by Ann Gosslin
So, he’d noticed. That meant he was paying attention, alert to body language and intonation.
‘I’m from England, like Dr Harrison,’ Erin said. ‘But I only moved here a few months ago. I didn’t know Dr Harrison before. We met for the first time today.’ Best to spell it out now, before his paranoia ballooned into panic.
He heaved himself from the chair and approached the window. The icy sleet had turned into snow, big wet flakes that spun out of the sky and stuck to the glass. Before long, the roads would be a mess.
‘I want to leave the hospital,’ Tim said. ‘They tell me it’s time to go now.’
‘Who tells you?’ Was he hearing voices? She jotted the letter V in the margin of her notes.
He mumbled. ‘No one. Just people.’
‘Have you been hearing voices today?’
‘No.’
She made another note, no voices (today).
‘Dr Harrison mentioned that you didn’t want to leave the hospital before when you had the chance. Can you tell me why?’
‘Miss Leena said I would live with people like me.’ He tapped his skull. ‘Crazy people. Strangers. Strange.’
Tim’s gaze ping-ponged from the wall to the door. He drummed his fingers on the windowpane, plucked at his sweatshirt, his agitation growing. It might be wise to end their session. But he hadn’t clammed up yet, and it was an opportunity she couldn’t waste.
‘Why are you ready to leave now?’
‘My father has a farm. A farm with a barn. A red barn. Chickens, goats, rabbits.’ He accompanied each word with a finger tap on the window. ‘I like rabbits.’
For the first time, Tim’s expression showed a ripple of life.
She was desperate to ask him about the Viking, but if he grew suspicious and shut her down, it might take weeks to regain his trust. ‘Does your father come here to see you?’
The room had grown dark, the window obscured by patches of snow.
‘He called me one time. No, two times. Two.’ He scratched his ear. ‘He sent a Christmas card once. Mrs Belmont said it was long ago. Ten years, twenty. From California.’ He made a sound, like a bark. ‘Palm trees, surfin’ USA. California made him mellow. Mellow yellow. Blue eyes, blue.’
Her ears pricked up. ‘He wasn’t mellow before?’
Tim pressed his whole body to the window until he was spreadeagled against the glass. ‘Fly away. Like a bird.’
Through the flocked snow, she could see the trio of crows, dark as paper cut-outs against a field of white.
Tim muttered. ‘Scopus umbretta. A mustering.’
Scopus what?
She held her breath and counted two beats. ‘So, your father… he’s mellow now. But he wasn’t before?’
He made a noise again, deep in his throat, like water running through a cavern.
‘People start here, go there.’ He traced a line across the glass. As if something had caught his eye, his chin snapped up. In a single motion, he turned and launched his body across the room.
Terror gripped Erin, but it was too late to scream. She covered her head with her arms as he lumbered past and stomped his foot on the floor.
‘Cockroach.’ He examined the sole of his shoe. ‘He’s dead now.’
Her heart banged against her ribs. As she pressed her hand to her chest, trying to slow her erratic breathing, he raised his head and looked at her. Straight into her eyes. A white-hot, electric stare.
‘The doctors have fixed me. I feel it in my blood. It’s humming.’ He pushed up his sleeves to show her the network of veins under the skin. ‘Like bees. Bees in the trees. Bees in the blood.’
10
An anaemic sun traced a slow arc to the mountains in the west. Standing outside Greenlake’s front gate, Erin shivered inside her coat, anxious to start the long drive back to Lansford. But Reggie from the service garage had already given her the bad news that her car wouldn’t be ready until morning. She would have to spend the night here after all.
But rather than stay in nearby Syracuse with its bustle and commerce, she pleaded with the taxi driver to take her to a hotel near the motorway she’d spotted from Reggie’s truck. He was right about the reluctance of taxis to go so far out of the city, but it was the perfect place to hide out and think. In the back seat, she lowered the window and breathed in great gulps of frigid air, hoping to wash away the sour odours and disturbing sounds of the ward. Loosened from its knot, her hair blew around her face.
Mister Golden Hair. The Viking. Was she looking too hard for a connection? How often had she been counselled to avoid attaching any meaning to a patient’s delusions? But from the early days of her training, she’d rebelled against the belief that specific, and often highly intricate, delusions arose from nothing. A basis in reality, however tenuous, surely created the spark for whatever thoughts – however bizarre – sprang forth.
By the time the cabbie pulled up to the entrance of the Roundabout Motel, a squat brick building next to the motorway, a fresh batch of snow was spinning through the air. The torrent of flakes filled the sky like Arctic moths, swirling in the fading light.
At the reception desk, she collected her key and climbed the dingy stairs to room nineteen. Beige carpet, polyester bedspread. The cheap air freshener failed to mask the odour of stale smoke and the whiff of other people’s bodies. She yanked the shiny orange and brown bedspread to the floor and stretched out on what she hoped was a clean sheet, her eyes gritty with fatigue. With her attention fixed to a spot on the ceiling, she waited for her impressions of Tim to settle into a pattern. Diffident (shy?). Flat affect (schizophrenia or meds? Institutionalised?). No eye contact. Poor hygiene. Possible schizophasia.
He seemed articulate enough, though brain-fogged and slow. But that could be a side effect of his medication. The doses they had him on would topple a rhino. His responses to her questions were mainly coherent, with little to none of the jumbled speech or ‘word salad’ some schizophrenics displayed. No eye contact either, except for that one brief moment at the end of their talk. Plenty of staring out the window, picking at his shredded cuticles. On their own, none of those things pointed to active psychosis.
Her thoughts drifted to the famous experiment in the early seventies that shook the bedrock of the psychiatric community. A prominent psychologist, along with seven other mentally healthy volunteers, was able to get himself admitted to a psychiatric hospital when he complained of hearing voices. Once inside the ward, the volunteers were instructed to act normally and report to the staff they felt fine. All were diagnosed with schizophrenia and prescribed multiple antipsychotic drugs. Nearly two months passed before they were released. When the results of the experiment became known, the psychiatric community was thrown into uproar. Especially provocative was the researcher’s conclusion: that once labelled psychotic, it was impossible to be viewed as mentally well.
Tim was admitted to Greenlake a few years after the findings were published. Could he have been misdiagnosed? During the pre-trial investigation, he’d admitted to hearing voices off and on in the months prior to the murders. A true symptom? Or was he coached on what to say to avoid a prison sentence for life? She’d have to look at the trial transcript, or speak to the lawyer on the case to be sure.
As for sociopathic traits, at no time during their brief interaction had Tim tried to challenge her or stare her down. No hint of grandiosity. No attempts to beguile or charm. Not a glimmer of anything other than what he appeared to be: heavily medicated, befuddled, confused. A man who knew almost nothing of life beyond the stultifying routines of a state institution.
In the room next door, a television was switched on, with the volume cranked up. Screeching tyres, shouting and gunfire. Earplugs would have been a good idea, but she hadn’t anticipated the need to spend the night. She hauled herself off the bed to look out at the car park, covered in a growing layer of snow. The storm showed no signs of stopping. In the bathroom, she washed her hands and studied the tired set of her mouth. As she co
iled her dark hair and fastened it with a clip, she could see a narrow strip of lighter hair, barely perceptible, coming through at the roots. She’d have to visit the hairdresser soon.
Stretching out on the bed, Erin turned the day’s events over in her mind. The proper assessments would help her form a more accurate picture of Tim’s mental state. Based on today’s meeting, he appeared functional enough. Placid. Probably harmless. Provided he continued to take his meds.
Just like Leonard Whidby.
She shut her eyes and pushed the thought away.
*
The motel cafeteria smelled of damp wool and bacon grease. Erin slid into an empty booth by the window with a view of the motorway. Heedless of the weather, a stream of lorries thundered past, as the snow continued to fall in the deepening dusk. She might be stuck here for days, but with any luck, the roads would be clear by morning. She had a full day ahead of her, and a roster of patients to look after.
A waitress with sallow skin and vacant eyes set Erin’s coffee on the Formica table, along with a wedge of apple pie.
‘Anything else for you, hon?’
Erin shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Enjoy the pie. Fresh made today.’ The woman’s smile snapped into place like a rubber band. Was she on something? Erin’s first guess would be Valium, though it could be any number of things. Oxycodone, Xanax. So easy to get these days from unscrupulous doctors or dodgy websites flogging black-market pills.
She tasted the coffee, surprisingly good, before ferrying a piece of pie into her mouth. An older man at the table next to her, with heavy jowls and rheumy eyes, folded his newspaper and struggled into a threadbare coat.
Unsure of her next move, and wary of venturing onto the treacherous path this case would lead her on, her first inclination was to daydream of escape. A cobbled, sun-drenched village in the mountains of Spain where no one would find her. She could get a job at a local café. Spend her free time lounging under a hot sun. Anything other than face what lay ahead. But now that she was no longer just a doctor, but a potential conduit to Tim’s past, walking away from his case was not an option any more.
Dread pooled in her gut, but if she was certain about anything, it was this: those scrawled words of Tim’s were not the by-product of a diseased brain. The Viking? That was her brother’s nickname.
11
The Meadows
Lansford, New York
March, Present Day
Niels had vanished. He wasn’t in the staffroom or his office, but he hadn’t signed out, so he must be somewhere in the clinic’s main building. As Erin passed through the vaulted central atrium, trying to track him down, she nearly bumped into Greta, lurking behind a potted palm as she polished off a slice of chocolate cake.
‘We missed you at the staff meeting yesterday,’ Greta said, brushing crumbs from her lips. ‘Not playing hooky, were you? Niels was out, too. Some family emergency, so I ran the show. We allocated group assignments and the on-call schedule for April. You’ll find them posted in the usual place.’ She waved a heavily beringed hand and swept past.
Notes from the piano drifted through the half-closed door of the music room. Erin peeked in to find a slender woman at the bench, her posture supple as a ballerina’s. It took her a moment to remember who she was, the woman who came in twice a week to accompany the girls in their Music & Movement classes.
As if sensing she wasn’t alone, the woman paused in her playing and looked up.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Erin said. ‘I was looking for Dr Westlund.’ She tried, and failed, to recall the woman’s name. Karen was it, or Katy?
The woman propped her glasses on her head. Her hair, a sleek bob of chestnut mixed with grey, curved around her cheek. In her fawn trousers, mauve cardigan, and sensible flat shoes, she blended easily into the background. Like me, Erin thought.
‘I haven’t seen Dr Westlund since this morning.’
The sun slanted through the windows and pooled on the waxed floor. Erin hung back in the doorway, reluctant to disturb the peaceful mood. The woman’s neat figure and quiet grace suggested someone caught between two realms. One in this world, the other inside her head.
‘What was that you were playing?’ Erin asked. ‘It’s lovely.’
‘Haydn’s Piano Sonata 33.’ Her smile was warm. ‘One of my favourites.’
Erin apologised again for the disturbance and backed away. Niels might be in the conservatory, a desired spot on chilly days. But as Karen, or Katy – she’d have to ask Niels– resumed her playing, something tethered Erin to the floor. What she wanted, more than anything, was a little music therapy of her own. To enter that inviting room of golden light and stretch out on one of the floor mats, close her eyes and sink into the embrace of the piano’s soothing melody.
*
At first glance, the conservatory appeared deserted, though it was hard to say with the exuberant masses of foliage filling up the space. Erin held still and listened. A rustle of leaves in the far corner provided a starting point, and she followed the blue and yellow mosaic path through the forest of ferns.
After rounding a corner, she spotted Niels, half-hidden behind a soaring plant with large indented leaves.
He dipped a cloth into a brass bowl and wrung it out, wiping down one of the leaves with steady strokes, front and back. His expression was blank, his movements mechanical. She hesitated before approaching him.
‘Niels?’
He wet the cloth again and wiped down another leaf. When she drew closer, he spoke. ‘In another life,’ he said, leaning in to flick something from one of the glossy leaves, ‘I might have been a gardener.’ He dabbed another leaf gently, as if cleaning a child’s face. ‘I find it soothing.’ He rubbed a stem between his fingers. ‘And they seem to like the attention.’
They? Erin perched on a brocade ottoman under the boughs of a date palm. ‘Do you talk to them?’
‘Not usually. But sometimes I come in here when I can’t sleep. Mostly I like to listen to them breathe.’
Erin was taken aback. What could she say to this? Niels, always dependable and a stickler for rules, communing with the foliage in the dead of night. Apparently, there were layers to his character, she had yet to discover. Or did his odd mood have something to do with that woman she’d seen him with last week? Erin had been at the coffee house near the clinic when Niels passed by the window, his progress dogged by an angry woman in a red parka, her blonde dreadlocks streaming from a grimy knit cap. She was shouting at him as she punched her fists in the air. Erin had ducked down, so he wouldn’t see her through the glass. Though Niels seemed oblivious, his eyes fixed on the pavement, and his face creased with exasperation.
‘I’m just back from Greenlake. I wanted you to know I’ve decided to take the case.’
‘Good. The board will be pleased.’ He leaned in to examine a yellow spot on a particularly large leaf. ‘I was afraid you might back out.’
She fingered a tassel on the ottoman. ‘I thought I might,’ she said, leaning in to sniff a bright red flower. ‘But we seemed to make a connection, the patient and I.’
‘A connection? With a schizophrenic?’
‘It happens.’
If Niels wasn’t acting so strangely, she would have welcomed his thoughts on the case. What, for instance, would he make of the fact that the patient’s father had stepped forward to take in his son? Or about Tim’s claim he had no memory of the crime? Or that three days after the murders, he was found two hundred miles away, stumbling along a logging road on the New York–Vermont border? Was it psychosis, a fugue state, amnesia? All these things and more she would have liked to discuss with Niels, but as he appeared to have entered a fugue state of his own, it seemed prudent to say nothing.
She tried another tack. ‘Any news about Cassie Gray?’
‘Cassie Gray?’ Niels scanned the vaulted glass above their heads as if trying to recall the name. ‘Not that I know of. But, come to think of it, we’ve had a co
uple of phone hang-ups. One late last night, the other early this morning. Probably just kids fooling around.’
Last night and this morning? How annoying, exactly the time she was away. She hated hang-ups. It could have been Cassie, or someone else in need of help who lost their nerve. Or, worse, someone looking for her. But that was a train of thought she didn’t care to follow.
When she glanced over at Niels, his face was placid as a pudding, his eyes unfocused. Whatever was wrong, he wasn’t going to tell her.
*
That evening, Erin pulled into her street to find an ambulance parked in front of the house, its red light flashing like a beating heart. She stopped the car and rushed over to find her pregnant neighbour strapped to a gurney, moaning in pain. Her distraught husband hovered by her side.
‘Is she okay?’ Erin said, touching his arm. ‘Qué pasa?’
His eyes were wild with fright. ‘Accidente. Baby coming.’
The paramedics bundled him into the back of the ambulance with his wife and sped away in the dark, lights flashing, siren wailing. Only after they’d gone did Erin notice her landlady standing on the front porch in a dressing gown, shivering in the cold.
‘Mrs Deptford, you should go in. It’s freezing out here.’ Erin pushed open the front door and herded her inside.
Her landlady dropped into a chair, her face distraught. ‘Poor thing. She slipped and fell in the kitchen, apparently. I heard a tremendous clatter above my head. A pan knocked off the stove, full of hot soup. I do hope she’ll be all right. She was so excited about the baby. Not that I could talk to her all that much. Her English is poor, and I don’t know any Spanish.’
Erin laid her hand on Mrs Deptford’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right. The doctors will take good care of her. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’
‘You’re a dear for asking, but I’ll be fine. It’s that poor girl I’m worried about.’ She patted Erin on the arm. ‘Go on upstairs. By the looks of you, you’ve had a long day.’ She stood shakily and turned to go. ‘Oh heavens,’ she smacked her forehead. ‘Silly me, I almost forgot. A letter came for you the other day. It was put in my mailbox by mistake. Completely slipped my mind, but I’ll give it to you now.’ She pulled open the middle drawer of the hall table, stuffed with receipts and old bills, and handed Erin a square envelope, bright hyacinth blue, with her name and address written in block letters on the front. US postage, but the cancellation mark was smudged, so there was no telling where it came from. The cheerful stamp, orange and yellow butterflies, seemed to mock her.