ColdScheme (18 page)

“So am I,” he intoned.

“I’m also too tired to think of anything else,” I said, sharpening
my tone.

“So am I.”

I laughed. “I gather that you’re too tired to drive.”

“It’s a long way back to the waterfront.”

“I have a guest room,” I capitulated.

“Great. I would have settled for the porch if you didn’t.”

“You used to.”

“Only because your roommate was a dragon.”

“You haven’t changed.”

“No. I never gave up hope.”

“Guest room!” I turned and headed inside. As he walked
behind me, I heard him murmur, “A month ago, I would have never dreamed that
I’d be sleeping in your house.”

Chapter Eleven

Mrs. Tavalho arrived at seven o’clock. She awakened Jazz,
fed her breakfast and had her ready and waiting for the school bus before she
woke me up.

“An overnight guest, a colleague,” I murmured lamely,
motioning at the closed door of the spare bedroom where she slept on overnight
stays. She smiled, briefed me on the state of my child and her readiness to
depart and said she would fix breakfast—for two.

I rapped hard on the door, fervently wishing that the man
had changed. Fate did not oblige.

“Field, wake up!” I had to grab his shoulders and roll him
over, just like the good old days. Once I’d run through the exhausting, ancient
morning ritual of trying to get him up—tapping his head, flicking his ear,
pulling his toes—and was about to smack his ass, he stirred.

“I know you’re awake. You’ve had more than five hours of
sleep. That’s all that a working FBI ace deserves. We have another hellish day
ahead of us,” I said, giving him his daily horoscope. My memory slipped. I made
one tiny mistake. I didn’t jump back.

His arm shot out, encircled my waist and all but slam-dunked
me down beside him.

“Fine. I can brief you lying down,” I snorted, knowing it
was useless to fight his strength, especially in the morning.

Those turned out to be my last words for a long time.

“Field, for God’s sake!” I gasped, when he gave me a chance
to breathe. “I have to see my kid off to school.”

“So this is what fatherhood’s like,” he groaned. I laughed,
freed my hand to be able to motivate him into releasing me and slid out of his
unwilling arms.

Jazz was still on the porch, sitting on the steps, hugging
her knees.

“Sorry I overslept.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I know you’re tired. Is he here?”

“Who?”

“Field, from your work.”

I was about to open my mouth to explain, when his voice
sounded from behind me.

“Good morning. Sorry I had to cut dinner short last night.
The Laserquest offer still stands.”

She lifted her head, grinned at him and said that her
friends would be happy to hear that. We saw her off to the bus and then went
inside to a royal breakfast spread.

Mrs. Tavalho went to do the laundry and I briefed him on
everything, from our visit to Patterson in Mongrove, to our interview with
Daniel Kane. He reached for the phone while I was still speaking. I served him
a “What now?” look.

“Olsen. District Attorney’s office. We need a legal
document, a court order, to avoid nasty confrontation in the facility.”

“What for?”

“To obtain Patricia’s case file and medical records.”

“Good thinking.”

“Do you think this Patterson could be Dr. Martin?” he asked
after he made the arrangements. The question froze my hand as it reached for my
coffee cup. The unruly blond shag whipping with authority as Patterson shook
his head, sculpted in my mind even as I considered Field’s question.

“He’s too young, Field, surprisingly so to be a Chief
Resident doctor in such a large State facility. Besides, a company staff
physician would be a general MD, not a specialist. Patterson has to have quite
a few letters and titles after his name. Clinical psychiatrist would have to be
one of them. He didn’t give us his business card but he has to be qualified to
hold that job. A general practitioner, a mere MD, would not get that position.”

“Quite a few company doctors have several specialties,
including industrial and accident therapy and quite possibly psychiatry, or at
least mental rehab. The nature of our stressful work environment these days
demands it,” he said.

“Maybe so but Patterson’s just too young to be such an
accomplished specialist.” Patterson’s slate gray eyes, sparking with youthful
vitality, bothered me. So did that voluminous shag. Youth, verve, irreverence,
defiance—those would be the words I would use to define Dr. Patterson.

Dr. Martin, sight unseen, sat in my mental window like a
solid, middle-aged stone. Well dressed, well groomed, well versed in corporate
lingo, I saw him as an epitome of ambivalence. That would have been his primary
motivation for taking a boring and mostly administrative job as a company staff
physician. Was I stereotyping because it was the easiest route? Had I already
fallen into a dangerous mindset, a gouge in my imagination that would enlarge,
as I grew older, to where everything had to be compartmentalized, fit a precise
pattern?

But patterns were what a detective’s job was all about.
Especially criminal behavior patterns that gave rise to categories used in
profiling. Then again, this criminal mastermind had opened up a new category
and he was its first and only member. His motives could be easily categorized
but the nature of his crime was unique. He implanted his victims with a deadly
device that only he could activate whenever it suited his purpose. This meant
that even if he’d tagged a victim with an explosive pacemaker, if the killer
didn’t need to eliminate him, the victim could live out his life naturally and
not even know he had a bomb planted in his chest. Would such a person still be
considered a victim? Wouldn’t he be on the same level as someone born with an
undetected heart defect that could kill at any time—or equally could let the person
live out his life naturally? Did this unique method of control make the killer
the true keeper of the dead? Is that how he saw himself—the ruler of the
underworld, holding the life-leashes he could cut at any time? And did this
image fit Patterson? Being the Chief Resident at a huge stage psychiatric
facility meant he was ambitious but did his ambition stop at this healthy level
or did it grow, like a malignant plant shooting its roots in all directions,
seeking control?

Wild and outrageous theories used to thrill me. The
impossible and improbable used to be exciting, new challenges, not roadblocks.

“Let’s visit the Mongrove facility and then you can tell me
what you think of Dr. Patterson,” I said, abandoning my critical review.

We stopped by our district office. Sven was waiting for us
with the court order. The mere fact that he didn’t mention having any
difficulties obtaining the document so quickly, told me that the entire BPD had
been put on notice.

Bourke would have asked Sven one question. “Is this going to
help solve the case—quickly?” Sven was a good cop, smart too. His answer in the
affirmative was all Bourke would have needed.

Ken phoned the Mongrove to inform them of our impending
visit. I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. Patterson would be prepared. But
Ken insisted on following protocol.

The moment I walked out of the small armored cage that was
the waiting area at Mongrove and entered the stark, cold expanse of gray-white
quarry, I felt something was wrong.

Field kept staring at the nearly vertical staircase sweeping
ahead of us and murmured something about mountain climbing. Ken kept shuffling
his feet as if wiping them. He wore rubber-soled shoes and still managed to
raise an unearthly echo. I felt the ghostly sound was a warning. I’ve seen
churches that had soaring ceilings. Such grandeur had always made me want to
kneel and bow my head. Here, I wanted to turn and run.

I heard a sound in the distance. It was sharp, precise—like
a military march.

This time, Patterson came alone. I saw him when he was still
just a tiny figure in this stone temple, indeed a high priest in this severe
shrine. The shag whipped wildly around his shoulders. This visual disturbance
arrived long before he did.

He shook Field’s hand with a curious greeting. “I’m sorry.
Of course, I’m at your disposal.”

I started to wonder whether I should file all my education,
training and experience in the “false alarm” drawer and work with my “feelings”
as the only reliable tool.

“Social services has looked after all the arrangements,”
Patterson was saying, as I quickly banished my reflections. “The funeral
expenses as well as the legal requirements. They will post ads in all the major
newspapers, asking for any relatives to step forward but according to her file,
there were none. She was cremated. I haven’t yet received notification as to
where her remains will be interred, though it’s due shortly.”

Patricia Vanier was dead. Perhaps I knew it—felt it—even as
I had stepped through the door. Stone was impervious to suffering and anguish
but I felt it emanating from the walls. They gave off gloom, as if the tiny
pores in the stone matrix could trap misery, justifying their cold, heartless
existence.

Patricia had a history of violence and roaming while she was
incarcerated in Mongrove. Prior to being committed, she was only prone to
worry, fear and anxiety on behalf of her fiancé. This drove her to report him
missing, kidnapped, threatened, tortured, or murdered—four times in a span of
fifteen months. Mongrove drove her to her death.

“About a week ago, we had a very busy and difficult night,”
Patterson said, his voice tinged with fatigue that was not apparent in his
military bearing.

He was not a King Cobra today but neither was he in a good
mood. He took us to his office. I was surprised to see it was an edifice, not a
cage. The ceilings must have been at least fifteen feet tall and once again, as
everywhere else in the facility, unspoiled by higher architectural ambition or
finishing touches. All the piping and ducts were exposed, though some had been
painted a drab gray color to blend in with the rest of the décor. The amount of
metal filing cabinets would have filled a surplus warehouse. They looked like
tall, cold grave markers and were appropriately colored in smudged newsprint black.
I hadn’t seen a wooden office chair in a long time and reflected that it was
because any remaining office furniture from the thirties had been donated to
Mongrove. Patterson’s office made a loud statement about the financial status
of his facility, perhaps louder than his chipped plastic nametag.

“It was the night of the full moon. Even the most docile
patients were agitated. Only three orderlies were on duty. Five were missing,
for medical reasons. Still, even if we’d been at full staff, ten times that
many would not have been enough to cope that night. We had more than thirty
patients in the lounge, the quieter cases. It reduced the workload for my staff
and freed them to attend to the difficult ones individually. This is an old
building.” He swept the office that was three times the size of our largest
conference room with his hand and continued. “Patricia was surprisingly quiet.
That’s why she was included with the patients in the lounge. There is an old
laundry chute opening in one corner, in the wall, low to the floor. We had no
idea it was there. There are no plans, no blueprints for this building. She
crumbled and chipped away the putty and sealant that were pasted over the
opening and crawled into the chute. It was a long slide down but that’s not how
she broke her neck.” He tossed his head and sent that glorious shag on a
violent dance. It was still settling around his shoulders, wriggling like a
nest of snakes, when I heard a click.

“You can watch the rest. The laundry facility area is
monitored.” He invited us to turn and face a silver gray sheet covering the
wall.

Ken’s phone call must have given him a chance to prepare
this show. For a facility that depended on State grants, Mongrove had a superb
monitoring system—in color. Patterson was full of clicks—and surprises. In
order to afford us an unobstructed view, he went over to a huge wooden desk. I
heard a staccato of clicks. Immediately, a whole row of metal gravestones
whirred and moved to the side. Another row tilted as it slid diagonally to clear
the view, then returned to horizontal position so gently I was still waiting
for the inevitable dunk when the metal connected with the floor. It never came.
The tall, rectangular windows darkened. Therefore one of those clicks must have
rotated the built-in shutters. By now I would not have been surprised to see a
chair approach me on its own. I lowered my head to search the floor for tracks
of magnetic strips. All through this automated show, I kept thinking how much
it resembled what went on in the morgue when Joe was working. What were the
chances that two Baltimore doctors from unrelated medical disciplines nurtured
passion for high-tech automation? I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a strip
of putting green and the ubiquitous white plastic cup with the putting setup
driven by some form of automation. Doctors especially needed such
stress-reducing measures in their office. Even the NASA control room was
probably not operated on remote the way Patterson’s office whirred to life. I
started to look around for telltale research journals and magazines lying
around when Patterson’s voice made me abandon my preoccupation with impressive
automation and technology in a place that claimed to be fearfully underfunded.

I looked up at the screen and watched Patricia’s final
adventure with a sense of foreboding.

She wore the same dingy beige tracksuit and moved between
the rows of huge steel drums and looming boxes as if playing hide-and-seek. She
turned often, walking sideways, crossing her feet over each other, like a
line-dancer. I couldn’t see her face. The monitoring cameras were behind her.
However, from the way she would incline her head now and then, when she
stopped, I got an impression that she was listening. Indeed, she moved through
the sprawling laundry facility equipped with ancient machinery, as if guided by
a voice—listening to instructions—and obeying them.

Suddenly, her hands flew up above her head and she
disappeared.

“You can’t see it on the tape,” Patterson said from behind
us. “The angle of the camera is too high to sweep that portion of the floor but
she fell into an open access hole. It’s about the size of a manhole.
Maintenance was being done on the conduits that feed through this portion of
the facility. The grating had been removed and the maintenance staff forgot to
put it back. Of course, we’re investigating this negligence but no one has
stepped forward to confess. During the day, when the laundry facility is
staffed, there would have been a safety cage with fluorescent flags around that
open manhole. It must have interfered with the laundry bins, since they are
large and need corresponding clearance to wheel around. Someone must have
removed the cage.” He shut off the tape and the screen returned to its flat
texture.