by Jeff Abbott
‘I’m done with the computer. Thank you again.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘I don’t mean to pry. I saw on your screen, you’re logged on to one of the post-traumatic support blogs.’
‘Yes. Victor Gamby’s. I think I mentioned him to you. He’s a friend of mine in Los Angeles – he’s tireless about raising awareness of PTSD issues. He’s the one who wanted me to appear on Oprah with him.’
‘I hope you’re strong enough to accept his offer.’
‘God, are you kidding? No way. No way in hell.’
‘Someday, Celeste, you’ll leave this house. You’ll want to.’
Celeste couldn’t speak. Allison cleared her throat, blinked as though she were searching for the right words. ‘Those discussion groups… it’s good that you’re reaching out to others.’
‘I don’t talk about myself. I just read what other people say.’
‘But it helps to know you’re not alone.’
‘I’ve made an art of being alone.’
To her surprise Allison knelt among the scatterings from the spilled purse, fished out a fresh rubber band, stood awkwardly, and slid the band on Celeste’s wrist. ‘There may come a day you don’t want to be alone.’
Celeste shrugged. ‘Who’d want a basket case like me?’
‘Oh, Celeste.’ Allison shook her head. ‘I have a second favor to ask.’
‘Sure.’
‘If anyone calls from the hospital – especially Doctor Hurley – you haven’t seen me today.’
‘Who’s Doctor Hurley?’
Allison stuck out her tongue, rolled her eyes. ‘My boss at my part-time job.’
‘Shame on you, playing hooky,’ Celeste said.
‘We all need a mental-health day.’
‘Or week, or month, or year.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow, see how you are,’ Allison said.
‘Thanks.’
Allison left, and Celeste shut the heavy door behind her. She peered around the curtain, watching over the low adobe wall surrounding her yard as Allison got into her BMW and drove off. Celeste stood at the window, her hand against the reinforced pane of glass. Twenty seconds later another car shot by and then the mud road lay quiet, and Celeste listened to the wind rattle in the cottonwoods.
She went back to the computer – Allison had thoughtfully left it as she found it, the posting from the boy-soldier back from Baghdad front and center. She clicked on E-mail Reply and wrote: It does get better, sweetie, be sure and find a doctor who really understands PTSD and will listen to what you tell him/her. Don’t let them tell you it’s just in your head or depression, don’t let them use nothing but pills to numb you. Don’t lose faith. If you were here, I’d give you a big hug if you’d let me.
Then, to the girl cutting herself, Celeste wrote: I wanted to cut today and I didn’t. Lately I’m more able to resist the urge, maybe it’s the change of the seasons maybe I’m just less ‘crazy’ today but we’re not crazy we’re broken and we are our own glue sweet girl know that we on the list care and if I were there I’d give you a big hug and tell you: You will, you will, you will be okay. She signed both replies ‘ceebee,’ the name from her initials she used on the group, because she dared not use her own. That would bring out the media vultures.
She pressed Send. She didn’t want anyone else to suffer the hell that she did, she was only twenty-eight but here were these kids younger than she, already with savaged souls, and it broke what was left of her heart. Saying no to Victor, the flashback, reading other people’s sadness, she needed a lift. She hunted for the antidepressants Allison had prescribed for her, kneeling in the jumbled spill from her purse. The razor. The rubber bands. Her wallet.
The vials of pills she kept in her purse were gone. White pills and blue pills. She took the blue if her mood sank low, like now, and she needed the comfort of an antidepressant, the white pills right before a therapy session with Allison, to calm her, to make it easier to talk about Brian and the Disturbed Fan. But the bottle had just been there on the floor, hadn’t it, when Allison got her a replacement rubber band?
She knelt, glancing under the chair and the coffee table, finally getting up and wandering the room. She went to her bathroom and found one bottle holding the sweet blue numbers. But no white pills. Where the hell had she put them? She should have asked Allison for a refill, but that was all right, she didn’t have a session for two more days.
She downed a blue meanie, as she called them, and went and sat in front of her window. She observed the shifting sunlight of the day from inside her cage. The thought nagged at her. Those pills had been in her purse this afternoon, she was sure of it.
Perhaps Allison had taken the pills, palming them when she rummaged through Celeste’s purse. But why, without telling her? And asking her to keep her secret for her, as if they were teenage girls, was downright odd. Actually unprofessional. Keeping a secret meant responsibility, and she wanted nothing to do with responsibility.
She got up and headed for the phone.
SIX
Miles slowed to a walk as he reached Palace Avenue. He scanned the office’s parking slots. Allison’s silver BMW wasn’t in the lot.
But he saw Sorenson walking through the front door, into the building. He carried a fat briefcase, the kind Miles had seen government lawyers use to haul massive files into the courtroom.
Miles ducked close to a cottonwood, counted to thirty, then went up to the steps and into the building.
Allison’s office was closed. He risked a quick listen at the door; he heard the softest tread of foot on floor. The hallway air reeked of paints and solvents and he heard voices upstairs, workmen discussing the renovations, the quiet voice of a woman asking when the work would be finished, she planned to relocate here from Denver and, damn, she needed an office before the rents went up. The painters laughed and agreed with her sense of urgency.
Keep them occupied, lady, please, Miles thought. Knock or wait? Confront Sorenson – but with what? That he wasn’t licensed? He considered the oddity of Allison’s request, a note tucked into his medication. She presumably couldn’t ask for help in front of Sorenson. So Sorenson was her so-called real trouble. She couldn’t call and ask for help, which might mean that Sorenson was going to be around her a lot. Or monitoring her calls…
That sounded ridiculous. Paranoid. But she’d said Sorenson was a doctor, and he wasn’t. So what was he?
He stepped away from the door toward the office across the entryway from hers. The door stood open, the beige paint on the walls fresh. The workers upstairs must be refurbishing these rooms as well. They could return at any second and he didn’t want to be forced to explain his presence. But he eased the office door shut to an inch, where he could still see Allison’s door.
Two minutes later, Sorenson stepped out from Allison’s office, locked the door with a key, and left the building through the front door. No briefcase in hand.
Miles watched Sorenson step out of his line of vision and ten seconds later the door he was hiding behind slammed into his face.
‘Jesus, mister, sorry,’ the painter said, peeking around the edge.
‘My fault,’ Miles managed to say. ‘Sorry.’
‘These offices are already leased,’ the painter said. ‘The ones upstairs are available.’
‘Okay, thanks, sorry.’ Miles fled into the hallway, then into the bathroom. Washed his face, counted to thirty. He heard, after a minute, the heavy tread of the painter’s feet going back up the staircase.
Miles hurried to Allison’s door. He fished the lockpick he’d brought from home out of his pocket. It resembled a Swiss army knife set, and he pulled a blade free and eased it into the door. He hadn’t picked a lock since he’d stopped his spying for the Barradas, since he’d walked into a meeting with the feds to help bring the Barradas down. Lockpicks were part of the world he’d left behind but when he got to Santa Fe, he’d bought a basic set of picks off the Internet. He had assembled
, and hidden in a rented locker at the bus station, a cache of equipment and money in case WITSEC couldn’t protect him, in case he had to vanish on his own terms. Because, until he lost his mind, he’d always taken care of himself.
He wondered, as he bit his lip and worked the mechanism, if picking a lock of a person who’d asked him for help was a violation of the Memorandum of Understanding WITSEC had required him to sign. He wasn’t supposed to commit a crime. It wasn’t a contract, but the MOU laid out, in clear black and white, his responsibility as a freshly minted law-abider, and the government’s duty to protect him. If WITSEC found out he’d jimmied her locks, they could boot him from the program, and then he was dead.
He was crossing a line not drawn in ink or sand but in trust. But she wasn’t answering her phone and Sorenson – who wasn’t a doctor and had lied about being one – came and went at will from her office. He was afraid for Allison.
The lock clicked open.
He stepped inside, shut and locked the door behind him. He checked the office.
She wasn’t here.
Okay, then, he thought. She’s not here. He comes in with a large briefcase, he leaves without it, which means he left it here. And what’s inside tells me who he is.
He searched the closet; it stood empty, except for a hooded sweatshirt, a raincoat, an umbrella, a sealed cardboard moving box marked MISC, and a box of spare office supplies. He peered under her desk. Empty. There weren’t that many places to stash a large briefcase. He went through the office methodically, telling himself he should leave, he wasn’t a private investigator, he wasn’t the Barradas’ spy anymore.
‘I don’t think she’d appreciate you being here,’ Andy said.
Miles paid him no attention. No sign of the briefcase. Now it was more interesting; now it was an item Sorenson didn’t want found. But he’d run out of hiding places.
The phone rang. He let it ring. Five rings and then Allison’s voice-greeting on the machine, simply asking the caller to leave a message. A woman’s quiet voice came on: ‘Hi, Allison, it’s Celeste Brent, um, the medicine you gave me last week seems to have vanished, the white pills, and I guess I need to get a replacement.’ Pause, but he could still hear the woman breathing into the line. ‘And I’m not really comfortable keeping secrets for you. It’s nothing personal, I think we’re just crossing a line that we shouldn’t. So, please, don’t put me in that position again. If I’m being a bitch, I’m really sorry, call me and we’ll talk.’ The woman hung up.
Celeste Brent. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. The fact that the name was familiar bothered him; he’d have to be sure and find out who she was.
Then he heard a voice in the hallway, heard the key slide back into the lock.
He stepped into the closet, eased the door closed so he could see a sliver of the office, and heard the door open, then shut.
The thought of Allison catching him here made his chest nearly burst with shame. But Sorenson hurried past the two chairs where Allison always sat with Miles, into her office. He couldn’t see Sorenson but he heard the creak of a chair, he heard fingers tapping on a computer keyboard for several minutes. Miles stayed still, careful to breathe silently through his nose, a panic surging up and down his spine. Jesus, what if Sorenson stayed here until Miles was supposed to meet Allison? The thought made his legs ache, his mouth wither dry.
The typing stopped. He heard Sorenson say, apparently into a phone, ‘The action’s loaded. Dodd doesn’t know.’ A laugh, a pause. ‘Tonight. Yes. Her house. No problem.’ Then silence.
Miles strained to hear. What did that mean? Who was Dodd? The silence was awful. He imagined Sorenson walking straight to the closet.
Then he saw a flash of Sorenson’s blazer, crossing the narrow viewpoint, then the rattle of a file cabinet opening, a few seconds’ pause, then the file cabinet closed with a slam. He heard the click of a lock engaging in the cabinet.
Then feet crossing the floor, the office door opening, shutting, locking again.
Miles remained perfectly still. Frozen. He counted to three hundred. Then he counted it again. Slowly he unfolded himself from the closet, hands shaking. He inspected the file cabinet. He could pick the lock – but, no, he couldn’t peruse her patient files. Too much of a betrayal. He unlocked the door. He relocked the office door and left, pocketing the lockpick.
He glanced up and down the street. No sign of Sorenson. Nothing made sense, Sorenson mucking about on her computer, going through her files, hiding a briefcase in her office. He hurried back down Palace, toward the Plaza. He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and tried Allison’s number again.
‘Allison?’ he said when she answered.
‘Yes. Michael?’
‘Please tell me what’s going on. What trouble are you in?’
She didn’t answer right away and he heard the rumble of an engine; it sounded as though she was in a car. ‘Can you come at seven?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can explain then. Before Sorenson comes at eight.’
He risked a shot across her bow. ‘Is Sorenson really a doctor?’
An awkward laugh. ‘Very good. No, he’s not.’
‘Why did you lie to me?’
‘Because I didn’t want him to know… that you could help me.’
‘Who is he? Is he threatening you?’
‘I’ll tell you all tonight. I can’t talk now.’
‘He’s planning something tonight at your home.’
A pause. ‘How do you know?’ A tinge of shock in her tone.
He decided to wait. See her face to face. ‘I just know. I’m – I was an investigator, I find out things.’
‘Is that how you’ve spent today – investigating?’ She sounded surprised.
‘Yes. I used to be good at it.’
‘I don’t doubt it at all. I know I can trust you. Come at seven and I can explain it all.’
‘All right. Allison – who’s Dodd?’
But she had hung up.
He tried her phone again. No answer.
As he walked, the wind began to gust and the air carried the raw scent of storm. He ran up the stairs to his apartment. The rooms were too warm; he opened a window a couple of inches, let in the chilly air. WITSEC had offered to rent a house for him but a house meant too much space and quiet, too much room for Andy to roam free.
Exhausted from his close call, he collapsed onto the bed.
He read Allison’s note again. He shook one of the pills from the bottle into his palm; a tiny white slug of a capsule. He’d decided against taking one after the flashback in Joy’s office, not wanting to talk with DeShawn while medicated. The pill was light as a feather. He fingered the capsule; the casing dented under his fingernail. Pushed harder. The dent went deep.
He pulled apart the two halves of the capsule – empty.
She’d given him a vial of fake pills. Odd on top of odd.
He lay down on the bed, contemplating the ceiling. The burden of responsibility – of helping her, of making a decision to do rather than just to be – pressed on him. The lack of sleep from the night before, restless and frantic as he considered writing the confession, made his eyes hurt. What if he couldn’t help her, if he was unequal to the task? He touched the confession in his pocket and closed his eyes to try to think.
SEVEN
‘Does it work?’ Groote asked. He nearly held his breath and thought: This is it, Amanda, here’s the miracle that saves you and makes you all right again. He had flown out from Orange County to Albuquerque, then sped the hour north to Santa Fe. His exhaustion from the long night of waiting to kill the accountant evaporated. ‘Does it really work?’
And in the hospital conference room, Doctor Leland Hurley smiled at him and his hopes and his question. Hurley started talking again about lessening the vivid emotional toll of the most horrifying of memories, rattling off a glossary of brain chemicals: epinephrine, propanolol, super beta-blockers, adrenergic receptors. Hur
ley spoke of giving patients back their normal lives and all Groote could think was, Does it work, does it work, does it work?
Doctor Hurley gestured at the elevator. ‘Let’s go to the top floor.’
The top floor meant Frost. The medicine.
Most of the patients were in their rooms after an early dinner, small but comfortable cubbyholes. At the end of the floor’s main hallway stood an expansive group room where they could talk and gather.
‘Here’s a treat you won’t see every day,’ Hurley said, leading Groote through a door that read VIRTUAL REALITY TREATMENT. QUIET, PLEASE.
The room was dark, separated in half by a glass screen, a jumble of computers loading the walls. A young man, on the other side of the glass, dangled by four elastic cables from the ceiling. A strange helmet covered his eyes and ears; he wore a tight white bodysuit, webbed with wire and tiny gadgets that Groote guessed were recording heartbeat, breathing, and other functions. The patient hung, almost motionless, jerking now and then as he reacted to the scenes playing out of the goggles. On a screen, what appeared to be a computer-animated movie showed a darkened alleyway, wet with rain, three men walking close. One held a chain, the other a blade.
‘What are those scenes?’ Groote asked.
‘We re-create their traumas for them,’ Hurley said with a thin knife of a grin. ‘We do extensive research and interviews to get the details of their individual traumas, then we construct a computer-generated scenario that matches those details. We watch it onscreen – he sees it on the goggles, as though he’s immersed in the scene. You see it’s like a rough cut of a video game, except it’s tailor made to help them face their worst fears. It helps those who aren’t yet willing to talk consistently about their experiences process the memories, so they can discuss them and the medicine, Frost, can weaken the bad memories. This subject was attacked and nearly murdered in a vicious gang mugging in Washington. So he’s experiencing a re-creation of the mugging.’
‘Virtual reality,’ Groote said. ‘But it’s not required for the medicine to work, right?’