by Ed Gorman
She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. There was no sense fighting the drug. There never was. Quinlan ran the hospital with drugs. He could set your mood according to his whim. All hail the hypodermic.
"We'll let you sleep a little while," Quinlan said. "Then we'll come back for you."
"Wear something nice," the man in the gray uniform said. "There'll be a lot of cameras at the police station. I already called the press and told them we'd be bringing you in."
She'd underestimated the effects of the drug. True, it didn't seem to be one of his killer drugs-one that would make you a zombie for days-but it wasn't quite as harmless as she'd first thought either.
It was putting her to sleep…
And as she fell asleep… the man's words still in her ears… she saw the shape of it then. Like looking at a table full of pieces-and then suddenly seeing the shape of the whole puzzle.
Quinlan had killed those two men and then made it look as if she had. He had also-somehow-managed to manipulate her into calling him. And he had spent last night using drugs to get a taped "confession" out of her.
She remembered the long, sad days at the end of her hospital stay. How much he'd hated her. How many ways he'd tried to seduce her. In certain ways, it had almost been funny, the way i a French sex farce is funny. And yet it was sad, too. For him, she'd come to symbolize some kind of acceptance. He needed to seduce her to prove this. And when she wouldn't comply… he'd turn her over to the police. She could see him savoring the glory in the press. An insane girl (given her history, the press would have no problem casting her as a rich, spoiled, insane monster) that only a guru like Quinlan could deal with. Quinlan would be a hero. Even his numerous critics would have to walk more carefully around him. Most gurus didn't bother with civic responsibility, but here was Quinlan performing a service for the entire city…
She slept…
***
"You bitch! You think I don't know who you are!"
A nightmare. That was all Jenny could attribute it to. A young woman with a shaven head, a young woman who managed to be strikingly pretty even without hair, was slapping her, calling her names.
Jenny tasted hot blood. Her own hot blood. The inside of her cheek had been cut from one of the blows.
This was no nightmare.
Jenny rolled away from the arc of the young woman's slaps. Rolled away and then dove for the end of the bed so she could get to her feet. But the young woman was there, grabbing her hair. Jenny slapped her hard enough to move the young woman back a few inches. Jenny scrambled to her feet.
"Who are you?" she said.
"Gretchen," the young woman said. And for the first time, Jenny got a good enough look at the face to conclude that Gretchen was insane. The lovely dark eyes didn't quite focus upon Jenny but looked instead at some imaginary world that only Gretchen saw. The anger that tensed the face had an element of sadness about it, too. It wasn't righteous rage, the irrational moment of a rational person, but frenzy, the inchoate pain of the unbalanced.
"He loves me," Gretchen said. Then she touched her stomach. "I'm going to have his baby."
"Who?" Jenny said, still groggy from the medicine.
All sorts of questions flooded her mind. Who was Gretchen? Why did she hate Jenny so much? And how in God's name had she gotten through a security-safe door?
And who was the "he" she was talking about?
"Listen," Jenny said, taking deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down, "you need to explain what's going on here. I don't want either one of us to get hurt."
"He loves me," Gretchen said angrily.
"Who is 'he?' "
"Oh, c'mon. Don't be coy."
"You mean Quinlan?"
"Yes. Who else?"
"Well, then I'm glad he loves you. And I'm glad you're having his child."
"You lie," Gretchen said. "You want his baby. I know you do."
As strange and frustrating as the conversation was, Jenny more pitied Gretchen than feared her.
"Gretchen, listen, how did you get in here?"
Gretchen glanced around the room, as if electronic eavesdropping devices were everywhere. As perhaps they were. She then leaned forward and whispered in Jenny's ear. "I stole a pass card from the lock-up one night."
"The lock-up? How did you get in there?"
Gretchen smiled, then. Her smile was eerier than her frown. Scarier, too. "The little thing between my legs. A few of the guards find me attractive."
Jenny didn't have any doubt of that. Nor did she doubt that Gretchen got what she wanted as a result.
"That's how I found the tape, too," Gretchen said.
"What tape?"
Gretchen smiled again. For a moment, Jenny's compassion waned. This was like looking very, very deep into the pit. Once you looked down there, you were never the same again… Perhaps Jenny feared that she would end up like Gretchen someday.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" The smile remained.
Jenny saw that here was a potentially useful confidante. Jenny needed any information she could get to fight Quinlan's story that she'd simply gone insane and killed those two men, then turned to Quinlan and asked him to hide her in the commune. It was clear that Gretchen didn't know about any of this. She was assuming that Jenny was here to stay.
"Gretchen?"
"Yes."
"If I left here and never came back, wouldn't that prove I wasn't trying to get Quinlan for myself?"
Gretchen hesitated, her small winsome face thoughtful. "I guess."
"You seem to know how to get around this place."
Gretchen smiled. "I know a lot more than people think I do."
"Could you help me get out of here?" The drugs were starting to wear off already. She was dizzy sometimes but kept forcing herself to focus on the moment.
Gretchen's brow furrowed. "You really mean that?"
"I really mean that."
Gretchen studied her some more. "You'd go and never come back?"
"Never."
"He used to talk about you sometimes. People always said you were the only one he couldn't get."
Gretchen's eyes glistened. Her hand covered her face. She began to weep. Jenny went to her-her head was clearing from the drugs already-slid her arm around her, held her. "I can't help how much I love him."
"I know, Gretchen. It's all right."
"And now with the baby and all-"
She continued to cry, her small body trembling in a kind of shattered rhythm. You could feel her grief in the little-girl way she clung to Jenny.
"And now he's mad because I stole the tape," she said. "He took it back from me."
The subject of the tape seemed to bring Gretchen back to this room and Jenny. "I guess I shouldn't talk about it." She was sniffling tears.
If the tape was something that made Quinlan angry, Jenny definitely wanted to hear about it.
"Maybe you need to lie down, Gretchen," Jenny said. "I'll get you some cold water. You feel very hot."
"I've just been so worried is all," Gretchen said, sounding weary and lost.
Jenny almost felt guilty, knowing she was going to use this poor girl as a way of destroying Quinlan. But what choice did she have?
She got Gretchen on the bed and brought her some nice cold water. Then she sat on a chair right next to the bed and started asking Gretchen all her questions.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
You could tell a lot about a person by the type of receptionist she hired. Dr. Priscilla Bowman employed a rather severely pretty young woman with cold dark eyes and a terse, precise manner.
"May I help you?" she asked when Coffey came through the door. Her tone said that she doubted there was any way she could help or even wanted to help him. Even with a necktie and sport coat on, Coffey looked a bit on the rough side, the type of man this woman most devoutly disapproved of. The office furnishings reflected the same austerity, Nordic and stylish and cold as hell.
He glanced at the walls. Another way you cou
ld get a thumbnail sketch of someone's psyche was by looking at what kind of art they chose to be publicly associated with. Priscilla Bowman had covered her wall with the kind of bad imitation Picasso-style art that spoke of a profoundly neurotic universe from which there was no relief short of death. Just the thing to cheer up her patients.
He bearded the ice maiden. "I'd like to see Dr. Bowman, please."
"I'm afraid that's impossible. She's booked all day long."
"I'd only need a few minutes."
The ice maiden, a dark-haired woman with nice flesh and a coldly erotic mouth, shook her head and said, "I don't believe we've seen you before, have we?"
"No."
"Then it really is impossible today. The doctor must take care of her regular clients first."
"I'm here about her husband."
The ice maiden looked startled. "Kenneth?"
"Yes. Kenneth."
"But he's dead."
"That's why I'm here," Coffey said. "There's some new evidence."
The ice maiden's gaze now shifted from disapproval to distrust. "May I ask who you are?"
"My name's Coffey."
"And you're with-"
"Myself. I'm a private investigator."
He'd always wanted to say that line. He'd read it in scores of private eye novels and it always sounded so much more romantic than, "I'm with the police department." Anybody who was with any kind of department-fire department, streets department, sanitation department-always sounded like a bureaucrat. But a private eye… Maybe when he got done here, he'd go get himself a trench coat and fedora.
"I see." The disapproval was back in her voice. "Why don't you have a seat over there? I'll go speak with Dr. Bowman."
"I appreciate it."
She stood up. She was tall, with one of those slightly gangly bodies that was nonetheless girlishly appealing. A little long in the waist but nice hips and legs. He wondered if she was assessing him similarly-men forget that women judge men just as analytically as men judge women-and finding him wanting in a few areas himself. Movie star material, he wasn't.
He sat down and picked up Psychology Today. He read about the psychological components of impotence, spastic colons, migraine headaches, anal bleeding, headaches, shingles, cancer, psoriasis, and temporary blindness. It was all very uplifting stuff. He wondered if the good doctor might have a cyanide capsule he could bite down on. One thing an ex-cop and mystery writer didn't need to be reminded of was human mortality.
A man came in, looked around the office, then took a chair across the reception area from Coffey. He seemed nervous and embarrassed about being here. He kept straightening the jacket of his gray three-piece suit. Coffey felt compelled to tell the man that he, Coffey, wasn't a patient. You 're the one with problems, pal, not me, Coffey wanted to say in defense of his own sanity, dignity, and masculinity. But he couldn't figure out any way to do this. Will anybody who has psychological problems please raise his hand? He could try that old number, but the other guy probably wouldn't raise his hand, anyway.
The ice maiden was back. She looked at the man in the three-piece suit and smiled, careful not to say his name. Anonymity and expensive visits were the guiding principles in a shrink's office. She turned her reluctant attention to Coffey. "She'll give you ten minutes between appointments. In another five minutes."
"Thank you."
Coffey felt the man in the suit staring at him. The man was probably thinking that Coffey was so desperately crazy, the good doctor had to squeeze him in immediately.
***
The good Dr. Bowman was prettier and more stylish than the ice maiden (Bowman probably had a plastic statue of Armani on her dashboard) but not one whit friendlier.
Her private office continued the Nordic motif of her reception area, blond, bold, barren. She opened a desk drawer, took out a package of cigarettes, and lit up.
"Bad habit," she said.
"Very."
She smiled icily. "Maybe I should see a shrink."
He smiled back. "Or a rabbi or a priest. They're cheaper."
She exhaled with great glee, and right in his direction. She'd probably put a voodoo curse on the secondhand smoke. She looked elegant and impressive in her blue linen suit and white scarf. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
"I want you to tell me about Sigma."
Her gaze grew much colder. "What about Sigma?"
He took the wristwatch from his pocket and held it up for her to see. "I tore this from somebody's wrist last night."
He put it on the desk, slid it over to her. She picked it up, looked it over.
"We have forty-three employees at the moment," she said. "Some of them are young and occasionally do foolish things. I take it this altercation took place at a pub somewhere."
"No pub. My home."
She tried very hard to look startled but didn't quite make it. "Your home?"
He explained the break-in.
She pulled a classic defense lawyer's move. She immediately changed the subject. "I thought you were here to talk about Kenneth."
"Dear Kenneth."
"I don't like that tone. He was my husband."
"How did he die?"
"What the hell does that mean? I thought you were bringing me some new information."
"How did he die?"
She glared at him for a time, inhaled on her cigarette a few more times, and said, "Fire."
"House fire?"
"Yes. Why?"
"That's what your boy was doing at my place last night."
"I don't have any idea what you're talking about."
"I caught him in the middle of rigging up my water heater. Even a lot of big city fire investigators get faked out by water heater fires. They write them off as accidents when they're really arson."
"Well, he certainly wasn't there last night because Sigma wanted him there."
"No?"
"No," she said. "Absolutely not." She glanced at a slim, golden wristwatch. "You have four minutes left, Mr. Coffey."
"Do you still see Quinlan?"
She smiled. "Mr. Coffey, if you really are a private investigator, then you're a very incompetent one. Mr. Quinlan and I haven't been an item for years."
"What did Kenneth think about you and Quinlan being an 'item?' "
"Kenneth pursued his own leisure time activities. I didn't bother him, and he didn't bother me."
"Apparently. I mean, he agreed to front for Sigma when it opened up."
"Kenneth was an enthusiast, Mr. Coffey. That's why we used him. He looked good and sounded good."
"And he no doubt had a good memory."
"Memory?"
Coffey nodded. "For memorizing exactly what you told him to say."
"He was certainly useful. Starting a new company is a very dicey proposition these days."
"Especially when the product is mind control. That's a phrase that scares the hell out of most people."
She leaned forward and smiled at him. "It only scares stupid people, Mr. Coffey."
"I assume that would include me?"
She sat back. "Last year, we made the greatest strides in dealing with autism that anybody has in the past twenty years. This year, in addition to our research with autism, we're applying our 'mind-control' techniques as you call them to comatose severe trauma patients. We're trying to show that by communicating directly with a patient's subconscious, the patient can play a key and direct role in helping to heal himself. And at the same time, we've also been given a large federal grant to pursue ways of controlling schizophrenia through both drug therapy and hypnotherapy. There's your 'mind control' for you, Mr. Coffey."
"If you're so proud of your work, why don't you play a more public role in it."
She glanced again at her wristwatch. "I really do need to go, Mr. Coffey. But let me say this as my parting shot-you mentioned rabbis and priests. Well, that's how most of our clients like to see us. As doctors who've dedicated their lives to helping others. Even whe
n you're involved in something as beneficial as Sigma, the press likes to play it as if you're this big, cold-hearted capitalist robber baron who has her hands in dozens of pies. Our clients like to think of us as rabbis and priests, Mr. Coffey. It's that simple." Another glance at her watch. "Now if you'll excuse me."
She stood up and started around the desk. She was going to hustle him right back into the arms of the ice maiden.
At the door, he said, "Was the fire marshal sure Kenneth's death was an accident?"
Dr. Priscilla Bowman said, "Have a nice day, Mr. Coffey."
***
Five minutes later, Coffey was in his car again, just wheeling out onto the street. He picked up his cell phone and dialed the number of his stockbroker. He'd invested most of his severance pay from the police force. It wasn't a lot, but it was something, anyway. He asked his stockbroker, Mallory, if he could get a profile of the Sigma Corporation, the board of directors, any heavy investors, etc. Mallory said he'd give it his best shot.
Then Coffey turned on the news.
He listened in disbelief to two stories: one about how Quinlan had called police and promised to deliver Jenny Stafford later this afternoon and the other about a double murder.
While he was sailing down the street, he reached over the seat and grabbed the phone book he kept back there. He put the book on the seat next to him and began searching through the pages for the letter C.
***
"You know who they were?"
"Huh-uh."
"You watch the news?"
"Sometimes."
"Well, a while back," Gretchen said, "this woman named Judith Carney and this young boy named Sean Gray… they killed a bunch of people."
"Oh?" Jenny said.
Gretchen nodded. "They were on the tape."
"What were they doing?"
"Shooting somebody."
"What?"