After a while a nurse came in to shoot Amy up with another dose of hydromorphone, which Amy described as feeling like being squished with a rolling pin from head to toe -- in a good way, before falling asleep again.
I figured I should get out of there before her dad came back, and that I'd probably be in trouble for sneaking away from the hotel anyway.
I was right. When I parked my car and walked past the officer sitting in his car he gave me a funny look and brought his radio to his face, and when I walked into the lobby I almost ran into Special Agents Bremer and Rubino coming around the corner from the elevator bank. They both looked annoyed.
"Where the hell have you been?" Bremer barked, his jowls flapping with each syllable.
"I had to get some clothes," I said, realizing I'd left everything I'd bought back in the trunk of my car. Rubino and Bremer eyed me suspiciously.
"We thought you might have been nabbed," Rubino cut in before Bremer could continue yelling.
I took a quick look around the lobby. A man in a suit was standing at the front desk, flanked on all sided by expensive luggage, probably checking out. Two people were reading newspapers on the couches set up around the front door. Across the lobby I could see a few people scooping hot food from the breakfast buffet, reminding me how very hungry I was.
"Alright, look," I said, breaking away from the two-man FBI huddle and heading toward the food, "if there's ever a situation where the options are that I'm either in mortal danger or just doing something reckless and self-serving, it'll be the second one."
"Noted," Bremer said, falling in step behind me.
Forgoing any fears that everything probably had strychnine in it, I grabbed a plate and shoveled a bunch of fruit on it, then opened one of the two waffle irons and dumped a carton ofpre-measured batter onto it, closed it, and set the timer.
"We need you to come with us," Rubino said while I waited for my waffle to manifest.
I looked at him, then at Bremer, then back at Rubino. "What, like, I'm under arrest?" I said.
"No, we have some photographs we'd like you to look at on the computer. People suspected of murder-for-hire in the States who come from Western Europe. Maybe one will jog your memory so we can ID your newest fan."
"Couldn't you have printed them and brought them here?" I asked.
"There's two hundred and thirty seven," Rubino said, crossing his arms.
"Huh," I said just as the waffle iron beeped behind me.
Seated at a table now, I jabbed at sliced strawberries with a fork while Bremer and Rubino sat opposite me and sipped water from plastic cups.
"Where is your office, anyway?" I asked. "Is there a field office in Fredericksburg or something?"
"No, we're in the FBI headquarters in DC," Bremer said.
"DC? That's over an hour away," I said. There goes my whole day.
Both Agents nodded.
"But you're always ten minutes away whenever I call," I said, trying to recall our past meetings. When I'd called Rubino from the hospital he was there in under five minutes.
"We're usually in the field during the day," Rubino said. "Investigating."
"That's what the I stands for," I said to myself before finishing off the waffle.
"So that's as far as you are with leads?" I asked. "Pictures from the computer?"
"You could say that, I guess," Bremer said. "Other departments are doing most of the legwork, we're mostly just liaisons between them and you."
"Fancy," I said, thinking. "Come to think of it, I think that guy's accent might have been Irish, not Scottish. Scotch. Scottish?" I hadn't thought of that before. Whiskey from Scotland is Scotch, the tape is Scotch, so are people Scotch or Scottish. Maybe Scottish is the language. No, that's stupid, they speak English. Well, they try to...
"Ok," Rubino said, "that doesn't really change anything."
"Absolutely nothing," I said for the second time in an hour.
"Though if he's Irish he might be ex-IRA. He might have fled to another country, so he could be working out of anywhere. If he's IRA, you or the Brits should have a file on him." Yes, perfectly normal thing for a seventeen year old to say.
Rubino and Bremer were both squinting at me, like I were casting blinding light.
"Y-yes," Bremer said, "hence, the pictures."
"I know, I know," I said. "I'm just trying to work this out from my end. If he expatriated from Ireland to somewhere else, he could possibly be from whatever country my dad was trying to sell Schumer's program to."
Rubino and Bremer blinked, almost in unison, looked at each other, back at me, and said, entirely in unison, "What?"
I looked up at each of them and shrugged. "What?"
Rubino squinted again. "What did you just say?" he asked, incredulous.
"That this Irish guy might not be from Ireland, he might be from whatever country my dad was trying to leak national secrets to. He could have picked up some heat for some IRA nonsense when he was in his twenties and moved abroad. Like a free agent. This could have nothing to do with Schumer, this killer guy might be trying to clean up the evidence or whatever around my dad's death."
"No," Rubino said, then shook his head slightly. "What are you talking about? Your dad wasn't selling anything to anybody."
My jaw went slack. "Huh?" I said.
Rubino's face almost matched my own, he turned to Bremer, who said, "Is that what Schumer told you?"
I said nothing for a few seconds, then managed to echo my previous, "Huh?"
"Kid, your dad wasn't selling anything to anybody. He realized that the work he was doing with Schumer was massively, massively illegal and he contacted us to see if the FBI could shut it down."
I had no muscles. Nothing worked.
Rubino said, "He was in the process of filtering out enough information for us to move on when he 'mysteriously' died. He told us, at the beginning, if Schumer found out what he was doing, he'd probably kill him." Both their faces were flat, slightly concerned.
My face felt flushed, my heart was pounding, my mind was racing in a thousand directions. I wiggled my fingers, just to make sure I was still alive. I put my hand to my forehead, felt a bit dizzy.
My dad was trying to sell Schumer's program, government black ops secrets, to a foreign country. He was killed. That's the information I'd been working with this whole time. Where did I get it? Was it Schumer? Why the hell did I believe him? My dad was the bad guy. He was selling secrets. The FBI was investigating him for that. That was the truth, it was written on the back of my mind in permanent ink, but it didn't make any sense whenever I thought about it.
I tried to put everything in line, from the beginning. The FBI knew about my dad because they were investigating him selling secrets. No, the FBI knew about him because he himself approached them to report on Schumer's secret program. My dad was killed in a failed sting operation while he was meeting with the foreign buyer. No, my dad was killed because Schumer found out that he'd gone to the Feds. My stomach twisted, I felt like throwing up.
Schumer had my dad killed? Or he did it himself? No, he would hire the job out like everything else. It could have been Dingan, or this Irish guy. The guy who killed Comstock, who almost killed Amy, who wants to kill me, could have been the one who killed my father! Was he shot? Poisoned with more strychnine, writhing on the floor, breaking his own bones with muscular convulsions? Schumer had Comstock killed, and wants me dead. He must be trying to shut the whole program down, clean up all the scattered pieces.
God, this is all about Schumer. Why hadn't I just assumed that from the beginning?
"Are you alright, Chris?" Rubino asked.
I looked up at him, my face red and my teeth grinding. "Do you realize that if you'd have told me all this two weeks ago, absolutely EVERYTHING would be different?"
Rubino frowned slightly. Bremer spoke up, "He told us not to tell you if you didn't already know."
"Who?"
"Your dad," he said. "And he told us that if he died, to watch out for you until we bring this whole thing down."
I closed my eyes, hoping no new information could come in. "A personal favor," I said.
"Why do you think we've stopped the police from tearing you apart three times now, deleted an Interpol request for your apprehension, and even got you a gun just in case?"
"Got me a gun?" I asked after opening my eyes.
"The guy at the gun store in Lorton, he's one of ours. He called us from the range, told us how well you were shooting. We told him to make sure you got a gun."
"You had people following me?" I asked.
"When we could," Rubino said.
I shook my head.
"Your dad was taking a big risk," Bremer said. "He knew what Schumer was capable of, knew that if Schumer found out your dad was 'betraying' him, he'd probably kill him. He said he wouldn't give us anything unless we could guarantee your safety. I told him if he was so worried, to increase his life insurance policy until it was all done with. That's what he did, so that if he failed, you would at least have enough money to protect yourself, to get away or move on."
I leaned back in my chair, tipped my head back, and groaned out loud. My world was imploding into itself.
"Had no idea Schumer told you that about your dad," Bremer said.
"Though it does explain some of the angst," Rubino chimed in.
"Ok," I said, still looking up at the ceiling, "I feel like I've asked this before, but can I go shoot Schumer now?"
"Maybe later," Bremer said. "Your dad was killed before he could get us enough evidence to convince our superiors to bring the hammer down on a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps. If you're willing, we'd like you to help us by getting close to Schumer somehow. If we put a wire on you and you had one more meeting with him, he'd probably say enough to hang himself."
"Meeting? He wants me dead!"
"Right. So, first things first, lets go to DC and take a look at some pictures."
We all got up, I left my plate and silverware on the table, and we walked to the front door of the lobby. I felt like I was walking through a fog, or there was sand in my shoes. Once again it seemed like everything I knew about everything had been wrong, and my brain was having trouble processing it all again. Hopefully I'd be able to clear my head during the ride to Washington DC, and hopefully I'd learn to stop dancing around questions from now on and just get right into it. I couldn't figure out why my dad, after working in this program for almost twenty years would only now decide to report it. Did something new happen? Did I not turn out the way they wanted?
The three of us went out the front lobby doors and I stopped to find the black, officious-looking car that Bremer and Rubino drove. I spotted it in the first row of cars and fell in line behind Rubino toward it. Bremer stopped at the police car in front and leaned into the front driver's side window to talk to the cop inside. Something felt weird, like it was a prisoner transport. Something else, though. Something nagging on me, which was surprising because there were a million things that should have been nagging on me, but there was just one little thing poking at my conscious like a sliver in my eye, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
I stopped for a second to look around, letting my brain filter out everything except movement. Bremer was still talking to that cop, Rubino was taking slow, steady strides toward their sedan, on the street a few cars drove past the hotel parking lot, there was nothing else. I turned to keep walking when a while streak caught my attention, the side door of a white panel van sliding open. I stopped again to focus in on what I thought I'd seen when I heard it.
A loud, resonant sound I'd heard before. It came and went in less than a second, and before I could even process the sound my right leg gave out, buckling completely, and my left leg pressed my foot against the pavement below just quickly enough so I'd fall sideways and onto my back. When I hit the ground I recognized the sound and heard it again, and again, and again. Gunshots, close, and a lot of them.
Behind me, the wall of the hotel was peppered with a line of small impacts that sent brick and mortar dust outward like tiny little land mines. Then a series of hits rocked and shattered the glass of the row of cars I was laying behind. I turned my head to the right, Rubino was ducked behind the hood of a car, pulling the sidearm from his shoulder holster. To my left, Bremer was bent over and making his way to the front of the police car, trying to put it between him and the shooting. Another quick round of shots trailed from the rear bumper of the police car, fragmenting the tail lights, straight up the trunk, piercing compact little holes through the metal, up the rear windshield, cracking then shattering the glass into a rain shower of glass particles, then cut sharply to the left to cut down the police officer as he tried to jump from inside the cruiser. The cop landed face-first on the pavement, unmoving. Bremer stared at him, wide-eyed, from where he knelt behind the car's front end.
I just lay on the ground, feeling bits of gravel poking into my back, and remembering how much I'd needed a massage.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, April 27, 2007
Bedside
Not really knowing what to say, I simply asked, "Are you alright?"
Amy shut her eyes for a moment and grinned just slightly. "More or less," she said. Her voice was a bit froggy.
"They were talking about a tracheot--tracheon-- cutting a hole in your throat so you could breathe, before."
She slowly lifted her hand to her throat and rubbed it with two fingers. "Ouch. No, they just stuck a tube down my throat for a while; that sucked. After a while they said I was breathing on my own so they took the tube out; that also sucked."
"Breathing on your own, so the strychnine is all out of your system?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I'm not twitching anymore." She raised both arms a few inches and dropped them onto the bed.
I sighed in relief. "So you're going to be fine," I said.
"That's what they tell me. I just have to stay here until my muscles come back."
"Come back?" I asked.
"They say I tore up most of my skeletal muscles from that little dance back at Costco. You know that kinda-good-mostly-bad pain you get in your muscles after a workout?" She spun her right hand around at the wrist. "Everywhere."
"At least it would be," she continued, "if they didn't come by and shoot some morphine-stuff into this thing every hour." She moved her right elbow and nodded toward the IV line running into her forearm. A clear rubber tube ran from it, wound slightly around the back of the bed, through a complicated-looking machine, then up into a plastic bag hanging from a silver pole. A smaller plastic IV bag was hanging next to the larger one, a tube from it connected it to the main line with a kind of Y-connector.
"The big one is just saline, to keep me hydrated, the small one is some kind of protein. For the muscles."
I took another look around the room. There was a flat-screen TV mounted on the opposite wall from the bed, above a dresser and below some bland artwork. Aside from the hospital bed and linoleum floor, you might think it was a hotel room.
"That pain you get after a workout," I said, "is partly from the muscle rebuilding itself after being torn up. When it rebuilds it overcompensates, making the muscles bigger. You might be pretty beefy after all this."
Amy chuckled. "Upside to everything, I guess."
After a few seconds, I asked, "How much do you know? About what happened, I mean."
She licked her dry lips and took a few breaths. "Strychnine. Isn't that what they said Mr. Comstock might have gotten?"
I nodded.
"And it was in that tea from your hotel room."
I nodded again.
"So that Irish guy tried to kill you, and killed me instead."
"Almost," I said.
"Right. Because you knew exactly what to do."
I nodded, a bit slower. My eyes fell down to the tube in Amy's arm.
Amy swallowed. "Was that you, or the -- other you?"
I looked back up, into her eyes. "The killing me?" I asked, then paused. "I'm not sure. It could have been something I heard before, or it could be part of whatever Schumer and my dad did to my brain. I don't know why a program just designed to skip boot camp would include first aid for specific poisons."
She shrugged. "I've never heard of cutting a Brita filter open and pouring it down someone's throat."
"Do you remember everything from when it happened?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes upward slightly. "I remember your zombie theory, and a headache, then my jaw not working, but after that it all kind of blurs together."
"Like you were passed out, or not aware of what was happening?"
"I think I was aware; I remember being aware, but not what I was aware of."
"So how did you know about the Brita filter?"
She grinned. "My dad told me. He says some FBI agent told him about it, and about what happened at Comstock's house but none of the other stuff. Was that one of your FBI people?"
I nodded. "Rubino came here."
"What for? Just to tell my dad?"
"No, I needed a ride because my car was still at Costco."
"A ride where?"
I dropped my eyes again, turned around and moved one of the chairs closer to the bed so I could sit down.
"To go kill Schumer," I said after I'd seated.
Amy was silent for a few seconds, then said, "Oh. Did you?"
I shook my head. "I wanted to, but I guess it might have been a bit overboard."
"Possibly," she said.
"It was good that Rubino was here, though," I said. "When the doctors heard it was strychnine and that I magically knew exactly what to do for it they called the police on me. Rubino smoothed that over, and told your dad just enough of the truth for him to hate me forever."
Amy rolled her eyes.
"Where is he, anyway?" I asked.
"My dad? He went back home to get some of my clothes and stuff after they moved me in here. They cut up the shirt I was wearing."
"I know," I said, "I was there."
"Oh," Amy said, blushing slightly. "Well it was stupid, it was a button-up shirt. They could have just unbuttoned it."
"They've got those shirt-cutting scissors and they like to use them," I said.
"I liked that shirt."
The hospital gown she was wearing had rather short sleeves that were being scrunched up because of the position she was in. On her left arm, just below her shoulder, I could see the long, thin scars I'd seen before. It looked like there were four of them. She saw me looking and perhaps too-quickly drew her right hand upward and pulled the sleeve down. She winced from the movement.
"What?" I asked, carefully.
"I didn't want you to see those," she said. Her eyes seemed to be watering, perhaps from the pain in moving too quickly.
I'd seen scars like those before, mostly in pictures on the internet but a few times on girls in school. Depressed teenagers who wanted the rush of cutting themselves but couldn't bring themselves to cut at their wrists would often use straight razor blades to cut very thin lines just below the shoulder. Same rush, less risk. People who cut at their wrists were usually just trying to get attention, it would seem. Doing it below the shoulder means you're doing it just to feel something. Using a razor blade also made a very fine, almost invisible scar; another sign that it isn't so much a cry for help as in other forms of self-mutilation. People who do this to themselves are called cutters, and doing so is practically a cliché among "emo" and "goth" subcultures.
My silence seemed to frighten her. "Not because I think you'd judge me," she said, looking away. "I just don't like what it says about me. I think it tarnishes me."
"I don't care about it, Amy."
She looked back at me, her eyes heavy with tears, then she leaned back and pressed her head against the pillow.
"Do you still do it?" I asked.
"No," she replied after a few breaths. "When I was, like, fourteen."
I tried to remember when Amy had said her parents split up. I thought it was younger, but it seemed to affect her later. From what I could tell, she was just coming out of a punk phase. I felt a bit of empathy for her, though my parental drama was much more recent and not as deep-seated as hers. Parents split up all the time, driving millions of teens into depression. The thought of it somehow made Amy seem more real.
"It doesn't tarnish you," I said. "Not unless you let it."
She was silent.
I went on, "Earlier I was trying to figure out what defines a person; is it the mind, the body, the sum of his actions, and so on. I think it's more than that. I think it's how we take our experiences and our actions and move forward from them. A bum isn't a bum because he lost his house and all his money, he's a bum because he doesn't do anything about it; he gives up and begs for spare change. Whatever you did before, it's not who you are. What you learned from it, and did to move on from it, that's who you are. That's something between the mind and body."
She was silent for a few seconds more, then rolled over slightly to look at me with her head still on the pillow. "You were trying to figure that out because you said your mind and body weren't yours. If your dad and some team of geneticists designed your body, and some psychologists and drill instructors designed your mind, like Schumer says, what does that make you?"
I thought about it. "I wish I knew," I said.
"Keep fighting until the answers come?" she asked.
"Or until there's nobody left to fight."
I thought about this guy who's coming after me. If I, the police, or the FBI can stop him -- what will that solve? If I knew who had hired him, would that lead me to the end of this mystery or just up another dark alley? Will a few more words answer all my questions, or just raise further ones? How many more people would have to be hurt before I felt safe, or before I had the truth? How much more of myself would I have to lose just to find out who I am? My dad, Schumer, Rubino, Bremer, Pratt, dead Austrian guy, Comstock,Dingan, Scottish guy, how do they all fit together? Don't ask questions, don't ask questions.
"Wait," I said. "You said Irish guy, before. I thought he was Scottish."
Amy blinked twice. "Umm," she started, "the accent sounded like Irish to me."
"Not Scottish?"
"No, Scottish is more Scrooge McDuck. That guy was more Colin Farrell."
"Huh."
"Does that answer anything?" she asked.
"No," I said, truthfully. "Absolutely nothing."
Amy shut her eyes for a moment and grinned just slightly. "More or less," she said. Her voice was a bit froggy.
"They were talking about a tracheot--tracheon-- cutting a hole in your throat so you could breathe, before."
She slowly lifted her hand to her throat and rubbed it with two fingers. "Ouch. No, they just stuck a tube down my throat for a while; that sucked. After a while they said I was breathing on my own so they took the tube out; that also sucked."
"Breathing on your own, so the strychnine is all out of your system?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I'm not twitching anymore." She raised both arms a few inches and dropped them onto the bed.
I sighed in relief. "So you're going to be fine," I said.
"That's what they tell me. I just have to stay here until my muscles come back."
"Come back?" I asked.
"They say I tore up most of my skeletal muscles from that little dance back at Costco. You know that kinda-good-mostly-bad pain you get in your muscles after a workout?" She spun her right hand around at the wrist. "Everywhere."
"At least it would be," she continued, "if they didn't come by and shoot some morphine-stuff into this thing every hour." She moved her right elbow and nodded toward the IV line running into her forearm. A clear rubber tube ran from it, wound slightly around the back of the bed, through a complicated-looking machine, then up into a plastic bag hanging from a silver pole. A smaller plastic IV bag was hanging next to the larger one, a tube from it connected it to the main line with a kind of Y-connector.
"The big one is just saline, to keep me hydrated, the small one is some kind of protein. For the muscles."
I took another look around the room. There was a flat-screen TV mounted on the opposite wall from the bed, above a dresser and below some bland artwork. Aside from the hospital bed and linoleum floor, you might think it was a hotel room.
"That pain you get after a workout," I said, "is partly from the muscle rebuilding itself after being torn up. When it rebuilds it overcompensates, making the muscles bigger. You might be pretty beefy after all this."
Amy chuckled. "Upside to everything, I guess."
After a few seconds, I asked, "How much do you know? About what happened, I mean."
She licked her dry lips and took a few breaths. "Strychnine. Isn't that what they said Mr. Comstock might have gotten?"
I nodded.
"And it was in that tea from your hotel room."
I nodded again.
"So that Irish guy tried to kill you, and killed me instead."
"Almost," I said.
"Right. Because you knew exactly what to do."
I nodded, a bit slower. My eyes fell down to the tube in Amy's arm.
Amy swallowed. "Was that you, or the -- other you?"
I looked back up, into her eyes. "The killing me?" I asked, then paused. "I'm not sure. It could have been something I heard before, or it could be part of whatever Schumer and my dad did to my brain. I don't know why a program just designed to skip boot camp would include first aid for specific poisons."
She shrugged. "I've never heard of cutting a Brita filter open and pouring it down someone's throat."
"Do you remember everything from when it happened?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes upward slightly. "I remember your zombie theory, and a headache, then my jaw not working, but after that it all kind of blurs together."
"Like you were passed out, or not aware of what was happening?"
"I think I was aware; I remember being aware, but not what I was aware of."
"So how did you know about the Brita filter?"
She grinned. "My dad told me. He says some FBI agent told him about it, and about what happened at Comstock's house but none of the other stuff. Was that one of your FBI people?"
I nodded. "Rubino came here."
"What for? Just to tell my dad?"
"No, I needed a ride because my car was still at Costco."
"A ride where?"
I dropped my eyes again, turned around and moved one of the chairs closer to the bed so I could sit down.
"To go kill Schumer," I said after I'd seated.
Amy was silent for a few seconds, then said, "Oh. Did you?"
I shook my head. "I wanted to, but I guess it might have been a bit overboard."
"Possibly," she said.
"It was good that Rubino was here, though," I said. "When the doctors heard it was strychnine and that I magically knew exactly what to do for it they called the police on me. Rubino smoothed that over, and told your dad just enough of the truth for him to hate me forever."
Amy rolled her eyes.
"Where is he, anyway?" I asked.
"My dad? He went back home to get some of my clothes and stuff after they moved me in here. They cut up the shirt I was wearing."
"I know," I said, "I was there."
"Oh," Amy said, blushing slightly. "Well it was stupid, it was a button-up shirt. They could have just unbuttoned it."
"They've got those shirt-cutting scissors and they like to use them," I said.
"I liked that shirt."
The hospital gown she was wearing had rather short sleeves that were being scrunched up because of the position she was in. On her left arm, just below her shoulder, I could see the long, thin scars I'd seen before. It looked like there were four of them. She saw me looking and perhaps too-quickly drew her right hand upward and pulled the sleeve down. She winced from the movement.
"What?" I asked, carefully.
"I didn't want you to see those," she said. Her eyes seemed to be watering, perhaps from the pain in moving too quickly.
I'd seen scars like those before, mostly in pictures on the internet but a few times on girls in school. Depressed teenagers who wanted the rush of cutting themselves but couldn't bring themselves to cut at their wrists would often use straight razor blades to cut very thin lines just below the shoulder. Same rush, less risk. People who cut at their wrists were usually just trying to get attention, it would seem. Doing it below the shoulder means you're doing it just to feel something. Using a razor blade also made a very fine, almost invisible scar; another sign that it isn't so much a cry for help as in other forms of self-mutilation. People who do this to themselves are called cutters, and doing so is practically a cliché among "emo" and "goth" subcultures.
My silence seemed to frighten her. "Not because I think you'd judge me," she said, looking away. "I just don't like what it says about me. I think it tarnishes me."
"I don't care about it, Amy."
She looked back at me, her eyes heavy with tears, then she leaned back and pressed her head against the pillow.
"Do you still do it?" I asked.
"No," she replied after a few breaths. "When I was, like, fourteen."
I tried to remember when Amy had said her parents split up. I thought it was younger, but it seemed to affect her later. From what I could tell, she was just coming out of a punk phase. I felt a bit of empathy for her, though my parental drama was much more recent and not as deep-seated as hers. Parents split up all the time, driving millions of teens into depression. The thought of it somehow made Amy seem more real.
"It doesn't tarnish you," I said. "Not unless you let it."
She was silent.
I went on, "Earlier I was trying to figure out what defines a person; is it the mind, the body, the sum of his actions, and so on. I think it's more than that. I think it's how we take our experiences and our actions and move forward from them. A bum isn't a bum because he lost his house and all his money, he's a bum because he doesn't do anything about it; he gives up and begs for spare change. Whatever you did before, it's not who you are. What you learned from it, and did to move on from it, that's who you are. That's something between the mind and body."
She was silent for a few seconds more, then rolled over slightly to look at me with her head still on the pillow. "You were trying to figure that out because you said your mind and body weren't yours. If your dad and some team of geneticists designed your body, and some psychologists and drill instructors designed your mind, like Schumer says, what does that make you?"
I thought about it. "I wish I knew," I said.
"Keep fighting until the answers come?" she asked.
"Or until there's nobody left to fight."
I thought about this guy who's coming after me. If I, the police, or the FBI can stop him -- what will that solve? If I knew who had hired him, would that lead me to the end of this mystery or just up another dark alley? Will a few more words answer all my questions, or just raise further ones? How many more people would have to be hurt before I felt safe, or before I had the truth? How much more of myself would I have to lose just to find out who I am? My dad, Schumer, Rubino, Bremer, Pratt, dead Austrian guy, Comstock,Dingan, Scottish guy, how do they all fit together? Don't ask questions, don't ask questions.
"Wait," I said. "You said Irish guy, before. I thought he was Scottish."
Amy blinked twice. "Umm," she started, "the accent sounded like Irish to me."
"Not Scottish?"
"No, Scottish is more Scrooge McDuck. That guy was more Colin Farrell."
"Huh."
"Does that answer anything?" she asked.
"No," I said, truthfully. "Absolutely nothing."
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
More Waiting
I had a few hours of that uncomfortable, worthless, semi-waking sleep that most people settle for on airplanes or friends' couches. Bremer and a few FBI technicians were still in the suite, but the police had all left. I was annoyed that I had to put on the same clothes I'd been wearing, but by now it was too late to go shopping. My stomach was practically digesting itself as well. There was a picked-over tray of croissant sandwiches set up on the kitchen table that I eyeballed warily.
"Don't worry," Bremer said, "we had some police officers down in the kitchen watching them make these."
I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but I didn't see anybody writhing on the floor from strychnine poisoning so I threw caution to the wind and ate a dry turkey sandwich, then roast beef, then another turkey.
The FBI techs seemed to be on their way out. All the gear they'd been using was packed up into metal locking cases and the bags of tainted food were nowhere to be seen. When one of them carried a case out and through the door I saw there were still two police officers standing in the hall and I felt a little bit better.
I looked around for my mom and didn't see her, but the door to her room was closed so I assumed she'd gone to sleep. Bremer pulled out a chair at the small kitchen table and sat across from me.
"You're wondering what you're supposed to be doing now," he said.
"You're going to tell me that we're waiting for him to try again," I said.
"That's what you're doing. We're hoping to find him first. Local PD is on it, and our people are looking too. It would help if you could give us any more of a description of the guy."
"I told you, I never got a good look at his face. He seemed average height, average build, and some kind of accent. Scottish, I think."
"Right. Well, you just described almost everybody in Scotland."
"There was some of his blood at the house. Can't you analyze that and get his DNA signature or something?"
Bremer scratched his almost-leathery cheek. "No, it doesn't really work like that. We could try to match his DNA against something, but we don't have anything to match it against."
"Prints from the gun?"
"Just yours."
"Security cameras from the hotel?"
"He looks away from every camera."
"But you have a shot of him, you know what he looks like?"
"Like almost everybody in Scotland."
I tried to recall any of the cop shows or detective movies I'd seen, tried to cull together a list of all the ways to catch a killer. It seems like in the stories they always left behind some kind of clue, and got in some kind of battle-of-wits with the lead detective. For lack of that, I didn't know how any real crimes are ever solved.
"What about grocery stores?" I asked.
Bremer's mouth tightened a bit. "What about them?"
"Can't you go to all the local stores and pull up receipt logs to look for transactions matching all the stuff he bought? That'd give you a timestamp, then you could check their security footage from that time and see if you can get a shot of his face. Or maybe he paid with a credit card."
Bremer tapped his middle finger against the surface of the table for a moment. "Ever considered a career in investigation?" he asked.
"I'll be done with mysteries as soon as this crap is sorted out," I said.
"We already put PD on grocery store duty. Most of the smaller stores don't have indexable logs so they have to be sifted through by hand. It could take a while."
I frowned, more upset that my genius idea wasn't very original than the fact that we were no closer to stopping the guy who wanted to kill me.
"Are you going to put me in a safe house or something? Protective custody? This guy clearly knows where I am."
"We can, at least we're going to be moving you to a different hotel and we'll leave some police on the place for a while until we can sort out some kind of legitimate security detail. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that these situations usually aren't like the movies."
"In what way?"
"Well, this guy isn't sitting around in a darkened room, staring at a photograph of you and sharpening a bowie knife. Professionals aren't the relentless at-all-costs arbiters of mayhem you'd imagine them to be. Right now the guy's probably got more on his plate than you, he's got covers and papers to deal with. You're just a job, and if was actually contracted to take out a teenager he probably expected little resistance. If anything, he's probably contacting his client and asking for more money."
I didn't say anything, just stared at the remaining sandwiches.
"All I mean," he continued, "is that this is a low-profile job. He's not going to blow up any buildings just hoping you'll be in it, and he's not going to take a thousand-yard shot at you from a clock tower. He might not even know how to work a gun. Maybe all he knows how to do is squirt strychnine into bottles of tea."
"If I happened to see this guy, and I happened to shoot him, where would I stand with the law there?" I asked.
"What, you going to go looking for him?"
"No, I need to buy some clothes and go back to the hospital. If he should jump around a corner and try to splash strychnine on me or something, I can shoot him, right?"
Bremer sighed and dropped his head into his palm.
The next morning, after some more worthless sleep, I put on the same damn outfit and grabbed my dead cell phone, wallet, knife, and the USP and headed out. Out in the hall were two police officers sitting in two chairs from the kitchen table from my suite. I hid the gun from view and told them, if they even cared, that I was going downstairs for some food. One of them nodded, the other said that there was another officer down in the parking lot.
The officer outside was easy enough to avoid.
I got in my car, pulled the gun from my pants, and slid it between the center console and the passenger seat. If I needed it, I could grab it and fire out the passenger window in one motion. For a moment I thought that was a weird thing for a person to think, but just added it to the pile of similar things I'd thought lately.
Across the street from the hotel was a shopping center with a few stores I could use. I'd thought about going to Old Navy, where I usually got my $18 jeans and $8 t-shirts, but opted instead for an outlet store of a more upscale department store. For some reason I felt like having some nicer clothes, maybe it was just because I could afford it. I left the gun in the car and did my shopping, consistently looking over my shoulder and trying to avoid blind corners. I bought some expensive pants and shirts that didn't have the brand's logo plastered all over the front for once. A few stores down was a Radio Shack, where I got a car and a wall charger for my phone. I looked at the fancy new phones and considered an upgrade, but really didn't feel like dealing with contracts and the fact that I wasn't 18 yet.
I changed into some of the new clothes in my car, somehow, plugged my phone in for the first time in nearly a week, and headed off toward the hospital.
At the front desk I asked where the ICU was and the lady said that only family members could visit people in the ICU. I told her I wanted to visit my sister, Amy Westborne. The lady typed into a computer for a bit, then announced that she'd been moved to a regular room that morning and gave me the number and directions.
I supposed that was a good thing.
After some tedious navigation of the poorly-laid-out hospital I found the right floor, wing, then room. I paused outside the door for a while, listening to hear if Amy's dad was in there and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Everything inside of me said I should feel horrible, feel scared, feel guilty that I'd almost gotten Amy killed. Somehow, though, I felt nothing. I knew how I should feel, but I couldn't get myself to feel it. It was like the first time I'd seen Citizen Kane and everything said I should be blown away, but all I felt was that I'd just seen an overly-complicated movie about an old rich guy who wishes he were young and poor again.
It didn't feel like denial. I'd been in denial when I heard my dad had died. It wasn't shock, either. It was just a kind of mechanical lack of emotion. Like whatever I was turning into wasn't the kind of creature who cared whether friends lived or died. Maybe I was compartmentalizing, I thought. Putting away the things I should be feeling now so I can feel them later when I'm in less danger. Maybe I'm just a robot.
After a few minutes I took in a deep breath and stepped in.
There she was. In the middle of the small, tan-colored room was a fancy-looking hospital bed. In it, under a sheet and attached to more tubes than I could account for, was Amy. She was asleep, her skin looked pale and her hair drawn back awkwardly. She was asleep; I hadn't anticipated that.
I thought about what to do for a bit, then decided to it down in one of the visitor's chairs against the window. I sat for a few minutes, used the bathroom attached to the room, then sat some more.
I almost felt myself drift off to sleep when I heard a weak, distant voice.
"You're here," she said, roughly.
I stood up and crossed the room. She was awake, grinning almost stupidly. "I'm everywhere," I said.
"Don't worry," Bremer said, "we had some police officers down in the kitchen watching them make these."
I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but I didn't see anybody writhing on the floor from strychnine poisoning so I threw caution to the wind and ate a dry turkey sandwich, then roast beef, then another turkey.
The FBI techs seemed to be on their way out. All the gear they'd been using was packed up into metal locking cases and the bags of tainted food were nowhere to be seen. When one of them carried a case out and through the door I saw there were still two police officers standing in the hall and I felt a little bit better.
I looked around for my mom and didn't see her, but the door to her room was closed so I assumed she'd gone to sleep. Bremer pulled out a chair at the small kitchen table and sat across from me.
"You're wondering what you're supposed to be doing now," he said.
"You're going to tell me that we're waiting for him to try again," I said.
"That's what you're doing. We're hoping to find him first. Local PD is on it, and our people are looking too. It would help if you could give us any more of a description of the guy."
"I told you, I never got a good look at his face. He seemed average height, average build, and some kind of accent. Scottish, I think."
"Right. Well, you just described almost everybody in Scotland."
"There was some of his blood at the house. Can't you analyze that and get his DNA signature or something?"
Bremer scratched his almost-leathery cheek. "No, it doesn't really work like that. We could try to match his DNA against something, but we don't have anything to match it against."
"Prints from the gun?"
"Just yours."
"Security cameras from the hotel?"
"He looks away from every camera."
"But you have a shot of him, you know what he looks like?"
"Like almost everybody in Scotland."
I tried to recall any of the cop shows or detective movies I'd seen, tried to cull together a list of all the ways to catch a killer. It seems like in the stories they always left behind some kind of clue, and got in some kind of battle-of-wits with the lead detective. For lack of that, I didn't know how any real crimes are ever solved.
"What about grocery stores?" I asked.
Bremer's mouth tightened a bit. "What about them?"
"Can't you go to all the local stores and pull up receipt logs to look for transactions matching all the stuff he bought? That'd give you a timestamp, then you could check their security footage from that time and see if you can get a shot of his face. Or maybe he paid with a credit card."
Bremer tapped his middle finger against the surface of the table for a moment. "Ever considered a career in investigation?" he asked.
"I'll be done with mysteries as soon as this crap is sorted out," I said.
"We already put PD on grocery store duty. Most of the smaller stores don't have indexable logs so they have to be sifted through by hand. It could take a while."
I frowned, more upset that my genius idea wasn't very original than the fact that we were no closer to stopping the guy who wanted to kill me.
"Are you going to put me in a safe house or something? Protective custody? This guy clearly knows where I am."
"We can, at least we're going to be moving you to a different hotel and we'll leave some police on the place for a while until we can sort out some kind of legitimate security detail. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that these situations usually aren't like the movies."
"In what way?"
"Well, this guy isn't sitting around in a darkened room, staring at a photograph of you and sharpening a bowie knife. Professionals aren't the relentless at-all-costs arbiters of mayhem you'd imagine them to be. Right now the guy's probably got more on his plate than you, he's got covers and papers to deal with. You're just a job, and if was actually contracted to take out a teenager he probably expected little resistance. If anything, he's probably contacting his client and asking for more money."
I didn't say anything, just stared at the remaining sandwiches.
"All I mean," he continued, "is that this is a low-profile job. He's not going to blow up any buildings just hoping you'll be in it, and he's not going to take a thousand-yard shot at you from a clock tower. He might not even know how to work a gun. Maybe all he knows how to do is squirt strychnine into bottles of tea."
"If I happened to see this guy, and I happened to shoot him, where would I stand with the law there?" I asked.
"What, you going to go looking for him?"
"No, I need to buy some clothes and go back to the hospital. If he should jump around a corner and try to splash strychnine on me or something, I can shoot him, right?"
Bremer sighed and dropped his head into his palm.
The next morning, after some more worthless sleep, I put on the same damn outfit and grabbed my dead cell phone, wallet, knife, and the USP and headed out. Out in the hall were two police officers sitting in two chairs from the kitchen table from my suite. I hid the gun from view and told them, if they even cared, that I was going downstairs for some food. One of them nodded, the other said that there was another officer down in the parking lot.
The officer outside was easy enough to avoid.
I got in my car, pulled the gun from my pants, and slid it between the center console and the passenger seat. If I needed it, I could grab it and fire out the passenger window in one motion. For a moment I thought that was a weird thing for a person to think, but just added it to the pile of similar things I'd thought lately.
Across the street from the hotel was a shopping center with a few stores I could use. I'd thought about going to Old Navy, where I usually got my $18 jeans and $8 t-shirts, but opted instead for an outlet store of a more upscale department store. For some reason I felt like having some nicer clothes, maybe it was just because I could afford it. I left the gun in the car and did my shopping, consistently looking over my shoulder and trying to avoid blind corners. I bought some expensive pants and shirts that didn't have the brand's logo plastered all over the front for once. A few stores down was a Radio Shack, where I got a car and a wall charger for my phone. I looked at the fancy new phones and considered an upgrade, but really didn't feel like dealing with contracts and the fact that I wasn't 18 yet.
I changed into some of the new clothes in my car, somehow, plugged my phone in for the first time in nearly a week, and headed off toward the hospital.
At the front desk I asked where the ICU was and the lady said that only family members could visit people in the ICU. I told her I wanted to visit my sister, Amy Westborne. The lady typed into a computer for a bit, then announced that she'd been moved to a regular room that morning and gave me the number and directions.
I supposed that was a good thing.
After some tedious navigation of the poorly-laid-out hospital I found the right floor, wing, then room. I paused outside the door for a while, listening to hear if Amy's dad was in there and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Everything inside of me said I should feel horrible, feel scared, feel guilty that I'd almost gotten Amy killed. Somehow, though, I felt nothing. I knew how I should feel, but I couldn't get myself to feel it. It was like the first time I'd seen Citizen Kane and everything said I should be blown away, but all I felt was that I'd just seen an overly-complicated movie about an old rich guy who wishes he were young and poor again.
It didn't feel like denial. I'd been in denial when I heard my dad had died. It wasn't shock, either. It was just a kind of mechanical lack of emotion. Like whatever I was turning into wasn't the kind of creature who cared whether friends lived or died. Maybe I was compartmentalizing, I thought. Putting away the things I should be feeling now so I can feel them later when I'm in less danger. Maybe I'm just a robot.
After a few minutes I took in a deep breath and stepped in.
There she was. In the middle of the small, tan-colored room was a fancy-looking hospital bed. In it, under a sheet and attached to more tubes than I could account for, was Amy. She was asleep, her skin looked pale and her hair drawn back awkwardly. She was asleep; I hadn't anticipated that.
I thought about what to do for a bit, then decided to it down in one of the visitor's chairs against the window. I sat for a few minutes, used the bathroom attached to the room, then sat some more.
I almost felt myself drift off to sleep when I heard a weak, distant voice.
"You're here," she said, roughly.
I stood up and crossed the room. She was awake, grinning almost stupidly. "I'm everywhere," I said.
Monday, April 23, 2007
No Rest, For the Wicked
It was like another life. Graduation day, the world coming together at last. Friends cheer when they call my name, Amy's waiting for me at my car after the meet and greets. We talk about what we'll do that night; everybody's throwing a party, or we could drive around. I tell her my dad is going to take me shopping for a new car the next day. I feel like my life is everything it ever could be. Amy and I drive around, we talk about anything that pops into mind. I smile at a joke she makes, pull a gun from my waist, and shoot her.
I woke up with a sore neck and hunger pangs beating at the sides of my stomach.
I'd stayed still and the hospital had moved around me. A whole new crowd of people were seated in the waiting room, I didn't see Rubino or Amy's dad anywhere. The trauma room where Amy had been was empty. I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time but remembered it was dead. I tried looking around for a clock but found nothing. Everything seemed distant, out of reach. I wondered if I was still dreaming, but decided that if I were dreaming I wouldn't be able to wonder that. It must have been the tiredness and hunger.
Could I ask what happened to Amy? Is that one of the things they can't tell people? I stood in the middle of a hallway and closed my eyes, waiting for my thoughts to pull themselves together when I heard my name.
I opened my eyes and looked up to see Rubino, his little FBI badge hanging over the side of his belt. He looked tired and annoyed.
"What happened?" I asked when he was close enough.
"You fell asleep. It was cute."
"I mean with Amy," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Right. They moved her up to ICU for observation."
ICU. Intensive Care Unit. The 'I' stands for Information. I smiled for a second.
"So she's alright?" I asked.
"More or less. They said they have to leave the breathing tube in and that she's hypotensive, whatever that means."
"Was she still spasming?"
"I think she would be, they have her paralyzed from something."
"Ok, where is she?"
Rubino paused. "Uhh, I don't think you should go up there," he said.
"What? Why?"
"Because her dad said, 'Don't let that kid up here'."
"He's mad at me?"
"Yes."
"Why? What did you tell him?"
"That she got some food from your hotel room and that it had poison in it. I think all he heard was 'hotel room' and 'poison'."
"So you didn't mention the walking rampage of destruction I am or the pile of dead bodies I leave in my wake?"
"I did not."
"And he still doesn't like me?"
"Correct."
"Well I should still be able to see her," I protested.
"Not unless you want to get mauled. Besides, there's not much to see anyway, she's out cold and is riddled with tubes."
"So what am I supposed to do, wait?"
"Go back to your hotel, get some sleep and some unadulterated food."
"No, I want to go see Schumer and get some answers."
"No."
"What do you mean, no? What, 'we need him alive'?"
"No, we just have nothing connecting Schumer to any of this. Plus, if he does want you dead, which unlikely, but if that's the case -- you shouldn't just march onto his territory with no sleep and an empty stomach."
"So, get some food and sleep and then go kill him?"
"Nobody's killing anybody--"
"Everybody's killing everybody!" I said.
"Not anymore."
"Are you sure? Because I can't think of anybody I've met in the past month that hasn't been killed or tried to kill me. Except you, of course. I'm just here wondering whether you're going to be one of the ones getting killed or one of the ones trying to kill me."
Rubino smiled. "Killing you isn't really my job."
"And what is your job?" I asked. "I mean, I can't figure out what you or the FBI is even doing in all this. Shouldn't you guys be bugging mobsters houses or something?"
He held his grin. "I'm just doing a personal favor. Now lets go to wherever you left your car."
In an hour I was in my car and then back at the hotel.
At the front desk there was a uniformed police officer talking with some hotel staffer. Up in the hall of my floor there were two cops standing around, eyeballing me as soon as I got off the elevator. The door to the suite I was staying in was open and there was quite a commotion inside. When I approached the door, one of the two cops put a hand out to stop me. Just for fun I tried to imagine how many seconds it would take me to have both of these guys on the floor, but I decided to be polite and announce that I live in there.
Special Agent Bremer, Rubino's older partner, was just inside the door talking to somebody in the kitchen and he heard my voice, turned, and told the officers I was alright.
Inside the suite there were about four more cops and five FBI personnel. It was like a law enforcement cocktail party, but instead of lemon rickeys and gimlets people were mixing blue and clear chemicals in small glass bottles. My mother was sitting in one of the couches facing the TV talking to somebody with a notepad. When she saw me she got up and ran over to hug me and embarrass the life out of me.
"How's your friend?" she asked.
"Well enough, I think. She's in the ICU."
"You didn't have any of the food?"
"No, as can be seen by the fact that I'm alive."
The refrigerator door was open and everything from inside was either on the counter, the table, or being placed into large clear bags. Bremer saw me looking and came over.
"There's strychnine in pretty much everything," he said. "Heaviest concentrations are in the tea bottles, though. None in the water."
"The bottles were sealed, how'd he get the stuff inside?"
Bremer grabbed one of the bottles of green tea from the table and held it up to me, pointing at the plastic just under the rim and cap. There was a small raised bump in the plastic, like the bottle had a pimple. "Pierced the plastic with a needle and injected liquid strychnine, then sealed the hole over with some super-glue or by melting the plastic with a soldering iron."
"Diligent," I said.
"I'll say. We've been going over everything with the hotel management and staff. Nobody saw anybody come in with a carton of groceries and the guys who do that stuff say that there wasn't any food order form on your door last night."
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. When Amy and I left Comstock's house around eight, I came back here and sat around for a while, wrote out a grocery list for the hotel people and hung it on the doorknob like always, then tried to sleep. Whoever this guy is, he must have followed me from Comstock's, found out what room I'm in, saw the grocery list, and saw his opening. He bought all the food on the list himself, and laced all of it with strychnine. The thought of a killer with a knife wound in his leg at the grocery store, looking for green tea and cereal bars from a list seemed a bit absurd. That guy must have a whole vat of strychnine somewhere.
I told Bremer all of that, and he agreed. "Sounds about right, though for him to have followed you he would have had to have a car nearby your principal's house. It's possible that he didn't follow you and just knew where you were."
"If this was about revenge for last night, he wouldn't know who I was or where I was. If it was about revenge, he would have just kicked the door in and popped me in bed."
"Could be. Or he could just have a thing for strychnine. Some one's back at the office looking up all the strychnine poisonings in recent history."
"If this isn't revenge, though, then it means that whoever put a hit on Comstock also put a hit on me. That there's a guy out there with a paycheck riding on me being dead, and a guy willing to pay money to see me dead."
"Yeah. I really don't know why you'd be so popular," Bremer said, scratching his forehead with the top of his pen.
I tried to think, again, of all the people who would actually want me dead. It didn't make any sense for Schumer to put a price on my head; it made a little bit of sense for him to want to kill Comstock, him being a gigantic idiot and all, but is hiring a hitman really apt punishment for making the mistake of hiring a hitman? If not Schumer, who would want me dead? The Interpol guy, Pratt? He thought I was a hitman. Maybe it was the people my dad was supposed to be selling Schumer's program to. Maybe they thought that if they couldn't have it -- nobody should; so they kill anybody involved. Comstock, me, Schumer? My dad?
Considering Bremer and Rubino's odd interest in finding out exactly how the program works, I had been starting to wonder if it was them that my dad was in the middle of selling the secrets to. Maybe they'd turned on him, killed him, and now wanted to wipe the whole program off the books. Could Bremer, Rubino, or both of them be the ones behind all this. What does "a personal favor" mean? I was giving myself a headache.
If the FBI boys really did want me dead, they could have just pulled me around a corner and shot me in the face. They'd only be having a hitman do all this if they really, really wanted to insulate themselves.
At the beginning, I thought this was all about my money. Those seemed like simpler times now.
For all of that, in the back of my mind still was the thought of Amy. They had to paralyze her to stop her muscles from tearing themselves apart, but what if she woke up and was still paralyzed. Unable to move, with a tube down her throat, in pain. A mind trapped in a useless body. I told myself that couldn't happen.
The hotel suite was still stuffed with FBI and police and all I wanted to do was sleep. I also needed to eat, but I doubted I'd feel safe eating any food for a while.
How could eat when anything could have been poisoned? How could I sleep when I knew there was a guy out there who wanted to kill me?
I woke up with a sore neck and hunger pangs beating at the sides of my stomach.
I'd stayed still and the hospital had moved around me. A whole new crowd of people were seated in the waiting room, I didn't see Rubino or Amy's dad anywhere. The trauma room where Amy had been was empty. I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time but remembered it was dead. I tried looking around for a clock but found nothing. Everything seemed distant, out of reach. I wondered if I was still dreaming, but decided that if I were dreaming I wouldn't be able to wonder that. It must have been the tiredness and hunger.
Could I ask what happened to Amy? Is that one of the things they can't tell people? I stood in the middle of a hallway and closed my eyes, waiting for my thoughts to pull themselves together when I heard my name.
I opened my eyes and looked up to see Rubino, his little FBI badge hanging over the side of his belt. He looked tired and annoyed.
"What happened?" I asked when he was close enough.
"You fell asleep. It was cute."
"I mean with Amy," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Right. They moved her up to ICU for observation."
ICU. Intensive Care Unit. The 'I' stands for Information. I smiled for a second.
"So she's alright?" I asked.
"More or less. They said they have to leave the breathing tube in and that she's hypotensive, whatever that means."
"Was she still spasming?"
"I think she would be, they have her paralyzed from something."
"Ok, where is she?"
Rubino paused. "Uhh, I don't think you should go up there," he said.
"What? Why?"
"Because her dad said, 'Don't let that kid up here'."
"He's mad at me?"
"Yes."
"Why? What did you tell him?"
"That she got some food from your hotel room and that it had poison in it. I think all he heard was 'hotel room' and 'poison'."
"So you didn't mention the walking rampage of destruction I am or the pile of dead bodies I leave in my wake?"
"I did not."
"And he still doesn't like me?"
"Correct."
"Well I should still be able to see her," I protested.
"Not unless you want to get mauled. Besides, there's not much to see anyway, she's out cold and is riddled with tubes."
"So what am I supposed to do, wait?"
"Go back to your hotel, get some sleep and some unadulterated food."
"No, I want to go see Schumer and get some answers."
"No."
"What do you mean, no? What, 'we need him alive'?"
"No, we just have nothing connecting Schumer to any of this. Plus, if he does want you dead, which unlikely, but if that's the case -- you shouldn't just march onto his territory with no sleep and an empty stomach."
"So, get some food and sleep and then go kill him?"
"Nobody's killing anybody--"
"Everybody's killing everybody!" I said.
"Not anymore."
"Are you sure? Because I can't think of anybody I've met in the past month that hasn't been killed or tried to kill me. Except you, of course. I'm just here wondering whether you're going to be one of the ones getting killed or one of the ones trying to kill me."
Rubino smiled. "Killing you isn't really my job."
"And what is your job?" I asked. "I mean, I can't figure out what you or the FBI is even doing in all this. Shouldn't you guys be bugging mobsters houses or something?"
He held his grin. "I'm just doing a personal favor. Now lets go to wherever you left your car."
In an hour I was in my car and then back at the hotel.
At the front desk there was a uniformed police officer talking with some hotel staffer. Up in the hall of my floor there were two cops standing around, eyeballing me as soon as I got off the elevator. The door to the suite I was staying in was open and there was quite a commotion inside. When I approached the door, one of the two cops put a hand out to stop me. Just for fun I tried to imagine how many seconds it would take me to have both of these guys on the floor, but I decided to be polite and announce that I live in there.
Special Agent Bremer, Rubino's older partner, was just inside the door talking to somebody in the kitchen and he heard my voice, turned, and told the officers I was alright.
Inside the suite there were about four more cops and five FBI personnel. It was like a law enforcement cocktail party, but instead of lemon rickeys and gimlets people were mixing blue and clear chemicals in small glass bottles. My mother was sitting in one of the couches facing the TV talking to somebody with a notepad. When she saw me she got up and ran over to hug me and embarrass the life out of me.
"How's your friend?" she asked.
"Well enough, I think. She's in the ICU."
"You didn't have any of the food?"
"No, as can be seen by the fact that I'm alive."
The refrigerator door was open and everything from inside was either on the counter, the table, or being placed into large clear bags. Bremer saw me looking and came over.
"There's strychnine in pretty much everything," he said. "Heaviest concentrations are in the tea bottles, though. None in the water."
"The bottles were sealed, how'd he get the stuff inside?"
Bremer grabbed one of the bottles of green tea from the table and held it up to me, pointing at the plastic just under the rim and cap. There was a small raised bump in the plastic, like the bottle had a pimple. "Pierced the plastic with a needle and injected liquid strychnine, then sealed the hole over with some super-glue or by melting the plastic with a soldering iron."
"Diligent," I said.
"I'll say. We've been going over everything with the hotel management and staff. Nobody saw anybody come in with a carton of groceries and the guys who do that stuff say that there wasn't any food order form on your door last night."
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. When Amy and I left Comstock's house around eight, I came back here and sat around for a while, wrote out a grocery list for the hotel people and hung it on the doorknob like always, then tried to sleep. Whoever this guy is, he must have followed me from Comstock's, found out what room I'm in, saw the grocery list, and saw his opening. He bought all the food on the list himself, and laced all of it with strychnine. The thought of a killer with a knife wound in his leg at the grocery store, looking for green tea and cereal bars from a list seemed a bit absurd. That guy must have a whole vat of strychnine somewhere.
I told Bremer all of that, and he agreed. "Sounds about right, though for him to have followed you he would have had to have a car nearby your principal's house. It's possible that he didn't follow you and just knew where you were."
"If this was about revenge for last night, he wouldn't know who I was or where I was. If it was about revenge, he would have just kicked the door in and popped me in bed."
"Could be. Or he could just have a thing for strychnine. Some one's back at the office looking up all the strychnine poisonings in recent history."
"If this isn't revenge, though, then it means that whoever put a hit on Comstock also put a hit on me. That there's a guy out there with a paycheck riding on me being dead, and a guy willing to pay money to see me dead."
"Yeah. I really don't know why you'd be so popular," Bremer said, scratching his forehead with the top of his pen.
I tried to think, again, of all the people who would actually want me dead. It didn't make any sense for Schumer to put a price on my head; it made a little bit of sense for him to want to kill Comstock, him being a gigantic idiot and all, but is hiring a hitman really apt punishment for making the mistake of hiring a hitman? If not Schumer, who would want me dead? The Interpol guy, Pratt? He thought I was a hitman. Maybe it was the people my dad was supposed to be selling Schumer's program to. Maybe they thought that if they couldn't have it -- nobody should; so they kill anybody involved. Comstock, me, Schumer? My dad?
Considering Bremer and Rubino's odd interest in finding out exactly how the program works, I had been starting to wonder if it was them that my dad was in the middle of selling the secrets to. Maybe they'd turned on him, killed him, and now wanted to wipe the whole program off the books. Could Bremer, Rubino, or both of them be the ones behind all this. What does "a personal favor" mean? I was giving myself a headache.
If the FBI boys really did want me dead, they could have just pulled me around a corner and shot me in the face. They'd only be having a hitman do all this if they really, really wanted to insulate themselves.
At the beginning, I thought this was all about my money. Those seemed like simpler times now.
For all of that, in the back of my mind still was the thought of Amy. They had to paralyze her to stop her muscles from tearing themselves apart, but what if she woke up and was still paralyzed. Unable to move, with a tube down her throat, in pain. A mind trapped in a useless body. I told myself that couldn't happen.
The hotel suite was still stuffed with FBI and police and all I wanted to do was sleep. I also needed to eat, but I doubted I'd feel safe eating any food for a while.
How could eat when anything could have been poisoned? How could I sleep when I knew there was a guy out there who wanted to kill me?
Friday, April 20, 2007
Waiting
Hospitals. Most people begin and end their lives in the same building. Were it not so creepy, it would be slightly poetic.
With absolutely no sleep in me, everything going on around me kind of buzzed on the edge of my attention. I felt like a tree stuck in time while the world evolved and moved around me, sitting in a hard plastic chair while Special Agent Rubino talked into his cell phone, Amy was still in the ER, her dad on the way, and nothing making any sense. I watched Rubino across the waiting room, pacing back and forth in his cheap black suit. Even though I was pretty sure he was probably somehow involved in my father's death, I felt like he was one of the few people I could count on. All the acquaintances I had in school had fallen off the map after I'd become dead-dad kid. In the past few weeks the only people I'd been able to talk to were Amy and my two FBI stalkers.
The longer I sat still, the more the gravity of the situation sank in. I'd become rather comfortable with the idea that there are actuallyhitmen in the world, a fact I'd have argued as fiction a month or so ago, and it didn't seem to faze me that I'd killed one of them and another was trying to kill me. Strychnine in the tea, what is that? If he wanted to kill me, why didn't he just stand outside the hotel room door and shoot me in the face as soon as I came out? It was all illogical.
I wanted to be doing something. I wanted a weapon in my hand and bodies at my feet. I wanted to be prying the truth from dying lips. I wasn't, though; I was sitting in a hospital waiting room while Amy struggled for oxygen.
"They picked up all the food from your hotel room and are testing it now," Rubino said as he walked over and sat in a chair across from me. "If that's what was poisoned, there may be some latent prints on the packaging."
"Is that likely?" I asked, wondering what the handful of people seated around me were making of this conversation.
"No," Rubino said plainly.
"And my mom, she's alright?"
"Yeah, Bremer's there with some local police and some lab guys now. She says she went downstairs for breakfast."
I was glad to hear that, though I hated that she had to go through even more of this nonsense. I hadn't even really talked to her since I'd found out any of this, just a few fragmented conversations to pass the time. I didn't know what she thought of me, anymore. I don't know what I'd think of me.
"Any progress in finding out who's behind this?" I asked.
Rubino met the glances of the other people waiting, warning them away with his eyes. He finally turned to me and said, "Some. That, uh, profession isn't exactly my or Bremer's department so we've had to bring in some guys from DC. They're starting with Dingan and working backwards, trying to see if knowing his name and having his fingerprints solves anything. They're also trying to find out where he keeps his money."
"So nothing really useful right now," I said.
"Right. It seems that we both know Schumer's the man at the top of all this, though."
Right, Schumer. The guy my dad worked for. The guy with the idea to use infertile hopeful-parents to grow a crop of unwilling lab rats.
"Do you think this guy is coming after me for personal reasons or as part of his contract?" I asked, a bit quieter.
Rubino shook his head. "This is all uncharted waters for me, Chris."
"He could come right through that door," I said, "pop me between the eyes. Do you think I should have protection?"
"Do you think you need it?"
"What does that mean?"
He shrugged. "If this guy's a pro, he wouldn't do something like that unless he was desperate. The name of their game is untraceability. Anybody can walk into a room and pull a trigger. People hire these guys for more personalized service."
"Personalized like, 'I want them to suffer'?"
"Could be."
Lovely. Whoever wanted Comstock dead, be it Schumer or whoever, clearly wasn't a fan of his. He could have gotten a shot in the head with that .22 and not known what hit him, instead of a lethal poison that kills you by either making you break your own back, crush your own lungs, or die of exhaustion from the uncontrollable muscle spasms. That could have been Amy. Pangs of guilt shot through me once more. What she must be going through, I hated it. It should have been me. Maybe the death would stop with me. If I hadn't known about activated charcoal and diazepam, Amy would probably be dead. How could I live like that? And how did I know about activated charcoal and diazepam anyway?
It seemed like something I'd already known, second nature, just like how I'd been doing most of my harrowing activities lately. I didn't have to think about it, it just came to me. But why would that be up in my head? Why would most of the stuff I've magically known be up there? If the whole purpose of Schumer's program was for people to bypass boot camp or basic training with hypnotic training, all I should know how to do is shine my own boots and climb a rope. Where in standard Marine training does one learn how to bypass a security-bar lock on a door, or interrogate someone with a tape recorder, or con his way into a hotel room, or field-treat a strychnine poisoning? Schumer must have lied about something, but what?
"You know a bit about Schumer's program, right?" I asked Rubino, who'd taken to reading messages on his phone's screen.
"Some," he said. "We were hoping that sometime you could fill us in on the rest."
Right, because you killed my dad before he could sell you everything.
"Why would I know how to treat strychnine poisoning?" I asked.
"What?"
"When Amy went down and I realized it was probably strychnine, I knew exactly what to do. Activated charcoal and diazepam. Why would I need to know that?"
"I don't know what you..."
"The only reason I can think that I'd need to know how to treat a specific kind of poisoning is that I'd also know how to administer the poison. You don't teach someone how to arm a bomb without teaching him how to disarm it..."
"Ok, well..."
"So part of my program must include strychnine use. But why would I need to know anything like that?"
Rubino looked confused. "I thought you knew about all that."
I tried to figure out what that meant, but I heard the doors behind me slide open and a man's feet pounding against the floor. I turned and saw Amy's dad stop at the entrance for a moment and look around, then he spotted the desk and headed toward it.
"Man..." I said.
"What?" Rubino asked.
"What are we going to tell him?" I asked.
"Is that the girl's dad?"
"Yeah. How do I explain that she was poisoned by a guy who's upset that she stabbed him in the leg last night?"
"I'm not sure. Did you call him?"
"No, a nurse found her cell phone and dialed the 'home' number programmed in."
"Someone will tell him that you were with her. Does he know you?"
"Just as a guy who hangs around his daughter. He was in the Corps, we think he might have been Special Forces. He could kill me."
Rubino smirked, then ran his hand through his hair. "We'll see," he said before standing up and walking over to Mr. Westborne, still frantically trying to get information out of the nurse behind the front desk.
Alone again, I thought before I dozed off in that hard, plastic chair.
With absolutely no sleep in me, everything going on around me kind of buzzed on the edge of my attention. I felt like a tree stuck in time while the world evolved and moved around me, sitting in a hard plastic chair while Special Agent Rubino talked into his cell phone, Amy was still in the ER, her dad on the way, and nothing making any sense. I watched Rubino across the waiting room, pacing back and forth in his cheap black suit. Even though I was pretty sure he was probably somehow involved in my father's death, I felt like he was one of the few people I could count on. All the acquaintances I had in school had fallen off the map after I'd become dead-dad kid. In the past few weeks the only people I'd been able to talk to were Amy and my two FBI stalkers.
The longer I sat still, the more the gravity of the situation sank in. I'd become rather comfortable with the idea that there are actuallyhitmen in the world, a fact I'd have argued as fiction a month or so ago, and it didn't seem to faze me that I'd killed one of them and another was trying to kill me. Strychnine in the tea, what is that? If he wanted to kill me, why didn't he just stand outside the hotel room door and shoot me in the face as soon as I came out? It was all illogical.
I wanted to be doing something. I wanted a weapon in my hand and bodies at my feet. I wanted to be prying the truth from dying lips. I wasn't, though; I was sitting in a hospital waiting room while Amy struggled for oxygen.
"They picked up all the food from your hotel room and are testing it now," Rubino said as he walked over and sat in a chair across from me. "If that's what was poisoned, there may be some latent prints on the packaging."
"Is that likely?" I asked, wondering what the handful of people seated around me were making of this conversation.
"No," Rubino said plainly.
"And my mom, she's alright?"
"Yeah, Bremer's there with some local police and some lab guys now. She says she went downstairs for breakfast."
I was glad to hear that, though I hated that she had to go through even more of this nonsense. I hadn't even really talked to her since I'd found out any of this, just a few fragmented conversations to pass the time. I didn't know what she thought of me, anymore. I don't know what I'd think of me.
"Any progress in finding out who's behind this?" I asked.
Rubino met the glances of the other people waiting, warning them away with his eyes. He finally turned to me and said, "Some. That, uh, profession isn't exactly my or Bremer's department so we've had to bring in some guys from DC. They're starting with Dingan and working backwards, trying to see if knowing his name and having his fingerprints solves anything. They're also trying to find out where he keeps his money."
"So nothing really useful right now," I said.
"Right. It seems that we both know Schumer's the man at the top of all this, though."
Right, Schumer. The guy my dad worked for. The guy with the idea to use infertile hopeful-parents to grow a crop of unwilling lab rats.
"Do you think this guy is coming after me for personal reasons or as part of his contract?" I asked, a bit quieter.
Rubino shook his head. "This is all uncharted waters for me, Chris."
"He could come right through that door," I said, "pop me between the eyes. Do you think I should have protection?"
"Do you think you need it?"
"What does that mean?"
He shrugged. "If this guy's a pro, he wouldn't do something like that unless he was desperate. The name of their game is untraceability. Anybody can walk into a room and pull a trigger. People hire these guys for more personalized service."
"Personalized like, 'I want them to suffer'?"
"Could be."
Lovely. Whoever wanted Comstock dead, be it Schumer or whoever, clearly wasn't a fan of his. He could have gotten a shot in the head with that .22 and not known what hit him, instead of a lethal poison that kills you by either making you break your own back, crush your own lungs, or die of exhaustion from the uncontrollable muscle spasms. That could have been Amy. Pangs of guilt shot through me once more. What she must be going through, I hated it. It should have been me. Maybe the death would stop with me. If I hadn't known about activated charcoal and diazepam, Amy would probably be dead. How could I live like that? And how did I know about activated charcoal and diazepam anyway?
It seemed like something I'd already known, second nature, just like how I'd been doing most of my harrowing activities lately. I didn't have to think about it, it just came to me. But why would that be up in my head? Why would most of the stuff I've magically known be up there? If the whole purpose of Schumer's program was for people to bypass boot camp or basic training with hypnotic training, all I should know how to do is shine my own boots and climb a rope. Where in standard Marine training does one learn how to bypass a security-bar lock on a door, or interrogate someone with a tape recorder, or con his way into a hotel room, or field-treat a strychnine poisoning? Schumer must have lied about something, but what?
"You know a bit about Schumer's program, right?" I asked Rubino, who'd taken to reading messages on his phone's screen.
"Some," he said. "We were hoping that sometime you could fill us in on the rest."
Right, because you killed my dad before he could sell you everything.
"Why would I know how to treat strychnine poisoning?" I asked.
"What?"
"When Amy went down and I realized it was probably strychnine, I knew exactly what to do. Activated charcoal and diazepam. Why would I need to know that?"
"I don't know what you..."
"The only reason I can think that I'd need to know how to treat a specific kind of poisoning is that I'd also know how to administer the poison. You don't teach someone how to arm a bomb without teaching him how to disarm it..."
"Ok, well..."
"So part of my program must include strychnine use. But why would I need to know anything like that?"
Rubino looked confused. "I thought you knew about all that."
I tried to figure out what that meant, but I heard the doors behind me slide open and a man's feet pounding against the floor. I turned and saw Amy's dad stop at the entrance for a moment and look around, then he spotted the desk and headed toward it.
"Man..." I said.
"What?" Rubino asked.
"What are we going to tell him?" I asked.
"Is that the girl's dad?"
"Yeah. How do I explain that she was poisoned by a guy who's upset that she stabbed him in the leg last night?"
"I'm not sure. Did you call him?"
"No, a nurse found her cell phone and dialed the 'home' number programmed in."
"Someone will tell him that you were with her. Does he know you?"
"Just as a guy who hangs around his daughter. He was in the Corps, we think he might have been Special Forces. He could kill me."
Rubino smirked, then ran his hand through his hair. "We'll see," he said before standing up and walking over to Mr. Westborne, still frantically trying to get information out of the nurse behind the front desk.
Alone again, I thought before I dozed off in that hard, plastic chair.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
E.R.
Sirens slammed against my head in steady intervals as I bounced around the back of an ambulance. It was too bumpy to put in an IV, so they'd strapped Amy in tightly and shot something into her leg and pumped oxygen into her mouth with a clear, plastic... oxygen squeezy thing. I was trying not to notice that her shirt had been cut open.
Someone had tried to poison me. Amy had taken it instead. Her body was out of her control. Her mind locked in a convulsing prison.
I watched a heart monitor displayed on a screen mounted to the side of the vehicle, lines danced their merry dance. It was then that I realized this was my life now. As much as I tried to run from it, nothing was ever going to calm down. Something in the core of me seemed to summon havoc, manifest it all around me. I let go of any hope for a normal life then, and just hoped that my curse wouldn't spill onto any more of the people close to me. I did not want Amy to die, I couldn't let her take my bullet.
The ambulance screeched to a halt and the doors burst open, the chaos amplifying. White jackets and green scrubs yelled back and forth between blue coats. Everything was moving, everybody was making noise; I couldn't track any of it.
"This the poisoning?"
Out of the ambulance.
"Amy Westborne, 16. Suspected oral strychnine poisoning, muscular spasm, diffuse esophageal spasm."
Automatic doors.
"Pulse ox 88 and slipping."
Past a desk.
"Twenty-five of diazepam and unknown dosage activated carbon administered orally at scene. Ten-cc phenobarbital administered en route."
Around a corner.
"Trauma three is clear. Any idea how much strychnine was ingested?"
More people show up.
"Get me a line of saline with two milliliters of diazepam and seventy dantrolene."
Through double doors.
"We need to intubate."
Past a waiting room, people's heads drawn to the motion.
"No, not with DES. Keep bagging."
More doors. Curtains and beds everywhere.
"Who's he, a relative?"
Last set of doors. Even more people.
"Boyfriend, I think."
"Sir, do you know how she was poisoned?"
I figured the voice was talking to me so I answered without tracing the source, "She drank from a bottle of tea, said it was bitter. After ten minutes she complained of a headache, after another ten she went lockjaw and dropped."
"You recognized it as strychnine poisoning and gave her activated carbon and valium yourself?"
The rolling stretcher stopped beside a bed on wheels. Four of the people floating around her slid Amy from the stretcher to the bed.
I turned to look at who was talking to me, it was a doctor, female, forties. "Yeah," I said. "I mean, no. There was a guy there, a med student."
The woman nodded, then turned to a nurse and said what I thought was, "Get Petey down here." The nurse nodded and went out a set of doors behind her.
Another nurse was running an IV line into Amy's left arm, another standing over her head and squeezing the plastic bag pumping air into her mouth and nose. A few doctors shouted terse directions back and forth.
"Is she going to be alright?" I asked the doctor who'd been talking to me.
"Don't know yet," she said, "we're pushing anticonvulsants to keep the muscles from spasming, but her lungs aren't working properly so she's not getting as much oxygen as she should be. We can't run an orotracheal tube right now because her throat keeps opening and closing. If that doesn't stop we may have to perform a tracheotomy, cut a hole into her trachea so we can run air into the lungs."
The doctor stepped away from me and over to Amy, a flurry of hands moving all around her. Amy just lay there, motionless, like a CPR dummy. Something in my mind was telling me to get out of there, like something was wrong. I should call Amy's dad, I knew, and I should call my mom and make sure she doesn't touch any of the new food. It was something else, though. Who's Petey? Get Petey down here, it kept repeating in my head. Do I know a Petey? Or could she have said "PD," the police?
A girl was poisoned with some obscure chemical, and I just happened to be able to identify it and know how to treat it. That might look bad. Cops would want to talk to me. They'd want to know where the strychnine had come from, how it got into a bottle of tea that was technically mine. The fact that I was on the shitlist of a Scottish-accented killer who'd used the same poison to kill my principal the night before probably wouldn't go over too well. They might also wonder why I wasn't at school, if that made any difference.
I started to back out through the door we'd come in when I realized that I was clutching Amy's purse in my hand. I set it down on a small cart of supplies by the door, and slipped out the door into the hall. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, the screen was black. I tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. Shoot, I was supposed to get a new charger for the phone since the original one was in my house. The one that burned down. I headed toward the main waiting room for the ER and found the payphone. I slid my debit card through the phone's slot and dialed Rubino's cell number from the business card I was given last Sunday.
Four rings. "Rubino."
"It's Baker. You need to come pick me up at Mary Washington Hospital."
"I, uhh, why?"
"So you can take me to Quantico and so I can put three bullets in Schumer."
"Ok," he said, "any particular reason?"
"So he can tell me who the guy is that he hired to take out Comstock," I said.
"What, did he come after you?" Rubino asked with little concern.
"Someone put strychnine in food delivered to my room. Amy got some of it,---"
"Your little girl pal?"
"She's in the ER right now, they're talking about cutting a hole in her throat so she can breathe. Are you going to pick me up or not? I need to get out of here before the police find me and start asking why there was poison in my tea."
"I can deal with the police, for the hundredth time," he said. "I can also send Bremer over to your hotel with some uniforms to check on your mom and watch the place."
"Ok, good," I said. "He'll probably try to come after me again when he finds out I'm still walking."
"Alright," Rubino said, "I'll be there in a few minutes."
He hung up, I hung up.
I paced around the waiting room while I waited.
Strychnine. Damn it all, someone tried to poison me. Some crazy hitman. What is this? This isn't normal. A guy my dad worked for hired a hitman to take out my pretend school principal because he screwed up in hiring a hitman, and now the hitman is upset that Amy stabbed him, or upset because I'm the one who actually killed the first hitman? This, all because I'm the product of some insane program to build pre-programmed soldiers from scratch? I felt like my head was about to explode. I'd been awake for over 24 hours now and my brain felt like mush. Amy was laying on a slab in the ER unable to breathe for herself, my dad was dead, my ankle still kind of hurt from when I'd kicked out the back window of a stupid little European car in Austria, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and my house had recently exploded.
I wanted to go find Schumer, dragging the wrath of a holy hellstorm behind me. I wanted to make this all go away, make him tell me what's going on, make him call off the hitmen and put my life back together. I knew that wouldn't happen, but I'd be satisfied with a bit of revenge.
Rubino finally came in through the main ER entrance, spotted me, and walked toward me.
"Congratulations," he said, "it looks like you did manage to piss of a hitman."
"Looks like," I said with my arms crossed, trying to contain my roaring stomach and ignore the screaming madness in my head.
"I suppose it will be no surprise to you that the lab report came back on Nathan Comstock, and the cause of death was, in fact..."
"Strychnine," I said.
"You bet," Rubino said. He looked around for a moment, then asked, "how's the girl?"
"I don't know," I said, truthfully, "I'm afraid to go in there. Plus, the police will have questions I can't answer."
"Alright kiddo," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Let's go face the music."
My dad used to call me "kiddo".
Someone had tried to poison me. Amy had taken it instead. Her body was out of her control. Her mind locked in a convulsing prison.
I watched a heart monitor displayed on a screen mounted to the side of the vehicle, lines danced their merry dance. It was then that I realized this was my life now. As much as I tried to run from it, nothing was ever going to calm down. Something in the core of me seemed to summon havoc, manifest it all around me. I let go of any hope for a normal life then, and just hoped that my curse wouldn't spill onto any more of the people close to me. I did not want Amy to die, I couldn't let her take my bullet.
The ambulance screeched to a halt and the doors burst open, the chaos amplifying. White jackets and green scrubs yelled back and forth between blue coats. Everything was moving, everybody was making noise; I couldn't track any of it.
"This the poisoning?"
Out of the ambulance.
"Amy Westborne, 16. Suspected oral strychnine poisoning, muscular spasm, diffuse esophageal spasm."
Automatic doors.
"Pulse ox 88 and slipping."
Past a desk.
"Twenty-five of diazepam and unknown dosage activated carbon administered orally at scene. Ten-cc phenobarbital administered en route."
Around a corner.
"Trauma three is clear. Any idea how much strychnine was ingested?"
More people show up.
"Get me a line of saline with two milliliters of diazepam and seventy dantrolene."
Through double doors.
"We need to intubate."
Past a waiting room, people's heads drawn to the motion.
"No, not with DES. Keep bagging."
More doors. Curtains and beds everywhere.
"Who's he, a relative?"
Last set of doors. Even more people.
"Boyfriend, I think."
"Sir, do you know how she was poisoned?"
I figured the voice was talking to me so I answered without tracing the source, "She drank from a bottle of tea, said it was bitter. After ten minutes she complained of a headache, after another ten she went lockjaw and dropped."
"You recognized it as strychnine poisoning and gave her activated carbon and valium yourself?"
The rolling stretcher stopped beside a bed on wheels. Four of the people floating around her slid Amy from the stretcher to the bed.
I turned to look at who was talking to me, it was a doctor, female, forties. "Yeah," I said. "I mean, no. There was a guy there, a med student."
The woman nodded, then turned to a nurse and said what I thought was, "Get Petey down here." The nurse nodded and went out a set of doors behind her.
Another nurse was running an IV line into Amy's left arm, another standing over her head and squeezing the plastic bag pumping air into her mouth and nose. A few doctors shouted terse directions back and forth.
"Is she going to be alright?" I asked the doctor who'd been talking to me.
"Don't know yet," she said, "we're pushing anticonvulsants to keep the muscles from spasming, but her lungs aren't working properly so she's not getting as much oxygen as she should be. We can't run an orotracheal tube right now because her throat keeps opening and closing. If that doesn't stop we may have to perform a tracheotomy, cut a hole into her trachea so we can run air into the lungs."
The doctor stepped away from me and over to Amy, a flurry of hands moving all around her. Amy just lay there, motionless, like a CPR dummy. Something in my mind was telling me to get out of there, like something was wrong. I should call Amy's dad, I knew, and I should call my mom and make sure she doesn't touch any of the new food. It was something else, though. Who's Petey? Get Petey down here, it kept repeating in my head. Do I know a Petey? Or could she have said "PD," the police?
A girl was poisoned with some obscure chemical, and I just happened to be able to identify it and know how to treat it. That might look bad. Cops would want to talk to me. They'd want to know where the strychnine had come from, how it got into a bottle of tea that was technically mine. The fact that I was on the shitlist of a Scottish-accented killer who'd used the same poison to kill my principal the night before probably wouldn't go over too well. They might also wonder why I wasn't at school, if that made any difference.
I started to back out through the door we'd come in when I realized that I was clutching Amy's purse in my hand. I set it down on a small cart of supplies by the door, and slipped out the door into the hall. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, the screen was black. I tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. Shoot, I was supposed to get a new charger for the phone since the original one was in my house. The one that burned down. I headed toward the main waiting room for the ER and found the payphone. I slid my debit card through the phone's slot and dialed Rubino's cell number from the business card I was given last Sunday.
Four rings. "Rubino."
"It's Baker. You need to come pick me up at Mary Washington Hospital."
"I, uhh, why?"
"So you can take me to Quantico and so I can put three bullets in Schumer."
"Ok," he said, "any particular reason?"
"So he can tell me who the guy is that he hired to take out Comstock," I said.
"What, did he come after you?" Rubino asked with little concern.
"Someone put strychnine in food delivered to my room. Amy got some of it,---"
"Your little girl pal?"
"She's in the ER right now, they're talking about cutting a hole in her throat so she can breathe. Are you going to pick me up or not? I need to get out of here before the police find me and start asking why there was poison in my tea."
"I can deal with the police, for the hundredth time," he said. "I can also send Bremer over to your hotel with some uniforms to check on your mom and watch the place."
"Ok, good," I said. "He'll probably try to come after me again when he finds out I'm still walking."
"Alright," Rubino said, "I'll be there in a few minutes."
He hung up, I hung up.
I paced around the waiting room while I waited.
Strychnine. Damn it all, someone tried to poison me. Some crazy hitman. What is this? This isn't normal. A guy my dad worked for hired a hitman to take out my pretend school principal because he screwed up in hiring a hitman, and now the hitman is upset that Amy stabbed him, or upset because I'm the one who actually killed the first hitman? This, all because I'm the product of some insane program to build pre-programmed soldiers from scratch? I felt like my head was about to explode. I'd been awake for over 24 hours now and my brain felt like mush. Amy was laying on a slab in the ER unable to breathe for herself, my dad was dead, my ankle still kind of hurt from when I'd kicked out the back window of a stupid little European car in Austria, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and my house had recently exploded.
I wanted to go find Schumer, dragging the wrath of a holy hellstorm behind me. I wanted to make this all go away, make him tell me what's going on, make him call off the hitmen and put my life back together. I knew that wouldn't happen, but I'd be satisfied with a bit of revenge.
Rubino finally came in through the main ER entrance, spotted me, and walked toward me.
"Congratulations," he said, "it looks like you did manage to piss of a hitman."
"Looks like," I said with my arms crossed, trying to contain my roaring stomach and ignore the screaming madness in my head.
"I suppose it will be no surprise to you that the lab report came back on Nathan Comstock, and the cause of death was, in fact..."
"Strychnine," I said.
"You bet," Rubino said. He looked around for a moment, then asked, "how's the girl?"
"I don't know," I said, truthfully, "I'm afraid to go in there. Plus, the police will have questions I can't answer."
"Alright kiddo," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Let's go face the music."
My dad used to call me "kiddo".
Monday, April 16, 2007
Activated
Through all of this, the one thing I'd never felt was helpless. I conned my way into bank records, broke a guy's arm without caring, slipped into a double-locked hotel door, and escaped a slow-moving car drifting through oncoming traffic; and through all of it, the only fear I felt was that it wouldn't be enough. I'd never feared that there was just nothing I could do. Never felt my heart beat echo in my own ears and my breathing stutter because something was just out of my hands.
My hands were gripped around the back of Amy's neck and her arm as she lay on the cold, cement floor of a Costco Warehouse. Her muscles twitched rhythmically as her eyes darted in all directions. A few feet away a man was half-screaming into his cell phone about a girl having a seizure, or something, in the middle of the store. The guy tried to repeat instructions and questions from the 911 operator, but he made a poor proxy and I couldn't concentrate on anything except the girl in my arms. The only language I could process was the, "No, no, no" playing on repeat throughout my skull and escaping as whispers from my lips.
What was going on? I had no idea. My mind raced in circles but couldn't stop on anything. Sixteen year olds don't have seizures. People don't die when you care enough about them.
A slight panic was spreading outward from my position like ripples on the surface of a sea of self-concerned shoppers. What's all the commotion? Is someone hurt? My god, she's just a kid. Is she on drugs? Is there a doctor? Does the coupon for applesauce apply if I buy the three-pack or is it just for single jars?
After the first concerto of dread finished in my mind and the encore was about to begin, a guy who didn't seem much older than myself filtered through the forming crowd and knelt on the floor across from me. He said some words I didn't hear, pulled up his sleeves, and put one hand on Amy's chest. What kind of pervert, I thought. I tried to focus my consciousness onto something nearby I could bludgeon him to death with. He repeated the same words, but they were again lost to the thick soup my brain had turned into. I had a knife. I could flick it open and swing it up into the base of his jaw. The blade wouldn't reach his brain, but it would get him the hell away.
"I said, is she a diabetic?" he said again, much louder this time.
The volume seemed to trump my hysteria. My thoughts pulled together slightly.
"Are you a doctor?" I asked in one quick breath.
"I'm a medical student," he said, dismissively. "Do you know this girl? Is she a diabetic?"
I tried to process the words. "Diabetic. I don't think so. Medical student?"
"I'm a third-year. I started my internship at the hospital a month ago," he said, leaning in and putting his ear near Amy's mouth. "This looks like hypoglycemia. Insulin shock. You don't know if she's diabetic? Has she eaten or drank anything yet today?"
Diabetic. Diabetic. The word hung for a moment before I remembered what it even meant. "I haven't seen her take insulin or anything before," I said.
I let go of her arm with one hand and grabbed a hand, looked at the tips of her fingers. I didn't see any puncture marks. I pulled the sleeves of her shirts up to look at her arms, saw no needle marks or scabs. There were a few long, very narrow scab-looking scars on her bicep in a neat row. Was she a cutter? Did she ever mention that?
"I said did she eat anything to drink? If she's hypoglycemic she has to get a certain amount of sugar. These spasms are severe."
I tried to remember. The only thing I remembered her having was that bottle of tea back at the hotel, but she didn't have much because she said it was bitter. Bitter. Something about that tickled on the back of my brain. Bitter. The groceries. What was it? My mind was trying to tell me something. Why is my mind trying to tell me something? That doesn't make sense. I am my mind. What does it know that I don't? Well, besides all those handy ways to kill people...
"Wait," I said, then let my mouth hang open. Amy had stopped spasming for a moment. They seemed to come and go.
"What?" the guy said.
Something was seeping into my mind, my real mind, but it was coming slow. Ways to kill people. How did they say Comstock died? Spasm something. Where did that tea come from? Somebody usually had to sign for the groceries when they were delivered. This morning they were just sitting there after I'd left the shopping-list on the doorknob the night before. Bitter tea. Plastic bottle. Comstock. What was all of it? The lady said Comstock may have been dosed with VX nerve gas or something else. Can you put nerve gas in tea? Is it bitter? Shouldn't nerve gas be a gas? What was the other thing? Damn it. It started with S.
"Strychnine," I said at last, in a low, somber voice.
"Strychnine?" the med student said, incredulously. "What about it?"
"She might have been poisoned. Do you know what strychnine is?"
"Yeah," he said, "it's poison. How could she have--"
Amy started spasming again. The muscles in her chest and back seemed to heave against each other. The medical examiner said most people die by breaking their own back.
"Oh god," the guy said, looking down at her.
"What?" I asked.
"This is going to be bad."
I swallowed.
He looked up, tried to pick out the guy in the crowd who had called 911. He was still on the phone, seemingly narrating the events.
"Is that still 911?" the med student asked the narrator.
The man said yes.
"Tell them to inform the ambulance dispatch that it's strychnine poisoning. They'll probably want to prep the ER for her arrival."
The man nodded slowly.
I looked back at Amy. Besides the twitching, she looked almost peaceful. Not yet, I thought.
"So it's poison," I said, "can't we just induce vomiting?"
The med student placed a hand on her throat. "No," he said, "I don't think so."
"You don't think so?"
"No, I mean. If the throat muscles are in spasm, reverse peristalsis is impossible. She would choke on the vomit." He sounded like he was reciting study notes from memory.
"What can we do, then?"
"Wait," he said. "And try to stop her from snapping her spine. Strychnine activates all the skeletal muscle tissue at the same time, her muscles are flexing against each other at once. If they ever get into a contrary rhythm, they could tear themselves apart or break her bones."
"There are couches over there," I said, "we could move her off the floor."
He thought about it, then said, "No, motion can make the spasms get worse." He turned around and asked the crowd, in general, to go fetch a pillow. A few people scampered away.
Wait? Wait. Amy was lying there on the floor, her body turning against her and we just wait?
The med student repositioned himself and pressed one hand against Amy's chest and the other against her stomach, like he was pushing her into the ground. he told me to hold her legs, but the words bounced right of me. I had an idea, but I didn't understand it. For a moment I wondered if I had slipped into the other me, but I didn't care.
"I'll be right back," I said as I stood up and ran through the circle of onlookers and down the aisles of the store.
I ran full speed, bobbing my head in all directions like a robin to look down the aisles as I passed them. Office supplies. Desk chairs. Clocks. Kitchen knives. Water filters. There. I stopped in my tracks and doubled back, cutting through the aisle and stopping in front of the home water filtering pitchers. I grabbed a box of replacement filters, and then started running again. Winter jackets. Toothbrushes. Shovels. Car batteries. Books. DVDs. Wine. Cakes. Raw meat. Fresh shrimp. Produce. Bottled water. I stopped again, pulled my knife out and cut away the plastic wrapping from a large case of bottled water. I grabbed two bottles, replaced my knife, and headed back to the pharmacy area. I slipped through the crowd and slid on my knees back to Amy's side. The two bottles I set on the floor, the box of replacement filters I tore open and produced a single plastic, tube-ish water filter.
The medical student, and everybody whose face I could see, looked at me like I was crazy. If I had the time, I would have smiled.
I pulled my knife back out, set the water filter on the floor, and stabbed into the side of it with the knife. Once through the thin plastic exterior the knife stopped against something dry and sandy. I used a sawing motion and twisted the filter with my other hand to cut the whole top off of the filter and tossed it aside, leaving a kind of makeshift plastic cup in my hand. Inside the cup, and overflowing onto the floor, was a black, slightly crystalline powder with a few plastic-looking, tiny rubbery balls mixed in. I had no idea what the balls were, but the black powder was pure carbon. Activated charcoal.
The med student was holding Amy's torso against the floor still, someone else was holding her legs down by the ankles. When the med student realized what I'd done, he let out a slight laugh.
I poured some of the charcoal onto the floor to make some room in the filter-cup and topped it off with water from one of the bottles. I covered the top and shook the filter to get the carbon particles all wet, then poured the sandy sludge right into Amy's mouth, followed by some water. She coughed a few times, but it went down.
"What the hell was that about?" the man holding Amy's legs down asked.
The med student turned his head toward him and said, "Activated charcoal. It absorbs the poison in the stomach so it isn't metabolized. Most people get it in tablets."
"I'm not most people," I said, standing back up and retreating again. I squeezed through the crowd and headed over to the small, white mini-building that acted as the store's pharmacy. I looked around for people in white coats, but the room was empty. I turned back around and saw that pharmacists were all in the midst of the crowd, standing out like grains of salt in a pile of pepper.
"I need Diazepam," I said from just outside the pharmacy window, loud enough for the pharmacists to hear me. "Or Valium."
The outer ring of the crowd turned toward me, pharmacists included. The oldest of them, a man with graying hair, walk-jogged over to me.
"You need what?" he asked.
"Diazepam," I repeated.
"For her?"
No, I just remembered I had a prescription to fill and thought this would be a cool time to fill it. "Yes, for her!"
He looked around, nervous and distraught. "I can't issue meds without a doctor's authorization--"
"This is an emergency!" I interrupted.
"Even still. Only a doctor can know what she needs."
I sighed, then turned around and slid the pharmacy window open a bit wider and jumped onto the counter and dropped into the pharmacy.
"Hey!" the guy said. What was he going to do?
I looked at the shelves, hundreds of white bottles perched at the edges of each shelf. I tried to make some kind of sense out of the ordering of the medications, incorrectly assuming it would all be alphabetical, and after about seventy seconds stumbled upon the Diazepam. I grabbed the whole bottle and hopped back over the counter and pushed past the protesting pharmacist, through the crowd, and back to Amy and the men keeping her down.
I held the bottle out to the med student, the label facing him, and said, "How much?"
He squinted to read the label, looked at Amy, then back at me. "What are you?" he asked.
"Unique," I said. "How many pills?"
My hands were gripped around the back of Amy's neck and her arm as she lay on the cold, cement floor of a Costco Warehouse. Her muscles twitched rhythmically as her eyes darted in all directions. A few feet away a man was half-screaming into his cell phone about a girl having a seizure, or something, in the middle of the store. The guy tried to repeat instructions and questions from the 911 operator, but he made a poor proxy and I couldn't concentrate on anything except the girl in my arms. The only language I could process was the, "No, no, no" playing on repeat throughout my skull and escaping as whispers from my lips.
What was going on? I had no idea. My mind raced in circles but couldn't stop on anything. Sixteen year olds don't have seizures. People don't die when you care enough about them.
A slight panic was spreading outward from my position like ripples on the surface of a sea of self-concerned shoppers. What's all the commotion? Is someone hurt? My god, she's just a kid. Is she on drugs? Is there a doctor? Does the coupon for applesauce apply if I buy the three-pack or is it just for single jars?
After the first concerto of dread finished in my mind and the encore was about to begin, a guy who didn't seem much older than myself filtered through the forming crowd and knelt on the floor across from me. He said some words I didn't hear, pulled up his sleeves, and put one hand on Amy's chest. What kind of pervert, I thought. I tried to focus my consciousness onto something nearby I could bludgeon him to death with. He repeated the same words, but they were again lost to the thick soup my brain had turned into. I had a knife. I could flick it open and swing it up into the base of his jaw. The blade wouldn't reach his brain, but it would get him the hell away.
"I said, is she a diabetic?" he said again, much louder this time.
The volume seemed to trump my hysteria. My thoughts pulled together slightly.
"Are you a doctor?" I asked in one quick breath.
"I'm a medical student," he said, dismissively. "Do you know this girl? Is she a diabetic?"
I tried to process the words. "Diabetic. I don't think so. Medical student?"
"I'm a third-year. I started my internship at the hospital a month ago," he said, leaning in and putting his ear near Amy's mouth. "This looks like hypoglycemia. Insulin shock. You don't know if she's diabetic? Has she eaten or drank anything yet today?"
Diabetic. Diabetic. The word hung for a moment before I remembered what it even meant. "I haven't seen her take insulin or anything before," I said.
I let go of her arm with one hand and grabbed a hand, looked at the tips of her fingers. I didn't see any puncture marks. I pulled the sleeves of her shirts up to look at her arms, saw no needle marks or scabs. There were a few long, very narrow scab-looking scars on her bicep in a neat row. Was she a cutter? Did she ever mention that?
"I said did she eat anything to drink? If she's hypoglycemic she has to get a certain amount of sugar. These spasms are severe."
I tried to remember. The only thing I remembered her having was that bottle of tea back at the hotel, but she didn't have much because she said it was bitter. Bitter. Something about that tickled on the back of my brain. Bitter. The groceries. What was it? My mind was trying to tell me something. Why is my mind trying to tell me something? That doesn't make sense. I am my mind. What does it know that I don't? Well, besides all those handy ways to kill people...
"Wait," I said, then let my mouth hang open. Amy had stopped spasming for a moment. They seemed to come and go.
"What?" the guy said.
Something was seeping into my mind, my real mind, but it was coming slow. Ways to kill people. How did they say Comstock died? Spasm something. Where did that tea come from? Somebody usually had to sign for the groceries when they were delivered. This morning they were just sitting there after I'd left the shopping-list on the doorknob the night before. Bitter tea. Plastic bottle. Comstock. What was all of it? The lady said Comstock may have been dosed with VX nerve gas or something else. Can you put nerve gas in tea? Is it bitter? Shouldn't nerve gas be a gas? What was the other thing? Damn it. It started with S.
"Strychnine," I said at last, in a low, somber voice.
"Strychnine?" the med student said, incredulously. "What about it?"
"She might have been poisoned. Do you know what strychnine is?"
"Yeah," he said, "it's poison. How could she have--"
Amy started spasming again. The muscles in her chest and back seemed to heave against each other. The medical examiner said most people die by breaking their own back.
"Oh god," the guy said, looking down at her.
"What?" I asked.
"This is going to be bad."
I swallowed.
He looked up, tried to pick out the guy in the crowd who had called 911. He was still on the phone, seemingly narrating the events.
"Is that still 911?" the med student asked the narrator.
The man said yes.
"Tell them to inform the ambulance dispatch that it's strychnine poisoning. They'll probably want to prep the ER for her arrival."
The man nodded slowly.
I looked back at Amy. Besides the twitching, she looked almost peaceful. Not yet, I thought.
"So it's poison," I said, "can't we just induce vomiting?"
The med student placed a hand on her throat. "No," he said, "I don't think so."
"You don't think so?"
"No, I mean. If the throat muscles are in spasm, reverse peristalsis is impossible. She would choke on the vomit." He sounded like he was reciting study notes from memory.
"What can we do, then?"
"Wait," he said. "And try to stop her from snapping her spine. Strychnine activates all the skeletal muscle tissue at the same time, her muscles are flexing against each other at once. If they ever get into a contrary rhythm, they could tear themselves apart or break her bones."
"There are couches over there," I said, "we could move her off the floor."
He thought about it, then said, "No, motion can make the spasms get worse." He turned around and asked the crowd, in general, to go fetch a pillow. A few people scampered away.
Wait? Wait. Amy was lying there on the floor, her body turning against her and we just wait?
The med student repositioned himself and pressed one hand against Amy's chest and the other against her stomach, like he was pushing her into the ground. he told me to hold her legs, but the words bounced right of me. I had an idea, but I didn't understand it. For a moment I wondered if I had slipped into the other me, but I didn't care.
"I'll be right back," I said as I stood up and ran through the circle of onlookers and down the aisles of the store.
I ran full speed, bobbing my head in all directions like a robin to look down the aisles as I passed them. Office supplies. Desk chairs. Clocks. Kitchen knives. Water filters. There. I stopped in my tracks and doubled back, cutting through the aisle and stopping in front of the home water filtering pitchers. I grabbed a box of replacement filters, and then started running again. Winter jackets. Toothbrushes. Shovels. Car batteries. Books. DVDs. Wine. Cakes. Raw meat. Fresh shrimp. Produce. Bottled water. I stopped again, pulled my knife out and cut away the plastic wrapping from a large case of bottled water. I grabbed two bottles, replaced my knife, and headed back to the pharmacy area. I slipped through the crowd and slid on my knees back to Amy's side. The two bottles I set on the floor, the box of replacement filters I tore open and produced a single plastic, tube-ish water filter.
The medical student, and everybody whose face I could see, looked at me like I was crazy. If I had the time, I would have smiled.
I pulled my knife back out, set the water filter on the floor, and stabbed into the side of it with the knife. Once through the thin plastic exterior the knife stopped against something dry and sandy. I used a sawing motion and twisted the filter with my other hand to cut the whole top off of the filter and tossed it aside, leaving a kind of makeshift plastic cup in my hand. Inside the cup, and overflowing onto the floor, was a black, slightly crystalline powder with a few plastic-looking, tiny rubbery balls mixed in. I had no idea what the balls were, but the black powder was pure carbon. Activated charcoal.
The med student was holding Amy's torso against the floor still, someone else was holding her legs down by the ankles. When the med student realized what I'd done, he let out a slight laugh.
I poured some of the charcoal onto the floor to make some room in the filter-cup and topped it off with water from one of the bottles. I covered the top and shook the filter to get the carbon particles all wet, then poured the sandy sludge right into Amy's mouth, followed by some water. She coughed a few times, but it went down.
"What the hell was that about?" the man holding Amy's legs down asked.
The med student turned his head toward him and said, "Activated charcoal. It absorbs the poison in the stomach so it isn't metabolized. Most people get it in tablets."
"I'm not most people," I said, standing back up and retreating again. I squeezed through the crowd and headed over to the small, white mini-building that acted as the store's pharmacy. I looked around for people in white coats, but the room was empty. I turned back around and saw that pharmacists were all in the midst of the crowd, standing out like grains of salt in a pile of pepper.
"I need Diazepam," I said from just outside the pharmacy window, loud enough for the pharmacists to hear me. "Or Valium."
The outer ring of the crowd turned toward me, pharmacists included. The oldest of them, a man with graying hair, walk-jogged over to me.
"You need what?" he asked.
"Diazepam," I repeated.
"For her?"
No, I just remembered I had a prescription to fill and thought this would be a cool time to fill it. "Yes, for her!"
He looked around, nervous and distraught. "I can't issue meds without a doctor's authorization--"
"This is an emergency!" I interrupted.
"Even still. Only a doctor can know what she needs."
I sighed, then turned around and slid the pharmacy window open a bit wider and jumped onto the counter and dropped into the pharmacy.
"Hey!" the guy said. What was he going to do?
I looked at the shelves, hundreds of white bottles perched at the edges of each shelf. I tried to make some kind of sense out of the ordering of the medications, incorrectly assuming it would all be alphabetical, and after about seventy seconds stumbled upon the Diazepam. I grabbed the whole bottle and hopped back over the counter and pushed past the protesting pharmacist, through the crowd, and back to Amy and the men keeping her down.
I held the bottle out to the med student, the label facing him, and said, "How much?"
He squinted to read the label, looked at Amy, then back at me. "What are you?" he asked.
"Unique," I said. "How many pills?"
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