Prodigy

by Charles Atkins

  The dark-haired man smiled at her and let her pass. As he did, Justine felt something sharp jab into her shoulder. She turned back to see what it was, and saw that the orderly had stabbed her with a syringe. He smiled as she opened her mouth to scream. A crackling plastic-coated pillow clamped onto her face, and she struggled for air, but she was so tired, and maybe this was all part of the dream. She felt a pair of strong arms wrap around her waist. She pictured Don and warm turquoise waters filled with kaleidoscope fish. She moaned a final time, and felt nothing as Jimmy Martin gently arranged her inside the laundry cart, covered her over with linens and then wheeled her back to the elevator.

  He removed the tape and out-of-order sign, placed them on top of the cart and pushed the button for the service elevator. Inside his head, Father clamored to get out. No, he thought, Father was dead, and Jimmy’s own life was about to start. The elevator opened and he pushed his cargo inside. His emotions bubbled with an almost unbearable anticipation, and with a fear that he struggled to quell. Nothing would go wrong, not this time. He glanced up nervously as the elevator descended. It stopped on the fifth floor and a security guard entered.

  Jimmy’s pulse accelerated as the dark-skinned man greeted him. “Hell of a night,” he said, pressing the button for the lobby level.

  Jimmy mumbled his agreement, wondering if this was another test. He felt inside his pocket for the syringe, as his eyes fell on a strand of Justine Conyor’s auburn hair visible from beneath a sheet. He could hardly breathe, as Father whispered, “They’ll send you back Jimbo.”

  He startled when the elevator stopped, and looked up at the lit letter “L.”

  “Have a good one,” the guard said, getting out.

  “You too,” Jimmy answered, and held his breath until the doors closed.

  He pushed the cart out into the basement, having earlier mapped out his route to the hospital’s delivery bays. Getting the side door open, he glanced up at a security camera trained on the spot-lit garage style openings. Why hadn’t he seen those before?

  A dark van backed toward him. He jumped to the ground, and hurriedly opened the doors, then climbing the half set of stairs he reached into the laundry cart, and careful to keep his prize covered, loaded her into the van.

  “I’ll stay in back,” he said, closing the doors behind.

  “Anyone see you?” Ellen, her hair covered in a wig like her brother’s and wearing tinted glasses, asked from the driver’s seat.

  “No,” he said, not wanting to mention either the guard or the cameras.

  “Good,” and just like when they were children, Hansel and Gretel continued on their way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Needing to clear her head, to not think that tomorrow was Ralph’s funeral, Barrett, dressed for jogging, was heading out the door. The phone rang. It was seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, and even that ordinary sound sent her pulse racing, who the hell could it be? Playing it safe, she checked the caller ID and picked up.

  “Barrett?” her mother’s anxious voice greeted her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you seen Justine?”

  “No, why? What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said. “I just got a call from her chief resident wanting to know if I’d heard from her. He said she didn’t show up for morning report.”

  “Slow down, Mom. She was on call last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s not in the hospital this morning?” Barrett asked, not yet understanding.

  “No, he said that she had an admission around midnight, and that someone remembered her getting paged at two or three in the morning, and that’s the last anyone saw her.”

  “You called her apartment?”

  “She didn’t answer, I’m there right now; she hasn’t been home. This isn’t like her, Barrett. She wouldn’t just leave the hospital.”

  “No,” Barrett agreed, shunting away the nightmare stories of what can happen to a young female house officer late at night in an inner-city hospital. “What was the name of the resident that called you?” she asked, grabbing pencil and paper.

  “It was something, Fitzgerald … where could she be?”

  “I don’t know, did he say anything else?”

  “No …” Ruth Conyors started to cry. “He said that she was a wonderful resident, the best he’d ever had.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Mom,” Barrett said, not at all convinced of that. “Have they called the cops?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. He said he wanted to check around first and see if maybe she’d gone home sick in the middle of the night. But she would have told someone. She wouldn’t just walk out.”

  “Mom, I’m going to hang up and call back the resident. If they haven’t found her and she’s not in her apartment, I’ll call the police. I’ll let you know whatever I find out.”

  “Barrett, I’m so scared.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Mom. We’ll find her.”

  Barrett hung up and immediately called the hospital where she had done her internship years earlier. She glanced at the clock as the operator paged Dr. Fitzgerald. It was just after seven and he’d be finishing rounds and morning report, getting set to go home. She waited, and she prayed that Justine had fallen asleep in the wrong call room or had gotten tied up with some emergency room fiasco and lost track of time. Or maybe the battery had run down in her pager and …

  “Hello?” a man’s deep voice picked up.

  “Hi, is this Dr. Fitzgerald?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Barrett Conyors, I’m Justine Conyors’ sister.”

  “Have you seen her?” his voice hopeful.

  Despair welled; he didn’t know where she was, they hadn’t found her. “No,” she said.

  “Your mother said that she was going to check her apartment.”

  “She did; Justine hasn’t been there. And even if she’d left the hospital, she would have told somebody.”

  “I know,” he said. “This seems unreal. She performed an emergency appendectomy last night.”

  “When was that?”

  “We finished around nine. She told me she was going to the on-call room, and the other residents said she was on the top bunk. Somebody thought she got paged a few hours later, and that’s the last anyone saw her. We always have breakfast as a team in the morning before report and rounds.”

  “When would that have been?”

  “Five-thirty.”

  “And you paged her?”

  “Not right away. I figured she could have another half-hour’s sleep if she wanted.”

  “So about six?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want her to miss morning report. Harrison doesn’t forgive things like that.”

  “And then what?”

  “She didn’t answer her page, or call back, or show up. So we went into morning report and Harrison immediately saw that she wasn’t there. For God’s sake, she’s about to be the first woman ever to make chief surgical resident and she’s not at morning report … it didn’t sit well. So I paged her again, and I started to get worried. And the other resident said that she wasn’t in the on-call room when she came down and that she thought Justine had gotten an admission in the middle of the night. Only, we hadn’t gotten any admissions in the middle of the night. And right around that time Harrison sent the resident back to the on-call suite and down to the emergency room, and he called hospital security. I tried her apartment and your mom and …”

  “Did anyone see anything?” Barrett asked.

  “Security is sweeping the hospital and the grounds. I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Have the cops been called?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You need to,” Barrett said. “I’m going to check out something else.”

  “Where she might be?”

  Barrett pictured Jimmy’s townhouse and the horrific ramblings of their last session, “I hope not.” She gave h
im her pager and cell phone numbers and hung up.

  She wiped back tears—she needed to focus. She glanced at her watch, it was just seven. It was hard to think. All she could see was Justine and the knowledge that something bad had happened, that someone had done something—was doing something—to her Justine. And the other image that kept flashing was Jimmy’s face.

  She dug her knapsack out of the closet and threw her pager, wallet, and cell phone inside. She considered changing out of her sweats, but somehow her all-black jogging outfit seemed right for the nightmare she was in.

  ___

  “Where are you, Hobbs?” Barrett pleaded silently as the precinct’s desk clerk informed her that he wasn’t on duty. She stood on the corner of Park Avenue South and 21st Street, holding her cell phone and looking east into a partial view of Gramercy Park. The tall trees, gas lamps, and belle époque mansions and hotels seemed out of place in this bustling, horn-honking, exhaust-spewing heart of Manhattan.

  “I could put you into his voice mail?” the clerk offered.

  “There’s no way you could page him?” Barrett asked, winded from her cross-town dash. She’d already tried his apartment, but had been met by another answering machine. He was probably out with his daughters doing some wonderful early Saturday morning, divorced-father thing.

  “I can try.”

  “Please do” and Barrett gave her cell number. “Let me leave a message on his machine, as well.”

  “One moment.”

  The phone rang and then she heard his voice. Her spirits lifted briefly, perhaps he was in after all—he wasn’t, it was just a recording.

  “Ed,” she began after the beep, “it’s Barrett.” Her words tumbled fast, “Justine is missing from the hospital. I’ve had them call the police, but you and I both know that a less-than-twenty-four-hour missing person report doesn’t get jack. This is not like her and I’d bet my life Jimmy knows something. That’s where I am now. I have both my cell and beeper, as soon as you get this call me.”

  She hung up and stared down 21st Street. From where she was, she couldn’t see Jimmy’s house, so she walked past the Calvary Church, just to the point where, through the park’s lush greenery, she could glimpse the elaborate ironwork front of the Martin mansion.

  What was he doing now? she wondered. What if she was wrong, what if none of this was connected to Jimmy? What if they’d already found Justine, and she’d just fallen asleep in the doctor’s lounge or a patient’s room? It was still early. It could happen. And how could Jimmy have anything to do with her sister? He couldn’t leave … but that’s not his way, she heard the Jimmy Martin tag line in her head, “I never touched her.” But it was clear that someone else … others … could do lots of things for him, without his ever leaving his velvet cage. But maybe she was wrong. What if he did have a way to get out? With his kind of money, finding a way to slip off his bracelet without detection might not be that hard. As the idea percolated, she felt sure that was it. But then, how would he get by the neighbors? In rarified old Gramercy Park, there’d be enough neighbors who’d know his story. They’d know Jimmy and notice his coming and going—or anyone else entering the Martin mansion. He wouldn’t risk it. She backed away and jogged in the opposite direction. She turned south on the avenue, bypassing Gramercy and then turned east on 19th Street.

  She’d never been in the kitchen, but Hobbs had told her about the garden that ran out back. It had to end somewhere, what was on the other side? She crossed to the south side of 19th and looking in the uptown direction she jogged down the block trying to eyeball which building would be flush in-line with the mansion. Even early on a Saturday, 19th Street was active. A pair of waiters carrying clean white shirts hurried past her, as an after-hours club on Irving Place dislodged its mascara-smeared patrons into the bright spring sunlight. An impromptu parade of cabs zeroed in on the potential customers and took them off to their scattered beds in groupings of one, two, or more. Yet for all of the activity, it was anonymous. None would recognize who might be standing next to them, a perfect venue for Jimmy if he were stepping out.

  Barrett walked up the stoop of an apartment building and peered over the rooftops of the opposing structures. Craning her neck she caught a glimpse of Jimmy’s roof—another potential source of egress. How difficult would it be for him to go up to the roof and then come down and out through some other building?

  Mentally she drew a straight line between Jimmy’s roof and the matching building on the north side of 19th Street. The connection was suddenly obvious. There, between two metal-gated storefronts was a two-story carriage house covered in graffiti and posters, but under those she glimpsed the same weathered brownstone as the Martin mansion. She crossed the street and approached the building with its three bay doors and adjoining entryway three steps below the sidewalk.

  “Isn’t that perfect?” she muttered, walking down the steps, and noticing how the shadows surrounded her. The door had been outfitted with a fish-eye peephole and above her were positioned small cameras trained in either direction of the street. “Clever boy.” It was clear that the arrangement allowed whoever was behind the door to get a panoramic view of the street.

  Wishing that she’d worn gloves, she tried to turn the tarnished brass door knob. It was securely locked, and unlike her inadequate apartment security, Jimmy—or whoever—had installed two unpickable Medeco cylinders. As she took her hand back, she felt a sticky resistance. She tapped her forefinger against the brass, and then rubbed her thumb against it. She looked at her fingers, and brought them to her nose. There were barely visible traces of a tacky chalk-white powder … resin … cello resin from his bow.

  She thought about again calling Hobbs, but realized that either he’d get her messages or he wouldn’t. She was alone. Justine needed her, and she had to do something.

  She went back up to the sidewalk; it was eight o’clock. What occurred to her was risky, but she saw no choice. She walked back toward Irving Place and past the row of yellow cabs and tweaked-out revelers wearing club-kid black and clutching bottles of designer water used to rehydrate from the effects of designer drugs.

  She turned onto Gramercy South and walked up the front steps of Jimmy’s townhouse. She rang the bell and waited. Seconds passed into a minute; she pressed it again, and heard it resonate inside the cavernous foyer. She rang a third time. Stepping back, she stared up the front of the six-story mansion, peering through the openings in the lacy ironwork.

  “Interesting,” she pulled off her knapsack, looked up Jimmy’s number in her Palm Pilot, and dialed. She waited, letting the phone ring. No answering machine cut in. After all, why would he need one? He wasn’t going anywhere. But then, why wasn’t he picking up? She let it ring for several minutes, then put her ear to the thick oak door to see if she could hear it coming from inside; she could.

  She hung up and called the review board’s twenty-four-hour hotline. Maybe Jimmy was on a scheduled outing.

  She quickly introduced herself and asked if they could check to see where her patient was.

  “At home,” the woman told her.

  “I’m at his home,” Barrett informed her. “I’ve rung the bell three times and let the phone go for a good five minutes.”

  “I’m looking at his bracelet log,” the woman told her. “He hasn’t left his geographic zone in weeks. Are you sure you had the right number when you called?”

  “Look,” Barrett said tersely, “we have one of two possibilities here, either Jimmy Martin is AWOL and has figured out a way to deactivate his bracelet, or he’s unable to get to his door or his phone—either way I want you to get the supervisor on call and have them page me now. And while you’re doing that, I need an outreach team with cops, because if he’s not in there, we’ve got a problem.”

  Barrett hung up, and pressed Jimmy’s buzzer again. She stabbed it repeatedly with her forefinger. Hope surged through the fear; she was going to get him.

  Her cell phone chirped to life. Barrett flip
ped it open and pulled out the antenna.

  A familiar Boston-accent voice spoke; it was Anton and he sounded pissed. “I just got off the line with the monitoring center. They said you called and were saying something about Jimmy Martin going AWOL.”

  “I’m at his house right now, Anton. He’s not answering the door or picking up the phone.”

  “What are you doing there? It’s not even eight o’clock. This could be construed as harassment.”

  “Really?” she said. “I find your response interesting. Anton. If this was anyone other than Jimmy Martin, you wouldn’t be giving me this crap.”

  “Don’t push me, Barrett. It’s clear that you’ve lost your perspective with this case. On Monday morning you and I are going to have a talk and transfer his care to someone else.”

  “He wouldn’t like that,” she said.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Look Anton, if anyone’s ass is going in a sling it’s yours. You neglected to tell me that Jimmy asked for me by name. This wasn’t some throw-Barrett-a-bone favor. And you know what? I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Stay out of my way,” she warned. “And do whatever you have to do to get a Croton bed ready for him, because when I get through that door, either he’s sick and dying, or else he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be. And swear to God—if he is—he’ll be back in Croton before nightfall.”

  “Don’t do this. Barrett.”

  “Goodbye, Anton.” And she hung up.

  Ten minutes later a team of case managers from the forensic evaluation center and a patrol car—with lights, no siren—appeared at the Martin residence. Barrett rang the buzzer as they approached.

  “That’s really strange,” the young Latino case manager commented. “Jimmy doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “You know him?” Barrett asked.

  “I’m Hector. Most of the time I’m the one who brings him his meds.” He smiled sheepishly, “And his coffee.”