Cast in Stone

by G. M. Ford

  "Psychoactive meds. That's what she went to Hampton for. They're the cutting edge of private psychoactive research."

  "And?" I could hear pages being turned.

  "And they worked. She got her first significant change in prognosis in what—thirteen years? Thorazine alleviated nearly all of her symptoms."

  "Nearly all?"

  "The most recent notation says she suffers occasional psychotic episodes under extreme stress,"

  "So she found her miracle."

  "That remains to be seen. This is all too new. Nobody knows what the long-term effects are going to

  be. There isn't a sufficient sample to tell about long-term side effects or whether, over time, the body builds up a resistance to the drugs, things like that." "So, she's in Longview."

  "Not quite. Let me finish. September eighth of this year, she was transferred again to something called Mountainview Recovery in Issaquah."

  "A little over two months ago."

  "Right."

  “What do you know about Mountainview?"

  "Nothing." I could hear pages turning again. "I've got the state directory here. Chartered in November of seventy-four. Private, which means we're talking about really big bucks now. Used to be privately owned and operated. Changed hands earlier this year. Closed for reorganization until August of ninety-five."

  "At least this clears up one of my loose ends."

  "What's that?" she asked.

  "Well," I said. "I've been trying to figure out how she goes through as much money as she does."

  "She's just trying to get her mama cured."

  "It would sound pretty noble if I didn't know where she was getting the money."

  "Find her, Leo. Before she hurts someone else."

  "I will," I promised.

  27

  I came blinking out of the Mount Baker Tunnel and cruised down the western high-rise onto the new floating bridge just as the sun put in a belated guest appearance. I had to flip the switch on the mirror to keep from being blinded by the slim orange sliver burning low over the Olympics. A stiff southern breeze had punched the water on the right side of the bridge into a series of small, disorganized whitecaps. On the left side, the water was dark and flat.

  I traversed Mercer Island, ran by Factoria, and followed 1-90 out past Issaquah. I drove past the private road twice before I realized it was a driveway. No number. No sign. No mailbox. I thought it was just a turnout across from the white rambler with a big picture window. The overhanging trees absorbed the last remaining light. I nosed the Fiat into the darkness, turned on the headlights, and followed the road up and to the left. Another seventy yards, and then a sharp right. Up and right, then same thing back to the left. The road was a series of switchbacks that zigzagged all the way up the south side of the hill. The little car began to labor up the ever-steeper slopes. I downshifted to first and continued up.

  At about the better part of a mile from the main road, I stopped in front of an ornate metal gate. Two small turnouts, one on each side of the gate, ran parallel to the high metal fence, just enough room for

  a car to back in and then head down the hill. A small white porcelain sign at the left of the gate read MOUNTAINVIEW RECOVERY. To the right of the gate, a white call box was bolted to the other brick column.

  I could hear the slow clicking cadence of a distant sprinkler as it arched back and forth. The dim lights of a large two-story house shone dusky yellow through the trees. I backed the Fiat into the right-hand turnaround, walked back to the gate, and pushed the button on the box.

  A loud set of chimes rang somewhere in the building.

  "Yes?" An accent of some sort.

  Two anodized lanterns on top of the gateposts suddenly buzzed on, throwing a thin circle of white light over the gate area.

  "My name is Waterman. I'd like to see whoever is in charge."

  "You have an appointment?"

  He sounded a bit like Hector. Probably Hispanic.

  "No. But I—"

  "Sorry. Only by appointment."

  With a snap of static, he was gone. I heard the whirring then as a small camera mounted on top of the gate header scanned the area and settled on me. Smiling for the camera, I leaned on the button long enough to make the chimes sound like the circus was in town. Nothing. I respected the process this time with a bigger smile. Still nothing.

  I was debating the wisdom of climbing the fence when they appeared on the other side. Two Hispanic youths, not much more than twenty. Five-eight or so, a hundred fifty pounds max, dressed in white from head to foot.

  "You must go," said the one on the left with the pencil-thin mustache. "Or we call the police."

  I took a business card from my pocket, walked forward, and offered it through the fence. They looked at one another like I was trying to hand them a roadkill rat. When I kept waving it, Lefty stepped forward and plucked it from my fingers. His lips moved as he tried to decipher the card. Visibly frustrated now, he turned to his mate. "Yo lo llevo a la jefa. Quedate aqui y cuidalo."

  Still decoding, Lefty trotted my card off into the gloom. The other guy took a step back away from the gate and began stiffly pacing back and forth like a Beefeater at the Tower of London.

  The click of a single sprinkler was joined in chorus by another. Closer I could hear the thick drops striking the ground. In the localized artificial light, Beefeater was now stalked by his shadow when he marched left and pushed it before him like a wheelbarrow when moving right.

  It was another ten minutes before Lefty returned. He'd found a friend. Either they had a mould somewhere on the grounds where they made these guys, or they were reproducing through cell division. Lefty turned the handle on the back of the gate, pulled it open about three feet, and beckoned me in. "You follow," he said.

  I followed. Down a wide flagstone walk bordered by bricks set on edge, cutting through a well-manicured lawn surrounded by world-class shrubbery. Lefty led the way; the other two brought up the rear.

  It must at one time have been a private home, a neocolonial manse. Maybe thirty rooms when it was new. This was the kind of place where secrets got buried. Where, if you had the cash, you stashed that alcoholic ex-wife, that idiot brother Waldo who liked to wave his pee-pee in public, or old Uncle Frank who just couldn't keep his hands off little boys. As long as you kept paying the freight, Mountainview Recovery would keep them out of your hair and out of the papers.

  We climbed the two steps up to the twelve-panel doors on the front of the building. Using a key attached to his belt, Lefty opened the door in the middle. It swung open silently on oiled hinges. On the way by, I grabbed the edge of the door and tested it with a fingernail. Steel, not wood.

  With the same key, he opened the first door on the right. The room seemed to be part library, part office. The spaces between the windows on the left wall were covered with framed medical degrees and official-looking plaques honoring civic contributions. The right wall held books on built-in floor-to-ceiling shelves. An old-fashioned sliding ladder provided access to the upper reaches.

  Lefty led me to the far end of the room, where an elegant teak desk, a bit too big for Ping-Pong, was flanked by four red leather chairs with brass studs hammered in along the seams.

  "Here," he said, indicating nothing in particular.

  "Yes, we are," I agreed.

  After he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him, I walked over to the windows. I scratched at the windowpane in front of me. Plastic of some sort, about a half inch thick. What I had thought was standard window leadings was instead more stainless steel. It would take a lumberjack a half hour with a splitting maul to hack his way through one of these babies.

  I checked out the books. Mostly ancient decorator stuff, chosen for the color of their bindings rather than for the quality of their content.

  The large oil painting occupying the central position behind the desk was of a woman in her thirties. Medium-length curly brown hair, held back over the ears by a pair of g
old clasps. A pointed chin that seemed to poke out at the viewer. Pale blue eyes, showing white all around, as if in a constant state of surprise. The brass plaque on the table beneath the

  picture read "Medical Administrator—Dr. Lila Dawson."

  I was still admiring the artwork when a voice came from behind.

  "I hope you have a good reason for disturbing our patients, Mr.—" She checked my card. "Waterman." She said it slowly. She made it sound like a silly name. Some vagrant designation, ignominiously bestowed on the substantially less fortunate.

  The painter had removed her rough edges. In the flesh, she was older, thinner, and much more intense. Her heavily veined hands held my card as she scanned it through her black half-glasses.

  "My apologies," I offered. Without being asked, I sat in the red chair to the right of the desk. She walked around me and sat behind the desk, placing my card in the exact center of the blotter, meticulously squaring it up to the edges.

  "Anyone can have cards printed," she said when she was satisfied.

  "Anyone can have their portrait painted."

  Lila Dawson donned her glasses, sat back in her chair, and looked me over like a lunch menu.

  "I don't think I like you," she said.

  "That's not very sensitive. You keep that up, you're gonna hurt my feelings. Then I'll need rehabilitation."

  She removed her glasses now, allowing them to dangle from the gold chain around her neck.

  "Because I am responsible for the well-being of so many, you'll excuse me if I have little talent for levity, Mr. Waterman."

  "You're doing just fine," I assured her.

  The eyes opened even further.

  "You find disturbing the solitude of seriously ill patients to be a laughing matter?"

  "Certainly not," I assured her. "I rang the bell. That's the way it's done in polite society, isn't it?"

  "You should have called ahead for an appointment."

  "Would I have gotten one?" A thin smile.

  "I just have a few simple questions about one of your patients."

  She treated me to a stare that was supposed to melt me into a slobbering mass of protoplasm. "All information concerning my patients is strictly confidential."

  "Claire Hasu is one of your patients. Is that correct?"

  She opened the center drawer on her desk and poked around inside.

  "I am not at liberty to share that with you. Now if that will be all—" She let it hang.

  "Not even close," I said. "I have no desire to breach any kind of confidentiality. I just—"

  The door hissed behind me. Huey, Dewey, and Louie stepped into the room, standing with their backs to the door. I turned back to Dr. Dawson.

  "I only want to know—"

  She stood up. "These unfortunate "souls have enough problems without the likes of you. Can you imagine the agony that their families go through? Can you imagine a life without control of your senses or even your most elemental bodily functions? Can you?" Her voice rose. "Can you imagine yourself completely in the hands of others? When even your most basic need is at the whim of someone else? Can you? Would you like that, Mr. Water . .. man? Would that give you pleasure?"

  When I didn't answer she spoke over my shoulder. "Mr. Waterman will be leaving."

  I rose from the chair. "Mr. Waterman will be back," I said. "With a state inspector and a couple of policemen. Thanks for your time."

  She stood to face me, her face suddenly quivering as if she were getting an electric shock.

  Again she spoke over my shoulder. "Tienes lista las medicina?"

  I didn't hear an answer, but I could feel them moving behind me. I stood up and stepped to the desk. I lifted a decorative crystal sphere from its wooden base on the desk and palmed it like a softball. Lefty was coming down the center rug, his right hand cupped at his side. Dewey and Louie were carrying out a flanking movement along the walls.

  "I'm leaving, Doctor," I said to her. "No need for—"

  "Agarallo!" she cried.

  I was a step slow. The sphere caught Lefty square in the forehead, but not before he pierced my left shoulder with whatever he'd been hiding. He fell at my feet. I reached down and jerked at the chain that held his key, tearing a belt loop free, coming away with it. He groaned and rolled over onto his face. Dewey and Louie feinted at me but kept their distance.

  Brandishing the sphere, I began to back toward the door. I checked over my shoulder for reinforcements. A syringe, plunger down, was imbedded in my shoulder. I pawed at it with my free hand, knocking it to the floor.

  The doctor stayed put; her face was lopsided now, without symmetry. "No. No, no," she ordered. "El no llega legos. La medicina lo calma."

  They shadowed me up the room but made no move to stop me as I fumbled the key into the lock and backed out the door. As I kicked the door shut, my right arm was suddenly pinned to my side by a face I couldn't keep still. I reached around the face, grabbed the back of the neck, and drove my

  forehead hard into the center of the swiri. I heard the crack and scrape of bone. The grasp loosened. I brought the sphere up from my shoetops. It caught him under the chin to the crushed-rock sound of teeth crushing teeth. The apparition disappeared. I swung in a circle, looking for new challengers. Bad move.

  My eyes failed to keep up with my head. The disparity upset my equilibrium; I went to one knee. Whatever Lefty had injected into my shoulder was beginning to take effect. I weaved out the front door, missed the first step, and sprawled out onto the flagstones. Even through the injection, I could feel the searing pain in my left elbow.

  I started forward but inadvertently veered left around the main building as if driven by the wind. My legs felt heavy and useless like I was running uphill in deep sand. I kept leaning left and running until I came to the fence on the south side of the building. Like the windows, the fence was at once decorative and formidable. Eight feet tall, wrought-iron spikes with fancy spearpoints on top. It would take an agile and determined patient to climb out into the woods.

  The world was animated and quivering with life. Each leaf, each blade of grass, was alive and moving independently of its brethren as if undulating to some underlying cosmic rhythm. It was all I could do not to stand and gawk in wonder. I hadn't felt this good since seventy-nine. I moved forward along the fence, working toward my car, using my hands to maintain my balance, searching in braille for an opening in the fence.

  I could hear voices to my right. Moving closer. My path along the fence line was blocked by a massive rhododendron. Beams of light bobbed and crisscrossed over the lawn area. I squatted next to the bush, lost my balance, and sat heavily. The lights moved closer.

  I crawled in between the rhodie and the fence, separated from the yard by the massive twisted trunk of the bush. The legs of two white-clad orderlies danced by the small opening in the roots. I wiggled my body down into the soft loam. Years of beauty bark had lined the flower bed with a soft, spongelike carpet. My hand felt the bottom of one of the fence spikes. Instinctively, I began to dig, moving the bark up and forward, piling the soft material around the roots of the shrub, creating an earthwork to further shield me from the yard.

  The lights and the legs came by again, this time lingering on my hiding place. I peeked through the roots. Dewey and Louie. With Lefty and the other guy out of commission, they seemed to be all that was left.

  "Que es eso ayi?"

  "Donde?"

  The lights swept back and forth, centering on my hidey-hole. I ducked my head and waited to be found. Inexplicably, the whole scene suddenly seemed wildly amusing. I had to push my face into the ground to avoid laughing out loud.

  A sudden clamor arose from the other end of the grounds. I could hear high-pitched yelling, but couldn't make out the words. The legs thundered off a run, their four-legged vibrations fast fading.

  Sputtering, I rose to my knees, clearing my eyes and spitting bark, digging now like a dog for a bone, using both hands to send a rooster tail of dirt out behin
d me. Within two minutes, I had hollowed out a space large enough for me to wiggle out under the fence.

  Once out, I giggled my way around the perimeter, bouncing off trees, falling twice, until I was at the back of the Fiat. The main gate was still closed. Back

  inside the fence, several shadows were moving my way on foot. I ran, slow motion, to the Fiat, threw open the door, and climbed in. I felt around the ignition. No keys. The wheel was locked. Thank God I'd used The Club. I began to laugh hysterically. Tears ran down my cheeks as I wrenched the wheel back and forth in a frenzy. On the fifth try, the pin that locked the steering wheel snapped. The shadows were getting shorter. There were three of them. I counted again. Three.

  I fell out the door, climbed to my feet, and began to push the little car forward. As it reached the slope, it gained momentum, rolling smoothly, nearly leaving me behind as it moved down the hill. At the last moment, I crawled inside and aimed the little car at the road in the middle.

  Through the glare, the gate was sliding to the right. There were four now. The doctor, Dewey, and Louie. And another who stood beside the gate, arm pointed accusingly in my direction. I was studying the face when I missed the first switchback. I took the scenic route across the dogleg, plowing over a couple of scrub oaks, pulverizing a rotted stump, and then popping out the other side onto the pavement again.

  I wrenched the wheel hard to the left and tried to focus my fading vision by using only one eye. I found the brake in time to baby it around the next corner, and the next. I gave up the brakes. The little car fishtailed wildly. I was still fighting the wheel when I broke from the woods onto the final straight stretch of the driveway, nearly blind now. Rolling fast toward the distant yellow light. I floored the brakes four times before I realized I was pumping the clutch. The Fiat was moving fast, running smooth like a sled. It was momentarily airborne as it left the driveway and bounced over the berm of the county road. The yellow light down the hill drew closer. A smaller blue light moved in the center of the field of yellow. I tried for the brakes again, missed again, and began to laugh. I aimed for the blue.