Kiss of the Sun (13 page)

Martha looked at the box on the table. The cover said
REVELL SNAPTITE—2015 MUSTANG GT.
The car in the picture had shiny silver sides and top, in contrast to the dull gray pieces Beulah was laying out on the table.

“I don't know, I've never tried.”

“You seem pretty smart.”

Martha took a seat. In front of her was a compartmented bin containing various craft items: multicolored pipe cleaners, Styrofoam balls, old wine corks, construction paper, stickers. Apparently these were materials that had been deemed safe for patients in this ward. Martha picked up a few orange pipe cleaners and started bending them around one of the corks.

Beulah spread out the paper instructions with line drawings showing how the pieces fit together.

“That looks like a pretty big project,” Martha said.

“Yeah, just something to keep me busy. I guess I like the idea of building something that can go
zoom
You know, like that song says: ‘All I need's a fast machine.' ”

Beulah separated the last of the plastic pieces from the frame, then pulled a sheet of decals from the bottom of the box. The sheet had dark blue racing stripes and larger metallic silver decals. “They won't even allow us to use paint in this place,” she said.

“How long have you been here, Beulah?”

“Just a week this time. They had me in the regular ward at first. Then I punched that orderly in the jaw and they put me over here in forensics.”

“You've been here before?”

“Yep. That time it was for about a month.”

Martha nodded. “Does anyone ever escape?”

“Not that I've heard about. We're in the high-security ward, so it's just about impossible. Anyway, they keep most of us so doped up in here you don't even know which direction is the exit. Why, are you thinking about busting out?”

Martha twisted a second pipe cleaner around the cork to make an animal with two pairs of long legs. “No, I was just curious,” she said.

“All in all, it ain't too bad in here, anyway,” Beulah said. “You get three squares a day, plenty of drugs, lots of TV. It's relaxing. Kind of like a vacation from bullshit.”

Martha gazed toward the barred plate-glass windows at the far side of the rec room.

“What's your hurry to leave? You've got somebody outside?” Beulah asked.

Martha twisted another pipe cleaner around a cork. “Not really. Just a few relatives in Atlanta. And a cat.”

“That's all? I'm not sure I believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're pretty. And you've got that look. That dreamy, distracted look. I've seen it before.”

“What look?”

Beulah leaned toward her. “Let me tell you something, girl. Good love is hard to find. If you've found it, you better hang on to it tight. I've had the wrong kind often enough to know the difference.” Beulah snapped two halves of a plastic wheel together.

“Hello, ladies.” Reggie sidled up to the table, a bundle of bedsheets under his arm. He looked down at the model box. “What are we building here?”

“A statue of you with a stick of dynamite up your ass,” Beulah said. “What do you think?”

“Martha, it's nice to see you up and active,” Reggie said, turning toward her. “I wanted to check in with you, because I understand you had a concern about your treatment here. Well, I just want you to know that your concerns are taken very seriously. Do you know I've won employee of the month three times in the past two years? I'm going to make sure you're treated with compassion and respect.” He put a hand on Martha's shoulder. She pulled away.

“You keep your paws off her,” Beulah said, “or I'll tear you into so many pieces you'll make this model look like it was finished a week ago.”

“Whoa,” Reggie said, holding his hands up. “Just trying to be social. Carry on, ladies.” He turned and left.

“Fucking octopus,” Beulah yelled after him. The woman with the tattoos looked up from her yarn craft.

“Does he harass you, too?” Martha asked.

“Not me. Are you kidding? He doesn't mess with anybody who ain't smaller than him or tied down. But I've heard others complain.”

“Why doesn't someone do something about him?” Martha twisted another pipe cleaner around the front of the cork and bent it to form a long neck and head, then set her creation on the table: a pipe-cleaner giraffe.

“Because he's a passive-aggressive piece of chicken shit,” Beulah said. “He only messes with patients who are so buzzed out they don't know what's going on. Your best defense against him? Just hang on to your marbles.”

When Martha's computer time rolled around, the patient with the slicked-back hair and glasses was sitting at the station, staring at a message on the screen that said,
SESSION EXPIRED. THANK YOU FOR USING MIDDLE STATE HOSPITAL IT SERVICES.

“Excuse me?” Martha said.

The man looked at her with a weird smile, stood, and left.

Martha took his place in the still-warm seat and typed in her patient ID number to log in. A clock in a small window in the upper left of the screen showed her remaining time: 60 minutes.

She opened her notebook to a page with a list of topics she planned to research. Bernard Somis was at the top of the list. She launched Internet Explorer, went to Google News, and typed the lieutenant's name in the search form. When the results came up, Martha felt the temperature of her blood drop. There were only two hits: an innocuous department press release from two years ago announcing Somis's promotion from sergeant to lieutenant, and a short article listing recipients of a service award from the 300 Club. Next she tried combining the words “Somis” and “death.” Then “Somis” and “murder.” Nothing.

She changed the search setting from “News” to “All” and searched his name again. This time there were many more results, including his LinkedIn page and assorted hits related to other people who happened to share the lieutenant's name. But nothing about a murder.

Martha sat back in the chair, sighed, shut her eyes. The memory was like a nightmare burned into her brain, an image she would never forget: Somis toppling over in the car seat, that bloody crater in the back of his head. His blood on her blouse. It
had
to be real.

She thought about trying to get in touch with Somis, but she no longer had his contact information. She called up the Atlanta Police Department home page, clicked the tab labeled
CONTACT US.
There was no comprehensive phone directory, but there was a link for the Public Affairs Department. That page gave contact information for the public affairs supervisor, named Sgt. Ellroy Davis. It gave his phone number and email address: [email protected].

Perhaps Somis had a departmental email address that followed the same format, Martha reasoned. Martha went to the Gmail page, logged into her personal account, then brought up a window to start a new email message. In the address line she typed [email protected].

The patient with the bright red hair appeared next to her. “My turn.”

Martha glanced at the timer window in the corner of the screen. Less than two minutes left. “Just a moment,” she said.

In the subject line of the email, she wrote simply,
Urgent query.
In the body she typed,
This is Martha Covington. We met last week at the Rory Nickerlane fundraiser. I believe I have new information about a case that I would like to report. Please let me know how I can get in touch.

Martha paused. What if she got a reply? Then she would have to admit to herself that Goodwin was right. Maybe she really belonged here, shuffling along the sterile corridors of Zanesville State Hospital.

She hit send.

Martha had dinner in the cafeteria seated across from the burn-scar woman, who seemed to oblivious to everyone else as she worked at her dinner in a trancelike state. Martha ate little but made multiple trips to the beverage area to get refills on the weak, watery substance they called “coffee.” It took about four cups before she began to feel the beginning of a caffeine buzz that might give her the mental edge she needed to break through her pharmaceutical fog, review the notes from her Internet search, and try to make sense of the images and events in her notebook.

Dinner was followed by an opportunity to watch Disney's
Frozen
in the common area, but Martha skipped it to study her notes and sketches in her room. She had also begun a new series of notes documenting the routines of the hospital.

At nine o'clock a chime sounded and a female voice on the PA system asked all patients in the ward to “please report to the pharmacy window.”

“C'mon, let's go.” Beulah threw her legs over the edge of the bed and worked her way over to the wheelchair. “This is the most popular time of the evening.”

Martha stepped out into the hallway and saw that a line had already formed leading up to the dispensary. When she reached the front, a blond nurse behind a window asked Martha to show her ID bracelet. The nurse typed the number into a computer, stepped away, and returned with a tiny paper cup. It contained the familiar olive-green clozapine tablet, along with a pink tablet.

“What's the pink one?” Martha asked.

The nurse squinted at the screen. “Um, that's aripiprazole,” she said. “Your doctor prescribed it as a supplement.”

Martha swallowed both tablets with water from a fountain by the window and turned to go back to her room.

“Wait, there's one more,” the nurse said, sliding another paper cup through the acrylic arch. This cup was slightly larger and contained a purple liquid.

“What's this?” Martha asked.

“Unisom. It's to help you sleep.”

“I'd prefer not to take it,” Martha said.

The nurse looked at the computer screen, then leaned toward the voice grate. “Well, it says here the sleep aid is optional, but it's recommended.”

“Hey, are you going to take all night?” The woman with the red hair sidled up to the window. “I've got a problem to report.”

“Just a moment, Lori.” The nurse turned back toward Martha. “Do you want your sleep medication or not?”

Martha picked up the cup. The redhead pushed her face up to the window. “I had a problem with my meds last night,” she began. Martha turned and walked away, cup in hand.

When she returned to her room, Beulah was already in bed, pulling the covers up around her neck. Martha put the cup with the Unisom on the bedside table.

“Ain't you going to drink that sleep juice, girl?”

“I haven't decided yet.”

“You better. It's the only way you'll ever get catch any sleep in this puzzle factory.” Beulah rolled over. Seconds later, she was snoring like a sawmill.

Martha used the remaining time as efficiently as her brain, still sluggish from the meds, would allow, methodically reviewing her notes from the computer session.

Her Internet search for information on Peavy Turner—real name Peter Turner—had turned up hundreds of pages of results on Google, but not a single news article related to his disappearance. Unfortunately, a number of potentially useful sites, including the FBI missing-persons database, were blocked by the hospital's IT department.

She'd also tried an image search for “glass animals,” and results were varied: There was a band called the Glass Animals, various objects for sale on eBay, a Swarovski online shop featuring crystal figurines. Nothing quite matched the snarling, menacing bestiary she remembered from her vision.

Martha heard a chime, followed by a PA announcement: “All residents, please prepare for bed. Lights will be turned off tonight at ten
P.M.
”

Martha stared at her notebook. One potentially useful item she'd found was a Wikipedia page about Greek Revival architecture. It had described the three major types of columns: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The second type, Ionic, with scroll-shaped ornamentation at the top, seemed like the best match for the four columns that fronted the mansion in her vision. She had sketched an example in her notebook. She'd also learned that the majority of such homes had been built in the 1800s and hence were usually registered as historic landmarks, especially those in the South that had survived the Civil War. Perhaps she could find an online directory of them, along with photographs. If so, she could try to find one that matched her vision.

The overhead lights went out at ten, as scheduled, but the room didn't go full dark. Instead, a nightlight in the ceiling came on, casting an ethereal blue glow. Martha sat up in her bed and stared at the fixture. She could make out the brand name, Nite-Glo, in raised letters.

Martha held the notebook close to her face but was unable to read her own writing in that dim light.

She lay back against the mattress and continued her train of thought. She considered the next element of her vision, that column of smoke, towering toward the sky. In the recent past, had there been a fire at or near one of those antebellum homes? It was a slim thread, but something she could follow up on. And then there was the final and most unnerving part of her vision—the young man lying prone in the ravine. Her intuition had told her the ravine was somewhere near that columned mansion.

In fifteen minutes the door clicked open and she heard “Checks.” She recognized the voice of Reggie, the night orderly. The door closed again. In another fifteen minutes, he came again: “Checks.”

Martha looked at the letters on the digital clock bolted to the bedside table. Half past midnight. She considered using the cup of Unisom, which still sat unused next to the clock. There wasn't much she could do in the dark that would be productive. She slid down in the bed, pulled the linens up around her neck. For what seemed like the hundredth time, she heard “Checks.” This time the door didn't click shut again.

She slitted her eyes and could see a dark form step into the room, then close the door. The shape came toward her bed, stopped, and stood next to it. From underneath her eyelids, she could make out a husky silhouette. Faint glints of blue light reflected off a pair of silver wire-framed glasses. Reggie.

She felt herself tightening inside, ready to scream, ready to flail. But the shape came no closer. He just stood watching her, silent except for the damp sound of his breathing. Finally he turned and left. She heard the door click shut.

Martha let out a blast of breath and realized she'd been holding it the whole time Reggie had been in there. She sat up and reached for the pendant at the side of her bed, with its emergency call button. Then she sat back.

No. Not yet.
She lay back down and stared at the blue room, once again wide awake.
You've got to hold on to every card you've got.

She picked up the Dasani water bottle from the bedside table, padded to the bathroom, and emptied it. Then she returned to the bedside, poured the dose of Unisom into the bottle, and recapped it.

Lying in bed, she held the bottle up and looked at the dark liquid in the bottom, gave it a swirl. One thing was clear: sleep, either natural or drug-induced, would not be an option during her stay at Middle State Hospital. And somewhere, in the hidden recesses of her subconscious, a dark plan was beginning to form.