Straw Men (7 page)

“Big explosion at Denny's?”

Christensen looked up. Harmony's acerbic lobby receptionist, Petra Smanko, was shaking her head, one of the few body parts her bullet-scarred brain could still control. She was sitting behind her futuristic telephone control panel, strapped in her wheelchair, wearing a cordless headset. She looked like a space shuttle pilot. More remarkably, her easy smile was undimmed by the wreckage of her life and the devastation in her head. Christensen found endless inspiration in Smanko's unshakable good humor.

“It's really bad today, isn't it?” he said.

“Worse than usual. Putting your dry cleaner's kid through college?”

He laughed. “Oh, you know, I let the kids sleep in and—”

“You were late getting out. I know the story. Hold it a sec.” She poked at her console with the eraser end of a pencil clamped in her left hand, which still had some function. “Harmony Brain Research Center. Good morning.” Then, “I'll transfer you.” She poked at the console again and looked back at him, nodding at the purple stain. “Grape jam?”

“Something like that.”

At the brown streaks down his chest. “Coffee?”

“Yep.” He started down the hall, toward the small research office he kept at the center. “Thanks for the damage report.”

“Add some eggs and bacon, make a nice Grand Slam,” she said.

Twice a week for the past three years, Christensen had come to this futuristic facility in the hills of O'Hara township, just northeast of the city, to work on one memory project or another. He'd spent two years in the Alzheimer's wing trying to understand how art therapy helps patients in the later stages of the disease reconnect with memories that once seemed lost forever. Colleagues had hailed the resulting paper as a breakthrough when he'd delivered it a year earlier at a conference in Houston, but by then he'd shifted his attention to the malleability of post-traumatic memories—a project inspired by Teresa Harnett's evolving account of the night she was attacked.

Harmony was not only a state-of-the-art neurological treatment facility, but a deep well of potential study subjects in various stages of neural disrepair. Some of their brains were reshaped by disease; others struggled with coordination, function, memory, and psychological scars in the aftermath of an accident or assault. Sometimes their stories hinted at the worst in human nature, sometimes the best. And sometimes the stories were a bit of both, as in the remarkable journey of Petra Smanko, whose ex-boyfriend had left a 9mm slug in her cerebral cortex four years ago. When Christensen first met her, she was just learning how to talk again. Now she was the center's full-time chatterbox, talking as if, any second, she might go mute.

He moved down the smooth concrete hallway, navigating past a young man in a motorized wheelchair. Christensen recognized him from the elaborate gang tattoo on his left forearm.

“How's your game, DeeCee?” Christensen slowed to the chair's pace and looked down. “I'll whip your butt whenever you're ready.”

DeeCee laughed. “I'm hittin' the board now at least. Gimme another week, but man, I hate those Velcro darts. Pussy darts. Want the spiky ones, man.”

“You bounced one of the soft ones off my forehead last week. Your therapist gives you real darts, I'm not even coming in the room with you.”

“Gimme a week, home. Be kickin' your ass.”

Christensen shot him a thumbs-up and moved on, turning right into a corridor marked “Skills Testing.” In small rooms on both sides of the hall, patients were struggling with tasks they once took for granted. A petite blond woman to Christensen's left was pouring water from a pitcher, soaking the table beneath the cup for which she'd been aiming. In a room to the right, Christensen recognized the back of an old man's bald head as that of former Mellon Bank executive Dwayne Laughlin. He was in his mid-80s but looked older; less charitable staff members called him the White Raisin. He was staring hard at a flash card of a horse, which his therapist across the table was holding up for him to see. “Spoon?” Laughlin asked.

Christensen turned the key on his office door, shoved it open with his foot, and flipped on the overheads. Everything was as he left it, a wreck. At times the place more resembled a landfill than an office, but his papers were deceptively organized. His filing system was drawn from the principle of geologic layering—the oldest stuff on the bottom, the more recent deposits on top. He understood the system and it served him well, though few shared his confidence in it.

He shrugged off his coat and sat down, then looked up when he heard footsteps in the hall outside, slow and measured. A moment later, the incredible hulk of David Harnett moved slowly past the office door. Harnett walked toward the vending area, apparently lost in thought, sipping from one of the small foam cups dispensed by the testing unit's coin-operated coffee vending machine at the end of the hall. The cup nearly disappeared in his huge hand.

Christensen froze, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. Had that really happened?

On one hand, a chance encounter at Harmony was probably overdue. Teresa had been a physical rehab patient here since shortly after the attack. By the time Christensen began his work at Harmony, Teresa already was a role model for other rehab patients who faced a long and difficult road after their traumatic head injuries. Her skull had been smashed into four pieces by an attacker who swung a thick glass wine bottle against it no fewer than thirteen times. The assault had sent her brain crashing around the inside of her cranium with the same force as if she'd driven a car into a bridge abutment at seventy miles per hour.

But in all those years, her one-day-a-week therapy schedule and Christensen's irregular Harmony research schedule had seldom coincided. Now, a week after DellaVecchio's release and Teresa's troubling visit to his Pitt office, her husband strolled casually past an office hardly anyone knew Christensen kept.

This was weird. Teresa was years past having to be driven in for therapy; Christensen knew he'd seen her alone with car keys in the Harmony parking lot. So why was her husband here, pacing the halls?

Christensen closed his door, peeking down the hall before he did. He felt a tightness in his chest and a buzz in his head as he watched David Harnett feed coins into a candy machine. What the hell was going on? At his desk, Christensen opened a drawer, then closed it. He moved his stapler from one side of his desk to the other. He spun his chair toward the window, wondering how Teresa had reacted to the news that Brenna, too, had received a threatening phone call. Suddenly he was in the hall, pretending to mosey down to the vending area for a midmorning snack.

From the back, Harnett was roughly the size and shape of the vending machine in front of him. He was older than his wife, maybe by twenty years, and it showed mostly in the thinning hair at the crown of his head and the fleshy strain on his belt, which separated his khaki slacks from a polo shirt stretched over his broad shoulders.

Christensen acted surprised and appropriately uncomfortable as Harnett turned his head. For an instant, the man seemed happy to see a familiar face. But with recognition came contempt, and it registered both in Harnett's eyes and in the sudden and wordless
whack!
he delivered to the side of the vending machine.

“Sorry,” Christensen said. “I was just, ah, sorry. Didn't know you were here.”

Harnett focused on the machine, saying nothing.

“I'll come back later,” Christensen said.

Whack!
Harnett grumbled, then gently bumped the machine with his shoulder. Behind the window, a Three Musketeers bar in space G3 shifted but didn't fall from its uncertain perch. Harnett pressed the coin return button, but got nothing. Christensen seized the opening.

“Does that all the time,” he said. “Pushes it out to the very edge, but the thing doesn't fall.”

Harnett shook his head, but he seemed just as relieved as Christensen that they'd found safe ground. “Then you're supposed to write off to Buttsniff, Ohio, or someplace,” he said. “Spend 33 cents postage to get your 75 cents back.”

“There's a trick,” Christensen said, then waited. “Mind?”

Harnett stepped back and waved one of his giant hands toward the machine. He wasn't smiling, but he didn't seem as hostile as Christensen expected. Christensen thought twice about turning his back on Harnett, but he held his breath and stepped forward. He reached up and put his hands on the top front edges of the machine and pushed, rocking it back on its hind legs, then let it drop. The front legs were maybe an inch off the ground when he let go. The hulk shuddered as it hit, and the Three Musketeers bar dropped into the delivery well with a satisfying
thud.
Christensen turned, triumphant, and took a modest bow. Harnett nodded his appreciation, but all he said was, “Nice fucking shirt.”

Christensen stepped aside as Harnett reached in for the candy bar.

“Rough morning, is all. I should just get a bib.”

Harnett pulled the chocolate bar out in a fist the size of a boxing glove, then opened his hand to show the treasure in his palm. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem.”

The two men faced each other in awkward silence, alone together in a room no larger than a walk-in closet.

“Were you here looking for me?” Christensen asked.

Harnett shook his head. His eyes shifted briefly to the corridor behind them. “My wife's here,” he said. “Regular rehab day.”

Christensen nodded, but the answer explained nothing. “You usually come along, then?”

Harnett narrowed his eyes. “Rough goddamn week. Thought I'd better.”

“Physical rehab wing's at the other end,” Christensen said. “What brings you down to the testing unit?”

Harnett said nothing. Not even a nod.

Christensen tried to fill the silence. “I keep a little research office, just down the hall.” Still nothing. How much had Teresa told him? “Hope the message about the phone call Brenna got didn't upset Teresa too much.”

Harnett's face clouded. Christensen imagined him withering a suspect in an interrogation room with the same hostile glare. After what seemed like a minute, Harnett said, “What message?”

“The weird phone message? Brenna talked to Captain Milsevic a week ago, right after it happened.”

Harnett's face was as unreadable as a shark's.

“The weird one, with the song lyric in it?” Christensen prompted.

“First I've heard of it,” Harnett said.

Christensen felt himself flush. Milsevic hadn't told the Harnetts. “I'm pretty sure Brenna asked Milsevic to let you know about it. She wanted to make sure you and your wife knew what had happened.”

“A weird phone message,” Harnett said.

“Right. Who knows what it might be, but it gave us the creeps and we thought you should know.”

“So, I'm supposed to thank you?”

“No. No,” Christensen said. “Look, we were just trying to make sure you knew, and I'm a little concerned you weren't told. It may be nothing. God knows there's cranks out there. Everything else aside, we thought you guys should know. Brenna just assumed, with you and Milsevic being so tight, that he'd keep you in the loop. Just in case.”

“Haven't talked to him in a few days,” Harnett said.

“And he didn't mention we got this call?”

“Already told you that. What song?”

Christensen felt for footing. The conversation's unexpected turn had taken him down a slippery slope. He was scrambling for an appropriate answer when Harnett repeated the question. This time his voice had an edge.

“The Springsteen lyric,” Christensen said. “ ‘Tunnel of Love.' Somebody called us and played it from a tape.”

“That's it? They say anything?”

Christensen shook his head. “That's why it was so, you know … Just the recording, the same verse as in that letter to Teresa. So Brenna called it in and turned the whole thing over to Milsevic. There's a report on file somewhere.”

Christensen heard soft footsteps in the hallway behind him. Harnett noticed them, too. They turned and saw Teresa walking toward them, uncertain eyes focused on the startling scene in the vending area. She was moving awkwardly, trying to hurry.

“She got this call when?” Harnett said.

Christensen told him the date. Harnett smiled, but it wasn't friendly. “A day or so after the hearing, is what you're telling me?”

Christensen knew where this was going, felt himself sliding into a conversation that should never occur.

“So let's get this straight,” Harnett said, his voice rising. “Eight years your little retard's inside, no problem. No threats. No stalking. Nobody gets hurt.”

Behind him, Christensen heard the rustle of Teresa's clothes as she approached. He'd let curiosity lure him down the hall, and now he was trapped. “Whoa—”

“Then a few days after you people spring him—”

“I should go, because—”

“Tell me something, buddy. You a rocket scientist?”

“—this is something we shouldn't try to—”

“Don't matter. 'Cause you really don't gotta be a goddamn rocket scientist to figure this one. But I'm gonna connect the dots for you anyway. We've got some bitch lawyer who took it in the teeth eight years ago who'll do anything to win this thing. We got a judge lets her spring her little cretin because of some fucking technicality. We got—”

“Technicality?” Christensen felt his anger rise. “Since when are we discounting DNA?”

Teresa was beside them now, refusing to look into Christensen's eyes. Her husband loomed over them both. Teresa touched David's arm, but he shook off the gesture.

“We got a freak with a hard-on for anything with tits, and he worms his way out of prison through some bullshit loophole. And suddenly, go figure, we got a psychostalker who likes Springsteen. Hmm.” Harnett's eyes bulged as he tapped a finger on the side of his head. “Let me think. Who could have made that phone call?”