The Fifth Harmonic

Repairman Jack novels

The Tomb

Legacies

Conspiracies

All the Rage

Hosts

The Haunted Air

Gateways

Healer

Wheels within Wheels

An Enemy of the State

Black Wind

Soft & Others

Dydeetown World

The Tery

Sibs

The Select

Implant

Deep as the Marrow

Mirage
(with Matthew J. Costello)

Nightkill
(with Steven Spruill)

Masque
(with Matthew J. Costello)

The Barrens & Others

The Christmas Thingy

Sims

The Adversary Cycle:

The Keep

The Tomb

The Touch

Reborn

Reprisal

Nightworld

Editor:
Freak Show

Diagnosis: Terminal

Copyright © 2003

by F. Paul Wilson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages in connection with a review.

Cover design by Marjoram Productions

Cover art © 2003 Digital Vision/PictureQuest;

Corbis Images/PictureQuest; Brand X Pictures/Alamy;

Image 100/Alamy;
www.comstock.com

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

1125 Stoney Ridge Road

Charlottesville, VA 22902

434-296-2772

fax: 434-296-5096

e-mail:
[email protected]

www.hrpub.com

If you are unable to order this book from your local bookseller, you may order directly from the publisher.

Call 1-800-766-8009, toll-free.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, F. Paul (Francis Paul)

The fifth harmonic : a novel / F. Paul Wilson.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57174-386-3 (alk. paper)

1. Throat--Cancer--Patients--Fiction. 2. Physicians--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.I45695F54 2003

813'.54--dc22

2003014796

ISBN 1-57174-386-3

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States

www.redwheelweiser.com

www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

The author wishes to acknowledge the work of Ronald Wright and Charles Gallenkamp for taking him places he could not go himself.

PART ONE: The Shining Blind Man in the Fortress

PART TWO: Hidden Harmonics

PART THREE: The Fifth Harmonic

Not much doing in this quaint little Westchester town on a hot Thursday afternoon, so Will felt free to crawl his Land Rover past the brick- and clapboard-fronted shops on the tree-lined main drag as he scanned their windows: a café, an optician, Hallmark cards, one-hour photo—

There. Black letters on a plate-glass window: HEALER. No wonder he'd missed them on his first pass; they couldn't be more than two inches tall, barely visible from the street.

He spotted an empty parking space right in front and eased into it. He turned off the engine but left the keys in the ignition. He still wasn't sure he could do this.

With the air conditioning off, the Rover's interior began to bake in the late August sun. Still he sat staring at the tiny storefront. Nothing terribly threatening about the exterior. In fact he couldn't imagine how it could be more low-keyed. A curtain of some sort of red-and-white embroidered fabric stretched across the lower three
quarters of the window, high enough to keep all but the Patrick Ewings of the world from seeing inside. The word HEALER sat offcenter to the left, toward the solid white door with the dripping air conditioner in its transom.

And that was it. No come-ons, no promises. Just . . . HEALER.

The only visible clue as to what the place might be about were the many-colored crystals hanging from threads above the curtain.

I must be crazy, he thought. How can I go in there?

He peered up and down the shady sidewalk, scanning for pedestrians. A young woman pushing a baby carriage off to his left, heading away, otherwise all quiet here on the fringe of a commercial district that looked frozen in 1947. Lunch time had passed, and it was way too hot to be out window shopping.

Good. Less chance of being spotted if he did decide to go in. Will lived over in Bedford and had his internal medicine practice there, but a fair number of his patients lived in Katonah. He didn't want any of them spotting him going into a place like this.

But then, why the hell should he care? Especially now that he didn't have a practice anymore.

Though the question was rhetorical, the answer flared in his mind: Because it went against everything he believed in, because he had nothing but contempt for these people, these so-called psychic healers, these phonies, these charlatans, these “new-age” leeches who attached themselves to sick, desperate people and sucked off their money with empty promises of miracle cures.

His knuckles whitened as his hands squeezed the leather-wrapped steering wheel. He forced himself to loosen his grip. Lighten up.

At least when I go in, he thought, it will be with my eyes open.

If
I go in.

Do it, he told himself. What have you got to lose?

Nothing but my self-respect.

He sighed. Yeah . . . his self-respect. And what would that mean three months from now?

As they say, desperate times called for desperate measures.

Will grabbed the baseball cap from where it lay on the passenger seat and jammed it onto his head. He checked in the mirror to make sure the turtleneck collar hid the angry red scar on his throat.

A turtleneck in August, he thought; she's going to think I need a shrink.

He caught a glimpse of his blue eyes and the new wrinkles around them . . . worry lines, someone might call them. Well, that same someone could say he'd had some stress lately. And maybe that had shaken a little more salt into his predominately pepper-colored hair. He noticed that his normally full-cheeked face looked pale and drawn. For the first time in his forty-nine years, Will looked his age.

He pulled the hat brim low, yanked the keys from the ignition, and stepped out into the heat. Feeling like a fugitive, he glanced up and down the sidewalk again—empty. Six quick, long strides and three heartbeats later he'd reached the door and was stepping through into the cool interior.

A bell on the door jangled as he closed it behind him.

If she's psychic, why does she need a doorbell?

Then again, where does it say she's psychic?

Nowhere.

Be fair.

He stared around, letting his eyes adjust to the lower light. A small, unadorned room, done in beige and brown, with minimal furnishings—a single desk, a table with some magazines atop and two chairs tucked against it—all of it looking secondhand. A beaded curtain hung across a doorway at the rear. Tiny open flames danced everywhere—candles of every size, shape, and shade sat on every available horizontal surface, glowed from multiple sconces on the walls.

The rest of the light came through the windows, filtered through crystals. Of course . . . couldn't do the new age thing without crystals. They hung on threads inside the big front window, cluttered the sills of the small, high, side windows—amethysts, rose quartz, carnelians, aquamarines—throwing rainbows about the room.

Despite all his apprehensions, Will felt himself begin to relax. The candles and the crystalline light had a soothing, comforting effect.

Lulling
was probably a more accurate description. He was sure the room hadn't been set up this way by chance.

And yet . . . he sensed a sort of temporariness about the place, as
if this were just one stop on a long journey, that everything here could be left behind at a moment's notice.

He heard noise at the rear, then a woman stepped through the beaded doorway. Will was immediately struck by her looks. Her long dark hair—black, really . . . black as the deepest cellar of a cavern— was gathered behind her neck and held by an embroidered band. Smooth mocha skin stretched across a strong jaw and high cheekbones. But it was her eyes—the jade green of her irises stabbed out from her dark face and pinned him against the door.

She smiled without showing her teeth.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

He swallowed—where had all his saliva gone?—and removed his cap.

“Yes,” he managed. “I want . . . do you do consultations?”

“About your health? Yes, if you wish,” her voice rich and throaty, with a strange accent, as if she'd learned English in Seville . . . from a Parisian.

Her eyes released him as she moved toward the desk, and Will saw that she was barefoot. He took in the rest of her. Five-five, five-six, maybe, wearing a loose white blouse and khaki slacks. Her broad shoulders and straight-backed, almost military posture gave her body an angular look. He liked her looks, her understated clothes. Under different circumstances he might be thinking of ways to get to know her.

From the street he'd spotted what looked like an apartment on the second floor. He wondered if she lived there.

She opened a desk drawer, pulled out an index card, and slid it across to him. He noticed that her fingers were long and her nails were short, unnibbled, and unpainted. How many sets of unpainted fingernails in Westchester County, he wondered.

“Please write your name and address for me.”

Will moved away from the door and took the chair on the near side of the desk. He pulled out a pen . . . and hesitated. How much should he give away?

As little as possible.

But he wouldn't lie. He wrote “W. C. Burleigh” but left off the M.D., and gave the address of his now empty office. He glanced up at her.

“Do–don't you want any past medical history?”

“I will get to that. I have my own way of taking one.” Her green eyes narrowed, concentrating their agate light until it seemed to pierce his skin and look right through him. “You seem very tense.”

Oh, there's a real diagnostic coup, he thought. A kindergartner could see I'm just about ready to jump out of my skin.

Yet he had to admit that this was a woman with extraordinary presence. She seemed to fill the room. Which was certainly an asset in the charlatan trade.

“I am,” he said. Might as well get it out in the open. “You can't imagine how uncomfortable I am being here.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because I don't believe in any of this . . .” He'd almost said “shit” but bit it back and let the sentence hang.

She surprised him by smiling, showing white, even teeth this time. Close up now he noticed how her smile created little dimplelike creases around the corners of her mouth.

“I have wondered why I was sent to Westchester County. Sometimes I think it was to make believers out of people like you.”