From Potter's Field

14

The Medical College of Virginia had saved my niece's life last year, for no hospital in the area was more adept at guiding the badly injured through their golden hour. She had been medflighted here after flipping my car, and I was convinced the damage to her brain would have been permanent had the Trauma Unit not been so skilled. I had been in the MCV emergency room many times, but never as a patient before this night.

By nine-thirty, I was resting quietly in a small, private room on the hospital's fourth floor. Marino and Janet were outside the door, Lucy at my bedside holding my hand.

'Has anything else happened with CAIN?' I asked.

'Don't think about that right now,' she ordered. 'You need to rest and be quiet.'

'They've already given me something to be quiet. I am being quiet.'

'You're a wreck,' she said.

'I'm not a wreck.'

'You almost had a heart attack.'

'I had muscle spasms and hyperventilated,' I said. 'I know exactly what I had. I reviewed the cardiogram. I had nothing that a paper bag over my head and a hot bath wouldn't have fixed.'

'Well, they're not going to let you out of here until they're sure you don't have any more spasms. You don't fool around with chest pain.'

'My heart is fine. They will let me out when I say so.'

'You're noncompliant.'

'Most doctors are,' I said.

Lucy stared stonily at the wall. She had not been gentle since coming into my room. I was not sure why she was angry.

'What are you thinking about?' I asked.

They're setting up a command post,' she said. 'They were talking about it in the hall.'

'A command post?'

'At police headquarters,' she said. 'Marino's been back and forth to the pay phone, talking to Mr. Wesley.'

'Where is he?' I asked.

'Mr. Wesley or Marino?'

'Benton.'

'He's coming here.'

'He knows I'm here,' I said.

Lucy looked at me. She was no fool. 'He's on his way here,' she said as a tall woman with short gray hair and piercing eyes walked in.

'My, my, Kay,' Dr. A

'This doesn't exactly constitute a house call,' I said. 'This is a hospital. You remember Lucy?'

'Of course.' Dr. Ze

'I'll be outside the door,' Lucy said.

'You forget I do not come downtown unless I have to,' Dr. Ze

'Thank you, A

Dr. Ze

'What have you done to yourself?' she asked in a German accent that had not lessened much with time.

'I fear it is finally getting to me,' I said. 'These cases.'

She nodded. 'It is all I hear about. Every time I pick up a newspaper or turn on TV.'

'I almost shot Lucy tonight.' I looked into her eyes.

'Tell me how that happened?'

I told her.

'But you did not fire the gun?'

'I came close.'

'No bullets were fired?'

'No,' I said.

'Then you did not come so close.'

'That would have been the end of my life.' I shut my eyes as they welled up with tears.

'Kay, it would also have been the end of your life had someone else been coming down that hall. Someone you had reason to fear, you know what I mean? You reacted as best you could.'

I took a deep, tremulous breath.

'And the result is not so bad. Lucy is fine. I just saw her and she is healthy and beautiful.'

I wept as I hadn't in a very long time, covering my face with my hands. Dr. Ze

'I'm so ashamed of myself,' I finally said between sobs.

'You mustn't be ashamed,' she said. 'Sometimes you have to let it out. You don't do that enough and I know what you see.'

'My mother is very ill and I have not been down to Miami to see her. Not once.' I was incapable of being consoled. 'I am a stranger at my office. I can no longer stay in my house - or anywhere else for that matter -without security.'

'I noticed many police outside your room,' she observed.

I opened my eyes and looked at her. 'He's decompensating,' I said.

Her eyes were fastened to mine.

'And that's good. He's more daring, meaning he's taking greater risks. That's what Bundy did in the end.'

Dr. Ze

I went on, 'The more he decompensates, the greater the likelihood he'll make a mistake and we'll get him.'

'I would also assume he is at his most dangerous right now,' she said. 'He has no boundaries. He even killed Santa Claus.'

'He killed a sheriff who plays Santa once a year. And this sheriff also was heavily involved in drugs. Maybe drugs were the co

'Tell me about you.'

I looked away from her and took another deep breath. At last I was calmer. A

'Like him, I am decompensating,' I confessed in frustration.

'I must know more.'

'That's why I'm here.' I looked at her. 'That's why I'm in this gown, in this bed. It's why I almost shot my niece. It's why people are outside my door worried about me. People are driving the streets and watching my house, worrying about me. Everywhere, people are worrying about me.'

'Sometimes we have to call in the troops.'

'I don't want troops,' I said impatiently. 'I want to be left alone.'

'Ha. I personally think you need an entire army. No one can fight this man alone.'

'You're a psychiatrist,' I said. 'Why don't you dissect him?'

'I don't treat character disorders,' she said. 'Of course he is sociopathic.'

She walked to the window, parted curtains and looked out. 'It is still snowing. Do you believe that? I may have to stay here with you tonight. I have had patients over the years who were almost not of this world, and I did try to disengage from them quickly.

'That's the thing with these criminals who become the subject of legend. They go to dentists, psychiatrists, hairstylists. We ca

'That was his thing. He would pour them wine and wash them. When he would get to their feet, he would suddenly grab their ankles and yank. In those big tubs, you ca

'I know that.'

'I could have been,' Dr. Ze

'No, I didn't.'

'So I will tell you why I avoided that specialty. I ca

She turned around and looked at me.

'I don't give a damn why any of them do it,' she said, eyes flashing. 'I think they should all be hanged.'

'I won't disagree with you,' I said.

'But this does not mean I don't have an instinct about him. I would call it a woman's instinct, actually.'

'About Gault?'

'Yes. You have met my cat, Chester,' she said.

'Oh, yes. He is the fattest cat I have ever seen.'

She did not smile. 'He will go out and catch a mouse. And he will play with it to death. It is really quite sadistic. Then he finally kills it and what does he do? He brings it in the house. He carries it up on the bed and leaves it on my pillow. This is his present to me.'

'What are you suggesting, A

'I believe this man has a weird significant relationship with you. As if you are mother, and he brings you what he kills.'

'That is unthinkable,' I said.

'It excites him to get your attention, it is my guess. He wants to impress you. When he murders someone, it is his gift to you. And he knows you will study it very carefully and try to discover his every stroke, almost like a mother looking at her little boy's drawings he brings home from school. You see, his evil work is his art.'

I thought of the charge made at the gallery in Shockhoe Slip. I wondered what art Gault had bought.

'He knows you will analyze and think of him all the time, Kay.'

'A

'Nonsense. If you start believing that then I need to start seeing you in my office. Regularly.'

'How much danger am I in?'

'I must be careful here.' She stopped to think. 'I know what others must say. That's why there are many police.'

'What do you say?'

'I personally do not feel you are in great physical danger from him. Not this minute. But I think everyone around you is. You see, he is making his reality yours.'

'Please explain.'

'He has no one. He would like for you to have no one.'

'He has no one because of what he does,' I said angrily.

'All I can say is every time he kills, he is more isolated. And these days, so are you. There is a pattern. Do you see it?'

She had moved next to me. She placed her hand on my forehead.

'I'm not sure.'

'You have no fever,' she said.

'Sheriff Brown hated me.'

'See, another present. Gault thought you would be pleased. He killed the mouse for you and dragged it into your morgue.'

The thought made me sick.

She withdrew a stethoscope from a jacket pocket and put it around her neck. Rearranging my gown, she listened to my heart and lungs, her face serious.

'Breathe deeply for me, please.' She moved the head of the stethoscope around my back. 'Again.'

She took my blood pressure and felt my neck. She was a rare, old-world physician. A

'Your pressure's low,' she said.

'So what else is new.'

'What do they give you here?'

'Ativan.'

The cuff made a ripping sound as she removed it from my arm. 'Ativan is okay. It has no appreciable effect on the respiratory or cardiovascular systems. It is fine for you. I can write a prescription.'

'No,' I said.

'An antianxiety agent is a good idea just now, I think.'