Over the Edge (48 page)

'You put him on a pharmacologic roller coaster,' I said.

'The electrochemical properties of his nerve endings were being constantly altered. Which is why he showed such a strange reaction to the medication: settling down one day; going out of control the next. When his body was free of anticholinergics, the antipsychotics did their job properly. But in the presence of atropine they were turned into poisons, which could also explain the premature tardive dyskinesia. Isn't one of the main theories about TD that it's caused by cholinergic blockage?'

Mainwaring dropped the pipe again, this time willfully. He put both hands in his hair and tried to melt into the chair. His face was as white and moist as boiled haddock; his eyes were feverish with fear. Beneath the bulk of the sweater his chest moved shallowly.

'It's not true,' he muttered. 'I never poisoned him.'

'Okay, so some stooge did the actual dosing,' said Milo. 'But you're the expert. You can the show.'

'No! I swear it! I never even suspected until - '

He stopped, groaned, and looked away.

'Until when?'

'Recently.'

'How recently?'

Mainwaring didn't answer.

Milo repeated the question, more sharply. Mainwaring sat frozen.

'Have we reached an impasse, Doc?' thundered the detective.

No response.

'Well, Guy,' said Milo, opening his jacket to reveal his shoulder holster and fingering the handcuffs that dangled from his belt, 'looks like it's you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent time. No doubt you want to dummy up until you talk to a lawyer. Do yourself a favour and get one with heavy-duty criminal experience.'

Mainwaring put his face in his hands and hunched over.

'I've done nothing criminal,' he muttered.

'Then answer my goddamn question! How long have you known about the poisoning?'

The psychiatrist sat up, ashen.

'I swear, I had nothing to do with it! It was only after the - after he'd already escaped that I grew suspicious. Following my meeting with Delaware. He kept pressing me about drug abuse, badgering me about hallucinatory content, the idiosyncratic response to phenothiazines. At the time I dismissed all of it, but it had been such a puzzling case that I started thinking - about the drug abuse issue in particular, wondering if there could be some merit to it- ' 'Where did your thinking lead you?' demanded Milo. 'Back to Cadmus's medical chart. When I reread it, I began noticing things I should have noticed before - '

'Hold it!' I said angrily. 'I read that chart. Three times. There was nothing in it to indicate atropine poisoning.'

Mainwaring shivered and laced his fingers together, as if in supplication.

'All right, you're right. It's not - wasn't the chart. It was . hindsight. Recollections. Things I hadn't recorded -things I should have recorded. Discrepancies. Discrepant symptoms. Deviations from the norm. Flushing, disorien-tation, confusion. The precocious tardive syndrome. I'd just written the article on anticholinergic syndrome, and it had passed right under my nose. I felt like a bloody idiot. An EEG at the outset might have put me right on it. Atropine causes mixed rapid and slow brain wave activity, reduced alphas, increased deltas and betas. Had I seen that kind of pattern, I would have caught it, known what it meant from the outset. But the EEG never got done; the bloody radiologist baulked. You read the chart, Delaware; that's in there. Tell him about the radiologist's baulking, go on.'

I looked away from him, attempting to suppress my disgust, fixing my eyes on a seascape so muddily rendered it had managed to make Carmel look ugly.

'Guy,' said Milo scornfully, 'am I hearing right? Are you trying to tell me that you - an expert, a board-certified imperial poobah were fooled ?' 'Yes,' whispered Mainwaring 'That's a crock,' I said. With a glance Milo told me to back off He ben" over so

that his nose was an inch from Mainwaring's. The psychiatrist tried to pull away but was stopped by the back of the armchair.

'Okay,' said the detective, 'let's go with that for a minute. Let's say you were fooled.'

'It's humiliating, but it's tr - '

'You think that kind of ignorance is gonna buy you bliss?' snarled Milo. 'You just admitted you figured it out after you spoke to Delaware. You've known about it for over a week! Why the hell didn't you say anything? How could you let that kid continue to go through that kind of suffering?' He waved his notepad in Mainwaring's face. 'Intense suffering, bleak and terrifying, a goddamn private hell? Why didn't you stop it!'

'I - I was going to. Took the time off to formulate - to plan how to go about it.'

'Oh, Jesus, more bullshit,' said Milo disgustedly. 'How much did they pay you, Guy?'

'Nothing!'

'Bullshit.'

The door to the hallway opened, and a woman stepped into the room. Young, dark, conspicuously voluptuous in a flame red turtleneck and tight jeans. Brassy brown eyes shielded by long black lashes. The sculpted cheekbones and full dark lips of a young Sophia Loren.

'It's not bullshit,' she said.

'Andrea!' said Mainwaring, with suddenly renewed vigour. 'Stay out of it. I insist!'

'I can't, darling. Not anymore.'

She walked over to the armchair, stood next to the psychiatrist, and placed a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers uncurled, and Mainwaring shuddered.

'He's not a coward,' she said. 'Far from it. He's trying to protect me. I'm Andrea Vann, Sergeant. I'm the one they paid off.'

Milo's interrogation of her was as rough as any I've seen him do. She took it unflinchingly, sitting on the edge of the sofa, straight-backed and stoic, hands folded motionless in

her lap. Every time Mainwaring triad to intervene on her behalf, she silenced him with a steely smile. Eventually he gave up and withdrew to brooding silence.

'Run that by me again,' demanded the detective. 'Someone leaves five thousand dollars in cash in your apartment along with a note telling you there'll be another five if you leave your post on a certain night, and you don't ask questions.'

'That's right.'

'That kind of thing's an everyday occurrence for you.'

'Far from it. It was unreal, like winning the lottery. The first good luck I've had in years. It bothered me that someone had broken into my place, and I knew the money was dirty; but I was dirt poor and tired of it. So I took it, changed my lock, and didn't raise a peep.'

'And tore up the note.'

'Tore it up and flushed it down the toilet.'

'Very convenient.'

She said nothing.

'Remember anything about the handwriting?' asked Milo.

'It was typed.'

'What about the paper?'

She shook her head.

'The only paper I was looking at was green. Fifty-dollar bills. Two packages of fifty each. I counted it twice.'

'I bet you did. Did you ever stop counting long enough to wonder why someone wanted you off the ward that night?'

'Of course I did. But I forced myself to stop wondering.'

Milo turned to Mainwaring.

'What would you call that, Guy? Repression? Denial?'

'I was greedy,' said Vann. 'Okay? I saw dollar signs and blocked everything else out. Turned my brain off. Is that what you want to hear?'

'What I want to hear is the truth.'

'Which is exactly what I've been giving you.'

'Right,' said Milo, and busied himself with note taking. She shrugged and asked if she could smoke.

'No. When did you decide to switch your brain back to on:

'After Jamey was arrested for murder. I realised then that I'd got myself into something big. I got scared - really scared. I handled it by insulting myself calm.'

'What?'

'I kept telling myself I was an idiot to let anxiety get in the way of good fortune. Over and over, like hypnosis, until I calmed down. I wanted the second five thousand, felt I deserved it."

'Sure, why not? Honest wages for an honest night's work.'

'Now look here,' said Mainwaring. 'You - '

'It's all right, Guy,' said Vann. 'He can't make it any worse than it is.'

Milo crooked a thumb at Mainwaring.

How long have you and he had a thing going?'

'Almost a year. Next Tuesday's our anniversary.'

'Happy anniversary. Marriage plans?'

She and the psychiatrist exchanged meaningful looks. His eyes were wet.

'There were.'

'Then why all the pissing and moaning about poverty? Soon you would have been a doctor's wife. Until then he could have loaned you money.'

'Guy's as broke as I am.' She scanned the shabby room. 'Do you think he'd be living like this if he weren't?'

Milo turned to Mainwaring.

'That true? And don't bullshit me, I can check out your finances in an afternoon.'

'Go ahead. There's nothing to check. I'm bloody busted.'

'Bad investments?'

The psychiatrist smiled bitterly.

'The worst. A rotten marriage.'

'His wife's an evil bitch,' spat Andrea Vann. 'Cleaned out their joint accounts, attached his earnings, took the children and every stick of furniture, and rented a twelve room mansion in Redondo Beach - five thousand dollars

a month plus utilities. Then she filed a deposition full of vicious lies, claimed he was an unfit father, and had his visitation cut off. He has to undergo a full psychiatric evaluation in order to see his children!'

'Had,' corrected Mainwaring. 'The matter's moot now, Andy.'

She turned on him.

'Don't be so goddamned defeatist, Guy! We've messed things up, but we haven't killed anyone!'

He withered under the heat of her words, gnawed at a knuckle, and stared at the carpet.

'Let's get back on track,' said Milo. 'You say the second five thousand came a week later.'

'Five days,' she said. 'Same as the other two times you asked. The story won't change in the retelling because it's true.'

'And Guy, here, knew nothing about it.'

'Absolutely nothing. I didn't want to get him involved, didn't want to jeopardise his custody fight. My plan was to put away the money for a nest egg, so that we could start fresh. I was going to surprise him with it after we were married.'

'The Mustang part of that nest egg?'

She hung her head.

'How much did it cost?'

'Two thousand down, the rest on payments.'

Milo pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her.

'This your loan contract?'

'Yes. How did - '

'You registered it in your own name but told the dealer you were Pat Demeter. Gave a Barstow address. How many of those payments did you plan on making?'

She looked up defiantly, eyes the colour and heat of mulled cider.

'All right, Sergeant, you've made your point. I'm a lying bimbo with the ethics of a - '

'Who's Pat Demeter?'

'My ex-husband! A snake. Beat me and stole every penny I owned and shoveled it up his nose. Tried to turn

me into a coke whore and threatened to maim Sean when I refused. I'm not telling you this to get your sympathy, Sergeant. But don't waste any on him either. When they come to him to collect for that car, it won't even start to make up for what he did to me!'

'Demeter's your married name?' asked Milo dispassionately.

'Yes. The first thing I did after the divorce was change my name back. Didn't want anything to remind me of that scum.'

'Where's your son?'

She stared at him hatefully.

'You're a sweet soul, aren't you, Sergeant Sturgis?'

'Where is he?'

'With my parents.'

'Where with your parents?'

'In Visalia - yes, I know you can get the address. They're good people. Don't drag them into this.'

' Why'd you send him away?'

'I was scared.'

'Because Cadmus had been arrested.'

'No. There's more if you'd just let me get it out!'

'Go on.'

She caught her breath.

'It was after the second payoff arrived. Whoever brought it got into the apartment again. Through the new lock - a dead bolt, supposed to be burglarproof. They put the money on the lid of the toilet bowl, left the door wide open. It felt . . . contemptuous. As if someone wanted to let me know how expendable I was. I drove straight to Sean's school, picked him up and took him to a friend's, went back to the apartment, and packed - '

'By yourself?'

'Yes. There wasn't much.' She waited for another question.

'Keep going,' said Milo.

'I waited until after dark to put the stuff in the car. Just as I was about to drive away, these two guys appeared out of nowhere, on both sides of the car, yanking on the door

handles, saying they wanted to talk to me, trying to force their way in. I barely got it locked in time.'

'What did they look like?'

'Scuzzy. Outlaw bikers. I know the type because there are lots of them around Barstow, and during the few times in his life that Pat worked, he pumped gas at a station where they used to hang out.'

'Recognise these two?'

'No.'

'What did they look like?'

'The one on the passenger side was fat and bearded. The one close to me was a hairy animal. Unshaven, big moustache. Big hands - at least they looked big pressed against the glass. Weird, dead eyes.'

'Eye colour? Tattoos? Distinguishing marks?'

'No idea. It was dark, and all I could think about was getting out of there. They were pounding the glass, rocking the car, snarling. I tried to back out, but they'd parked their chopper up against my rear bumper. It was a big bike and I was afraid I'd get jammed up and be trapped. So I screamed and leaned on the horn, and Mrs. Cromarty -the landlady - came out. The hairy one had a hammer; he was about to smash the window in. But Mrs. Cromarty kept shouting, "What's going on?" and coming closer. That scared them off. The minute they were gone I got out of there. Drove around for hours before I was sure I hadn't been followed, finally picked up Sean, and came here to Guy's.'

'Who was absolutely shocked by the whole thing.'

'As a matter of fact, yes. When he told you he'd been fooled, he was being truthful. It was only after I told him about the money that he started to suspect something. We're not saints, Sergeant, but we're not the people you're after.'