by Nancy Bush
“I’m not on the list,” Lang said. “How do I get on?”
“You need a Halo Valley doctor’s written permission.”
“Okay.”
“And a medical escort.”
Lang nodded at the guard and turned away. The two-way transmission clicked off, regulated by the guard inside, apparently.
Not bad security, he thought. Not a prison. But not bad. The guard was probably armed and looked like he could handle about anything thrown his way.
Feeling slightly encouraged, Lang followed in the wake of Claire Norris and strode down the curved stairway from the gallery. His feet were wet and uncomfortable; his cowboy boots looked a lot dryer than his socks. His jacket was only slightly wet, but the black leather had taken a beating. His hair was nearly dry.
The patients who’d populated the main room had been moved elsewhere and several uniformed workers, aides, maybe, were setting a series of tables with plastic plates and flatware, serving platters of bread, while the scent of string beans and macaroni and cheese swept toward him. His stomach growled. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten.
He wondered if he should look in a mirror and thought about ducking into the public restroom near the front desk when a black Town Car pulled up in front of the building and a driver in black slacks and sports coat stepped out, came around the vehicle, and opened the passenger door. Heyward Marsdon Sr. stepped out, balancing lightly on a black cane with a silver tip and curved handle. His son kicked open the door behind him and joined his father.
Lang felt some movement beside him and half-turned as Dr. Freeson hurried toward the door followed by a more sedate man. Another doctor, Lang assumed. Dark hair, swarthy good looks, a sense of power. What name had Claire thrown at him? Dr. Avanti. He would bet this was the man.
And then Claire herself appeared from the direction of the meeting room. The look she sent him was full of mixed emotions. She was not a happy camper.
Freeson was gushing, helping Marsdon Senior inside. “Let’s all sit down for a few minutes while we get ready.”
Granddaddy flicked a look at Lang, didn’t recognize him, said in a gravelly voice to Avanti, “I want to see my grandson.”
“We’re bringing him over,” Avanti said smoothly.
Lang couldn’t believe his ears.
Claire rushed to say, “I thought we were going to him, as per protocol.”
“As Heyward’s being transferred here soon, we thought it would be a good idea to get him acclimated.” Avanti made it sound like a directive.
Lang must have made a sound. Maybe a growl. He certainly felt like growling. Avanti turned to him, his nose in the air, as if he were scenting an enemy or maybe just practicing being the snobbish prick he obviously was.
Claire introduced him quickly and politely. “Dr. Avanti, this is Detective Stone, formerly of the Portland Police Department, soon of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”
Avanti’s mouth dropped open. He blinked several times. “What…what…?”
“He’s investigating our Jane Doe’s attack and trying to learn who killed her companion. He’s here for that,” Claire said.
“I don’t need a disclaimer,” Lang stated flatly, his gaze on Marsdon Senior.
“Who is this man?” Marsdon Senior said imperiously. He’d picked up on the tension but Melody’s last name meant nothing to him.
But Marsdon Junior had it. He was standing behind his father and now put a hand on the older man’s shoulder. “We didn’t know Detective Stone would be here.”
Freeson’s face had paled, but Avanti turned on Claire. “No, we didn’t know,” he said in a voice barely above a snarl.
“You’re moving him to this side of the hospital. That wasn’t the court’s decision,” Lang snarled right back.
Avanti was trying to hurry Marsdon Senior to the meeting room, but he stood stubbornly in place. Lang stared at the old man in a kind of repressed fury as the room faded back, the faces of the growing crowd of employees disappearing. “You don’t give a damn that your grandson slit my sister’s throat.”
Marsdon’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“He’s a killer, and all you want to do is set him loose.”
“I am sorry for your loss, but he was ill.” Marsdon Senior recovered his aplomb. “Off his medications, I understand. Something Dr. Norris should have seen.” He slid her a crafty look.
“He’d missed appointments.” Claire defended herself, flushing nevertheless.
“He shouldn’t have been released!” Lang turned on her. “He should have been locked up before this happened!”
“There was no indication of hallucinations,” Freeson jumped in. “We thought he was delusional, but not hallucinatory. We didn’t know he was seeing things. He was supposed to be on his meds.”
“Supposed to be.” Lang had heard it all before. “He’s still ill. He’ll always be ill.”
“You have no right to talk about my grandson as if you know him!” Marsdon Senior’s face was turning red.
“Mr. Marsdon,” Avanti said, stepping between the old man and Lang to defuse the escalating battle. But Marsdon was a feisty bastard and shook a hand at Avanti to get him to move out of the way. Unhappily, Avanti stepped to the side and shared a look with Marsdon Junior.
“You can’t control him taking his medication,” Lang said to the group at large. “That’s the problem. He’s dangerous.”
“She asked for it, you know,” Marsdon Senior stated tightly. “Your sister asked him to kill her.”
“You bastard.” Lang was stunned. This was new territory, and he thought he’d known the script by heart by this time.
“Ask Dr. Norris. She’s the one who said so.” He pointed his cane at her.
Claire put her hands up in front of her, equally stunned. “That’s not what I said at all.”
“You told the guard that’s what she said.”
“That’s not what happened.” Claire’s voice was a whisper.
Marsdon Junior spoke up, “The security guard who came to your aid said you were coherent and that Detective Stone’s sister asked my son to kill her.” His supercilious tone cut like a knife through the thick atmosphere.
“They were both in a state of high anxiety,” Claire said. “Heyward was clearly delusional and hallucinating.”
“What are you saying?” Lang demanded, his voice dangerous.
“Melody wasn’t really understanding what Heyward was seeing. She didn’t know what to say to him,” Claire answered, hearing the desperation in her own voice and hating it.
“You’re blaming my sister for him killing her?” Lang’s ears rang.
“Heyward was off his meds. And apparently so was she,” Claire said. “You want to talk about your sister, you need to check with her doctor. I was Heyward’s, not hers.”
“What were her words?” Lang demanded. “You were there. What did she say to him?”
“She said, ‘Do it,’” Marsdon Junior told him. “She ordered my son to kill her, and he complied. I’m sorry, but that’s what happened.”
Lang saw through a haze of red. He was angry. Felt murderous. Knew he was out of control. “You’re all crazy, ass-covering bastards.” His voice was far away. “You don’t give a damn about anything.”
He focused slowly on Claire, who was shaking her head. She looked angry, too, and something else. Scared, maybe. Did she think he was going to hurt her?
Screw ’em.
He strode past them all. Out the front doors, beneath the portico, into the incessant rain, and to his truck, waiting at the far end of the medical building’s parking lot.
Chapter 10
Claire stood on her front deck and let the rain come at her in fits, wetting her cheeks, soaking her raincoat and jeans. It was somewhere after nine P.M. Tomorrow was Friday, and she planned to just limp through it and get ready for the weekend. She expected it to be noneventful. Nothing could be as bad as today.
Dinah had been home w
hen Claire drove up her drive; Claire had seen the welcoming glow of yellow lamplight coming through the slits of her front blinds. She’d parked her car and walked up Dinah’s drive, knocked on her door, and been greeted by Dinah, who wore her caftan and whose house smelled like some kind of musky incense mixed with cinnamon.
Claire had started weeping and Dinah had led her to a cushy chair, gently taken her raincoat, then gone to get a cup of herbal tea that Claire had cradled in her hands while she apologized for her breakdown for the next forty-five minutes.
Dinah brought her a bowl of vegetable soup with an Asian flavor and two pieces of thickly sliced wheat bread. Claire tried to do justice to the food but barely made a dent.
“What happened?” Dinah asked when Claire set the food aside and lay back in the chair, spent.
And it all came out. Stuff Claire would have expected from her patients, but not of herself. The dismal marriage. The miscarriages. The turning away of her colleagues. The shock of Heyward Marsdon’s release. The blame of Melody Stone’s death.
Dinah didn’t say anything. She’d heard some of it before, and she just listened. When Claire finally got to the last scene at the hospital with the Marsdons and Langdon Stone, she made some kind of murmuring sound that penetrated Claire’s purge.
“What?” Claire asked.
“You either deserve a medal or an intervention for putting up with those doctors. Why have you done it?”
“It’s my job.”
“You could have another job.”
“Could I?”
“They’ve made you doubt yourself.” Dinah shook her head. “That’s shameful.”
“Melody’s brother thinks I blame her for her own death.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“You weren’t there.”
“Is he a complete Neanderthal?”
Claire drew a breath and let it out. “No.”
“It was a volatile situation and things were said that shouldn’t have been. It doesn’t change anything.”
Claire disagreed. “I should call him.”
“I wouldn’t do that right away,” Dinah said wryly. “Unless you want more abuse.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“To explain what?” She cocked her head. “That this whole thing was a tragic falling of dominoes that has no real explanation? What would you tell yourself, if you were your patient? Would you recommend calling Langdon Stone?”
“No.”
“Then why do you want to exonerate yourself so badly, when you know in advance it won’t work?”
Now, hours later, Claire thought over her conversation with Dinah and also about her meeting with Heyward Marsdon III and his family, the first since the incident. She hadn’t told Dinah all the ins and outs of that meeting; it was privileged, and even if it weren’t, Claire hadn’t really wanted to discuss it.
After Detective Stone left they regrouped and headed to Side B. They took the south entrance, which did not have a twenty-four-hour guard like the north, but was monitored with security screens by the north side guard during the evenings. Their images were clear on camera, and as soon as Avanti spoke into the microphone, a soft buzzing allowed him to open the door and they all trooped through into an anteroom with more overhead cameras. The second door was buzzed open as well and then they were walking down a corridor the same width and style as those on Side A. Claire knew the general layout of Side B. She just didn’t spend a lot of time there.
The outdoor area, with high chain link fencing and razor wire, was neatly landscaped with low shrubbery and a large cement slab that offered up bolted-down plastic benches. Outdoor privileges were coveted, but this evening the sodium vapor lights barely made a dent in the oppressive rain and crowding cloud cover.
Claire had been in a fog, her brain still processing the scene with Stone. She’d thought it was bad when she’d been thrown to the wolves by the likes of Freeson and Avanti; seeing Langdon Stone’s face full of revulsion in believing she was blaming Melody for goading Heyward…it was enough to make her stomach revolt. There was no explaining what had really happened. No way to put it in perspective without making it seem like she was making excuses for herself.
There were varying levels of incarceration and care on Side B, from the very restrictive and intense, to nearly as open and relaxed as Side A. Nearly, as anyone who ended up at Side B came there for one of two reasons: they were a danger to themselves or a danger to others, or both.
How strictly they were monitored depended a lot on the patient. Most of the inmates on Side B had committed egregious crimes. All were considered mentally unable to stand trial. Some were believed to be candidates for reentering society; others were disaffected lifers, unable to understand the most basic human emotion, intent upon destruction.
Heyward leaned to the less restrictive side. On his meds, he was a model patient. Claire knew she’d built up an aversion to him based on her own experience but had been unwilling to go see him. Now was the time, and at some level, she sensed it was a good thing she was so preoccupied with her anguish over what Langdon Stone thought of her; it kept her from making too much of this first meeting.
They walked past Heyward’s room on their way to Side B’s central meeting area, a much smaller area than Side A’s, as fewer patients and staff were allowed that kind of freedom. Heyward wasn’t in his room, which looked sparse but comfortable. His door was generally locked but, being under less restrictive care, he was allowed out for meals, therapy, and even some closely monitored interaction with other patients. Claire got a quick look inside as part of the tour that Avanti, and Side B’s Dr. Jean Dayton, had coordinated as they continued to the central patient meeting area, a mirror-image location to Side A’s morning room.
Heyward III was seated on a chair at a table, his attention directed through the window to the rain that was snaking in drizzles down the windowpanes and the drenched outdoor area beyond. He didn’t turn as their group moved into the room.
“Heyward,” his father said, trying to put a smile in his voice, though it sounded stiff.
He slowly turned around. He was twenty-eight but with a drawn expression and unfocused eyes that made him look closer to forty. Claire found herself holding her breath and expelled it quietly. Her heart was drumming in her chest. Her reactions were all from expectation, she realized, because seeing him was like opening a dam, letting her built-up resistance wash out in a rush. He was not a scary monster. He was sick. And lost.
His gaze traveled over the group and fell on Claire. “Dr. Norris?” he said with a note of hope.
“How are you doing, Heyward?” Her voice was steady. She told people on a regular basis to face their fears. She hadn’t known hers were so intense, but they were insubstantial. She could almost see them floating away like cottonwood fluff.
“Where’s Melody? She’s okay. Tell me she’s okay.” He half-rose from the chair and Dr. Dayton crossed to him and soothingly reminded him of reality. His eyes beseeching Claire, he sank back down, defeated. Claire went to him on stiff legs and managed to say a few words of comfort about Melody, but clearly all he wanted was to hear she was alive, and Claire couldn’t let him believe that delusion.
Marsdon Senior and Junior took turns saying hello to him, both of them clearly uncomfortable with the surroundings and Heyward himself. Ironically, Claire found herself keeping the conversation going as an intermediary, and eventually they all headed back to Side A.
“He shouldn’t be there,” Marsdon Senior declared, his bushy white eyebrows a drawn line about his fierce blue eyes.
“Their treatment isn’t helping,” Junior said.
“He responded to Dr. Norris,” Avanti pointed out.
Neither Marsdon wanted to hear Claire had any influence on him whatsoever. She was a loose cannon, prone to her own independent thinking. To negate her, Marsdon Senior said, “He became more confused when Dr. Norris arrived.”
“He’s not processing Melody’s death and his part i
n it,” Claire responded. “Even on his meds. He’s a long way from recovery.”
They didn’t want to hear that.
“When are you moving him?” Senior asked Avanti.
By this time they were facing the cameras on the south entrance of Side B, waiting for the doors to open. Avanti heard the buzzer and led them inside and to the opposite door before answering. “By the end of the month.”
“Not good enough!” Senior declared.
“Can you give us a specific day?” Junior asked. It was clear he didn’t care as much when the deed was done. If his father, Heyward’s grandfather, weren’t so adamant, Junior might let Heyward stay on Side B indefinitely.
The family dynamics were a study in power and selfishness. Claire wanted no part of them, but seeing Heyward had gotten to her. She was still convinced he should stay on Side B; his hallucinations weren’t over and they were dangerous to everyone. But she found herself wanting to help him.
“I’ll let you know when it will be as soon as I know,” Avanti said as the door closed to the anteroom behind him and they were safely on Side A. Dr. Radke, the hospital’s administrator, was there to meet them, and Marsdon Senior forgot about them at once and bent Radke’s ear with Junior following along.
Avanti said to Claire, “Having Stone meet the Marsdons was irresponsible.”
“Yes, I planned that to embarrass the hospital.”
She stalked away from him, gathered her personal items, slopped through the rain to her Passat, and drove home, her head swirling equally with thoughts of Heyward III and Detective Langdon Stone.
Now Dinah’s question floated across her mind. Then why do you want to exonerate yourself so badly, when you know in advance it won’t work?
She couldn’t answer that. In the overall scheme of things, Langdon Stone’s opinion shouldn’t matter. He wasn’t unbiased. He wanted to blame someone for Melody’s death. He thought she was using the ultimate cop-out, believing, in so many words, that Claire was saying Melody had asked for it. It was damn frustrating, not being able to explain the truth, but what good would it do her anyway? Closing her eyes, she gritted her teeth and sighed. Why did Stone’s opinion matter so much when she didn’t give a damn what her colleagues felt about her? What was it about him that got to her?