The Euthanist (33 page)

I let him stare at me. There wasn’t anything I could say that would ignite his terror the way a whirly imagination could. The less I spoke, the more inhuman I seemed. The silence made him more vocal. He spewed curses and accusations, favoring the word
cunt
. Finding the guards in his periphery, he gave them hell too. My heart raced as well, and I did my best to retain my serenity, especially nude in a room with three men. I breathed deeply into my belly to ground myself, to remember that this man couldn’t hurt me. Walter spat at me, and I didn’t react beyond placidly wiping his spittle off my breast.

Walter must have also realized that he couldn’t hurt any of us, and so he was completely vulnerable. He shivered under my kind, reassuring smile. As the drugs worked their magic, he began hallucinating visions beyond me, somewhere behind me, possibly a mural of living characters stirring in a melting ceiling. He shrieked like a bird. I fought not to jump when he did.

I masked my own revulsion, not only of Walter, but of myself and of us all. This was what being a torturer felt like, and it felt so much worse than anything I had ever done, even though the victim was as deserving as anyone could be. Walter Gretsch twisted and shook in his restraints as waves of visions came to him. He had expected to be dead by now, and as the full flood of psychedelics coursed through him, he doubtlessly wished he was.

When Walter’s convulsions settled down to predictable tremors, Royce went to the hatch and opened it slightly wider, nodding a signal to Leland to let him know we were starting to question him. Walter couldn’t see him from the table.

Royce walked out to the viewing gallery and came back with a map and a note, which he unfolded beside Walter’s face. I took the note from Royce but didn’t open it yet—I didn’t want to break eye contact with him, not when he was so mesmerized.

I spoke in the lowest portion of my natural range, with the forced calm of someone who might snap at any moment. “Where are they?”

I had to ask several times before it sunk in. I let the silence do the convincing for me. In the quiet spaces he ruminated about his situation, trying to make sense of me and what was happening to him. By now he might have even put it together that we’d tricked him, doped him up. But eventually the drugs won out. The fear was too much. When he looked at me now, he lost his breath and tried with everything he had to squirm away. I lowered a hand over his frozen, shivering face, and when I touched his cheek, he screamed bloody murder, as if my hand were a branding iron.

“Helena said you had a garden. Do you remember that garden, Walter?”

He barely squeezed out the word, “
Yes
.”

“You brought the children to that garden?”

“
Yes.
” He stared at the map, “
Never used one of those
.”

I unfolded the handwritten note from Leland, which read, “Ask him to lead you there.”

“Fine. Take me there, Walter.” I needed a specific name, and I pulled one from Leland’s files. “How did you take Gayle Nelson there?”

“
Gayle
…”

“That’s right. Gayle. Gayle’s dead, Walter. You’ve bundled her up. How did you bundle her? Plastic?”

He hissed, “
We had a blanket
.
A quilt
.
Helena made a quilt for them kids.
”

“You wrapped Gayle in the quilt?”

“
Yes. Tight like a burrito
.”

“Then what?”

“
We carried her to the car. Late, real late. Put her in the back seat, in the bench. We put the sled in the back.
”

“Did you say sled?”

“
Sled because of Helena’s foot.”
This didn’t make sense to me. Royce and Kearns seemed just as confused. The way sound echoed, Leland probably heard us out there. I wondered if it made more sense to him.

“Where did you go?”

“
We drove and drove and drove. Late, real late.
” He was babbling, but not to riddle with us. His mind was probably racing too fast to put together cogent thoughts.

“Where, Walter?” He clenched and bucked on the bench, fighting his own will to keep his secrets. His gaze was lost in a spot on the ceiling, at something that had come alive for him. He gulped at it. “What are you seeing right now?”

“
Them
,” he whispered icily.

“I can make them go away. Stay with me, Walter. Where did you drive?”

“
Down the Thirteen.
”

“Route Thirteen?” I asked.

“
Yes
.” Walter drooled on the
s
.

Kearns said, “He’s in California.”

“Then to Pinehurst and into the park.
”

“Is that a town?” I asked.

Royce said, “Pinehurst Road. He’s in Oakland. Shit, he’s right over in Oakland.”

I asked, “Are you in Oakland, Walter? Is that where you’re driving?”

He started crying to whatever children haunted the space over the table, “
Yes
.”

I asked, “What park, Walter?”

“
Redwoods
.”

“Redwood Regional Park,” said Kearns.

“Is that right, Walter?”

“
Yes
.
Yes
.”

I felt our momentum build, and I wanted to keep him talking. “Where in the park?”

“
We stopped on Pinehurst at a closed trail. Dark and safe. The police don’t go there, not when it’s that late.
”

“How did you know where to stop? Was it marked?”

“
One thirty-seven
,” he gasped.

I had problems following him. “What is that? Is that another route?”

“
A tiny sign. One-three-seven on it.
”

Royce said, “Could be a mileage marker.” He exited through the hatch to tell Leland. Out in the gallery, I saw Leland starting to check maps.

“Is that what it is, Walter? A mileage marker?”

“
Probably
,” he said.

“Then what?”

“
We carried her down the path. Only the beginning, where it was flat. Helena couldn’t take hills with the fake leg. We walked off the trail, just ninety-seven paces in. Then we went downhill. I put the girl on the sled, and she went down first. I dragged the sled back up and sent Helena down the slope on the sled because it was too steep for her. Then I went down the rope.”
His eyes pinged right and left, and he whimpered at something hovering past my shoulder. He talked faster, as if he might be running out of time. “
There was a dry riverbed at the bottom. Muddy with big rocks. We pulled the sled across. From there we carved the big trees to mark the trail. Simple scratches, knee-high. Then a special symbol when we reached the garden. Bigger than the rest.
”

“What did the symbol look like?”

Walter fought for words. Initially my face had melted into something that horrified him, but whatever visions he was conjuring around me spooked him even worse. When he spoke, an innocence ushered into his voice. “
Am I dead?
”

We were so close, and I had to prod him. “You’re not dead, and you’re not alive.”

“
Kill me
,” he pleaded.

“The way you’re feeling now? It can go on forever. Never living. Never dead. Always like this.”

“
Kill me
.”

“What did the symbol look like, Walter?”

His right arm tried to rise off the table. The straps wouldn’t let him. When the arm wouldn’t budge, his finger rose like a dowsing rod and pointed toward the map. He insisted, “
I’ll show you. I’ll show you. I’ll show you
.” He repeated this phrase over and over, occasionally diverting into a screech when some hallucinated shadow leapt at him.

“Free his arm,” I instructed.

“No way,” said Kearns.

“He’ll show us.”

Royce seconded, “No fucking way.”

“This is why we’re here. Free his arm.” Neither of them responded. I had to break character, and shout at them in my best firehouse yelp, as Pamela Wonnacott. “It’s two of you versus a free arm. What the fuck are you afraid of?” Of all the things that happened in this room so far, this seemed to surprise the two guards the most. To get someone on my side, I looked through the hatch at Leland, and the guards followed my stare into the viewing gallery. Leland had heard all of this. He nodded to us, and they complied.

Kearns unleashed Walter’s right arm. It flailed wildly at first, but they easily controlled it. “Easy, Walter,” Royce warned. Eventually the flailing subsided.

They brought the map to Walter’s stomach, and Kearns handed him a pen. Walter scratched his symbol on the paper. It was a crudely rendered outline of a house, a simple box with a pitched roof. It only took him a few seconds to scrawl it, and he dropped his pen to the floor when he was done. “
That’s where the garden is.
”

Walter clammed up. His hallucinations seemed to intensify. His fear paralyzed him, and he breathed as if he were freezing to death. He fixed at a point somewhere below the ceiling at something in the air. His mouth quavered for the words that would express his purest fear. I suspect he was waiting to die.

Kearns asked, “What if everything he tells us is bullshit?”

Royce answered, “Then we do this again.”

“
Kali
,” Walter whispered. I ignored it the first few times, but he was persistent. “
Kali
.”

I leaned over him. “Yes, Walter.”

“
You promised
…”

I felt a pinch on the outside of my thigh. It didn’t register right away. Leland sprang out of his chair in the viewing gallery, but I didn’t understand why for a moment. The two guards wrestled Walter’s free arm, and strapped it down with effort. Leland came into the room and looked afraid.

My syringe dangled from my thigh. When I plucked it out, I could see Walter had depressed the plunger and injected the remainder of the pharmahuasca. It was probably red as a fresh mosquito bite under the blue paint. No curses could properly punctuate the moment. My hands flew to my mouth and I forgot to breathe.

It burned beneath the skin, but the drugs didn’t hit me right away. That meant I got to see everything that happened next.

Walter was breathing too fast. At first I thought he was exhilarated from the burst of violence, but his body began to vibrate. Unaware of what to do, Kearns and Royce secured all the bindings. Leland stood over Walter’s head and slapped his face to bring him back. The whole table shook and rattled the floor bolts. Unsure of how to help him, the two guards tried to hold him down. Kearns pressed on the man’s shoulders, Royce his legs. Leland held his face between his hands and called Walter’s name several times.

“
You…promised
,” Walter grunted. He said this again several times until he began to gag.

I’d gone on a fair amount of medical calls that involved overdoses, but never for this drug. I felt for a pulse, smudging paint on his wrist and neck. His heartbeat raced. Sweat beaded up everywhere from the neck up. “Give him some water,” I said. This was a guess.

Royce obliged, but Walter wouldn’t take the straw into his mouth. His eyes rolled into his skull, and he couldn’t even see the straw. Royce tried to pour water into his mouth, but most of it ran over his lips and cheeks. The trickle that got to his throat rolled down his windpipe until he coughed it up. His body had forgotten how to swallow.

“This is going wrong,” I warned.

“We can’t get him to a clinic,” Royce said. “We can’t take him out right now.” Walter’s face was tumid with blood. “What do you have in your bag?”

I’d packed light today. “Nothing that can help him.” Walter’s shoulders hunched up toward his ears. “We need to move him,” I insisted.

Royce shook his head. Leland spoke to the prisoner. “Stay with us, Walter.” Walter was not with us. He had drifted into his hallucinations, trembling.

“We need to move him,” I repeated.

“A doctor will perform tests. They’ll know what we did,” Royce said, addressing Leland more than me.

“Let them,” I said.

I looked to Leland, who remained impassive. He agreed with Royce. “We can’t move him.”