Parking spaces along the street stayed empty when they were vacated now.
Kevin, Jane knew—as surely as she knew things like how far away the sun is and the speed of light—wasn’t coming back.
When the next gear-grinding red behemoth lumbered to the curb and snapped open its double doors, Jane followed an old woman with a shopping bag into the inviting yellow light.
The driver took her paper without glancing to her face. Jane perched on the long bench seat near the stairs and twisted to watch the Upper Midwest Savings & Loan, a neon-red emblem looming above its entryway now, slip behind her.
She tried to observe the passing streets, but someone stared back at her from the dark, and the little old lady across from her on the bus peered over her shoulder. It took a moment for Jane to realize that she was sandwiched by reflections—her own and the lady’s.
Jane pressed her face to the window, putting gloved hands to her eyes as blinders, and began reading street signs as the bus jolted past them without stopping. Fourth Street. Then Fifth, Sixth. The bus stopped at Seventh and three people got on. Eighth and Ninth ground by, a patchwork of sparsely lit buildings sprinkled with pedestrians.
At least the bus was going in the right direction, Jane thought. She would get off—her mind zoomed into focus on the street map of Minneapolis she’d once seen. The gridwork of black lines and tiny type tightened into perfect focus. She’d get off at Franklin Avenue and walk the rest of the way.
Kevin had been angry with her once before when she’d walked alone at night to his place—angry and then, unaccountably, pleased.
Jane remembered how he’d held her, Zyunsinth spread over them both, how they’d slept together on his sofa as warm and kitten-content as that soft, silly creature of his. There had been no sex between them that night, but Jane didn’t mind. For one thing, she really hadn’t known how to do it yet. For another, some things were even better than sex. Sometimes.
She smiled and cradled her face on her hands, swaying to the bus’s melancholy motion. Kevin had tried to take her home not long ago; maybe he had gone there now, too.
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
Turner’s office boasted only one oversized window, and night had finally faded it to black, like a TV tube that gives up the ghost. Kevin waited under the humming fluorescent lights, staring out the window and knowing that there was nothing to see beyond it, nothing but his own reflection, murky and evasive.
He knew, too, that the wait was meant to unnerve him. It did. At last he got up and paced the chilly room. They’d hung his jacket in the outer office, as if he were just a regular visitor and could leave whenever he liked. But he figured that he had become an official enemy of the state—an obstruction, really, not important enough to rank as an enemy. A bureaucratic impediment.
He gave an infinitesimal tweak to the brushed chrome doorknob. It seemed to have contracted lockjaw. Okay, Turner, he told himself with comic-book bravado. Maybe I’ve got lockjaw, too.
Unluckily, his mind hadn’t locked. It revved, that numb, overtaxed brain of his. It conjured gruesome scenarios of Jane lost, frozen, raped, run over. The worst one remained the thought of Jane captured. She was on her own now. Where would she go? Kevin couldn’t say, but they wouldn’t believe that.
The door cracked open walnut-neat. Turner hovered behind some incoming figure.
“I’ll alert the stakeout at the condo; maybe she’ll head there,” Turner was telling someone else behind him.
No! Kevin’s mind revolted at the fiendishly apt logic of that idea. It hadn’t occurred to him. No, Jane, no! Don’t go there. Stay… lost.
The stranger on the threshold resolved into a smallish man with an army of manila folders marshaled under his elbow. He turned to shut the door behind him, shutting Turner up—and out.
A fur-lined leather coat that would have looked good on George Hamilton draped his shoulders. An expensive ostrich skin briefcase dangled from his free hand. He took Turner’s place at the desk, opening the case and eyeing its contents hungrily. One by one he laid out the folders, like cards in a tarot deck, dealing from others hidden in the case. He paused now and again to regard Kevin over the sinister circles of his thick, rimless glasses.
None of it scared Kevin, none of it—stranger, silent treatment, stupid props—until the man lifted a hinged black plastic case from the bowels of the briefcase. It opened with a click. Kevin could guess what lay inside.
The case’s raised cover shielded its contents from Kevin, but the man seemed to gloat over them, his hands moving to caress certain objects within.
“When does Sydney Greenstreet get here?” Kevin asked abruptly.
“You always had a smart mouth.” The man didn’t look up.
Move and countermove. Kevin contemplated the balding spot crowning the man’s bowed head. Now he was supposed to get unglued trying to place the bastard. He chose silence. Any reply would have weakened his position.
Folder after folder was shifted, straightened, flipped tantalizingly open and then snapped shut again. The oblong black case remained open—too small to contain a firearm, too large to house false hope for Kevin.
The man finally looked up, directly at Kevin. The overhead bank of fiuorescents poured light the color of bile down on them both. One lamp, failing, sizzled with faint blue lightning. Kevin wondered if that was deliberate, then dismissed the idea as paranoia. They could pull a lot more effective tricks if they wanted to.
“So, Dr. Blake,” the man began. Kevin still couldn’t place the voice, the face. “How long,” he went on pleasantly, “have you been screwing your patients?”
A blood-red bull of rage charged through Kevin, herding all the adrenaline in his body before it. He dammed the reaction before it became just what the doctor across him had ordered. Now Kevin recognized the man—the manner of attack.
“At least I don’t screw up their heads, Dr. Nordstrom.” Nordstrom smiled. “I’m flattered.”
“No, just unforgettable, like a posthypnotic suggestion.”
“Speaking of hypnosis, I’m surprised you used it on Jane Doe. I thought you considered yourself more adventuresome. That’s a… milquetoast method—out-of-date and overrated.”
Kevin quashed the impulse to answer that he’d done pretty well with it; that’s exactly what Nordstrom wanted to know. “Look, Aaron, let’s cut out the cat and mouse—”
“Eric,” Nordstrom seethed, his face whitening against the shiny black square of night behind it.
“It’s been a while,” Kevin agreed. “I didn’t know you got your kicks from government cases nowadays.”
“I have a private practice as well, in Manhattan. Quite lucrative.” He opened a manila folder. “I was surprised, too, to find you… subsisting… on a university salary. You would have done better in private practice.”
“Money’s not everything, as you oughta know,” Kevin shot back, wincing anyway at the sight of Nordstrom flipping through the particulars of his life. Letting an antagonist see your salary was almost worse than letting him observe your sex life.
“Of course you had your headlines,” Nordstrom mused, cracking another folder, one obviously older than the others. Kevin glimpsed tatters of yellowed newsprint, even recognized the still-white, slick page with the old item from Time.
How had the PID managed to unearth this creep? He wondered. Probably the same way Probe had found Kevin.
Nordstrom decisively shut the folder. “I have no headlines, but I’ve had interesting work, too, all these years. My consultation cases. As you know, the government and the universities don’t pay that well. But they offer other advantages. I too have ‘ridden the cutting edge of current psychiatric practice,’ Blake. Smarts, sometimes, doesn’t it?”
Kevin recognized the line from the Time article, and shrugged. Offhand gestures had always nettled Nordstrom’s sense of formality.
Nordstrom opened a new folder, its front flap slapping the desktop, all business. “Your Jan
e Doe is an intriguing case.”
“I thought so, too… at first.”
“You apparently thought other things later. I’m eager to meet her, the woman who pulled you off your pedestal.”
“She’s just an… interesting case—”
“Your eyelids widen slightly when you lie, the way William F. Buckley’s do when he’s going for the jugular, did you know that, Blake? It’s almost as if you have to force yourself to watch yourself do it. You’ll never last in this game without lying.”
“I’ll practice,” Kevin promised sharply.
Nordstrom nodded, his manicured hand cupping his mouth but not quite concealing a slightly crooked smile. Kevin’s memories of the man came trickling back. Nordstrom had been too unlikable to dwell on, but he’d been bright enough, in his self-effacing way, and rich enough. And sly enough.
“I’ve been thinking.” Nordstrom steepled his hands. As his suit sleeves drew up, Kevin saw the glint of a watch far richer than his own. His watch lay on the desk, with the other possessions Turner had taken from his pockets. Kevin’s body remained free, but his person had been stripped of his things, his accessories.
As if a mind reader, Nordstrom picked up the timepiece, letting the fine-jointed gold band lie snake-supple across his small, manicured hand.
“I’ve spoken to your parents…”
“My parents?” Kevin kept his voice cold, polite, like Nordstrom’s.
“Nice people.” The watch still draped his palm, on the verge of slipping to the desktop.
Kevin didn’t care, he told himself, but he projected his parents into the watch they had given him anyway.
“Nice people,” Nordstrom repeated. “Ordinary people. Proud of you. And puzzled, of course.”
“What did you talk to them about?”
“You.”
“And what did they talk to you about?”
“You.”
“They don’t know who you are—”
“I told them. I’m assigned to a special government unit, I said. ‘Oh, like our son,’ they said.” Nordstrom smiled. “Your mother got on the extension. She was so excited to hear about you. Doesn’t get too many long-distance calls. Been a bit busy lately, Doctor? Forget your familial duties?”
“It isn’t a duty, but then you wouldn’t understand that.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them what hot water you’re in. I simply sowed a few seeds. Said there was a case I needed to question you about. One of your female patients. That you were missing, you were… both missing and we… were concerned. I said that some people thought you had rim away with your patient, so to speak. They are old-fashioned folk, aren’t they, your parents? It was better to speak in such terms, wasn’t it?”
“You contemptible bastard,” Kevin said without feeling.
Feeling wouldn’t help him now. “Yeah, they’re real easy. It must have given you a kick to manipulate people like that. They live in a town so small they think everyone who rings the doorbell or the phone needs something, and deserves it”
“They gave me what I needed.” Nordstrom put the watch down, nudging it so it lay straight. “Oh, their Kevin wouldn’t do anything wrong like that, no. Elope with a patient, never. Violate his professional ethics, heavens no. It was rather touching. Too bad they were wrong.”
“Parents often are wrong about their children, particularly the grown ones. Weren’t yours about you?” Nordstrom’s lips screwed a millimeter tighter. “Your parents defended you to the ditches, you’ll be gratified to hear. Told me all about you and your early days—your grades, your girlfriends, your track medals, your civic spirit—such a paragon, such an all-American boy. They finished up with your scholarship to Harvard.”
“That should have got you up-to-date.”
“Odd, though, that’s when I discovered I knew more about you, from that point on. They didn’t even know about Julie Symons.”
Kevin shrugged the shrug that had infuriated Turner. He hoped it would do the same for Nordstrom. “Maybe Julie Symons wasn’t that important.” It did.
“She was!” Nordstrom’s fist hit the desk, folders twitching at the blow. “You… lying—” His face smoothed. “She was,” he repeated more coldly.
“I didn’t think you even knew her.”
“You didn’t think a lot of things you should have then.” Kevin shrugged again. “So you got my parents all worried about me—about where I might be, about what I might have done. I don’t like it, but they’re parents. Parents have worried for a long, long time. They’ll get over it.”
“Still, it’s bound to be distressing. They’ll call the Probe unit first—and find it… gone. They’ll call your apartment… and get no answer. They’ll start to look for your friends, and realize that they don’t know who they are. Or maybe that you don’t have that many—”
“I’m particular.”
“You don’t need anyone!” Nordstrom charged. “How long since you’ve seen your parents—those nice, grayhaired old people in Elk River?”
“Six months, so sue me.”
“They’re very worried about you, Kevin.” Nordstrom’s eyes grew soulful as he assumed the role of guilt-applying authority. Kevin could see that the man would have a certain force with his patients if they were unsophisticated or damaged enough.
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty worried about me, too,” Kevin said wryly. His frankness momentarily disarmed Nordstrom.
“You should be. I’m nobody to trifle with.”
“ ‘Trifle with.’ Come on, Nordstrom, no wonder nobody takes you seriously. You want to talk no friends, take a look at your own social calendar. How could I remember you off the bat? You weren’t very memorable, except as something unpleasant people have to take sometimes, like castor oil. Pursuing degrees instead of humanity. You want to talk maladjusted, let me put my cards on the table—I’m a pretty good analyst, you know.”
“Shut up!” The man’s voice sank to a whisper. “Shut up. I had connections, who needs friends? And Julie was my friend—didn’t know that, did you, Dr. Hotshot? Julie Symons wasn’t yours alone; she was mine, too.”
“That’s sick, Nordstrom.” Kevin’s contempt was deeply genuine now, so real he couldn’t look at the man.
Manila folders rustled. Kevin used the pause to reassess his opponent, to figure out what Nordstrom really wanted, what Nordstrom really was. He didn’t like the possibilities that were clarifying in his mind.
“She was mine!” Nordstrom’s intensity of tone implied spittle. Kevin was glad he was sitting six feet away. He looked back at the man, because he had to.
Nordstrom’s fist whitened in the chilly room; it clenched, crushed something shiny and black and white. Kevin felt his face melt like a Salvador Dali clock as he realized what it was.
He was up and leaning over the desk, manila folders scattering, the briefcase lid banging down, Nordstrom’s Ivy League tie knot in his hand, his other hand crushing wool suiting material.
“How the fucking hell did you get a hold of that, you twisted son of a bitch—?”
Kevin didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded raw, as if he’d been shouting himself hoarse at a basketball game. The room buzzed. It seemed crowded with light and color and sound. His bands knew they could tear Nordstrom apart. He wanted to let them.
Nordstrom’s glasses had jolted crooked on his bland, ugly face. Kevin could have squeezed, shaken, throttled, except that Nordstrom’s eyes flicked significantly away, down and to the left- He repeated the gesture, quick and slick as a snake’s tongue sniffing the air for scent. Kevin followed the glance.
At last, now, leaning over Nordstrom across the desk, Kevin could see into the black case.
He saw what he had been afraid he’d see—a glistening row of syringes cradled in notched velveteen, fine white lines scribing their sides to the fifty-milligram mark. Chemical abbreviations for the clear liquid contents were scrawled on the adhesive tape wound around them. Kevin recognized sodium pentothal and
amytal sodium, a hypnotic drug, but three more syringes lay there, unidentified foreign substances filling their familiar shining tubes.
“At my discretion, Blake,” Nordstrom enunciated. “My discretion. It suits me to interview you in an unaltered state now. But if you don’t control yourself, I’ll go to these sooner rather than later.”
That clinical array iced Kevin’s rage. He eased back into his chair, brooding on the drugs. Such things were useful in the practice of psychiatry, had helped many patients and irretrievably harmed a few. He didn’t like them, but someone like Nordstrom would say that was because he liked to hog all the glory with his technique in session. Kevin would say that the human mind, given half a chance, could produce more wonders than a battalion of injected chemical wonder-workers.
“Nice work if you can get it.” Kevin stretched out his legs and laced his fingers over his stomach. The posture would irritate Nordstrom for its studied insouciance, but it was also physically unthreatening. Nordstrom, Kevin realized now, was far too dangerous to threaten.
The man was smoothing the wrinkles in the stolen photograph. Kevin had kept the picture under glass for ten years—the only surviving likeness of Julie. Watching Nordstrom’s fingers crush and then caress the slick paper image made his guts clench until they hurt, but he knew Nordstrom wanted it to hurt. In any psychiatrist-patient encounter, the one who hurts less will emerge the stronger.
A prick of fear, like a needle delicately encroaching on Kevin’s skin, burned into the base of his neck.
“You had no right to take it.” Kevin nodded at the photo. “It has nothing to do with anything now.”
“It has everything to do with it!” Nordstrom glanced up, his glasses still low on his nose so the unfocused fever of his eyes—mud-brown—drove into Kevin’s. “It’s the key to you, Doctor—to your delusion about this amnesia patient, to your obsession with her…”
“My obsession!” Kevin laughed. “At least my obsession lives.” It was a cheap shot, cheaply intended. Nordstrom’s pupils contracted to pinpricks and Kevin felt a throb of new hope.
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