Jack Daniels Six Pack (64 page)

That got my attention.

“When?”

“Chart says this morning. There’s a notation that we called you at home.”

“Why didn’t you call my cell phone?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Daniels. Would you like me to put down your cell phone as your primary contact number?”

“My cell phone should already be the primary contact number.” My voice got louder. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have tried it since you couldn’t reach me at home. Or you could have tried work. I do work for a living.”

I set my jaw and felt my ears burn.

“I understand, Ms. Daniels. I’ll make sure we use the cell next time. Did you want a glass of water? It will be a few minutes before your mother is ready.”

I declined, and sat in a relentlessly cheery waiting room, walls painted bright yellow and adorned with framed prints of rainbows and sunrises. I thought about the Glasgow Coma Score. Mom’s Glasgow scores fluctuated all the time. While she hadn’t spoken since her injuries, her response to stimulus and her eye-opening were on-again off-again. Her doctors told me that a PVS patient might have a low score one day, and then the next day she could suddenly be awake and aware. So much for Glasgow.

I spent a few minutes sitting and staring at a dusty silk flower arrangement on the magazine table and a man I recognized walked in.

“Hi, Tony.”

He brightened when he saw me. Tony Coglioso was tall, in his forties, and had classic Italian good looks. His father had been in a coma for three years.

“Hello, Lieutenant. Any change?”

“Up two points. How about yours?”

“Down a point.” He smiled, but it seemed forced. “It sounds like we’re talking about the stock market, and not our parents.”

Tony and I had seen each other many times over the past few months, exchanging little snatches of conversation in hallways and waiting rooms. Like me, he was divorced, but unlike me he had two adult children. I enjoyed his company, and he wasn’t hard to look at. I wondered why he never asked me out. I still fit comfortably into a size eight, and just last week, on the street in front of my apartment, a homeless man told me I had a nice ass.

“How are the kids?”

“Too busy to visit Papa. My oldest says it doesn’t matter, that Papa doesn’t hear anything anyway.”

“He hears,” I promised him. “He hears every word.

” “Yeah. Well. You on your way up?”

I glanced at Julie, who’d been watching our conversation. Julie nodded.

“Go ahead, Ms. Daniels.”

I smiled at Tony. “I guess I am.”

“Would you like to share an elevator with an old paisan?”

“I’d be honored.”

We didn’t talk during the elevator ride. Though some of the cops in my district would label me as aggressive, I wasn’t that way with men. It didn’t make sense. I could bust down a door and handcuff a murderer, but I’ve never asked a guy on a date. Not once. In all of my romantic encounters, I’d been a follower rather than a leader.

Even worse, I was crummy at dropping hints. Perhaps if I said something like, “Gosh, it’s been a really long time since I got laid.” Would a guy pick up on that?

I didn’t have a chance to find out. The elevator stopped, and Tony went left, without a word or a wave.

Of course, he was off to visit his PVS parent, so I couldn’t really fault his manners.

My own PVS parent was lying peacefully on her bed. A cotton bandage covered the hole in her neck, where the feeding tube went in. Her eyes remained closed, even when I shut the door extra loudly, as I always did.

“Hi, Mom. Still napping, I see.”

I sat in the rocking chair next to her, held her withered hand, and told her about my day.

We talked for an hour or so. I tried to remain cheery and upbeat. Regardless of what I’d told Tony, I had doubts that Mom even knew I was there. But on the slight chance she did know, I didn’t want to depress her.

When I was all talked out, I stood up, stretched, and then did my poking and prodding. I checked her diaper. Examined her for bed sores. Tickled her feet and pinched her arm, hoping to provoke some kind of response.

“You know, Mom, you’re only supposed to sleep for one-third of your life. You’re using up your allotment here.”

After a pillow fluff and a kiss on the cheek, my attention drifted and I wondered if Tony was still here. A kind, good-looking, single man my age was a rarity.

How hard could it be to ask a guy out for a cup of coffee? What’s the worst that can happen? He tells me no? On several different occasions, men have tried to kill me. Getting rejected had to be easier than that.

“See you tomorrow, Mom.” I leaned down, whispered in her ear. “I think I’m gonna ask him out.”

I closed the door behind me, gently this time, and wandered down the hallway.

Tony had left his door open, and when I poked my head in I saw him holding his father close, his face buried in the older man’s chest.

He was sobbing. Great heaving sobs that shook his whole body.

Before I could back away, he noticed me, his face a mask of rage and tears.

“Leave me alone, for crissakes!”

“I . . . uh . . . sorry.”

I backpedaled, not able to get to the elevator quick enough.

In the car ride home I second, third, and fourth-guessed myself. My conclusion: A coma clinic isn’t a smart place to pick up men.

I lived in an apartment in Wrigleyville, a stone’s throw from where the Cubs played. The rent was outrageous and the neighborhood younger than me by two decades. I parked next to a hydrant on the street and lugged the evidence bag up the stairs and to my door.

After disarming the alarm, I went into my kitchen and discovered the cat had been playing his favorite game—toss the kitty litter out of the litter box.

I hated that game, but preferred it to his second-favorite, crap on Jack’s bed.

I decided to leave the mess until tomorrow. There was a lump of solidifying cat food in the bowl, and I couldn’t remember if it was from this morning or yesterday. I scraped it into the garbage and opened a fresh can.

Mr. Friskers leaped onto the counter upon hearing the can opener.

“You don’t greet me when I come home, but you come running when I give you food.”

He didn’t reply. I dumped the food into his dish and he sauntered over and sniffed it. Then he looked at me, his face the picture of utter disappointment.

“How about a thank-you?”

The cat ate without thanking me.

I plodded into the bedroom, took off my outfit and judged it unsmelly enough to hang up, and washed off my makeup in the bathroom sink. I followed that up with a careful mirror examination of my face, studying the wrinkles and deciding I needed nothing short of spackle to fill them in. My roots were showing too. No wonder Tony wanted me to get away from him.

After dunking my head into a bucket of Oil of Olay, I put on one of Latham’s old T-shirts and crawled into bed.

Latham was my ex-boyfriend. I loved him, but messed up the relationship by being me.

I reached across my blanket for the remote, and made an unpleasant discovery: Mr. Friskers had indulged in his second-favorite game after all.

“Dammit, cat!”

I curbed a desire to toss him out the window, a desire I often had but never seriously considered because Mom loved the damn cat. Ten minutes later I’d cleaned up Mr. Friskers’s gift, microwaved a chicken parm Lean Cuisine for myself, and got under the covers to watch TV.

The videotapes from the Kork case called to me from their bag.

I ignored them, sticking with sit-com reruns and zany late-night talk show antics. But the jokes weren’t funny, and my mind wouldn’t let me relax. I brought those tapes home to watch them. And I only had forty-eight hours to find some kind of lead.

But I didn’t want to watch videos of people being tortured to death.

But this was my job.

But they might not even help the case.

But they might.

But, but, but.

Finally, when the only thing on was infomercials and pay-per-view porn, I crawled out of bed and went for the Jewel bag.

I told myself I could handle it. I told myself that the people on those tapes had been dead a long time. They were beyond my control. They weren’t in pain anymore. I was strong. I could handle it.

I could handle it.

I picked out a tape at random and shoved it into my VCR.

Snow. Then an image.

A teenaged girl. Tied to a chair. Crying.

“Hi, Betsy.”
Charles Kork’s voice, low and straining to be seductive.
“We’re going to play a game. It’s called ‘Please God Make It Stop.’ You see all of these nails? I’m going to hammer them into you, one at a time, and you’re going to beg God for it to stop. Are you ready?”

This happened in the past. I could handle it. I was a police lieutenant.

“Look at how big this nail is, Betsy. I bet it’s really going to hurt.”

I could handle it.

“Here it comes!”

Kork put the nail on the girl’s knee.

I forced myself to watch.

Chapter 4

M
Y FATHER WOULD
. . . do things. To himself. To us.”

“What kind of things, Alex?”

Alex shifts on the shrink’s couch, stares at a small water stain on the ceiling. The office is too bright for Alex to get comfortable. It’s like being scrutinized under a microscope.

“Father’s a very religious man. A member of Los Hermanos Penitentes. Are you familiar with the group?”

“Flagellants. They lash themselves to atone for their sins.”

“They’re a Christian sect dating back to the sixteenth century, extremely strict, focusing on redemption through pain. They kneel on tacks. Rub salt and vinegar into their wounds. Mutilate themselves to absolve their sins. They also whip their children. Or make their children whip them.”

“Your father would whip you?”

Alex’s eyes close, memories flooding in. “Among other things.”

“How often did this occur?”

“Sometimes a few times a month. Sometimes every day.”

“And where was your mother during all of this?”

“Dead. When I was just a kid.”

Alex wonders if revealing the next part is wise. But what good is therapy without a little disclosure?

“My mother died of cancer, after I was born. Father took up with different women after that. Bad women. I remember one of them who wasn’t so bad. Father killed her. He beat her to death and buried her in the basement.”

Alex turns to assess Dr. Morton’s reaction. The good doctor remains composed, sitting in his high-back leather chair. Probably fancies himself Sigmund Freud.

“Were the police ever involved?”

“No. Father claimed she ran away, and ordered us never to speak about her.”

Dr. Morton leans forward. “Sometimes, when something traumatic happens to small children, they create events to help them deal with the trauma.”

“You mean maybe I imagined her death, and blamed my father for it? Because he abused me and she was missing?”

Dr. Morton makes a noncommittal gesture.

Alex considers. “That’s interesting. But not true in my case. I watched Father murder her. He tied her to a beam and flayed all of the skin off her body with a cat-o’-nine-tails.”

“And you saw this?”

“Father made me help.”

Dr. Morton jots something down on his notepad.

Alex smiles. “You don’t believe me.”

“I believe this is what you believe, Alex. In our last session, you mentioned your father is still alive.”

Alex thinks of Father. “Yes. He is. If you can call it living.”

“It’s difficult to believe he was never arrested.”

“Isn’t it? I wonder about that sometimes. How different I’d be if someone had stopped him. How many cats would be alive.”

Dr. Morton’s pen stops on the paper. “Cats?”

Alex yawns. It’s been a long week. Not much sleep.

“I kill cats. I get them from animal shelters, and drown them in a bucket of water.”

“Why do you do this, Alex?”

“It makes me feel better.”

“How often?”

“When the need arises. Does that shock you, Doctor?”

Alex meets Dr. Morton’s gaze. The man doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“No. I don’t judge, Alex. I listen, and try to help. When was the last time you killed a cat?”

“A few days ago.”

“Do you think that hurting animals is a way to release some of the pain you endured as a child?”

“Yes. Plus . . .” “Plus?”

Alex grins. “It’s funny to watch them struggle.”

Dr. Morton stands up, walks to the window, his hands clasped behind his back.

“You’re in control of your own fate, Alex, not a victim to it. At an early age, we all create unique ways to deal with life. With determination and effort, we can change. I don’t think you believe that killing cats is therapeutic, or beneficial, and the pleasure you gain from the act isn’t substantive.” The doctor turns around, raising an eyebrow. “We’ve talked about setting goals before.”

Alex knows where this is headed.

“You think I should quit killing cats?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah. I could probably do that.”

Dr. Morton nods, playing the mentor role to the hilt.

“How are your other goals? You seem more at ease since last we spoke.”

“I’m getting all of my ducks lined up,” Alex says.

“Any ducks in particular?”

“Tying up loose ends from my past. Working to get over it. Taking small steps, instead of large ones, like you said.”

“Glad to hear it. How about that person you’ve fallen in love with?”

Dr. Morton flips through his notebook, but Alex mentions the name and saves him the trouble.

“Everything is going perfectly. Exactly according to plan.”

“And this love—it’s reciprocated, right?”

Alex wonders about this often.

“That’s an interesting question, Doctor. Can you ever truly know if love is being returned? You wear a wedding ring, so I assume you’re married, and I assume you love your wife. But even if she says she loves you, you can’t crawl around in her head and feel it for yourself. You can’t ever truly know.”