One September Morning (37 page)

Abby bites her lower lip. “Flint and I aren’t exactly talking. He came over a few weeks ago and we got a little short with each other. I think he was jealous of Jump. He blew a gasket when he saw Jump’s laundry spread out in my living room.”

“Good instincts. I always liked that guy.”

“Then I got testy with him when he smashed a photo of Jump and John.” Abby pauses. “At least I thought Flint smashed it. It was that weird period when the heat kept going off in the house.”

“Oh, right around Christmas.” Suz nods. “John showing his disapproval by freezing Jump out.”

“I didn’t believe that at the time, but if it’s true, then John had some astute insights about Jump.”

“Ya-ha. I say you mend your friggin’ fences with Flint and get him investigating Jump’s sorry ass.”

Abby can tell Suz is mad because her language has gone to hell. “I can’t call Flint. He’s got a life of his own, a job that consumes him.”

“Suit yourself. But you and I are going to get cracking on investigating the sordid past of Charles Jump.”

At the informal staff meeting the next morning, laughter and wisecracks abound as people discover the identity of their Secret Cupid. When Rhonda opens the Beyoncé CD and discovers that her Secret Cupid is Abby, she throws her arms in the air and gives her a huge hug.

“How’d you know I liked Beyoncé and hazelnut coffee?” Rhonda demands.

“I’m a good listener.”

“Thank you so much.” Leaning close for another hug, Rhonda whispers: “He’s not here, is he?”

Abby shakes her head. “The coast is clear.”

“Well, I’m here when you need me. Here drinking my coffee and listening to Beyoncé. I’m going to have the whole Day Room singing along by lunchtime.”

“Eighteen minutes till Getaway Friday.” Lizzy double-checks her watch, scribbles something on a chart, then tosses her pen onto the counter. “Not that I’m counting or anything.”

“Got plans?” Abby asks.

“That’s why I switched shifts.” An intern in the same program as Abby, Lizzy usually works evenings. “My boyfriend is taking me to Seattle for a fabulous dinner, then we’re staying overnight in that hotel on the bay. The Edgewater Inn?”

“That’s a famous one.” Abby has never stayed there, but she’s seen photographs. “You know, the Beatles stayed there when they visited Seattle.”

Lizzy tucks her short blond hair behind one ear studded with half a dozen gems. “What are the Beatles?” When Abby pauses to explain, Lizzy nudges her shoulder. “Kidding. What are you up to this weekend?”

“I get to spend the weekend with the love of my life.”

Lizzy grins. “Romantic dinner? Heading off on his seaplane to Vancouver?”

“We’re sticking close to home. Lots of tea parties with Nilla wafers. Walks in the park and hours of
Sesame Street
.” When Lizzy’s freckled nose wrinkles, Abby adds: “I’ve got my friend’s three-year-old for the weekend. Suz is flying off to Chicago for a wedding, so Sofia and I get to have a girls’ night in.”

Lizzy’s attention switches to the hallway, where a group session is ending. “What’s up, Doc?” she jokes, and Abby doesn’t have to look up to know that she’s talking to Dr. Jump. The icy shiver descending her spine indicates he’s near.

“Like I’ve never heard that one before.” Instead of heading straight out of the ward and into his office, his usual pattern, Jump stops into the nurses’ station and steps up to the counter right between Lizzy and Abby. As he checks something on the computer, he fishes out his dog tags and fingers the gold medal there, the replica of the Purple Heart that he’s so proud of.

It’s a struggle to keep her breathing steady. The revulsion of having his body so close is tangible, a bad taste in her mouth.

Most days she manages to avoid major exchanges with him, scheduling herself for group sessions other doctors are leading. Once a week she sees him in evaluation meetings, but so far the only patient they share is Emjay, so most of her evaluations are from other doctors.

She hoped to avoid him completely today, but her luck has run out.

“So what are you doing this weekend, Doc?”

Is she flirting with him? Abby remembers a time when his lean frame and crystal-clear blue eyes held a tug of attraction—long before the beast within had reared its fierce head.

“No plans,” Doc answers.

“But it’s Valentine’s Day.” Lizzy crosses her legs and cocks her head so that her blond bangs fall seductively over one eye. “Everybody needs somebody on Valentine’s Day.”

Stupid, stupid girl.

Abby jerks her gaze back to her paperwork as Jump snaps a chart closed and steps back.

“I’ve got a lot of patients who need me,” Jump says, folding his hands beneath his chin as if in prayer. “That’s about the extent of attachment on my Valentine’s Day.”

Except for poisonous notes.

“Ms. Fitzgerald.”

Abby freezes, her hand suspended over the file drawer.

“I have a special Valentine’s Day gift for you.”

Her mouth is suddenly dry, her tongue bunched in her throat as she forces herself to meet his icy blue gaze. “You shouldn’t have.”

His laughter pelts her in the gut, a helter-skelter spray of bullets. “But you don’t even know the value of this gift.” He steps toward her and casually rests a hip against the counter.

Fear burns through her with the awareness of his body, inches away.
He can’t do anything to you here. He can’t hurt you here, with all these people around.

If only she could believe that.

“You have been chosen to work under my tutelage for the next few weeks,” he says proudly. “I am going to give you my undivided attention, and share with you…” his voice grows low, husky, “everything I have to give.”

“Sounds like quite an honor,” she says, pulling out a random chart as a diversion. “But I’m sure there are other interns far more deserving. Rhonda could recommend someone else.”

“Ah, but she’s the one who insisted I take you under my wing.”

What? How could Rhonda do that to her, after Abby had confided in her?

“For starters, I’d like you to write up treatment plans on all my patients this weekend,” he says. “Due Monday morning.”

“Dr. Jump, that’s two weeks’ worth of work.”

“But a talented student like you needs to be challenged. All that time on your hands. Of course, I can cancel the treatment plans if you could help me with my laundry. It’s really backing up and—”

“What?”

“I’m kidding.” He smiles, a glint of pure evil in his dove blue eyes. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Fort Lewis Sharice

S
urrounded by a mess so uncharacteristic of her organized nature, Sharice sits on the floor of the den beside the attic stairs and flips through the Rutgers University yearbook of 2000–2001. This time, she carefully combs each and every page so that she doesn’t miss mention of him, the way she did before when she casually leafed through it and searched for his name in the alphabetized section.

Her perusal tugs at her heart as she comes across photos of both her sons. Football practice. Student government. Noah and a friend splashing in a fountain on a hot spring day. A photo of her sons lined up with other students waiting to give blood after 9/11. And there’s a shot of John leading a meeting as the head of a political group he founded called “Peace Now.” She snorts, recalling how that drove Jim crazy, that his son would rally to reduce the size of the U.S. Army.

But as she turns the last pages of the yearbook, her chest grows tight with the proof that there is no Charles Jump listed—in any grade-level list.

He said he went to school with John, so she has searched every one of John’s yearbooks on the off chance that Jump is two or three years older or younger than John. He’s not even listed under “not pictured.”

Something is wrong here.

The sick pang in her stomach is back—the feeling of dread that blackened her mood yesterday when the pharmacist called out of the blue to check on Madison.

“Your daughter is on a regimen that might require some supervision,” Philip said. “Her physician has prescribed antidepressants and tranquilizers, which we don’t see often in teenagers. Sometimes kids that age don’t understand that doubling up on medication or taking something ahead of schedule can be toxic. I just wanted to make sure Madison is vigilantly following prescribed dosages.”

She assured Philip that Madison would be very careful, made a point of counseling her daughter about it after school, then called Dr. Jump’s office to see if he might cut back Madison’s dosage.

Thirty minutes later when the doctor called back, his voice bristled with annoyance. “Is Madison having an allergic reaction to anything?” he asked Sharice.

“No, it’s just that…she’s just sixteen and I worry about her being on such strong medications so young.”

“Have you consulted another physician?” he asked in a low voice. “Because I have to tell you, I didn’t spend three years at the Mayo Clinic to have my medical opinion undermined by a housewife.”

“No, that’s not my intent. I’m sorry…” She went on apologizing, and by the end of the conversation Charles Jump’s tone lightened up, even to the point that he suggested she send him some of the delicious snickerdoodles like the ones he’d sampled at Christmas.

After that she tried to put the matter out of her mind. However, something occurred as she lay in bed last night going over things in her head.

The Mayo Clinic. That’s where he said he went to med school. But he’d always been so proud about studying medicine at Harvard. It was one of the things about Dr. Jump that had impressed Jim so much.

That had planted the seed of suspicion, which compelled her out of bed this morning on a mission to find out what she could.

Sharice turns on the computer and tries to do an online search. Computers are not her thing, so she’s not surprised when she can’t get class lists online from Rutgers or Harvard, where Dr. Jump attended medical school.

So she picks up the phone and makes a call.

It takes two transfers to get to the right place, but the person she speaks with in the records department is very kind. “I can’t give you a class list of graduates,” the woman explains, “but if you give me a name, I can verify whether that person graduated from Rutgers University.”

“Charles Jump,” Sharice says, her stomach tensed in a tight knot. “But I’ll need you to check a few years,” she says, quickly fabricating a lie. “You see, we…had a fire in our office and we’re trying to recreate personnel records.”

The woman seems hesitant at first, but she checks for Charles’s name in her data of matriculating students. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see the name here,” the woman says. “Maybe the dates are wrong? If you can give me his social security number, I can run him that way.”

“I’ll do that,” Sharice says, thanking the woman for her time. She’s still dazed as she ends the call and presses the phone to her chest.

Charles Jump did not attend Rutgers. Or if he did, he was not there during the years John attended.

The doctor lied.

Why?

She glances down at the yearbooks, class photos, pom-poms, mortarboards and tassels spread around her, mementoes of her sons’ college years. If Dr. Jump lied about Rutgers, what about Harvard?

The call to Harvard University makes Sharice nervous, but she persists, knowing that this is about more than a little white lie. It was one thing for him to pretend to be John’s friend; that lie was somewhat harmless. But Dr. Jump is now treating her daughter and her husband. If his credentials are fraudulent…and she was the one who pushed so hard to get them both in therapy…

Unfortunately, Harvard Medical School cannot verify Jump’s matriculation unless she provides a social security number. A call to the Mayo Clinic is another dead end.

What to do next? Sharice isn’t sure, but she knows she has to get to the bottom of this, has to make things right. She’s the one who fixes things, mends them, holds the family together.

She’s not usually the one making the mistake.

Fort Lewis Abby

“E
lmo loves five! Give me five!” Elmo’s furry red face fills the TV screen.

Two feet away, Sofia holds up five fingers and bobs her head in time to the music. “That’s five!” Sofia sings.

“Not so close to the TV.” Abby ushers Sofia back a few steps, then sits back down to her third treatment plan for Jump. She’s enjoying having Sofia here, but struggles to balance her extra work from the hospital with the joys of childcare.

This treatment plan is for a man named Derek who’s suffering from post-traumatic stress after deployment to Iraq. Derek, who went undiagnosed for a while, was nearly court-martialed after he barricaded himself in his apartment for three days. And right now, Dr. Jump has him on a high-dosage cocktail of antidepressants and tranquilizers.

That seems to be the pattern in terms of Jump’s treatment plans—this doctor believes in drugs, and lots of them. Not that the other patients aren’t on medications. It’s just that Dr. Jump prescribes very high dosages, higher than any Abby has seen in the treatment plans of other doctors on the ward. Abby isn’t all that familiar with dosages, and as a psychologist she will not be able to prescribe medications, but she worries that Dr. Jump’s dosages might be toxic.

“Yay!” Sofia claps as Elmo’s song ends. She skips around the coffee table, then pauses at her pink tricycle in the corner. “My bike! Let’s go to the park. Take my pink bike,” she says, flicking the pink and silver streamers on the handlebars.

“We’ve already been there. Twice.” But then, there’s plenty of time to play when you wake up at six a.m. on a Saturday. Abby yawns over her open book. “I’m glad you like to step out, kiddo. Give me two minutes to finish with this plan and we’ll head out again.”

“Two minutes.” Sofia holds up two fingers solemnly.

Abby pushes through the report, then helps Sofia ease her arms into her quilted white coat. “It’s cold out there, so you need your hat again.”

“Cold out there!” Sofia chimes as Abby ties the little pompom tassels under her chin. Under the puffy jacket, Sofia moves a bit like a penguin, and Abby has to stifle a laugh as she follows the little girl out the door. Abby lugs the pink bike over the front porch to the path, then they circle around the house and head toward the commons beyond the small backyard.

The sky has clouded over and, without the sun, the air seems colder. Abby pulls her hands into her sleeves, vowing not to keep Sofia out for too long. A few of the neighbors are out jogging or strolling with their dogs. Pedaling steadily, Sofia travels to the play structure where she parks beside the wood chips and runs to the purple slide.

Over on the lawn, a bunch of kids are playing football. When one of the kids breaks away and heads over, Abby realizes it’s her neighbor Peri Corbett, her hair tucked under a watch cap.

“How are you, Abby? I saw you out with the little one earlier. Suz’s daughter, is it?”

“Sofia. She loves the park.” Abby nods toward the football players. “I take it some of those players are your kids?”

“They’re all mine for the night. My son’s ninth birthday.”

“Tell him happy birthday for me.”

They are joined by a couple, new neighbors—Cory and Jack—who are walking a red dog with floppy ears and a fluffy tail that beats the pavement when Sofia pets him.

“Sweet doggy,” Sofia coos.

“Abby!” a man calls.

When Abby glances up at the smiling face of Charles Jump, her mouth goes dry. Defensive reflexes unwind like a mounting alarm: Protect Sofia. Tell everyone to run. Call the police…

“Hey. I saw you out here earlier when I was jogging by. Thought I’d bring a peace offering.” He holds up a Thermos with two plastic cups on top. “Hot cider.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Peri says, nodding approvingly. “Just the thing to take the edge off in this cold.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now,” she says. “I’m baby-sitting, and I’ve got a ton of work to finish off. I need to keep a clear head.”

“It’s nonalcoholic, my grandma’s recipe for hot apple cider. I know it’s more traditional to break bread together, but I didn’t think I could get you out to dinner.”

“You were right about that.”

Jump sets the Thermos on a nearby picnic table and divides the steaming liquid between the two cups. “We had a fight,” he tells the others. “She’s still mad at me. Can you tell?”

Abby turns away from him, infuriated, but she doesn’t miss the knowing smiles of the others, who think they’re about to see two people about to kiss and make up. Damn him! He’s got them charmed.

Of course, because he’s a sociopath. A textbook case.

Just a few minutes ago she had just been reading over the profile of a sociopath: a grandiose sense of self. A pathological liar who feels no shame or remorse. Manipulative and loaded with superficial charm—the charisma that was now tightening around her neighbors like a noose.

“You have to be careful with the clove,” he tells the neighbors. “Too much clove and it will taste like soap.” He lifts the cups and holds one out to Abby. “I wish you all could taste it, but I only brought two cups.”

“We’ll try it next time,” Cory says, politely. “Abby should have it.”

“No, go ahead,” Abby says. “You take mine.”

“It’s a peace offering,” Peri interjects. “It’s sort of a ceremonial thing, right? So you have to drink it.”

“Fine.” Because everyone is watching her, Abby takes a cup and sniffs. The amber liquid smells of apples and cinnamon, and the cup is already warming the palm of her hand. “Smells good.”

“Well, taste it already,” Peri says. “I love the smell of hot cider in the house. I use that mix at Christmastime.”

Under the neighbors’ scrutiny, Abby takes a sip, allowing the cider’s warmth to penetrate. “Delicious.” She nods and extends the cup to Jump. “So we’re cool.” She sounds like a jerk, she knows that, but her neighbors don’t know the big picture.

But Jump makes no move to accept the cup. “How is it? Too much clove?”

She sips again to appease him. “Nope. It’s perfect.”

He sits down at the picnic table and sets down the Thermos. “And who’s this urchin?”

Sofia sits atop her tricycle, steering nowhere and mugging like a model for a car show.

“You remember Sofia? Suz’s daughter.” Abby turns to Sofia, hoping the edge of distress isn’t obvious in her voice. “Honey, do you remember Dr. Jump?”

“Dr. Jump!” As she says it, Sofia does a little hop off the seat, her feet remaining on the pedals.

“Aren’t you a cutie,” Jump says.

“She’s a doll,” Peri says. “Sofia is in preschool with my son Zach.”

As Peri points out her kids among the football players across the way, Abby places her half-empty cup on the picnic table behind them and steals protectively toward Sofia. How is she going to get rid of Jump now? The neighbors think he’s her boyfriend.

Kneeling beside Sofia, she studies the back of Jump’s hateful head. He would be furious once he found out the truth: that she and Suz are investigating him, checking out his background. Abby is convinced that they’ll find something unseemly—enough to get him dismissed from his position at the hospital. And she’s convinced that when they dig deeper, they’ll discover that he is John’s killer, that he’s the man who was either jealous enough or angry enough or craven enough to take another man’s life.

The only answer is to leave…now. “We need to get going,” she says. “Say good-bye to everyone, Sofia.” A cold pain slices down the back of her neck, causing her to momentarily lose focus. Is she coming down with the flu? She should have worn a scarf. She pushes the tricycle with Sofia on it to the pavement, wishing she could huddle on the back and ride along. Maybe she and Sofia can take a nap together.

Behind her, Jump is shouting: “Hold on! We didn’t get a chance to talk.”

“Sorry. Gotta go,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Wait up. I’ll walk you back.”

She wants to shout back that she can make it on her own, but it takes all her energy just to focus on following the toddler on her tricycle. At the porch Sofia seems to move in slow motion, climbing off the tricycle, adjusting her hat, stepping up to the porch.

“Come on, honey,” Abby sighs.

The warmth of the house hits her along with a sudden wave of dizziness. Abby drops into a chair, grateful that she didn’t have far to walk.

“Are you okay?” Suddenly Jump’s voice sounds like it’s echoing down a hall.

“You have to go…”

“Abby, you need help. You’re responsible for this child.” His tone flips from concern to anger. “What the hell have you been doing?”

“Nothing.” The word peels from her throat as the upholstered arm of the chair comes up under her head. She collapses into its nook

She wants to call 911. She wants to wrap Sofia in her arms and hold her there till this storm passes. She wants to run and ask Peri to watch Sofia for a while because the world is spinning out of control, making her so dizzy, her body so heavy.

But she is unable to lift her head or move her lips.

“You drunken whore.” His words stretch from a distance. “If you won’t take care of the kid, I’ll do it for you.” His voice streams over her, circling the warm cocoon around her.

She wills herself to get out of the chair—get up and stop him!—but her body is a mass of stone.
Don’t take her! Don’t you dare touch her! Stop, right now!

“Come on, Sofia.” In her mind’s eye, malice curls the edges of his words like a parchment burning on the edges. Those flames burn in her head now, a fire raging out of control. “Dr. Jump will take care of you.”

His footsteps are the last thing she hears.