The Bird Cage (6 page)

“Okay,” Trevor said. “You have my cell phone number. Day or night. You know what I mean.”

Later, with Dale at her side, Grace watched the recorded brain wave again. There was no need to explain what they were seeing. When the wave fluttered and returned to an expected line, Dale exhaled. “The bird can’t get out again,” he said softly. “It’s back in the cage.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t you remember?” He laughed. “Several of your horny grad students were sitting around doing what they do at that age, arguing about mind/body and you said the mind is a bird in a cage that has no door.” He gave her an appraising look, then said, “You found the door, Grace, and you opened it.”

Abruptly she wheeled about and left him in the monitoring room. She walked through her office and out to the table in her own private park. The chimps chattered to her and she ignored them. It was something she could have said, something she had always believed, had to believe. There had to be another explanation, or no explanation at all. One of those inexplicable mysteries without a solution.

She was still sitting there when Dale came out with a tray, glasses, ice, water, and a bottle of scotch.

He poured drinks, dropped in ice cubes, handed one to her. “It’s mostly water for you. You’re so beat a real drink would floor you.” Without pause he continued, “We can’t let a son of a bitch like Markham do that,” he said. “That kid in there is as innocent as a baby compared to Markham, and capable of destroying anyone he ever interacted with, however harmless that interaction was in the past. How many people has Markham already destroyed one way or another, whether or not they’re dead now. Their own humiliation, fear, whatever, in addition to his rage and fear, his sadism, power lust, blood lust even, how many of those poor sods would withstand an invasion by him?”

“You believe what they were saying?”

“I saw Trevor McCrutchen experience his brother’s orgasm in his first, most intense sexual encounter of his life,” he said evenly. “He happened to walk in on them, unaware. But there it was. I saw him, Grace. I believe every word.” He lifted his glass and said, “Cheers.”

She drank and wished he had added more scotch. She wanted oblivion for a time. “It depends on Cody’s condition when he wakes up,” she said in a low voice. “If he’s a raving maniac, Markham will back off.”

She did not voice the rest of the thought. Dale knew it as well as she did. If Cody appeared to be as normal as the chimpanzees always were, Markham would demand to be next, if not with her, then with her replacement. And his money would guarantee that her replacement would obey his orders. A bird out of its cage. A predatory, merciless bird who had hurt countless others already and would never hesitate to crush anyone who got in his way.

“Grace, I called down for dinner for two, and I have a bottle of pretty good Pinot Noir. We’ll eat, then you’ll hit the bed while I man the battlements for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll know what we have to do.”

“I want you to leave, Dale. Go home, the way I told you. I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

He drank deeply, put his glass down. “I’m already in, and I intend to stay in. God, how I wanted to say something like that to you when you were a real slave master over me as a grad student. The hours you made us put in! No, my dear mentor, it’s sleep for you tonight, and tomorrow decision time. Our decision time.”

Sunday afternoon, Grace watched Cody shift his position slightly, not awake yet, but in the process of waking. Most, but not all, the tubes and sensors were gone. They would continue to monitor his blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level and basic brain function for the next few hours. And they would keep him hydrated. The room was a comfortable seventy-two degrees and now a warm, preheated coverlet was over him.

He shifted again and his eyelids fluttered, then opened. He yawned as he came awake with the blank expression of anyone waking from a long sleep. Very quickly the blank look was replaced by comprehension, awareness of her presence, of the bed, the room. He yawned again.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“Yes,” Grace said. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty. My mouth is dry.”

“I have chipped ice for you,” she said. “No liquids yet, but ice will help. I’ll raise your head a bit first.”

She did that, then put a spoonful of cracked ice to his mouth. “Do you remember any of it?” she asked.

“No. Out like a light, then awake. Did I really sleep a week?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a little cold.”

“I know. Your temperature is not quite up to normal yet, but it’s getting there. Any dreams?”

“No. It seems impossible that it was a whole week. Easiest cash I ever picked up.” He grinned broadly, then yawned again. “Why am I still sleepy?”

“Induced sleep isn’t the same as regular sleep,” she said. “I’m not sure why. Maybe that’s a whole new area for someone to explore.”

She remained with him for ten more minutes, talking easily, asking few questions which he answered readily, then she said, “You’ll want to nap awhile, I imagine. There’s a pull bell on the rail, if you want anything.”

He was yawning when she stood, watched him another few seconds, then left. In the monitoring room again, she leaned against the door with her eyes closed until she felt Dale’s hand on her shoulder. He swung her around and hugged her fiercely.

“My God, Grace,” he said. “You did it! He’s fine! Not just fine. He’s great!”

“Not so soon, Dale. Not so soon.”

“You know it, and so do I! He’s great. Let’s have a look.”

He propelled her to the glass where they saw that Cody had rolled to his side with his knees slightly bent, one hand barely visible on the edge of the cover. He was sound asleep.

“His next wakeful period will be the real test,” she said faintly, but without conviction. She did know it. Cody was fine.

“Right,” Dale said with a laugh. “I’ll make two CDs, one for Trevor McCrutchen and one for Markham. I’ll take Trevor’s over to his place and come right back. Those two poor souls have to have some of the pressure relieved before they explode. He probably won’t wake up before I get back.”

She agreed. He would probably sleep for several hours and wake up thirsty, and maybe even a little hungry.

She stayed in the monitoring room when Dale left to make his CDs, leaving one camcorder turned on the way it would be for the rest of the day and night, recording every twitch, every sound that Cody made. Frequently she moved to the window to watch him sleep, then sat down again. He was snoring softly.

Decision time, she told herself. It was decision time.

Trevor and Jean watched the CD with Dale, both of them silent and tense. When it stopped, Trevor said, “He just rolled over and went back to sleep?”

“That’s what happens,” Dale said. “Seems incredible, weird, but that’s the same way they all behaved. He’ll doze off and on the rest of the day, and sleep well tonight. Tomorrow he’ll be able to eat a little, just light food, bouillon and apple juice, post-surgery diet kind of food for a day, and gradually get back on to real food, whatever he wants. He’ll be wobbly tomorrow, but on his feet, in the real bedroom prepared for him, and then out to the park for walks, and so on.” He leaned forward in his chair and said, “Trevor, he’s great, really fine. No after effects, nothing negative to report in any way.”

“No dreams?” Jean said. “What if he starts remembering dreams after a day or two.”

Dale shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re much more likely to recall dreams within the first few minutes of waking up than later. And even those you recall tend to fade out of consciousness with each passing minute.”

“He was grinning as if he’d just won a bet, or pulled a fast one or something,” Trevor said.

“Yeah,” Dale said. “Look, I’ve been thinking of what you two told us, and it makes me want to hit the books again about synchronicity. You know, the Jungian theory. Too vague in my memory to recall much of it, things happen that appear to be connected, but the connection can’t be found or confirmed. Something like that. You both happened to have vivid dreams, waking dreams about Cody, hallucinations, or, as you said, flashbacks. Then your mother was critically injured. You couldn’t find your brother, and more flashbacks. Could it be that your anxiety was making your imagination work overtime? Who knows? But now that you know Cody’s okay, and your mother’s going to be okay, that node in your brain can relax again.”

“And Elise? That woman who killed herself?” Jean said. “She’s no one’s imagination or hallucination. Dead is dead.”

“Obviously she was unstable if she tried it before, and who knows what pushed her over the edge this time? A new engagement? The man in her life? Something else?”

“There’s always the logical explanation, isn’t there?” Jean said bitterly.

Dale regarded her soberly for a moment, shook his head. “No, there isn’t always. And as a scientist, it drives me batty, but I can accept it and make a stab at the things that maybe we can explain. It’s the best I can do, and I accept that.”

He looked at Trevor then. “Are you going to tell Cody the things you told us? The flashbacks?”

Trevor drew in a breath, exhaled before he said, “No. If he doesn’t remember, I won’t tell him. No point in bringing up painful memories for him.”

After Dale left them, Jean said, “Do you accept his explanation? Synchronicity? Hallucinations? Waking dreams?”

Trevor shook his head. “No. And neither do you. It happened, and we’ll never know how or why. But it happened, all of it, and we’ll both always know that and live with it. Can you accept that?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “There’s no other choice, is there? Our secret.”

Back in the monitoring room Dale said, “They’ll be okay. He’s an electrical engineer, practical, and he knows damn well what he experienced, and that there’s nothing he can do about it or say to explain it. She’ll manage to put it out of mind and get on with her life.”

Grace nodded. Some things you just have to live with, she thought. “Cody’s still sleeping, vitals normal, temp still rising. I’ve been thinking, Dale, and I know what I have to do and how to do it.”

“We have to kill Markham,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “We have to kill him.”

A week later, after Trevor had come to get Cody, who was as happy and trouble free as a child with sparkling blue eyes, Grace stood at the window observing Markham on the water bed. The temperature of the bed, of the whole room, was at forty-one degrees. The only sensor monitoring him was for brain function.

“He’s gone,” she said.

Together she and Dale put pajamas on Markham’s body and moved him to the bedroom where the thermostat was set at eighty-two. She took the glass with a little orange juice and dissolved sedative out and brought in an identical glass with half an inch of orange juice. She removed her surgical glove and handled the glass, then replaced the glove and pressed Markham’s fingers on it in several places and put it on the night stand. Dale, also gloved, wiped a small pill box clean and pressed Markham’s fingers on it, put it on the stand next to the glass.

“We’re done in here,” he said.

They left the room and returned to the treatment room where Dale pumped out the cold water and replaced it with tepid water. They were ready for the sedated chimp to be brought in and the new procedure to start.

A police lieutenant took Grace’s statement in the park, sitting across from her along with a detective with a tape recorder.

“I know this has been a shock,” the lieutenant said. “Just tell us exactly what happened. Why he was here.”

“He often came to watch the procedure,” she said. “He was funding the research center and took a great interest in our work here. Sometimes he took a nap in the bedroom he had set up. He said he was tired and would just sleep over all night this time. He asked me for some orange juice to have with his sleeping pill. I never gave it a thought, about the sleeping pill or his fatigue. He was very ill, you know, and I assumed he was managing his own medications, so I didn’t think about it. I took in the orange juice and put it on the night stand. I removed the bed spread and turned down the bed for him. I asked if he would want dinner later on, and he said no. He just wanted to sleep. I went out and back to work. We had just started with the subject that day and there was much to be done, to be observed. I never gave Mr. Markham another thought until late the next morning when I realized he had not come out. I found him.”

She knew that forensics had gone over the room, that the lab tests would show a few grains of his prescription sleeping pill in the pill box, that the juice in the glass would show nothing but juice. His body would have registered a little cool, indicating that he had died soon after going to bed. They had seen the chimp on the water bed, stared at the lights and lines on the LED screens without comprehension, had questioned her and Dale separately, compared notes.

“What kind of research exactly are you doing here?” the lieutenant asked.

“Basic sleep research, trying to determine the optimal temperature for restful sleep, and especially for patients recuperating from surgery or awaiting transplants. Sixty-five, sixty, higher or a little lower.” She nodded toward the compound. “They are our subjects.”

There was a little more and when he seemed content, Grace said, “Lieutenant, he was a great man, a benefactor to humanity. He knew he was dying and he wanted to do something that would persist and help others. He desperately wanted to conceal the fact that we use chimpanzees in our research, for fear that misguided people might object. As you can see, our subjects are not mistreated in any way. It’s important to keep them healthy and active or the research would become meaningless.”

He nodded. “I don’t see any need for that to come into it, Dr. Wooten. He was sick, dying, probably in pain, since it seems he had deliberately stopped taking his meds. Then he took too much sleep medication. Maybe he decided it would be best to go that way, in his sleep like that.”

She continued to sit in the park as dusk fell. The chimps became quiet and a bat squealed overhead. Dale joined her.