ColdScheme (15 page)

I glanced at Ken, stifled a sigh and obeyed. Ten seconds
later, he was allowed to squeeze through the crack then the door hurriedly
slammed shut.

It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the smoky darkness.

“This way, please.” A hand waved in the air, like a shadow.

I entered a library. The only source of light was a large
computer screen. The shadow went to sit in the corner. He told us to sit in two
chairs strategically positioned so that the light from the monitor shone
directly at us.

“Mr. Kane, it’s difficult to speak to someone I can’t see,”
I said as I sat down.

“Now you know what I have to live with,” he shot back
quickly.

“I understand and I sympathize but if you won’t allow us to
see you, then we’ll have to stay here twice as long to get your physical
description, before we get to the issue.” I was frustrated. He must have heard
it in my voice. He laughed.

“I have to admit I haven’t heard that threat before. Very
well. I see your point.”

I heard a scraping sound. He pulled the chair in line with
the desk where the peripheral light from the monitor was enough to see him and
sat down.

He was thin but not frail, in his fifties. Sitting down, I
judged him to be a little taller than I was, maybe five foot ten. He had a
circle of pale hair. The rest of his head was a bald crown. I couldn’t tell the
color of his eyes but they were dark. He didn’t seem nervous, just reserved.

“I’m a schizophrenic,” he said. “But the condition is not
stamped on my face. It’s apparent from the way I live. I wasn’t always like
this. My condition worsened as I aged. For at least twenty years, I was able to
lead a normal life. I was a professor of history at Darwin College in Selecton.
I was married, no children. My wife passed away ten years ago. I believe that’s
what increased my symptoms. But that’s not why you’re here.”

“I see you keep in touch with the world.” I motioned at the
monitor and the impressive computer hardware I saw stacked underneath the
large, L-shaped desk.

He smiled. “It’s my only means these days. I no longer go
outside. I have a housekeeper who does my shopping and errands. I just cannot
bring myself to leave the house anymore.”

“Who had you committed to the Mongrove facility?” I asked.

“I did. My physician at the time reluctantly concurred,
though he’s no longer sure whether it was a good idea. It certainly didn’t help
me to control my condition. Nothing can. I’ve accepted that.”

“How long did you stay at Mongrove?”

“Nine months. I signed myself in just about two years ago.”

“Mr. Kane, you obviously have financial means. Why would you
choose to go to a state-funded facility like Mongrove? Why not a private
institution?”

“It’s close by. I couldn’t go too far away from my house.
Since I voluntarily committed myself, I could sign myself out anytime. Knowing
that I could hire transport with tinted windows to take me home in a matter of
ten minutes was the main reason why I chose it.”

“Where would you have hired that kind of transportation?”
Ken asked.

“There was an armored limo service, located in a plaza just
across the street from Mongrove. I don’t believe it’s still there. My housekeeper
told me that the plaza closed down. Two years ago, however, it was still
there.”

“Would you know when the plaza closed down?” Ken asked

“According to my housekeeper, two months ago.”

“Was the limo service there right until the end?”

Kane passed a hand in front of his face. “I always thought
it was a strange location for an armored limo service but I suppose things like
that are driven by the economy. The name was Creeslow. It’s what made me take
closer notice of a fellow patient at Mongrove.”

“Patti,” I said.

Kane raised a hand. He leaned forward, into the circle of
light given off by the monitor. “At Mongrove names are usually fashioned into a
control tool. Spoken three or more times in quick succession turns a patient’s
name into a phrase used to direct, stop—or threaten. My physician had tried to
stop me from going there. He would not tell me outright why but at the end of
nine months, when I’d learned enough, I signed myself out. Her name was
Patricia Vanier. She was a distraught young woman, prone to melancholy—a
marginal manic-depressive but she was not afflicted to a degree that would
require her incarceration in a hard-line facility like Mongrove, under constant
medication. This, of course, is only my own educated opinion. I spent twenty years
studying the nature of my condition, even as I functioned normally, teaching at
the college. I knew that it would progressively worsen as I got older. This
house, the shadowy atmosphere, is a result of those years of learning.”

“Go on, sir,” I said softly. “We’ll ask questions when you
finish.”

Kane was a schizophrenic but he was highly cognizant of what
his affliction meant in terms of living and functioning in society. He’d spent
years preparing himself for the inevitable. He was not just a credible witness
but also a highly intelligent man. He knew more about his condition than his
doctors. His knowledge, coupled with his experience in a psychiatric
institution, made him an expert.

He’d befriended Patricia, as much as anyone could with a
patient who was over-medicated to the degree Kane claimed she was. When he
listened to her ramblings, he’d filtered out the prejudicial nonsense. He’d
picked out things that struck him as facts. Once he began to suspect that her
condition was not severe and would rapidly improve if drugs were withheld, he
did it on quite a few occasions. He was clever. No one noticed anything.

When the medication was stopped for two days, she’d told him
that her fiancé Jonathan, had worked part-time for Creeslow. She had reported
him missing two years earlier. However, she’d told Kane that since then, she
had seen Johnny at Mongrove, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. But she hadn’t been
allowed to talk to him.

“It was unethical to withhold her medication,” Kane said. He
lowered his head and clasped his hands. “But I felt this young woman should not
have been committed to such a hard-line facility, or any facility for that
matter.”

“What do you mean by hard-line, Mr. Kane?” I asked.

He motioned feebly at the shuttered windows. “If you removed
those window coverings, I would be covered in sweat in a matter of seconds. I
would become incoherent and disoriented. In a few more minutes, I would start
to babble. I would collapse on the floor, curl into a tight ball and moan.
Spittle might form in the corners of my mouth. Perhaps frothing may appear. It
would be very much like an epileptic seizure. It would take forty-eight hours
for the attack to pass. If you were a doctor in a psychiatric institution and
knew these symptoms, would you use the means of therapy that I have just
outlined on a schizophrenic patient?”

“Is that what they did to you?” I was shocked to hear him
chuckle.

“That was just basic therapy. There were others, far more
brutal. Once I recovered, these pioneering cures were explained to me with help
of statistics claiming great success—to convince me that it was done for my own
good.”

“Why did you stay there nine months?” Ken asked.

Once again he chuckled. “I had to stay there long enough to
make a statistically valid conclusion that their methods did not work. In my
opinion, Patricia’s affliction was merely deep melancholy. It was not an
ailment that required heavy medication. She needed to talk out her feelings.
That’s precisely what she did not get in Mongrove. Talking was forbidden. That’s
what the control phrases were for—to stop the patient, redirect him. Patricia
was young. The major effects of the drugs cleared out of her system in
forty-eight hours. She was still not what you would term clear-headed but she
was lucid. Unfortunately, once she experienced greater awareness of her
surroundings, she started to roam. She was clever and observant. She found a
way to get out of the patient area—and was caught. I stopped withholding her
medication. I didn’t want to cause any more problems for her.”

“She’s still in there,” I told him.

A painful smile creased his sparse features. “I wouldn’t be
surprised. I don’t believe she had any relatives who would have followed up on
her release. It’s probably what she saw during the last time she escaped from
the patient area that’s keeping her incarcerated. After that episode, her
medication was increased. She could no longer form a sentence. She spoke in
fragments. But by then I was in the facility for eight months and very familiar
with her. It was easy to pick out new words I’d never heard before.”

“Like what?” I sat in the chair as Kane talked but I felt as
tired as if I had run a marathon. Listening to his story was emotionally
draining and worrisome.

“She had escaped at night and roamed the corridors. That’s
how she saw Johnny, in a chauffeur’s uniform again, pushing a gurney—with a
dead body. I’m not sure whether it was Johnny but I’m sure about the dead body.
She had lifted the sheet. The chest looked as if it had exploded. The word
‘exploded’ came from her. I don’t know whether she’d heard it or made it up. I
didn’t see her for two days after that. Then I asked about her—and she
returned—blank stare, very responsive to her control phrase—Patti, Patti,
Patti. When I approached her, she spoke rapidly, hatefully, with focus, ‘The
clerks. The foreigners. Black men. Bishops. Blank monsters. They push. They
pull. They stick needles.’

“Two weeks later, I signed myself out of the facility.” He
leaned back into his chair. Then he lifted his head and stared at us.

We sat there for a long time, silent and reflective. We’d
heard a lot but could we act on it? Was it safe for Patricia, for us, for Kane?

“Mr. Kane,” I motioned at the monitor, “if necessary, would
you be able to write this down and send a file to the FBI?”

Once again I saw the flat planes of his face crease in a
smile. “Certainly, Detective. But would it be safe?”

Chapter Nine

The three o’clock meeting was cancelled. The FBI had not
returned from their visit to the IMF.

Ken phoned the lab to get an update on his Malibu. The lab
told him that in another day or two, his
brown
vehicle would be
released.

“I’m sure Marci was just teasing you,” I told him when I
drove him home. “You know our lab doesn’t conduct destructive tests on cars—or
any other material they have to analyze.”

“It won’t be silver metallic gray anymore,” he murmured. He
was so distraught that I had to remind him that I was already parked in front
of his house.

When I walked into the kitchen I could smell the excitement.
My daughter was roaring through her homework.

“It’ll be a nice change, for both of you,” the housekeeper
was saying. She left without explaining her mysterious comment.

“Hi, Jazz.”

“I’m almost done. You can check it. No mistakes,” she
rattled off.

“That’s fine. I’m happy to see you working so hard—and so
fast—but what’s going on?”

“We’re going out to dinner at Portofino’s.”

“Really?” That was not my plan tonight. It wasn’t in my
budget. Portofino’s was an upscale steak house where pirates served dinner
while jugglers and minstrels entertained. Underneath a dozen lucky plates, the
patrons would find a genuine reproduction of a golden Spanish doubloon. An
average bill for two, without drinks, could come to two hundred dollars. They
didn’t have a children’s menu.

Jazz finished scribbling in her notebook and lifted her
head. “Field called. He’s taking us out.”

“Really?” I managed to choke out.

“Yep. I’ve got to go get dressed.” Before I had time to
blink, she vanished.

“No way are we going…” I was saying to her disappearing backside
when the doorbell rang.

“I phoned and left a message on your pager,” he said when I
opened the door.

“I didn’t have time to check and you didn’t bother waiting
for my reply.”

“Jazz replied.”

“Field!”

“I’ll brief you on the day’s developments. We didn’t get
back until half an hour ago.”

My expression must have given me away.

“Don’t look so trapped,” he said. “It’s only dinner. I’ll
make it into a work session.”

“Is that supposed to make me happy?”

“Judging from your look, another murder would be about the
only thing that would make you happy right now.”

“Yours.”

“That’s what I figured. Portofino’s serves excellent Irish
coffee. Can I come in?”

“Don’t you have two people working with you? Shouldn’t you,
as their boss, set a good example and go have dinner with them—so you can
continue working?”

“They’re still working. I’m here.”

“That doesn’t reflect very well on you.”

“I’ve spent years working with partners I never saw again
once we clocked off work.”

“I guess the FBI is not into teamwork,” I grumbled.

“Sure we are. Can I come in or do you want me to wait out
here? Your neighbors might be interested in our little parlay.”

I looked at him. Whatever else I had wanted to say stuck in
my throat. When we were still dating, he used to say, “Leave the back door
unlatched.” He’d enter quietly but my roommate, Nellie, would be awake and
checking out any suspicious behavior.

Times had changed. Had the man changed? Had I changed? I let
him in.

“I could have knocked on your side door,” he remarked.

“No memories tonight, Field,” I cautioned.

“I’ve lived ten years on memories.” I heard his quiet
comment as he headed down the hallway.
I’ve lived the years trying to forget
them,
I thought.

When Jazz came out, I made a mental note to take her
shopping for clothes—soon. The white sweater with bunnies was cute—three years
ago. On a young lady of ten it was outdated.

I changed into a plum colored suit and a white blouse and we
set out for a night on the town.

“This is progress,” I murmured, when we were seated at a
table and told that there was a video arcade for young diners. There was also
pirate cove and mini golf. I remembered Portofino’s for their upscale adult
dining. It didn’t use to be a family restaurant.

Jazz hadn’t spoken much to me these last six months. When
she did, most of her words were angry. Tonight, however, she was talkative. I
learned more about her school, friends and hobbies in one hour of her
irrepressible chatter than I had in years. I also learned more about her father
than I knew ten years ago when I said, “I do.”

I had ex-in-laws in North Carolina. Field’s father owned a
trucking company. His wife worked for his firm as a bookkeeper. I had two
ex-sisters and one ex-brother-in-law, scattered across the country, all married
and raising families. With the numbers on both sides, Jazz had enough cousins
to fill out five family trees. Inspector Weston had a pilot’s license. If
necessary, he could even fly a jet. He’d raced speedboats in California,
crashed one on to a reef and lived to laugh about it. He’d gone to Europe
several times and loved Paris in the spring. His most difficult assignment was
two weeks on the New York Stock Exchange. After that assignment LA freeway
traffic noise had seemed almost soothing. He’d surfed in Hawaii and fished in
the Bahamas. He’d nearly stepped on a rattlesnake in the Arizona desert and a
coyote had walked up to him as he was filling up at a gas station on Van Buren
Street, in Phoenix.

Judging by her expression as she listened, Jazz was happy.

I sipped Irish coffee and tried to remember whether
Washington restaurants made it as strong as this one. I also wondered when she
would begin putting him through the third degree.

Suddenly, she leaned back, wiped the chocolate drizzle
smudges from her face on her napkin and asked, “Are you married now?”

“No,” he replied with an amused twitch.

I sighed, raised my hand and made a rapid circle, indicating
refill.

She continued, “How many ex-wives do you have?”

I pursed my lips in appreciation. Her techniques were
getting more sophisticated. The last time she’d served this question to one of
my dates, it was, “How many times were you married?”

He arched his brows.

“Don’t you know?” she asked with an exasperated groan.

“One ex-wife.”

“When did you get a divorce?”

I hid my smile in the whipped cream. She had vastly improved
her method.

“Ten years ago.”

“That’s the last time you were married?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you marry any of your girlfriends?”

“What makes you think I had girlfriends?”

“All guys have girlfriends, tons of them.”

“Why would you think that? And how?”

“Jenny’s father is still married to her mother and he’s on
his twelfth girlfriend. Her mother thinks it’s only the fifth but Jenny knows
about all the others. Melissa’s dad has been in prison three times. She says
he’s had several boyfriends there. Her mom doesn’t pick him up anymore when
they let him out on parole. One of his girlfriends does it. Kristin’s mom
travels a lot. She’s a sales rep. When she’s out of town, her dad brings his
girlfriend to sleep over. Kris said that once he brought over two. They were
hookers. Amy lives with her dad. She’s on her fourth stepmother. Do you have
any kids?”

“One,” he said carefully. I could see that he was rattled by
the barrage of information and Jazz’s update on the standards and morals of today’s
society. I thought it was strange, considering he’d spent eight years in
California.

“Male, female?”

“Daughter.”

“Age?”

“About your age.”

“Does she live with you?”

“No. She lives with her mother.”

“Is she yours?”

“Which one of your friends’ fathers is wondering about
that?”

“All of them. They don’t want to pay child support. Do you
pay child support?”

He looked at me, trapped. Momentarily, I felt sorry for him
but after two Irish Coffees, I could only grin.

“No but that’s because I only found out recently that I had
a daughter.”

“Every time Melissa’s father gets out of jail, he forgets
her name. That’s pretty normal. Why did you split up with your wife?”

He took a deep breath, held it and then let it out slowly.
“I don’t know.”

“Did she cheat on you or did you cheat on her?”

“Neither.”

“They why did you split up?”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

I saw that he wanted to stop this line of questioning but
didn’t know what to do—talk his way out or shut up.

“Every time the cops arrest Melissa’s dad because he’s
packing guns or drugs, he tells his lawyer that it’s a misunderstanding.” She
shook her head.

Field tried again. “All right. Let’s see if I can summarize
it. I fell in love, married the girl. She was going to have a baby. I was
working, on assignment. Something went wrong. I got hurt. A message was passed
on to me. I believed it to be true. It said that my wife no longer wanted to be
married. She left. I never saw her again—or my daughter. That was ten years
ago. I went out with women but never with anyone long enough to call her a
girlfriend. How’s that?”

“Pretty unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head with a
frown. “No drugs, no hookers, no domestic violence, no gambling, no grand
theft, no prison—it’s just not real.”

I shook with laughter, halfway hoping Field would work his
way out of this.

“I work for the FBI. I put people like your friends’ fathers
in prison. If I did any of those things that are so real to you, I wouldn’t be
sitting here,” he said, chuckling.

“Jenny’s father told the vice squad that he was an
undercover CIA agent investigating prostitution rings,” she finished with a
grin. She turned to me and announced that she wanted to play the arcades.

“What kind of school does she go to?” Field asked when she
left.

“A normal, middle-class neighborhood community school. What
she put you through is a general quiz that her girlfriends learned when
listening to their mothers talking to lawyers, parole officers or giving
statements at the police station. It’s sad but reality.”

His eyes skipped over the table and settled on my hands.
“Did you keep your wedding band?”

“It’s locked up with my memories, Field. I didn’t expect my
world to crack in the middle of an investigation. We’re working a tough case.
Two murders. If Joe’s right, there might be more. Let’s carry on with work. I
don’t have the energy to work on two levels.”

I was confused and exhausted. Work had drained my energy and
Jazz was siphoning my emotions. Seeing Brick’s dead body sprawled across the
hood of Ken’s Malibu had rocked me. I had to repopulate my realm with solid
shapes that resembled a realistic future. Portofino’s was not the place to do
it.

“I love you. I never stopped,” he said in a reflective
voice, tinged with emotion. “I spent five years working, trying not to think
about you. One morning I woke up in a hotel room. I stared into the mirror and
talked to you. Then one day, I opened my briefcase in a meeting. I flipped
through the memos, case files and reference material and noticed paragraphs,
written notes. I wasn’t aware that in my meetings I was writing letters to you.
Even my phone bill had a long note scribbled on the back of it. I wanted to
find you—talk to you.”

After two Irish coffees, my emotions were as mellow as
butter taffy. I wanted to believe that there was a better road ahead. But what
if it was just wishful thinking?

“Fielding—” I began.

He cut me off. “I asked to be assigned to the Washington
office. I went to the Freer Gallery every week. Mr. Greenjeans is still there.
I’d bring my work along so people wouldn’t think I was crazy if they noticed
how often I was there. I needed to find you—and myself. The part that left with
you.”

“What would you have done if I were married?”

“Same thing I did two days ago.”

I laughed.

“Why didn’t you marry?” he asked.

“I didn’t know I was divorced. Or that my marriage was
annulled.”

“If you thought you were still married, why didn’t you look
for me?”

“It hurt. We were going out to dinner. You never came home.
I put up a wall and went ahead with my life.”

“Is that why you never told Jazz about me?”

“What could I say? I didn’t understand what happened
myself.”

He picked up his napkin. He folded and refolded it.

I used the pause to study his features, to pick out those he
had passed on to his daughter. They shared wood-green eyes, sandy hair and the
same smile. His nose quivered with emotion, his daughter’s twitched. I tried to
pick out the feature that I loved the most but decided that I’d fallen in love
with the whole package.

“Meg,” he said, lifting his head. When he saw me looking at
him, he sank his hand beneath his shirt and pulled out something. It was his
wedding band, on a gold chain. He rubbed it between his fingers. “Do you
remember what’s engraved inside?”

“I remember the entire sentence. It has four words. I got
the first two. You have the rest.”

“Is there a chance for that sentence to be whole again?”

I closed my eyes and the words sculpted in my memory, “I
love—you forever.” They stood alone but also belonged together. I opened my
eyes and found him staring at me.

I relaxed my mouth into a smile. I was about to reply, when
my cell phone rang.

* * * * *

“Where is he?” Field asked when I paused, listening to Ken’s
instructions.

“Go down Waterston. Make a right at Marcy. Go east for about
a block. There’s a little plaza.”

We were on duty.

Field scooped his daughter out of the pirate’s cave and
carried the protesting treasure hunter to the front entrance where he put her
down. He paid cash because the credit card lines were too busy. I ran to the
table to leave a tip. He grinned when I came back. I just shook my head.