by Rob Cornell
Then my eyes found a non-traditional path out of the room. “I’m sorry,” I said.
I used my chair as a step up and onto the round table.
One of the women at the table shrieked as if I’d stepped on her fine furniture at home. This was a plain, fold-up table you might find in a school cafeteria. A few footprints would not hurt it. Nor did they as I marched across the table and hopped down on the other side.
I slipped out the door before the therapist could say anything.
I heard a frightened muttering among the other patients, the sound like a flock of pigeons all after the same piece of crust. Then I shut the door and cut off the noise.
Chapter 19
I ran into my orderly friend just outside the group therapy room. We nearly collided, as if he’d been standing outside the door the whole time I’d been in there. Gave me a chance to check his name tag pinned to his shirt. It said in all caps, “Billie.”
“Whoa,” Billie said. “Group not working for ya, Dave?”
The strange name confused me for a second until I remember Dave was me. I’d spent so much time getting used to referring to myself as David, I never considered the shortened version.
“Not my style,” I said, a little breathless from my dramatic exit. I felt foolish about it, but there was no way I could sit through that session. Just no way. “What else have you got around here?”
“There’s the TV room. But you’re not gonna get any better watching the tube.”
“I figure I can take it slow. Want to show me the way?”
Billie eyed me for a couple seconds. I could tell something was churning in his mind. He sensed something off about me. “You don’t strike me as much of a TV type.”
“I like movies.” I shrugged. “What else did you have in mind?”
“There’s a game room. And the prayer room.”
Something in my expression must have amused him. He grinned. “You’re an atheist, huh?”
“I’m not anything,” I said. “I try to keep as many labels off of me as I can.”
“Do you believe in God?”
TV room, game room, or prayer room. I tried to figure which I’d find Peter in if he were here. I had a hunch. “Show me the prayer room.”
Billie smiled again. He scooped his hand in the air, indicating I should follow him. I stuck by his side as he led me down the hall to a door that looked no different than the one leading into the group therapy room. In fact, the door looked so innocuous, I had a hard time imagining what it would look like inside. Another crowded table for people to sit around, hold hands, and pray?
I reached for the door handle, but Billie grabbed my wrist. Not hard, but firmly enough to keep my hand from getting any closer to that handle.
“So you do believe?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
He narrowed his eyes. Puckered his lips. Then he nodded. “For you, I think it does.”
“Can you let me go now?”
He released my wrist. “Even if you don’t believe, I’ll say a prayer for you, for whatever is really bothering you, Dave.”
Before I could insist my cover story was real, Billie walked away. Not cool. First day, been at the hospital a few hours max, and already I have someone suspicious of me. The next three days would be a hard road if Billie kept this up.
I had to let the worry go for now. It was time for me to find Peter, once and for all. I’d check behind every door on the floor if I had to.
I opened the door to the prayer room and stepped inside.
* * *
Of course, I had pictured the room all wrong. While square-footage wise, the room was even smaller than the therapy room, unlike the therapy room, it was the perfect size for its purpose.
At the far wall from the door, a secular alter took up most the space on that side of the room. It carried religious symbols from various faiths, not just Christian. In front of the alter, a padded step allowed for someone to kneel comfortably in front of the alter. On the alter at the moment a smoking stick of incense filled the room with the smell of cinnamon.
Only one person was in the room besides myself. He knelt at the altar, his back to me, his head bowed. I thought I could hear him whispering a prayer or plea. “Give me time. Give me time.” He repeated those three words several times.
Even though I had only seen a picture of him from the front, I could tell immediately from the body shape who knelt at the altar.
Peter Brown.
It’s nice when a plan actually comes together.
He must have sensed my presence. He stiffened. Lifted his head. “You’re welcome to kneel beside me,” he said.
“Thanks, but I’m not really the religious type.”
“Yet you’ve come here.” His voice sounded like water through gravel, calm but ragged.
“I came here looking for you.”
His shoulders tensed. He bowed his head again. “So my time is up.”
“I’m not sure what that means, and I don’t much care. My job was to find you. That’s all.”
“Of course.” He spoke so softly, I barely understood him. “You don’t even know why you’re here.”
“Because you walked out on your distraught daughter, and her friends want you to answer for that. I assume you know she’s dead.”
He didn’t say anything. His head hung lower. “Oh, Sasha, I let them get to you. Lord have mercy, honey. I’m so sorry.”
“What are you talking about, Brown?”
He shook his head. He wore his salt and pepper hair long, in a braided ponytail down the middle of his back. His hulking form—a significant contrast to his twin’s lithe build—made him look like he’d fit right in with a biker gang. Even when he started to weep.
I dared a step closer. “Turn around, Mr. Brown. Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve run out of time. They took Sasha from me. Next will be Collin. Then, finally, me. We’ll die with our sins and sit right in the middle of a burning hell.”
It appeared Peter had rediscovered his religious roots during his stay at Sunnygale. Or, rather, something bothered him so much, he had crawled under the cover of religion to protect his conscience. The man had the stink of guilt all around him.
“What really happened to Sasha?”
He wept and smashed the heels of his hands into his eyes as if he worried his eyes would wash out with his tears. “Just get it over with.”
“Get what over with? I think you have the wrong idea about who I am.”
Peter knelt quietly for a moment, then finally stood. He must have had a good six inches on me. Thick muscles earned in the real world, not some fancy gym, bulged in his arms and across his chest. The only giveaway about his beer vice was the extra gut straining against his t-shirt and hanging a little beyond the shirt’s reach. He wore a pair of sweatpants that matched the shirt, including the yellowish perspiration stains. The smell of old sweat wafted over to me, cutting through the incense.
“I won’t go easy,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to go anywhere.”
His lips peeled back from his teeth. “Don’t play games. I don’t know how you got in here. But if it’s a question of who gets to leave, it’s gonna be me.”
“You have this all wr—”
He charged at me, growling like an attacking warrior protecting his homeland, thankfully without a sword.
His large body collided with mine and he lifted me off the ground on his shoulder like a linebacker. I sailed a couple of feet and crashed to the tiled floor. Luckily, one of my flailing arms had cushioned my head. Otherwise my skull would have done a Humpty Dumpty all over the floor. There’d be no putting me back together.
As I recovered my senses, Peter continued his attack. I looked up in time to see his size twelve shoe cocked up and over my face. If he put all his weight on stomping on my head, I could lose teeth, get my face caved in, maybe even die if it hit me right.
I really didn’t wan
t to die.
I reached up with both hands and grabbed his foot before he could crush me. With him standing on only one foot, he had no balance. I pushed, then jerked his foot to the side. He wobbled on his one foot for an instant, then tipped and slammed down beside me.
I took the initiative. I got him into the old-school headlock cops weren’t allowed to use anymore because it had led to too many accidental deaths. No such regulation existed for PIs or private citizens.
He was big, but way out of shape. Once I had him in the lock, the flow of oxygen to his brain slowing, he went limp. Part of it came from the headlock, but I could sense he’d also given up the fight.
Rather than let him pass out, I released the hold.
I got right to my feet and backed away from him in case he got a second wind and wanted to try another assault. No need. He stayed on his back, gasping. Tears pooled in his eyes. “Why is this happening to me?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t know what to say, Pete. I have no idea what’s happening. But if you tell me, maybe I can help.”
He lifted his head slightly off the floor to look at me. “You’re really not here to kill me?”
I stared at him for a while, letting my brain try to fit together some pieces. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”
“Because I owe them.”
“Who?”
“CYAN,” he said.
Chapter 20
I stepped over to Peter’s side and offered him a hand up. He took my hand and I helped get him on his feet. As luck would have it, just then Billie came into the prayer room. He eyed Peter, who still had tears streaking his face. Then Billie turned to me. His eyes narrowed.
“Everything okay,” Billie asked. “I thought I heard shouting.”
“Everything’s cool. I was just having a heated discussion about religion with Peter here.”
“I bet that was good,” Billie said, laying the sarcasm on thick.
As much as I wanted to, I didn’t say anything.
Billie stared me down. “Art therapy is in twenty minutes. I think you should come.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“No,” Billie said, drawing it out. “You should be there. Mr. Brown here has plenty of issues of his own. You’re stressing him out.”
“You’re stressing me out, and I’ve only been here half a day.”
Billie smiled, but his eyes looked like black marbles in his doughy face. “Only two and a half more to go, huh?”
“That’s only if I’m better.”
“No. I know you from somewhere. I can’t place it, but I’ll figure it out. And when I do…” He clenched a fist as if he held something precious in it.
I noticed Peter trying to skirt around me, staying back, hoping I wouldn’t notice his effort to escape. I let him sneak around. It wasn’t like he could hide from me. We were both locked up in this place.
“Think what you want, Billie Bob.”
His smiled curled away like paper burning at the edges. His eyes grew darker. “Careful, or I’ll put you in The Room.” Without elaborating, he walked out.
Peter tried to scurry along behind him, but I put a hand on his shoulder. The muscles in that shoulder felt like padded rocks―hard but with a little give. He spun to face me.
“Billie’s right. You aren’t a real patient, and if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll tell them.”
“Tell them what, Peter? What sort of thing would they believe from a drug addict like you?”
He stepped into my personal space and didn’t stop there, kept trudging forward, forcing me to back off or get run over. He kept coming until I ran into the alter. A cross tipped over and clattered on the floor.
Peter leaned into me. His breath smelled like spoiled milk.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t have to bully me, Pete. I’ll gladly tell you who I am, why I’m here, all of that. But first you have to back off. Because your breath stinks and that Billie guy has put me in the mood to break something. Might as well be your legs.”
He glared into my eyes, a challenge in his. A few seconds passed. Finally, he stepped back.
“Tell me,” he said.
* * *
We moved from the prayer room to the book room. Peter said most the residents simply could not focus on reading, so they migrated to the TV room. This made book room a quiet place where we could talk and not worry about being overheard.
The room held three waist-high bookshelves and had that library scent that brought back a lot of childhood memories—I used to go to the Hawthorne North Branch library once a week with my mother.
The room rivaled the prayer room as smallest room in the hospital. In fact, this room had almost certainly been a storage closet first.
A couple of wooden folding chairs cramped the room even more.
We each took a seat, the old wood creaking under our weight. But our chairs held us both.
Peter folded his arms and rested them on his belly. “So?”
I leaned forward so I could speak in as low a voice as possible with Peter still able to hear me. “I’m a private detective, hired to find you, since you failed to mention you were leaving.”
“I told Sasha. She was supposed to let her mother know.” He hung his head. “I couldn’t stand telling Deb about it.”
“I got the impression you two didn’t get along too well.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t still care about her. I had good reasons to marry her when I did. Sometimes people just…change.”
I mulled on this for a moment. Gave myself a chance to think about what to ask now. Peter interrupted my thoughts.
“Who hired you to find me? Debra?”
“I can’t say.”
“I’m locked up in here with you. What difference does it make?”
“It’s just how things work.”
“But you’re not with CYAN.” His voice hitched mid-sentence.
“Like I said, I’m not the religious type.” I thought of something. “You mentioned running out of time and someone coming to get you and your family. Is it the drugs? You owe money?”
He looked away, but I could still see the wet sheen on his eyes.
“Kind of,” he said, while studying the titles on the nearest bookshelf.
“That’s not helpful, Peter.” I braced my elbows on my knees. “Technically, finding you here puts an end to my case. I found you. That’s all I was hired to do. But I also don’t have to give you up, if you’d prefer. I think it’s the wrong move, but we could play it that way.”
“Really?”
“You’re an adult, Peter. You don’t have to answer to anyone. Not me. Not my clients. Not even your wife.”
His gaze snapped back to me at her mention. “Have you spoken to her?”
I nodded. “I talked with your mistress, too.”
Blotches of red formed on Peter’s cheeks. “Oh, jeez.”
I stuck out my hand and counted off on my fingers. “So that’s addiction to sleeping pills and booze, leaving your kids behind, cheating on your wife, maybe borrowing from a loan shark… Quite a list of sins.”
“We all have sinned, Mr. Brone. I’m not perfect. Neither are you.”
“Not by a long shot,” I muttered. “Anyway, I’m not judging. I’m counting up the issues you’d have to straighten out before you went back home.”
He seemed to think about this a moment, wondering if he should trust what I said. Then he made his decision. “I’ve never dealt with a loan shark, so you can cross it off your list.”
“I thought you said you owed money.”
“I said, ‘kind of.’”
I glanced at the door, imagining Billie with his ear pressed to the other side.
“We don’t have time for cryptic,” I said. “Be straight with me or I won’t help you.”
Peter mashed his lips together and hummed. “Why are you helping me?”
As if flicking a switch, I heard Sasha’s voice flowing from the
speakers like audio sugar. I saw her white blonde hair, the straight cut to her bangs like spun gold in the stage lights. Then I pictured her still, on a snow bank, an empty baggie clenched in her dead hand.
I know it all was exaggerated. Fantasy, even. But that’s what the young lady inspired. What she stood for. Innocence caught in a shadow.
Of course, I didn’t say any of this. I left him with, “Let’s just say I have my reasons.”
“I don’t owe money,” he said. “But I am in debt.”
Kind of like the arrangement I had with Patriot X, I figured.
I figured wrong.
“I’m in debt to CYAN,” Peter said. “I started doing volunteer work for them almost thirty years ago, when they were nothing more than a notion. A rented office downtown on one of the scariest blocks.”
“How did you get involved in something like that?”
“A flyer at school. I was enrolled at U of M at the time. Had big plans about what I was going to do with my life.”
“And you’ve been involved with them all this time?”
“Only because of the debt.”
“How did you get in debt with them if you were volunteering?”
“The group grew quickly. Very quickly. And after five years of helping renovate houses or discussing partnerships with local churches, I found out how.”
I waited. The next question was obvious and he clearly needed time to work out the answer.
“They called it hyper-recrution.”
I made a face. Sounded like something out of a science fiction book. “What the hell is that?”
Peter sighed. “As the organization grew, they turned into an official non-profit. This meant they could pay some of us instead of having us volunteer. Seemed like God’s plan since I got Deb pregnant around the same time. In order to afford raising a kid, I quit school and went to work full-time with CYAN.”
I remembered mention of this from their letters. Some of the pieces finally started to fall in place. I realized I had hit a crucial point in the case. Then I remembered my actual case only involved finding him. But at some point I had decided answers became as important.
I wanted to know the truth about what had happened to Sasha.
“So you worked for CYAN doing…whatever it was you said…and got hooked on uppers to keep up with the work load, but after a while they wouldn’t put up with your behavior, especially since you’d expanded your narcotic repertoire. CYAN boots you, but you get a job at the Ford plant and everyone lives happily ever after.” I paused for effect. “Except they don’t.”