Extreme Measures (1991)

by Michael Palmer

  "You're really certain?" she asked finally.

  "I see a lot of tattoos, many on people I would never have expected to have one. They interest me, so I remember a fair number of them anyhow. And that one was unique because of where it was, and also because it was beautifully done. It struck me at the time because, frankly, there wasn't anything else the least bit appealing about the man who had it."

  "Scott was--is--one of the most appealing men I've ever known," she said. "He has a wonderful face, and the most expressive eyes. Couldn't the tattoo just be a coincidence?"

  "Of course it could."

  "You don't believe that. I can tell."

  Eric shrugged helplessly.

  "Terri Dillard, the nurse who felt she recognized Jordan as Scott, is a pretty sharp person. The scientist side of me is prepared to consider one coincidence, but now this would be two."

  "But the funeral director ... the fingerprints ... the death certificate. It doesn't make sense. How could the medical examiner have misidentified the body?"

  "I don't think he could have," Eric said grimly.

  "He lied?"

  "Either he did, or Donald Devine."

  "But why?"

  "I don't know. I've heard that medical schools pay a hell of a lot for bodies. Maybe they've got some sort of scam going."

  "How can we find out?"

  "Well, for a start, I think we should have a talk with Dr. Bushnell, the M.E."

  They walked away from the river and found a diner with a pay phone. T. Bushnell, M.D., was listed with a Beacon Hill address.

  "It's only eight-thirty," Laura said. "Do you think it's worth trying to call him?"

  "I'd rather try it in person. If there's something weird going on, I don't want this guy to have time to think about it."

  "Should we go now?" she asked.

  Eric took both her hands and held them.

  "Can you think of a better time?" he said.

  There were two observation huts in Charity, Utah: one at the west end of the main street, built atop what was once the Miner's Bank and Trust building and was now the laundry; and one by the clinic in the east end, set beside the water tower, which still functioned quite nicely, storing water pumped up from the spring deep beneath the town. This evening Garrett Pike sat on a three-legged stool in the east end hut, gazing out across miles of rolling desert at the sun, now a huge copper plate dropping close to the horizon.

  He was nearing the end of one of his three-month stints at the hospital and was getting antsy to return to L.A. for a three-week break. The setup, which Dr. Barber had suggested to him at his hiring nearly two years before, was perfect. Three straight months of relative solitude in the desert was about all he could handle, and three weeks of the smog and bullshit in L.A. was just about enough as well.

  Pike's title was mental health worker, and in fact he did speak to the patients from time to time--ask them their problems and such. But in truth, since he had barely graduated from high school and had been given no formal training by Dr. Barber, he knew that he was more a caretaker than anything else. And a caretaker was what the thirty or so patients living at any one time in the Charity Project needed. They were so heavily medicated, so sluggish, that having one oversleep and miss a meal or a shift at work was far more likely than having one slip off into the desert or commit an act of violence.

  Initially, when he had answered Dr. Barber's ad in the L.A. Times, Pike had been reluctant to consider working at a hospital for the criminally insane, especially one stuck out in the middle of nowhere. But the pay was great--several times what he was making as a security guard--and Barber had assured him that the project had proven completely successful at keeping patients docile. The key was a long-acting tranquilizer, which was itself being evaluated for more general use.

  Whenever the boredom began to get to him, Pike liked to think back to how it was before he took the job, back to the days when he didn't have a pot to piss in, and owed money to everyone and his brother. Now he had a car, a decent little apartment in the city, and even some money in the bank. The secrecy bothered him a little--he was barred from entering the clinic building, and promised immediate termination should he speak of the Charity Project to anyone. But he enjoyed feeling that he was doing something of value to society. And as long as he could go hunting in the desert, and drive into town every few weeks to get his rocks off with one of the girls at Cathie's Place, the bennies of the job far outweighted the drawbacks.

  Pike checked the hour and then took his clipboard and pushed himself to his feet. It was time for evening rounds. On the street below, he could see the last of the patients shuffling their way from the dining hall to the barracks. All in all, he mused, the government must consider the Charity Project to be a huge success. Besides himself, there was John Fairweather doing maintenance; the old Indian woman, Jane, in the kitchen; and Dr. Barber. The rest of the jobs at the hospital--all menial and repetitive tasks--were done by the patients themselves. Three workers and one doctor for thirty or forty patients. Talk about cost-effectiveness!

  Pike clipped the two-way radio over his left hip and hung his night stick from a leather thong over his right. There were shotguns locked on the wall in each hut, but the only time he had needed one on the job was a year or so ago, when a young couple from L.A. had stumbled into the town by accident. Pike smiled at the memory of how tough he had acted, and how frightened the psychologist and his pushy wife had looked facing the business end of the Remington. Dr. Barber had given him a decent bonus for handling things so well.

  Pike started his rounds by checking through the fields and greenhouses. It had been a while since he had last thought about the couple, and he wondered, as he usually did when that affair crossed his mind, what sort of deal Dr. Barber had struck with them to keep the existence of the Charity Project a secret. A day or two after the pair had left Charity, he had asked John Fairweather about them. But the tight-lipped Navajo had just shrugged.

  The store, the laundry, the gymnasium, the showers, the vitamin shop, the women's barracks, the maintenance shed. Pike worked his way down Main Street, one building at a time. As usual, everything and everybody were in place. Except for the arrival of a new patient every two weeks or so, or the departure or death of an old one at about the same rate, there was never a change in the place. Pike assumed that those who left were transferred to a medical hospital, or back to a regular prison, but neither. Barber nor John Fairweather had ever actually told him.

  The men's barracks occupied the building that had once been Charity's hotel. Twenty-two patients were currently housed there, four or five to a room. Each patient was identified by a single, simple name--almost certainly not his real one. The names were sewn onto every article of clothing, and were recycled when a patient left the hospital for whatever reason.

  Tonight, as always, the men were all accounted for. Some sat silently on their beds, staring off at nothing; a few were flipping absently through old, frayed magazines; and two were coloring clumsily with crayons on blank paper. Seeing them like this, it was hard to hang on to the notion that each had been judged criminally insane. Pike studied the bland and expressionless faces as he ticked off the names on his list, and he wondered about what horrible things each of them had done.

  Pike started each day at Charity by picking up the roster from Dr. Barber. There were always asterisks beside three or four of the names, indicating which patients were scheduled for examinations or tests. This night, Dan, Charlie, and Bob were starred. Pike motioned the men to their feet and led them in silence from the barracks, down the dark and chilly street to the clinic.

  The clinic building, a large new one-story cinder-block structure, was surrounded by a high fence topped with barbed wire. Pike was buzzed through the outside gate and then deposited the three men in the sparsely appointed waiting area. In almost two years he had never been any farther into the building than that room. Fairweather had the run of the place, as did the doctor who, from time to time
, came to help Dr. Barber or check on the program. But the clinic was off limits to everyone else.

  Pike handed his daily roster over to Barber and left to wait in the east end observation hut. In half an hour or so Barber would notify him by two-way that the patients were ready to return to their beds.

  If there was a problem of any kind, Barber would signal him by radio or by a "panic button," which would sound an outside alarm. But in almost two years there had been no such emergency. Nor, Garrett Pike knew, would there be one tonight.

  As far as he could tell, the Charity Project was functioning as close to perfection as any program--government or otherwise--that he had ever heard of.

  Dr. James Barber sat on the edge of the waiting room desk, studying the records of the three men seated placidly before him. He was wearing a white clinic coat, dress shirt, string tie with turquoise clasp, and highly polished western boots. In the pockets of his clinic coat were a stethoscope, a reflex hammer, an ophthalmoscope, and a customized, bone-handled Beretta .25.

  "Well, Bob," he said, "it looks like just a once-over and an injection for you tonight. No blood tests. Charlie, Dan--you two just stay put while I check over your friend here and give him his medicine."

  The two patients with patches reading CHARLIE and DAN sewn on above their breast pockets, sat dutifully as the third man was led into a small examining room just off the waiting area. After donning rubber gloves, Barber checked the man's blood pressure and temperature, listened to his heart and lungs, and then checked his eyes, abdominal organs, reflexes, balance, and response to light pain and vibration.

  "You're doing fine, Bob, just fine," he said. "Your memory seems to be shot, but otherwise there's not a hint of that viral encephalitis. I think we can consider you a cure. How does it feel to be part of medical history?"

  Barber paused a beat for a response, but knew there would be none. If he had chosen to start the man's treatment earlier, there was every reason to believe that not nearly so much mentation would have been lost. He made a note to confirm that theory on the next patient with equine encephalitis virus. But for now, the best he could do was to continue observation on the man and with time, perhaps, reduce his tranquilizers.

  He stepped back, admiring his patient as if he were a hard-won tennis trophy. Another cure. Carditis, fulminant hepatitis, and now encephalitis; and promising results with two leukemias and one of the AIDS patients. Caduceus would be pleased, he thought. The Charity Project was well ahead of the timetable they had set. And of course, that also meant that one Dr. James Barber was closer than ever to the good things--the really good things--in life.

  Barber took a filled syringe from the drawer beneath the examining table.

  "Okay now, Bobby," he sang, "just lower your trousers for your shot."

  "I ... don't ... want ... to," the man said. Each word was forced.

  "My, but you are a feisty one," Barber said. "Maybe you still have some more recovery in you after all. But understand this, my friend: What you want or don't want doesn't matter here. We've told you that. It's what you need that counts. And what you need right now is this shot. Now, just do as I say."

  "I ... don't ... want ... to," Bob mumbled again, shaking his head as if trying to clear it.

  "Right now!" Barber commanded.

  Still mumbling, Bob undid his trousers and let them fall to his ankles. He was wearing no underwear.

  Barber clucked his tongue reprovingly.

  "Bob, Bob, Bob. How many times do we have to tell you: We don't want our patients running around without their underwear. Nasty germs can get into places where they shouldn't and raise all kinds of havoc. Is that clear, Bob?... I asked, is that clear?"

  He slammed his fist on the desk.

  Slowly, Bob nodded.

  "Good," Barber said. He opened an alcohol swab. "Now turn around, Bob. This goes in the behind."

  Bob hesitated, then mechanically did as he was asked.

  "Oh, yes," Barber exclaimed, "I remember you now--the one with the rose tattoo. Anna Magnani, Burt Lancaster--I loved that movie. Well, Bob, whoever Mom, Dad, and Laurie are, I'm sure they'd be very proud of the sacrifice you're making. So here you go. Bend over and let's take another step toward your place in history--and mine on the Riviera."

  Barber swabbed a spot just to the side of the tattoo, buried the needle to the hilt, and depressed the plunger.

  The man named Bob reacted not at all.

  Beacon Hill, largely pared down in the nineteenth century to fill in the Back Bay, was overbuilt with brownstones and low apartment buildings set along a tangle of narrow streets and alleys. Its varied blocks were home to many of Boston's elite, but also to transients and virtually every class in between. Even though Eric had a Beacon Hill resident's sticker on his Celica, the drive there from Watertown took considerably less time than it did to find a place to park.

  "Do you go through this every time you bring your car home?" Laura asked.

  "Parking is only half the fun," Eric said. "The other half is the excitement of wondering whether your car will still be there when you want to use it again."

  "Theft isn't much of a problem on Little Cayman. There are only six cars and three pickups on the whole island."

  "The lines to get resident parking stickers must be very short."

  They found Thaddeus Bushnell's home with no difficulty. It was a run-down structure on the lower portion of the hill, the side farthest away from Eric's apartment. There were three floors in the old brown-stone, but only one window on the first was lit.

  "How're you holding up?" Eric asked, as he scanned the place.

  "I'm upset, and bewildered as hell."

  "You're certainly not the only one. I promise we're going to figure this madness out though."

  "I know. It really helps to feel I'm not in this alone anymore. Eric, I'm sorry if I keep harping back to this question, but are you sure about the tattoo?"

  "Believe me, I wish I weren't. I'm not sure why, even, but the memory of it is very clear to me. Much clearer than Scott's--I mean, the patient's face."

  "You don't have to watch your words with me. Remember, I lived through my parents' death. I just can't believe this, that's all. When I left Cayman to begin looking for Scott, I purposely began preparing myself for the worst. But not something like this."

  "Just hang in there a little longer."

  For the briefest moment an EKG pattern flashed in Eric's thoughts--wide electrical complexes, spaced at eight-second intervals, gliding across an endless monitor screen.

  The man was clinically dead, he told himself. There was nothing more that should have been done.

  He chased the pattern from his mind and rang the buzzer. They waited, and then he rang again.

  "No one's home," Laura said.

  Eric rang a third time, more persistently. They heard the sound of someone moving inside.

  "What do you want?" The voice was thick and raspy.

  "Dr. Bushnell?"

  "What do you want?"

  "Dr. Bushnell, my name is Dr. Eric Najarian. I'm a resident at White Memorial. We need to speak with you."

  "Go away," the voice said.

  "Dr. Bushnell, please. It's very important."

  "Nothing involving me is very important. Go away."

  They sensed the man beginning to retreat from the door. Eric pressed the buzzer again.

  "It involves the Gates of Heaven Funeral Home," Laura called out.

  A few seconds of silence, and then the door opened a crack. An old man peered out over the safety chain. He was in his seventies at least, and was dressed in a robe and slippers. His silver hair was a disheveled mop. And even from several feet away, Eric could smell alcohol.

  "Please, sir," he said. "Please let us in. We won't take much of your time."

  Thaddeus Bushnell checked them both up and down, and then pushed the door closed and fumbled the chain free.

  "Thank God," Laura muttered as the door swung open. They stepped inside a
nd immediately exchanged bewildered looks.

  The foyer of the place was dark. Back-lit by a dim lamp, Thaddeus Bushnell looked even older than they had first thought. He stood several feet away, leaning heavily on a metal walker, glaring at them.

  "Now, what is it?" he growled.

  Laura stepped forward to him, and instantly Eric saw the man soften.

  "My name's Laura," she said gently. "Laura Enders. May we come in and sit down for a bit?"

  The old man hesitated, and then turned and led them into a living room that was as depressing as a mausoleum. The furniture, which had probably been elegant at one time, was frayed and dusty. On the cluttered coffee table were several vials of pills and a half-filled bottle of vodka. There were empty bottles on the floor. If Thaddeus Bushnell was conscious of them, he gave no sign. He maneuvered his walker to a worn, floral-printed easy chair, and sank down into an indentation that seemed permanently molded to his thin frame.

  Eric introduced himself again.

  "Thank you for seeing us, Dr. Bushnell," Laura said, taking a seat near him.

  Bushnell tapped a nonfiltered cigarette from a crumpled pack and lit it on the second try.

  "Place needs a woman," he said. "It's gone all to hell since Evie died."

  "Your wife?" Laura asked.

  "Cleaning lady. My wife died nearly ten years ago. Ol' Evie went a month or two after that. I don't suppose you two want a drink?"

  "No, but go right ahead," Eric said.

  The old man nodded, and then nodded again. Eric realized that he was drifting off. He leaned over, poured Bushnell a small drink, and held it beneath his face, shaking him gently with his other hand.

  "The nights get real lonely," Bushnell said, taking the glass. "This stuff helps pass the time."

  "Are you a pathologist?" Eric asked.

  "Hell, no. I'm a GP. At least I was until I retired."

  "But you're still a medical examiner?"