Dr. Monks handed her the computer-generated postop images—front and profile. “Just tell yourself: ‘No more big, fat, Greek nose.’”
She nodded.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
The nurse assistant brought her to a changing room where she put on a hospital gown then lay down on a gurney while an IV was attached to her arm. The doctor returned with the anesthesiologist and nurse. They reviewed the procedure. As was the current practice, she would not be put under general anesthesia. Instead, she would be sedated into a twilight state and local anesthesia would be applied. She would feel no pain since the interior of her nose would be numbed. All she would experience was the pressure of the hammering on the chisel. She might also hear the cracking of bone. But the sedative would dull her perceptions, and since the operation would be under the focal point or her eyes, she would see nothing but the blur of hands.
The procedure would take about an hour and a half, after which a splint would be put on her nose with a soft web roll and bandages across her forehead and cheeks. For the swelling, she would apply a cold compress lightly across her eyes for the first twenty-four to thirty-six hours. There would be some light blood discharge from her nostrils, but only for a day or so. After a week she’d come into the office for Dr. Monks to remove the dressing and check up on her progress.
The bruising on the upper part of her face would last for two to three weeks. The swelling would no longer be noticeable after three. Then final definition would set in, although her nose would be considerably smaller. For discomfort, he prescribed Tylenol with codeine.
After the briefing, the nurse assistant applied the IV drip and rolled her into the operating room. Dr. Monks was wearing his green scrubs and smiling down at her. Overhead was a bank of lights. To her left were the anesthesiologist and nurse assistant.
“How you doing?” Monks asked.
“Fine,” she said, feeling the drowsiness flow through her like lava.
“Good.” He smiled down on her warmly.
She fixed on that smile and drifted into the twilight.
61
Steve spent the next two days with Dacey at headquarters checking out what cyber had found on the hard drive of Neil’s office computer. They had scoured his files, e-mails, and Internet sites and so far had come up with nothing connecting him to Terry Farina—no correspondences and no incriminating links. There was more still to cover, but by the time he got home that Tuesday evening, he was mentally wrung out and frustrated—and crackling in the background like white noise was that mounting sense of guilt.
Before he took a shower, he gave Dana another call. The operation was on Sunday, and she had left a brief message to say it went well, but he still hadn’t talked with her. There was no answer, so he left a message that he called.
It was a little after nine when he sank into his pillow, feeling the kind of total exhaustion that told him he’d make it through the night without medication. For more than a week he had gone to bed cold turkey in an effort to shake his dependency. Although a couple of tabs would put him under, he’d wake up a few hours later and toss and turn, leaving him with the option of taking another pill or settling for a night of spotty sleep and a next day of feeling lousy. On the upside, Ativan did get him through the night dream-free.
He had a glass of warm milk and turned off the light, sinking into sleep in a matter of minutes. But it was far from a dream-free night.
He found himself at the front door of the two-family house at 123 Payson Road—the large brass number plate glaring in the sunset. But, oddly enough, instead of a gray-sided two-family structure, it was a white colonial with a central entrance, green shutters, and a brick walk hedged with hostas.
He rang the doorbell, and a beautiful red-haired woman in a black satiny dress opened it. He knew her face and was about to say something when she smiled and without a word turned and began to climb the stairs. He followed her into a living room, which didn’t make sense since the living room was downstairs on the left. But that’s where she had led him, and he did not again question the oddity. Nor the non-Euclidian shapes and angles of things and the odd discontinuity in time.
Suddenly he was holding a cold bottle of champagne by the neck, and she had produced two fluted glasses. Then they were on the couch and kissing.
He knew it was a dream, because it had that spectator quality that dreams can create. Yet it felt so real, so tactile. He could taste the champagne. He could feel her mouth on his. He could detect the apricot scent of her blazing hair. He was also aware of a sense of guilt, the kind he had come to know—the kind that made him feel naughty.
Then like the snap of a magician’s finger they were in a bedroom and she was lying naked on the bed, her arms raised to him. Her skin was an alabaster white and her mouth was moving. He felt the magnetic pull of her body, but he was transfixed on her face, which appeared to flicker between that of Terry Farina and Dana’s—one then the other blurring into one and the same.
As he took in her nakedness, he felt the heat of desire rise up, but suddenly that yearning flamed into angry wrath, and he felt himself fill with fury and an intense desire for violence.
The next moment, he was straddling the woman and pulling tight a black stocking around her neck. With horror she looked up at him, her eyes bulging like hen’s eggs, her mouth an O of soundless scream, her face swelling and darkening. For a brief moment, she thrashed under his weight and pounded his arms with her hands and tried to claw at the garrote, yet he pulled with all his might as if trying to snap her head off her spine.
With an explosive yelp he bolted upright in bed, panting, his chest jackhammering.
He kicked off the covers and leapt off the mattress as if it were contaminated ground and went into the bathroom and turned on the cold water, wishing it could flush the images from his mind. He splashed his face and looked at himself in the mirror.
He moved into the living room and sat on the couch in the dark. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt as if it were covered with fur. He felt the magnetic pull of the Chivas bottle in the kitchen cabinet, but resisted it.
Maybe, he told himself, the dream was not a re-creation of an act that belonged to him but autosuggestion, arising out of a vivid reconstruction of the killing of Terry Farina. That was possible, especially with his permanent guilt, wasn’t it? He had spent his professional life tracking predators, trying to imagine their instincts, to identify with them so as to understand their MOs, maybe second-guess them. As for the fury, imprints from childhood—the angry, oppressive will of his father taking him over. That was entirely possible since his innocence had been forfeited at a young age, stripping him to an innate instinct to survive in an environment of bitterness and repression—an instinct nurtured in part by his mother who, in spite of her own neuroses, was protective and affectionate to a fault.
He poured himself another glass of milk and moved onto the porch. The night was mild and the breeze made the sweat-dampened T-shirt a cool second skin. Cicadas filled the night air with an electric chittering. Above, clouds fringed with light from a gibbous moon scudded across the sky in a diorama of light and shade.
An hour later he was still sitting there, trying to shake the overwhelming sensation that that nightmare was reliving the hideous event—that he had been there, done that awful thing on some dark autopilot that was simply working out his conflicts.
