The Girl Without a Name (22 page)

Jesus, he's going to go through the whole laundry list.

“Negative for cocaine—”

“Wait, sorry, I'm just in a little bit of a hurry.” I make a “jabber jabber” motion with my hand, and Dr. Berringer grins. “Was it positive for anything?”

“Do you want me to fax it up to you?”

“No, that's okay. If you could just tell me, that would be great.”

“Okay, one second.” I hear pages flipping. “Here it is. Positive for meperidine.”

Meperidine, also known as Demerol. “Wait, I thought you said opioids was negative.”

“Actually,” he boasts, “it
did
come up negative for opioids, but I ran a different assay that's more sensitive for the ol' demmies. And sure enough, it came up positive.”

“Positive,” I confirm.

“You got it.”

I tap my fingers against my lips. “I don't get it, though. I just did a urine tox, which was negative.”

“When was that?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Yeah, maybe it was out of her system by then. Also urine's not as sensitive.”

“So you're absolutely sure it's positive.”

“On my mother's grave,” he says. “Naughty, naughty Candy, right?” He laughs.

I laugh back, but it comes out a nervous bark. “Thanks. Could you fax it to the floor, too?”

“Will do. Good luck out there, chickadee,” he says, and the phone clicks off.

“Anything important?” Dr. Berringer asks.

“No,” I lie, my head spinning. I can't exactly explain that I'd run a secret blood tox on Candy to prove a priest imposter was poisoning her when Dr. Berringer had already sicced the Chair on me for suggesting it.

So we ride off to the hospital in the silence of the warm car while I try to determine my next move.

What I come up with is this: I have no next move. All I know is somehow I have to stop this freight train, without being either fired or thrown off the case.

Candy is in the room when we get there, and Dr. Munroe is setting up, laying out swaths of gauze, various sizes of IV needles, rectangles of tape, a large syringe with white liquid that looks like glue. Propofol. The good stuff. His setup is the workbench of a mad but very organized scientist.

“I am sorry to be late,” Dr. Munroe says formally. He looks up at us briefly, then back down to continue his arrangement. The bald top of his head shines in the light, the rest of his hair tight corkscrews on a monk's pate.

“Not a problem,” Dr. Berringer returns, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, as loose and cheerful as Dr. Munroe is boxed and tight.

“It will probably be”—he looks up at the clock—“eight more minutes here.”

“That's fine.” Dr. Berringer and Nancy trade smiles. Not seven or nine minutes, but eight.

My stomach is twisting. The words are on my lips to tell him about the Demerol, when I get a better idea. The fact is, it has to come from someone else, not me. Somehow (by no fault of mine, I might add), I've shot all my credibility on this one. But I know he'll listen to Detective Adams. He has to.

“Sorry, I've just got to…” I motion to the hallway in a way that's meant to suggest the bathroom.

“Oh, yeah. Sure, sure,” Dr. Berringer says.

I run to the nurses' station and call the detective. It rings six times and then goes to voice mail, which is odd. He always answers his phone.

“The Demerol came back positive. They ran a different sample. Listen, Donner's been giving it to her, I know it.” I breathe in deep, collecting my thoughts. “I need you to call Dr. Berringer to stop the ECT. He won't listen to me right now; it's kind of hard to explain…so just please, please, please call me back as soon as you get this. Or better yet, call Dr. Berringer and order him to stop it. Okay? Just tell him he's got to and that's it. Okay? I'll try to stall him as long as I can. Thanks.”

I'm hanging up when I see Nancy striding down the hall. “We're just about ready to go in there. Dr. B wanted me to let you know.”

“Sorry. I just had to check one thing. I'll be right down.”

“I'll let him know,” she says, her tone a warning that I should hurry the hell up if I know what's good for me, then hurries back down the hall.

A phone rings then, “The Saints Go Marching In” ringtone. Glancing around, I see a phone lighting up the pocket of Dr. Berringer's lab coat hanging on the rack. He must have left it in there. I pull it out, hoping it's Detective Adams, but it's not. It's a long-distance number I don't recognize, which has gone to voice mail. Then a text pops up on the screen.

Is it done?

The name on the text is Raymond Donner.

My scalp goes hot, like it's been seared. I touch the number on the screen, my hand trembling against my ear.

“Yeah, it's Donner. What's the status?”

I don't answer, holding my breath.

A frustrated sigh comes out over the other end. “We went over this, Berringer. Either kill the girl or do that brain-fry thing you talked about. I don't care either way. But it needs to get done.”

My heart drops a beat, and I tear down the hall, skidding down the tile floor, and whip open the door to the procedure room, smacking the knob against the wall. Everyone turns to look at me as Dr. Berringer adjusts the dial on the machine.

“Did you start yet?” I ask, breathless.

“No, as a matter of fact,” Dr. Berringer says, annoyed at me for showing up late. “We're just about to. Come on over.”

“Don't,” I say as strongly as I can. “Don't do it. Please.”

Dr. Munroe takes his hand off the IV. Silence steals over the room, except for the bleating of the heart monitor. “What did you say?” Dr. Berringer asks.

“I know everything, Dr. Berringer. I know you're involved with Raymond Donner. I know you don't want to kill her, and maybe this is the best you could come up with, but please don't. Don't do it.”

His face goes ghost white; his shoulders tremble.

“What's she talking about, Tad?” Dr. Munroe asks.

“Nothing,” he answers curtly. He puts his hand on the dial again but doesn't move it, just clings to it like a lifeline.

“I know you're trying to do the right thing. But they found her sister. Dr. Berringer, they found Janita,” I say, hoping my lie sounds convincing. “It's over now. Don't do this. Don't do this to Candy.”

Dr. Munroe clears his throat. “I'm not comfortable with this, Tad. I need some answers, or I'm afraid I'm going to have to reverse the anesthesia. I won't be party to something unethical.”

“It's not,” he barks out, “unethical. Jesus Christ.” But his voice loses steam. He takes his hand off the dial and stares right at me. Nancy watches us both. “It's not what you think. I never wanted to—”

“I know.” I take a step toward him.

Dr. Munroe is fumbling with another syringe. “I'm reversing,” he announces.

“I never meant…” Dr. Berringer says, his voice strained. The wind roars out against the window like a train. “I loved her.”

“I know,” I say again, but he is walking away from the dial, away from the bed.

“I have to…” he mumbles, looking around the room in a daze. “I…I have to—” he repeats, then runs out of the room.

“Nancy, can you take her back to the room? Once Dr. Munroe is finished here?” I ask, at once feeling like the attending I will be in six months' time. “And call security. See if they can stop him from leaving.”

“On it,” she says, heading into the hallway.

I step out into the subdued light of the psych ward and call Detective Adams. Again, it goes to voice mail. The operator's strident voice is calling security overhead. I get inside the elevator and stand there. The elevator feels unnaturally still, waiting for me to push the button, to make my decision. And for some reason, I don't push the smudged button to the lobby.

I push the button to the twelfth floor instead.

“I knew you'd come,” he says.

Dr. Berringer is collapsed in the pink chair. I sit down beside him. He doesn't say anything for the longest time. We just sit side by side, watching the window like we're watching waves at the beach. The wind is wreaking havoc on the little world below us. Buffeted trees, overturned garbage cans, traffic signs jerking. A utility truck pulses a yellow light up to the sky as it tends to a downed power line.

“Zoe.” His voice is hoarse, a plea.

I don't answer.

“I know I don't deserve it, but I need to explain something to you.”

I still don't answer.

He sighs and shifts in the chair. “I was raped, when I was thirteen.” Pausing, he scratches under his neck, his expression invisible in the dark. “Family friend. We were all on a camping trip, and we were off looking for wood.” His voice is flat, without emotion, retelling someone else's tale. “I could have handled him now, but at that age, I was skin and bones, and…” He takes a deep, pained breath. “You know how these things go. I don't have to spell it out.”

I nod.

“After that, I just wasn't the same. I don't know how else to explain it. There was the before me and the after me.” His hands are gripping the wood arms of the chair. “For a while, I was just angry. At everyone, for not guessing what happened. At the asshole who did it and still had a round with my dad at the bar.” He looks down at his hands, like he's looking for something, a drink maybe. “I got over it in time, as much as you get over these things. Drank too much, of course. You know all about that.” He lets out a harsh laugh.

I want to mirror him and offer him a laugh back, but I can't bring myself to do it.

“It changed me, Zoe. I wish I could go back and make it never happen, but I can't do that. And I can't change who it made me.”

I pause. “A pedophile?” There is an edge to my voice.

“Sounds like an excuse?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

He tattoos a rhythm with his fingers on his thigh. “Maybe it is. Maybe so…but then again, I don't know. I can't help it.”

I turn to look at him. “So you're saying being raped made you want to rape these girls?”

“No, no!” he breaks in, focusing his gaze on me. “I'm not saying that at all. I've only been with her, Zoe. With Candy. I know it sounds crazy, but I love her. I want to marry her.”

Goose bumps crawl on my arms. “But she's a child.”

He scratches the edge of one blond sideburn, sprinkled with gray. “Not really. You never really knew her.”

“It's rape, plain and simple.”

“No, Zoe,” he insists. “I'm gentle with her. I would never hurt her. Never, never, never. Not in a million years. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. I'm good to her. Not like some asshole out there would be.”

I stare at him in dismay.

“Someone who'd take her into the woods, hold her down in some dirty ferns until she can't even breathe. I would never do that to her. Never.”

“It's rape.” I say it softly. “You may not be brutal or vicious about it maybe. But these are young girls.”

He stares out the window.

“And maybe you were only with Candy, but she's not the only one caught up in this. What about Janita? What about Eliza Sapierski? And the others? Young girls, Dr. Berringer.”

“Tad,” he corrects me.

“They don't want to have sex with you.”

“No, you don't see it, Zoe. We relax them first. I make sure of that.”

My stomach sinks. “You mean you drug them?”

A long silence follows before he answers. “Nobody hurts them, Zoe.”

I can't hear another word. My ears can't take it. My brain can't take it. My heart can't take it. “I can't—”

“I know,” he interrupts me, his face glum, guilty. “My wife didn't understand it either. No one understands. I don't expect them to.”

We sit another minute, the wind whipping against the window. The utility truck crawls away. He stands and stretches his arms up high, like he just finished a long nap. He walks over toward the window, steps as graceful and measured as a cat, and leans his palm against the glass. Peering down at the wind-strewn chaos of the hospital grounds, he reaches down for something. Only when the window is lifted with the wind barreling through, the sudden noise like a plane taking off, do I realize he's opened it. I leap to my feet as he sticks his head into the howling wind, dipping down like he's trying to get a better view, before he turns back to me.

“I'm sorry, Zoe,” he says. “There is a crack in everything.” And then he jumps.

I try to stop him. I do. I lean out the window and grab some fabric—a shirt maybe or his khakis—that slips through my fingers, and he falls. It doesn't take long for a body to fall. Gravity is quick. There is a ghastly thud, some yelling outside, and then silence.

I never understood that cliché, deafening silence. Now I do. I stand there, awash in it, with no idea of what to do next, when my phone rings.

“Zoe, we found her!”

“Who?” I say. My voice echoes in my ears. Who, who, who, who? The word goes on forever. Maybe this is what it's like to lose your mind.

“Janita! We got a hit off Donner's phone, and we got him, Zoe. He wasn't in New York City after all. Though it appears that was his next stop. He was in Niagara Falls, and we nailed him. And more importantly, we got Janita.” His voice is humming with victory.

“How…how is she?”

“She's fine. Shaken up, but fine, all things considered. Are you okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“Yeah.” I look out the window again. Police cars are racing down the street toward the hospital.

“Hey, I got your message. And I need to warn you, Zoe. Dr. Berringer may be involved in this. That's who Donner was calling. I don't know all the facts yet, but you need to be very, very careful here. I'll get the ECT stopped, but don't say anything. Just stay away from him.”