Assassin's Code

by Ward Larsen

  She had come to the coast nine years ago—nine years exactly, because people here tracked such things as a matter of pride. She was not a local, but to her credit not from the city, and she kept to herself a bit more than she should have. There were rumors of a bad divorce, others of an inheritance pirated by siblings. It was all quite dramatic, and likely no more than gossip. But she was a nurse. There had been no mistaking the proper bandage she’d put on the young boy who cut himself on the rocks two summers ago, nor the dutiful CPR she’d performed, to no avail, on old man Ferguson the winter before. At least one year-round resident had seen her car parked behind an urgent care clinic in Bangor, although he couldn’t say whether she’d been there as a patient or an employee. She was polite to the clerk at the grocery in Columbia, and equally so when gassing her old Honda every Sunday at the Circle K on Route 1. Her only defined shortfall, if it could be characterized as such, was laid bare by the garbageman, who swore by all that was distilled that the nurse’s recycle bucket was habitually filled with enough wine bottles to maintain three thirsty men. Still, as with her social reticence, that was her business. There were two types of year-rounders in Cape Split—those whose ancestors swam onto its rocks, and the rest who came to escape the dispensed ills of life.

  Her weathered cottage—because no place with such a view could be called a shack—was little more than four walls of shaker siding, once a happy blue, and a roof that didn’t leak. One path led to the road, another to the sea. The nearest neighbor was half a mile in either direction. It was a small place, and private, which here was saying something. And by one reliable account, for the last three weeks the recycle bucket had been empty.

  Joan Chandler rose early that morning, not much after the sun, and stepped onto the small porch that overlooked the sea. She stretched gingerly, thinking the light seemed unusually intense. Her heart was racing even before her morning coffee, and she steadied one trembling hand on the rail. The trees were silent in a slack wind, the sea serene. Other than a few gulls wheeling in the distance, the world outside was uncommonly still. How fitting, she thought.

  Her patient hadn’t stirred in the week since she’d brought him here. Or for that matter, in the week before, not that anyone was counting. He had stabilized, as far as she could tell, although her equipment was laughably rudimentary. The portable heart monitor she had stolen from work, although it would never be missed because it had been closeted for dodgy leads. They were scads of redundant equipment in the small place where she worked—lab, clinic, she’d never known what to call it—and she’d reasoned that one fault-prone monitor wouldn’t be missed. God, what a budget they had. Everything was new, full digital suites suitable for surgery fitted into all four rooms. Most outlandish were the imaging machines: functional magnetic resonance imaging, gamma knife, helical x-ray CT, all brand new and perfectly calibrated.

  Chandler knew little about any of that—she’d been recruited for the operating room. Her baseline clinical experience was years ago, right after nursing school, and like so many in her profession she had gravitated to a more lucrative specialty: perioperative nursing. She’d made a good living before her troubles—an abusive husband, two miscarriages, and a financially ruinous divorce. Her drinking got the better of her, costing her a good job—a career, in truth, or so she’d thought. Then she’d been granted one last chance, the most peculiar of job offers.

  She pulled open the weather door, which creaked heavily, and stepped back inside to check on her patient. There was no chart at the foot of his bed. For that matter, there wasn’t really a bed, her little used trundle substituting for a proper hi-low setup. Aside from the heart monitor, there was little else. An IV pole, now empty, and a few supplies on a shelf: bandages mostly, and an assortment of medications to ward off infection and manage pain. Like the rest, all pilfered from the clinic since the patient had arrived. Since she’d made her decision.

  She took a pulse and a blood pressure reading. Much better than last week. His color was improving, and respiration seemed normal, not the shallow rasps of seven days ago when she’d wheeled him up the porch in the collapsible wheelchair that had barely fit into the trunk of her Honda.

  He was a good-looking young man. Short brown hair with streaks of blond from the distant summer, regular features, and a swimmer’s build. She checked his eyes now and again for pupil dilation, and found them vacant and clear and, she couldn’t deny, a storybook blue. Chandler wondered how different they would look with life behind them. Aside from the legend behind his injuries, which might or might not be true, she had little background information on patient B—that was how he was referred to at the clinic, and of course she knew why. But she had learned his name. Against regulations, she’d rifled through the doctor’s files and found it. She had wanted that much. If there was a date of birth in the record she hadn’t been able to find it, but she guessed him to be thirty, maybe a bit younger. Fifteen years her junior, more or less. Almost young enough to be the son she’d never had.

  Chandler sighed. She went to the kitchen and put the coffeepot on the stove.

  He woke just before noon, while she was changing the bandage on his head. His eyes cracked open, only slightly at first, then suddenly came wide. Even in that moment, vacant and imprecise, the eyes were as blue as any she’d seen.

  “Well, hello,” she said in her best nurse’s sing-song.

  He responded by blinking once.

  “Take it easy. You’ve had an accident.”

  He looked around the place, trying to get his bearings. His lips began to quiver as he attempted to build a word.

  “Go slow, it’s all right. You’ll have all the time you need to recover.”

  “Wa … water,” he rasped.

  For the first time in two months, the nurse smiled.

  THREE

  By the third day the patient was sitting up in bed and eating solid food. As he downed a second plate of pasta, he asked, “What can you tell me about the accident I was in—I don’t remember anything.”

  “That’s often the case, Trey.” They had settled that much the first day. Trey DeBolt, originally from Colorado Springs, twenty-seven years old and single. He was a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, one of the most physically demanding specialties in all the services—and probably the only reason he was still alive. “You took a beating when your helicopter went down. Your right shoulder was damaged, and there were a number of cuts and contusions. The most significant injuries were to your head.”

  “No kidding. How about another Percocet?”

  “No.”

  “I need something.”

  “Only on schedule.” Chandler said it firmly, no mention that stock was running low.

  “I remember a hospital … at least I think I do. Now I’m in a beach house?”

  He had heard the surf yesterday, and she’d admitted that much. “I told you, it’s complicated. I’ll explain everything when you’re stronger. For now you’re safe, you’re recovering. What’s the last thing you do remember?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Obviously.”

  Trey DeBolt smiled, another first. “I remember reporting for work at the station … Kodiak, Alaska.” His eyes went far away, something new recollected. “Then we got scrambled for a mission. There was a rescue.” After a lengthy pause, he shook his head. “I can’t remember where we went, or what we were after. A foundering ship, a lost crewman. It was a dire situation, I know that much. The weather was awful, but … no, I can’t remember anything else.”

  “Parts are coming back—that’s good. I can’t tell you any details of the accident. I only know that when they brought you into surgery you were in bad shape.”

  “What about my crew, Lt. Morgan and Adams? Mikey?”

  “You were the only survivor, Trey—I’m sorry.”

  He was silent for a time. “That’s a Class-A mishap. There will be an investigation. Has anyone come to interview me?”

  “I’m sure
they will. In time.”

  “When?” he demanded. His first touch of impatience.

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked out the window. “This isn’t Alaska.”

  “You’re in Maine.”

  “Maine?”

  “You were brought here because you needed our doctors. They specialize in head trauma, the best in the world. Tell me—who will be wondering about you?”

  “Wondering? What do you mean—like my commander?”

  “No, he’s been notified.”

  DeBolt’s eyes narrowed. “She.”

  “Sorry—I was only told it had been done. I was thinking more along the lines of family.”

  “It’s all in my personnel file.”

  She waited.

  “My father is dead, mom is in Colorado Springs. But she’s got early-onset Alzheimer’s, so I doubt she’s been told anything.”

  “Brothers or sisters?”

  “None.”

  “Significant other?”

  “I’m between relationships—isn’t that what everyone says now? I’ve been stationed on an island in the Aleutians for a year, and the guy-to-girl ratio is pretty bleak.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m taking classes, an online program. At some point my professor will wonder what became of me.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “I’m aiming for a bachelor’s degree in biology. I like the Coast Guard, but I’m not sure I’ll last twenty years.”

  She stood abruptly. “Your appetite is improving. I should go for provisions. Is there anything you’d like?”

  “Drugs.”

  She frowned.

  “Maybe an omelet. And some OJ.”

  “That I can manage.” She was out the door.

  The room fell quiet. DeBolt looked all around. He tried to remember more about Alaska. A small engine kicked to life, followed by tires crunching over gravel.

  He fell fast asleep.

  It was sleep in only the roughest sense, troubled dreams jolting him in and out of consciousness. Shooting images, angular shapes, letters and numbers, all colliding in his mind as he drifted just beyond the grip of consciousness. He was rescued by a noise, a sharp wooden creak. DeBolt opened his eyes and looked all around. He saw no one.

  “Joan?”

  No reply.

  He wondered how long he’d been out, but there was no way to tell. Not a clock anywhere. He turned his head slowly, examining the place in detail, and found every limit of movement a new adventure in pain.

  What was it about this room?

  Then it struck him. It was completely devoid of anything electronic. No television, no computer, not even a microwave in the tiny kitchen. He had yet to see Joan use a cell phone, which in this day and age was striking. Was the place that remote, completely out of cell coverage? Or was his nurse an anti-technology type, a back to basics pioneer with a vegetable garden and two chickens out back, a wind generator on the chimney?

  Whatever.

  He sat up straight, fighting a stab of pain in his skull. Never one to sit still, DeBolt began moving his arms, up and down, rotating in expanding circles. Not bad. He graduated to leg lifts, but that somehow involved the muscles in his upper back, and a bolt of lightning struck the base of his neck. He lay back down.

  A car crunched closer on gravel outside. DeBolt heard the engine die, a door open and close. Then an unfamiliar voice as Joan Chandler began conversing with someone—apparently a neighbor. Most of it he didn’t catch. But he heard enough.

  Soon she was inside with an armload of groceries, the visitor having been sent packing.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  She busied herself unloading two paper sacks. DeBolt would have thought her a reusable-bag sort.

  “Bob Denton, lives in town. He does a bit of handiwork for me now and again. Said he was in the neighborhood, and he wondered how my weather stripping was holding up.”

  “You told him my name was Michael.”

  A lengthy pause. “I have a nephew by that name.”

  “You have a patient named Trey.”

  She slammed a can of beans on the counter, her face tightening as she fought … what? Anger?

  “Look,” said DeBolt, “I don’t mean to be ungracious. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. But this is no hospital. I’ve seen no doctors, and haven’t been allowed to contact anyone I know. What the hell is going on?”

  She came to his bed and sat down on the edge. Instead of answering, she began unwrapping the wide bandage on his head. Once done, she took the old gauze to the bathroom and returned with two hand mirrors. She held them so he could see the wounds on the back of his skull. What he saw took his breath away. Two deep scars formed a V, joining near the base of his scalp, and three smaller wounds were evident elsewhere. There had to be a hundred stitches, but it all seemed to be healing; hair was beginning to grow back where his head had been shaved, covering the damage.

  She turned the mirrors away.

  After a long silence, he asked, “Will there be any long-term effects?”

  “Some scarring of course, but the damage to your scalp was minimal. As long as you keep your hair a certain length, your appearance will be unchanged.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  She met his gaze. “The trauma to your brain was significant, but so far I see no evidence of cognitive impairment. Your speech and movement seem normal, which is a very good sign. But then, I’m no expert.”

  “But I will see them at some point—experts.”

  “Of course you will. Tell me, do you notice anything different?”

  “In what way?”

  “Mental processes, I suppose. Have you had any unusual thoughts or sensations?”

  “I’m hungry, but that’s hardly unusual.”

  She waited.

  “No,” he finally said, “although I’m really not sure what you’re asking. There is something when I sleep, I suppose. I see things—angular shapes, light on dark.”

  The nurse almost said something, but instead launched into a series of cognitive exams. She made him calculate a tip for a restaurant bill, spell a given word forward, then backward, arrange historical events in chronological order. When she asked him to draw a picture of his childhood home, an increasingly irritated DeBolt said, “If I earn a passing grade, will I be allowed out of the house?”

  “You’re lucky to be alive right now, Petty Officer DeBolt.”

  “And you’re lucky I’m not well enough to get up and walk away.”

  “You will be soon. For your own sake, I hope you don’t. I hope you stay a bit longer.”

  “How caring,” he said, his sarcasm falling to crassness. Realizing he’d crossed a line, he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. When you’ve been a nurse as long as I have, you avoid taking things personally—force of habit.”

  Those last words, the tone and intonation, clicked in DeBolt’s damaged brain like a light switch. Force of habit. “You—” he said tentatively, “you were there in the hospital. You put the needle in my arm.” He shivered inwardly, remembering the glacial sensation of the drug crawling through his body.

  She didn’t answer right away. “Yes, I administered a special narcotic—it’s what saved you, Trey. There are other things that must remain unsaid for now, until your recovery is more complete. But please … please trust me when I say that I only want what’s best for you.”

  DeBolt searched her open gaze, her earnest expression. And he did trust her.

  FOUR

  DeBolt was soon walking with confidence around the cottage and porch, and days later set out toward the rocky beachhead. The next weeks were full of rehabilitation, the intensity increasing and pain lessening until it was something near exercise. The nurse performed rudimentary tests: an eye chart on the far wall, whispered hearing evaluations, all of which DeBolt passed, or so he guessed because they were not repeated. She
brought him clothes, ill fitting and—he was sure—purchased from a second-hand store. He thanked her for all of it.

  The quandary of time was settled when she bought him a watch, a cheap Timex that promised but failed to glow in the dark. It was accurate enough, though, and DeBolt found strange exhilaration in keeping a schedule. Wake at 6:00. Soft run on the beach, three miles back and forth over the same quarter-mile stretch of rock-strewn sand. Breakfast at 7:10. Rest until 8:15. The running he hated—always had—and with obvious reluctance she allowed him to swim. He took to the water gratefully, but complained the cold was intolerable, and she managed to procure a used neoprene wetsuit, two sizes too large, that made the daily plunge bearable. Each day brought advances and, rare setbacks aside, DeBolt progressed in but one direction. The headaches lessened, and so correspondingly did his need for pain medication. New examinations were introduced—memory games, mathematical puzzles, cognitive exercises. She assured him in every case that he performed well.

  Yet if the patient was improving, he sensed a notable decline in his caregiver. She seemed increasingly withdrawn and distant, moreso each time he pressed her for an explanation of how he’d ended up in a beach house in New England after the frozen Bering Sea. Her descending mood was more apparent each day, relentless and foreboding. One morning, as she counted his push-ups on the beach, he spotted a young girl far in the distance. She was eight, perhaps ten years old, prancing barefoot through tide pools with a net and a bucket. As she neared the edge of the rock outcropping where she was gathering creatures, DeBolt recognized a shift in the sea beyond—a strong rip current funneling offshore. He said they should warn the girl to stay clear of the water. Chandler responded by immediately ushering him shoreward.