Authors: J.A. Konrath,Jack Kilborn
Tags: #General Fiction
“Chicago.”
“A Chicago pig has no jurisdiction in South Carolina.”
“True.”
Moni pulled out a large syringe and held it up, triumphantly.
“What is that?” Tom asked, feeling like he already knew.
“Heroin. Enough to make a charging bull OD. I didn’t think I could get a gun through TSA because I’d get into trouble, so I brought this to protect myself.”
“Instead of a gun you brought a lethal dose of heroin,” Tom said. “You don’t think if you got caught with that, you’d be in more trouble?”
Moni’s eyebrows crinkled and her lips pursed. “When you say it like that, it sounds like a bad idea.”
“Am I interrupting?”
They looked at the open door and saw Mal, the sports reporter missing a hand.
“The more the merrier,” Moni said, waving him in.
“Forenzi wants us to line up for our physicals, but I just wanted a moment of your time, Detective. Are you both… busy?”
“I’m just showing the pig my heroin,” Moni said.
Mal frowned. “I could come back…”
“How can I help you, Mr. Deiter?” Tom asked.
“At dinner. You didn’t seem excited about Forenzi’s experiment. You seemed like you knew something no one else did.”
Both Mal and Moni stared at Tom. He wondered what to do, but strangely he felt comfortable around them, in the same way he felt comfortable around Frank and Sara.
In that moment, he decided the benefits of telling them outweighed keeping it a secret.
“My partner, Roy Lewis, came to this house last week, supposedly doing the same thing we’re doing tonight. He never came back.”
Tom watched Mal’s frown deepen. “Shit.”
“You look so sad,” Moni told him. She offered the syringe. “Need a little pick me up?”
“Moni,” Tom kept his voice even, “can you please put away the heroin? And Mal, I don’t know what happened to Roy, so I can’t cry
foul play
yet. Maybe Forenzi is legit, and this will all be smooth sailing.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“No. I don’t.” Tom felt like he was telling a child there was no Santa Claus.
Moni put her hand on Mal’s neck. “Buck up, little soldier. Would a little three-way action with me and your wife make you feel better?”
Mal choked out a laugh. “You know, it probably would.”
“Is she into chicks?”
He lost his mirth again. “No.”
“Too bad. Well, maybe some figging will take your mind off things.”
“What’s figging?” Mal asked.
“It’s when you take a—”
“Mal?” His wife, Deb, stuck her head into the room. “Everything okay?”
“He’s moody,” Moni explained, “so I offered him smack and a three way.”
Tom decided it was time to take some control of the situation. “I don’t know how this is all going to play out tonight, but I think we all need to stick together, and watch out for each other. Did anyone bring weapons?” He looked pointedly at Moni, who was waving her hand. “Weapons other than narcotics?”
“I packed a .38 in our suitcase,” Mal said.
“Extra rounds?”
Mal shook his head. “Just the five in the cylinder.”
“Are you a good shot?”
“I’m so-so. Deb is better.”
Tom took out his Sig, removed the magazine, and pulled back the slide to make sure the barrel was clear. Then he did a quick explanation of how to load, how to use the decocker, and what double action meant. As he was passing his gun around, one of the suited guards knocked on the door frame.
“We’re ready for you.”
Tom took his Sig back, tucked it into the holster, and followed the others into the hallway. They’d been given rooms on the second floor, all in a row, and there was an ornate wooden railing that overlooked the great room. As they headed for the stairs, they passed a marble statue of a cupid on a pedestal. Tom did a double-take, then went back for a closer look.
In the baby’s mouth were sharp fangs.
Moni, who was behind him, said, “Wouldn’t want to breastfeed that little bastard. And look at the wings.”
At first glance, they seemed like typical, feathered cherub wings. But the individual feathers weren’t feathers—they were tiny daggers.
“Dr. Madison is waiting.”
Tom turned, startled, and was surprised to see yet another guard in a gray suit standing next to him. That made five he’d seen so far. Why did Forenzi need so many guards? To protect him from ghosts? And how had he managed to sneak up on Tom? Like the others, this guard was tall, muscular, and wearing military boots. But he hadn’t made a sound during his approach.
“What branch of the military were you in?” Tom asked.
The man’s face remained blank, and he didn’t answer.
“Do you work for the government, or for Forenzi directly?”
“Please move along,” the guard said.
Tom shrugged, and he followed Moni and the others down the stairs, across the great room, and to a hallway lined with drab paintings depicting plantation life. They looked old, paint peeling and a decade’s worth of grime on them. Slaves in the field, picking tobacco. Blackjack Reedy astride a horse, whip in hand. An endless field of cattails, stretching off into the horizon. Everyone had stopped next to a closed door, and Tom assumed it was the queue for the examination room. But he quickly figured out the group had huddled around another painting, this one of Butler House.
It was massive, perhaps a meter tall and twice as wide, in an ornate frame and protected behind some non-reflective glass. The picture depicted the house in the 1800s, when it was still new, and the fields were filled with cotton. Tom didn’t understand the interest until Frank pointed to a figure in one of the windows.
It was a woman, her hair tied back, a pensive look on her face. Tom squinted at it, then turned to Sara, who had gone ashen.
The woman in the painting was a dead-ringer for her.
Tom moved in closer, checking the figures in the other windows.
He saw Frank’s face peering out between half-closed shutters on the second floor.
Deb, opening the front door to the house. Mal in the shadows behind her.
Moni’s face, complete with her pock marks.
Wellington, in the cotton field with a scythe.
Two people in a horse-drawn buggy, approaching the house. Pang and Aabir.
Tom looked for himself, dreading the search, holding his breath.
“You’re here,” Belgium said, pointing to the side of the house.
Tom didn’t understand what he was seeing. It was definitely his face, lying sideways on the ground, but his body was obscured by scrub brush.
“And over here,” Belgium continued, moving his finger.
Then Tom understood.
His body wasn’t in the bushes. His body was sitting against the house, holding a knife, his shirt drenched with blood.
Tom had apparently cut off his own head, and it had rolled away.
Mal was in much better spirits since Dr. Forenzi’s talk at supper, which was just in time for Deb’s mood to take a nose dive.
They passed co-dependency back and forth like two hobos sharing a cigar. So it was Deb’s turn to feel awful, and Mal’s to buoy her up.
But he’d gone out to ask the cop some questions, leaving Deb alone in her room.
Which was when a painting in the bedroom fell off the wall.
It scared the shit out of her, and when she went to look for him she found a convention of sorts in Tom’s room.
Now, first in line to be examined, she still hadn’t had the chance to tell Mal what had happened. The painting—a ghastly picture of a brooding southern gentlemen standing calmly in the middle of a storm—had dropped off the wall just as she was wiping the sweat off her stumps.
It could have been a coincidence. Or it could have been supernatural.
What was behind it didn’t matter. What mattered was Mal hadn’t been there for her, when she’d been there for him since the airport in Pittsburgh.
It wasn’t fair. So now she was coping with resentment as well as fear, and having to go in first made Deb even more on edge. Add in seeing herself on the hallway painting, and Deb wanted to either cry, rip all her hair out, or both.
“Tom’s partner disappeared here last week,” Mal said, whispering over Deb’s shoulder.
Deb sensed the worry in her husband’s voice. But she was worried, too. She needed him to be strong for a while. The fact that he wasn’t made her angry as well as scared.
“Deb, did you hear me?”
She turned around so fast that she lost her balance, which for Deb was about the most humiliating thing she could do. That Mal had to quickly reach out and steady her made it even worse.
“Leave me alone,” she said, teeth clenched and trying to pull away.
He recoiled like he’d just seen a snake. “Deb? What’s wrong?”
“It isn’t all about you, Mal. I’m hurting, too. I need support just like you do.”
“Deb, I—”
“I don’t need this right now.”
The door to the examination room opened, and a male voice from inside said, “Come in.”
Deb began to enter, but Mal held her back.
“Let go, Mal.”
“Let’s talk about this. We can let someone else cut ahead.”
“Let. Go.”
“At least let me go first so I can tell you what to expect. I know you hate doctors. Let me—”
Deb pulled away, wobbled into the room, and slammed the door behind her.
She immediately regretted her decision.
The exam room looked like it jumped off a postcard from the 1800s. The examination table was made of wood, with a cracked leather cushion, and metal arm rests with buckled straps. A dusty apothecary shelf, filled with old glass bottles, took up most of the left wall. Along the right wall were a desk, a water basin, and a shelf of moldering, leather-bound books. On the desk was some sort kind of organ—a human lung maybe—floating in a specimen jar of gray liquid.
“Take a seat.”
The doctor still hadn’t turned around. Her husband had been right; she was afraid of going to the doctor. She’d seen too many in her lifetime, and they always hurt her in some way.
Deb considered walking back out, letting Mal go first. But stubbornness won out over nerves and she went to the antique examination table and sat down.
“Name?” the doctor asked. He was filling out something on a clip board.
“Deborah Dieter.”
Deb looked at the old medical cart next to the table. On it were filthy old medical tools. A bone saw with crusted brown flecks. Pointy forceps. A large, curved scalpel. A jagged pair of oversized snippers. A hand drill that seemed more suited to a woodworker than a doctor. Rusty trocars. A rough-edged metal speculum that was open wider that a human being could accommodate.
Deb could feel her mouth go dry and her heart rate kick up. Getting an exam was bad enough. Getting an exam from some quack stuck in the nineteenth century was much worse.
Of course it’s much worse.
That’s the point.
Deb closed her eyes and slowed down her breathing, controlling her fear. This had to be part of Forenzi’s experiment. To try and scare her. What could be scarier than a collection of barbaric surgical implements from the past?
After ten seconds or so, Deb was able to reign in her panic. Then she opened her eyes and found herself face-to-face with—
Oh my god.
She recognized this so-called doctor. He was the hotel clerk who sent her to the Rushmore Inn. The same pale, pasty face. The same crooked toupee.
But he’s still in prison!
Isn’t he?
“I’m going to take some of your blood, Mrs. Dieter.” His breath smelled like sour milk.
“I need to…” Deb said weakly. “Are… are you…?”
“I’m Dr. Madison. I assist Dr. Forenzi.”
He was tugging on some rubber gloves, and gave Deb a crooked smile.
Is this the guy? Or does he just look like the guy, and my imagination is doing the rest?
Deb sometimes thought she saw people she knew in crowds, only to look closer and realize they just resembled the people she knew. Her mind filled in the blanks, jumped to conclusions. It happened to everyone.
Is it happening to me now?
“Why, Mrs. Dieter. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He opened up a plastic package, taking out a long needle attached to a clear tube.
Maybe this isn’t the guy. Maybe Forenzi hired him because he looked like the man Deb knew.
To scare her.
After all, this is a fear study.
“You… remind me of someone.”
“I get that a lot. George Clooney, right?”
More like Boris Karloff.
“Please put your arm on the armrest, Mrs. Dieter. I’m going to strap it down so you keep still.”
He buckled a strap around her wrist.
“So, are you from around here, Doctor?”
“Oh, no. I’m from West Virginia.”
Where the Rushmore was.
“Been here a while?”
“Only recently. For the past few years I’ve been… busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
He smiled again. “Just hold still, Mrs. Dieter. This will only pinch for a moment.”
The needle was jammed into her forearm. The agony was immediate.
Then he began to move it from side to side.
“Where is that vein? I can never find it.”
Deb ground her teeth, locking her jaw. The doctor wiggled it, going deeper, so deep Deb was sure he’d hit bone.
The pain was bad. But the anxiety was nuclear.
Deb shut her eyes again, begging the universe for it to stop.
“You have such tiny veins. I may have to get a smaller needle.”
Yes! Please please please do that!
Her whole world had been reduced to that needle in her flesh, probing, twisting, poking left and right like she was being tenderized instead of giving blood.
“Maybe I should try the other arm.”
No!
“Yes, I think that’ll I have to… ahh, there it is.”
Deb chanced a look and saw him attach a vacuum vial to the end of the tube, and it began to fill with blood.
“Was that so awful, Mrs. Dieter?”
Deb’s hair was stuck to her head from sweating. She blew out a deep breath, and pumped her fist to make the blood go faster.