The Artifact (17 page)

“You’ll be getting raucous laughs at my expense at cocktail parties for the next ten years. Now, let’s go find someone with ID.”

Sammy pushed Andrea across the lobby in the main building, up to the receptionist behind a glass partition in the sparsely furnished waiting area, which in contrast to the exterior, took no grand leap of imagination to assess as a tired, under-funded facility of the federal government. Andrea presented her fake driver’s license through a narrow opening in the glass window, leaning forward to introduce herself as George Mitchell’s sister, her expression changing to suppressed anger when the receptionist refused to confirm Mitchell as a patient.

Sammy reached out to touch Andrea’s shoulder, attempting to calm her. “We knew this. Patient confidentiality.”

Andy raised her voice to make sure the receptionist could hear. “Yeah, they’ve been so damned confidential, they haven’t bothered to tell us George had been transferred from Atlanta.”

“What are we waiting for?” Sammy asked.

“She said the head shrink would be down in a minute.”

A tall slender woman with long gray-brown hair, narrow face and thick oblong glasses swept through a door marked PRIVATE on soundless crepe-soled white shoes, her white knee-length lab coat flowing behind her, revealing a wrinkled beige suit and absence of jewelry or other adornment.

“‘Shrink’ is not a designation we are fond of in my profession,” the woman said, clutching several manila folders to her breasts. “I am Doctor Geraldine Phillips, MD, Chief Psychiatrist and Administrative Director here at San Pedro.”

When Sammy strained to read the plastic photo ID clipped to the pocket of her coat, she removed it and handed it to him.

“I have just heard about Doc Fred’s 375
^th
attempt at terminating our services.” She accepted her ID from Sammy. “I understand you have enquired about someone whom you believe to be a patient here.”

“Our brother, who
is
a patient here, according to an extremely reliable source, and has been for a month,” Andrea countered. “We know he has been in your Atlanta facility since he became disturbed during the Iraq war, when the United States friggin’ Army told us he’d been killed in action!”

“Please refine your language, Madam, if you wish to converse with me, or I will have you removed from the premises,” Dr. Phillips said, casting a meaningful look at the receptionist. “Do I make myself clear?”

Sammy noticed the woman behind the glass partition pick up the phone, turn away and speak into it.

“Excuse me, Doctor,” he said, “my sister is upset and rightly so.”

Andrea opened her mouth, but Sammy clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Our brother, George Mitchell, was listed as killed in action in Iraq last April. Just a few days ago, we came upon incontrovertible evidence that he is alive and held under tight secrecy in this psychiatric hospital. We would like to see him.”

Two orderlies, one of them the same dark-skinned young man who had prevented them from unwittingly assisting Doc Fredrickson’s departure, came through the PRIVATE door to stand silently behind the psychiatrist.

“I would never allow strangers to visit one of my patients without corroboration from my superiors. I can assure you that with the exception of normal patient confidentiality, the
secrecy
you claim has been imposed on your brother’s confinement does not exist here, nor does your brother.”

Andrea looked as though she was going to leap from the chair and claw his cheeks. Her irate glare shifted between Sam and the doctor until she seemed to have her breathing under control. She turned the chair around and wheeled herself out of the building.

“A wise decision,” Phillips said. “Unfortunately, I still cannot accommodate your wishes for the simple reason that your brother is not at this hospital under my care.”

“Doc, my brother’s name was George Mitchell, the army told us he’d been killed in a Shiite ambush in Baghdad. Two days ago, I stumbled on to some highly credible data on the Internet that George was alive, in a psychiatric ward in Atlanta, and had been since last month.”

Sam reached into the back pocket of his trousers, pulled out his wallet, and proffered the forged Alabama driver’s license. “We were all living at home with mom after dad died, before George’s division got called up to Iraq.”

Phillips didn’t reach out to take the license or even glance at it. “I have no reason to doubt who you are or the sincerity of your quest, Mr. Mitchell. But you have been misinformed. Lieutenant George Mitchell is not, nor ever has been a patient at this facility.”

“Doctor, Mr. Fredrickson told us they prayed together!”

Sammy thought Phillips’ laugh seemed forced and contrived. Either she was uncomfortable with her lies or she needed practice. “Doc Fred is mentally disturbed. He’d claim Jimmy Hoffa was a patient here if he thought it would get him downtown to a porno movie. Good day, Mr. Mitchell. David will show you to your car.”

Dr. Phillips turned and walked out the door she had come in through followed by the second orderly. Sammy stood where he was for several moments, his complexion red, eyes blazing, before he looked at the young mulatto man in whites standing a few feet before him.

“Sorry about that,” David said.

Sammy looked at the orderly closely for the first time without the distraction of the Fredrickson gaffe or their performance for Dr. Phillips. He raised his eyebrows to David’s smile, exchanging significant looks before they walked out the main door and down the worn granite steps toward the parking lot.

“I can imagine.” Sammy slowed his pace as they approached visitor’s parking. “Don’t answer if you think it can come back on you, hurt your medical career.”

“Not see him?” Sammy turned on the orderly. “Let him rot the rest of his life away in some federal nuthouse because nameless army brass don’t want him running around loose, telling a story they want squashed?”

“Hold it, hold it, Mr. Mitchell, I’m on your side.” David drew a deep breath and expelled it. “The reason I’m talking to you, this isn’t patient confidentiality. This is some kind of conspiracy. If you and your sister hadn’t showed up today, I was thinking how I could blow the whistle on Phillips, somebody. I didn’t know where to start without getting my teat in the wringer.”

“Then why should we leave it alone?”

“One thing, because of what it is. A conspiracy by the army, or people in pretty high places. They’re not going to let you bust George out with a big band and homecoming party, then put the boots to them while they sit there with their digits up their noses.”

“How can we get in to see him? Confirm he’s here?”

Andrea was fuming beside the Ford as they approached the rental car, waiting for Sam to help her get out of the wheelchair and into the passenger seat.

“There’s a handicap ramp out back you could use,” David told him. “The door will be open two to four am. He’s on the first floor, turn right, room 112.”

He slipped a master key off the ring on his belt and gave it to Sam. “Come in at 3:15 AM tomorrow morning. I go off at 3:00, so you’ll be on your own.”

They had reached the car, and David stood looking at the ground, nudging a little stone with the toe of his white sneaker. “I don’t know how much good it’s going to do you.”

“What do you mean?”

David glanced up briefly at Sam. “George Mitchell is certifiably insane.”

She waited until Sammy had backed out of the parking space and began to retrace their directions toward their motel, sulking, staring out her side window at the strip malls and tenements steaming in the afternoon sun, children in bathing suits cavorting on front lawns in plastic pools, spraying one another with water from garden hoses.

She turned toward the side window again, arms wrapped around her body, shoulders hunched, lips compressed, trying to suppress the tiny sobs. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.

Sammy pulled over to the side of the road, cut the engine, reaching out to enfold her in his arms. “Time to quit, Princess. It isn’t worth it. To my knowledge nothing has ever chewed you up like this. It’s a cliché, but true: without your health, you have nothing.”

She leaned into him, burying her face in his chest, crying full strength now, so he could hardly understand her. “Quit? Quit?” she mumbled, as though she had forgotten the meaning of the word. “To do what? Work at some backwoods independent, if they’d have me? Drink away my rapidly declining years in some dingy apartment playing footsie with a pet cat? I have nothing but my work, Sam. Take that away and I’m dead, never mind the friggin’ mystery disease.”

Sammy did not respond for several minutes, stroking her back through the smooth texture of her blouse as she became less agitated, feeling the tension leave her body, listening to the heaving sobs subside.

“Then you have to make a choice,” he said. “If you want me to stay with it, you’ll have to handle both the story
and
your health problem. Ignore your health and you’re on your own. Quit the story, and I’m with you every minute until you’re back in shape.”

She pulled a tissue from her handbag, wiped her eyes and smiled up at him. “I’ll be good. You’ll see.”

“I know you have the inner strength to do this or I wouldn’t suggest it. I do realize how important this story is to you, what your life would be without it.”

“This gets tougher and tougher.” She pulled away to look at him with red eyes and a faint smile. “So, what did the orderly have to say?”

Sammy dropped Andy and their luggage off at the Radisson Hotel near the Albuquerque airport, returned the rental car, then took the shuttle back. He confronted Andrea with a wry grin when she opened the door to their room. “This is a bit presumptuous, isn’t it?”

“You expect me to pay for two rooms when our sexual proclivities live on different planets?” She reversed the wheelchair, moving into the large, bright room with two double beds and the usual bland motel furnishings. “Not that I wouldn’t like to take a crack at changing your mind....”

“Yeah, yeah. Flattery will get you everywhere.”

Andrea sifted through her notebook that contained her own comments and those from her interviews with the two ex-soldiers and phone conversation with Davidson, speaking softly, almost to herself. “All these denials, going to all that trouble, secrecy, and risk of exposure hiding Mitchell, when according to your friend David, the poor man seems to be mentally impaired. What could anyone possibly learn about the artifact from him?”

“He must have been there, know who was involved. Maybe constantly babbling about it. If the right people got their hands on him, used hypnotism, sodium pentothal, torture....”

“He might not even know what he knows, suffered some shock that repressed it.” Andrea ran her fingers through the gray streak in her hair, still thoughtful, pondering. “All that adamant denial. Callaghan, Geoff, a half dozen soldiers, a treasure so valuable it’s imposed a discipline of patience, camaraderie and evasion for almost two years.”

“Figure that Doc Phillips is a government employee, doesn’t know the whole story,” Sammy said, “under strict orders to keep everything about Mitchell under wraps.”

“Phillips will call whoever’s behind this.”

“So we need to move fast, if we’re going to do the deed.”

She held his gaze with her own unflinching stare. “I am. You can drop me off at the handicap ramp David told you was at the rear door.”