Mania (22 page)

“I understand exactly how you feel, Nick.”

“Please,” Nick shouted.
Please!

“You hate me so much right now you would kill me, eh? You’d strangle me to death if you could, wouldn’t you? Stabbing is more your thing, though, I suppose.” The doctor chuckled, then straightened his legs and stood back up. At the same time he reached a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a syringe and a needle wrapped in clear plastic. The needle’s wrapping fluttered like a butterfly, hanging in the air for a moment before dropping to the ground. The doctor attached the needle to the plunger, then reached into his other pocket and withdrew a small vial of clear liquid. “You have so much methamphetamine in your system right now, Nick,” he said, puncturing the top of the vial with the needle and drawing some of its clear fluid into the syringe, “that a small dose of an MAOI should be enough to give you a good old-fashioned heart attack.” Barnes looked down at Nick, his mouth stretched into a cruel smile.

As the doctor turned his attention back to the syringe, Nick caught sight of something else behind him:
a man approaching him
.

Nick had no idea how the man had gotten there. He had no idea whether he was real or another hallucination. He simply appeared behind Barnes. Nick looked over the doctor’s shoulder, trying to make sense of the man’s face. His features were blurred and jumbled, and Nick had only the faintest idea who the man was.

“And if you’re lucky enough to survive the heart attack, Nick,” Barnes was continuing, oblivious to the man behind him, “your brain will be so badly damaged that I doubt you’ll be telling anyone anything about our little conversation. I doubt you’ll even remember it yourself.”

The doctor finished filling the entire syringe with fluid, then, squirting a little from the needle, lowered the lethal injection toward Nick’s arm. His hand was steady. The needle glinted in the sunlight. Nick felt sweat break out on his forehead.

The man behind the doctor was resolving himself into Jackson Ferry. Nick was certain as the needle punctured his bicep that he was only imagining him there. Ferry, dressed in white, his ravaged face twisted with repressed rage, was nothing more than another figment from the recesses of his mind, a memory from the night he had burst from the shadows when Sam was killed. As the apparition raised its fists into the air, however, Nick remembered that Ferry, too, had been incarcerated at Western State Hospital, pending his trial for Sam’s murder.

When Ferry brought his fists down onto the back of the doctor’s head, the doctor crashed forward onto Nick, plunging the syringe deep into his arm. The needle tore through his muscle and dug itself into his bone, but the doctor never pushed the plunger into the tube of the injector. The fluid inside the syringe remained where it was.

Nick watched helplessly as Ferry battered Barnes in the face with his fists. Blood splattered the white legs of his hospital-issue trousers as Ferry took his thumbs and dug them into the doctor’s bright blue eyes, gouging them from the sockets, plunging his thumbs deep into the doctor’s skull. When the eyeballs popped out from the doctor’s head, dangling loosely from his stretched optic nerves, Ferry began to laugh.

And Nick at last began to scream.

Three days before Christmas, Nick was sitting on a steel cot in the Seattle jail, his head in his hands, his fingers buried in his unwashed hair. It had been a grueling period of days since Jackson Ferry had escaped from the hospital yard and killed Barnes. Nick had been transferred to the jail the day before, but only after undergoing an extensive psychiatric evaluation at Western State. The drugs that the doctor had been feeding him inside the ward were just now receding from his system.

Nick looked up at the approach of footsteps. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, because he was still having trouble sleeping, and his vision was bleary. He was feeling much more alert than he had for some time, however, and he was able to track the blur of movement through the steel bars.

When Nick saw Stolie, a smile spread across his face, and he stood from the cot to greet him. The detective had visited him the day before, too, and he had assured Nick that he would do everything he could to secure his quick release.

“I have some good news for you, Nick,” the detective announced as he approached the cell. He turned to the guard on duty at a small steel desk just beyond the holding area and asked him to slide back the motorized outer doors. “The prisoner has made bail,” he told the guard. “I have the papers here. He’s to be released into my custody.” Stolie set the small briefcase he was carrying down on the floor and pulled a couple of loosely folded papers from his back pocket, then tossed them on the desk. “Just a few more signatures,” he said to Nick over his shoulder, “and I’ll have you out of there.”

Nick watched the detective sign his name onto the forms. “Who paid my bail?” he thought to ask, clinging to the steel bars that still separated them.

“No ‘thanks’? Just who paid?”

Nick smiled. “You have no idea how grateful I am to you. It’s just that bail was set at five hundred thousand. I don’t know anyone with that kind of money.”

The guard buzzed open the remaining door. Nick watched the detective grip one of its heavy bars and slide it back on its rails. He had to fight the urge to leap from his confinement. “Come on,” the detective said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They were walking down the wide corridor when Nick realized how somber Stolie looked. “You’ve made yourself some real enemies in the department,” the detective said, as though he were answering a question that Nick had posed.

“I imagine that means you have, too.”

The detective flashed Nick a strained smile. “I suppose. But it’s not my head in the noose.”

“So tell me, who paid for my release?” Nick asked him again as they approached the jail’s two-story lobby.

“You have an appetite for some eggs and bacon?”

Nick shook his head. “Coffee, maybe.”

“You’re looking pretty damned thin.”

“I haven’t felt like eating much.”

“Okay, coffee, then.” The detective’s voice echoed through the tall, empty lobby as he pushed open the front doors. “Let me buy you a cup across the street before I let you go, and I’ll catch you up.” He looked up to measure how hard the rain was falling, then, hunching slightly, placed a hand on Nick’s shoulder and guided him down the concrete staircase.

“So like I said,” Stolie began as he joined Nick at the bar lining the plate-glass window, handing him a coffee in a tall white paper cup, “you’ve managed to collect a number of enemies in the department. You might have passed your psych tests with flying colors and impressed the doctors over at the hospital, but as far as the lieutenant is concerned, you’re no less guilty today than you were last month.”

“Lieutenant Dombrowski?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, Lieutenant Dombrowski. He showed up at your bail hearing himself and personally begged Judge Fong to lock you up and throw away the key.” The detective smiled. “He thinks you’ve got us all fooled. You’re a psycho serial killer, and the last thing we should be doing is letting you out on the street. He doesn’t buy into any of the Dr. Barnes stuff. He’s even talking about a conspiracy between you and Ferry.”

“What about all the drugs in my blood?” Nick pointed out. “What does he make of that?”

The detective shrugged. “Says you could have been taking them yourself. Look, Nick, I don’t mean to be freaking you out with any of this. I’m only telling you because I think you should know. With Gutterson stepping down, Dombrowski’s been made the acting chief. The department is going to be watching you, making sure you keep your hands clean. I’ve got my orders, too. One false move and you’re back behind bars without bail.”

Nick nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate the heads-up.”

“Yeah, well—the truth is, it looks like you’ve made a few friends, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Your bail. The five hundred thousand. It was picked up by Sara Garland.”

“By Sara?” Nick remembered her standing next to him in the doorway into Jason Hamlin’s room.
Don’t touch me! Get away from me!
He cringed, remembering the streaks of blood covering his T-shirt and jeans, the small chunks of gore that had been stuck to his hands and arms. He chased the image from his mind.

“I haven’t spoken to her myself,” Stolie said.

Nick remembered the horror in her eyes.

“But she’s standing with you, Nick. I think she wants to see you again.” The detective took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup down and gave Nick a long, assessing stare. “Just keep in mind you’re out of jail on borrowed time. You’re not a free man yet. There’s an evidentiary hearing scheduled for January fifteenth—three weeks from now. After that, it will be up to the DA whether to take you to trial for Jason Hamlin’s murder. Your brother’s, too.”

“That’s what the public defender told me.”

“You’re going to have some pretty powerful people in the department gunning for you at that hearing.”

Nick took the information in. Still untouched, his coffee was growing cold in his hand.

“Myself, Nick, I’m going to do everything I can in the meantime to see that you’re not only exonerated, but that you don’t stand trial at all. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve got all the evidence we need right here.” The detective lifted the small briefcase he had been carrying onto the table between them.

“My computer,” Nick said.

“That’s right. You remember that insurance policy Sam bought over the summer when he borrowed your computer? It turns out Sam was exchanging e-mails with Barnes over the summer, too, and your laptop here automatically made a copy of all the e-mails he sent.”

“The e-mails confirm that Sam and Barnes were working together?” Nick surmised.

The detective tapped Nick lightly on the shoulder. “Your brother wasn’t very discreet. Barnes himself didn’t leave much of a trail, but your brother said enough so that we can pretty much piece the whole chain of events together. It’s just like you said—Barnes and your brother were testing their new drug on human subjects without their knowledge, and at higher doses the drug was causing some pretty psychotic behavior.”

“I still have trouble believing that Sam would poison me.” The disbelief was evident in Nick’s voice.

“He stood to make millions,” Stolie reminded him. “And for what it’s worth, as far as I’m concerned, the doctor was the ringleader anyway. You know what I discovered, Nick? It turns out the doctor had a vacation house on a certain island on the Puget Sound.”

“San Juan Island?”

“That’s right. Not as grand as the Hamlins’, but only a couple of miles away. I don’t have proof yet, but my guess is that Barnes was on the island the same time you were, the night of Hamlin’s murder. I’m heading up there myself this afternoon to question the caretakers at the Hamlin estate. Barnes set you up, Nick. Our forensic tests are going to find evidence linking him to the crime scene. Or maybe we’ll turn up something proving that Hamlin had found out about the doctor’s conspiracy. One way or another, I’m sure we’ll be able to trace the entire scheme back to the doctor.”

Nick closed his eyes, considering the idea. For weeks he had been haunted by the vision of a shadowy figure standing in Jason Hamlin’s room next to him, looking down at Hamlin’s mutilated corpse. He tried now to bring the image into his mind, but could barely hang onto it. Was it Barnes? He wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t be certain that he was remembering anything definite. As far as he knew, Barnes may well have been right. The shadowy figure he had seen in Hamlin’s room might have been himself. The drugs had been splitting his identity into fragments.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking down at the cold cup of coffee cradled in his hands. “Sometimes I think I can remember someone there with me the night Sam was murdered. But then I can remember holding the knife that killed him myself.” He glanced at the detective. “And I think maybe I can remember standing over Hamlin’s body with a knife in my hand. Bits and pieces, you know? Things come back to me from those nights, but not everything. I don’t know. I just can’t remember.”

The detective regarded him. “Maybe it will come back to you once the drugs are completely gone from your blood,” he said. “I hear the doctors are weaning you off them gradually.”

“Some of them are pretty powerful,” Nick acknowledged. “You can’t just stop taking them. I’m feeling better every day, though.”

“I’m sure it will make sense soon enough, Nick. And in the meantime, like I say I’ll do what I can to nail down your innocence.” The detective took another large swallow of his coffee, then pushed the briefcase across the table toward Nick. “Here you go. This belongs to you. We’ve copied everything we need from the hard disk.” He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet, then pulled out a few twenties, setting them carefully on top of the black nylon briefcase.

“I can’t possibly take that,” Nick said, looking at the money.

Stolie smiled. “I can’t give you a ride back to your apartment.” He stood up. “Like I told you, I’m on my way back up to the island now. You’re going to have to catch a cab.”

Nick was broke. He hesitated, then took the money and slipped it into his pocket. He didn’t know how to thank Stolie, so he didn’t try.

In the taxi, Nick gave Laura Daly a call. The editor was relieved to hear from him. “I’ve been worried, Nick,” she said. “I was going to visit you today, to see if there was something I could do. From a legal standpoint, I mean.”

“Sara bailed me out,” Nick informed her.

The editor took in the information. “She’s more solid than I first thought,” she admitted.

“I might still need your help, Laura.”

“What’s up?”

“Not immediately. Stolie tells me the police are still pursuing me, though. As far as Dombrowski’s concerned, the case isn’t closed yet.”

“Barnes had his prints all over this thing,” Daly insisted. “The police have got to see that.”

“Dombrowski’s never liked me,” Nick said. “He’s been dogging me from the start.”

“We’ll talk once you’ve had a chance to rest. I know some lawyers who’ll love nothing more than to take Dombrowski on.” The editor wanted to reassure Nick. “We’ll see you through this. You can be certain of that.”

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, Laura.”

Daly ignored the implicit question. “So what’s next? Where are you now?”

“On my way home.” Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d try to see Sara.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Daly asked, too quickly. She hadn’t been able to disguise her apprehension, and Nick understood from her tone that it wasn’t for him that she was afraid.
She was afraid of what he might do
.

“Don’t worry, Laura,” Nick said dryly. “I’m feeling better. I’m not going to hurt her.” He had managed to keep his voice light. He found himself wondering, though, whether he would ever be free from suspicion. In the end, if it came to a trial, his best defense might be that he wasn’t responsible for whatever he had done. “I didn’t kill anyone,” he said into the phone. He wasn’t talking to Daly anymore, he was talking to himself. “I couldn’t have.”

“I didn’t mean—” Daly faltered. “I just meant the police will be watching to see what you do,” she said, trying to recover herself. “Especially if what you say about Dombrowski is true.”

“I appreciate your concern.”

“Just get some rest,” the editor said. “You’ve been through a scare.”

Nick hung up the call. It had been more than a scare. Daly was right, though. What he needed now was sleep.