Simple Genius (4 page)

LATER THAT NIGHT Michelle lay on the bunk in her room, the rancid grub they called Salisbury steak burning a hole in her belly. Since she was in here on a voluntary basis, her movements were fairly unrestricted and she was leaning toward a walk over hugging the toilet. Not all patients here had such liberty. There was a separate ward, locked down and patrolled by
guards, that
housed involuntarily committed patients who were deemed to be violent. Michelle had heard some staffers refer to it as the “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

The door opened and her roommate, Cheryl, walked in; last names were not used here. Cheryl was grossly underweight, about forty-five, with ringlets of graying hair plastered against her gaunt face. She carried a drinking straw with her and constantly sucked on it. Michelle didn’t know exactly why Cheryl was in here, but assumed anorexia figured in somehow.

Cheryl collapsed on her bunk and started sucking on the damn straw.

It’s no wonder I keep having nightmares, Michelle thought.
Great, big sucking beasts coming after me in bed.

“How’s it going, Cheryl?”

The sucking sound stopped for an instant and then started again.

Michelle started pacing. She wanted to call Sean, but what would she say? I’m sorry about the whole bar thing. Come get me, I’m fine now.

In desperation she turned to Cheryl. “That steak was something, wasn’t it? Feels like I’ve got a tire in my gut.”

Cheryl turned away from her and started sucking louder.

Michelle gave up and headed to the small workout area. For obvious safety reasons all exercise equipment was locked up when it was not being used. However, a large rubber ball had been left out. Michelle used it to work her abs and legs. That took thirty minutes and it felt good to use her muscles again. Yet she still had the rest of the night to kill, and she wasn’t sleepy.

She walked back down the hallway, passing two other patients dressed in scrubs and blue slippers accompanied by a nurse. On another of the corridors one of the burly attendants passed her and stopped. “You need any help, Michelle?”

He was a muscle-bound six-footer running to fat in his fifties with close-cropped blond hair and three gold chains visible from under his green scrub V-shirt. His nameplate read, “Barry.”

The way he asked she didn’t like, but maybe it was just her bad attitude. Then he touched her elbow and his intentions became clearer with just the feel of his fingers against her skin. “You need help back to your room maybe?”

She pulled her arm away. “It’s not that big a place. I can find it.” She strode off, but could feel his gaze burning into her. She whipped her head around and caught him smiling at her.

She hurried back to her room. Cheryl was still sucking on her straw. Michelle lay on her bunk, staring at the door. There were no locks on the rooms, so patients couldn’t barricade themselves in. But it also meant that you couldn’t stop others from coming in, like Barry.

An hour later the lights went dark and still Michelle did not close her eyes. She was waiting for footsteps, stealthy and motivated by evil purpose. Around one in the morning she finally told herself, “He just touched your arm, for God’s sake, and made a suggestive comment.” Was she adding paranoia to her other issues? No, she told herself, I don’t have
issues.

At two in the morning she was awakened by footsteps passing down the hallway. She slowly sat up and checked Cheryl’s bed, but the straw sucker was dead asleep. Michelle slipped the covers off and put on her tennis shoes. A moment later she was out in the corridor. At night there was a reduced number of staff on duty and the rental guard had a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of motivation to do it.

She followed the sounds of the footsteps down another corridor. Michelle heard a door open and then close. She crept closer, straining to hear something. Then she froze. She’d heard another sound, but this one was
behind
Michelle. She took a few steps back and then cut down another corridor.

An instant later, coming around the corner was Barry, the gold chain attendant. He strode right past Michelle’s hiding place in the darkened hall. As soon as it was safe, Michelle ran back to her room.

THE NEXT MORNING MICHELLE RETURNED to that part of the building. Two things caught her eye: the lovely, well-dressed lady who was being wheeled out of her room by a nurse; and the pharmacy at the end of the hall.

Later that afternoon, Michelle had her session with Horatio.

“No more nightmares last night?” Horatio asked.

“No, it was really peaceful. There’s a woman in a wheelchair in a room at the end of the patient corridor on the east wing?”

Horatio looked up from his notes.
“Yes, what about her?”

“Who is she?”

“She’s not one of my patients. But if she were, I couldn’t tell you anything about her. Patient confidentiality, you understand. That’s why I don’t talk to anyone else about
you.
” He added jokingly, “Unless they pay me an enormous amount of money of course. I have my ethics, but I’m not stupid.”

“But you do to Sean. Talk about me, I mean.”

“Only because you signed that release.”

“Can you at least tell me why she’s in a wheelchair? That’s not mental, right?”

“It certainly could be. But as I said, she’s not my patient. Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious.
There’s not a lot to hold one’s attention around here.”

“Well, I’ll give you something. How about we focus on getting you better?”

“Okay, what’s on the menu today?”

“Not Salisbury steak, but the spaghetti isn’t much better.
Now yesterday we finished up with your thinking about why you’re here. What conclusions did you draw?”

“Not many, I’ve been busy.”

“Busy?
Really?
I thought you just said you were bored?”

“Okay, I’m here because I want to get better.”

“Are you just saying that or do you mean it?”

“I don’t know
,
which answer do you want?”

“I can play games with the best of them, Michelle, but it does waste a lot of time.”

“Is that what you’ve been telling Sean, that I’m wasting his time, and his
money
? I know he’s paying for all this.”

“And does that matter to you?”

“I know he’s trying to help me. He’s a good guy. It’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

“I think he could probably spend his time and money better elsewhere, that’s all.”

“Meaning you’d rather he abandoned you to your fate?
You going melodramatic on me?
Do I have to add that to the list of weird shit to look out for in you?” Horatio’s smile managed to defuse this comment.

Michelle studied the floor for a few moments.

“Do you think
you
know Sean well?” Horatio finally asked.

“Of course.
We went through some pretty dangerous things together.”

“He told me you saved his life, more than once in fact.”

“He did the same for me,” she said quickly.

“If you know Sean so well you have to realize that he’s not going to walk away from you.”

“All I’m doing right now is holding him back.”

“Oh, he told you this?”

“Of course not.
He’d never say it. But I’m not stupid.”

“Were you two ever physically intimate?”

Horatio’s question caught Michelle so off-guard that she could only gape.

“It’s a fairly standard query, Michelle. I need to understand the different roles that people close to you play in your life. And sexual roles are very powerful influences for both good and bad.”

“We were never intimate like that,” she said in a mechanical tone.

“Okay. Did you want to have sex with him?”

“You can ask me this shit?” Michelle exploded.

“I can ask you pretty much anything. It’s up to you to answer or not.”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“It’s not too difficult, is it? Sean King is tall and handsome, smart and brave, honest and true.” Horatio smiled. “Frankly, I think those traits are given inflated importance in life, but who am I to say? And he’s a
good
guy too, as you said. You’re a young, attractive woman. You worked closely together.”

“Just because you work with someone doesn’t mean you have to sleep with him.”

“You’re absolutely right. So if I said you did not have thoughts of being intimate with Sean that would be correct?” He smiled. “I need to check off the right box on the multiple choice test here.”

“God, I feel like I’m on the witness stand being cross-examined.”

“
Self
-examination can be even harder than getting drop-kicked by a skillful shyster in the courtroom. So, no feelings of intimacy toward the big teddy bear?”

“Just go with your gut, Doc. That’s all I can tell you.”

“That actually tells me a lot. Thank you.”

“Now that we’re finished with Sean, I suppose you’ll want to know if I wanted to sleep with my dad.”

“Let’s talk about that.”

“Come on, I wasn’t being serious.”

“I get that. But how is your relationship with your father? Good?”

“No, great!
He was a police chief, retired now. He and Mom are in Hawaii on a second honeymoon. That’s the reason I didn’t want to let them know about me. They would’ve just rushed back.”

Horatio didn’t let on that he had already learned part of this from Sean.
“Very thoughtful of you.
Do you think they’d be surprised you’re here?”

“I hope they’d be
stunned
!”

“I understand your brothers are cops as well. Ever think of doing something else for a paycheck?”

Michelle shrugged. “Not really. I mean I had the usual pie-in-the-sky ambition to be a professional athlete, but that wasn’t going to happen.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re the first Olympian I’ve ever treated. A silver medal in rowing, Sean said.”

“Yeah,” she replied, a smile tugging at her mouth. “That was great. The high point of my life, or at least I thought so at the time. Maybe it was after all,” she added quietly.

“And then you were a cop for a while and then you joined the Secret Service.
Any special reason for the change?”

“All my brothers were cops. I thought it would be cool to be a fed.”

“And your father was okay with that?”

“Not really. He wasn’t big on me being a cop actually.”

“And how’d that make you feel?”

“I understood. Daddy’s little girl and all. My mom didn’t like any of us being cops. But I did it anyway. I’m sort of independent.”

“You’ll be
stunned
to learn that one I’d already diagnosed,” Horatio said. “So I take it you love your parents very much?”

“I’d do anything for them.”

Horatio looked a bit curious at this statement. “Would you give me permission to talk to them about you?”

“Not my parents, no!”

“How about one of your brothers?”

“You can talk to Bill, he’s the oldest, a state trooper in Florida.”

“Whatever you wish, milady.”

“I wish I wasn’t here,” Michelle blurted out.

“You can leave anytime you want. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You can leave right now, get up and walk out. If that’s what you want. Get the hell on with your independent life. No one’s stopping you. There’s the door.”

There was a long moment of silence and then she said, “I think I’ll stay, for now.”

“I think that’s an excellent choice, Michelle.”

After they finished their discussion Michelle followed Horatio out. As they stood in the doorway Barry walked by, but didn’t look at them.

Michelle said, “What do you know about that guy?”

“Not much. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Now why don’t I believe that?”

“
You doubting
my word, Horatio?”

“I was thinking of a more technical phrase, like liar, liar, pants on fire.”

BEALE PENINSULA IS A WEDGE of land that juts out into the York River on the Gloucester County side midway between Clay Bank and Wicomico in Virginia’s picturesque Tidewater. Like much of Virginia, Beale had been settled early in colonial times. It was filled with the first glories of the new country that over a century later would become the United States. Less than ten miles to the south, at Yorktown in 1781, British General Cornwallis had turned both his sword and thousands of humbled redcoats over to George Washington’s ragtag Continental Army. This effectively ended the American War for Independence on a distinctly high note for the victorious yanks,
who
, up until that point, had rarely seen a battle they could not somehow manage to lose in the end.

From the cleared fields of those early days had risen magnificent brick and clapboard plantations that depended on legions of slaves to run them properly. Less than a hundred years later, depleted soil and the Civil War ended these sleepy days of southern aristocracy forever.

A second wave of prosperity hit when the newly minted wealth of the Industrial Age found its way to this tranquil spot on the York, enticed by its clean water, good fishing, temperate climate and pastoral setting. It was also deemed a restorative place for those with consumption, due to its low elevation and water breezes and abundance of longleaf yellow pine that was thought to be good for tubercular lungs. And once one or two of these exalted families began putting down expensive roots, others had quickly followed.

For this reason, at its peak, six private railway lines stretched down from the north and three more from the west terminating at this doughy fist of Virginia red clay with its steady river breezes.

Now, years later, a few of these palaces had been turned into bed-and-breakfasts or small hotels. The majority though, like the southern plantations before them, had fallen into ruins, which at least provided adventure-filled places for the children to roam during the long, humid days of a Tidewater summer.

Directly across the river on the York County side the United States government’s imprint was heavy with Camp Peary, next to a naval supply center and a weapons station. Together this triumvirate took up the entire waterfront from Yorktown to on past Lightfoot, Virginia. It was said that the folks at Camp Peary, an ultra-secretive training center for CIA agents and nicknamed the “Farm,” had technology that could discern a person’s eye color from across the wide river in the dead of night. And it was also accepted as fact by the locals that every person who had ever come within a four-mile radius of the place had been spied on from outer space. No one had proven that this was so, but it was very much true that no visitor ever left the area without hearing that story at least three times.

Beale had endured the ups and downs of the economy and the whims of the rich, while its more moderately well-off citizens went about their ordinary lives in ways that occurred throughout much of the country. That was so except for one recent development in the area.

And that was a place called Babbage Town.

Sean King’s small plane landed smoothly on the asphalt of the lone runway and came to a stop, its twin props winding down. A slate blue Hummer pulled up to the aircraft and a young, lanky black man in a private security uniform got out and helped Sean with his bags.

As the Hummer rolled along, Sean sat back and thought about his visit with Michelle before he’d headed to Babbage Town. He’d called Horatio to make sure it was okay to see her before he left. And, in turn, the psychologist had asked to see Michelle’s personal things at the apartment Sean had leased for them both. Horatio had also wanted to see Michelle’s truck.

“Just wear a mask and gloves,” Sean had warned him, “and make sure your tetanus shot is up to date.”

When Sean had seen Michelle in the visitor’s room his spirits had been lifted by her healthy appearance. She even gave him a hug, listened to what he was saying and answered directly the questions he put to her.

“How long will you be gone to this Babbage Town place?” she’d asked after he’d told her about his new assignment.

“I’m not sure. I’m taking a private plane down that Joan arranged.”

“And how is your paranoid schizophrenic slut of an
ex-friend
Joan?”

He took the comment as a sign of her returning spirit and said, “Well, she won’t be coming with me. There’s a guy down there named Len Rivest who’s head of security for Babbage Town. He was with the FBI, knows Joan and recommended her firm. He’ll be my main contact there.”

“You said a man was murdered?”

“We don’t know for sure. His name was Monk Turing. He worked at Babbage Town.”

“What exactly is Babbage Town?”

“It’s only been described to me as a secret think tank working on some important stuff.”

“Who runs the place?”

“According to the file a guy named Champ Pollion.”

“Monk?
Champ?”

“I know; it’s weird right from the get-go. But there’ll be a nice payday if I can find out what happened to the guy.”

“Is that how you can afford this place? I know my insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“All you need to do is get better. Let me worry about the rest of it.”

“I am getting better. I feel good.” Her voice sank lower. “And there’s something weird going on
here.
”

“Weird? What do you mean?”

“Sounds in the night.
People moving around in places they shouldn’t be.”

Sean took a deep breath and said in a mildly scolding tone, “Will you promise me you won’t get mixed up in it, whatever it is? I won’t be around to help if you do.”

“
You’re
flying into the middle of nowhere to investigate a murder without me backing you up. I should be the one putting the screws to you.”

“I promise I’ll be careful.”

“As soon as I’m out of here I’ll come down and help you.”

“I hear you and Horatio have really hit it off.”

“I can’t stand the son of a bitch.”

“Good, then you
are
getting along.”

A few minutes later he’d started to leave when she clutched his arm. “If things start getting really wild, call me. I can be down to help in a flash.”

“I’ll watch my backside.”

“I don’t think you can watch your front and back at the same time.”

He pointed a finger at her. “The most important thing is for you to get yourself right. Then we can start being our perfect opposites-attract all-star detective team again.”

“I’m looking forward to that.”

“Me too.”

Now he was heading to Babbage Town, alone, and regretting more than ever that Michelle wasn’t with him. Yet his partner had a long road to travel back to good health and his mind was constantly preoccupied with the possibility that she might not succeed.

As they drove along beside the York River a scattering of birds rose into the air at the same time a half-dozen deer flew across the road. The driver barely tapped his brakes. The flank of the last whitetail deer came within a couple inches of meeting the fender of the pumped-up SUV. All Sean could envision were antlers coming through the windshield and impaling him on the deep, rich Hummer leather.

“Get that a lot this time of year,” the driver said in a bored tone.

“What’s that, instant death?” Sean snapped.

He looked to his right where he could see the river through the patches of cleared fields. Beyond that he made out, just barely, the shiny chain link fencing topped by razor wire surrounding the land just across the York River.

“Camp Peary?” he asked, pointing.

“CIA spook land. Call it the Farm.”

“I’d forgotten it was down here.” Sean knew perfectly well it was there, but he was pretending ignorance in the hopes of getting some local intelligence.

“People who live around here never have trouble remembering.”

“Small animals and children disappearing in the night?”
Sean asked with a smile.

“No, but that plane you came in on? You can bet that a surface-to-air missile from the Farm was trained on your ass until you touched down. If the plane had wandered into restricted airspace, you would’ve come down out of the skies a lot faster than you would’ve wanted to.”

“I’m sure. But I guess they bring a lot of jobs to the area.”

“Yeah, but they also took stuff.”

“What do you mean?” Sean asked.

“The Navy ran it first. When they came here they kicked everybody out.”

“Everybody out?”
Sean looked confused.

“Yeah, there were two towns over there: Magruder and Bigler’s Mill. My grandparents lived in Magruder. During the war they got moved to James City County. Then the Navy vacated the place after the war but came back in the early Fifties. It’s been off-limits ever since.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, wasn’t so interesting for my grandparents. But the military does whatever the hell it wants.”

“Well, you should take comfort in the fact that now it’s just your neighborly CIA over there watching you through binoculars.”

The man chuckled and Sean changed the subject. “Did you know Monk Turing?”

The man nodded.
“Yeah.”

“And?”

“And he was like everybody else at Babbage Town. Too
much brains
. We didn’t exactly speak the same language.”

“How long have you worked there?”

“Two years.”

“Why does this place need security?”

“Important stuff they’re working on.”

“Like what?”

“Asking the wrong person.
Has to do with numbers and computers.
They’ll probably tell you, if you ask them.” He smiled. “Oh, yeah, they’ll tell you in a way that you’ll never understand, but there you are.” The driver pointed up ahead. “Welcome to Babbage Town.” He added with a grin, “Hope you enjoy your stay with us.”