Fever Dream (53 page)

Pendergast said nothing. He seemed dazed, his torn suit still dripping with mud, his pale hair smeared and tangled.

Slowly, Slade let his arm fall to his side. “
I
killed your wife.”

Pendergast raised his .45. “Tell me.”

“No,
wait
—” June began.

“Silence,” said Pendergast with quiet menace.

“That’s right,” breathed Slade, “
silence
. I ordered her killed. Helen—Esterhazy—Pendergast.”

“Charles, the man has a gun,” said June, her voice low but imploring. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Poppycock.” He raised a finger and twirled it. “We all lost somebody. He lost a wife. I lost a son. So it goes.” Then he
repeated, with sudden intensity, in the same faint voice,
“I lost a son.”

June Brodie turned toward Pendergast, speaking sotto voce. “You mustn’t get him talking about his son. That would set him
back—and we’d made such progress!” A sob, immediately stifled, escaped her throat.

“I
had
to have her killed. She was going to expose us. Terribly dangerous… for
all
of us…” Slade’s eyes suddenly focused on nothing, widening as if in terror, staring at a blank wall. “Why are you here?”
he murmured at nothing. “It isn’t time!” He slowly raised the whip up over his head and brought it down with a terrific smack
on his own back, once, twice, three times, each blow causing him to stagger forward, the tatters of the torn suit jacket fluttering
to the ground.

The blow seemed to snap him back to reality. He straightened, refocused his eyes. The room became very still.

“You see?” the woman said to Pendergast. “Don’t provoke him, for God’s sake. He’ll hurt himself.”

“Provoke? I intend to do far more than that.”

Pendergast’s menacing tone chilled Hayward. She felt trapped,
helpless, vulnerable, stuck in the bed with IVs. She grasped
the tubes, pressed down on her arm, and yanked them out. She swung up and out of bed, momentarily dizzy.

“I will handle this,” Pendergast told her.

“Remember,” Hayward replied, “you promised you wouldn’t kill him.”

Pendergast ignored her, facing the man.

Slade’s eyes suddenly went far away again, as if seeing something that wasn’t there; his mouth worked strangely, the dry lips
twitching and stretching in unvoiced speech, of which Hayward gradually made out a rapid susurrus of words. “Go away, go away,
go away, go away…” He brought the whip down again on his back, which again seemed to shock him into lucidity. Trembling, he
fumbled—moving as if underwater, yet with evident eagerness—for the IV rack, located a bulb hanging from a tube, and gave
it a decided press.

Drugs
, she thought.
He’s an addict
.

The old man’s eyes rolled up white for a moment before he recovered, the eyes popping open again. “The story is easily told,”
he went on in his low, hoarse voice. “Helen… Brilliant woman. A juicy piece of ass, too… I imagine you had some rollicking
good times, eh?”

Hayward could see the gun in Pendergast’s hand shaking ever so slightly under the fierceness of his grip.

“She made a discovery…” Another gasp and Slade’s eyes defocused, staring into an empty corner, his lips trembling and whispering,
unintelligible words tumbling out. His whip hand fluttered uselessly.

With a brisk step forward Pendergast slapped him across the face with shocking force. “Keep going.”

Slade came back. “What do they say in the movies?
Thanks, I needed that!
” The old man shook briefly with silent mirth. “Yes, Helen… Her discovery was quite remarkable. I imagine you could tell me
most of the story already, Mr. Pendergast. Right?”

Pendergast nodded.

A cough erupted from the wizened chest, silent spasms racking his frame. Slade wheezed, stumbled, pressed the bulb again.
After a moment he resumed. “She brought the discovery to us, the avian flu, through an intermediary, and Project Aves was
born. She hoped a miracle drug might be the result, a
creativity
treatment. After all, it worked for Audubon—for a while. Mind enhancement. The ultimate drug…”

“Why did you give it up?” Pendergast asked. The neutral tone did not fool Hayward—the gun was still shaking in his hand. Hayward
had never seen him so close to losing control.

“The research was expensive. Hideously expensive. We began to run out of money—despite all the corners we cut.” And he raised
his hand and—slowly, slowly—waved it around the room.

“And so this is where you did the work,” Pendergast said. “Spanish Island was your laboratory.”

“Bingo. Why build an expensive level-4 biocontainment facility, with negative pressure and biosuits and all the rest? We could
just do it out here in the swamp, save ourselves a pot of money. We could keep the live cultures out here, do the really dangerous
work where nobody was going to see, where there were no annoying government regulators poking their noses in.”

So that’s why Longitude had a dock facing the swamp
, Hayward thought.

“And the parrots?” Pendergast asked.

“They were kept back at Longitude. Complex Six. But as I said, mistakes were made. One of our birds escaped, infected a family.
A disaster? Not when I pointed out to everyone:
Here’s a way to save millions in experimental protocols; let’s sit tight and just see what happens!
”

He burst into another fit of silent mirth, his unshaven Adam’s apple bobbing grotesquely. Bubbles of snot blew out of his
nose and flecked his suit. He hacked up a huge gobbet of phlegm and bent over, allowing it to slide off his lips to the floor.
Then he resumed.

“Helen objected to our way of doing business. The lady was a crusader. Once she found out about the Doane family—right before
your little safari, by the way—she was going to expose us, go to the authorities no matter what. Just as soon as she got back.”
He spread his hands. “What else could we do but kill her?”

Pendergast spoke quietly. “Who is ‘we’?”

“A few of us in the Aves Group. Dear June, here, had no idea—back then, at least. I kept her in the dark until just before
the fire. Neither did poor old Carlton.” He flapped at the silent man.

“The names, please.”

“You have all the names. Blackletter. Ventura. By the way, where is Mike?”

Pendergast did not reply.

“Probably rotting in the swamp, thanks to you. Damn you to hell, Pendergast. He was not only the best security director a
CEO could ask for, but he was our one link to civilization. Well, you may have killed Ventura, but you couldn’t have killed
him
.” Here Slade’s low tone became almost proud. “And
his
name you shall not have. I want to save that—to keep a little surprise for your future, maybe pay you back for Mike Ventura.”
He sniggered. “I’m sure he’ll pop up when you least expect him.”

Pendergast raised the gun again. “The name.”

“No!” cried June.

Slade winced once more. “Your voice, my dear—
please
.”

Brodie turned to Pendergast, clasping her hands together as if in supplication. “Don’t hurt him,” she whispered fiercely.
“He’s a good man, a
very
good man! You have to understand, Mr. Pendergast, he’s also a victim.”

Pendergast’s eyes went toward her.

“You see,” she went on, “there was another accident at Project Aves. Charles got the disease himself.”

If Pendergast was surprised by this, he showed no sign. “He made the decision to kill my wife
before
he got sick,” he replied in a flat tone.

“That’s all in the past,” she said. “Nothing will bring her back. Can’t you let it go?”

Pendergast stared at her, his eyes glittering.

“Charles almost died,” she continued. “And then he… he had the idea for us to come out here. My husband,” she nodded at the
silent man standing to one side, “joined us later.”

“You and Slade were lovers,” Pendergast said.

“Yes.” Not even a blush. She straightened up. “We
are
lovers.”

“And you came out here—to hide?” said Pendergast. “Why?”

She said nothing.

Pendergast turned back to Slade. “It makes no sense. You had recovered from the illness before you retreated to the swamp.
The mental deterioration hadn’t begun. It was too early.
Why did you retreat to the swamp?
”

“Carlton and I are taking care of him,” Brodie went on hastily. “Keeping him alive… It’s very difficult to keep the ravages
of the disease at bay… Don’t question him further, you’re disturbing him—”

“This disease,” Pendergast said, cutting her off with a flick of his wrist. “Tell me about it.”

“It affects the inhibitory and excitatory circuits of the brain,” Brodie whispered eagerly, as if to distract him. “Overwhelms
the brain with physical sensations—sight, smell, touch. It’s a mutant form of flavivirus. At first it presents almost as acute
encephalitis. Assuming he lives, the patient appears to recover.”

“Just like the Doanes.” Slade giggled. “Oh, dear me, yes—
just
like the Doanes. We kept a very close eye on
them
.”

“But the virus has a predilection for the thalamus,” Brodie continued. “Especially the LGB.”

“Lateral geniculate body,” Slade said, slapping himself viciously with the whip.

“Not unlike herpes zoster,” Brodie went on rapidly, “which takes up residence in the dorsal root ganglion and years, or decades,
later resurfaces to cause shingles. But it eventually kills its host neurons.”

“End result—insanity,” Slade whispered. His eyes began to defocus and his lips began moving silently, faster and faster.

“And all this—” Pendergast gestured with the gun. “The morphine drip, the flail—are distractions from the continuous barrage
of sensation?”

Brodie nodded eagerly. “So you see, he’s not responsible for what he’s saying. We might just be able to get him back to where
he was before. We’ve been trying—trying for years. There’s still hope. He’s a good man, a healer, who’s done good works.”

Pendergast raised the gun higher. His face was as pale as marble, his torn suit hanging off his frame like rags. “I have no
interest in this man’s good works. I want only one thing: the name of the final person on Project Aves.”

But Slade had slid off again into his own world, jabbering softly at the blank wall, his fingers twitching. He gripped the
IV stand and his whole body began to tremble, the stand shaking. A double press of the bulb brought him back under control.

“You’re torturing him!” Brodie whispered.

Pendergast ignored her, faced Slade. “The decision to kill her: it was yours?”

“Yes. At first the others objected. But then they saw we had no choice. She wouldn’t be appeased, she wouldn’t be bought off.
So we
killed her, and most ingeniously! Eaten by a trained lion.” He broke into another carefully contained spasm of silent
laughter.

The gun began to shake more visibly in Pendergast’s hands.

“Crunch, crunch!” Slade whispered, his eyes wide with glee. “Ah, Pendergast, you have no idea what sort of Pandora’s box you’ve
opened up with this investigation of yours. You’ve roused the sleeping dog with a kick in the ass.”

Pendergast took aim.

“You promised,” Hayward said in a low, insistent voice.

“He must die,” whispered Pendergast, almost to himself.
“This man must die.”

“The man must die,” Slade said mockingly, his voice rising briefly above a whisper before falling again. “Kill me, please.
Put me out of my misery!”

“You
promised
,” Hayward repeated.

Abruptly, almost as if overcoming an invisible opponent in a physical struggle, Pendergast lowered the pistol with a jerk
of his hand. Then he took a step toward Slade, twirled the gun around, and offered him the grip.

Slade seized it, yanked it from Pendergast’s grasp.

“Oh, my God,” Brodie cried. “What are you doing? He’ll kill you for sure!”

Slade, with an expert motion, retracted the slide, snapped it back, then slowly raised the gun at Pendergast. A crooked smile
disfigured his gaunt face. “I’m going to send you to the same place I sent your bitch of a wife.” His finger curled around
the trigger and began to tighten.

J
UST A MOMENT,” PENDERGAST SAID. “BEFORE YOU
shoot, I’d like to speak to you a minute. In private.”

Slade looked at him. The big handgun looked almost like a toy in his gnarled fist. He steadied himself against the IV rack.
“Why?”

“There’s something you need to know.”

Slade looked at him a moment. “What a poor host I’ve been. Come into my office.”

June Brodie made a move to protest, but Slade, with a flick of the gun, gestured Pendergast through the doorway. “Guests first,”
he said.

Pendergast shot a warning glance at Hayward, then disappeared through the dark rectangle.

The hallway was paneled with cedar, painted over in gray. Recessed lights in the ceiling cast low, regular pools of light
onto neutral carpeting, its weave tight and plush. Slade walked slowly behind Pendergast, the wheels of his IV making no noise
as they turned. “Last door on the left,” he said.