Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

'You're not going to skip out on me, are you, Mongo?'

'Skip? You've got to be kidding me, Lou. I might try to crawl out on you, but skip? No way.'

'Make it snappy, will you?'

'Snap this,' I grumbled to myself as I got to my feet and stumbled up the stairs.

Naturally, I was in no hurry whatsoever to get back downstairs, because I was certainly in no hurry to go another round with MacWhorter while trying to keep my wits about me as I figured out what I was going to tell him, which was probably going to be only a slightly less fantastic bubbameister than whatever it was I had told Punch and Judy.

I stripped off my soiled clothes, sealed them in a plastic bag, which I set down by the kitchen door to take out with the garbage. Then I stepped into the shower, turned the water on as hot as I could stand it, then lay facedown in the tub and let the needle spray wash over me as I reflected on how very close I had come to being dead. Very sore was preferable to very dead, I concluded, and started to feel better about life in general.

After twenty minutes or so of stretching out and soaking under the hot water, I got to my feet, soaped up, rinsed off, and got out of the shower. I was moving easier, and it at least felt as if I might be able to get about without looking and feeling like a palsy victim. I dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, then checked on Margaret and Michael, who were both sound asleep. I considered calling in some outside help to stand guard while I was gone, but then decided that it was unlikely that Punch and Judy would return to the brownstone, at least not so soon. I went to the bar in Garth's apartment, whacked my brain and body with a quarter of a tumbler of scotch, then went back downstairs, double-locking the front door behind me. The policeman was leaning against the hood of his cruiser, sipping at a carton of coffee he'd gotten from the deli up the block.

'You took your own sweet time.'

'You'd better cuff me,' I said, going across the sidewalk to him and holding out my wrists. 'It's procedure, and you know how MacWhorter is about procedure.'

He looked at me in an odd way, then crumpled up his empty coffee carton and threw it into a wire trash container a few feet away. 'You've got a really strange sense of humor, Mongo. Get in the car, will you?'

Chapter 8

This is bullshit, MacWhorter, dragging me down here in the middle of the night!' I shouted as I marched into the police captain's office. 'Don't you sleep?! You're wasting your time, and mine! The first thing I want to do is call my lawyer, and then you and I can sit and stare at each other until she gets here!'

The burly policeman looked up from the stack of papers on his desk. In the harsh light thrown from his desk lamp he looked as if he had indeed not slept in some time, or even bothered to change his uniform. There were sweat stains around his collar and under his arms, and he would certainly not have passed one of his infamously rigorous inspections. He was unshaven, his beard a dark shadow cupping his face, and the large rings under his eyes were the color of bruises. 'You don't need a lawyer, Frederickson,' he said in a hoarse voice, 'because you're not under arrest.'

I stopped in front of the desk. 'I'm not?'

'You're just here for a friendly chat. Sorry if Lou dragged you away from something you were doing.'

'Actually, I was in the middle of being tortured, but it's all right. I was getting tired of it anyway.'

He studied my face, blinked slowly. 'If that's a joke, I don't get it.'

'Didn't Lou call in a report?'

'He said you'd been mugged by a couple of guys in front of your house, and he was giving you time to clean up.'

'That sounds about right. Before you bother to ask, I didn't get a good look at them.'

'Two guys beat you up, and you didn't get a good look at them?'

'They were wearing ski masks.'

MacWhorter grunted, then leaned back in his chair and smiled thinly. 'Actually, I'm surprised they survived the encounter, much less got away. You're a pretty tough little bugger.'

'Yeah, but I'm getting old. I can't mix it up like I used to.'

'Now that you mention it, you look like shit, Frederickson.'

'You don't look so hot yourself, Captain.'

'How long have you had that twitch?'

'Not long. Why don't we both go home and get some sleep?'

MacWhorter sat up straight, pulled his chair closer to his desk. Color had risen in his cheeks, but his tone was even, and he seemed to be making some effort to control his temper. 'I'll tell you why I can't go home, Frederickson, and why you're not going home either until I get some straight answers from you. Because more than two dozen people are dead, their hearts or spinal cords punctured, and eleven of those deaths occurred in my precinct. Guaranteed, there'll be more by morning. It's hard to nab somebody who has no apparent motive and who seems to have nothing better to do than wander around the city jabbing people with an ice pick. The reason I can't sleep is because I know more people will be dying while I do. I want to catch that crazy son of a bitch, and I just happen to have living in my precinct a civilian who seems to know more about what's going on than the whole NYPD put together. It's nothing short of amazing to me how this kind of weird shit always seems to stick to you and your brother; if there's something really bizarre going down, one or both of you are odds-on favorites to be somewhere right in the middle of it.'

'I've often thought the same thing myself, Captain,' I replied carefully.

'You were right about the stiff we found in the Dumpster. I kicked some ass and got an emergency autopsy performed. All of his tissues, and especially his brain, were saturated with some kind of drug.'

'Will you tell me what it is?'

'Actually, there appear to be a number of drugs involved. There were traces of psychoactive drugs they use for nut cases, and don't ask me to try to pronounce the names. The bulk of the stuff they found can't be identified, at least not by our people. Forensics has sent tissue samples to the FBI labs in Quantico, and we're waiting for the results. As for that upstate mental hospital-'

'Rivercliff.'

'Yeah, Rivercliff. The whole place burned to the ground better than two weeks ago. The Smokies suspect arson, but they aren't sure. Nobody who was inside survived-not patients, not staff. More than sixty people dead. And all of the hospital records were destroyed. The Smokies and the Feds are looking into it, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to tell me anything. In the meantime, I've got Dr. Death, identified by you and two anonymous sources as Raymond Rogers and who you say came from Rivercliff, running around the city stabbing people to death. It's the kind of thing that makes it hard for me to sleep, Frederickson. You know what I mean?'

'Jesus Christ,' I breathed, thinking of the sixty people who had been murdered to cover up somebody else's crime.

'That's all you've got to say to me?'

'I have to be very careful what I say to you, Captain. Every time I open my mouth, it only makes you angrier.'

'That's because every time you open your mouth you say too much, or not enough, or you give me bullshit. You want something?'

'What?'

'You want some coffee?'

'I want a drink.'

He rubbed a hand across his grizzled chin, sniffed. 'It smells to me like you've already had a drink.'

'What are you, president of your local temperance union? I want another one.'

'I don't drink.'

'It's not for you, Captain, it's for me.'

'There's no liquor on the premises. It's against regulations.'