The Client (8 page)

What if the doctors or, heaven forbid, the cops got to him first, and Ricky told the whole story and they all knew Mark was lying? What would they do to him if they caught him lying? Maybe they wouldn’t believe Ricky. Since he’d blanked out and left the world for a while, maybe they would tend to believe Mark instead. This conflict in stories was too awful to think about.

It’s amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, and they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you’d simply told the truth. He could have told the truth to the cops and to his mother. He could have explained in great detail everything that Ricky saw. And the secret would still be safe because Ricky didn’t know.

Things were happening so fast he couldn’t plan. He wanted to get his mother in a room with the door locked and unload all this, just stop it now before it got worse. If he didn’t do something, he might go to jail and Ricky might go to the nuthouse for kids.

Hardy appeared with a tray covered with french fries and cheeseburgers, two for him and one for Mark. He arranged the food neatly and returned the tray.

Mark nibbled on a french fry. Hardy launched into a burger.

“So what happened to your face?” Hardy asked, chomping away.

Mark rubbed the knot and remembered he had
been wounded in the fray. “Oh nothing. Just got in a fight in school.”

“Who’s the other kid?”

Dammit! Cops are relentless. Tell one lie to cover another. He was sick of lying. “You don’t know him,” he answered, then bit into his cheeseburger.

“I might want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Did you get in trouble for this fight? I mean, did your teacher take you to the principal’s office, or anything like that?”

“No. It happened when school was out.”

“I thought you said you got in a fight at school.”

“Well, it sort of started at school, okay. Me and this guy got into it at lunch, and agreed to meet when school was out.”

Hardy drew mightily on the tiny straw in his milk shake. He swallowed hard, cleared his mouth, and said, “What’s the other kid’s name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

This angered Hardy and he stopped chewing. Mark refused to look into his eyes, and he bent low over his food and stared at the ketchup.

“I’m a cop, kid. It’s my job to ask questions.”

“Do I have to answer them?”

“Of course you do. Unless, of course, you’re hiding something and afraid to answer. At that point, I’ll have to get with your mother and perhaps take the both of you down to the station for more questioning.”

“Questioning about what? What exactly do you want to know?”

“Who is the kid you had a fight with today?”

Mark nibbled forever on the end of a long fry.
Hardy picked up the second cheeseburger. A spot of mayonnaise hung from the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” Mark said.

“He won’t get in trouble.”

“Then why do you want to know his name?”

“I just want to know. It’s my job, okay?”

“You think I’m lying, don’t you?” Mark asked, looking pitifully into the bulging face.

The chomping stopped. “I don’t know, kid. Your story is full of holes.”

Mark looked even more pitiful. “I can’t remember everything. It happened so fast. You expect me to give every little detail, and I can’t remember it that way.”

Hardy stuck a wad of fries in his mouth. “Eat your food. We’d better get back.”

“Thanks for the dinner.”

*     *     *

RICKY WAS IN A PRIVATE ROOM ON THE NINTH FLOOR. A large sign by the elevator labeled it as the PSYCHIATRIC WING, and it was much quieter. The lights were dimmer, the voices softer, the traffic much slower. The nurses’ station was near the elevator, and those stepping off were scrutinized. A security guard whispered with the nurses and watched the hallways. Down from the elevators, away from the rooms, was a small, dark sitting area with a television, soft drink machines, magazines, and Gideon Bibles.

Mark and Hardy were alone in the waiting area. Mark sipped a Sprite, his third, and watched a rerun of
Hill Street Blues
on cable while Hardy dozed fitfully on the terribly undersized couch. It was almost nine, and half an hour had passed since Dianne had walked him down the hall to Ricky’s room for a quick peek.
He looked small under the sheets. The IV, Dianne had explained, was to feed him because he wouldn’t eat. She assured him Ricky would be all right, but Mark studied her eyes and knew she was worried. Dr. Greenway would return in a bit, and wanted to talk to Mark.

“Has he said anything?” Mark had asked as he studied the IV.

“No. Not a word.”

She took his hand and they walked through the dim hallway to the sitting area. At least five times, Mark had almost blurted something out. They had passed an empty room not far from Ricky’s and he thought of dragging her inside for a confession. But he didn’t. Later, he kept telling himself, I’ll tell her later.

Hardy had stopped asking questions. His shift ended at ten, and it was obvious he was tired of Mark and Ricky and the hospital. He wanted to return to the streets.

A pretty nurse in a short skirt walked past the elevators and motioned for Mark to follow her. He eased from his chair, holding his Sprite. She took his hand, and there was something exciting about this. Her fingernails were long and red. Her skin was smooth and tanned. She had blond hair and a perfect smile, and she was young. Her name was Karen, and she squeezed his hand a bit tighter than necessary. His heart skipped a beat.

“Dr. Greenway wants to talk to you,” she said, leaning down as she walked. Her perfume lingered, and it was the most wonderful fragrance Mark could remember.

She walked him to Ricky’s room, Number 943, and released his hand. The door was closed, so she knocked slightly and opened it. Mark entered slowly,
and Karen patted him on the shoulder. He watched her leave through the half-open door.

Dr. Greenway now wore a shirt and tie with a white lab jacket over it. An ID tag hung from the left front pocket. He was a skinny man with round glasses and a black beard, and seemed too young to be doing this.

“Come in, Mark,” he said after Mark was already in the room and standing at the foot of Ricky’s bed. “Sit here.” He pointed to a plastic chair next to a foldaway bed under the window. His voice was low, almost a whisper. Dianne sat with her feet curled under her on the bed. Her shoes were on the floor. She wore blue jeans and a sweater, and stared at Ricky under the sheets with a tube in his arm. A lamp on a table near the bathroom door provided the only light. The blinds were shut tight.

Mark eased into the plastic chair, and Dr. Greenway sat on the edge of the foldaway, not two feet away. He squinted and frowned, and projected such somberness that Mark thought for a second they were all about to die.

“I need to talk to you about what happened,” he said. He was not whispering now. It was obvious Ricky was in another world and they were unafraid of waking him. Dianne was behind Greenway, still staring blankly at the bed. Mark wanted her alone so he could talk and work out of this mess, but she was back there in the darkness, behind the doctor, ignoring him.

“Has he said anything?” Mark asked first. The past three hours with Hardy had been nothing but quick questions, and the habit was hard to break.

“No.”

“How sick is he?”

“Very sick,” Greenway answered, his tiny, dark eyes glowing at Mark. “What did he see this afternoon?”

“Is this in secret?”

“Yes. Anything you tell me is strictly confidential.”

“What if the cops want to know what I tell you?”

“I can’t tell them. I promise. This is all very secret and confidential. Just you and me and your mother. We’re all trying to help Ricky, and I’ve got to know what happened.”

Maybe a good dose of the truth would help everyone, especially Ricky. Mark looked at the small blond head with hair sticking in all directions on the pillow. Why oh why didn’t they just run when the black car pulled up and parked? He was suddenly hit with guilt, and it terrified him. All of this was his fault. He should have known better than to mess with a crazy man.

His lip quivered and his eyes watered. He was cold. It was time to tell all. He was running out of lies and Ricky needed help. Greenway watched every move.

And then Hardy walked slowly by the door. He paused for a second in the hall and locked eyes with Mark, then disappeared. Mark knew he wasn’t far away. Greenway had not seen him.

Mark started with the cigarettes. His mother looked at him hard, but if she was angry she didn’t convey it. She shook her head once or twice, but never said a word. He spoke in a low voice, his eyes alternating quickly between Greenway and the door, and described the tree with the rope and the woods and the clearing. Then the car. He left out a good chunk of the story, but did admit to Greenway, in a soft voice and in
extreme confidence, that he once crawled to the car and removed the hose. And when he did so, Ricky cried and peed in his pants. Ricky begged him not to do it. He could tell Greenway liked this part. Dianne listened without expression.

Hardy walked by again, but Mark pretended not to see him. He paused in his story for a few seconds, then told how the man stormed out of the car, saw the garden hose lying harmlessly in the weeds, and crawled on the trunk and shot himself.

“How far away was Ricky?” Greenway asked.

Mark looked around the room. “You see that door across the hall?” he asked, pointing. “From here to there.”

Greenway looked and rubbed his beard. “About forty feet. That’s not very far.”

“It was very close.”

“What exactly did Ricky do when the shot was fired?”

Dianne was listening now. It apparently had just occurred to her that this was a different version from the earlier one. She wrinkled her forehead and looked hard at her eldest.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I was too scared to think. Don’t be angry with me.”

“You actually saw the man shoot himself?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yes.”

She looked at Ricky. “No wonder.”

“What did Ricky do when the shot was fired?”

“I wasn’t looking at Ricky. I was watching the man with the gun.”

“Poor baby,” Dianne mumbled in the background. Greenway held up a hand to cut her off.

“Was Ricky close to you?”

Mark glanced at the door, and explained faintly how Ricky had frozen, then started away in an awkward jog, arms straight down, a dull moaning sound coming from his mouth. He told it all with dead accuracy from the point of the shooting to the point of the ambulance, and he left out nothing. He closed his eyes and relived each step, each movement. It felt wonderful to be so truthful.

“Why didn’t you tell me you watched the man kill himself?” Dianne asked.

This irritated Greenway. “Please, Ms. Sway, you can discuss it with him later,” he said without taking his eyes off Mark.

“What was the last word Ricky said?” Greenway asked.

He thought and watched the door. The hall was empty. “I really can’t remember.”

SERGEANT HARDY HUDDLED WITH HIS LIEUTENANT AND Special Agent Jason McThune of the FBI. They chatted in the sitting area next to the soft drink machines. Another FBI agent loitered suspiciously near the elevator. The hospital security guard glared at him.

The lieutenant explained hurriedly to Hardy that it was now an FBI matter, that the dead man’s car and all other physical evidence had been turned over by the Memphis PD, that print experts had finished dusting the car and found lots of fingerprints too small for an adult, and they needed to know if Mark had dropped any clues or changed his story.

“No, but I’m not convinced he’s telling the truth,” Hardy said.

“Has he touched anything we can take?” McThune asked quickly, unconcerned about Hardy’s theories or convictions.

“What do you mean?”

“We have a strong suspicion the kid was in the car at some point before Clifford died. We need to lift the kid’s prints from something and see if they match.”

“What makes you think he was in the car?” Hardy asked with great anticipation.

“I’ll explain later,” his lieutenant said.

Hardy looked around the sitting area, and suddenly pointed to a trash basket by the chair Mark had sat in. “There. The Sprite can. He drank a Sprite while sitting right there.” McThune looked up and down the hall, and carefully wrapped a handkerchief around the Sprite can. He placed it in the pocket of his coat.

“It’s definitely his,” Hardy said. “This is the only trash basket, and that’s the only Sprite can.”

“I’ll run this to our fingerprint men,” McThune said. “Is the kid, Mark, staying here tonight?”

“I think so,” Hardy said. “They’ve moved a portable bed into his brother’s room. Looks like they’ll all sleep in there. Why is the FBI concerned with Clifford?”

“I’ll explain later,” said his lieutenant. “Stay here for another hour.”

“I’m supposed to be off in ten minutes.”

“You need the overtime.”

DR. GREENWAY SAT IN THE PLASTIC CHAIR NEAR THE BED and studied his notes. “I’m gonna leave in a minute, but I’ll be back early in the morning. He’s stable, and I expect little change through the night. The nurses will
check in every so often. Call them if he wakes up.” He flipped a page of notes and read the chicken scratch, then looked at Dianne. “It’s a severe case of acute post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“What does that mean?” Mark asked. Dianne rubbed her temples and kept her eyes closed.

“Sometimes a person sees a terrible event and cannot cope with it. Ricky was badly scared when you removed the garden hose from the tail pipe, and when he saw the man shoot himself he was suddenly exposed to a terrifying experience that he couldn’t handle. It triggered a response in him. He sort of snapped. It shocked his mind and body. He was able to run home, which is quite remarkable because normally a person traumatized like Ricky would immediately become numb and paralyzed.” He paused and placed his notes on the bed. “There’s not a lot we can do right now. I expect him to come around tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, and we’ll start talking about things. It may take some time. He’ll have nightmares of the shooting, and flashbacks. He’ll deny it happened, then he’ll blame himself for it. He’ll feel isolated, betrayed, bewildered, maybe even depressed. You just never know.”