Deadly Design (9780698173613) (18 page)

“Y
ou remember the plan?” Jimmy asks.

“Yeah, but I still don't like it.”

We're parked at the veterans' hospital. It's a mammoth brick building. The east and west wings are three stories high, while the center is four with a white steeple rising from its center.

“Well, tough shit, kid. Matt and I went over and over it, and with her office being in a secured area, this is the best way to get you in.”

“But what about you?” I'm okay with the part of the plan where Matt has an actual appointment with the doctor, thus assuring that she stays out of her office for a while. But I'm not comfortable with Jimmy's part in this. Not comfortable at all.

“Did you know I wanted to be a teacher?”

“Yeah, Cami told me.”

“Uncle Sam was supposed to put me through college. I was going to be a good teacher. I was going to make kids feel capable, you know?”

He looks at me, and in his deep brown eyes, I see the spirit of a dead dream floating around. Lost.

“Instead of an education, I got a fucked-up brain. I worked so hard just to learn how to turn letters around in my head so I could read them, and now by the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I can't remember what the first part was about.” His face, covered with thick stubble, smiles. “But I can do this. I can help you. And, hey, a few days of Klonopin and cartoons won't be so bad. Won't be the first time.”

“What if they—”

“Give me a lobotomy and a dose of electroconvulsive shock therapy? Nah. I'll just act crazy for a little while. Once I turn all normal again, they'll hold me for observation, give me a few dozen pills, then save Uncle Sam a buck by sending me on my merry manic way.”

I'm not comforted. Jimmy's
normal
isn't exactly normal. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, genuinely. “Something could happen to you. You might not get out as easily as you think.”

Jimmy looks at me with clear eyes. “How much time do you have left?”

“At most, maybe three and a half months.”

He nods. “You join the military, they send you to a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, and you don't know how long you're gonna live. You hope you'll go home, hope you'll see your family again, but the truth is, you could get shot waiting in the damn chow line. Nobody knows how much time they have, but your best chance to survive is to depend on your buddies. We watch out for each other. We have each other's backs. And you're my buddy.”

Jimmy slaps me on the arm, then squeezes it, and my chest swells with emotion.

“Okay,” Jimmy says, opening the car door. “Time to get my crazy on.”

We go through the massive doors leading to massive hallways. The place is old. I don't know how old, but I wouldn't be surprised if some World War I veterans once hobbled down these halls on crutches or were pushed down them in wheelchairs after losing their sight to mustard gas. The place is cold and creepy.

I can almost see clean-cut World War II ghosts eyeing the bearded, tattooed Vietnam ghosts. I can see ghostly nurses mopping up ghostly blood and vomit and other bodily fluids from the tile floors. It's eighty degrees outside, and while the air conditioner seems to be working quite well, I have to wonder if the numerous ghosts passing through the halls add to the frigid feel of the air.

And this is where Jimmy is willing to spend the next few days—if all goes well.

We walk down one hallway, turn left, and walk down another. Jimmy knows right where to go, and we end up in front of a brick wall where there is a door labeled
RESTRICTED: PSYCHIATRIC WARD.
The door is made of thick glass. Next to it, halfway up the wall, is a large window that slides open.

“You ready?” Jimmy whispers, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be ready for. I've never seen someone having a psychotic breakdown, but Jimmy's about to demonstrate.

“Can't you hear them?” he asks me, his voice loud, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. “They're coming to get me. They're laughing, can't you hear them?” His fingers are moving nervously against one another. His torso is rocking back and forth.

A bald man in blue scrubs slides the window open. “What's the problem?”

“My uncle,” I say. “He's been here before. PTSD and some other shit, I don't know. I came home from school, and he was like this. He's not making any sense. He's really freaking me out.”

“What's his name?” the man asks.

“Jimmy. Jimmy Williams.”

The man closes the window and comes around to the glass door. He punches a code into a keypad. A buzzer sounds, and the door opens. “Hey, Frank,” he hollers to a thin African American man behind him, “I'm gonna need your help with this one.” He approaches us with his palms up in a nonthreatening stance, but he's a big man with a thick neck, and any stance he takes looks threatening.

“It's okay, Jimmy,” he says.

“No it's not!” Jimmy grabs hold of me, like he's terrified, and I have to wonder just how familiar he is with insanity, because he's doing a hell of a job. “Don't leave me. Don't leave me!”

“It's okay, buddy,” Frank says. “You want your nephew to come with you?”

Jimmy nods.

“You okay?” Frank asks me.

“Yeah, sure,” I tell him. “It's okay, Jimmy. These men are going to help you. But we have to go in here, all right?”

The two men back up as I lead Jimmy through the steel door.

“That's great, Jimmy,” the bald one says. “You're doing great.”

Once we're inside, Jimmy looks around like he's Frodo getting his first look at Mordor. “I don't like it here,” he says. “You're bad guys! You're bad guys!”

I half expect him to start lashing out, to grab a chair and throw it at them, but Jimmy knows what's he's doing. He wants to be evaluated, not harpooned with a sedative and strapped to a bed.

“Do we look like bad guys?” the bald one asks. “We're the good guys. I did two tours over in Afghanistan. How many did you do? I bet more than me.”

Jimmy eyes him. “Four,” he says. “Hate that fucking place.”

The man laughs. “Me too, buddy. They can keep their fucking desert. But we ain't there no more. We're home. Ain't that right. It look like the desert around here to you?”

Jimmy shakes his head.

“You want to come with me. I know a nice quiet place we can go. You and me can talk about things. Things only you and I know. Like having to wash our own goddamned laundry because those assholes the government hired don't know shit about doing laundry.”

Jimmy smiles, and for a minute, I think he's falling out of character. He lets the guy lead him down the hall.

“You hang out here,” the other one says to me. “We'll get him settled, then I've got some paperwork and questions for you.”

I nod. “You bet.”

I sit down and watch as they turn a corner; then I stand and head for the elevator. According to Matt, the entire east wing of the hospital is restricted. It's the wing where the majority of staff offices are and where the mentally ill patients are kept. Once you get past a security door, you're in. You can travel between floors and still be in.

I start to push the Up button on the elevator, but stop myself. There's a good chance someone may be getting off on this floor, and they'll wonder what I'm doing here. To the right is a door leading to the stairs. I climb to the second floor, then the third.

I stand there for a moment, listening. There's a conversation going on between at least two people, both females, waiting for the elevator. One's talking about her kid, how he just started pulling himself up and walking around the furniture. The other woman oohs and ahs at how cute that stage is. I hear the elevator door ding and the voices grow distant, then silent. I close my eyes, envisioning the map Matt showed me.

From the stairs, take a sharp left turn, then go straight to a hall labeled 3B. Turn right, go past the men's restroom and a water fountain. Then there's another hall but go straight. Dr. Bartholomew's office is on the left side of the hallway. There's a chance her name won't be on the door, due to the fact that it's only used when she's in town, so don't forget that it's the second door from the far end of the hall.

I glance at my phone. Matt's appointment is in five minutes. She has three other appointments scheduled before his, and another two after.

Cracking open the door from the stairwell, I listen for voices or footsteps. I don't hear anyone, so I push the door open. There's a man in a doctor's coat at the end of the hall, but his back is turned, so I follow Matt's directions until I get to the office that is not labeled. Every other door has a nameplate on it, but on this one there is only a faded rectangle where a name should be.

Her office isn't locked. It's evident that this is just a place for her to dictate information in private and make phone calls while she's visiting patients at the VA. I can imagine that her office in Saint Louis is much larger and actually decorated and carpeted. This room is bare. The walls are beige, and the wood floor is covered by a fine layer of dust.

There is a bookshelf that stretches from the floor to the ceiling, but it's mostly empty. And there is no filing cabinet. The desk is my only bet. Other than a cup of coffee and an outdated dial phone, there is nothing on the desk. I open the center drawer and see paperclips, a pen that's sprung a leak, and what look like Oreo crumbs.

The top side drawer has a few envelopes with a silhouette of the hospital stamped in the corner, next to a notepad with the same silhouette. There are rubber bands, a fingernail file, and an abandoned pack of nicotine gum; someone must have started smoking again. The only other drawer is large and has a keyhole.

I hold my breath as I grip the top of the drawer and pull. It doesn't budge. I take the small tool set Jimmy gave me out of my pocket and choose a flathead screw driver. I slip it in between the top of the drawer and the desk. I might be able to flip the latch and open it. It won't budge. I put the screwdriver back, and this time, I select a slender instrument like what my dentist uses for those hard-to-reach places. I tilt and turn the instrument inside the lock the way Jimmy taught me when we practiced last night.

Footsteps sound in the hall, and I duck down behind the desk. A man is talking, and I wait to hear who he's talking to. When there's only silence instead of a reply, I realize that he's on a phone. My heart slows back to a frantic pace, and I start working on the lock again. After what seems like minutes, but according to the clock was only thirty seconds, I hear a click and the drawer opens. There is no neatly labeled flash drive with blinking neon arrows pointing to it, just an oversized leather handbag.

I always assumed all purses were filled with dirty Kleenexes, loose change, a lint-filled hairbrush, and a stick of gum so brittle it shatters if you try to bite into it. But not Dr. Bartholomew's. I empty the contents onto the top of the desk: a thin leather wallet, a silver compact with a matching silver cylinder of lipstick, and an appointment book.

I start flipping through the appointment book. It's filled with names and times. I flip from page to page and then back again, but nowhere do I see the name Richard Sharp. I flip back to the last pages, the pages where names and phone numbers and addresses are kept. Still no Richard Sharp. I go through the book again and again. I look through the drawer again, even feel around the bottom, because I've seen things hidden there in movies. Nothing.

I lean back in the chair and want to scream. If I scream loud enough, maybe the two guys taking care of Jimmy can run up here and take care of me. I wouldn't mind a cup full of pills, or maybe even a shot in the ass, if I could forget about everything for a while.

But not for too long.

The door opens.

We stare at each other. Dr. Bartholomew's expression is one of anger and outrage that I'm sitting behind her desk going through the contents of her purse. Then it's as if she recognizes me, and her expression shifts more to curiosity. She closes the door.

“I've seen you before,” she says, coming forward and sitting in the chair in front of the desk.

“I was going into a building you were coming out of,” I say. “I was visiting Dr. Sharp.”

Her thin lips tilt in a slight smile. The hair that settles against her shoulders in one giant curl seems a bit more yellow now than it was. She's wearing her white doctor's coat over a petite frame, and there's something so familiar about her, something more than just the fact that I saw her coming out of Sharp's building.

“That's not where I know you from,” she says, “although I do remember being a bit startled when the elevator opened and there you stood. I don't know why I was so surprised, really. I knew he wanted to meet you. He was very curious about you.”

“Was?” I ask, and even though I know he said he'd never help me, I want him to be alive. I want there to be a chance that he might change his mind.

“I'm afraid he passed shortly after your visit. It's a blessing, really. My brother was in a great deal of pain.”

“Your brother?” I almost choke on the question.

“You didn't know? I thought he might have told you his true identity. If I were dying, I would want people to call me by my given name. His was Edward.” She says the name deliberately.

“Do you know what he did to us? To me and my brother and the others?”

She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, I see the resemblance. He was so emaciated when I saw him that the only family members he could resemble would have to have been long dead, but eyes don't lose weight in a dying body. They don't fade, and she has the same black, birdlike eyes as her brother.

“Confessions are part of the dying process,” she says, “although I don't think Edward was confessing as much as bragging about the success of his experiment.”