KnockOut (18 page)

“IS ANYONE THERE?
How can I know if anyone’s there if I can’t see?”

“Yes, I’m here, Mr. Backman. I’m sorry about the blindfold. I’m your nurse, Cindy Maybeck. Do you need anything, sir?”

His voice sounded weak, querulous. “I need you to take off this ridiculous blindfold.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I was told to leave it in place, for my own protection, not that I believe it, but I have to follow orders. Let me take your pulse, listen to your heart.”

Blessed felt her lift his wrist, place two fingers against the pulse. “It’s that hick sheriff; he’s torturing me because we had a disagreement. Here I’m old enough to be his daddy and he’s afraid of me. Isn’t that a kick? Listen, how would you like to lie in darkness, Nurse, with your hands strapped down? I can’t even scratch my nose. It’s inhumane, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Backman. I was told—”

“I hurt; I hurt real bad.”

“Now, sir, you had a shot of morphine not an hour ago. Why don’t you try to sleep? Sleep will make you heal faster. You want me to scratch you anywhere?”

Blessed hissed out a moan but didn’t say anything more.

Cindy took his pulse. Nice and slow and regular. Then she put a cuff on his good arm and a stethoscope below it. He had good pressure, a little on the high side but nothing to merit alarm. She straightened, looked down at him. She said softly, “Don’t cry, Mr. Backman, you’re getting the blindfold wet.”

He sobbed.

“You’re going to make yourself all itchy if you don’t stop crying, Mr. Backman.”

“Just wipe my eyes for me, Nurse. Please. What can I do? My hands are tied down, I’m helpless.”

She held herself silent for a few seconds. She’d heard Dr. Truitt say all of these precautions were ridiculous; he was an old man, for God’s sake. But then the sheriff and the FBI agent had told everyone not to remove his blindfold and why. He could hypnotize someone instantly? She’d never heard of such a thing. She agreed with Dr. Truitt. This poor old man, shot twice, helpless as a foal—she said, “I really shouldn’t, I’d be disobeying orders. Oh, all right, but only for a moment. It’ll be our secret, all right? You promise you won’t tell anyone?”

His voice was liquid with tears. “I swear I won’t say anything, Nurse.”

Cindy eased the blindfold over the top of his head. She wiped away his tears. Real tears, she saw, and she knew Dr. Truitt was right. This poor man couldn’t do anything to anybody. She studied his pale face for a moment. No, surely he couldn’t—Blessed Backman opened his eyes and looked up at her.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “You’re quite pretty, all that blond hair. Is it real?”

“Yes,” Cindy said, “from my grandmother.”

“You’re a pretty, helpful girl. Unfasten the straps on my wrists.” He smiled up at her.

Cindy didn’t hesitate. She unfastened the straps and straightened to stand next to the bed, unmoving.

Blessed slowly eased onto his side, pressed his palm to his bandaged shoulder, and sat up. He winced, cursed softly.

Cindy said, “Can I help you?”

He looked up at her and smiled again. “No, thank you, Nurse. That is much better. Now, I want you to bring my clothes.”

Cindy walked over to the patient’s closet that held his shirt, trousers, and shoes. She pulled them off the hangers. “I don’t see any underwear or socks,” she said.

“It’s all right. Bring them to me now.”

Cindy turned back with the clothes over her arm.

“I want you to go outside and talk to that guard, distract him; you’re pretty enough to turn the head of a dead man. Flirt with him, keep him busy until I call you. Then you can bring him in with you, all right?”

“All right.”

In the hospital room next door, Savich, Ethan, and Dr. Hicks were watching them. Savich said, “Well, that didn’t take long. Do you think Dr. Truitt will believe us now?”

“You said Dr. Truitt is a skeptic, Savich. He could say this was all a performance.”

“Good, you sound just like a defense attorney,” Savich said. “We’ll play it out some more, until and unless he acts against the nurse, then we move fast.” But he didn’t want to. Savich watched Cindy Maybeck walk out of the room, knew she wasn’t really there in her own head. Still, letting this go on was a risk, but he prayed it was a manageable risk. He forced himself to set aside all his doubts and fears. He drew in a deep breath. They watched a middle-aged man, thin and scrawny, his shoulder and arm hugely bandaged, slowly swing his legs over the side of the bed.

“I can’t believe he can move around as well as he can,” Dr. Hicks said. “Maybe along with his abilities, he’s also able to influence his own body somewhat.” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

They watched Blessed Backman slowly stand up and strip off the puke-green hospital gown, wincing and weaving a bit. They watched him awkwardly pull on his pants, then stare at the shirt. There was no way he could get himself into it, not with his shoulder bandaged so thickly, not with the pain the movement would cause him.

Blessed called, “Nurse, come here, please.”

Cindy opened the door and came in. She never looked away from his face. He said, “I need you to help me into this shirt.”

She did. He swore the whole time. They could see the pallor, the beads of sweat on his forehead. “He’s in pain,” Dr. Hicks said, “but he’s still functioning. Amazing.”

Blessed asked Cindy, “Where are my shoes?”

“I left them in the closet.”

“Get them for me.”

She did. She went down on her knees and helped him into his shoes.

“All right. I want you to ask the deputy to come in here, tell him you’re concerned that I might be getting free and you want him to check on me.”

Cindy nodded and turned to leave the room.

“That’s it,” Ethan said, and he and Savich were out of the room in a second flat. “You will stay outside,” Savich told him. “No arguments.” Savich walked past Nurse Maybeck into the hospital room to see Blessed reaching for his watch on the side table.

It was all on film.

“You!”

“Yeah, it’s me, your worst nightmare, Blessed. Go ahead, give me your best look, come on, give it a try. Sorry, not going to happen. Party’s over. That was some performance you gave us.” He nodded up at the camera, Blessed’s eyes following his. Savich didn’t think he could hypnotize people on the other side of the camera, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. He blocked his view. He looked over at the nurse, who was looking blankly at nothing at all, simply standing outside the doorway. Savich said to Blessed, “Get your clothes back off and I’ll help you with the gown.” Savich stripped him down because Blessed was cursing him, trying desperately to stop him and not succeeding. Blessed yelled to Nurse Maybeck, “Help me, Nurse. Help me!”

“What is that agent doing to him? Let me go!”

But Ox grabbed the nurse by her arms and lifted her bodily onto his shoulders to get her away from the room.

Savich got Blessed back into the hospital gown and flat on his back. Blessed stared up at him, panting with pain, his eyes burning wild and hot in his white face. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to skin you and make a lamp out of your hide. I’m going to bury you so deep no one will ever—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Savich forced the straps around his wrists, clipped them to the bed railings, and slipped the blindfold back over his eyes.

“It’s okay, Ethan, you can come in now.”

“This is amazing,” said Dr. Hicks, who stood in the doorway beside Ethan. He stared from Savich to Blessed, who was still panting from the pain. “That was the most incredible psychic phenomenon I’ve ever seen.”

Dr. Truitt appeared next to him in the doorway. “They paged me. What’s happening here?”

A half-dozen hospital personnel were soon clustered around Dr. Truitt, looking from Savich to Blessed Backman, who lay on his back, moaning, blindfolded, his wrists strapped down.

Ox stood beside the bed, staring down at Blessed Backman like he could kill him and enjoy it. Savich turned to the hospital staff. “It’s over now. We do have a little something to show you, Dr. Truitt, you and the staff. It’s a video in the next room. You’re in living color, Blessed. Maybe this will help keep you in solitary confinement for the rest of your miserable days.”

Ethan said, “I don’t suppose there’s a prayer of keeping all this away from the media?”

“We can try,” Dr. Hicks said. “Some of these people won’t want to confess to another soul that they saw a man take over another person’s mind so easily. Some simply won’t believe it. But the media will sensationalize any hint of psychic powers. Even if no one believes it, they’ll come like locusts.”

But Savich knew it would get out, knew Blessed’s family would find out fast that they had him. What would they do?

Cindy Maybeck stood beside Ox, rubbing her arm where he’d hit her. She’d recognized him when he’d first arrived with Sheriff Merriweather. He’d given her a parking ticket last year. She looked up at him. “Why did you hit me?”

“Because that nice old codger took away your brain for a while. You’ll be okay now. Do you have a headache?”

She shook her head, frowned. Ox knew she didn’t understand, but maybe she would when he explained it to her over dinner at Marlin’s Mexican if she said yes. He’d also teach her how to parallel park.

BRICKER’S BOWL, GEORGIA

Wednesday afternoon

“Joanna described Bricker’s Bowl well,” Sherlock said, staring around her. “It’s like the whole town’s at the bottom of a gigantic soup bowl. Very cool. It makes me want some chicken noodle. How many people live in this valley?”

“Around five hundred souls,” Savich said.

“It looks like nobody’s come or gone in a lot of years. It should be in black-and-white, like that old movie
Pleasantville
. Look, Dillon, there’s a cell tower, power lines, all the modern conveniences. Somehow they look out of place. I’m thinking the Backmans would have to be careful about what they do around here, you know, not soil their own backyard.”

“Joanna did say she saw Blessed stymie the young guy taking pictures the day they buried Martin Backman’s urn in their cemetery.”

Sherlock said, “And his brother Grace stopped him.”

Savich picked it up. “Blessed did tell the young man he wouldn’t remember anything. Neither did Ox or Glenda or that nurse at the hospital. Blessed would have to be very careful, though, or sooner or later he’d face a mob.”

Sherlock nodded. “And we’re talking years upon years living here, Dillon. Look there, cows grazing, goats munching away. Makes me feel better. But what I don’t understand is why Blessed doesn’t simply walk into a bank and stymie a teller and walk out with a gazillion bucks. No one would remember he was even there.”

“Maybe he’s tried it. They could have a lot of cash stuffed in those graves. We’re going to find out, I promise you that.” Savich turned the rented Camry into the first filling station, Miley’s. A young boy with buzz-cut wheat-colored hair was putting air in a couple of tires on an ancient Honda. A heavyset woman was seated inside the Quik Mart, the cash register in front of her, staring at them through the glass.

Sherlock said, “That woman’s looking at us like we’re trouble. Fact is, though, if I lived anywhere near the Backmans, I wouldn’t just be paranoid, I’d move. We don’t need gas, Dillon. Why’d you stop?”

He said, “That woman sitting at the register was looking at us even before we pulled in. I want to sit here awhile before I get out of the car and fill the tank. We’re two strangers, doing nothing, and she looks like she’s on red alert. This might end up being interesting.”

“I hope we luck out and find Caldicot Whistler here. He’s probably the key to this Children of Twilight cult, maybe to all of it.”

“I finished putting together what MAX could find about him this morning,” Savich said. “He’s thirty-seven years old, a graduate of Harvard Law who worked for four years in a private law firm in Manhattan, then took off without a forwarding address after he was turned down for a partnership. No wife, no kids. Actually he has no living relatives that MAX could locate.

“We have a four-year gap until we pick him up again here in Georgia, leading this Children of Twilight cult. Surprisingly, it’s the only mention MAX could find about him.

“Ah, look. Our subject behind the glass is giving us the evil eye, probably wondering if we’re criminals or we’re using Bricker’s Bowl as a hideaway to cheat on our spouses. And that boy’s putting too much air in that tire. If he’s not careful, it’s going to explode.”

Sherlock said, “I ran searches on Children of Twilight myself.”

He waited. “But?”

“Well, I did find a reference to a possible origin of the phrase, but, Dillon, it’s really out there—”

“And your point would be?” Savich held up his hand. The woman on the other side of the glass was reaching for the phone at her right elbow. He said, “Tell me the origin when we’re done here. It’s time for me to pump gas.”

Savich leisurely stepped from the car and eased the nozzle into the gas tank. The woman at the register dropped the phone into its receiver and turned back to watch him. He could tell from twenty feet away that her face was loaded down with makeup, from bloodred lipstick to bright blue eyelids. He gave her a little wave.

He replaced the gas nozzle and walked inside to pay the woman. He saw lines of suspicion form on her face. Her blue-shadowed green eyes were lined with black.

He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

“Hello,” he said, his voice smooth, confident. “Nice dress.”

She looked surprised and uncertain, the compliment unexpected, and she leaned toward him but only for a moment. Then she pulled back, crossed her heavy arms over her chest. She eased one leg over the other, letting her flowy blue print dress ease up to her knees.

“That’ll be only fourteen dollars and sixty-three cents,” she said, extending her hand. “Why’d you stop here when you didn’t need any gas to speak of?”

Savich glanced at her name tag as he peeled the bills out of his wallet. “You’re Doreen, right?”

“That’s me,” she said, and took his money. “You got three pennies?”

She had a deep Georgia drawl, every word syrupy-slow and with vowels. Savich shook his head no, watched her make change.

She gave him back a lot of nickels and pennies—payback, he supposed—then asked, her voice careful, “You and the missus take a wrong turn?”

“Oh, no,” Savich said. “We’re here to see the Backmans.”

He saw the whip of fear in her eyes before she smoothed it away. “Nice family,” Doreen said, looking down at an old
People
magazine with Drew Barrymore’s expressive face on the cover. He saw Doreen didn’t believe him. She said, “Outsiders usually pay with credit cards, not cash, particularly if they don’t have anything to hide.”

Savich said easily, “But then again I didn’t get much gas, did I? I like to keep rental cars nice and full. Do you also know Caldicot Whistler, Doreen? Good-looking guy about your age?”

Savich loved this woman. She was wide open, every thought clear on her face. He saw the flash of recognition, then fear or suspicion, or alarm, he wasn’t sure which.

“Nope, never heard of this Whistler. Dumb name.”

“I don’t know. I think Blessed is a pretty dumb name too, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Can you give me a recommendation for a place to stay?”

“The Backmans won’t put you up? They got more bedrooms in that big house than that Hearst Castle place in California. How long you going to be here?”

“We haven’t decided that yet. I guess we’ll have to see how long our business dealings with Blessed take.”

She let her breath whoosh out. “You’re not—I mean, you really know Blessed?”

“Yes. Very well, as a matter of fact.”

“I don’t know how that can be, since Blessed doesn’t leave Bricker’s Bowl very often and I’ve sure never seen you before. Fact is, though, Blessed’s not here—in town, I mean. Haven’t seen him in more than a week. Heard he borrowed an old SUV from Mr. Claus and headed out. So you’re out of luck.”

“Then we’ll deal with Grace and Shepherd.”

“Haven’t seen Grace either. As for Shepherd, who knows? She hardly ever leaves that mansion of hers, much less Bricker’s Bowl. I heard she buried one of her sons—the Lost One—just two weeks ago. Martin was his name. We started out in the first grade together and went all the way through. He was smart.”

“Why do you call Martin the Lost One?”

She shrugged her big shoulders. “After he left, Mrs. Backman started calling him that. The Lost One. And she’d cry. No one ever heard from him again, not until his widow brought him back in a miserable urn to plant in the ground since she’d had him cremated up north somewhere. People think that’s not right around here, you know? I heard the urn was made of one of those new specially treated woods, last as long as metal. Can you imagine? I also imagine Shepherd wasn’t happy about that, Blessed and Grace either.”

“Hey, Martin’s widow brought him back to his hometown and family. That was surely a nice thing for her to do, don’t you think, Doreen?”

“She was gone fast enough. Della Hoop down at the dry cleaner’s said she heard the widow was this city girl, all proud and proper, and Martin’s little girl was cute as a button. That’s what Mavis at the Food Star told her. Said the little girl liked butter-pecan ice cream. But she didn’t look a thing like her daddy. Martin was dark, had a five-o’clock stubble by the time he was sixteen. Shepherd didn’t like that either, I heard, the little girl looking the image of her mother.”

Savich nodded. “Blessed told me how he caught that young guy from the newspaper who was at the funeral spying on them, how he told him to go quit his job.”

Doreen’s eyes flashed again—was it fear? Or was it par for the course when you lived in Blessed’s universe? “The little snoop, serves him right, but old man Maynard wouldn’t let him quit even though he lost his prized camera.”

“Yeah, Blessed said he smashed the camera.”

Doreen’s mouth opened and Savich leaned forward a bit. Suddenly she looked out the window. Savich turned to see a big muscle truck, a Chevy Cheyenne, so spit-shined you could see your reflection in its black surface. He saw a gun rack but no one riding shotgun.

Doreen said, “That there’s Sheriff Cole. Burris probably saw you, wants to check you out. He’s real careful with our town. I told you, Blessed and Grace aren’t here. Why don’t you just leave now? I mean, you got a real full tank now, don’t you? Trust me, you don’t want to tangle with Sheriff Cole.”

“Tangle with the sheriff? Last thing on my mind. I’m pleased you called him for me, Doreen.”