“I’ll explain it in a second, believe me, but there are a few things I have to know first. Roger and I only want to help you, and—”
“Yeah, yeah, cut the crap. What do you want me to tell you?”
Laura took a breath.
“Yesterday you told Roger we were going to lock you up at Lavender Memorial, and you said you already knew everything. What were you referring to?”
“I don’t think that needs much explanation, does it? I meant this.” Ted again displayed his shackled hands.
“Who told you?”
“What difference does it make who told me? It was true.”
“Was it Wendell?”
Silence.
Ted recalled his conversation with Wendell in the toolroom at the abandoned factory.
She’ll lock you up with the raving loonies in Lavender Memorial. She has the power to do it, I’m telling you.
“That’s enough, Laura. Your turn to talk.”
Laura and Roger exchanged a glance that Ted was unable to interpret. She nodded and opened the folder in front of her. She turned it around so he could see, just as Lynch had done in Ted’s living room. This time, however, it wasn’t a criminal file but MRIs of Ted’s brain. He immediately recognized the images that Carmichael had shown him in his office; his name was printed in the corner of each picture.
“Do you recognize them?”
“Of course. There’s the tumor.” Ted pointed to an area slightly darker than the rest of the image.
“You don’t have a tumor, Ted.”
Why doesn’t that surprise you?
She turned around and gestured toward the dark window. Moments later the door opened.
“Hello, Ted.”
There stood Carmichael, hands in his pockets, looking sad or contrite, as if he had bad news.
Carmichael’s mixed up in this, too.
“I’m afraid Dr. Hill is telling the truth,” he said, still standing in the doorway.
He came in slowly, went around the table, and sat down. Now it was Ted against three.
“I’ve asked Carmichael to come to Lavender and tell you himself,” Laura explained.
Carmichael nodded gravely.
“There never was a mass,” Carmichael calmly stated. “When the first images came, I told you that your brain was perfectly healthy and something else must be causing your headaches, and that we’d track down the cause together, just as we’d done with every illness you’ve had over the years. You got all upset, and it was only when I told you we’d redo the MRIs that you started to calm down. I figured that would gain me a little more time, because there wasn’t a trace of a tumor in your brain, and I knew we’d get the same results next time.”
Ted looked at them, unfazed.
“You don’t remember any of this?” Laura asked.
“You switched the test results. How do I know those images are of my brain?”
“I’m sorry,” Carmichael apologized.
“And what about the headaches? The periods of confusion?” For the first time Ted betrayed signs of desperation. “Maybe it’s a small tumor, or it’s lodged in a part of the brain where the MRI can’t pick it up. I’ve read up on the subject. Don’t try to pull one over on me.”
“We will continue moving forward with the treatment to help you to—”
“Help me? You don’t get it, Laura. The last few sessions, it was a miracle I even went to see you. If things had gone according to plan, I’d be in my study at home right now with a bullet in my brain.” Ted laughed. “This is absurd. If it wasn’t for that fucking Lynch, I would have done it.”
He made a pistol with his fingers and put it to his temple. He made a gunshot sound.
The doctors looked at each other.
“What’s going on?” Ted had lost patience. “Stop treating me like I’m crazy!”
He sprang to his feet, his chair falling over backward. Nobody blinked. They just watched him as he paced in a circle.
“I can’t believe it,” Ted was muttering to himself. He walked with his hands on his stomach, staring at the linoleum floor.
“Do you have the horseshoe?” Laura asked.
Ted suddenly stopped short, frantically feeling his pants pockets. There was the hard horseshoe shape. He pulled it from his pocket and held it in his fingers, viewing it as a powerful talisman.
“Remember, you told me about it, right?” Laura went on. “About Miller, your chess teacher. About the match between Capablanca and Alekhine in Buenos Aires…”
At some point Roger came over to Ted and led him back to his chair. Ted didn’t seem fully conscious. His eyes were still fixed on the horseshoe.
“I found it by Wendell’s house,” Ted said, astonished, hypnotized by this bent piece of iron.
“Ted, look at me,” Laura said.
He looked up.
“The rules here are strict, and a blunt metal object like your horseshoe is definitely a violation. But I’ll allow you to keep it. And when you feel confused, I want you to concentrate on it, to think about Miller, about playing chess, okay?”
“About the good times,” he murmured.
“Exactly,” said Laura, pleased. “About the good times.”
No trace of his angry outburst remained. Ted lowered his gaze again, turning away from the horseshoe, which lay in his lap and which he still felt between his fingers.
“Was it because of Holly?” he said. “She…was having an affair with Lynch—not Wendell but Lynch. I’ve seen the photos. They were at a restaurant.”
“Don’t think about that now, Ted. I don’t know why you decided to try killing yourself. But we’ll figure it out.”
Ted was like a child being scolded. Then his expression changed, as if he had remembered something. He looked at Laura, and there was genuine terror in his eyes.
“Are Holly and the girls all right?”
“They’re fine. At her parents’ house, in Florida.”
“They were supposed to be back on Friday. What day is it?”
Laura didn’t answer. She closed the folder on the table. Dr. Carmichael excused himself, saying he had things to take care of, nodding to Ted on his way out, declaring he’d be back to visit, telling him to stay strong, he was in good hands.
The horror hadn’t left Ted’s eyes.
“What are all these memories, Laura?”
“We’ll deal with that later, though I’m afraid I don’t have all the answers. I don’t want to overburden you now. It’s important for you to take in everything I’ve told you. We’ll see each other the day after tomorrow, and we’ll keep talking. Next visit it’ll just be you and me, like old times.”
Laura smiled compassionately.
“Did Holly have me locked up here? I’m not stupid: I know she had to give her consent. Does she know? Know what I was about to do in my study?”
“She doesn’t.”
“Better.”
“But you do understand you have to stay here a few days, right?”
“I guess so.”
No, you don’t believe it, but play along. Everything’s happening just as Wendell predicted. He’s the only one who’s been honest with you—the only one who’s shown you real evidence.
“You’ll spend the night in the maximum security room, but tomorrow I’ll tell them to give you a regular room, where you’ll be a lot more comfortable. McManus told me that you hit it off with Dawson, which is excellent news. He tends to be very choosy.”
“I don’t know if ‘hit it off’ is the right term. We talked in the garden. He told me why he’s here—that’s all.”
“He’s said more to you in one day than most people hear from him in a lifetime.”
Ted shrugged. The last thing he cared to do was hit it off with a homicidal maniac.
31
It was late. Talk had long since ceased on the maximum security corridor. Ted rested on his bunk, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His anxiety to get out of Lavender was gone. He didn
’t know whether Laura had been entirely frank with him—probably not—but he had too many unknowns to process. Had he really made up having a brain tumor? Two fragmented realities coexisted in his mind: in one of them, he had murdered Wendell; in the other, not only had he not killed him, he had talked with him—in a pink castle! He clearly had issues; why deny it?
And don’t forget Blaine. You hid in his house and waited for him. He discovered you, but with one swift move you knocked him off.
He had to get some sleep and digest these things calmly. He felt the comforting weight of the horseshoe on his chest. He closed his eyes, ready to let sleep carry him away…but he suddenly opened them again. He sat on the edge of his bed. The horseshoe flipped off his chest and landed on the floor with a prolonged metallic clatter that sounded, in the quiet, like the tolling of a bell. Somebody at the other end of the corridor shushed him. Ted went to the glass wall. Lester was watching him from the room next to Mike Dawson’s.
“Don’t you ever sleep, Lester? Go to bed!” he snapped, to the bald inmate’s surprise. “Mike, are you awake?”
Again somebody hushed him.
“Shut up, fool!” someone shouted down the dark corridor.
In Mike’s room, a faint light came on by the bed. Mike got up. It looked as though he hadn’t been able to get to sleep yet.
“You should lower your voice,” he suggested.
Ted nodded.
“Were you asleep?”
Mike shook his head.
“I have insomnia, so the answer is no. What’s up?”
“I have to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“That chess set in the commons…it looks pretty new, especially the roll-up board.”
“They brought it here maybe six months ago,” Mike said. “There had been another one a couple years ago, but I don’t know what happened to it.”
Six months!
That was even before his first visit to Carmichael.
Ted was convinced that the chess set had been put there especially for him. What better than a chess set to make him feel at home? He looked at the horseshoe, still lying on the floor.
“Did Dr. Hill bring it?” Ted asked.
“No idea. Is that what you were wondering? I guess it was too important to leave it for the morning.”
Mike lay down again and turned off the light.
Ted did likewise after a moment, but now he had reached a conclusion. That chess set had been put there for him. Six months ago.
32
The next morning McManus took him to his new room. It was on the second floor of C wing. To reach it they walked along a carpeted hallway, quite unlike the cold, glass-lined corridor in the maximum security zone. Ted wore the gray pants and jacket he had been issued, but he was no longer in restraints; things were starting to improve. From a side door, Sketch—Ted recognized him from the chess game the day before—watched with an undecipherable expression.
“Let me give you one piece of advice,” McManus said before they reached the end of the hall. “Take this as an opportunity. Don’t do anything stupid. You seem like an intelligent man.”
The recommendation sounded sincere. Ted solemnly nodded. When they entered the room, he understood what the nurse meant a little better. Compared with the bare bunk he had spent the last two nights on, this was a room at the Hilton. He remembered his joke to Laura and smiled.
The room was large. Sun streamed in luxuriously through a huge window. There were two beds, each with a desk and a small shelf; everything was arranged symmetrically, except for an inner door that led to a bathroom. The half belonging to Mike Dawson, his new roommate, was crammed with books, clippings fixed to the walls, photos—everything necessary to make a room acceptably homey. McManus explained that Mike hadn’t shared the room with anyone in years.
On the bare mattress sat a cardboard box with Ted’s name written in black marker.
“Great! They already brought your stuff.”
My stuff?
McManus left and Ted remained alone. He went over to the window, following the imaginary dividing line that separated Dawson’s settled and colorful world from his, barren but for a cardboard box that held who knew what. A square of sunlight was all that knit their distinct universes together. He squinted against the sun’s glare until he could make out the basketball court and the paths through the garden. For a while he followed the erratic tracks of patients out for a stroll.
He stepped away and looked at his new roommate’s belongings. The newspaper clippings taped to a poster board over the desk attracted his attention. He took a step in that direction, but he stopped. He chose to go instead to the bathroom door.
“Mike?”
“What?” The voice came from the other side.
“It’s Ted. I need a pen or something to cut the tape on the box they left for me here. Mind if I take one from your desk?”
Silence.
“Mike?”
“Of course you can take a goddamn pen. Let me shit and read my book in peace.”
“Sorry.”
No response.
Maybe Dawson wasn’t as awful as everyone said. Ted went to the desk. This time he couldn’t help glancing at one of the articles. The headline read,
ANDREA GREEN WINS SPECIAL MENTION AT VENICE BIENNALE
He grabbed a pen and moved along. If Mike had come out of the bathroom at that moment, the relations between them, which apparently had gotten off to a good start, would of course have been ruined. He broke the tape on the cardboard box with the tip of the pen and opened the flaps. The box contained a pile of neatly folded clothes, books, a number of sealed plastic bags, a table lamp that he immediately recognized, and…a pink tentacle that wriggled and disappeared.
Ted gave a start. He dropped the flaps and stumbled back until he hit Mike’s bed and sat on it abruptly. He couldn’t take his eyes off the box. Something was moving inside it; not only had he seen it, but the noise of it knocking about the objects in the box was unmistakable. And Ted knew why. That was no tentacle: it was the pink tail of the possum.
His breathing became labored. Impossible. Seeing the possum had to be something out of a bad dream…
Are you certain? At Arthur Robichaud’s house, too?
Just then Mike came out of the bathroom. He saw right off that there was something the matter.
“What’s in the box?” he asked, heading in that direction. He was about to touch the box, but at the last moment he thought better of it. “A rat?”
“No,” Ted said. The box had stopped moving.
Mike opened a flap with a quick motion and kept his distance. Gingerly drawing closer, he reached in and pulled out the lamp, then a plastic bag, then another one…
“There’s nothing in here.” He turned around with a look of surprise.
“I saw its tail. The box was moving.”
Mike looked at Ted with one eyebrow raised.
Ted stood up, shaking his head.
“I swear, there was—”
Mike stopped him with an upraised hand.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“What did you see?”
Ted thought it over.
“I thought I saw a possum, but maybe I imagined it.”
“Was this the first time you saw it?”
The question caught Ted by surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“Yes,” Ted finally said.
Mike rubbed his chin.
“A possum,” he pondered.
“What’s wrong? Have you seen it, too? Before, I mean.”
“No, but after lunch you’re going to tell me all about this possum.”
His mysterious expression vanished. He picked up the book he had thrown on his bed when he came out of the bathroom and lay down to read without saying another word.
33
Ted took the lunch tray—breaded fish and peas�
�and went to sit at the farthest table. The dining hall on C wing wasn’t very spacious, so he still couldn’t get all the quiet he was seeking. Four inmates at the next table over watched him closely and tried to start up a conversation that sounded friendly enough. He told them he didn’t feel like talking, and they went along. The fact was, he needed to think. He realized he had accepted his stay at Lavender rather quickly, and that made him a little angry, as if he knew deep down that he really did need to be locked up. But what if it were true? His mind was a meaningless jigsaw puzzle. He’d tried to kill himself over a tumor he never really had. He might have even killed two people! Was that why they’d locked him up on C wing? Was he a murderer, like Dawson? Too many questions not to give in to the idea of his being locked up. He didn’t even have the strength to fight for his right to see Holly, or the girls. He missed them, of course, especially Cindy and Nadine; thinking about them was more painful than anything…but what would he say to them? How could he explain to Holly? If he didn’t have a tumor in his head, what was behind his behavior?
He ate in silence, alone with his thoughts, staring vacantly out a window. Somebody at the next table tried speaking to him again, but he didn’t hear. The incident in the room troubled him. When would it end? He had seen the possum in the box and hadn’t taken his eyes off it until Mike had turned his attention to him. After that, it was gone. The same thing had happened at Robichaud’s house when the pest had hidden inside the tire swing. Every time he’d seen the sickening animal he had thought it was real, only to convince himself later that he had simply dreamt it, or worse, hallucinated it. What was he supposed to think now?
He sighed. He looked resignedly at what remained of his fish, and then at the broken knife.
He was about to leave when Lester arrived out of nowhere and sat down next to him. He didn’t seem as disturbed as before.
“I know you didn’t have anything to do with my gear,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “I found it.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
Lester had Gollum eyes, large and cunning, and the more Ted looked at them, the bigger they seemed to get. What would happen if he stuck a broken piece of knife in one of those bug eyes?
Kill the Next One Page 14