Fever Dream Page 13

  Next up was a short piece on the young cop Roarke had shot in the throat during his escape. Thankfully, his surgery had been successful, and his doctors soon upgraded his status from critical to stable. “He’s expected to make a full recovery,” said the reporter on-scene.

  From here, the story switched to short bios of the three dead bank employees, as well as an exclusive interview with security guard George Vickers’ grief-stricken widow. To help viewers better relate to what she was going through, the camera helpfully zoomed in on her blanched, tear-streaked face.

  Fuck this, I thought, and was about to click it off when I saw a video replay from First Allegheny’s home office in Harrisburg. The CEO stood uncomfortably in the lobby of their corporate headquarters, the bank’s logo bannered over his left shoulder. He read a prepared statement expressing his outrage over the attempted robbery, and offering his sincere condolences to the families of the victims.

  Finally, the story’s cycle ended with statements from both Sinclair’s office and that of City Councilman John Garrity. As suggested this afternoon in Sinclair’s office, the DA’s media flacks delivered an earnest spiel about how the brave actions of the Pittsburgh police routed the gunmen and prevented further violence.

  I shut off the TV before seeing Garrity’s response to the day’s events. Having heard him speak a few times before, I knew the short, heavy-set politician would say something either pious or stupid. Probably both. Then he’d end with some veiled comments about Sinclair’s failings as the city’s district attorney.

  Seeing the news made me think of something, though, and I reached for the phone on the bedside table. And called Nancy Mendors.

  I figured she’d be up, since I knew she was an insomniac. I had to assume she’d been watching the news, or at least had heard about the day’s events, and I didn’t want her to worry about me.

  To my surprise, Nancy didn’t answer. Instead, I got her machine.

  “Nancy, it’s Danny. Sorry to be calling so late, but I figured you’d heard about the bank thing and my involvement in the whole mess. I just didn’t want you to worry. I’m fine. The media’s got half the story wrong anyway, which is why it’s a good idea not to believe everything you see on the news.”

  I paused, thinking she might have been in another room. The bathroom or somewhere. But she didn’t pick up.

  “Okay, well, that’s it, I guess. I’ll see you tomorrow at Andy Parker’s burial service. Bye.”

  I was about to hang up when I had another thought.

  “One more thing, Nancy. Could you email me Andy’s records from the clinic as soon as you get this? I’d really appreciate it. Thanks. Good-night.”

  Then I hung up. Lay back against the bed pillows, staring up at the ceiling. The play of the city’s lights arrayed there, coming from the window.

  I found myself wondering why I’d asked to see Andy’s medical records. It was just an impulse, but I’d long ago decided that I rarely went wrong following one. Even if I didn’t know why I was doing so, or where it would lead.

  Plus, something that Noah had said earlier today on the phone kept nagging at the back of my mind. About Andy’s suicide. Probably meant nothing. But still…

  As I felt myself drifting off, I replayed those horrific images from inside the bank. The bodies sprawled on the cold marble. The dark blood, pooling beneath them.

  Until, not surprisingly, I fell into a restless, dream-troubled sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Rosemont Cemetery, in suburban Edgewood, was a rolling sprawl of low hills carpeted in thick grass leached of its greenish hue by days of punishing sun. Even the shade thrown by the occasional small grove of oak and maple trees did little to offset the sense of parched, acrid stillness that enveloped the place.

  It was nearing noon, and—as Noah had predicted—I was roasting in my one dark suit I kept for such occasions. I parked in the graveled lot, sunlight flaring off the windshields of adjacent cars like mini-novas. As I made my way to the ancient wrought-iron entrance gate, I remembered the last time I’d been here.

  Too long ago, I realized bitterly. My annual visit to my parents’ parallel graves on their anniversary. A promise I’d made to my old man right before his inevitable death from liver failure. Echoing a promise he’d made to my mother right before she herself had died.

  I wondered, as I headed toward the small cluster of mourners on the knoll up ahead, if there’d be anyone around at the end of my life. Someone from whom I could extract, through guilt or guile, a similar promise.

  By the time I’d reached the burial site, the cemetery chaplain had already begun the service. About a dozen people stood looking down at the coffin, its sleek black lines glazed by sunlight. From where I stood, just across from the array of mourners, I could sense their palpable discomfort in the blazing heat. Almost feel the sweat beading their foreheads, streaking their dark jackets.

  I only recognized a few of them. A couple staff clinicians from Ten Oaks, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Plus some long-term patients who’d been residents at the clinic since before I even interned there. They stood huddled together, awkward and dismayed, as though there’d be strength in numbers against these troubling rituals of an alien world.

  Closer to the grave itself were a couple I took to be Andy’s parents. Though they were obviously estranged. Separate. Both expensively, tastefully dressed. Both with heads turned toward the chaplain. The polite attentiveness of the disinterested. My guess was that, in their minds, their son had been lost to them a long time ago.

  Then a woman’s plaintive sobs, audible above the pious drone of the chaplain, drew my attention. She was young, barely twenty, pale and thin. One of the group of mourners from Ten Oaks. Though she stood apart from them, alongside an equally young man with close-cropped brown hair. He was attempting to comfort her, putting his arm around her waist. But she shoved him away, her eyes flinty with anger and disgust. Boring into his, until he had to turn away.

  Which brought him into eye contact with me. For a long moment, we just stared across the open grave at each other. Then he adjusted the sleeves of his ill-fitting suit jacket and walked stiffly back to join the rest of the mourners.

  As the chaplain finished his prayers, we all bowed our heads and watched through hooded eyes as two burly cemetery workers began shoveling dirt over the coffin. Consigning Andrew Parker once more to the unforgiving earth.

  It was then that I saw Nancy Mendors, her slim form having been hidden behind that of the stout chaplain. I hadn’t seen her in some time, yet she didn’t seem to have changed. The same frank, solemn eyes. Pretty oval face framed by rich dark hair. Though she was a year or two older than me, her body was still slender, compact.

  She noticed me then, too, and we exchanged brief, sad smiles. And not just because of our shared grief about Andy’s death.

  It was more or less the way we always greeted each other, no matter how much time had gone by.

  And probably always would.

  ***

  Earlier this morning, after getting dressed and phoning my patients to reschedule the week’s appointments, I’d checked my email to see if Nancy had forwarded Andy Parker’s medical records. She had. At four AM.

  While I printed them out, I poured a second cup of black coffee and checked the TV news for updates about the robbery investigation. Nothing new there. More details about the slain bank employees and their families. Including footage of a makeshift memorial someone had placed in front of the bank. Photos of the victims, in and among an array of flowers. Hand-made placards displaying words of sympathy, condolence. Verses from the Bible.

  There was also a second interview with George Vickers’ widow. I noted that she’d had a bit of a makeover since the first one. Hair done up, more stylish glasses. And she had a grim-faced man in a three-piece-suit standing next to her. “A family friend,” according to the news reporter, “as well as an attorney representing Mrs. Vickers.”

  So it begins, I th
ought. The media-stoked bonfire of grief and outrage. The finger-pointing. The civil suits. The on-screen parade of lawyers and pundits.

  I clicked to another local channel, whose coverage focused more on the search for the two bank robbers. I caught the tail end of the anchorman’s report, which seemed merely to reflect the official party line.

  As with most newscasts when there isn’t much new information to impart, the report emphasized those few facts available. These being limited to biographical details about one of the gunmen, Wheeler Roarke, whose past links to both law enforcement and private security in the Middle East formed the bulk of the report. Moreover, by now photos of Roarke (including, unfortunately, one showing him in his Chicago PD uniform) were all over the Internet, which the program displayed in continuous rotation behind the anchorman as he spoke.

  I finished my coffee, shut off the TV and retrieved the printed copies of Andy’s records. I took them with me into the kitchen, now suffused with light through the broad bay window, and stood reading by the sink.

  According to his file, Andrew Parker had been a patient at Ten Oaks since his teens. The child of wealthy, divorced parents who’d been more than happy to unload him on someone else, Andy had been immediately diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and assigned to various staff therapists and case managers over the ensuing years.

  As I already knew, his primary delusion was his conviction that he wasn’t human. That he was an android, a mechanical man like out of a sci-fi movie. As a result, he often had to be fed intravenously, against his will, since, as he claimed, “machines don’t need to eat.”

  He’d been placed on a variety of psychotropic meds over the years, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes he’d go for months at a time in which the delusion receded, and, though depressed and uncommunicative, he seemed less tormented.

  But these periods were few and far between. Plus he was reporting more intense physical discomfort. He complained frequently that his CPS—whatever that was—hurt. Whenever his case manager expressed confusion as to what these initials referred to, Andy would fly into a kind of controlled rage. Arms and legs moving stiffly, robotically. Hurling himself around the office.

  Of more concern were the increasing number of suicide attempts, especially in this past year. Self-inflicted puncture wounds to his neck, abdomen. Often using tools from the shed at the rear end of the rec yard. The same building in which he’d hanged himself last week.

  I put aside the sheaf of papers with a heavy sigh. Though his particular set of symptoms were unusual, the pattern of behavior was achingly familiar for a patient like Andy. The occasional respite from delusion. The promising initial results of a new medication cocktail giving way to lowered expectations. The slow but undeterred deterioration. The increasing number of suicide attempts, leading up to some significant marker—in this case, Andy’s thirtieth birthday.

  All numbingly familiar. Another sober statistic to add to the reams of data compiled by every psychiatric facility in every city in the world.

  I bent at the sink then, hands gripping the counter. Looked out at the obscenely bright, sunlit day. Rolled my shoulders against the tight knots lodged there like marbles under the skin.

  I felt somehow jangly and dispirited at the same time. I needed to do something physical. Go for a run. Hit the well-worn heavy bag that hung from a hook in my basement gym. Punch…something.

  Instead, I straightened my tie in the reflection from the refrigerator door, went out to my car, and drove down the hill to watch them bury Andy the Android.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  When Nancy and I finally hugged, I noticed one thing about her that had changed. Her perfume. It was something slightly more exotic. I don’t know anything about scents, but it seemed tinged with some kind of spice. All I knew for sure was that she smelled different from how she used to when I held her close.

  We were standing just beyond the ring of mourners, a few of whom were talking in hushed tones, or exchanging commiserating comments with the chaplain. Again, though part of the group from the clinic, the pale young woman and the brown-haired man were standing apart. Arguing in fierce, barely contained whispers.

  Finally, the young woman pushed herself away from the man and ran over to speak to one of the Ten Oaks clinicians who’d attended the ceremony.

  Nancy, her hand still on my shoulder, had noticed me watching the couple and followed my eyes. I turned back to look at her.

  “You know those two lovebirds?”

  “Her name’s Victoria Tolan. Been a patient at Ten Oaks for a couple years. He’s a newbie named Stan Willis.”

  “What’s their story?”

  “Beats me. I didn’t even know they knew each other. I mean, that well. Though Ten Oaks is a pretty tight-knit community. Everybody knows everybody else.”

  “I know. I remember.”

  She smiled warmly. “It’s good to see you, Dan. It’s been too long.”

  “Since that whole Wingfield thing, I guess.”

  I took her arm and we started walking across the grass toward the parking lot.

  Nancy Mendors and I had met when I was an intern at Ten Oaks. Then, years later, and only a few months after my wife’s murder, Nancy went through a bitter divorce. Both of us still reeling, we fell into a brief, passionate affair. Using clinging, desperate sex as a salve against loss and regret.

  When it ended as abruptly as it had begun, we managed to remain good friends. Even though we saw each other infrequently, our worlds rarely intersecting. Nancy had stayed on staff at Ten Oaks, while I’d gone into private practice. Yet, for some reason, the bond we’d formed during that period of shared pain and mutual solace still sustained us.

  It also allowed for a bracing honesty.

  “You know,” I said as we neared the parking lot, “I feel like a jerk for not calling you when I heard the news. About your being made clinical director at Ten Oaks.”

  “You should feel like a jerk.” Though her voice was smiling. “Are you too famous now to get together with old friends?”

  I ducked my head. Pulled her closer to me. “Truth is, all I’ve done since the Wingfield case is concentrate on work. Try to recuperate—mentally and physically—from what happened.”

  “Then what are you doing mixed up in this bank thing?”

  “God only knows. I don’t even know if I can be of any help, but the cops’ve pulled rank on me. Put me on call for the week.”

  Nancy gave an involuntary shiver. “I saw that guy Roarke’s picture on TV. Those shark eyes. God, I hope they catch him soon.”

  “Me, too. My head still hurts from where he slugged me.”

  She stopped, fists clenched on her hips.

  “See, that’s my point, Danny. You’re a therapist, for Christ’s sake. Not a cop. What the hell were you doing, mixing it up with some bank robber? Didn’t you get your fill of stupid danger last year?”

  “Funny, Noah scolded me about the same thing. Are you two talking behind my back?”

  “I would if I thought it would do any good. But…”

  She sighed, brought her hands up to grasp mine. Clutched them to my chest. “Please, Danny. Just be careful. For once in your life, stay on the goddam sidelines.”

  “Now that is funny, coming from the clinical director of a prominent psych hospital. Hell, you’re on the front lines every day, fighting the good fight.”

  She laughed. “Right. If you consider wading through oceans of paperwork and haggling with insurance companies the front lines…”

  “Believe me, I do. Give me a stone killer with a loaded gun anytime.”

  By then, we’d reached the edge of the parking lot. To our left, the two Ten Oaks clinicians were leading a crooked line of patients to a small yellow bus idling at the curb. Waiting to take them back to the clinic.

  Nancy nodded in their direction.

  “I’m glad we were able to organize this for Andy. Especially given how long he’d been at Ten Oaks. Still, only a fe
w patients were that close to him, as you can imagine. He didn’t welcome it. Particularly given his difficulty in reading social cues.”

  “Was he bothered by that?”

  Her look was rueful. “Why would he be? Since when do machines pick up on social cues?”

  I nodded. Andy’s delusion—as was true with many schizophrenics—had served a multitude of functions. Protective. Isolating. And, of course, providing him an explicit explanation for his alienation, his intense feelings of estrangement. To patients like Andy, their delusions were often the only thing that made sense in a senseless world.

  One of the staff therapists was waving now in our direction, as he shepherded the last two patients onto the bus. I wasn’t surprised to see that it was the couple I’d noticed arguing at the grave. Victoria Tolan and Stan Willis.

  As the therapist climbed aboard the bus behind them, Nancy turned to me.

  “I probably should head back, too, Danny. Walk me to my car?”

  The patient bus roared to life and headed toward the exit. Nancy and I involuntarily stepped back as a plume of exhaust trailed from the bus and hung, suspended like a low-lying cloud, in the still air.

  Her car was parked not far from mine. We reached it in another minute, during which neither of us spoke.

  As she rummaged in her purse for her car keys, I leaned against the hood, arms folded.

  “Can I ask you a couple questions about Andy? I’m curious about a few things I read in his file.”

  “Only a few?”

  “Good point. Well, for one thing, he complained to his case manager about his CPS, whatever the hell that is. Says it hurt a lot.”

  Nancy chuckled. “Yeah, that one stumped us for a while. CPS stands for Cranial Processing Software. His android brain. All it meant was that he had a headache.”

  I took this in. “What about his earlier suicide attempts? Didn’t that indicate a need to change his meds?”

  “Of course. Which we did, frequently. Plus we monitored him more strictly. Or as much as possible. You know what it’s like managing that many patients.”