Headcase, p.9
Headcase, page 9
We rode the elevator all the way to the top floor, then walked down a tiled corridor to her door. The office was bigger than Garcia’s had been, and devoid of personal touches. Sticky notes surrounded her computer monitor. Her window overlooked the gigantic space shuttle—approaching the glass gave me vertigo. In the far distance, I could see the place where the fighter pilot’s body had been found.
‘Did you happen to look out your window yesterday morning?’ I asked.
‘No, why?’
‘Because the sunrise was amazing,’ Zara interrupted. ‘Anyway, can we see the CCTV from Tuesday night?’
‘Of course.’ Cuthbert swiped her access card to wake up her computer. ‘I’m afraid there are no cameras in the rock yard, so you won’t be able to see the astronaut landing—’
‘There was no astronaut,’ Zara said. ‘One of the staff had a seizure out there. He was diabetic, apparently. They found him in a comatose state. But the doctors think he’ll pull through.’
This part of the cover story was essential. No death meant no gossip.
‘Really?’ Cuthbert sounded confused. ‘Sam Garcia said it was a Chinese astronaut. And it was on the news. Everyone’s talking about it.’
‘They are?’ Zara rolled her eyes. ‘More conspiracy theories. God, this is going to be Area 51 all over again.’
Cuthbert clicked on some icons and typed in a password. A series of video files began to fill the screen.
‘If it was a diabetic coma,’ she asked, ‘why do you need to see the surveillance footage?’
Zara waved a hand around. ‘Thank you. That’s what I said. Now …’ She peered at the screen. ‘Wow, that’s a lot of files. This will take us a while. Any chance of a cup of coffee?’
Cuthbert looked a little put out but said,‘Uh, sure. Simone!’
Silence fell. There was no sign of Cuthbert’s PA. I wondered if that was just good luck, or if Zara had somehow arranged her absence. Maybe she was in Guantanamo Bay.
Cuthbert sighed. ‘How do you take it?’
‘Cream, and one-and-a-half sugars, and not too hot, please.’ Zara’s order would be time-consuming to make, but it wasn’t so complicated that Cuthbert would come back early and ask for clarification.
‘Cream, sugar and salt,’ I said.
‘Salt?’
‘Right.’
‘Oooookay.’ Cuthbert left us to it.
As soon as she was gone, Zara inserted the USB modem into the back of the computer. There were no lights on it—the grey plastic was almost invisible among the cables. She wiped it for prints, then leaned over the computer. A dialogue box had appeared. She clicked run as administrator. As the spyware installed itself on the computer—on the whole network—she went back to the CCTV files, hit select all, and reached for the delete key.
‘Wait,’ I said.
Zara glared at me. ‘We’re not here to investigate, Blake.’
‘Just hang on.’ I’d spotted a file from five pm Tuesday. The time of the pilot’s death, according to Holstein. I double-clicked it.
The video included sixteen feeds, all laid out on a grid. I boosted the speed to 32x, my eyeballs flitting from one square to the next. I could see Anders, the guy who’d found the body the following morning. He was in an office, typing, pausing occasionally to adjust the height of his swivel chair. In another square I saw a swimming pool, with a woman doing laps. At one point, Anders left his office and walked to the pool. But, seeing it was occupied, he went right back to his office. The woman got out soon after and disappeared into the showers.
Another square showed the cafeteria, where Garcia was talking on a cell phone. He picked it up and put it back down a lot, like he was making several calls. He went to the bathroom and was off camera for about six minutes.
Garcia’s feet were big enough to make the print I’d seen. But was six minutes long enough to get from the cafeteria to the rock yard and back? I didn’t think so. He didn’t even look out of breath.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Zara hissed.
There were other staff I didn’t recognise. A few clocked out at five-thirty, and a few more at six. By seven there was just a lone janitor, pushing a vacuum cleaner along a corridor. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d hoped to see, but I hadn’t seen it.
‘Move.’ Zara shoved me aside, hit CTRL+A, and then SHIFT+DELETE. All the records from the astronaut’s time of death vanished.
As Zara started copying the files from Wednesday into Tuesday’s folder, I heard high heels clicking up the corridor towards us. Cuthbert was back already.
‘Incoming,’ I said.
‘Asshole,’ Zara muttered, still tapping at the keyboard. ‘Stall her.’
I stepped out into the corridor and felt all the blood drain from my face.
It wasn’t Cuthbert.
It was Reese Thistle.
CHAPTER 12
Now
I’m severe until a change of character puts me at peace. What am I?
‘Tell me more about Thistle,’ says Dr Diaz, with a serene smile. ‘How did you meet?’
The clock on the office wall doesn’t tick. The second hand glides around in silence, a vulture circling.
‘We grew up together.’ I rub my knees as though my palms are sticky. ‘Same group home. She got adopted out, I didn’t. Later, when I was consulting for the FBI, I bumped into her again.’ I find myself looking out the window at the walls surrounding the hospital. ‘That’s pretty much all there is to it.’
‘What’s she like?’
I don’t want to tell Diaz anything about Thistle. It feels like a betrayal. ‘I liked her.’
‘Was she working for the FBI too?’
‘Yeah. She never got the respect that she deserved there. Other agents were always either dismissing her work or taking credit for it. But she stayed, because she believed in the job. Defending victims. Standing up to organised crime. All that.’
‘And you became friends?’
That doesn’t even begin to cover it. At the group home I survived neglect, starvation and physical violence. I wasn’t the only biter there. Add to that the fact that my parents died, violently, in front of me. I’d always told myself that I was doomed to become a monster. I never had a choice.
But Reese Thistle endured exactly the same hardships, and she turned out fine. Better than fine. When I realised that, my whole sense of self crumbled. But that was okay, because she loved me.
Until she didn’t.
I don’t tell Diaz any of this. ‘Friends, yeah.’
Diaz’s voice is careful.‘Was this a romantic relationship?’
I nod, still without looking at her.
‘Was it your first romantic relationship?’
A smaller nod.
‘Did it become sexual?’
I say nothing.
Diaz writes something down in her notebook. ‘But you stopped seeing each other.’
That’s one way of putting it. ‘Right.’
‘Recently?’
‘About four months ago.’ Like the exact date isn’t burned into my brain.
‘Why was that?’
I don’t want to talk about the corpse Reese Thistle found in my freezer. The look on her face when she realised what I was. The way I corrupted her—she was too horrified to keep seeing me, but cared about me too much to turn me in.
‘She didn’t want to date a cannibal,’ I say. That seems to cover everything.
‘Before the break-up,’ Diaz says, ‘what do you think Thistle liked about you?’
‘She thought I wasn’t a cannibal.’
‘Presumably she knew lots of men who weren’t cannibals. Why did she choose you, specifically?’
I hesitate. ‘She thought I was smart, I guess. And tough—she said that once. She didn’t realise how messed up I was. And that I was mostly solving cases by committing crimes, rather than by being clever.’
Diaz sighs, like I’ve disappointed her. Then she stands up. ‘Let’s swap seats.’
I cock my head. ‘Huh?’
‘You sit here—I’ll sit over there.’
Puzzled, I obey. We circle each other, like dance partners. I sit. Her chair is a little firmer than mine. Warm from her butt—one of the more nutritious parts of the body.
She sinks into my chair. ‘Imagine you’re the psychiatrist and I’m the patient,’ she says.
‘Sure.’
‘I’ve just come in, and I’ve told you that I’m a CIA agent.’
‘CIA asset.’
‘Okay, asset. What would you assume, after I told you that?’
‘I’m not a doctor,’ I say.
‘Pretend you are. Don’t tell my colleagues I said this, but a lot of psychiatry is just common sense.’ She smiles, like she’s revealing a juicy secret. As though I hadn’t already guessed that her whole profession was bullshit.
‘I guess I’d think you were lying for attention,’ I say. ‘Or maybe delusional.’
She lets that hang in the air.
‘I’m not, though,’ I say. ‘It’s all real.’
‘All right. But now imagine I tell you about my first and only girlfriend, someone who’d known me all my life, who knew me better than anyone else, maybe somebody I’d had a crush on long before we hooked up. I tell you she rejected me about four months ago. Right before I was recruited by the CIA.’ She doesn’t do air quotes, but I can feel them. ‘And then I tell you that I met this woman again, shortly before I started therapy. What would your reaction be?’
I think about it. ‘I’d assume that the break-up was traumatic, and that it caused the delusions.’
She gives me a patient look.
‘But I was eating people before Thistle left,’ I say. ‘I told you that.’
‘It’s not uncommon to rewrite the past so it fits with our view of the present. We all do it, to one degree or another.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to try to build a rapport with me before you tell me I’m crazy?’
She takes this as rhetorical. ‘How did you feel, when Thistle rejected you?’
‘Not great,’ I say.
Diaz waits for me to elaborate.
I don’t want Thistle to be blamed for what’s wrong with me. ‘She did the right thing, though.’
‘Tell me what you mean by that.’
‘She’s better off without me in her life.’
‘The break-up made you feel like a bad person?’
‘I am a bad person.’ I hold her gaze now, a bit defiantly.
But she just smiles. ‘I think it might be a little more complicated than that, Timothy.’ She stands up. ‘I’d like you to do some journalling. Each night, write down everything you experienced that day, in as much detail as you can remember. No one else will read your journal, unless you choose to share it. It’s just to help you make sense of things. Try to resist the urge to interpret the events. We want just the facts, no theories. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I say.
•
I leave Diaz’s office and turn left, towards my room. But when she closes her door, I do a one-eighty, heading for the main entrance.
The Behavioural Health Unit at the George Clark Red Memorial Hospital is T-shaped. The doctors’ offices and administration are on the east side. There are communal facilities to the west, including a kitchen, an eating area, a TV and another walled-off garden. To the south is a long corridor of patient bedrooms.
Most of the Behavioural Health Unit is tiled with green linoleum, faded from decades of mopping. The walls are plain, with glossy white paint. Vomit and shit wipe right off. But the closer you get to the entrance, the more attractive everything becomes. There’s a Persian rug as long as a bus, a miniature palm in a huge ceramic pot and paintings of mountains and lighthouses on the walls. This is the bit outsiders see, and the decor probably makes them feel better about having their loved ones committed.
Dr Diaz would say I’m interpreting.
Eventually I reach reception. The counter is protected by a tempered glass screen, like you’d see at a bank, with a two-inch gap between the counter and the screen so you can hear the receptionist’s voice. The counter faces the entrance: two doors, one in front of the other, like an airlock. The doors are also made of tempered glass. It looks fragile, but I know it isn’t. A resident recently tried to smash her way out with a shovel stolen from the garden. She kept swinging until the head of the shovel snapped off. The glass didn’t crack.
There’s a keypad next to the inner door, and another next to the outer door. I don’t know the code for either one, but the receptionist can open them with a button under the counter.
Today, the person on duty is a woman in her fifties, with friendly brown eyes, curly hair pulled back, and the teeth of a lifelong smoker. I hear her voice through the gap under the glass: ‘What are you up to, Timothy?’
‘I was expecting a visitor,’ I say.
She’s not fooled. ‘Oh? Who’s that?’
‘No one in particular.’
‘Is this the same no one you were waiting for yesterday?’
‘I won’t know for sure unless they turn up.’
On the wall behind Smoker Teeth is a pegboard, dozens of keys hanging off it. Metal keys are too sharp to be taken into the building, so all the staff leave theirs here. The keys used inside the building are all made of plastic.
I try to guess which ones belong to Diaz. Not the key ring with the bejewelled love-heart chain. Nor the one with the Kawasaki tag—a motorbike helmet wouldn’t agree with her hair. There are a few keys for ambulances, stickered with the licence plate numbers—I rule them out, too. Soon I’ve narrowed it down to two unadorned sets, one for a Toyota, another for a Nissan.
Smoker Teeth leans over, looking past me and through the doors to the parking lot outside. ‘I don’t think anyone’s coming.’
‘Probably not,’ I agree.
She smiles. ‘Maybe you’ll have better luck tomorrow.’
I haven’t eaten—properly eaten—in weeks. I’m starving. If there’s no way out of the hospital, I might have to make do with the food that’s already here.
I smile back at Smoker Teeth, all hundred and sixty pounds of her. ‘Maybe I will.’
CHAPTER 13
Two weeks ago
What kind of drink is made with a fist?
Thistle and I stared at each other.
I had convinced myself I was making progress. Some nights she didn’t appear in my dreams. Some days I managed to keep myself distracted with thoughts of meat. Now I realised I had accomplished nothing. Seeing her up close, her dark eyes, her soft lips, her thick hair—it all came rushing back. What I’d had, and what I’d lost.
As shocking as this was for me, it was clearly worse for her. She stumbled backwards like she’d taken a punch. Her jaw dropped, and she reached for the gun on her hip.
But she stopped herself and didn’t draw. She just stood there.
I spoke first. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ she said warily.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me?’ She gave a startled snort. ‘I’m an FBI agent. This is a federal facility, and a crime scene. What are you doing here?’
It sounded like Detective Jones had been forced to give up his case. ‘You think it’s a crime scene?’
She still had one hand on the gun. ‘I think there’s no legal way that guy could have ended up where he did, how he did.’
‘You saw the body?’
‘No, it was described to me by witnesses. The photos are missing, and for some reason the remains have already been incinerated—’
A look of dread crossed her face as she realised she was talking to a cannibal about a missing body. I wondered if she’d be reassured to learn that I’d only gotten the lungs and part of the ear.
‘It’s good to see you,’ I said. I wanted to reach out and touch her. Make sure she was real. But I could tell she would shrink away. I was lucky she hadn’t shot me already.
‘Your arm grew back.’ She pointed.
I chuckled nervously, waving my silicone hand. ‘Pretty convincing, right?’
‘I’ve seen worse, for sure.’ She let go of the gun, her arms awkward by her sides. ‘How have you been?’
‘Fine,’ I lied. ‘You?’
She looked away. ‘Yeah. Fine.’
Zara emerged through the doorway. I’d forgotten she existed. I’d also forgotten that she and Thistle had met before. When Zara was undercover with the dark web psychopaths, Thistle was one of the people they had abducted and held prisoner. But she’d only seen Zara briefly, and Zara had changed her hair and eye colour since then—would Thistle recognise her?
‘There you are,’ Zara said to me. She turned, and appeared to notice Thistle for the first time—though I was sure she’d been eavesdropping. ‘Oh! Sorry, didn’t see you there.’
‘Who are you?’ Thistle asked.
‘Sandra Holcroft,’ Zara said smoothly. ‘Timothy and I work together at ClearHorizon.’
‘What’s ClearHorizon?’
I needed Thistle to believe the cover story. If there was even a hint that she didn’t, Zara would report her as a potential threat. Who knew what the CIA would do then?
‘It’s a parasite,’ I said. ‘Another independent contractor soaking up your tax dollars. We send reports to the US Air Force that will be tossed in a filing cabinet and never read.’
Zara laughed.‘Do you need some more coffee, Timothy?’
Thistle still looked suspicious. I’d lied to her so many times that distrust was her default. If I told her the Earth was round, she would expect to fall off the edge. ‘What kind of reports?’
‘We investigate accidents and rewrite safety procedures,’ Zara said. ‘Timothy is one of our most capable new hires, cynicism aside. And you must be …?’
‘Special Agent Reese Thistle, FBI.’ Thistle didn’t offer a hand to shake.
‘My goodness! I’ve heard so much about you,’ Zara lied.
Thistle looked alarmed. ‘You have?’
‘Of course!’ Zara touched my elbow. Tenderly. Protectively.
Thistle noticed this, like she was supposed to. Her gaze went cold.
I needed to get away from her, before she saw through our cover and ended up at a CIA black site. I was trying to work out what to say when Cuthbert reappeared.
