Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (25 page)

CHAPTER 35

FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES ONLY

Seth and I slowly sipped a second drink. We were both tired and were talking less than usual, but between us was the comfort of an old friendship.

I took another pull on my bourbon and mused, “For medicinal purposes only.”

That made Seth smile. “Is that so?”

“The proof is in the proof,” I said. “When I was a boy, my mother used to take me on her visits to her sister Florence. Aunt Florence lived on the other side of the country in Portland, Maine. What I loved most about Aunt Florence’s house was her collection of old bottles. She had hundreds of them, most from the nineteenth century. The bottles had these wonderful shapes and sizes and colors, far different than the glasswork we see today. Even on some of the so-called clear glass, there were hues of purple and green when they were touched by sunlight. On the bottoms of some of them were pontil marks indicating they had been handblown.

“My favorite bottles had writing on them. Lots of little towns back then used to have their own breweries and bottleries, and I’d take out an atlas and look those towns up on the state maps. But I found the products themselves even more interesting. I can remember names, such as Moxie Nerve Food, and Dr. Liebig’s German Invigorator, and Dr. Jayne’s Alternative, and Miller’s Antiseptic Oil.

“We think modern advertising has a corner on hyperbole, but you should have seen some of the claims on her old bottles. They contained mostly booze, a much higher alcohol volume than anything being distilled today, but the contents were described as balms, tonics, purifiers, compounds, elixirs, and extracts. Nostrums, cures, refreshers, and remedies. Great vocabulary lessons. And there was one inscription on a number of these bottles that made me curious. And so I went to my aunt and my mother, and I asked, “Why do some of the bottles say ‘For Medicinal Purposes Only’?

“They laughed and laughed. And then they explained how there was a time when some doctors really believed that alcohol had medicinal purposes, and how distillers capitalized upon that.”

“For medicinal purposes only,” said Seth and smiled. “I wondered how you would get back to that.”

“Time in a bottle,” I said.

“More like lightning in a bottle. Whatever happened to your aunt’s collection?”

“When she passed, her children got it. I hope they kept those old bottles and didn’t sell them.”

“Did you ever think of starting your own collection?”

I nodded. “I’ve actually gone on expeditions to old dumps. So far I’ve found exactly one bottle—an old, rectangular apothecary container. But the digging and looking was a lot of fun. It was like searching for hidden treasure. And it was certainly a healthy way to hit the bottle.”

“Another drink?” asked Seth.

I shook my head. “The first two drinks actually felt as if they were for medicinal purposes. I wouldn’t be able to say that about the third.”

As Sirius and I both got up to leave, I said what had been on my mind the entire time, but which I only now stated: “It was a week ago at about this time that Heather Moreland was taken.”

Seth had known what was weighing me down, and gave me a sympathetic pat on my back.

I don’t know if any old distillers ever made a nostrum they called a “dream tonic.” It wouldn’t surprise me if they did. And I might have been a believer in such a product, if not a buyer. The fire came to me when I wasn’t seeking it, and for my sins known and unknown, I burned.

Haines was there to greet me. He was always a constant in my fire walk. Even when I avoided seeing him in my personal life, he haunted me. Langston Walker wasn’t the only one with a ghost.

The gusting wind stirred up the flames, boxing us in. The fire was talking to me again. It wasn’t only its crackling, popping, and sizzling; it wasn’t only the howling wind, or the lamentations of the smoldering brush, or the taunts of the dust devils.

“Pay the toll,” roared the fire. “Pay the toll.”

“What is it?” asked the Strangler.

I wasn’t sure if he was hearing what I was hearing, or if he was asking why I’d stopped and seemed to be listening to something.

“Pay the toll,” I told him, and with a shake of my head signaled our direction.

“The fire,” he said, as if I couldn’t see it everywhere.

I cradled Sirius’s limp form in one arm that refused to let him go, and centered my gun on the Strangler’s chest.

“Pay the toll,” I told him.

And then we walked through fire, and burned a little more.

My partner’s excited barking was even louder than the fire, drowning out its voice. His barking delivered me from hell, and I sat up gasping for air.

The fire receded. With a hot, trembling hand, I reached for Sirius and stroked his nape. “Thank you,” I whispered.

The moment after came; with it came the crazy stories. My oracle speaks in many tongues, and rarely allows for an easy interpretation.

Jacob Marley came in the form of Langston Walker. I stared into what looked like my mirror, and Walker materialized. Walker said nothing, but held up a sign that read “0 8 4.”

He disappeared before I could ask him what that meant.

And then Angie appeared in my mindscape. She was excitedly sniffing something. She was telling me we had to hurry. But I still wasn’t sure what she was saying. I did hear the voice of my one-time instructor, though: “You got to listen to your dog, Gideon.”

Like Scrooge, I got a third ghost. An unholy trinity. Emilio Cruz, or at least a marionette that appeared to be Emilio Cruz, lectured me. His mouth opened and closed, as if pulled by strings.

“Point number one,” he said. “I had nothing to do with my wife’s disappearance. Point number two, I don’t know anything about my wife’s disappearance.”

Cruz’s mouth wasn’t in sync with his words. He was lying, or he was a dummy, or both. His wooden choppers kept clicking, but they were at odds with the timing of his words. My sensory overload did its usual short-circuiting, and I fell asleep.

When I awakened in the morning, my body ached. My lips were cracked, and my skin was red and dry. It felt as if I was once more a harlequin that went around masquerading in a patchwork body of skin grafts. My steps were slow and painful, as if the fire was a recent event and not something in the past. I was dehydrated, and nauseated from the pain. After drinking two glasses of water, I went in search of some coffee. Imagine the worst hangover ever, combined with physical ailments that suggested recent burns. It was psychosomatic, I knew, but the mark of fire somehow manifested itself upon my body.

I sipped my coffee and took a chaser of aspirin. My recovery always takes time I don’t want to afford it. Instead of thinking about my PTSD, I contemplated my visions in the order of their appearances. What the hell was Langston Walker telling me? And why was he suddenly silent and forced to communicate through signs?

The paper he’d held up had the numbers “084.” I typed those numbers into my search engine and came up with a reference to a comic book wherein the code 084 meant an object of unknown origin. That wasn’t something even my subconscious mind would have known, but I found it ironic that I was thinking about an object of unknown origin.

Angie’s silence was more understandable. She was a dog. But I worked with dogs and was supposed to be able to divine what they were communicating. It was frustrating still not getting it. And what made it worse was Heather Moreland. Angie knew we had to hurry. At some level I knew we had to hurry. But that only made me all the more frustrated at my inability to figure out where to go and what to do.

Later, I would call Dr. Green and see how Angie was, but not now. There was other business I needed to tend to. I had to go call upon the dummy of my dreams. I had to go pull some strings of my own.

My shadow fell over Emilio Cruz. He was using a pressure blaster to remove paint and rust from a panel he was working on.

“What the hell?” he said, turning off the pressure blaster.

“I have some questions for you, Emilio.”

“You’re not allowed back here. This is a work area.”

“The sooner you answer my questions, the sooner you can get back to work.”

His face flushed red. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to call . . .”

He stopped voicing his threat in midsentence. Threatening to call the police on a cop isn’t usually much of a deterrent.

“I’m going to call your superior,” he hissed, rethinking his warning, “and lodge a complaint.”

“Are you sure you took anger-management courses?” I asked. “Your face is red and you sound furious.”

“He who angers you controls you. I won’t let you control me.”

“The last thing I want to do is control you. Like I said, I just have a few questions. I’m sorry if that upsets you.”

“I’m not going to give you the power to upset me. That would surrender my self-worth.”

The jargon was getting thick, I thought.

“During all of our conversations, Emilio, you’ve never seemed very concerned about Heather. I thought she was the love of your life.”

“I’m not her keeper.”

“And you’re not curious about what happened to her?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if Heather went off and ended her life.”

“Really? That would surprise me a lot.”

“People who die by suicide don’t want to end their lives; they want to end their pain.”

Most of the words coming out of Emilio’s mouth were jargon he’d picked up in therapy. I was reminded of my conversation with Seth the night before, and how I’d talked about the purported remedies described in those old bottles—the nostrums, balms, and elixirs.

“Heather was all about overcoming the odds,” I said. “Out of nothing, she made a life for herself. Her biggest misstep along the way was you.”

Emilio clenched his hands into fists. The tattooed snake on his arm slithered and undulated as the muscles in his arms rose and fell.

When he didn’t reply, I said, “I’m sorry. Is that a sore subject for you?”

“Anger is the only thing to put off until tomorrow.”

“That sounds like one of those posters in Dr. Barron’s office.”

“Talk to my lawyer. I have nothing more to say to you.”