Who is he? she screamed to herself. Was he the man in that car that'd been following her near school? She'd started to believe that was her imagination.
Guess not, honey, Crazy Megan offers with no sympathy whatsoever.
Standing by the bed, Megan looked out the barred window into a huge field of tall grass and brush. Some trees, many of them cut down and left to rot.
She gasped suddenly as a huge dog trotted past the window and stopped, staring up at her. A bit of bloody flesh dangled from its mouth, red, like a scrap of steak. Its eyes were spooky--too human--and it seemed to recognize her. Then suddenly the dog tensed, wheeled and vanished.
She examined the window. The iron bars were thick and the space between them was far too small for her to get through.
Frustrated, she pounded her palms against the wall.
Who is he?
Megan strode to the door, gripped and pulled it hard. It was, of course, locked tight. The tears returned suddenly; they fell on her breasts, and her nipples contracted painfully from the sobbing and the dank cold of the dismal room.
Who is he?
Why did they make her go to see the doctor? If they hadn't this never would've happened.
What'd I do to deserve this? Nothing! I didn't do a thing!
If her mother was going to fuck nerds in Baltimore then for Christ's sake why didn't she call me? Just a three-minute phone call. Sorry honey I'm going to be late call Domino's and use the charge card have Amy over and all right even Brittany too but no boys . . .
If her father was going to waste his life chasing bimbettes why couldn't he at least spend more than one weekend a month with her?
This was their fault! Her parents!
I hate you so much! I fucking hate you. I--
A sound.
What was it?
A scuttling . . .
It came from the ceiling. Looking up, she saw a number of dark clusters where the wall met the ceiling. She moved closer. Spiders! Two huge black ones. And one had just given birth--a hundred hundred tiny dots of infants flowed down the wall like black water.
Megan shivered, overwhelmed with disgust, her skin crawling at the sight. She raced toward the door, slamming into it with all her weight, and collapsed onto the splintery floor. She crawled along it, pushing at the baseboards, trying to find a weak spot. Nothing.
She pulled a wad of toilet paper off the roll, hesitated then crushed the spiders with it. Megan flushed the messy shroud and curled up in a ball on the cold floor. Cried for five minutes.
What's that? Crazy Megan asks her alter ego.
This stopped the tears.
Squick, squick.
That sound again. In the ceiling and the walls.
Squirrels, she decided. Then stood and walked to the wall, which was made of cinder block. How could there be animals in the walls if they were made out of cement?
Then she glanced into the bathroom and squinted. Those walls were just plasterboard. And there was a rectangular plate about twelve by eighteen inches mounted on the wall beside the toilet. Where did it lead?
She walked inside, crouched down and ran her finger across the edge of the metal, which was covered with many layers of paint. In the corners she felt one screw head but three holes, from which the screws were missing. If she could break through the thick paint she might be able to pull the plate up and bend the metal till it snapped.
But the enamel was thick, like glue, and with her short nails she couldn't get a grip. She thought of her friend Brittany, with the killer fingernails, a regular at a local Vietnamese manicure parlor. That was what she needed--slut claws . . .
She searched the bedroom once more but couldn't find anything to use as a tool. Sighing, she returned to the bathroom, lay on the floor and slugged the metal plate. It resounded hollowly, tantalizing with the promise of an empty passageway on the other side. But it didn't move a millimeter. Keep going, Crazy Megan says.
Megan slammed her fist into it again and again, until her knuckles began to bruise and swell. She turned around and kicked with her heel. As the center pushed in slightly, a hairline crack formed around the edge and she kicked harder. Her foot felt as if it were going to shatter.
Go! C.M. encourages. Go for it!
Megan spun round and tried again to grab the side of the plate. But her nails just weren't long enough to get a purchase in the crack and she howled in frustration then lunged forward, bared her teeth and shoved her face against the wall, trying to dig her incisors into the crack.
Her gum tore open on the rough paint and plaster. Her jaw exploded with cramping pain and she tasted blood. Then suddenly, with a snap, her front teeth slipped into the crack and pulled the plate away from the wall a fraction of an inch. Megan pressed her hands to her face to ease the pain. Then she spit blood, grabbed the plate and yanked so furiously it gave way at once, ripping the remaining screw from the wall. She fell backward.
Jesus, Crazy Megan says respectfully. Good job.
With a gasp of joy she sat up, seeing faint light through the hole. She shoved her head into the opening, looking into another room. The plate had apparently covered an old heating vent. There was a thin grille on the other side about a foot away. On her back, she guided her leg into the wall and kicked. The grille fell clattering to the floor. She froze. Quiet! she reminded herself. He could be nearby.
Then she started crawling through the opening, headfirst. Her shoulders were broad but she managed to ease them through. She had to reach down, cramping her arm, and cradle her breasts to keep her nipples from scraping on the sharp bottom edge of the vent. One inch at a time she forced her way through the vent. As she eased through she examined the other room. There were bars on these windows too. But the door was open. She could see a dim corridor beyond the doorway.
Another ten or twelve inches. Then twelve more.
Until her hips. They stopped her cold.
Those fucking hips, Crazy Megan mutters. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em. You just couldn't lose those ten pounds, could you?
I don't need any of your crap now, okay? Megan thinks to her alter ego.
The vent on the other side of the wall was, it seemed, slightly smaller than the one in her room. Megan tried wriggling, tightening her muscles, licking her fingers and swabbing her sides with spit but she still remained stuck--halfway between each room, her butt dead center in the wall.
No way, she thought to herself. I'm not getting trapped here! A terrible burst of claustrophobia shook through her. She fought it down, wriggled slightly and moved forward an inch or two before she froze again.
Then she heard the noise. Squick, squick.
The scuttling of claws in the wall above. Accompanied by a high-pitched twitter.
Oh, my God, no. The squirrels.
Her heart began to pound.
Squick, squick.
Right above where she was stuck. Two of them, it sounded like. Then more, gathering where the wall met the ceiling.
Then she looked into the corner of the room--at an animal's nest. It rustled and a creature appeared, staring at her with tiny red eyes.
Oh, fuck, they're rats! Crazy Megan blurts.
Megan began to sob. The noise of their little feet started coming down the wall. She stifled a scream as something--a bit of insulation or wood--fell onto her skin.
Squick. Squick squick squick. Walking along the ceiling, several of them gathering above her, curious. Maybe hungry. Hundreds of terrible creatures moving toward her stuck body--cautiously but unstoppably.
More rats. Squick.
Twitters and scuttling, growing closer still. There seemed to be a dozen now, two dozen. She pictured needle-sharp yellow teeth. Tiny gray tongues.
Closer and closer. Curious. Attracted to her smell. She'd just finished her period a day ago. They'd smell the blood. They'd head right for it. Jesus . . .
More scuttling.
Oh . . .
She closed her eyes and sobbed in terror. It seemed that the
whole wall was alive with them. Dozens, hundreds of rats converging on her. Closer, closer. Squick squick squick squicksquicksquick . . .
Megan slapped her palms against the wall and pushed with all her strength, kicking her feet madly. Then, uttering a dentist's-drill squeal, one rat dropped squarely onto her. She gasped and felt her heart stutter in terror. She pounded the wall, wriggling furiously. The startled animal climbed off and she felt the snaky tail slip in between her legs as he moved back up the wall.
"Oh," she choked. "No . . ."
As she struggled to free herself and scrabbled her feet on the bathroom floor, another animal tentatively reached out with a claw and then stepped onto the small of her back. The paws gripped softly and began to move. A damp whiskered nose tapped on her skin as the creature sniffed along her body.
Her arms cramping, she shoved hard. Her foot caught the edge of the toilet in the bathroom behind her and she pushed herself forward two or three inches. It was just enough. She was able to wriggle her hips free. The rat leapt off her and Megan burst into the adjoining room. She crawled frantically into the far corner, as four rats escaped from the wall and vanished through the open door, joined by their friend in the nest.
She sobbed, gasping for breath, brushing her palms over her skin frantically to make sure none of them clung to her. After five minutes she'd calmed. Slowly she stepped back to the vent and listened. Squick squick squick . . . More scuttling, more twitters. She slammed the grille against the vent opening. The rest of the rats vanished up the wall. An angry hiss sounded from the hole.
God . . .
She found some stacks of newspapers, removed the grille, wadded up the papers and stuffed them inside the wall to keep the creatures trapped inside.
She collapsed back on the floor, trying to push away the horrible memory of the probing little paws, filthy and damp.
Looking into the dim corridor, cold and yellow, windows barred, filthy, she happened to glance up at a sign on the wall.
PATIENTS SHALL BE DELOUSED ONCE A WEEK.
That sign--a few simple words--brought the hopelessness home to her.
Don't worry about it, Crazy Megan tries to reassure.
But Megan wasn't listening. She shivered in fear and disgust and curled up, clutching her knees. Hating this place. Hating her life, her pointless life . . . Her stupid, superficial friends. Her sick obsession with Janis, the Grateful Dead and all the rest of the cheerful, lying, fake-ass past.
Hating the man who'd done this to her, whoever he was.
But most of all hating her parents.
Hating them beyond words.
Chapter Twelve
The forty-minute drive to Leesburg took Tate and Bett past a few mansions, some redneck bungalows, some new developments with names like Windstone and The Oaks. Cars on blocks, vegetable stands selling--at this time of year--jars of put-up preserves and relishes.
But mostly they passed farmland.
Looking out over just-planted land like this, some people see future homes or shopping malls or town houses and some see rows of money to be plucked from the ground at harvest time. And some perhaps simply drive past seeing nothing but where their particular journey is taking them.
But Tate Collier saw in these fields what he felt in his own farmland--a quiet salvation. Something he did, yet not of his doing, something that would let him survive, if not prosper, graciously: the silence of rooted growth. And if at times that process betrayed him--hail, drought, tumbling markets--Tate could still sleep content in the assurance that there was no malice in the earth's heart. And that, the former criminal prosecutor within him figured, was no small thing.
So even though Tate claimed, as any true advocate would, that it made no nevermind to him whether he was representing the plaintiffs or defendants in the Liberty Park case, say, his heart was in fact with the people who wanted to protect the farmland from the roller coasters and concession stands and traffic.
He felt this even more now, seeing these rolling hills. And he felt, too, guilt and a pang of impatience that he was distracted from his preparations for the Liberty Park hearing. But a look at Bett's troubled face put this discomfort aside. There'd be time to hone his argument. Right now there were other priorities.
They passed the Oatlands farm and as they did the sun came out. And he sped on toward Leesburg, into old Virginia. Confederate Virginia.
There weren't many towns like this in the northern part of the state; most people in Richmond and Charlottesville didn't really consider most of northern Virginia to be in the commonwealth at all. Tate and Bett drove through the city limits and slowed to the posted thirty miles per hour. Examining the trim yards, the white clapboard houses, the incongruous biker bar in the middle of downtown, the plentiful churches. They followed the directions Tate had been given to the hospital where Dr. Hanson was visiting his mother.
"Can he tell us much?" Bett wondered. "Legally, I mean."
She'd be thinking, he guessed, of the patient-doctor privilege, which allowed a doctor to keep secret the conversations between a patient and his physician. Years ago, when they'd been married, Tate had explained this and other nuances of the law to her. But she often grew offended at these arcane rules. "You mean if you don't read him his rights, the arrest is no good? Even if he did it?" she'd ask, perplexed. Or: "Excuse me, but why should a mother go to jail if she's shoplifting food for her hungry child? I don't get it."
He expected that same indignation now when he explained that Hanson didn't have to say anything to them. But Bett just nodded, accepting the rules. She smiled coyly and said, "Then I guess you'll have to be extra persuasive."
They turned the corner and the white-frame hospital loomed ahead of them.
"Well, busy day," Bett said, assessing the front of the hospital as she flipped up the car's mirror after refreshing her lipstick. There were three police cars parked in front of the main entrance. The red and white lights atop one of them flashed with urgent brilliance.
"Car wreck?" Bett suggested. Route 15, which led into town, was posted fifty-five but everybody drove it at seventy or eighty.
They parked and walked inside.
Something was wrong, Tate noted. Something serious had happened. Several nurses and orderlies stood in the lobby, looking down a corridor. Their faces were troubled. A receptionist leaned over the main desk, gazing down the same corridor.
"What is it?" Bett whispered.
"Not a clue," Tate answered.
"Look, there he is," somebody said.
"God," someone else muttered.
Two policemen were leading a tall, balding man down the corridor toward the main entrance. His hands were cuffed behind him. His face was red. He'd been crying. As he passed, Tate heard him say, "I didn't do it. I wouldn't do it! I wasn't even there!"
Several of the nurses shook their heads, eyeing him with cold expressions on their faces.
"I didn't do it!" he shouted.
A moment later he was in a squad car. It made a U-turn in the driveway and sped off.
Tate asked the receptionist, "What's that all about?"
The white-haired woman shook her head, eyes wide, cheeks pale. "We nearly had an assisted suicide." She was very shaken. "I don't believe it."
"What happened?"
"We have a patient--an elderly woman with a broken hip. And it looks like he"--she nodded toward where the police car had been--"comes in and talks to her for a while and next thing we know she's got a syringe in her hands and's trying to kill herself. Can you imagine? Can you just imagine?"
"But they saved her?" Tate asked.
"The Lord was watching over her."
Bett blinked. "I'm sorry?"
The receptionist continued, "A nurse just happened by. My goodness. Can you imagine?"
Bett shook her head, very troubled. Tate recalled that she felt the same about euthanasia as she did about the death penalty. He thought briefly of her sister's husband's death. Harris. He'd used a shotgun to kill himse
lf. Like Hemingway. Harris had been an artist--a bad one, in Tate's estimation--and he'd shot himself in his studio, his dark blood covering a canvas that he'd been working on for months.
Absently he asked the receptionist, "That man. Who is he? Somebody like Kevorkian?"
"Who is he?" the woman blurted. "Why, he was the poor woman's son!"
Tate and Bett looked at each other in shock. She said in a whisper, "Oh, no. It couldn't be."
Tate asked the woman, "The patient? Was her name Hanson?"
"Yes, that's the name." Shaking her head. "Her own son tried to talk her into killing herself! And I heard he was a therapist too. A doctor! Can you imagine?"
*
Tate and Bett sat in the hospital cafeteria, brooding silence between them. They'd ordered coffee that neither wanted. They were waiting for a call from Konnie Konstantinatis, whom Tate had called ten minutes ago--though the wait seemed like hours.
Tate's phone buzzed. He answered it before it could chirp again.
" 'Lo."
"Okay, Counselor, made some calls. But this is all unofficial. There's still no case. Got it? Are you comfortable with that?"
"Got it, Konnie. Go ahead."
The detective explained that he had called the Leesburg police and spoken to a detective there. "Here's what happened. This old lady, Greta Hanson, fell and broke her hip last week. Fell down her back stairs. Serious but not too serious. She's eighty. You know how it is."
"Right."
"Okay, today she's tanked up on painkillers, really out of it, and she hears her son--your Dr. Hanson--hears him telling her that it looks like the end of the road, they found cancer, she only has a few months left. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The pain's gonna be terrible. Tells her it's best to just finish herself off, it's what everybody wants. He's pretty persuasive, sounds like. Leaves her a syringe of Nembutal. She says she'll do it. She sticks herself but a nurse finds her in time. Anyway, she's pretty doped up but tells 'em what happened and the administrator calls the cops. They find the son in the gift shop buying a box of candy. Supposedly for her. They collar him. He denies it all, of course. What else is he going to say? So. End of story."
"And this all happens fifteen minutes before Bett and I are going to talk to him about Megan? It's no coincidence, Konnie. Come on."
Silence from Fairfax.
"Konnie. You hear me?"
"I'm telling you the facts, Counselor. I don't comment otherwise."