced at Heyward’s family, his grandfather, Heyward Marsdon Senior, and his father, Heyward Marsdon Junior. Senior leaned forward, interested in the proceedings, but Junior looked like he was counting the tiny holes in the acoustical tiles on the ceiling.
Senior said in his gravelly voice, “I’ll allow my grandson’s had a few problems. He was overtaken by chemically induced visions that have altered his reality in terrible ways.”
Like killing Melody Stone? Claire felt her skin tingle with shock. He was trying to negate the seriousness of Heyward’s crime.
Dayton stated flatly, “If you’re implying that his medications altered his reality, you are ignoring the facts.”
“Dr. Dayton, we all know what happened.” This time it was Radke speaking. “And we’re not asking that he be released. What we are trying to discern is whether the more restrictive side of the hospital is the right place for Mr. Marsdon.”
“There are some seriously psychologically disturbed criminals on that side,” Marsdon Senior pointed out.
Of which Heyward III is one, Claire thought.
“They’re all treated with respect,” Dr. Zellman felt compelled to put in.
“That goes for all of our patients,” Avanti said. “Side A and Side B.”
“All right,” Radke said, closing his leather-bound notebook and leaning his arms across its smooth, black finish. His glance touched on Claire for a moment, then he looked around the room. The other doctors gazed back at him expectantly. Avanti, whose supercilious attitude was in high gear, had a faint smile on his lips, as if he knew it was already a foregone conclusion that Marsdon would be moved to Side A. He was worse than Freeson, Claire decided. A major leaguer while Freeson was still on a farm team when it came to overinflated ego, impatience, and narcissism.
The Marsdons, Senior and Junior, gave each other a look. Junior crossed his legs, twitched his knife-creased pant legs into place, then stared off into space as if he’d magically transported himself somewhere else. Maybe he had. He sure as hell hadn’t been in the moment once during this meeting.
Radke said, “We’ve all had a chance to discuss the right course of action for Mr. Marsdon, and though initially it seemed prudent to house him in the high-security wing of our hospital, maybe that time has passed. The focus of Mr. Marsdon’s care is, by design, centered on detention in the high-security wing rather than individual treatment of his disease.”
Heyward Marsdon Sr. reacted to “diseas
e” with a jerk of tension. His white hair pulled away from his head in a wavy, Donald Sutherland style and his eyes were as blue and piercing as the actor’s as well. He was heavier; his chest was wide, his cheeks fleshy, his hands meat hooks that looked as if they might have trouble handling the delicacy of a knife and fork. Claire could easily see him picking up a turkey leg in one hand and a pewter stein of ale in the other while hunching over a plate. He had that medieval look about him. She wondered if he’d been a grade school bully.
Marsdon Senior said, “My grandson needs help. Yes. But he is not the villain the media paints him. He does not belong with those vile killers in that part of your hospital.”
“He did take a life,” Dr. Howard Neumann reminded them quietly. He didn’t want to go against the tide, but he had enough honor to want to keep the facts straight, regardless of the amount of money and influence sitting around the table.
Radke, six foot two, long-faced with salt-and-pepper hair and a lean build that made him seem taller than he was, turned his attention to Neumann, who was six inches shorter, stubbier, and tended to fidget. But this time Neumann placed one hand over the other on the table and waited. He wasn’t going to let them forget what had truly happened. Claire could have kissed him.
“We haven’t forgotten, Howard,” Radke said. Then, to Claire, “You haven’t said much, my dear.”
“Everyone knows how I feel. He was remanded to the high-security side of the hospital. Side B,” Claire stated clearly.
“He was remanded to the hospital,” Radke corrected her.
“With the intention that he be monitored twenty-four seven. We don’t do that on Side A to the extent Heyward Marsdon needs.”
“I disagree,” Avanti said vigorously. “Side A has more personnel. More contact with the patients.”
“Side B has contact as well,” Dr. Neumann started, but Marsdon Junior chose that moment to jump in with, “They’re in cages on your high-security side! Only the sickest of the sick should be there.”