Projection (25 page)

"And if you tell him the truth, that could stop him?"

"Possibly.  It could short-circuit his pathologic defense mechanisms, dissolving the delusions.  I told you the mind is lazy.  With the past uncovered and all the facts on the table, it becomes much harder for a man's mind to resist reality."

"What if he'd rather die than accept it?  What if it's too overwhelming?"

That cut to the heart of the matter.  I took a deep breath, let it out.  "That's the danger."  I thought of Trevor's plan for mass suicide.  "Trevor's already talked about killing himself and everyone else on the unit."  I shook my head.  "But I have to believe I would never have met Michael Lucas if Trevor was dead set against learning the truth himself.  I don't think he would have given me enough information to start looking for it."

"Still..."

"It's a risk.  Anything can happen.  That's the main reason I wanted Michael to come back with us.  If Trevor saw that his brother had begun to forgive him, he'd be more likely to being forgiving himself."

Cynthia turned and looked out the window.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked her.

She shrugged.  "Nothing."

"C’mon."

She turned back to me.  "If he goes through with it — kills himself, I mean, or kills every one of the patients and hostages — will you be able to live with it?  Will
you
be able to forgive yourself?"

Hearing Cynthia lay out the possibility of failure so starkly made me focus on it, instead of rushing to think of ways to prevent it.  I thought of Nurse Vawn, of her unborn baby.  "I don't know," I said.  I pictured the locked unit absolutely still, bodies scattered everywhere.  And the terrible thought came to me that I would be left with the precise feelings Trevor must have experienced after burning his brother.  Guilt.  Despair.  Shame.  What if I was on a collision course with Lucas’ psyche, one step away from becoming a mirror of the emotions he had buried at the age of eight?  What if he was giving them to me like a virus?  The ultimate projection.  I ran my hands down my face.  "I don't know if I could forgive myself.  I hope I never have to find out."

Chapter 13

North Anderson had left his home phone for me on our voice mail at the Stouffer.  I called him from the room after I had booked the next USAir flight to Boston at 1:30
P.M.

"Hit pay dirt?" Anderson asked.

"Pretty much," I said, pacing back and forth in front of the windows overlooking the city.  The winter sun was cooling itself over the harbor, turning the water a brilliant green-blue.  The wind raised emerald swells with snow-white caps.  A new day graced a new city.  I glanced at Cynthia, curled up like a cat, asleep on the room's brown velvet chaise.  She hadn't lasted two minutes once we were inside the door.  "They're brothers," I told North.  "Michael's injuries were caused by Trevor when the two of them were kids.  It sounds like it was an accident.  Trevor knocked a pan of cooking oil off the stove.  They haven't seen each other since."

"Lord.  Talk about guilt."

I knew North was no stranger to that emotion.  I certainly wasn't.  I had been taking it to bed with me and waking up with it ever since I had let Trevor Lucas stand trial for murder in Kathy's place.  "It's an ugly adversary," I said.  "Grief is a pushover by comparison."

"I hear that."  He paused.  "So what's next?"

"I'll try to use what I know to get Trevor to surrender.  I wanted to use Michael himself, have him make a plea to his brother in person at Lynn State, but he wouldn’t go for it.  He escorted us to the door with a shotgun."

"He what?"

"We overstayed our welcome.  I pushed him a little further toward the truth than he was ready to go."

"Well, you've got bargaining power there, if you want to use it.  Pointing that shotgun at you was assault with a deadly weapon.  That carries a ten-year sentence in this state.  Swear out a complaint, and I can have a couple of the guys pick Lucas up, maybe make a deal for his cooperation.  Who knows if he's even got a license for that thing."

I thought about that, but not for long.  "What I need Michael to do would have to come from his heart.  He'd have to make the choice to help, for the right reasons.  The last thing I need is him blowing up at Trevor and blowing our chances of getting people off the unit alive."

"Can you perform this next act with a bullhorn?  Do you have to do it face-to-face?"

"Lucas sees everyone outside the hospital as the enemy — the forces of Satan," I said.  "I've got to go back inside.  That is, as long as I'm still invited."  I still didn't see any reason to tell him about Hancock and Kathy.  "The last time I called to check whether things had blown up was when you and I were at Hopkins."

Cynthia stirred, opened her eyes and watched me on the phone.

"Nobody blinked," North said.  "I called Captain Rice on-site before I left the station at seven.  They're expecting you."

"Good."  Some of the worry I was feeling dissolved, replaced immediately by rising anxiety about confronting Trevor again.  The distance between Baltimore and Boston collapsed.  I pictured Lindsey Simons’ mutilated mouth, Craig Bishop's open neck stretched over my knee, Gabriel Vernon dead on the floor at my feet.  I swallowed hard and focused on Cynthia, like a visual antidote.  Her beauty cleared my mind of terror.  "Did Rice tell you anything else?"

"Not a thing.  He's a man of few words."  He paused.  "You almost got the feeling he doesn't much care whether you come back or not."

"My flying to Baltimore wasn't his idea," I said.  "I forced him into it."

"I never trusted the state guys myself.  You better watch your back.  If they’ve got it in for you, you never know.  Anything can happen.  Friendly fire kills just as quick."

It sounded to me like Anderson's post-traumatic stress had left him paranoid.  "I'll be careful," I said.  "And if you talk to Rice again, tell him I'll be there."

"No problem."  He didn't sound ready to hang up.  "Hey, listen.  I just wanted to square one thing."

"What's that?"

"You probably don't remember, but when we were talking at the hospital, I said I didn't miss the streets."

"I remember."

"Well, that was a lie.  I do miss ’em.  I miss standing up to crime... or evil, or..."

"I think of it all as an illness — an epidemic."

"It sure feels that way.  And I still want to help fight it."  A couple of seconds passed.  "I don't know why I needed to tell you all this."

"You wanted to square things.  You want me to know where you stand."

"You can go nuts if you don't tell somebody what's really going on in your head."  He paused.  "I'm thinking I should take the department up on their offer.  Get myself to a shrink.  Then, maybe, I'll get back to work — real work."

"Seems like the right move."

"You stand tall up there in Lynn," he said.

"Thanks.  I'll see you again."  I hung up.

Cynthia sat up.  "That was the cop you met?" she asked.

"Right.  North Anderson."

"What did he have to say?"

"He talked to Captain Rice.  Things are status quo at the hospital.  They haven't stormed the unit."

She seemed relieved, but then her expression changed to a mixture of sadness and worry.  "Frank, when this is over, I..."

I figured she was nervous we'd be over.  "You want to fly somewhere far away together?  A long weekend in Paris, maybe.  A week in Monaco?"

She let out a long breath.

"C’mon, pick."

"Disney World."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"I offer you Paris, you take Orlando?"

She feigned irritation.  "It's my fantasy, all right?  I thought I got to pick."

"You do.  Disney World, here we come.  But at least tell me why I'll be shaking hands with Pluto instead of spinning a roulette wheel with Sly Stallone."

"I used to watch all the commercials for it when I was a kid.  My house was about three miles from Jasper Street — a row house like Michael Lucas’, just like all the others.  I used to dream about running away to that castle they show at the beginning of all the Disney movies.  The one the fairy flies in front of."

"Nobody would take you?"

"Take me to Disney World?  My parents were too drunk to take themselves to bed half of the time."  She shook her head, remembering something.  "You know what a ‘fly-up’ is?"

"Are we talking baseball here?"

"No," she laughed.

"Then, no, I don't."  I sat down in the desk chair.  "What's a fly-up?"

"It's a ceremony."  Her voice was flavored with the slightly embarrassed, tentative tone of a child speaking of something close to her heart.  "It's when a girl who's in the Bluebirds becomes a Campfire Girl."

"So Bluebirds are like Cub Scouts?"

"Only better."

"OK.  So a fly-up is like a graduation, or getting a merit badge."

"You got it.  Anyhow, the day I was supposed to fly up neither of my parents could take me to the ceremony."

"Because..."

"Because neither one of them could stand up."  She squinted at the ceiling.  "I was already in my uniform, set to go.  Blue cotton dress.  Blue cap.  Badges.  I remember each of them trying to get up.  I mean, they really did try.  Twice.  Dad, maybe even three times.  But they kept falling back into their seats at the kitchen table."

My eyes had filled up.  "I'm sorry," I said, my voice as solemn as if I were praying.  The ability of one human being to feel the pain of another is the best evidence I have found for the existence of a soul.

She winked.  "You had nothing to do with it."  She looked away, then back at me.  "I make it sound terrible.  It's just the way it was."

"Well, it shouldn't have been.  You deserved better."

"My parents didn't have it any better themselves when they were kids."

The words,
‘That's no excuse,’
were on my lips, but I did not speak them, because I knew they were untrue.  If you’ve never had the chance to be whole, it's tough to give someone else that chance.  My scalp tingled as I thought of the creed that had kept Rachel from being consumed by bitterness over her childhood injuries. 
There's no original evil left in the world.  Everyone's just recycling pain
.  "Where are they now?" I asked.

"My parents?  Here."  She nodded at the phone book, still open on the desk.  "At least they're still listed."

"Did you call them?"

"It's not time.  I have to have my feet planted a lot better.  A different profession.  A real place to live.  A life."

"You still want to make them proud."

She shrugged.  "They never got to see me fly up.  You know?"

"I do."  It is a terrible and exquisitely human irony that children inadequately nurtured almost never give up on the breast.  The thirst for love from a mother or father who cannot provide it is seemingly unquenchable.  I have treated sixty- and seventy-year-old business executives, politicians and physicians still desperate for approval from shriveled, emotionally barren men and women in their eighties and nineties.  "Maybe them not seeing you fly up is the reason you like that Disney fairy so much."

"Maybe," she smiled.

"When did you leave Baltimore?"

"When I was sixteen.  I ran away."  She paused.  "I'm not telling you anything else until after all this is all over."

"Fair enough."  I meant it, but my words sounded sharp.

She must have felt as if she needed to explain.  Her eyes locked on mine.  "I'm not the person you seem to think I am, Frank.  I don't have any reason to be proud of
myself
.  And I don't have a handle on how to do the right thing yet.  I keep screwing up."

"You're not alone.  I know something about how that feels."  I looked at Cynthia lying on the chaise.  The terror I faced back in Lynn made me want her more, not less.  "Come over here," I said.

She got slowly to her feet.  Without another word she unbuttoned her jeans and stepped out of them, leaving her in a black spandex bodysuit.  The light from the window shone on her light brown hair and the taut curves of her hip and leg.

It is a testimony to the incalculable designs of Nature that men and women will find each other even at the edge of an abyss.  There are lovers to rival Romeo and Juliet in every violent, run-down housing project in America.  There are lovers carrying on amidst hopelessness and chaos in Bosnia.  There were lovers in the death camps of Nazi Germany.

Cynthia walked to where I sat in the desk chair.  I reached for her hips — for control — but she stepped away.  "Don't," she whispered.  I let my hands fall back to my sides.  She came close again, reached down and pulled my black turtleneck out of my jeans.  "Arms up."  I lifted my arms, and she pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it on the bed.  She knelt down and pulled off my boots and socks.  She unbuckled my belt and unbuttoned my jeans.  "Now lift up," she said, almost sternly.  I did.  She pulled my pants off, then my boxer shorts.  I was naked, and she was not, which was a first for me.  With my excitement showing I felt vulnerable and in loving hands, a blissful combination.  She stood up in front of me.  I reached for her again, but she shook her head.  She felt between her legs and unsnapped the strap of cloth covering her.  "Keep your hands by your sides," she whispered.  She stepped flush to my knees, then straddled me, bringing us slowly together.  Her softness and scent brought me closer to the memory of Rachel rather than further away.  And as she rose and fell in the rhythm of our passion, I gave myself to her again and again.

*            *            *

We had the time to shower, holding each other under the spray, using the tiny bar of translucent hotel soap to clean one another's backs and legs.  Cynthia combed my hair and tied it in a ponytail using a gold elastic band from her handbag.  I called the front desk for a razor and shaved for the first time in three days.  I poured alcohol over the gash in my cheek and felt it burn in the raw, red-pink places where the scab had fallen away.

Neither of us said much in the cab to the airport or for half the flight to Boston.  Cynthia broke the silence.  "If things don't go well," she said, "should I do anything?  I mean, is there anything you'd want me to do?"