'Something tells me you didn't come all the way out here to talk about my sister.' Jenkins's voice, deep and resonant, betrayed little emotion.
David realized just how claustrophobic the backseat of a cop car was. The strip of Jenkins's face remained perfectly centered in the rearview mirror. He had mastered silence as a weapon, and David found it a powerful one.
He wasn't sure how to find the balance between condescension and communication. 'What happened to your sister was horrible. And I know
… and if there's anything I can ever do… But the patient is a-'
'Patient,' Jenkins sneered.
'The suspect is a very sick man. Disturbed.'
'Sick enough to wear a fake tattoo to throw off our investigation? Sick enough to use surgical gloves because they leave a less distinctive print than leather gloves? Don't buy the dummy routine, Doctor. Our boy's pretty clever for someone sick in the head.'
'People can be smart and still be unbalanced. Imagine how ill you'd have to be to do the kinds of things he's done.'
'That doesn't interest me.'
'Even if this guy is guilty, he's still got rights. You don't want to give his future attorney any ammunition against the DA, do you?'
Jenkins shifted in his seat and then finally turned his head. David stared back at his own distorted reflection in the broad band of Jenkins's sunglasses. 'My sister is blind. She has to barf up into napkins for the rest of her life. Dead skin falls off her face in gray patches. And you're more concerned about the guy who did it.'
Across the street, Bronner emerged from the shop, holding two cups of steaming coffee.
'I'm extremely concerned about Nancy. But she isn't my patient anymore. The suspect is.'
'Then go back to the hospital and take care of him so we can take him off your hands.'
David slid toward the door on the hard plastic seat. 'I can't,' he said sheepishly.
'Why not?'
'The door handle won't work.'
Chapter 24
Her careful arrangement of designer-styled, blond-highlighted hair bounced as she leaned back on the gurney. Her hand, set aglitter by deep maroon fingernails, clutched a cell phone to her ear. Her lips stretched full and amorphous, blown out of proportion by collagen injections. Dark eyeshadow filled the hollows beneath her eyes, where long-vanished tears had deposited it.
'Oh yes,' she said into the phone, in a socialite's singsong cadence, 'it's been awful. I tried to kill myself this morning… Um-hmm. Prozac, codeine, and a bad Bordeaux. Threw it all up by the time the paramedics arrived. You'll never believe where they brought me. The UCLA emergency room. I was terrified. Thought I'd get doused with alkali on my way through the doors.' She picked at a cuticle. 'What's that, darling?' She glanced up at the resident at the bed beside hers, drawing blood from another woman. 'One of them is, I suppose, in a Billy Baldwin sort of way.'
Carson looked up from his chart and nudged David. 'Welcome to West LA.'
'Think compassion, Dr. Donalds. Where else do you think a lonely, depressed woman could get this much attention?'
'On Jerry Springer.'
David coughed to cover his smile.
Dashiell Nwankwa suddenly filled the wide doorway to Exam Ten. 'You rang?' he asked, his booming voice causing Carson to drop the chart he was holding. David walked over to greet Dash as Carson crouched to gather the scattered papers.
Dash had to duck slightly to get through the doorway. At 6'8', 280 pounds, Dash's was an imposing presence. His face, so dark it diffusely reflected the lights of the room, was partly blocked by an overflow of thick-braided dreadlocks. Like most psychiatrists, he wore a dress shirt and tie, but during medical school he'd had to slit the already-wide sleeves of his scrub tops a good two inches to get his arms through.
Dash's appearance was so remarkable that several psychiatry programs had rejected him on that basis, claiming it would compromise his ability to interact with patients and put them at ease. After he failed to match in a fellowship program, Dash sued each of them in a widely publicized series of cases, winning admission to each department. The cases were decided in large part by his near-perfect grades through Columbia Medical School, and his excellent recommendations. The chair of UCLA's psych department had stepped in early in the proceedings and offered him a spot, and though he had not originally applied to UCLA, he'd elected to sign on. His performance through the four-year program had been so impressive that he'd been offered a teaching position immediately afterward, and he'd quickly become a prominent member of the department.
He was also a favored expert witness for the defense. He looked tough but spoke convincingly about mental illness-a good combination for winning the jury's trust. Most expert psych witnesses, thin-necked and bespectacled, were quickly painted as wimps soft on crime. Because of Dash's experience with violent patients and criminals, he'd been David's first choice to assess Clyde.
'What do we have here?' Dash's voice, so deep it found resonance in David's bones, was mitigated with a musical lilt-the faintest whisper of a Nigerian accent. He glanced over at the woman on the bed behind David and Carson, who continued to chat on the cell phone. 'Suicide attempt?'
'How'd you guess?' Carson said.
'Carson, why don't you take over,' David said. 'Dash, our guy is in Fourteen.'
As they moved toward the door, the woman's purse, just beyond her reach on a metal tray, began to vibrate.
'Is that your pager?' Carson asked, reaching into the purse. The woman froze, silent for the first time, her mouth a lipsticked O near the phone's receiver.
Carson withdrew an eight-inch vibrator and stared at it, mortified. Dash's laughter, even choked down, made the light casings rattle overhead.
As they reached the end of Hallway One, David shot a nervous glance at the two officers guarding the door to Clyde's room. He turned to Dash, lowering his voice. 'It was all I could do to slide you past the cops. Everyone's on edge. Anyone asks, you're assessing his need for antipsychotic meds.'
'Got it.'
'And keep tight-lipped. Some tabloid schmuck faked a concussion this afternoon just to get in here and poke around.'
David breathed evenly and deeply as he approached the room, gathering himself. His stomach churned, a morass of yet-unidentified emotions-fear, anxiety, duty of some ill-defined sort. Anger was in there as well, he realized, in no small amount.
He nodded to the officers and paused for a moment, hand on the doorknob, searching for compassion. He fought past Nancy's face, and Sandra's, past the blue liquid that burned and ate flesh, past the disgust that caked the edges of his perception-the disgust that sprang, innate and full-formed, when he pictured Clyde's acne-scarred face. When he turned the doorknob, he felt calmer, more detached.
He was ready to see his patient.
He swung the door open quietly, and he and Dash entered. Clyde lay on the gurney, bound, eyes closed, drawing deep breaths. David and Dash approached him and stood a few feet back from the gurney rail. 'Hello, Clyde. It's Dr. Spier again.'
'Spier,' Clyde murmured. 'Like the building.'
'Yes, but spelled differently. I'm here with Dr. Nwankwa from the Neuropsychiatric Insti-'
Clyde's eyes opened, a ripple of terror transforming his features from placid to violently agitated. He screamed, straining with his limbs against the restraints, bucking and thrashing. Dash calmly took a step back and signaled David to do the same.
