Mind in Chains

by Bruce M Perrin

  “I don’t know. Whoever called it in, I guess.”

  I’d estimated twelve to fifteen when I’d spoken to Marte. Maybe someone else had taken a guess and passed it on to the police, but no one inside would have been that far off. Besides, the company only employed about twenty full-time people, and several of them had been working from home. I frantically scanned the lobby but still saw no trace of Nicole.

  “Sir, you really need to sit down. You’re going to make yourself ill.”

  I ignored her and instead, cupped my hands around my mouth. “Nicole,” I yelled. Most of the heads in the lobby turned, but no one answered. “Nicole.” By now, the lobby was nearly silent. I yelled once more. “Nicole!”

  “Dr. Price, what’s wrong?”

  I spun around to find Agent Blewitt. “Nicole’s disappeared. Where’d you leave her?”

  He blinked a couple of times, then said, “At the door. With the first nurse we met.”

  “What did she look like?” I asked.

  Blewitt paused. “Tall, dark hair, but I didn’t really see her face. She was looking down … at a clipboard. She said something about your friend looking dizzy. Sure enough, next moment she slumps against the nurse. I started to help, but they walked off. So, I went back for you.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  “I didn’t watch, but they started towards the back.” I looked the way he was pointing, spotting an exit sign over the heads in the crowd.

  “You have an alert out on Greenwood?”

  “There’s been a multi-agency alert out since they found those people at her farm.” Blewitt stared at me a moment. “You don’t think that was Dr. Greenwood, do you?”

  I didn’t answer, now sure what I thought. “Nicole Veles is missing and probably a hostage. You need to have that added to the alert. Talk to Agent Marte or Clements if there’s any pushback.” I sprinted for the exit.

  Friday, May 31

  2:21 PM – My Apartment in the Central West End

  It started as a murmur. The reign of terror under which every doctor, medical researcher, and patient had lived was over. True, the demented individual responsible had escaped, along with at least Brother Justice, but her ability to inflict pain and death was gone. It had vanished with her reputation because it was her name that had opened doors. It had given her access to rural hospitals, where she had returned their trust by stealing at least three female newborns. Those babies, in turn, became the foundation for her mindless army. Her stellar record of research got her into the halls of higher education where she discovered gaps in their security and planned her deadly attacks. Her credentials were her calling card at research facilities, doctors’ offices, health clinics, and hospitals across St. Louis, even the nation. But with the loss of her professional aura, those doors were now closed, locked to her forever. Dr. Laura Greenwood had been defanged.

  By the evening news on the day the Crusader compound was found and the hostages freed, the murmur had become a triumphant chorus of relief. And throughout the next day, the tumult grew. Dancing in the streets would be an exaggeration but perhaps not that much; there was a largely impromptu parade in downtown St. Louis in support of medical science and in condemnation of Greenwood.

  My personal experience during those two days, however, couldn’t have been more different.

  After I confirmed that Nicole was missing and got her name included in the FBI’s alert—with a lot of help from Marte—I walked the streets, searching. I walked all that afternoon, slowly expanding the radius around her work. Through the night and into the next day, I looked. My only companion was my phone. All I needed was a call, a text that Nicole had been found, but it stayed obstinately silent on that topic.

  After 26 hours of wandering, I returned home. I had found nothing, but I had dulled my rage and my pain with exhaustion. At least, I had for a few, fitful hours of sleep. And when I woke sometime after dark, the waking nightmare came crashing down on me again. And the cycle repeated.

  Other than the press who had my name from the list of hostages, the only calls I received in those first days were from the parents. Both sets wanted to come and support me. I told both, no. There was no point in my folks coming to St. Louis; the help they could provide for my pain had been delivered over the years of my upbringing. As for Nicole’s parents—the Kansas City authorities had told them that their public announcements, messages they hoped would elicit compassion from the kidnapper, could be as effectively delivered from their home as in St. Louis. I used that as an excuse to decline their offer, too ashamed to face them after I’d failed to protect their daughter.

  I lived like that for two more days, a shadow roaming the streets, my phone refusing to deliver me from my hell. I had no objective beyond finding Nicole. And all the while, my head was filled with images I couldn’t shake. On the fifth day, Agent Marte called and those distressing visions took a turn for the worse.

  “Doc, you should hear this from me, rather than the news.”

  I had answered on the first ring, still clinging to the desperate hope that Nicole had been dropped at some remote bus station or highway rest stop once Greenwood had safely escaped. Marte’s greeting, however, hit me like a punch to the stomach. I squeezed my eyes closed and forced a single sentence through my lips. “What is it?”

  “I hate to say this, but you and Nicole weren’t the targets when Prudence took the Biomedical Engineering Associates building. It was just the opposite. The X’s meant that the two of you were to be spared at all cost. And unfortunately, with all the law enforcement and medical experts we needed to make sense of Greenwood’s papers and research … well, much of what she had planned got leaked to the press.”

  Over the next several minutes, Marte recounted the full story. At first, there was little I didn’t know or hadn’t guessed, but among the revelations were several involving Conroy.

  After Greenwood learned of his sister’s death, she made it a point to “accidentally” bump into him at a medical conference. That night over dinner, she convinced him that telling the story would honor his sister’s memory, putting her cruel plan in motion. Then, she took him as a lover. She hadn’t known about Conroy’s illness, but like any new lover would, he confided in her. She used the fact to keep him quiet. She’d told him she’d keep him alive as long as her medical expertise allowed, but that some of her treatments would be illegal in this country. Absolute secrecy was required, and he agreed. Their lovemaking was also a lie. She used it to collect his sperm so that she could impregnate the female Crusaders. She even noted in one of her notebooks that with a near-genius sperm donor, she didn’t have to worry about her troop’s innate intelligence. And when Greenwood released Prudence and Justice on an unsuspecting professor and his students, it was in a fit of rage over Conroy’s death. But it wasn’t because she loved him; it was because the city had forgotten him much too soon.

  Greenwood was back in control of her demented mind, however, by the time Prudence took the hostages at the Biomedical Engineering Associates building two days later. At this point, she was starting phase two, and everything Marte said was news to me. And each revelation rained blows on my already battered psyche.

  When Greenwood, Justice, and Prudence left the Crusader compound that Wednesday morning, the plan was to let Prudence fail. Our ruse with the beach had worked, but it was completely unnecessary. Prudence had been drilled on scenarios that would end in her death—with a sniper’s shot through a window, in a hail of bullets as she ran from the building, at her own hand. The roller bag itself was a decoy, meant only to hold law enforcement at bay until the medical team was in place across the street—an unnecessarily large team that Greenwood had called in.

  And why were Nicole and I to live? Because in the twisted logic that was Greenwood’s reality, I was to become the first of several new spokespersons for medical freedom. I was to carry forward the message of James Conroy. And I’d do that tirelessly and passionately after I had to stand by and watch N
icole die a slow and painful death. Because in the chaos of treating the hostages, Greenwood was going to infect her with an incurable illness.

  It was at this point in Marte’s monologue that I made my only comment, a plea made in pain and disbelief. Infecting people this way had to be impossible. But Marte assured me that their panel of medical experts considered Greenwood’s list of afflictions nothing short of evil genius. All the illnesses were terminal but only after prolonged periods of painful deterioration. And all were close to but just beyond the reach of current medical practice. Short periods of remission were possible, but they would only delay the inevitable and further intensify the suffering of those forced to endure it.

  Marte asked for a moment, saying she needed a drink of water, but I never heard her set the phone down. I had the feeling she was steeling herself. And as she detailed how Greenwood had selected Nicole and me as her future pawns, I felt sure I was right.

  The day Greenwood and Nicole first met, my fiancé’s rather effusive description of my ability to explain complex concepts had piqued Greenwood’s interest. Then, Nicole had apparently mentioned her love. That surprised me as Nicole shied away from public displays of emotion. But then, generating trust seemed as easy to Greenwood as breathing. She had certainly fooled me. The FBI even played their part in our selection. By suggesting I might be associated with the Crusaders, Greenwood manipulated Marte into checking into my background, where she found nothing anti-medicine.

  The act that had sealed our fate, however, was mine. It was that innocent kiss I had placed on Nicole’s cheek, not knowing that Greenwood was standing behind me in the kitchen. With that gesture, she wrote in one of her notebooks, she had all the proof she needed. Hearing the cold, calculated way the woman had verified our vulnerability to her evil design was almost more than I could bear. Fortunately, the tale was almost at its end.

  When Marte and Clements were staking out the farmhouse, Greenwood was already in St. Louis, setting her scheme in motion. But when the locals broke down her gate due to a miscommunication of Clements’s strategy, she knew her plan had been foiled. At that point, Greenwood and Justice would have ad-libbed their escape, and somehow, taking Nicole figured into that plan.

  When Marte finished, I hung up without a good-bye. Her tale had forced a whole new set of grim possibilities into my mind, all ending with Nicole’s death, and I was powerless against their sadistic pull. Once discovered, did Greenwood infect Nicole anyway? If the illness was slow acting, Nicole could still be the insurance she sought. Or was Greenwood prepared with something else that had only sedated her? And if Nicole was only insurance, why hadn’t she been released? In five days, Greenwood could have driven to either coast and be halfway back to St. Louis by now.

  As my brain churned away at the unthinkable, I was finding it increasingly difficult to form an image of my fiancé walking into a bus station disoriented but unhurt. Now, the only vision that came when I closed my eyes was Nicole dead in a ditch, animals picking at her lifeless corpse.

  As Marte had warned, Greenwood’s story of horror and our place of honor in it made the news. I became a virtual prisoner in my own apartment. What do you say to a reporter who asks, “How do you feel about your girlfriend being kidnapped by a madwoman?” The only response I had wasn’t fit for a 10-second sound bite on the evening news. But while Greenwood’s intentions were known, the kidnapping was a matter of speculation. She had never been positively identified at the scene. Lacking proof, the reporters eventually gave up and disappeared from my sidewalk and alley.

  With the media gone, I went out and bought a handgun. It just felt like I should have one—or at least, that was the justification that came from behind the curtain of my unconscious. As I understood the law in Missouri, the background of the buyer was checked in the FBI’s NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System). Having the unblemished record that my security clearance at work required, I had no concerns about the outcome. If Agents Marte or Clements had known of the malevolence growing in my heart, they probably would have amended the FBI records. But they didn’t know.

  I studied Greenwood’s life online—anywhere she had lived, taught, studied, completed a residency, done research. She had lived a lot of places, and I recorded each on a map, figuring if she had a past connection, she wouldn’t return now. Then, I removed any of the big cities that were left. She was too well known to wander around a Chicago or a Denver. And I crossed off the extremely remote locations—the middle of nowhere Montana. She wasn’t the pioneer who could repair a broken generator in the middle of a blinding snowstorm. Maybe I was being naïve taking this approach. Maybe an experienced investigator would laugh at me, but I had to start somewhere. And I was reasonably smart and driven by demons that showed me no quarter. I’d learn. I’d find Greenwood.

  After a week and a half of missing work, I called and resigned over the phone. I said my remaining vacation time would cover the two-week notice. That was a lie, but I figured I needed the practice; I could see a future filled with them. “Hi, I’m looking for Andrea. She’s my second cousin on my mother’s side and I wanted to say hello.” And besides, I didn’t care what Ruger-Phillips thought anymore. That was another life, now dead and gone.

  After quitting, I sold a few of my possessions and tossed the rest in the trash dumpster behind my building. That had made the task of packing a half-hour job—one that I had just completed. I was about to close and lock the door for the last time when my phone rang. It was Marte and probably her third or fourth call this week. I hadn’t answered any of the others. I had heard too many times from too many people that I should leave the matter to the police. Or that time heals all wounds. Or that I was going down a slippery slope. Or some other crap. To hell with all of that.

  But even so, Marte had listened when she didn’t have to. She had shared all she could, and she acted on my concerns. I admired and respected her. I should say good-bye.

  “Agent Marte.”

  “And I was about to suggest you use my nickname, Becca. But it sounds like you’ve reverted to old habits.”

  “Sorry. Never updated my phone display,” I replied as if that explained everything.

  “Given where I work, I guess you’re not surprised I know you’re leaving.” I wasn’t, but it felt pointless to say so.

  “Anyway, I’m not going to repeat anything I said in all those long messages I left. And I’m not going to pretend I know what you are going through. I don’t. But I did want to say, be careful. And if you ever need someone to talk to, call me. I understand I’m a good listener.”

  “You are.”

  “Hey, I don’t think I mentioned this, but we had this massive raid planned for some church in south-central Missouri till we found the Crusaders using your tip.” She said the final words in her most official-sounding voice. I knew, however, that they’d already decided to investigate Greenwood, and I’d merely been the emergency they used to justify breaking into her home.

  “Anyway,” she said, “after we got the Crusaders at Greenwood’s, we scaled back to six agents. Probably only needed two, since the Reverend and his wife were still in bed when the agents got there. Turns out, they weren’t Crusader supporters. The minister just used the medical controversy to stir up his congregation, so when he dipped his hand into the collection plate, no one would notice the missing cash. The team got some idea what they were getting into with all the elaborate gardens outside—lots of exotic plants, meticulously maintained. The missus apparently had groups of church women competing for that honor. But what they found inside the private quarters was nothing short of a palace—expensive furniture, antiques, valuable paintings. He wasn’t involved in the crime we thought, but it still felt good to stop him from ripping off all those hardworking people.”

  Perhaps it was a sign of how far I had dropped from humanity because my first thought was, why the hell are you telling me this? But after a moment I said, “Another small victory for justice.”

&
nbsp; “And we were looking into a realtor too—a dirt pimp as a friend called him—as a possible handler for the Crusaders. But he was just collecting money for another group down south, so they could build their own meeting hall. Not even a crime there.”

  “Can’t win ‘em all,” I said.

  With two terse and somewhat trite responses, I think Marte read my mood, as both her tone and topic changed. “You know, it’s already afternoon,” she said, sadness tingeing the words. “Why don’t you stick around and leave first thing tomorrow?”

  “Can’t. The new renters start moving in today.”

  “You can stay at my place, crash on my couch. It’s not bad.”

  She didn’t understand. When I gave up each day, it made no difference if I was floating on a cloud or lying in the mud. I’d be up in three hours, the guilt, rage, and pain returning to eat at my soul. “Sorry, but I need a change of scenery.”

  “I thought you might say that. Guess Gus and I will have to solve the next one ourselves. Take care, Doc.”

  “You too, Becca.” I disconnected.

  I started to take a final look around the apartment but couldn’t. Even empty, Nicole was everywhere. I turned off the light, then closed and locked the door on my first life, never expecting to return.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the help of a number of talented individuals. I’d like to thank Ms. Janet Harrison, Ms. Elaine Neale, and Ms. Olga Iordache for reading and providing numerous helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

  Special thanks go to Dr. Liz Gehr for helping me watch my technical Ps and Qs. Any inaccuracies are mine; hopefully, they’re all intentional to build the fiction.

  The diligence of my editor, Ms. Laurel Heidtman, is greatly appreciated. I’d never find all those pesky, extra commas without her help … not to mention all the other slipups that are so easy to overlook when you know a story by heart.