Fear the Darkness: A Thriller

by Becky Masterman

  “Hello, George,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “For a retired gal you sure do show up here a lot.” He peered into my face. “You don’t look well. Are you doing okay?”

  I ignored his question, but it made me realize I was biting the inside of my mouth, which caused my face to look like I’d had a stroke. I released my mouth and said, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Last August.”

  He had met me in the lobby and taken me to his office rather than the autopsy room, where I had spent more time with him. I remembered the office from another time, when I’d been under more stress but in better health. I explained to him that I wanted to go over his findings about Joseph Neilsen again now that I’d had a chance to talk with the death investigator. “Like I said, it wasn’t extra special or strange. I was just asked to take a look at the body of the deceased. A young man in good physical condition.”

  “And you said there was no internal autopsy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why are you asking me this again? We went over it, didn’t we?”

  “Humor me. I’m old and forgetful.”

  George gave me that dry look. “Don’t play the old lady card with me, we both know the truth. A better question than why not do an autopsy would be why. I already do at least one a day, so I’m not exactly looking for work. You know how it is, Brigid. In the movies they do an autopsy for every single death that doesn’t occur in a hospital bed with a preexisting condition. You know how many decomposed bodies are brought in every year after lying around in their house for several days? Most of them are heart attacks, and we don’t need to open them up to find out.”

  He sounded a little defensive, but I didn’t back down. I said, “I get that, but this one was under twenty-one. You sure his stepfather being a prominent physician didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “No. But like I said, the body had been transported to the hospital and I didn’t get called to the scene. I looked over the body, questioned the investigator and looked at his photos and description of the house. I called it, Brigid. And I remember the father wanted the whole thing to be over with without some big production. He seemed ashamed, I think.”

  “That was the stepfather. Shame. Does that seem like an odd response to a death?”

  “Shame, guilt, anger, laughter … I’ve seen so many responses nothing seems odd to me anymore.”

  “What about the mother?”

  “I only dealt with Tim Neilsen. The mother wasn’t involved. I heard she was hysterical and sedated. I did an external examination and didn’t find any defense marks or signs of struggle. So I took a little blood—”

  “You told me. You said you’d check with the lab.”

  “I did call the lab. Let me see if they had anything.” He turned to his computer and booted it up. “We’re going paperless, which I guess is nice, except the computer they gave me is so old it takes forever … here we go.” It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for once the Neilsen file was opened. “Here, they entered the report but didn’t tell me. Typical.”

  “So they did test?”

  “Yep.”

  “What was the delay?”

  “Same reason as I was saying. They’re backed up over there. Plus they’ve been moving into new facilities. Funded with a government grant. State of the art.” He had kept his eyes on the computer screen while he was talking, scanning the report. “Hm,” he said.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Nothing suspicious, none of the usual toxins, no opiates, stimulants, or antidepressants—they check for those routinely now. Got some ethanol. Is that what you were looking for?”

  “Could be. How much?”

  “Well over the limit for an adult. Any amount is too much for a fourteen-year-old.”

  “Why are you only hearing about it now?”

  “Like I said, backed up, files moving. I lost track. Besides, alcohol in his system makes the accidental call even more definite. But it says here the report was even given to the parents upon request.”

  “What? You’re shitting me. I’ve been dealing with a hysterical mother who says she never heard.”

  “She’s lying. It says here the results were given to Dr. Timothy Neilsen about three weeks after the death. The lab didn’t send me a copy but the tox test was done. Like I said, alcohol but still nothing that indicated suicide or homicide. It corroborates the finding of accidental death. Kid robbed his parents’ liquor cabinet while they were out, took a swim, died. Crying shame.”

  I knew he wasn’t being sarcastic. “Wait a sec. Order to forgo autopsy: Timothy Neilsen. Tox report made and given to … Timothy Neilsen. Mother’s questions blocked. Are you picking up a pattern here?”

  “Interesting, but I don’t see anything to prosecute in someone who’s looking for information. Want me to print this?” Without waiting for my answer he ran off the reports from the printer on his credenza. They included the death certificate.

  “I wonder who this Lari Paunchese is?” I asked, reading the form.

  “I don’t know. A physician. I remember talking to him the next morning, along with Tim Neilsen. I don’t know how he got involved.”

  “George, I know there’s no better ME than you. But are you smelling anything at all sloppy about this case?”

  George did not take offense. He’d been pushed around between detectives, families, and attorneys for too long to let my mild doubts ruffle him. “Brigid. You can’t look for conspiracies around every corner. It was all pretty plain. And like I said, the investigator and the family—”

  “The stepfather—”

  “Okay, fine. But all respectable and aboveboard. I would stand by the accidental ruling again if anyone reexamined this case.”

  Something tickled at the edges of my brain, some memory that I couldn’t quite get a grasp on. It was like when you can’t remember the name of the actor who played a character with a limp in Gunsmoke. I hate when that happens.

  Then even the lack of the memory was gone as the room lurched suddenly. I said good-bye, stopped in the ladies’ room off the lobby, threw up, and soldiered on.

  Throwing up made me think of the Pug, so on the way home I stopped at the veterinary hospital. It had been two days since we first brought the little guy in, and he was still kind of listless, though the vet assistant said he was taking some nourishment. She said she thought I could take him home if I kept an eye on him and brought him back if he started throwing up again and did I want her to go about checking him out? I thought of our situation at home and thought he was safer right where he was until he could fully take care of himself. I asked if they could keep him a few more days, just until I had things figured out.

  I sat with him a while, and he licked my fingers as if grateful that I’d taken care of him. He looked sad, but then pugs always look a little depressed.

  I told him, “You’re important to us, Al. You have to come back and claim the neighborhood bushes back from the coyotes. Your sister doesn’t know shit about marking territory.”

  Twenty–six

  The following day I kept my appointment with Timothy Neilsen, partly because I was scared at what was happening to me and partly because I wanted the chance to get him alone, tell him I’d spoken to Detective Humphries, and watch his reaction. I also let slip what I’d found out from George Manriquez about him getting the report about Joseph being drunk. I didn’t do it in an accusing kind of way, just soft and wondering. But when I did that, he grew a little cold.

  “There must be a mistake. Mallory Hollinger told me you wanted to see me about a health problem,” he said.

  “I really do. And of course I’ll tell Jacquie what I’ve discovered, too. I just thought you’d be interested and while I was here—”

  “Brigid, here’s something you probably don’t know, unless somehow it’s gotten into that gossip mill they call a church. When you saw my wife the other night, that w
as the first time she had been able to leave the house in months. She has this idea that if she leaves the house something awful will happen because it did the last time. Only she went to that function with the intent of telling off the Manwarings because she hates them. And then she lost her nerve. When she was saying she couldn’t do it, that’s what she meant.”

  Rather than me watching Neilsen’s reaction to my information, he was sitting there watching mine. Satisfied that I had understood, he said, “There. Now you know what I find interesting. I’m really sorry that my stepson fell in the pool and drowned. I’d like to fill the thing with concrete so I don’t have to look at it anymore. Now all I’m interested in is getting back the woman I married, and I don’t think what you’re doing can make that happen. As a matter of fact, you’re about to make it worse by telling her I hid the information from her about Joe being drunk. I’m asking you as a favor, don’t tell her that.” Neilsen leaned forward a little so he was almost in my space and fixed his eyes on me as if they could pin me to my chair. “Listen to me. You can’t do any good here, okay? You can only do harm. Now let’s move on to your case, okay?”

  If I had been feeling like myself I would have thought of half a dozen comebacks and then chosen the best in the space of a second. But Neilsen mentioning my “case” made me remember why this appointment had actually been set up. My body was going all weird on me and my brain was following suit. So for now I just repeated the symptoms I’d outlined for Mallory, told him how I’d gotten sick in the middle of the night, and that I had these feelings of manic anxiety that didn’t seem to have a cause. I didn’t tell him about the Carlo skeleton. He asked if I was on any amphetamines and I said no. Alcohol? he asked. Maybe a glass of wine a day. I didn’t tell him it was a nine-ounce glass. We all lie, right? Valium to relax. Ambien to sleep. He frowned at that. Not every night, I added. While talking about what was going on with me, I felt a tickle and brushed my hand against my cheek. “Good grief, what’s this now,” I said, looking at my glistening hand. I thought of the way Todd sweated when he was tense.

  “You’re crying,” Neilsen said.

  I went quiet, too embarrassed to acknowledge I didn’t know when I was crying. Who let this woman in and what did she do with Brigid Quinn, I wondered.

  After taking my vitals and some blood to run through tests as if he doubted my honesty about either the amphetamines or the liquor, he started asking me questions: Have you been feeling very sad lately? I thought of Gemma-Kate and well, yes. Are you sleeping more than usual, or less? Less. Feelings of anxiety, fear? Physically agitated? Trouble concentrating? Feeling that physical problems such as achiness are symptoms of a serious disease?

  I answered truthfully but knew where he was going. I’d been through this routine before when I was evaluated by Bureau shrinks after killing the unarmed suspect in the field, the case that tarnished my reputation and landed me in the Tucson field office. “I’m not depressed,” I said. “I don’t get depressed.”

  Tim Neilsen leaned forward from his chair in front of the little desk where he had tapped my answers into his computer, a record for all time. The coldness had been replaced by that compassionate yet firm Dr. Kildare look. “Frankly, all your symptoms are pointing to it. You answered five of the standard questions in the affirmative.” I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his look grew even more compassionate and firmer. “Are you sure there are no changes in your life right now? Something you can’t control?”

  It felt like I was back talking to Mallory. I thought of Gemma-Kate again. That was pretty close to uncontrollable. I didn’t like situations I couldn’t control. I was thinking about that when he said, “Depression doesn’t always manifest itself the way we expect it to. It makes some people manic. It can cause insomnia as often as it makes people crave sleep. It can even give you nausea. Arguably, we can run all kinds of tests, but if you want to see if I’m right I can give you a prescription.”

  My right hand, which had been resting on the plastic arm of the examination room chair, jumped and shot forward a little. Neilsen noted it.

  “How long has that been happening?” he asked.

  “It hasn’t,” I said.

  Neilsen looked a little more concerned than before. He took a piece of paper and a pen and asked me to write a sentence. I wrote My name is Brigid Quinn.

  Neilsen studied the sentence briefly. “Has your writing always been this small and cramped?”

  “No,” I confessed. I remembered signing the credit card bill at the restaurant. “I’ve noticed that, too.”

  “It’s called micrographia. Stand up a second.”

  I started to rise. “No,” he said, “don’t use your arms to boost yourself from the chair.”

  I tried to follow instructions, and frankly, it was a little hard.

  Neilsen frowned. “Tell you what, walk down the hall for me.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Humor me.”

  We left the examination room and he watched me walk down the hall toward the front desk. Then he watched me walk back.

  “Hm,” he said.

  “What, hm?” I asked again.

  “Your gait is off. Your right foot is slapping a bit. How long has it been like that?”

  I wondered if that was what Mallory meant when she said I was limping. I told him I didn’t know how long it had been that way.

  He said, “Hm.”

  We were standing in the hallway rather than in a private examination room, but I’d had enough hmmms. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d like you to see a specialist.”

  “What kind of specialist? Would you please just tell me what you’re thinking? I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

  Neilsen looked at an assistant passing us in the hallway who had glanced my way, and led me back into the examination room. He invited me to sit down. I did not, crossing my arms tightly in a way that, for the first time, I recognized had become a familiar stance.

  “So what’ll it be,” I said, prepared for the worst, thinking about my sister-in-law, about Owen, about anyone I’d known with wasting kinds of diseases. “Multiple sclerosis? Lou Gehrig’s disease?” That was all I could think of, so I stopped.

  “I’m not equipped to make a snap diagnosis. I don’t think anyone is. This sort of thing, you have to wait—”

  “Would you stop making me play Twenty Questions and just spit it out?”

  Neilsen said with studied calm, “This is nothing to be alarmed about yet, but along with some of your other symptoms I think we have to consider the possibility of Parkinson’s.”

  The universe tilted away from me.

  My body jolted despite my tough-gal assurance. Then, as when I’ve been in dangerous circumstances and have to turn into a machine or die, I became someone else. It’s the easiest way to put it. My voice felt cold and hard. “What’s the prognosis for that?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know much about medicine, but…”

  Neilsen didn’t jump in quickly enough with assurances. He appeared to think that my coldness was me taking things well and just sat there looking sympathetic, as if I had stopped being an annoyance and turned into a patient.

  “What can I expect, loss of functioning? How long does it take?”

  He shook his head. “This is way premature to be talking this way. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, but you insisted on knowing what I was thinking. Look, Brigid, this is all very unlikely. I just would like you to see someone who might be able to rule it out.”

  He explained that the other doctor might do some tests like a PET scan, which, while not ruling out Parkinson’s, would check to see if they could discover some other condition. If anything, Some Other Condition sounded even more ominous. Swell, I thought with a coldness in my gut, let’s definitely do some tests. Let’s find out if my body is going to fail me just as I was beginning to enjoy my life.

  “But don’t worry, I’m just covering all the bases, and the ant
idepressant could even help associated symptoms.” Then he tapped a prescription into the computer for twenty milligrams of a generic name I recognized from Mallory’s medicine cabinet. He told me to stop taking the Valium because there could be an adverse reaction in combination with the antidepressant. And he said to avoid the Ambien as well because that could be causing my irrational thinking. Irrational thinking, he said. And don’t drink. I left thinking he could be right after all. After all, the Valium and the wine, both depressants, hadn’t done anything but make me feel worse.

  My hand shook while I was signing the charge slip for the insurance co-pay. Me, always so cool under duress, always quick to notice a flaw in another and use it to my advantage, I hated myself for this small weakness. But I left agreeing with Mallory that whatever Neilsen’s faults, whatever he was holding back, he was a very kindly and thorough physician.

  At least I thought that until, waiting for the receptionist to give me my receipt, I glanced at the little holders containing the business cards of all the physicians in the practice. It was a big practice; there were six physicians with specialties all over the place, sports medicine, orthopedics, rheumatology … and that’s when I noticed the name of Dr. Lari Paunchese. The doctor who signed Joe’s death certificate was part of this practice. He was a dermatologist.

  Timothy Neilsen gave the order to forgo the autopsy.

  Timothy Neilsen requested the tox report and didn’t share the information with Jacquie.

  The doctor who signed the death certificate was in the same practice as … Timothy Neilsen.

  I thought of running back and confronting Tim Neilsen with the fact that I knew, and asking him why he had a buddy sign off. But I doubted they’d let me back into his office. I picked up one of Paunchese’s cards, to be played at a later time when I had more chips.

  Twenty–seven

  I dropped off the prescription at the drugstore and, feeling like I needed to practice before I said anything to Carlo, called Mallory from the parking lot.