Silence.
‘I haven’t talked to him since he came home. I wanted to see if he’s adjusting okay.’
Silence.
‘Mrs. Ruiz, may I speak with Nathan?’
She said nothing for five seconds and he wondered if she’d hung up when she spoke. ‘No. He doesn’t live with us.’
‘Is there a number where I can reach him?’
‘He – he’s in a hospital.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘No, he’s not. He’s at a special clinic. For when you have problems after war, you know. He…’
‘I don’t mean to pry, Mrs. Ruiz. I just wanted to see how he was.’ He paused. ‘If he’s at a clinic, is it Sangre de Cristo up in Santa Fe?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You’ve heard of it?’
‘Yes, ma’am, just that it’s very good.’
‘Oh, yes, I hope they take good care of him. Because…’ and she stopped. ‘I don’t understand.’ She paused again, as though wrestling with the words. ‘You tell me, why he doesn’t just get over it… the sadness.’
Miles’s stomach tightened. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He survived. Those other boys died. He should be grateful he didn’t die. Why isn’t he happy? He’s alive.’
‘The post-traumatic stress disorder, ma’am, it’s’ – he struggled with a way to describe it – ‘it’s not a lack of willpower. It… affects the way the mind works, the way he reacts to everything. It’s a fire he can’t put out. You think the fire’s out, it’s gone, then it burns again.’
‘Then get an extinguisher.’ She sounded beaten. ‘He wants to cry and jump at shadows and have bad dreams forever? Mister, I had a baby die. Nathan’s older brother, he was only three weeks old and he died in his sleep. Crushed my heart. But if I didn’t get over it, I don’t have Nathan. I don’t have a life. Where’s his strength?’ Her voice wobbled.
‘He still has his strength, ma’am, I’m sure.’
‘Last time I talked to him, leaving him at the hospital, I said, Have hope, baby, and he said, Mama, all my hope’s dead because I’ll never forget. I say, Don’t forget, just deal with what happened, and he shakes his head at me like I’m crazy.’
‘How long ago did you see him?’
‘When he went to the hospital, six months ago. I miss him terribly. We get him home, out of danger, and’ – her voice broke – ‘but he’s not doing well, it hurts my heart.’
‘I’m very sorry, Mrs. Ruiz. Would it be possible, do you think, for me to see him?’
‘No visitors. Not even family. The doctor said it’s part of the therapy.’
‘That seems really unusual. Who’s his doctor there?’
‘Doctor Leland Hurley.’
‘Well. I’d like to write Nathan a letter, then.’
‘No contact. At all. The only way to clean out all the pain from his mind, they said.’
He inched onto thin ice. ‘That must be expensive. I didn’t think the government would cover a private clinic.’
‘I’m not supposed to talk about the program,’ she said suddenly. ‘What was your last name again?’
‘Michael Raymond. I’d really like to talk to Nathan when he’s back home.’
‘You leave me your number, I’ll give it to him.’
He left her his cell-phone number. ‘Thanks, Mrs. Ruiz, I hope Nathan is better soon.’
‘I hope so too. Before he hurts himself, before he hurts somebody else. Good-bye.’ She hung up.
I’m not supposed to talk about the program. No contact, that’s what the doctor said. Weird. He didn’t know what was considered cutting edge in PTSD treatment, but surely isolating a patient from his loved ones wasn’t typical.
Allison said Sorenson ran a special program. Sangre de Cristo offered a special program. So was it one and the same, and was the shooter connected to the program?
The next name on his list was Celeste Brent, the woman who’d left the message on Allison’s phone. He Googled her name combined with ‘Santa Fe’ and got an avalanche of results. The first was a headline: ‘Reality TV Star Moves to Santa Fe after Tragedy.’
TV star?
A knock sounded against the door. Miles closed the browser.
‘The computer working yet, sweetie?’ Joy asked, sticking her head inside.
‘Having trouble getting your e-mail running,’ he fibbed, ‘but I’ll figure it out.’
‘We need to rotate a few pieces, can you please come help me?’
‘Sure,’ he said. He could read the rest about Celeste Brent later. But he realized with a cold shiver, if he was to find the truth, he had to get inside that hospital, Sangre de Cristo, find out what was going on there.
A mental hospital. His worst nightmare.
‘The crazy guy,’ Andy said from the other side of the room, as Miles hung a new painting with Joy’s guidance, ‘breaking into the asylum. This I have to see.’
FIFTEEN
First the fists, then the rubber hoses, then finally the screwdriver, brought back into the act for a virtuoso encore, won Groote a name from Nathan’s battered lips. Groote derived no pleasure from hurting others; agony was a means to an end. But two hours into the torture – really, Tin Soldier had done an impressive imitation of a hero, holding out far longer than Groote had figured he would – he’d screamed out a name for Allison’s shadowy partner: Michael Raymond. The MR in Allison’s cell. Five minutes later he got a physical description as well: about six two, strong build, brown hair, brown eyes.
Groote called a friend immediately back in California – a friend who made his living piercing firewalls, to test the security of the cell-phone provider. His friend, assured of a generous payment, spent the day hacking and then late Wednesday afternoon gave Groote a home address and a work number for the account. Groote dialed the work number, got a woman’s voice welcoming him to Joy Garrison Gallery on the world-famous Canyon Road, listing the employees and giving a number to reach their voice mail. ‘For Michael Raymond, press four,’ the computerized voice intoned.
Groote hung up. Gotcha, asshole.
Groote stood in the compact kitchen on the Sangre de Cristo’s top floor and drank a glass of ice water. He dumped the ice into the sink and scrutinized his hands. Nathan’s blood had crusted underneath Groote’s nails and he needed to give them another hard scrub.
He shuddered. You did what you had to do. For Amanda. For all the other poor sick bastards out there who need to be unchained from their nightmares. Even if Nathan Ruiz was one of those same poor bastards.
Doctor Hurley – sleepless, frazzled, a scared rabbit in a forest full of foxes – unlocked the door, stepped inside the kitchen, locked the door back behind him. ‘Quantrill’s on the phone. He sounds unhappy.’
‘Imagine.’
‘This isn’t my fault. Not at all. I asked Quantrill for additional security and he balked. He should have sent you earlier. I won’t be held responsible-’
Groote hit him, not hard, but enough in the stomach to shut his mouth. He sagged to the floor, vomited up a splash of coffee.
‘I can hit you next time, in the nose just so, Doctor Hurley, and send a splinter of bone right into your brain. It’s no sweat off my back. You understand me?’
Hurley nodded, real fear in his eyes.
‘So shut up. I’m in charge now, you’re not. You don’t have to worry your overstuffed head about responsibility. But I can’t abide whining.’ He helped Hurley to his feet.
