Mania (23 page)

The rain had let up, and the asphalt was shimmering in weak sunlight. Reflections of the sky were trapped in puddles scattered across the pavement, as though the atmosphere had shattered, Nick thought, and lay in a million pieces on the ground.

When Nick stepped from the taxi, Sara’s car was parked in the middle of the lot behind Nick’s apartment building, jets of steamy exhaust billowing from its twin tailpipes. His heart leapt in his chest when he saw her profile in the driver’s-side window. Sara turned to face him as he crossed the rain-soaked lot, and their eyes met through the tinted glass. Nick hesitated in midstep, nervous, anxious not to disappoint her.

Sara didn’t roll down her window as he approached. Instead, she pushed the door open and flew into his arms. Her skin felt cool and soft in his hands, against his cheek. He could barely comprehend the intensity of her desire, but he didn’t question it. He needed her, too. Without Sara, he would have nothing left. “I didn’t expect you,” Nick said. “I wasn’t sure I was ever going to see you again.”

Sara took a small step back from him, holding his arms in her hands and looking into his eyes, a slightly quizzical look on her face. “How can you say that, Nick?”

Nick shook his head. A rush of words came to his lips, but there was too much he wanted to say.

“I have faith in you,” Sara said. “I
know
you. You didn’t kill your brother, and you didn’t kill Jason. You’re not capable of it. I’m the one to blame. I’m the one who took you to see Dr. Barnes, and I’m the reason you trusted him. It’s unspeakable, the things he did to you.” She took his hands and lifted them to her lips. “I’m only glad that you’re still alive, darling. I can’t think what would have happened if that man—Jackson Ferry—hadn’t attacked Dr. Barnes. You’d be dead, Nick. And I’d be alone.”

They stared at one another without speaking.

“I’ll never be able to repay you,” he said at last, “for the money you posted for my bail.”

Sara shrugged her shoulders. “This car’s worth three times the amount I had to put up to secure the bond. I would have put up a hundred times as much to get you out a day earlier.”

Nick’s face was buried in her long silky hair. “I think I really do love you, Sara,” he said. “And it scares me.”

“I love you, too, Nick.” She raised her hands to his shoulders and pushed him back from her, so that she could look into his eyes. “But it doesn’t scare me. It excites me.” She reassured him with a broad smile. Nick became aware, belatedly, of a rhythmic high-pitched tone emanating from the Mercedes. He turned to glance at the car, realizing that its door was still ajar and that Sara had left the engine running.

“Aren’t you coming inside?” he asked her. “Aren’t you going to stay?”

Sara laughed. “I didn’t come here to stay with you,” she said lightly. “I came here to pick you up and bring you home with me.”

Nick looked at her in question. She had never once invited him to the house in Bellevue. The only time he had seen it was when he followed her there, that same morning that he had seen her disappear into the Four Seasons Hotel. Nick found himself overcome with memories of the two of them together in his small studio. Lying in bed. Waking up in the middle of the night to run downtown and find a place to eat. Sitting on the pathetic sofa reading, Sara’s head heavy in his lap. As dazed as Nick had become in the last weeks, these had been some of the most powerful, most meaningful moments of his life.

“The house is mine now, Nick,” Sara said. “There’s no need for us to stay here in this ridiculous little apartment any longer. My mother is away, down in San Francisco with her sister. They invited me to come down, too—for Christmas—but I wanted to be here with you.”

“I hadn’t realized.” It hadn’t crossed Nick’s mind that the estate would belong to Sara now that Jason Hamlin was dead. “Jason didn’t have any children of his own?”

Sara frowned at the idea. “He was a bachelor until he met my mom. I told you that.” She leaned forward and gave Nick another tight hug. “Wait until you see the house, darling. You’re not going to believe how beautiful it is.”

Nick glanced up at the windows of his apartment. “Maybe I should get a few of my things together,” he said. “I don’t know, some of my clothes. A toothbrush.” Relaxing, realizing how lucky he was, he laughed. “Are we going to be there long?”

Sara tugged his hands. “I’ll stay here with the car. But don’t keep me waiting. Grab enough for a couple days. After that, we’ll go shopping. I want to wipe the slate clean, Nick. I mean it. I want to start fresh in every way.”

Nick stood by himself on the pier behind the Hamlin estate. The view over Lake Washington, looking back at the city of Seattle, was extraordinary. The gigantic mansion dominated this corner of the bay. From where he stood, Nick was able to see a number of the other houses along the shore, set in lavish gardens, surrounded by lush evergreen trees. A seaplane like the one Hamlin had piloted to San Juan Island was descending toward the small airport in Renton, at the southern end of the lake. In the far distance Mount Rainier was crowned with a cap of white snow, blending into the clouds as the sky emptied of color.

At his back, the grounds behind the Hamlin house stepped up from the pier on a series of terraces. A tennis court was carved so discreetly into the side of the bluff that it complemented the landscaping. A huge light blue pool could just as easily have been an elegant fountain. Nick had never experienced wealth like this before. He had never even imagined that wealth on this scale could exist. It seemed inconceivable that a single man could earn enough in a lifetime to own an estate like this one—let alone the house on San Juan Island and the vineyard in Napa, and who knew what else as well.

This was what Sam wanted to grab for himself. This was the prize Sam had had his eyes on. This was what Sam had been willing to risk the sanity of his own brother to attain: a life led in a house on the shore of a lake of sapphire water, on the edge of this rainy city, lost in the far corner of the Pacific Northwest.
Nick was all at once overcome with a memory of the house he and Sam had grown up in, and a sad smile flitted across his face. As fiercely competitive as Sam had always been, it had never occurred to him back then that he didn’t have everything he would ever in his life need, right there on his doorstep. The two brothers had always had everything they could conceive of in each other.
When had that comfortable happiness been lost?

“Sam was still alive when Jackson Ferry took my shoes and left me in the parking lot,” Nick recalled out loud.

Standing at the end of the pier, he closed his eyes against the seductive view and tried to remember the course of events the night that Sam was murdered. It felt like something that had happened twenty years before. Little pieces of the tragedy stuck with him in snapshots: His hand on the handle of the knife as it slid into Sam’s chest. Jackson Ferry’s face emerging suddenly from the pitch-black shadows. Standing barefoot on the pavement in Elliott Bay Park. His memory broke down, though, when he tried to string the images together. Try as he might, there were black periods he couldn’t seem to fill with any color.

“I was on the ground,” Nick said under his breath, trying to give shape to the unease gnawing at the back of his mind, “lying on my stomach when Ferry took my shoes.” He remembered trying to turn over. He tried to resist the homeless man, but couldn’t. “He shoved his foot into my back. He took my shoes, then he left. I turned over and got up onto my knees and found Sam.” Once again, Nick closed his eyes, squeezing them shut to try to recall the image to his mind. “I reached down. I was about to check his pulse. And then something happened, and Sam opened his eyes.”

Sam’s cell phone had rung in his jacket pocket.

Nick opened his eyes. The sun had continued to set, and the heavier clouds above him had turned into charcoal. Farther off, a patch of blue sky had become blood red. Across the water, the color was trapped in the windows of the taller buildings, glimmering as if they had caught fire. “Did I answer the phone?” he whispered. “Yes. I took it from Sam’s pocket, and I flipped it open.”

It’s Sam. He’s been stabbed. Send an ambulance now, please. We’re on the waterfront, just beneath Pike Place Market. Hurry, please. Hurry!

“Who was it?” Nick asked himself. “Who called Sam? Was it someone I knew?” He shook his head. Someone was walking toward him from the shadows. He could hear the footsteps in his mind. The person’s shoes scraped on the gravel. And then nothing. “There was someone else there,” Nick said. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, trying to force himself to remember. “Or was it just the drugs?” he asked himself, frustrated. “No, I’m sure someone else was there. There must have been.”

Nick was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t hear Sara approach. She came up behind him, carrying a tall crystal flute of champagne in either hand. “Are you feeling well enough for a small celebration?”

Nick was startled by her voice. A burst of adrenaline spiked his heart, and for a second he felt himself overcome with a now familiar feeling of dizziness and disorientation. He fought to maintain control. “The doctors said I should be careful drinking any alcohol for the next few weeks,” he said. He smiled, dazzled by Sara’s extraordinary beauty. She had changed from her jeans into a long white dress, the fabric so sheer that he could see the outline of her body beneath. Its wide train billowed behind her in the breeze. Relaxing, he took a cold, frosty glass of champagne from her hand. He was aware of its crisp taste on his lips as she kissed him. When she leaned away from him, he got lost in her eyes.

“I heard you saying something as I came up,” she said, clinking his glass with her own before taking a sip of her champagne. “Were you on the phone?”

“Hmmm? No.” Nick shook his head. “Just talking to myself a little.” He laughed awkwardly. “Nothing important.”

Sara gave him a look of concern, then let her face soften into a smile. “To you, Nick,” she said, lifting her glass.

Nick shook his head somberly. “No.”

A look of confusion crossed Sara’s face. “No?”

“No,” he repeated. “To you.” Then he raised his glass to his lips and swallowed the champagne bottoms up.

They were walking hand in hand along the shore beside the pier when Nick was rocked by the first hallucination he had experienced since being released from the asylum. Dwarfed by the mansion above them, they were stepping over a litter of driftwood that had been carried in by the tide in front of the last few storms. Amid the calm, blissful beauty of the moment, Nick stopped short. His eyes opened wide with terror. Sara felt it in his fingers. His hand went stiff, and she turned to look at him. “Nick?” He didn’t hear her, though. He was mesmerized, transfixed by the vision seizing his consciousness.

The light was dim inside the kitchen at the Hamlin house on San Juan Island. A window was open a crack, and a gauzy curtain was fluttering above the counter. Nick could feel the cold fingers of the weak breeze on his face as he looked down at an open drawer in front of him. His eyes were drawn to the dancing curtain. Small white pieces of moonlight seemed to be sewn into its fabric, and as it twisted and floated in the air, shadows played on the white marble countertop beneath it. Nick was hypnotized by the movement. Then he remembered his mission, and he returned his attention to the drawer, once again searching for a carving knife.

The carving knife with the Japanese writing on the blade, Nick. The largest carving knife in the drawer to the left of the sink.

Nick lifted a couple of utensils from the drawer, then spotted the knife. His hand was drawn to it like a magnet. He picked it up and held it in front of his face, twisting it from side to side in the moonlight. The light seemed to get trapped inside the herringbone ripples of its lethally sharp blade.

His hand was on a doorknob. It was a heavy brass doorknob, colder to the touch than the ambient air in the long hallway stretching the length of the second floor. He was aware of the knob’s weight as he turned it. The door unlatched with a satisfying click, and Nick pushed it steadily open. He paused to pass the carving knife from his left to his right hand, then took a step inside the large, elegantly furnished room.

He became aware of Jason Hamlin’s regular breathing before his eyes were able to adjust to the lack of light. The moon had drifted behind a few heavy storm clouds, and Nick stopped just inside the doorway, waiting until he was able to make sense of the fuzzy shapes hidden in the black and gray shadows enveloping the room.

Hamlin moved in the bed. Nick’s eyes tracked the sound just as the moon peeked out from the clouds, shedding its light through a grid of small-paned windows, revealing the splendor of the huge bedroom. Hamlin was stretched out comfortably on the bed in front of him, his sleep made heavy by wine. Bluish light flickered on the floor as the clouds parted in front of the moon.

The illusion of movement confused Nick, and he stood stock still, his grip tightening on the handle of the knife. And in that moment, he became aware of a shadowy figure standing next to him. His heart leapt.
He wasn’t in Hamlin’s room alone
.

Someone else was there with him. He wasn’t imagining it.
Someone was standing next to him, reaching out to touch his arm.

“Nick? What is it, darling—Nick, talk to me.” Sara’s voice penetrated Nick’s consciousness, bringing him back into the present. A small wave tumbled over the rocky beach in a salty froth, reaching his feet and splashing his ankles with surprising force.

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “I’m not sure. I’ve been feeling so well these last few days.”

Blinking, trying to remain focused on the water running over his feet, he was nevertheless blinded by an image of Jason Hamlin’s corpse, lying on his bed in a thick pool of drying blood. Nick brought his hands to his ears, trying to shield them from a sudden, deafening roar.

“What’s happening, Nick? Tell me.”

A second later, the sounds and images vanished as abruptly as they had appeared, replaced by Sara standing in front of him in the shadow of the Hamlin mansion, peering at him with gentle concern. “It’s nothing,” Nick mumbled. His legs felt weak underneath him. “I’m sure it’s nothing. The doctors said I’d get flashbacks—that pieces of the last few months would force themselves into my consciousness from time to time.”

Sara reached out and caressed his cheek, then let her hand rest on his shoulder. “Shall we go back to the house? It’s getting dark anyway, and it’s been a long day. You’re tired and hungry.”

Nick allowed himself to be led back toward the mansion, a half step behind Sara as she guided him over the rocky beach to the lawn, then up the bluestone steps that ascended through a series of terraces to the marble porch off the living room. The house was lit inside with the intensity of a furnace, glistening through an arcade of glass doors. Nick felt winded from the short climb. His legs hadn’t yet recovered from his incarceration, and he stopped at the top of the stairs to catch his breath, gazing inside the house at the impossibly opulent collection of furniture and art and Oriental rugs that Hamlin had amassed. “It’s wonderful here,” Sara said, following his stare, “isn’t it?”

A piece of modern sculpture caught Nick’s eye. A life-size bronze depicting a modern soldier in battle, dressed in full army gear but carrying an ancient Greek sword and shield. Nick’s eyes were drawn to the sword. It was sharp enough, he imagined, to slice through skin if you were to run your finger down its length. The way the steel was glinting in the light fascinated him, dragging him back into his hallucination, and for a split second he was standing in the kitchen at the Hamlin house on San Juan Island, once again in front of the open drawer. The knife with the Japanese writing on its blade was clasped in his hand. Nick struggled to stay in the present, fighting the powerful image from his mind. He became aware, though, of a distant rumble in his ears, like an approaching train, and he knew that the crescendoing roar would bring another hallucination with it.

The knife with the Japanese characters on its blade sliced through Jason Hamlin’s throat, nearly severing his head from his body. It wasn’t an easy cut to make. The sinews and muscles of the man’s neck were stubborn, and they resisted the blade with the tension of tiny steel cables. The knife wanted to get lodged in the spinal cord at the back of the man’s neck. The larynx punctured, then ripped. It was like cutting through a piece of nylon rope. Flesh tore audibly. Blood was everywhere, sticky on Nick’s hands.
The hand on the knife isn’t mine.
The disembodied voice echoed through Nick’s head like a clap of thunder, and with it the image abruptly disappeared.

Nick hadn’t moved. He was still standing in front of the doors leading into the living room. Now, though, Sara was hanging impaled from the sword in the bronze soldier’s hand. Its razor-sharp blade jutted out from her chest, covered in blood. Her head was slumped forward, her arms dangling lifelessly at her sides. Her feet were suspended over a pool of coagulating blood.

Nick shrank from the vision, then fell to his knees, his hands over his eyes, then over his ears, his chest heaving with panic.
You killed Sam, Nick. You murdered Jason Hamlin and Ralph Van Gundy. And now you’re going to kill Sara, too
.

Sara knelt down next to him. Nick was aware of her hands, soft and cold on his forehead and in his hair, gently stroking him on the back. “I’m no good, Sara,” he heard himself say. “I’m a murderer.”

“Shhh,” she whispered.

“I’m afraid, Sara. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you, too.”

Sara took Nick into her arms. “Let’s go inside,” she said, drawing him to his feet. The crystal champagne flute fell from his hand as he tried to find his balance, shattering into a thousand pieces on the marble floor. “The champagne was a bad idea, darling. Let’s get you into bed.”

Nick woke up at the Hamlin estate on San Juan Island.

Sara was lying next to him in the double bed that had been made up by the Wheelers, in the third bedroom down the hallway that ran the length of the house. Nick moved to the edge of the mattress, then dropped his feet to the floor. The bed groaned beneath his shifting weight as he stood up. Moving stealthily to the window, he peered through a crack in the heavy curtains, watching the moon slip between two huge storm clouds, then gathered his clothes. He had set his jeans and T-shirt on the back of a chair, and he slipped them on. The floorboards creaked underneath him when he stood on a single foot to slide into the legs of his pants, but Sara didn’t even murmur. As far as Nick could tell, she was sound asleep.

He let himself out into the long hallway, then closed the door behind him. The latch snapped into place with a click. The household was asleep. The hum of an old electric clock in the kitchen vibrated throughout the house. Nick stood entirely still for a moment, listening. Then he made his way down the long, wide corridor to the top of the stairs, one slow step after another, the wood plank floor cold on his feet.

He crossed the dining room into the kitchen.
Sara hasn’t mentioned you to us once since the night of the fund-raiser. Has she, Jillian?
The moonlight was dancing on one of the curtains—a single curtain hanging loose over an open window. Nick paused halfway across the kitchen, hypnotized. Then he crossed the rest of the way to the counter, reaching for the drawer just to the left of the sink.

The carving knife with the Japanese writing on the blade, Nick. The largest carving knife in the drawer to the left of the sink.

Nick grasped the heavy knife. It was perfectly balanced. A beautiful knife with an eight-inch hardened steel blade and a handle made of mahogany. He admired it in the dazzling light of the moon. Slivers of light scintillated like strands of gems in its oily sheen. He measured its weight, twisted it slowly in the air. He wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there before he realized that he wasn’t in the kitchen alone.

He turned, raising his eyes in surprise. And as he turned, he realized that he wasn’t at the Hamlin house on San Juan Island at all. He was standing instead in the unfamiliar kitchen of the Bellevue estate, with no recollection of how he had come there. Sara was standing next to him, peering at him curiously. A sour taste came to his mouth. He had to think before he recognized the flavor of the champagne.

“You were there in the kitchen,” Nick said. “I took the knife. But you were there in the kitchen, too, Sara, the night that Jason Hamlin was killed.”

Sara hovered in front of him in the dim light of the room. When a wave of dizziness nearly knocked him from his feet, a smile spread slowly across her impossibly beautiful face. Grimacing, Nick reached for the counter. He managed to remain on his feet for a few seconds longer, then at last took a drunken step away from the counter and tumbled onto the floor. His eyes closed on his way down, and the blur of his shadowy fall melted into peaceful blackness.

Nick was lying facedown on the asphalt. Chunks of gravel were stuck to his cheek, and his skin was badly scraped. His head had hit the pavement, and a lump had formed on his forehead, throbbing painfully. When he moved his mouth to speak, sharp blades of pain shot through his jaw. For a moment he was blind, his eyes were burning as though he were staring into the sun.

Jackson Ferry was tugging at his feet. When he began to twist around, Ferry plunged one of his bare feet into the small of his back, shoving him down into the asphalt, once again grinding his cheek against the pavement. “You’re just as diseased as I am, you hopeless son of a bitch,” Ferry said. His voice was raspy and guttural, but surprisingly clear. Nick tried one more time to twist around. “You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t,” the homeless man said to him. “I know. It’s the same for me. One minute I’m in the here and now. The next I’m somewhere else.” He stopped moving. “You and I are brothers,” he said. Then he savagely yanked the Nikes from Nick’s feet. His own foot was still resting on the small of Nick’s back, and he shoved him forward again, even more violently. Nick felt the skin peel from his face.

Nick turned over when Ferry let him go, but gingerly. He didn’t try to struggle to his feet. His ribs were sore, and he was having difficulty breathing. He raised his head off the ground and watched Ferry sit down between Sam and him and pull his shoes on, his straggly hair covering his face, a few oily strands caught in his purplish, festering lips. The homeless man stood up. “I feel sorry for you,” he said. He looked down at Sam, sneering hatefully. “Him, no. Him, I wanted to kill. I had to kill him, man, to get him out of my head.” He flashed a gruesome toothless smile. “You know what I mean, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes, man. You’re one of his guinea pigs, too.”

Nick hunched over his brother’s body, cataloging the damage that Ferry had inflicted upon him. The knife was lying on the ground next to him, its blade sharp beneath Nick’s knee. The homeless man had slashed Sam’s face, and part of his cheek was hanging from the bone. His mouth was a bloody pulp, nearly unrecognizable. His teeth had been kicked into his throat. He was bleeding profusely from the wounds that Ferry had left in his torso. Nick’s hands shook as he reached down toward his brother’s face, thinking to caress him, perhaps to look for a pulse. His fingers were just above his brother’s torn cheek when the cell phone in Sam’s jacket rang. And Sam opened his eyes.

“Sam,” Nick said spontaneously. “My God, Sam.”

Sam gazed up at his brother, but his eyes didn’t focus. His head was beginning to tremble and jerk in the beginning stages of a seizure. Nick placed his hands on Sam’s shoulders, trying to still him.

The phone sounded again in Sam’s pocket, and Nick reached for it. It didn’t matter who was calling. All that mattered was that he get help. Sam would die without medical attention. Perhaps it was already too late. Nick searched his brother’s pockets for the phone. Examining it as he figured out how to take the call, he recognized the incoming number on the phone’s caller ID. His first reaction was simply relief. It was Sara calling.
Sara
. She would know what to do. She would call an ambulance.

Then it registered with Nick:
Sara was calling Sam’s phone.