by J. A. Kerley
“Go back to the injection,” I said.
Gershwin retracked the scene. I watched a length of arm enter the frame, broad hands guide the syringe into muscle, press the plunger. The hands caressed the legs and the screen again went black.
“What don’t you see, Zigs?” I asked, pointing at arms bare to the round biceps.
“Tats. Scott saw Gemini symbols tattooed on Donnie’s arms.”
“Did they go somewhere?” I wondered aloud. “Or were they never there?”
54
Patrick sat in the Brass Key, angry with himself. He should have stayed with Billy’s other friends gathered at D’Artagnan’s, helping console them, deal with the horror, the loss, but the grief turned into too many people having too much to drink, ending in waves of tears and maudlin excesses.
He’d needed somewhere quiet, but not his home, wall to wall memories of Billy: dancing in front of the stereo, primping in one of the mirrors, pacing the floor and exhorting Patrick to hurry up. Billy was always in a hurry to get somewhere, and once there, in a hurry to get somewhere else.
The never-ending quest for fun.
Patrick rarely visited the Brass Key and only when seated did he realize the cool and shadowy bar was three blocks from the hospital, like he needed distance, but not that much. Patrick’s phone rang. He checked the name, winced. Another of Billy’s friends wanting to commiserate. He silenced the phone – he’d check in tomorrow, when people sobered up and regained composure.
He rarely drank liquor, but had ordered Amaretto and soda. He raised his hand to order a second when he heard a familiar voice at his back.
“L-let me take care of it. I owe you one, Patrick.”
Patrick turned to see Derek Scott, his former patient. “What a surprise to see you, Derek. You don’t need to do that.”
“I owe y-you for all the care.”
“What brings you here?” Patrick asked.
“It’s one of my f-favorite places. Q-quiet. I l-like to sit and watch TV. How about you?”
“Same reasons. Plus it’s close to the hospital.”
“You looked s-sad when I came in. I almost tuh-turned around.”
To tell the truth would invite compassion, perhaps sympathy. All Patrick wanted was quiet. “A, uh, patient of mine passed away. It’s never easy.”
“I’m s-sorry,” Scott said. “I’ll leave you to y-your thoughts.”
“No, it’s fine, Derek. I’m just having a quick one. Gotta work tomorrow.” He nodded to the stool beside him. “Join me, please.”
Scott was a nice guy, if a bit self-deprecating, the touch of stammer, perhaps. Maybe it would be better to have someone to talk to, give him a few minutes from his thoughts of Billy.
Scott ordered an amaretto for White, a light beer for himself. The drinks arrived and the vested barkeep moved to the end of the bar. Scott sat and they talked, jobs, mostly. Scott was a veterinarian’s assistant and told amusing tales: the dyspeptic burro, the racehorse that went faster after drinking rum, the cow that grazed on chives and gave onion-flavored milk. Patrick talked of his studies and upcoming exam. Twenty minutes passed and Patrick ordered a round, then stood.
“I gotta hit the head, Derek. Watch my drink and phone, would you? Not that they’re in much danger here.”
Scott turned to see a table of business types huddled in conversation, the barkeep watching a muted boxing match.
“You bet I will, Patrick.”
Patrick returned a minute later, the businessmen leaving in a single file. They seemed to signal his own time to leave. He downed his drink and bid Scott good night, thanking him for his company.
The good-hearted Scott flicked a wave. “Take care, Patrick. Hope to see you soon.”
Patrick climbed into his Honda compact and belched, tapping his stomach with his hand, indigestion, the stress of the day. Derek Scott been a decent addition, though. Maybe Scott had been destined to be at the bar to keep Patrick from tumbling too deeply into his sorrow.
Patrick rented a bungalow west of downtown, a crummy place overall, but at least he didn’t share walls with others. When he made the jump to Nurse Practitioner he could look into buying his own home. He pulled into the drive and unlocked the rickety front door. The house to the left was vacant, the one to the right blared with guitars and trumpets, the renter a Mariachi who learned new tunes by cranking up the volume and sitting in front of the speakers.
Patrick passed through the living room – avoiding the book-laden desk in the small living area, guilt – and went to his bedroom. When he removed his shirt, his hands felt clumsy, inept. Jeez, did I drink that much? Three amarettos over ninety minutes? His guts started cramping and he headed for the bathroom, but his knees collapsed, the floor seeming to rise into his face. He pushed himself to standing and wobbled into the hall.
What the hell is happening?
A knocking at the door. Patrick stumbled into the living room and fell down again. He tried to yell Who’s there? but his words hardened in his throat and all he could do was croak. A coal-black iguana skittered across the floor and exploded into musical notes. A second iguana followed. How did iguanas …
Hallucinations, Patrick realized, fighting to keep focused. I’ve been poisoned.
The knocking again. Patrick grabbed for his phone, his fingers almost useless. A third black iguana raced across the carpet and exploded.
“Cm un,” he rasped, staring at the dead screen.
Thunder at the door and Derek Scott appeared in the room. He was green and smiling and holding something bright in his fingertips. His voice wavered up and down like someone was playing with his volume.
“I REMOVED the BATTERY from YOUR phone, PATRICK. How WAS your COCKTAIL, buddy?”
Patrick tried to kick himself backward across the floor, but Scott crossed the distance in an eyeblink, a pry-bar in his hand. The bar flashed and Patrick’s head exploded into stars and his back slammed the floor.
A hand grabbed his collar, trying to turn him over. Patrick pulled the hand to his mouth and bit. A scream and the hand wrenched away, Patrick tasting blood. Without knowing how, he was standing and running the short hall to his bedroom, bouncing from the walls like a drunk. He shut the door, pushing the lock with his knuckle.
Footsteps. A voice outside the door.
“COME on, BITCH,” Scott said. “IT’S gonna HAPPEN.”
Nothing. Then a slam from the door. The door cracked at the upper hinge. A second slam … the crack widened almost the length of the cheap door. A dozen glittering purple worms emerged from the split and began flying around the room.
Patrick squeezed his eyes shut. His guts screamed with pain and his heart jackhammered in his ears. Purple worms buzzed past his eyes. But there something he was supposed to know … something he had done.
“WHAT IS IT?” he screamed to himself, the words making spittle on his chin.
He heard his closet door open at his back. Patrick spun to see Detective Ryder stepping from between hanging clothes. Ryder pointed to the dresser and his voice made the sound of a siren.
Patrick yanked his bedside drawer open and saw the syringe stolen from Billy’s room. Pulling the plastic cap from the needle, he looked at Detective Ryder for approval, finding only a wisp of blue smoke spiraling in the air. Patrick sunk the needle into his thigh and threw the syringe aside. The shattered door fell from its hinges and a gigantic scorpion entered the room.
The monster’s immense claws lifted Patrick into the air and pinned him to the wall as black, stalk-mounted eyes inspected him from all directions. The scorpion’s stinger floated above Patrick’s head, a curved and dripping dagger. The creature’s mouth was a wet slit beneath the swirling eyes, pursing open and shut and dripping sour fluids. When Patrick screamed, he heard nothing but the voice from the scorpion’s reeking mouth.
It said, “Do you want to see something really funny?”
A thousand years passed. Patrick opened his eyes. He was naked and bobbing in a gray ocean, the looming sk
y made of wood, and the stars were too bright to view.
“Hey, Patty boy,” a bright and familiar voice said, so loud it seemed inside his head. “How about you put on your swim suit? We’re going to Miami Beach tonight.”
Patrick spun his head to see Billy at the end of the room. “Billy, help me,” Patrick screamed. The room answered with a soft echo: “Bu-uh h’me.” Billy smiled, pirouetted, and his face disappeared, replaced by quivering tendons.
He’s not real, Patrick thought, swallowing his horror. Don’t get lost in the hallucinations. Stay calm and think. First, check your systems …
Patrick looked down and saw his wrists crossing his belly and bound by handcuffs. His legs felt heavy, but mobile. He closed his eyes and scanned for his heart rate: elevated, one-fifteen, one-twenty. BP had to be high as well. Pain radiated through his abdomen and his head throbbed. Dry mouth. Occasional muscle spasms, currently minor. Probable pupillary dilation.
How much had the stolen mixture helped? A blunting effect hopefully, on both the robinia and datura. The dieffenbachia had to wear off. The other victims had reported visions so potent it was all they could remember. Patrick had hallucinations, but if he kept telling himself they weren’t real, he might stay in control. There was also limited muscular function.
The floor began to ripple like a waterbed and he made himself ignore it, not real. He closed his eyes and focused. The madman was Derek Scott. It had to be. But all the photos, all the descriptions … they were someone else. Were there two madmen? The Donnie one and Derek Scott?
He heard the sound of a door opening. Derek Scott entered the room. Except for a slight glow he didn’t look like a hallucination. What am I supposed to look like to him? Patrick asked himself. How should I act to keep the monster from knowing I’m still in me, at least for now?
Patrick stared into the air as if seeing a terrible vision. He choked out a scream and began knocking the back of his head on the floor … easy, not too hard. Scott looked pleased and approached, slipping from his clothes as he went. You will be raped, Patrick told himself, a flashing glance seeing Scott kneeling beside him, naked and aroused and twisting the cap from a tube of lubricant.
If you fight, Patrick’s mind said, he’ll administer more poison. You can’t fight.
He didn’t.
55
I overnighted at the Palace, which was getting tiresome. At home I looked out over water; the vista here was steel and brick and glass, nice for a couple days, but I needed deck time beside the cove, Mix-up cleaving the water like a furry, bobbing barge. But that could only happen when Donnie Ocampo was behind bars or in the ground. After yesterday’s events at the shop, I would have been delighted to shovel dirt over the monster.
I slept all the way to seven a.m. before the phone rang, Vivian. “I’m sorry to wake you, Carson. I’m at the hospital. I think there may be a problem … I’m not sure.”
My heart dropped. “Another victim?”
“No. It’s, well … nothing, maybe.”
I said I was on my way, arriving at the hospital twenty minutes later. Morningstar was standing by Marjorie, the Rubenesque nurse.
“It’s Patrick White,” the nurse said, her hands twisting in one another. “He didn’t come in for work this morning. I thought maybe it was the emotional toll of his friend, but he has a major exam today. It’s not like Patrick.”
Patrick had told me of his aspirations and I knew that even with the death of Billy Prestwick, White would follow through on the exam.
“I’m worried,” Marjorie said. “This is the first time he’s ever—”
“Give me his address.”
I met Gershwin at White’s rental house, a shabby little bungalow in a neighborhood of the same. I saw a small red Honda in the drive, his. Gershwin got to the front door first.
“Not good,” was all he said.
The door had been opened inward by force, wood shards littering the carpet. A desk by the front window held open books and pads, like he’d been there minutes ago. I saw a dark stain on the rug and leaned low to realize my worst suspicions: blood. I heard Gershwin call from a hall.
“The bedroom door, Jefé. It’s busted down, too.”
After issuing the BOLO, we had spent two hours talking to White’s friends and colleagues, but just because I knew the victim made me no less impotent in finding Donnie Ocampo. We returned to the department where I was lying on my couch with my hands over my eyes, empty. Gershwin was on the floor, case files spread around him like fall leaves. We both had nothing left.
Gershwin’s desk phone rang. He jogged to his office and I heard mumbled conversation. He was back in a minute.
I kept my hand over my eyes. “And?”
“You wanted me to query medical facilities in country locales about possible plant-related poisonings. That was Dr Clark in Hardee County. Says he saw an incident a couple years back. Robinia. Black locust.”
Morningstar had said black locust poisoning in humans was rare. I sat up, feeling a tingle in my spine.
“How far is Hardee?”
“Three-hour drive. There’s no direct route.”
“Not by car.”
One of the perks of being in the law-enforcement elite was fingersnap chopper service. Forty-five minutes later we were a half-mile above western Okeechobee and following Highway 27 until we veered to a locale just below Placid Lakes. It was farm country, dotted with cattle and horses and citrus groves.
We landed in the lot of a single-story brick clinic, TriCounty Medical Services. Dr Clark was in his late sixties, medium height and weight, his thinning gray hair counterbalanced by a bristle-brush mustache. Clark took us through a waiting room jammed with sad-looking people of all shapes, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds, leading to an office crammed with files. He sat atop the small desk, Gershwin and I in folding chairs.
“It was maybe three years ago,” Clark said, gnawing the arm of his reading glasses. “A man presented at my clinic, too sick to walk. He was brought in by a friend, himself barely able to stand. They said a third man was back at their camp, unconscious.”
“Camp?”
“They were migrants, cutting brush, repairing fences. We dispatched an ambulance and discovered a dead male, age forty-three. When the body was autopsied, the pathologist suspected a toxic substance, and sent tissue to the FBI lab.”
“What about the others?”
“I ran activated charcoal through them and kept them hydrated and nourished until they recovered. The Sheriff found no foul play and it was assumed they’d been in contact with either a natural toxin or man-made one, like a pesticide. Six weeks later the FBI results indicated robinia. I’ve seen equine and bovine black locust poisoning, but I grew up on a farm. Never saw it in humans.”
“The surviving workers have any idea how it got in their systems?”
“They had finished their suppers a while before and started vomiting and having trouble standing.”
“Where can I get in touch with them?”
He shook his head. “They were indocumentados, Detective. Illegals. They’re somewhere between Chihuahua and Seattle.”
Long gone. “You know most people around here, Doc?” I said.
“Been here twenty-two years. I’ve seen or treated about everyone in the county.”
I pulled my increasingly worn sheet of photos and held it up. “How about this guy? Ever see him?”
Clark slipped on the glasses. “Looks like a lot of folks. But no, doesn’t ring a bell.”
Out of politeness I didn’t kick anything. “Any other crimes of note around that time?” I asked.
Clark gnawed the glasses for a few seconds. “Nope … unless you want to include a disappearance: José Abaca, low-level thief, con artist, pimp, dope dealer, whatever made fast money. No one misses him.”
A nurse opened the door and wanted Clark to take a look at something. He said he’d be right back. I turned to Gershwin. “You thinking what I’m thinking, Zigs? About the three p
oisonings?”
He held up three fingers. “Three doses: low, medium, high. Papa Bear’s moving, Baby Bear’s dead, Mama Bear’s passed out on the floor. Mama Bear becomes the benchmark dosage.”
It looked like Ava had called it, dead-on, so to speak. Clark returned and I asked him if there was anyone we could talk to who knew the poisoned men.
“There’s a camp for the migrants. A few older guys are always there, sort of like permanent uncles. They probably won’t talk.”
“Can you come and make introductions?”
“Did you see my waiting room?”
Clark directed us to the camp. We passed several miles of pasture before seeing a cluster of graying wooden houses with small porches. A fiftyish Hispanic man sat on one porch, sipping beer from a can as chickens pecked in the sparse grass. When we pulled into the dirt drive his head turned away, like if he didn’t see us, we weren’t there.
“Excuse me,” I said. “May we speak?”
His eyes went blank. “No Ingles, señor.”
“Uh, Big Ryde …” Gershwin said, stepping in front of me. “How about you go reorganize the glove box and I’ll call you in a few.”
I headed to the car as Gershwin sat on the steps. I watched him pull his badge and ID, point to the ID, likely explaining that we weren’t inmagracíon. The guy finally nodded, and they started talking. After a couple minutes Gershwin waved me from the car.
I discovered that Gershwin was a miracle worker; Señor Ronaldo Vasquez had learned English in under five minutes. After the requisite pleasantries, I asked what he’d heard about the illnesses and the death.
He thought a moment, like framing his words. “There were rumors about the sickness, about a man’s death. There are always rumors.”
“That the men had been purposely poisoned?”
“That is a likely thing to think.”
“By who? Was that speculated?”
“A greasy snake named Abaca. He had been visiting the men at their little camp. He was all smiles and brought beer and a bag of tacos for each man. Not long after, they were sickened.”