Fever Dream Page 8

  “I’m just helping them out.”

  Noah ducked his head down, framed by the cross formed by his huge forearms. I heard his low chuckle.

  “I mean it, Noah,” I said. “It’s not like before.”

  “Whatever you say, man. You wanna be a big hero, impress the chicks, that’s your look-out. Me, I’m happy stayin’ this side of crazy and bumpin’ uglies with my sweetie Charlene.”

  I picked up on something in his manner that made me put down my beer. I’d known Noah for almost ten years, and was fairly confident I could read his shifting moods.

  “You seem pretty upbeat today,” I said carefully. “No complaints about politics or the state of pop music. What’s the story?”

  Noah smiled wanly. “I’m practicin’ gratitude, man. Tryin’ to, anyway. ’Cause, despite everything, I’m still alive and kickin’. Still above ground.”

  “And somebody you know isn’t?”

  He sighed heavily. “Someone we both know, Danny. You remember Andy the Android? From the clinic?”

  “Sure.”

  How could I forget? I’d gotten to know Andy when I first began working at Ten Oaks, soon after I’d met Noah. Andrew Parker was in his late teens at the time. Called “Andy the Android” by all the other patients, Andrew was a deeply delusional boy who believed he wasn’t human. That he was actually a machine. Like Pinocchio, his biggest and only dream was to become a real person.

  “What happened to him?” I asked. “Wasn’t he still at Ten Oaks?”

  “Oh, yeah. A lifer, that guy. Then last week, on his thirtieth birthday, he celebrated by hanging himself. They found his dead ass in the tool shed behind the rec yard. He used a bicycle chain.”

  “But that shed is always locked.”

  Noah shrugged. “Guy wants to do somethin’ bad enough, he finds a way. Poor son of a bitch. I always liked him.”

  “How did you hear?”

  “Dr. Nancy told me yesterday. She came by with my monthly head supplies and dropped the bomb.”

  I nodded. Though I hadn’t seen her in some time, I’d heard that Dr. Nancy Mendors, the psychiatrist who’d been providing Noah his meds since I’d found him on the streets, had recently been promoted to Clinic Director at Ten Oaks.

  Made sense. She was one of the city’s most respected clinicians and certainly deserved the job. She and I also shared a long—and somewhat complicated—friendship. Of whose intimate details Noah was, like most people we knew, thankfully unaware.

  “Dr. Nancy told me that Andy’s funeral is tomorrow,” Noah was saying. He toyed with the lapel of his multi-stained workshirt. “I haven’t decided whether or not I’m goin’. Funerals give me the willies.”

  “Well, at least think it over,” I said, finishing my beer. “I’m certainly going, now that I know. I liked Andy, too. A lot.”

  I looked down at my empty glass. Surprised at the level of quiet grief I felt. It wasn’t that Andy and I had been especially close. He wasn’t even a patient I’d worked with regularly back in those early days. But still…

  I silently chided myself. Why did my reaction surprise me so much? Wasn’t every loss, every death, some kind of marker? Some statement of finality?

  Especially those of people like Andy. So haunted, tormented. Lost. For a therapist, the Andy’s of this world are a daily reminder of how fundamentally fragile, how inevitably unknowable every human being is. No matter how many degrees or clinical licenses you have…

  My reverie was broken by Noah, who tapped me sharply on the shoulder. When I looked up, he gave me a wink.

  “Head’s up, man, the cops. Flush your stash.”

  It was Eleanor Lowrey, coming back from the rest room.

  Noah chuckled at his own joke and headed back down the bar, where his sole other customer was impatiently rapping the counter with his shot glass.

  I pulled Eleanor’s stool from the bar for her.

  “An A-minus, eh?” She settled in her seat. “Health inspector must’ve skipped the bathrooms.”

  I watched her sip her beer. Tried on a smile.

  “Is this okay, you having a drink on duty? Unless Harry’s right, and I’m a bad influence on you, too.”

  She gave me a sidelong look. “He’d also say, ‘this ain’t a drink, it’s beer.’ Just a lube job for a cop.”

  As if for emphasis, Eleanor took a long pull from the schooner, then set it down carefully on the bar. Ran her forefinger around the thick, foamy rim.

  “Helluva day, eh?” she said softly. “And this whole mess has just gotten started. God knows where it’s all gonna lead. If we don’t find those two guys soon…”

  “Cops just need a break,” I said. Averting my eyes. Readying myself for what I had to do. To say.

  “Yeah. And I need a long, cool bath.”

  She took a square of napkin from the counter, dabbed at her forehead. I was sweating, too. Damn humid in here.

  We sat for a long moment without talking, wrapped in the sounds of glasses tinkling, the murmur of voices coming from the dining tables, and the ambient presence of the river just beyond the walls.

  Finally, she turned to me, her gaze steady. Searching my face.

  “What about you, Dan? After everything that’s gone down today…What do you need? Or don’t therapists like you need anything?”

  “You’d be surprised. We need the same things everybody else does. Maybe even more.” I paused. “But, since you asked, there is one thing I need now…”

  A bit taken aback, she managed a smile.

  “What’s that?”

  I took a breath.

  “I need you to stop lying to me about Treva Williams.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The bell rang. Start of the fourth round.

  I didn’t want to leave my corner. My legs felt rubbery, unreliable. They wanted to go home.

  I blinked back salt water, sweat pouring from my forehead into my reddened eyes.

  I brought my head up, as though underwater and trying to break the surface. Drowning in a sea of noise. It was deafening, the bounce-back acoustics from the concrete floor, particle-board ceiling and pea-green mortar walls. Of a low-rent gym in a low-rent part of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

  There were people on all sides of the ring on folding metal chairs. Pot-bellied men waving short black cigars. Middle-aged women with lacquered clouds of hair that shone white in the harsh fluorescent overheads. Sharpies and gamblers standing in clusters in the far corners, heads down, not even watching the fight. Just counting out bills into eager hands. Laughing. Arguing.

  It was sometime before ten PM. Amateur night. And I was getting my ass kicked by a red-haired Irish kid with acne scars and arms like bridge cables. I was seventeen.

  I glanced down at my father, standing outside the ring at my corner. Eyes glowing like angry coals in the drifting cigarette smoke. Broad, mottled drinker’s face. Spider-web veins. His own huge fists clenched on the canvas, on either side of the corner post.

  I nodded once in his direction, patted my gloves together with a wet slap, and pushed off from my corner.

  The crowd cheered lustily as the kid and I traded blows, neither of us with an ounce of style or precision. Just two stupid kids, flailing away. At one point, I saw a patch of blood erupt over his left eye.

  I felt a surge of adrenaline. Confidence. And waded in.

  Nothing blurs your vision like hope. He connected with a quick combination, followed by an uppercut that felt like it came from the bowels of the earth. And suddenly I was sitting on my ass. The taste of blood in my mouth.

  The fans were on their feet, screaming and cursing and shouting. The middle-aged ladies were jumping up and down, clapping their hands.

  I heard my father’s harsh bellow—half encouragement, half contempt—as I got shakily to my feet. Then the Irish kid lunged again and I wrapped him up in my arms. Danced into the ropes. I felt the sharp whisk of fibers slice across my back. Rope burns. Not my first.

  Just as the re
f came in to break us up, the bell rang. The round was over.

  And then I was stumbling back to my corner, back to the opaque stare of my disappointed father. I also saw that he was raising his left hand, the old wedding band still on it. The ring he’d refused to wear when he was married to my mother. Not until she’d died, when I was three.

  He’d worn it ever since. Now welded to him like his own guilt. A small gold handcuff. A relic of the dead saint he thought her to be.

  Most of the crowd was still on its feet, though the tenor of their voices had changed. Angry. Demanding.

  My father was calling out to me, too. Voice thick, weary. Defeated. That upraised hand pushing against empty air, motioning me back toward the center of the ring.

  But why? I staggered out, confused. My eyes half-shut, caked with sweat and blood.

  Then the ref was holding both our gloved hands, me and the Irish kid’s, and announcing that the fight was over. We were both minors, for Christ’s sake, he pointed out. And I was pretty beaten up. The crowd booed. The ref raised the Irish kid’s hand in the air.

  The fans were still shouting and booing as I made my way back to my corner. I sagged against the turnbuckle. Pushed out my mouth-guard with my swollen tongue. Wiped away blood and spit with the back of my hand.

  “Well, at least you went back in,” my father said flatly. “At least you stood up and took it.”

  He lifted a sponge soaked with water and something brownish-red that stung like battery acid and swabbed my face. I blinked hard against the combination of sweat, blood and whatever the hell was mixed in that water bucket. Until I finally found some words and offered them up to my old man.

  “Sorry, Dad. I guess he was too good.”

  His look at me was pitiless.

  “No, he wasn’t. He just wanted it more than you did.”

  Then he threw the sponge back into the bucket and turned and headed to the locker room. I climbed down out of the ring and followed him.

  Neither of us said another word on the whole drive back home.

  ***

  I thought of that night so long ago in Wilkes-Barre as I sat now with Eleanor Lowrey in Noah’s bar. My father’s words to me after the ref’s decision. Maybe the only words of encouragement he ever spoke:

  “At least you went back in. At least you stood up and took it.”

  It was how I felt now, as I watched Eleanor’s face change. As she reacted to my accusation that she’d lied to me about Treva Williams. After—there’s no other way to describe it—I’d waded in.

  At first, her eyes had burned with anger, and a kind of indignation. Then, almost as quickly, the fire had burned out. “When have I lied to you about her?”

  I shook my head. More customers had come in, and the bar was filling with the layered sounds of multiple voices. Familiar greetings. Relieved end-of-work-day laughter. At the far end of the counter, Noah had clicked on the flat-screen TV with his remote. CNN. The usual talking heads, arguing about the upcoming elections.

  “Not here.” I touched Eleanor’s wrist on the bar. “Finish your food and let’s go for a walk.”

  She forced a short laugh. “And what makes you think I want to do that? Maybe I just want to sit here and eat my overcooked burger. Maybe I want to order another beer and soak up the atmosphere.”

  “Well, I guess you could do that. But then I think you’ll still want to go for a walk with me. And talk.”

  She turned on her stool, fists at her sides.

  “How about I snap some cuffs on you instead and haul your ass to the station?”

  “On what charge, Detective?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “I bet you will. You’re pretty good at thinking on your feet. You’ve been doing it all day, since the bank got hit. Since you called me at my office to ask for my help.”

  Her violet eyes narrowed, stayed guarded. But a rueful note fluted her voice.

  “Ya know, I liked you better five minutes ago. When I was ‘Eleanor,’ not ‘Detective.’”

  I shrugged. “That goes both ways. I liked you better when I didn’t know you were holding out on me about Treva.”

  We stared at each other for a long, awkward moment.

  Finally, I broke the impasse.

  “You’ve trusted me with her so far, Eleanor. To look after her. Protect her. Why stop trusting me now?”

  She gave me a frank, appraising look. And not just with a cop’s interest. Or curiosity. Or doubt. She was literally, at that moment, coming to a decision about me.

  “Okay,” she said at last. And slid off her stool.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What made you suspicious?”

  She had her hands jammed in the pockets of her snug jeans as we walked along the riverbank on Second Avenue. Late afternoon shadows had crawled down from the hills on the far side of the river, a chiaroscuro backdrop to the low buildings still glazed by the summer sun.

  “I wasn’t suspicious,” I said. “More like confused. Or curious.”

  “You’ll have to explain the difference to me.”

  Eleanor had put her sunglasses back on once we’d left Noah’s Ark and started walking south on foot. But it wasn’t to protect her eyes from the sun. It was to hide what was in them from me.

  The gravel shifted and crunched beneath our feet as we skirted the riverbank. Railway timbers embedded length-wise to shore up the embankment were black with pitch and age. Radiating the day’s heat like great fire-charred logs.

  There were no passersby down here. It was still too hot out for the homeless and train hoppers, and not yet dark enough for the panhandlers and drug dealers. Eleanor and I had this sun-baked, dusk-tinged world to ourselves.

  “Look, I’m not accusing you of anything,” I said. “But if I’m going to be of any real use, to you or Treva, I need to know the truth.”

  She said nothing, just kept her face pointed straight ahead as we walked. Not tilted down at the uneven earth, or even averted from my own gaze. Just straight ahead, her profile a smooth dark cameo backlit by the setting sun. Her beautiful lips pressed tightly together.

  I took the plunge.

  “Okay, I wondered if something was up from the first moment you contacted me. I knew that Biegler would’ve vetoed calling me in. And that Harry would give you all kinds of grief. Yet you called me anyway. Even though, as you yourself mentioned, there was already a departmental psychologist on scene.”

  Still she said nothing.

  “Then, when I was working with Treva, I noticed that your interest in her emotional state was more than professional. You seemed genuinely worried about her. Later, at the bank, after I told you I had to leave to accompany Treva to the hospital, I saw you make a cell phone call. Heard you repeat a phone number you’d been given. I recognized the number. Pittsburgh Memorial. And what do I find when we get down there? That somebody from the department had ordered Treva kept in ICU, for her own protection. Fewer visitors. Easier to guard.”

  I let this sink in, though it was hard to gauge her reaction. I was beginning to regret having even ventured here with her. In a real way it was none of my business.

  I went on anyway. “Not to mention your reaction to the detective assigned to her. Robertson. So maybe getting her stashed in the ICU was some sort of extra protection. Why?

  “Which got me wondering: if you had been the one who’d had her put there, maybe you’d also asked that a detective be assigned to guard her. Though that made no sense either. By your own admission, the department’s stretched too thin. The manhunt for the gunmen is too important, politically and otherwise, to waste a detective on that assignment. As far as anyone knows, Treva’s in no physical danger. Not at the moment. Not since she’d been released from the bank. So any regular uniform could stand guard outside her room.”

  By this time, we’d come to an old city bench that had been placed facing the water. Wood slats for seats, curved iron legs embedded in circular concrete pockets buried in the har
d earth. Civic improvement, circa 1900.

  Without a word, or even a confirming nod to each other, we sat at the same time on the bench.

  I waited a moment, then turned to her.

  “Treva’s not in some kind of danger, is she?” I asked. “I mean, not anymore. Right?”

  Eleanor Lowrey gave a long sigh, then lowered her head as though its weight had finally become too much. Her chin rested on her chest.

  “No.” Her voice was a hush. “Not that I know of. I just…well, I wanted her sequestered in ICU. Under guard. So that when she woke up…I mean, if I happened not to be there, she’d know I’d been thinking about her. Making sure she was safe. That she’d see another detective, like me, watching over her.”

  She let a smile tug at her lips.

  “Well, maybe not exactly like me.”

  “Tell me. I don’t think Robertson would inspire much confidence in anyone.”

  I saw the warmth return to her violet eyes.

  “Why did you call me, Eleanor?”

  “For the same reason I told you, Dan. Because you’re good. Better than the idiot shrink they had on scene. I’ve worked with him a few times, and believe me, calling him an idiot is an insult to actual idiots.” She paused. “I called you because I figured I could trust you with Treva.”

  I waited. I’d talked enough—too much, probably—and now she needed to tell me about it in her own way. In her own time.

  She took a breath. “When we found out the gunmen had released a hostage, Biegler sent me over to where the EMT guys were working on her. At first, with her head down, all wrapped up in that blanket, I almost didn’t recognize her. Then, when our eyes met…I mean, Treva was definitely out of it. In shock or whatever, like you said. But she knew who I was. She didn’t say a thing, but she knew. And I…well, all I said to her was that everything would be all right. That I was going to call someone who might be able to help her.”

  A sharp bleat of a klaxon drew my eyes to the river, and the rust-stained pilot boat skimming along its surface. A squirrel’s tail of dark water plumed behind.

  When I turned back to Eleanor, she was taking off the sunglasses. Folding them with a one-handed flip of her wrist and hanging them again from the deep V in her t-shirt. Then she gave me a frank look.