Fever Dream (35 page)
I told him.
For some reason, Polk remembered where Ten Oaks was, though I assumed it had been a year since he’d last been here. Yet, when I rolled to a stop on the curving driveway fronting the red-bricked, gable-roofed building, I saw his unmarked Ford sedan already parked in the side lot. I pulled in beside him.
At just after ten, the sun was already a flare-like blur in the cloudless sky. I could feel the heat coming up off the gravel beneath my feet as I went up to the large, gilt-framed double front doors.
As I crossed the opulent reception area—silent testimony to the exclusivity and expense of the private psychiatric clinic—I glanced up at the circular skylight, its curved glass glazed by the morning’s sun, like icing on a cake.
Flashing my hospital ID badge at the girl behind the desk, I pushed through the doors just behind it and entered the facility proper. Walked down the familiar pea-green-walled corridors. Past the patient quarters, staff lounge, conference room. The haunts of my internship, my initial training as a therapist. Sights, smells, and sounds forever etched in my memory.
Though one thing was new. For the first time, I was going to see Nancy Mendors sitting in the Clinic Director’s office.
Polk was waiting there when I arrived, standing uncomfortably by the wide rear window. Looking out at the recreation field with his usual skeptical demeanor.
Nancy came out from behind the desk, gave me a brief hug, then stepped back. Arms folded. With a look even more skeptical than Polk’s.
“Are you sure about this?” Her first and only words since I’d walked in the door.
“Hell, no,” I answered. “Ready?”
Polk turned from the window, cast a baleful glance in my direction, then gestured toward the corridor.
“It’s
your
party, Doc.”
As Nancy fiddled with the cuffs of her white hospital coat, I noticed what I took to be her new engagement ring. Nice, tasteful diamond. Gleaming off the light from the office windows.
If she saw me registering it, she didn’t give any indication. Merely straightened, then led us out into the hallway.
And to Andy’s room.
After we’d finished there, some twenty minutes later, Nancy told an intern to go ask Victoria Tolan to join us at the rear doors. We waited only a few more minutes, and then the pale, achingly slender young woman appeared. She stood nervously in her oversized blouse and jeans, compulsively twisting her long auburn hair between bone-thin fingers.
After Nancy had explained what was going to happen, she asked Victoria if she felt up to accompanying us.
“I want to,” she said. “More than anything.”
***
“Hey, what’s this all about?”
Stan Willis was standing alone in a corner of the clinic’s rec yard, shaded from the sun by high, sculpted hedges. He’d been lazily tossing a baseball into the air, then catching it in a worn fielder’s glove.
Until he saw us approaching from the rear of the main building. Crossing the generous expanse of short, fresh-cut grass. His eyes riveted on us as the last ball he’d thrown fell with a dull thud on the ground at his feet.
“Could we talk to you, Stan?” Nancy Mendors was the first to reach the slim, brown-haired man. We’d thought it best to let her do so.
“Is something wrong?”
Though he addressed his question to Nancy, Willis’ eyes darted past her to where I stood, just a few feet behind her. Along with Victoria Tolan and Harry Polk.
Willis must’ve been outside a lot since I’d first seen him two days before. His tan had deepened, become a painful-looking burn.
“We’d like you to come with us.” Nancy’s voice stayed cool, noncommittal. A practiced clinician, though I doubted many psychiatrists had much practice handling a situation like this.
Willis was wary, but acquiescent. He even favored Victoria with a sly smile, but her returning look was marble-cold. Not much had changed, I realized, since Andy’s funeral.
“Sure,” he said at last. “If you want.”
Polk made a face, squinting unhappily in the sun. “You folks want to move this thing along?”
I touched Nancy’s elbow. “Let’s go, Doctor.”
Taking the lead again, Nancy turned and headed toward the wood-framed tool shed on the other side of the field.
An odd, tense procession. None of us speaking as we made the trek across the clipped, dry grass.
We arrived at the shed and Nancy took a ring of keys from her coat pocket. Opened the rough-hewn door. Again, in silence, we marched in a line inside.
The small, single room was stifling.
Nancy flipped on the overhead light, though it wasn’t really necessary. The shed’s splintered wood walls let in a constant, diffused sunlight. Enough to illuminate the racks of power tools, lawn equipment. A wide workbench covered with old hammers, screwdrivers, pliers. Boxes of nails, screws. A dusty, long-unused band-saw was bolted to the far end of the table.
“What are we doing in here?” Willis rubbed his hands nervously on his jeans. “I don’t wanna be in here.”
“I’m not surprised,” I replied. A glance at Polk told me he was willing to let me take point on this.
My
party, as he’d said.
Willis turned to me, face going pale under the scarlet blush of his tan. “What do you mean? Who are you?”
“Dr. Daniel Rinaldi. And you know damn well what I mean, Stan.”
He kept rubbing his hands on his jeans. Gaze darting from me to Nancy Mendors, then back again.
“Do I gotta talk to this guy, Dr. Mendors?”
“I’m afraid you do, Stan.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said quietly, “you killed Andrew Parker. Andy the Android.”
“
What?
No I didn’t. Andy killed himself. He hanged himself with a bicycle chain. Right here in the shed.”
“I know. But it wasn’t suicide. Not really.” Willis blinked, trying to compose himself. Even let a thin smile crease his face.
“
Not really?
What does that mean? This is crazy.
Andy
was crazy. Everybody knew that.”
“And nobody knew that better than you. Which is why you were so furious that Victoria liked him. Liked being with him. Liked him and didn’t like you.”
He tried to look smug. Or maybe offended, I couldn’t tell. Though his mouth twitched, and a thin veil of perspiration sheened his forehead.
“Isn’t that right, Victoria?” I didn’t take my eyes off Willis. “Isn’t it true?”
The girl stood in a corner of the shed, fingers curling the ends of her hair. Eyes wide, frightened.
“Yes.” A hushed, urgent whisper.
Willis stared at her, betrayed. Anger rising.
“This is bullshit! Andy killed himself ’cause he was crazy. He thought he wasn’t human. He always said—”
I moved closer to him, crowding his space. He tried to back-step, but bumped against the edge of the work table. Tools rattled. Shifted on the sawdust-coated surface.
“That’s right, Stan. Andy thought he was an android. A machine. Which got me to wondering—if he believed he wasn’t a human being, what made him think he could kill himself by hanging?”
I took another measured step. Reached into my pocket and showed him what was in my palm.
“See these, Stan? Know what they are?”
Twitching more violently, he peered at the pills in my hand. Shook his head.
“They’re Andy’s pills. His medication. I found them hidden between the mattresses in his room. He hadn’t been taking his meds. Not for weeks. Which was why his delusion had re-emerged. Why he was back to believing he wasn’t human. Other people here at Ten Oaks noticed the change. I learned from my friend Noah that they were afraid he was getting worse. But nobody could understand it. Couldn’t figure out why the meds weren’t working. Because nobody knew that Andy had stopped taking them.”
“So?” Willis swallowed hard. Clamped his hands on the table behind him to steady himself. Control the twitching. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Maybe nothing. Unless you talked him into hiding his pills. Unless you convinced him that he was doing so well, he didn’t need to keep taking them.”
“That’s a lie! I didn’t do that! That’s a lie!”
“I guess we’ll never know. What I
do
know is that by now he was fully in the grip of his delusion. Convinced he was a machine. Not a human being.”
I looked across at Nancy, who stood quite still.
“And that’s the important thing to remember. That’s why something Noah said once got me thinking. He said that Andy had ‘deactivated himself.’ And the word stuck with me ever since. Because someone who thinks he’s a machine
would
envision deactivating himself.
Human beings
die. Machines get deactivated. Shut off.”
Nancy took a breath. “Oh, my God.”
“You see it now, don’t you? Remember what’s in Andy’s files? The ones you emailed me? When in full delusion, he disavowed being organic at all. Refused to eat. Even referred to his own mind as his CPS.”
Polk stirred. “What the hell does
that
mean?”
“It stands for Cranial Processing Software. You see how perfectly consistent his delusion was? Human beings have minds, brains. Machines have cognition software.”
Polk sighed heavily. “Christ…”
I ignored him. “That’s also why his previous suicide attempts always involved stabbing himself in the abdomen. Or in the neck. Using
tools
. He was looking for the ‘off’ switch.”
“Like when I found him that time,” Nancy said, “on the kitchen floor. He’d jabbed himself repeatedly in the stomach.”
“Yes. Directly in his navel. With a screwdriver he’d stolen from the tool shed. But why a screwdriver? He was in the kitchen, for Christ’s sake. There were dozens of sharp objects he could’ve found there. Knives, whatever. But instead he takes a screwdriver—a tool—from the shed.”
Polk looked unconvinced. “But why bring it to the kitchen to do it? If he was already in the damn shed…”
“My guess is, he wasn’t alone in the shed at the time. Maybe some staffer was there, or another patient. Somebody who might try to stop him. So he pocketed the screwdriver and went to the kitchen, which happened to be empty. Found a quiet corner and tried—again—to shut himself off. And if Nancy hadn’t found him, purely by chance, he might have succeeded.”
By now, Stan Willis had calmed himself. The twitching had ceased, and his eyes had narrowed. Their gaze steady.
“Again—what does all that have to do with
me
?”
I took a long moment before answering. As the airless heat of the wood shed clung like drying clay.
“If Andy wanted to commit suicide—or, as he probably thought of it, shut himself off—he wouldn’t try hanging himself. I don’t think he’d believe it would actually work. Besides, he’d never tried it before.”
“So what do you think happened?” Nancy said.
“I think Stan wanted Andy out of the picture, so he could make his play for Victoria. I think he got Andy alone here in the tool shed, on his thirtieth birthday, and challenged him about his delusion.”
“Meaning what?” Polk said.
“Meaning, no matter how much Andy insisted that he was an android, a machine, Stan argued with him. Belittled him. Called him crazy. Doing the one thing you must never do with a delusional person—force him to prove that his delusion is real.”
Polk scratched his jaw. “You mean, like, if some head-case thinks he can fly, you don’t dare him to jump off the roof. ’Cause he might go ahead and do it.”
“Exactly. Which is what I think Stan did. At some point, after mocking him, tormenting him, I think Stan convinced Andy to try hanging himself. After all, if Andy was truly an android, hanging himself by a chain wouldn’t harm him at all. So, to prove Stan wrong—to prove that he really
was
an android—Andy wound a bicycle chain around his neck, tied it to that crossbeam, and hanged himself in front of his tormenter.”
I paused, suddenly spent. Feeling not the flush of triumph, but a slow, deepening sorrow. The realization that, even if I was right, it didn’t do one goddam thing for Andrew Parker. Didn’t bring him back.
The numbed silence that had fallen over the small room was broken by Victoria’s short, wrenching sobs. Nancy went over to hold her, but the girl didn’t let herself fold into the embrace. Instead, choking back tears, she merely looked at Stan Willis.
Meanwhile, her would-be suitor stood stiffly, back against the table edge. Breathing slowly and deeply.
It was Harry Polk who broke the silence.
“This is fuckin’ nuts.” He squinted at me. “You’re tellin’ me this is all over some teenage love triangle? That
this
nut-job talked the
other
nut-job into hangin’ himself so he could get chummy with his girlfriend?”