Cape Disappointment (35 page)

In the back of the house a white-haired woman returned from what I assumed was the kitchen area and proceeded along a corridor toward us, then headed up the stairs to the second floor via a staircase at the back of the living room. The house was humid and smelled of pot roast. In the light under a window I could see she was carrying a hypodermic syringe.

“What's with the cowboy getup?” the man at the door asked.

“This is what I wear,” said Snake.

Several things happened in the next moments. The man realized his mistake in letting me open the door, while at the same time the worst panic of my life slammed me. I couldn't have been more alarmed if somebody had pushed me off an ocean liner with an anchor chained to my waist. I could tell by the way she was carrying it that the white-haired woman was familiar with hypos and that the dose she was carrying upstairs was not meant for her own use.

“No!” I shouted. I flattened the man and hurtled toward the stairs. Behind me, I could hear Snake step into the house in my wake. The woman was almost at the top of the stairs when she saw me. A moment later I heard her heavy, thumping footsteps on the floor above us.

I half expected to hear a gunshot behind me, but all I heard were the sounds of a struggle as Snake and the homeowner tussled. I turned back briefly and saw Snake trying to wrestle the gun away from the man in the doorway. Neither of them was gaining the upper hand. By rights I should have gone back to make sure Snake wasn't killed, but I didn't.

And then I had a demented thought that the government cabal Bert was always talking about— the one that may or may not exist, the one that may or may not have been a figment of his imagination— that they had set this up, that this was part of an elaborate plot to murder me and get away with it. They dangle a fake Kathy in front of me, make it just hard enough to find her that it's realistic, then cajole me into breaking into the house, where they can legally blow me full of holes. My thoughts were flooded with the idea that I'd been tricked. Spotting Kathy everywhere I went. The whole thing was a fantasy. I knew that now that it was too late. A shot rang out downstairs and the fracas
ceased, then slow footsteps crossed the living room toward the foot of the stairs.

The second-floor hallway was in shadows, the white-haired woman nowhere in sight. She was probably scrambling to find her own gun. In America everybody had a gun. It occurred to me that if Snake was dead, I would be next, and that nobody was ever going to know why we'd come here. The papers would print some simple account:
HOME INVADERS SHOT BY FRIGHTENED RESIDENT.
I opened one door, but the room contained only an unmade bed. The second bedroom was empty. There was a partially open bathroom door, but she hadn't gone in there. At the end of the hallway I found the third bedroom locked. I stepped back and knocked the door off its hinges.

The room contained a bed, a dresser, and a single straight-backed chair. On the bed was a mound of blankets I assumed had a human being buried underneath. The white-haired woman was bending over the bed with the hypodermic syringe. Behind me, somebody was coming up the stairs with leaden footsteps. The woman nervously tried to inject the individual in the bed.

Before she could complete the task, I vaulted over the end of the bed and grasped her fleshy arm. “Who are you?” she yelled. “Jimmy. Get this maniac off me! Jimmy? Help! Call the police. Jimmy?”

Although she was probably twice my age, she was amazingly nimble and whipped her arms out of my grip. Then, with a flash of inspiration, she came at me wielding the hypodermic like a knife, ready to inject me with whatever medication was in it. Up close, I could see she had blue eyes and rough-looking skin. I grabbed her arm, but she struggled ferociously. I put an ankle behind her leg and pushed her onto the floor, wresting the hypo away from her as I did so. Elementary school judo. It was a trick I'd learned in fourth grade. Now that I had the needle, she scooted into the corner on her rump like a frightened cat.

I turned and looked at the bed, stalling. It was one thing to chase a figure I believed to be Kathy, quite another to unmask that figure and once again be forced to realize Kathy was drifting somewhere in the wild blue Pacific Ocean with the sharks. I didn't know if I could stand it again.

Behind me, the squeaky door to the bedroom swung open. I heard a large revolver being cocked. The woman got to her feet in the corner.

Hoping I wouldn't get shot before I could talk my way out of this, I turned and faced him.

“Jesus, Thomas. What are you doing?”

“Snake? Where's the other guy?”

“Downstairs. I had to take his gun away from him after he fired it into the wall.”

“Well, don't be pointing your forty-four at me.”

Snake lowered the Smith & Wesson. “Is it her?”

“I don't know.”

“You going to check, or are you going to stand here all morning?”

“My patient?” said the woman. “Leave my patient alone. Jimmy's downstairs calling the police right now.”

When I glanced at Snake, he shook his head. “Is your patient's name Kathy Birchfield?” Snake asked.

“Her name is Marla, and she's quite ill. Don't touch her.”

Despite the commotion and chatter, the lump in the bed had barely stirred. When I peeled the covers partially back, it was easy to see why. Her head was swathed in bandages, her left arm in a cast and sling. Her eyelids fluttered, but she did not awaken. I continued to peel the covers back. She was wearing a long cotton nightgown. Her left leg had a cast that extended above her knee.

“Christ,” said Snake. “It's not her.”

I knelt and touched the patient's hot forehead. It was hard to tell what was going on here. On the nightstand were several bottles of pills and a paperback mystery. The pill bottles had been prescribed for a patient named Marla Anderson. “Kathy?”

“Jesus, Thomas,” Snake bellowed. “Give it up, will you? We broke into this house, terrorized these people, and now we need to get the fuck out of Dodge. Give it up!”

The patient opened her eyes, looked at the white-haired woman, who had by now stepped out of the corner, and then swung her gaze toward me. It took her a long time to say anything. “Thomas?”

THE WHITE-HAIRED WOMAN'S NAME
was Dorothy MacDonald. She claimed she was a nurse, had been hired by the day, was being paid cash, and lived in Gresham, Oregon, but had been here since the day after “that senator died in the plane crash.” She said this was a rented house, that none of them actually lived here, that she learned of the job through a friend of a friend, that she was an RN but hadn't been working the past few years because she'd been taking care of her husband, who'd recently died of dementia. According to her, the patient's name was Marla Anderson and she had been here for almost two weeks. Also, according to MacDonald, the man downstairs was an MD who'd recently graduated from medical school but had run up against personal problems at the hospital where he'd done his residency.

“Thomas?”

I sat on the bed.

“Thomas? Is that really you?”

“Kathy. Oh, my God.”

“Am I dreaming? I thought you were dead.”

“I thought
you
were dead.” It was hard to believe, after all of my near-psychotic disbelief, that she truly hadn't gone down with the Sheffield flight and had been barely fifteen miles from the spot where the world thought she died. Hundreds of people had attended her funeral. Her mother and sister had been stricken. I'd lost about half my
brain cells trying to come to grips with the fact that I was going to suffer the next forty years without her. And now here she was, good as new. Or almost. I touched her shoulder and kissed her cheek. She smiled grimly and drifted back to sleep. With her head swathed in bandages, she was barely recognizable, and worse, barely recognized me. “What happened?” I asked, turning to the nurse.

“Her name is Kathy Birchfield. And she is my wife.”

“Her husband died in the car wreck.”

“Is that how she got hurt? A car wreck?”

“Two weeks ago. Her husband was killed. She's had a severe head injury and, because of that, needs to be kept sedated. I need to give her that injection.”

“Why isn't she in a hospital?”

“There are … extenuating circumstances. We were warned about you. You're the ex.”

“Kathy never had an ex. This is a first marriage for both of us.”

I was still having a hard time believing this. The house. The nurse. The doctor downstairs. The fact that Kathy was alive. For days I'd been envisioning her last weightless moments as the plane hurtled toward the ocean, but she hadn't even been on the plane. Was it possible the patient in front of me was only someone who resembled Kathy, that she'd uttered my name as part of an elaborately rehearsed scam? Maybe the cops were on their way. Or a team of assassins. On her left-hand ring finger she was wearing a simple gold wedding band. I slipped it off and, without looking, handed it to the nurse. “Read inside. It says, ‘From Thomas, all my love.'” I gave her the date of our wedding.

The old woman leaned down next to the lamp, squinted at the ring and said, “Typical male.”

I grabbed the ring from her and read it.
Love Forever, Thomas.
Crap. I slipped the ring back on her finger. “At least I got the date right.”

“Fifty percent is flunking.”

“Who's paying for this?”

“Her brother. Out of his own pocket.”

“She doesn't have a brother.”

“Sure she does. I've seen him.” Dorothy MacDonald was staring at Snake.

“Is that supposed to be her brother?”

“Looks like him, but it's not.”

Snake and I exchanged a glance and spoke at the same time. “Bert.”

“His twin hired you,” I said.

“In case you ever get confused,” Snake said, “I'm the handsome one. It's been a burden for Bert all along.”

“That bastard,” I said.

“Just don't kill him when you finally get your hands on him,” said Snake.

“Who's going to stop me?”

“Just don't kill him.”

I turned to the woman. “What are her injuries?”

“I'm not at liberty to disclose medical information.”

“Don't piss me off, lady.” My threat only made her more determined to stick to her guns. I had to admire her for that. She was scared, but she was going to continue to act in her patient's best interest if she could. I tried to look at things from her point of view. For almost two weeks she'd been camped out in this lonely house taking care of an injured stranger, probably hadn't had a single visitor, and all of a sudden two madmen burst in making allegations and pointing guns. Her world had gone topsy-turvy almost as fast as mine had.

Snake and I looked at each other. “Don't let her touch her,” I said, as I left the room and went back downstairs. The living room was empty, a chair tipped over, the front door open. A cold wind blew into the house. “Doctor?”

In the yard the Subaru and my Ford were still there, but the Toyota was missing. A quick check of the rooms on the first floor revealed the bedroom where he'd been camping out had been ransacked, most of his personal possessions gone. There couldn't have been much or he wouldn't have been able to scram so quickly. It wasn't until I looked under a couple of old suitcases in the back of the closet that I found Kathy's purse, the luggage that hadn't gone down with the plane, clothing, and ID. Except for her cellphone sitting on top of it all, none of it appeared to have been touched since the afternoon I last saw her. I placed her belongings in the living room near the front door.

The house had been owner-occupied not too long ago. A collection of knickknacks adorned the mantel, mostly glass elephants. I walked
back up and found Snake and MacDonald staring at each other like a couple of worn-out boxers waiting for the decision.

“I want you to tell me everything,” I said, gently. When she didn't reply right away, I added, “Nobody's called the police. Your friend took off.”

Hurriedly, MacDonald walked around the end of the bed and peered through the drapes at the front yard. “He's gone.”

“That's what I said.”

She thought about it for half a minute. “I knew there was something wrong with this setup, but according to Jimmy—”

“Jimmy? Is that his name?”

“Jimmy Crocker. All I know is, I was following orders. I thought it was odd we were keeping her out here instead of in a hospital. But her brother said there was an ex-husband running around loose who wanted to kill her and he had all kinds of resources and if she wasn't kept incognito she would end up dead. That's why Jimmy had the gun. This whole setup was to keep her hidden from her ex.”

“When was the last time you saw the supposed brother?”

“A couple of days ago.”

“And Jimmy's really a doctor?”

“That's what he said. He seemed to know his stuff.”

Snake looked at me. “That's why he wants to know where you are every time he calls. He's been keeping tabs, making sure you weren't out here uncovering any of this.”

“When is she going to wake up?” I asked.

“Jimmy's let her come out of it in the afternoons for a little while. You mean fully conscious? It could be hours.”