Projection (6 page)

She sat down on the edge of the bed.  "You watched all that?"

I sat down next to her.  The horror of what I had seen Lucas do hours before and what I had done to him months ago gripped me all at once.  I closed my eyes and buried my head in my hands.  The image of Winston struggling for his life came to me.  I pictured his fingers clawing the ground as he tried to free himself from the bizarre beast Lucas had created.  The muscles in his hands, arms and chest contracted involuntarily.  Breathing was an effort.

"Are you OK?" she asked.  She rested her hand lightly on the nape of my neck.

I didn't answer.

She traced the arc of my ear with her fingertip.  "Do you want to get some sleep?"

I needed something much more than rest — to be rid of my isolation, to tell someone the truth.  I had the habit, then, of seeing people as I wanted to see them.  And I saw her as pure and trustworthy, a river to carry my sins away.  Some people go to church and talk to a priest.  Others choose a psychiatrist as their confessor.  My religion has no name, but three clear tenets:  that people are connected to each other in mystical, immeasurable ways, that we have the power to heal one another and that truth often precipitates out of our society and settles at the bottom.  It felt good and right to choose a hooker in a motel-turned-rooming house as a repository for my soul.  But it was a terrible mistake.

"He didn't do it," I said.  My scalp tingled with the gravity of what I had revealed.

"What do you mean?" Cynthia asked.

I raked my fingers down my face as I sat up and stared at the ceiling.  I took a deep breath, let it out.  "Trevor Lucas.  He didn't commit the murders he's on trial for."

"Why do you think that?"

I looked her in the eyes.  I couldn't control the flow of my truth.  "Because I know who the real killer is."

She nodded tentatively, becoming visibly tense.  She glanced at the door.

I realized she might be worried I was about to confess to the murders myself.  "I haven't seen her in over five months.  I helped hide her, right after Lucas was arrested."

"
Her?
"

"The killer."

She squinted at me like she was trying to figure out if I was leveling with her.  How could she be sure, after all, that I wasn't a compulsive liar, a nut case writing myself into the news of the day?  That, or something worse.  My apartment certainly didn't look like a doctor would live there.  I didn't look like a doctor, to begin with.  "She killed two people.  Why would you help her get away?"

"She was sick," I said.  "She couldn't stop herself."

"Then she'd have been found not guilty."

"No, she wouldn't.  She would have spent the rest of her life in prison.  These days juries convict no matter what mental state the defendant was in at the time of the crimes.  Jeffrey Dahmer ate seventeen people, and he was found sane enough to die in prison."

"But it's not up to you to..."  Cynthia stared into my eyes a few seconds.  "Who was this woman?  How well did you know her?"

I finally, too late, held back.  "A friend.  I thought we were close, but we weren't."

"So you let Trevor Lucas stand trial for something he didn't do.  To save her."

"I figured Lucas would get the right lawyer and beat the case.  But he ended up pleading insanity himself."  I paused.  "He seems to have actually gone insane.  I think being locked up drove him over the edge."

"Where is the woman?"

"Somewhere she can get help — somewhere she can't leave."

Cynthia looked away several seconds, then stared directly into my eyes.  "Why are you telling me all this?"

"I had to tell someone.  My instincts told me I could trust you."  I glanced up at the painting of the angel over her bed.

"So what do your instincts tell you to do now?" Cynthia asked.

I thought about that.  The picture my mind painted wasn't of the violence I had just witnessed, but of Lucas being carried out of the courtroom the morning before.  "Help him," I said automatically.

"Lucas?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I don't know."

She touched my face.  "You'll find a way."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because I know you."

I wanted to believe that.  I wanted to believe that, even after losing Rachel, I could find another angel.

"You're a shaman, Frank.  A healer," Cynthia was saying.  "It’s the reason you suffer so much.  You feel your own pain, and everyone else's — including Dr. Lucas."

"Well, I didn't feel anything but contempt for him before, and now..."

"And now you know you're human."  She put a finger to my lips before I could answer.  "You don't need to say anything else.  I understand."  She stood up, slowly pulled her T-shirt over her head and let it drop to the ground.  "I can feel other people's pain, too."

I was still lost in the beginnings of a day overshadowed by nightmares of bloodletting.  I took hold of Cynthia's hips, so smooth and firm and far from death, and pulled her to me.

*            *            *

I stumbled through three broken hours of sleep, awakened at least a dozen times by screams — sometimes Winston's, sometimes Lucas’, sometimes my own — that evaporated as soon as my eyes found the lighted billboard for Camel cigarettes outside Rachel's window.  I rode the camel back into my uneasy slumber, the way Spider-man had carried me there when I was a boy, when my night terrors were of my father chasing me up the stairs of the triple decker we lived in, shouting obscenities.

At 6:20 I woke up for good.  The morning light was starting to drown out the spotlights over the billboard.  Cynthia's hand was resting on mine.  I lifted it gently and set it down on the hospital-style, woven white blankets that covered us.  She swallowed once and took a single, deep breath, but her eyes stayed closed.  I unclipped my pager from the bed frame where I'd left it and carried it with me to the bathroom, hoping a shower would make me feel like I'd slept the night.

I wasn't three minutes under the spray when the mustard-colored, plastic curtain slid open, and Cynthia stepped in next to me.  She pushed me against the tile wall behind the shower head, then knelt in front of me.  The water fell on her face and shoulders as she took my penis in her mouth.  The room had fogged up, so that even with my eyes open, looking down at her, I could imagine Rachel there.  I took her hair in my hands as she took me inside her again and again.  The pleasure started crashing deep in my groin and brain at the same time.  I had to lean hard against the wall to stay on my feet.  She held me tight.  My body crested in spasms, then relaxed like an outgoing tide, the way your arms float away after being pressed against the sides of a doorway.  I knelt down, the hot water showering both of us, and kissed her ears and neck, the curves of her shoulders, her breasts.

My pager started chirping.  I wanted to stay right where I was.

"Better check," Cynthia whispered.

I groaned in protest, but helped her to her feet and stepped out of the shower.

The number on the pager was for Emma Hancock's cellular.  I toed a towel around my waist and walked into the bedroom.  There was no phone there.  I stepped back into the bathroom to tell Cynthia I'd be getting dressed and leaving to make a call.

"There's a cellular in my bag," she said.

My face must have registered surprise.

She shrugged.  "Tool of the trade."

I spotted her black leather handbag — styled like a pouch, with a drawstring — on the seat cushion of a wicker armchair near the window.  I picked it up and pulled it open.  Something about poking around in it made me feel like a little boy, but I didn't see anything that reminded me of my mother's purse.  I had to reach through rolling papers, Trojan and
MAGNUM
condoms, and a canister of mace to find the phone.  I dialed Hancock.

"Frank?" she answered.

"Yup."  I noticed Cynthia's driver's license face-up in her bag.  I focused on it just long enough to read her full name, Cynthia J. Baxter.  The license had been issued by the state of Maryland.

"Where are you?"

"The Y."

"What are you doing there?"

"I didn't feel like driving back to Chelsea.  I took a room here and slept a little."

"The Y.  Very swank.  Why didn't you just bunk at the Lynn shelter?  It's even cheaper."

"Didn't think of it.  Next time."

"I keep hoping there won't be a next time."  She paused.  "I needed to give you an update.  Lucas just issued another ultimatum."

"I'll say it again:  We should land that helicopter right in the hospital parking lot.  Drain the gas, if that makes Rice happy.  At least Lucas could literally see a way out."

"Lucas didn't mention the helicopter this time.  Or Cardinal Law."

"No?  What does he want now?  The Pope?"

"Not quite.  You."

The room suddenly felt claustrophobic.  My heart started to pound.  I wondered if Lucas had told what he knew about the killings.  What I knew.

"Still there?" Hancock said.

"Yeah."

"What do you figure he wants with you?  I'm the one who arrested him."

She was also the one who had arranged to have the life nearly beaten out of him while he was being held at the Lynn jail.  But what I had done to him was much worse.  "Your guess is as good as mine," I said.  I looked out the window.

"You sound nervous.  Nobody's suggesting you hurl yourself into any volcano.  I just thought you might come up with a way to use his demand to stall him."

I cleared my throat.  "What exactly is he demanding?"

"He says he wants to meet with you.  On the unit.  He promised to set two of the hostages — the two social workers — free at the same time he takes you inside."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cynthia walk into the room, but my gaze stayed focused outside.  "And if I don't go?"

"He says he'll kill them.  Actually, he said ‘the Harpy will devour them.’"

My skin turned to gooseflesh.  "He wrote all this in a note?"

"No.  Laura Elmonte delivered the ultimatum by phone.  She didn't sound anything like the smooth talker she was yesterday on the witness stand.  She kept gasping for air, struggling to get her words out.  Somebody was doing something to her.  I don't want to think what."

"How long did he give me to decide?"

"Twelve hours. What he doesn't know is that Sir Rice here is planning to storm the unit it four
P.M.
"

"He can't do that.  Lucas is too smart and too paranoid.  They'll end up carrying everyone out in body bags."

"I'm not in favor of it, either.  But Rice doesn't need my OK on state property."

I looked at my watch.  6:50.  "So I really only have about eight hours to decide."

"Decide what?"

"Whether I'll meet with Lucas on the locked unit."  I saw Cynthia turn around.  I looked over at her.  My mind was mostly frozen on a memory of the five-person beast Lucas called a Harpy, but I could see the fear in her face.  She sat down on the edge of the bed, watching me.

"Let me save you time and trouble," Hancock said.  "There is no chance,
absolutely no chance
, I would authorize you going into that unit.  If you want to commit suicide, you're not going to do it on my time."

I remembered Lucas’ crazed eyes locked on mine as he stood over Winston's body.  "He's sick," I said, more to myself than to Hancock.

"Great.  Why don't you go down to the morgue and have a chat with Winston about how well the good doctor responds to therapy?"

"Winston challenged him.  I'd be surrendering to him.  At least at the beginning."

"And we could etch that on your tombstone. 
He surrendered to a serial killer
."

"What inscription would you suggest for the hostages?  How about for the baby?"

"Look, I know you somehow get through to people, people no one else can reach.  You have a gift.  That's why you're worth what you charge.  But it's not just Lucas, Frank.  You've got Zweig and Kaminsky up there.  We also I.D.'d the tall white man who came out with Lucas and Zweig to kill Winston.  It was Craig Bishop."

I closed my eyes and hung my head.  "I thought he got transferred back to prison to await trial."

"The Bishop family has a few bucks, I guess — enough anyhow to hire a scumbag lawyer to get the transfer reversed.  They argued his mental illness was too complex to be adequately treated in a prison environment.  Personally I don't see anything complicated about it:  Beheading your victims isn't a lot different than shooting them, when you come right down to it."

"Lucas would have to release the two social workers first," I said.

"He'd never agree to...," she started, then caught herself.  "I can't believe we're actually wasting our breath on this insanity.  I called you to figure out how to bluff our way into more time, not so we could spin our wheels thinking about a kamikaze mission that's never going to happen."

"Let's work Rice on the Cardinal and the helicopter, then."

"I'm not about to propose that the Catholic Church..."

"What about the helicopter?"

"You really think that could change things?"

I thought it would keep Hancock busy.  "As a sign of good faith it could go a long way.  Meanwhile, tell Lucas I'm thinking about his offer.  Tell him I'd probably go for it if he released three hostages — the pregnant nurse first, within four hours from now, and two more when I go in."

"As a bluff.  Period.  Right?"

"You're the one calling the shots."

"You're not planning to go behind my back and do something stupid."

I figured whatever I ended up doing would happen right in front of her.  "You have my word."

"Good.  I'll bring up the chopper issue again with Rice."

"I'll be over to talk with him myself soon.  Page me if you need me."  I hung up.  I stood there, looking out the window at everything, but nothing in particular, knowing at some level that the next chapter in my life would be the darkest.

"Are you going to meet with him?  On the unit?" Cynthia asked from the bed.