“Not so fast, Chalice,” Ambler said. “I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve. Can I hold onto this a little longer?”
I could see in Ambler’s eyes that he had not lost hope. “Yes, sure—let’s catch up with each other in the morning. All this bug talk is making my skin crawl. I’m going home to take a shower and incinerate everything I’m wearing.” With the building deserted, I leaned over and gave Ambler a peck on the cheek. “Talk to you tomorrow, G-Man.”
There was a lot on my mind, but for now it was time to rest and let my premonitions come to me in the form of dreams. I was nodding off in the car as Lido drove home. I was picturing him dressed like a little leaguer, with freckles and tousled hair. There was a huge grin on his face as he rounded third, digging for home. The throw to home was on its way in. The catcher ripped off his mask, revealing Yours Truly. I was crouched to tag him out as he slid feet first into the plate. Then, before I knew it, it was morning. Lido was already awake, smiling at me with a mischievous look on his face. Batter up.
Ten
Damian Zugg drove along Shore Road to where the tall grass grew in tufts along Long Island Sound’s sandy embankment. The windows of his old BMW were rolled down. His vintage 2002 tii was equipped with air conditioning, but Zugg preferred the feel of the wind in his face and The Sound’s salty musk filling his nostrils.
Gazing out across the water, Connecticut was sharply in view as he maneuvered his Beemer into the small parking lot the Town of Bayville had recently repaved for the few North Shore residents savvy enough to know the existence of oft deserted Ransom Beach.
He stepped from the car without locking it and walked to the narrow strip of beach. It was still early morning and Zugg was virtually alone on the beach. Off in the distance, blissfully out of earshot, a solitary Asian family with three small children played in the sand.
Zugg lay down on the sand with his toes just inches from the water’s edge. The pain of his migraine headache was intense. He squeezed his eyes shut to cope with the pain. Staring out at the water, he was unable to concentrate. The Sound was already busy with sport boats. A powerful cigarette filled the air with the throaty burble of its powerful engines. The deep bass notes of the boat’s thunderous exhaust pounded mercilessly against his temples. Faster! Hit the throttle and gun that piece of shit! Zugg counted backwards from ten, watching the cigarette grow small in the distance, ultimately thanking God for the silence. He immediately pulled a small syringe from his shirt pocket, purged the air, and injected himself with six milligrams of Imitrex. He closed his eyes and waited for the blinding migraine to subside. A sharp breeze blew south off the water, cooling his face and filling his ears with its rushing noise. He smiled and wished for the few minutes of sleep the long night had denied him.
He felt the pain begin to ebb, opportunity enough for his fatigue to take hold. His head filled with images. He pictured the small tumors that stretched out across his frontal lobe, throbbing and red as he had seen them through the infrared camera. Their pattern was like the island chain that made up the Philippine Archipelago. He imagined them fading from red to a soft pink as more medication migrated through the blood-brain barrier, extinguishing the pain. And then with a merciful wash of serenity, he drifted off.
He was not quite awake when he sensed the presence of someone lying next to him. “How long have you been lying there?” Zugg opened his eyes slowly, squinting against the rising sun. He was immediately aware that his head was for the moment free of pain.
Herbert Ambler folded his newspaper and stowed it under his butt to keep it from flying away. “Maybe twenty minutes. How long were you out?”
Zugg checked his watch. “Something short of a good night’s sleep. Didn’t have any trouble tracking me down, did you?”
“A man as predictable as you? No… I was careful not to wake you.”
“Well, aren’t you just precious.” Zugg grinned. “Always happy for your company, my friend.” His gaze went immediately to a brown paper bag on the sand beside Ambler. Zugg slapped Ambler on the knee. “What did you bring me for breakfast?”
“No, not breakfast.” Ambler smiled and then turned to look across The Sound. “It’s like heaven out here, isn’t it? Sometimes I wonder how God had the inspiration to create such beauty. I hear the pounding of the surf and it makes me feel like we share the same origin.”
“We all arose from the ooze, now didn’t we?”
Ambler smiled, still looking out to sea. When he turned back, he noticed the empty syringe lying between them on the sand. “Rough night?”
Zugg followed Ambler’s gaze. He nodded. Finding the cap to the syringe, he fitted it over the end of the needle and put it back in his shirt pocket. “So what’s in the bag?”
“Are you up for a challenge?”
“Worried you’re going to overtax me?”
“Not really, I’m sure you’re up to the task.”
“You’re full of crap, my friend. But don’t worry. To quote the irreverent Richard Prior, ‘I ain’t dead yet.’”
“No you’re not, but just for the record, Damien, how are you?”
Zugg turned to look down the beach. The Asian couple that had been playing with their kids was now loading them into a shiny BMW SUV. “How is it that just about everyone can afford a sixty-thousand dollar truck nowadays?”
“Credit to George W.”
“Bush—you’re kidding, right?”
“He gave us daily affirmation that the American system of capitalism was idiot proof—God love ‘em.”
Zugg smiled. “You’ve got a real future in political satire.”
“I’m a regular Lewis Black.”
“Who’s more pissed off at the world than you?”
Ambler pried a small mussel out of the sand with his fingertip, examined it, and tossed it into the water. “No more jokes. How are you feeling?”
“I’m three months into what may very well end up being the last year of my life. I’m trying to keep busy.”
“Busy is good.”
“I’ve got a friend over at NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena. He pulled some strings and got me in for the testing phase of their new thermal imaging system. You can see them clear as day, Herb, over seven thousand microscopic lesions and growing. You can’t see them on the MRI, but they’re there, real as life…real as death. Hard to get an image like that out of your head.”
“What about treatment?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Does it sound like I’m kidding?”
“Stereotactic radiation of the frontal lobe? I’ve had fifty good years. I’m not going to spend my last days, deaf, drooling, and wetting my pants.” He raised his hand. “It’s not open to discussion.”
The wind switched direction. Zugg tugged on the brim of his Yankees cap to keep it from blowing off. Ambler could see the trailing end of Zugg’s surgical scar where the cap didn’t quite cover.
“So what’s in the bag?”
Ambler placed the brown paper evidence bag on the sand next to Zugg. He stood and dusted the sand off his slacks.
“I emailed you the case information. The prints have already been lifted.” Ambler slipped on a pair of sunglasses.
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
Ambler stopped and turned back. “This one’s important to me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Whatever you can do, my friend—I’ll appreciate it.”
Zugg read a look of worry on Ambler’s face. “Don’t worry. What’s the worst that could happen, it kills me?”
Ambler shook his head in dismay. “Droll to the last. Call me as soon as you’ve found something.”
“What makes you so sure I’ll find something?”
Ambler grinned behind his sunglasses and walked off.
Zugg watched as Ambler climbed into his Volvo and drove away.
Looking around, Zugg confirmed that he was now completely alone on the beach. He quick
ly pulled open the bag. Within, he saw what appeared to be a sterilized human skull. Zugg took the skull out of the bag and examined it in the bright sunlight. He judged that it was the skull of a young adult male, nineteen to thirty years of age. Turning the skull in his hands, he examined it for abnormalities, but found none that were apparent to the eye.
In the sand, just off his fingertips, the shell of another large mussel protruded up through the sand. Zugg rested the skull on his lap and dug the shell out of the sand. He wiped the moist sand from its shell. Mytilidae. Order mytiloida. Bivalve mollusk. Omega-3 rich. Zugg tore off the beard, pried apart the stubborn shells, and chewed down the raw meat. He wiped his mouth clean and then picked the skull up again. Holding it in front of his face, he turned it in his hands, pressing his nose against it as one might sniff a melon at market. With his eyes closed, he paused with his nose almost touching the skull, sniffing hard like a dog trying to extract a scent. In the next instant, he was on his feet, eager and rejuvenated, rushing back to his car.
Eleven
An Oxford Inca Energy 400 Spectroscope running IMQUANT software would normally be the last thing you’d expect to find in someone’s home. Nonetheless, there sat Damien Zugg, surrounded by the tens of thousands of small bits he had collected over the years. Forensic pathology: no one living knew more about it. Only the dead were capable of revealing more secrets.
Bordering the basement, metal shelves were lined with boxes filled with the many specimens Zugg had collected over the term of his professional and intellectual career. Each box was clearly labeled and dated. They were of varying sizes, all except for the thirty-inch corrugated boxes stacked under the basement window; each of those contained some two hundred-six bones, roughly the number of bones found in a human skeleton. These were samples he had prepared and catalogued on his own, with hands he could once depend on, with eyes that once saw true. This skull, this pure white skull, it tore at him. He could sense a connection that had been intangible to all else.
The computer screen before him registered in both graphical and digital output, elemental composition—he had found the smallest traces of a substance running horizontally across the temporal bone, barely enough for assay. It had been undetectable in ordinary daylight, but had irradiated under infrared. Data began to fill the screen.
A number counter began to run across the center of the computer screen. When it was done, Zugg would know the specific gravity of the substance.
Zugg glanced at the clock in the lower left corner of the computer screen. It read 7:15 p.m. He closed his eyes and rested, face in hand. It had been days since he’d enjoyed a sound night’s sleep. His conscious mind was beginning to drift. He glanced at the clock again. It now read 7:40 p.m. Where did the time go? He was blanking out more and more often, succumbing to weariness, losing little bits of the day, unable to account for the missing time.
He removed his baseball cap. Time for the seventh inning scratch, he mused. It had become a part of him, adorning his head at all times, except when he attempted to sleep. The brim was causing irritation where it touched his surgical scar, and his itchy scalp was driving him to the point of distraction. He scratched his shaved head carefully. His scalp prickled constantly, but Zugg had a strong resolve; not wanting to initiate infection, he rarely succumbed to the annoyance.
The counter was now running quickly. He saw that it had finally stopped at 407,979, and then he clicked a tab at the side of the screen. The chemical composition was already there, C25H30ClN3.
Zugg allowed his head to fall limply to the side, his expression, a cross between revelation and disappointment. The scientists at the FBI’s forensic lab were capable of identifying the most obscure amounts of almost any substance. What he had found was one of the most common materials used in modern day forensics. The question running through his mind was, had it gotten there by accident? Had someone been clumsy in the lab? Good sense told him that there was no other explanation for gentian violet to be on this otherwise sterile skull, but this was what made Zugg the scientist he was. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his cancer-riddled brain, a neuron fired telling him not to ignore the clue.
He reached for the phone and dialed Ambler.
Twelve
Adelaide Tucker rarely strayed from the nurse’s station in the middle of the night, except to make necessary rounds. The evening had been quiet and her supervisor was on her meal break for the next thirty minutes. It was time to shut her eyes and take a catnap. It was the only way for her to keep going. No matter how she tried, she had never been able to adjust her sleeping pattern and often ran out of gas at about this hour. She had at first tried ducking into an empty room to get off her feet, but was always being walked in on by randy interns. Nowadays, the chair was good enough. She’d conditioned herself to fall asleep within seconds. Twenty minutes was all it took. It was better than working groggy. God forbid she made a mistake with someone’s medication. She felt her eyelids lower and was almost out when she heard the scream. She was used to almost every noise a patient could possibly make: moaning, crying, heaving—she had heard it all and had learned how to ignore or sleep through most of it, but this scream, this one was serious. She had hoped it would be a single outburst, but no, it was followed by another, and yet another. She jumped out of the chair.
It wasn’t difficult to follow the screaming to its source. In a moment she was standing over John Doe. “Quiet now, Honey. Calm down.” She placed her hand on his shoulder and tried to calm the comatose patient. “I thought you were in a coma. Easy now, it’s alright.” Doe continued to scream. She could hear the rest of the floor waking up around her. She paged the attending physician and continued her attempt at calming Doe. “What’s going on in there?” she said as she stroked his head. “What’s got you so worked up?”
John Doe lay motionless in his stark, white room, searching within for the courage to set himself free. Somehow, the spark of life within him had reignited.
He was once again naked upon a bed in the room he had been imprisoned within from the very start.
The surface of his skin, his tapestry of scars was growing in detail and complexity with each passing day—like ancient hieroglyphics, they chronicled his history in the white room. Cigarette burns, needle punctures, electrical burns, and bruises: each a badge of honor, a testament to John Doe’s will to survive.
Still here. I’m still here. These words that once tormented him had become his mantra. He had once wished for death, but the end never came, and the torture never stopped. “I’m still alive, goddamn it. I’m still here.” He was not a brave man, but extreme circumstances had forced him to find courage.
A tab each of Valium and Ambien had been squirreled away in the crevice between his cheek and mandible. He’d discard them when he was fully awake, but for now, the soft, uncoated pills leached just enough medication into his bloodstream to produce a semiconscious stupor.
A coroner stood over him in his dream. “John Doe is a male Caucasian, approximately twenty-five years old.”
“I’m Brian,” he mumbled in his sleep. “My name is Brian.”
“Height, approximately sixty-eight inches, weight, roughly one-hundred-and-forty pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Note: the corneas appear to be damaged. More on that to follow. Apparent cause of death—”
“I’m not dead,” he said, refuting the coroner’s observations. “I’m alive, I’m still alive.”
Running his hand over his leg, he noted how loose the flesh had become over his quads, quads that were once taut from competition track and field. They had begun to grow softer after high school, in the years in which he allowed himself to languish—too much dope, too many lazy days—one piled on top of another, years lost in the blink of an eye. His muscles had further atrophied from lying in bed. He knew the exact placement of every scar on his body and could find them with ease, his fingertips reading the raised surfaces on his skin like brail—each conjuring a horrifying memory.
One-by-on
e, Doe’s eyes snapped open to explore the hazy darkness. A small light had been left on to prevent him from tripping. He was now virtually blind, his corneas damaged from caustic applications of Drano. The small light was redundant. Doe knew how to maneuver in the dark using his sense of the room’s layout, arms extended forward for precaution—sensory organs adapted for survival like an insect’s antennae, searching, sensing, directing.
An electrical generator rested on the floor. It was large and heavy, with sharp metal corners he seemed unable to avoid. He had smashed his leg into it several times before finally growing savvy.
Doe fine-tuned his hearing—the house was silent. He’d heard the front door close, the car starting and pulling away. Still he waited several minutes to be absolutely sure. The threat of more electric shocks had trained him very well. At times it was little more than a pulse. Other times, when he had been “bad”, the jumper cables had been clamped on with the current running until he had passed out. As a result, he had learned to stay perfectly still during those occasions when his hair was sheared and his head measured and marked. How long? He wondered. How long before they were ready for the next step. How long would they keep him alive? Not long. I have to do it now.
Doe counted the seconds until five minutes had elapsed, and then pushed the remnants of the two pills from his mouth. They were soft from saliva absorption but they had maintained their integrity. He could distinguish the Valium’s small button shape and the Ambien’s oblong contour as he ground them into powder between his thumb and forefinger and flicked it away. He was no longer bound to the bed as he had been in the past. His captor was relying solely on sedatives to keep him secure. The reason, he assumed, was because they felt he had been broken, and no longer had the will to escape.
One foot off the bed, then the other—cigarette butts beneath the pads of his feet. He scraped the sole of one foot against the other to remove the butts, and then turned to face the bed. Beneath the frame, stashed by the headboard, a paper grocery bag had remained unnoticed for days. Doe retrieved it. Holding it between his hands, he pressed lightly on the sides of the bag. It was still there, still inside. He placed the treasure on the bed for safekeeping and moved to the opposite wall, the outside wall, where a solitary window was covered with wrought iron bars and a shade.
The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3) Page 6