Do No Harm (44 page)

Broken bottles, gravel, weeds, and a few chunks of concrete left over from the demolition. A scorched car sat up in blocks in the middle of the lot. Nobody in sight.

Cautiously, David stepped off the street and entered the dark, deserted lot. He noticed a slat missing in the fence at the periphery and headed toward it. An opening to another street. His Brooks Brothers loafers crunched gravel underfoot as he walked slowly forward. His mind raced with all the reasons it was foolish for him to be out here in this neighborhood in the middle of the night pursuing a dangerous fugitive, but something drew him forward, a deep-seated compulsion.

Clyde had been careful so far to attack only those who couldn't effectively fight back; David hoped he was too timid to go after an able-bodied man.

David stumbled over a beer bottle, and it shattered against a rock with a dry, popping sound. He paused, leaning on the hood of the torched car.

Through the myriad cracks of the windshield, he saw two eyes glinting in the darkness. His mouth went instantly dry, and his voice seemed to catch in his throat on the way up. "Clyde?"

The door creaked open. David stood frozen, one hand resting on the car hood, as a rustling figure got out and slowly took shape in the darkness. The door closed with a bang, then Clyde stood over him, his face dark and shadowed.

The two men faced each other, David looking up at Clyde. Excitement mingled with fear, kicking both up a notch.

Clyde calmly drew back a large, puffy fist and struck David in the face. David's head snapped down and to the side, a splattering of blood leaving his mouth and spraying across the car's hood. The punch made a dull thud, that of a dropped orange hitting asphalt. The action was oddly matter-of-fact; the men had observed it as it occurred, as if they were both somehow detached from it. Clyde made no move to strike David again.

Slowly, David raised a hand to his mouth and pressed it to his split lip. He had felt no pain, just a sudden pressure. His stomach churned.

He turned back to Clyde, careful to keep his head lowered so as not to make eye contact. The thought of Diane's soft whimpering the first time she kissed him in the hospital room brought on a sudden, intense rage, but he fought it away. Anger did him little good here, as it did little good on the ER floor.

Only Clyde's large stomach and chest were within his view. The sickening and frighteningly familiar combination of body odor and orange candy-coating hung in the air.

It occurred to David how surreal it was to be threatened physically and how ill equipped he was to handle it. He'd been in one fight in his life--Daniel Madison in third grade over a stolen Sandy Koufax baseball card. The ass-kicking Daniel administered had convinced David subsequently to pursue other avenues of conflict resolution. And to root for the Giants.

"You don't know," Clyde said, his words a slur. "You don't know how scary I can be."

"Yes, I do," David said. Clyde might strike him at any moment. He tried to figure out where he'd hit Clyde if he had to defend himself. Neck? Crotch? "But you're in danger. I can help. I can bring you in myself, and make sure you're taken care of."

"I'm not a game." Clyde's voice, deep and raspy, was pained. "You'd better leave me alone."

"Clyde, listen to me." David's voice was shaking, though he was doing everything to keep it even. "I saw the films of the fear study. I know what they put you through when you were a kid, and how wrong it was. I understand why you're angry--you have every right to be angry." He sensed Clyde's shape relaxing slightly, shoulders starting to lower.

"No one's born with problems like mine," Clyde said. "Someone made me."

"If you come with me, we can talk to the authorities together and explain everything that's happened to you," David continued, in as calm a voice as he could muster. "But as long as you're out here and wanted, you put yourself in danger."

"I'm not in danger. They're the ones. They're the ones who are scared of me."

"Clyde, I know there's a part of you that doesn't want to do these things to people. I know there's a part of you that wants to be better." Wording the question like a statement, trying to pick up ground. David stared up at Clyde's shadowy face, framed in silhouette by the glow of a distant streetlight.

"I tried to go into a clinic," Clyde said. "To stop the feelings that were starting to come. I wanted them to make me better. To give me . . . things . . . to make me better." Fear crept into his voice. "But I got to the parking lot and saw them with their white coats and I couldn't. My hands were sweating. I dropped my orange bottle, but it was empty."

The orange bottle--for prescription drugs? Clyde's cryptic words were confirming connections David had already made. Connolly's study had left Clyde terrified of doctors. Or at least of receiving treatment. That's why he'd been trying to cure himself.

"How about if I went with you?" David asked. "To get help?"

A voice, small and defiant, like a child's. "No."

"If you won't go with me to get help, I have to believe you're not very serious about getting better."

A low humming sound broadened into a sob-stained cry. David waited silently, shocked, as Clyde wept and then fell silent. After a pause, Clyde said, "People talk at me but their voices don't have any color. They're metal and cold. They scrape my ears." His words were distorted from crying, but his tone was more gentle. Confessional. "It's like there's darkness everywhere and in my eyes until someone smiles and then it gets light." A mournful pause. "It hasn't been light in a long time."

David tried to collect his thoughts.

"I'm not filled inside," Clyde continued. "It's like straw instead of skin, and ropes instead of veins. I'm rotting. I'm rotting from the inside out, but I still move around in my body." Clyde beginning to cry again. Rocking on his feet, muttering. "Three, two, one. Back from the door." Calming himself. When he raised his head, his eyes gleamed, sharp-focused and angry. A forged connection--vulnerability followed by intense animosity.

David took a small step back. "There are people who can talk to you." He made sure not to mention psychologists or psychiatrists. "Make you feel better. Plus your wounds--your wounds from the alkali--those need to be treated as well."

Clyde turned and spat. "I can taste my rot. It's like there's a dead rat in my throat and it's melting."

"That's a side effect," David said, "and another reason you need help. You've been poisoning yourself with the drugs you're taking."

Clyde's shadow stiffened, rearing back, and David realized he'd made a terrible mistake.

"I don't take drugs." The fist drew back calmly again, like a piston, and drove down into David's face.

David came to with gravel in his mouth. Using the front bumper of the car, he pulled himself to his feet and spit out the gravel on the hood. His mouth was warm and salty; when he studied the gob of spit in the moonlight, he saw it was dark, lined with blood.

The vice-grip of a headache seized him suddenly and intensely, pulsed three times, then dissipated. He slid up on the hood, careful to miss his spit, and sat with his feet on the front bumper. His pants were ripped and bloody at one knee. He caught his breath slowly, blotting his split lip with a sleeve and going through a neuro checklist. He didn't have any weakness or altered sensations, and there seemed to be no clouding of his mental facilities. He thought about getting himself to the ER to be checked out, but continued toward the missing slat in the fence on the far side of the lot. Halfway there, he noticed another slat that had been shoved aside, farther down the fence. This one appeared to lead not to a street but an alley. David was fairly certain the slat had been in place before his confrontation with Clyde.

He headed over and stepped through the fence without first scanning the alley. He was tired, aching, pissed off, and no longer cared to slow down for the sake of taking precautions. A homeless man shuffled from behind a Dumpster, approaching David in threatening fashion, but David lowered his hand from his bloody lip and froze him with a glare.

He trudged out from the alley and found himself on an empty street of run-down apartments. Dilapidated cars were parked along the curbs--Chevettes with tinted windows, El Dorados on sunken shocks, trucks with soil scattered in the beds. On the apartments, screens hung off windows by single pegs; clean patches of wood were visible where decorative shutters had recently fallen off. David walked along the torn-up strips of grass intended to decorate the sidewalks, not really sure for what he was looking. He paused at the corner of the street, staring at the row of quiet, decaying buildings. Insects chirped somewhere nearby, though there was little vegetation.

The realities of the situation struck him. He was alone, in a bad part of town at night, searching the streets for an assailant.

David turned purposefully and began the long walk back to his car. Beside an overturned Healton's shopping cart, a man slept on the sidewalk, drawing deep, shuddering breaths. David circled him, passing beside a car.

A parking permit hanging from the car's rearview mirror caught his eye: UCLA MEDICAL CENTER. Expired in May, three months ago. The month Clyde was fired.

David froze, peering at the car. A chipped brown Crown Victoria. On the dash sat an empty box of Nobleman's Zinc Lozenges and a loose twenty-gauge needle, still in its plastic sheath. Wrappers and soda cans covered the backseat.

Carefully sidestepping the homeless man, David headed for the run-down apartment building closest to the car. He ran his finger down the list of names on the mailboxes, searching for Clyde's to no avail. He did the same at the apartment building next door. And the one next door to that. He was just about to give up when a name caught his eye. Slade Douglas. Apartment 203.

The lobby featured a circular couch with the stuffing showing and a large dead fern. The carpet covering the stairs was worn through in the middle. A shattered lightbulb littered the landing between the floors.

A bare flickering bulb was all that lit the second floor. Maroon carpets and brown peeling wallpaper made the hall seem darker than it was.

David paused outside the door to Apartment 203, then slowly drew his eye close to the peephole. A large form, coming directly at him.

He sprang back, nearly tripping over his feet, and darted for the alcoved doorway to Apartment 202. As Clyde's door swung open, David pressed himself flat against the neighboring door. He heard three dead bolts lock, one after another, then Clyde swept past him, banging into a wall. Clyde stumbled down the hall toward the stairs, pulling on a torn jacket and muttering under his breath.

Loud footsteps on the stairs, then all was still. David realized he'd been holding his breath, and he let it out in a rush. He felt light-headed.

Walking back outside, he headed out of view along the side of the building, in case Clyde returned. He paged Yale again, this time to his cell number, then switched his phone over to vibrate mode. Peering up the street, he wondered where Clyde had gone. Probably to spy on David again, to make sure he'd left the area.

Pacing impatiently beneath a fire escape, David waited for Yale's return call. None came. He'd just decided to page Yale again when the muffled cries of a woman caught his attention. Looking up the side of the building, he saw he was standing beneath Clyde's window. The muffled cries were in all likelihood coming from Clyde's apartment.

David's face went slick with sweat. The breeze kicked up, and he lost the sound of the cries momentarily, before it died down. Ed had pointed out that police response time to this area was slow. Clyde could return and resume torturing, or even kill, whoever was up in his apartment before a 911 call could be responded to. And Yale hadn't even called back.

David walked back and forth beneath the fire escape, the cries overhead driving him to a near-panic. His mind stumbled through terms--suppressed evidence, search warrants, unlawful entry--searching for something to guide him, but he was forced to acknowledge that his legal expertise was derived almost entirely from bad movies. A pained, stomach-deep grunt overhead drove him to action.

David pulled on a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket, then jumped up, grabbing the fire escape ladder and yanking it down. He climbed to the first landing, then the second, the structure creaking beneath him.

Peering through Clyde's filthy, cracked window, he saw little more than an unmade bed. The reflection of the glowing Healton's Drugstore sign shined in the glass, and David turned to look at the store, visible beyond the empty lot. In front of the store, bathed in a cone of light, sat his Mercedes, in clear view from Clyde's window. David grimaced at the distinctive tilt of the headlights--his car stuck out glaringly from the surroundings. Clyde must have recognized it pulling up, and realized David had come looking for him. The Pearson Home was also distinctly observable from Clyde's apartment. It struck David as noteworthy that Clyde had never left the vicinity of the Happy Horizons home in which he'd spent part of his childhood. Clearly, he derived some comfort from being nearby.

The woman's cries brought David's attention back to the dark apartment. He carefully removed a long shard of glass from the cracked window and reached through, lifting the catch. He pushed the window up and slid inside, resting the shard on the sill.

The first thing to catch his attention was the odor of decay--nearly unbearable. Thousands of motes swirled in the artificial light filtering through the window.