The Radix Page 4

  Everyone here thinks I’m crazy. Cori Cassidy knew that’s what the doctors and nurses thought about her. Even the ward attendants. She had been admitted to the Amherst Psychiatric Hospital five days ago. Since then, she had talked to a numbing parade of clinicians, all probing her mind for clues. But she wasn’t crazy. Not at all. It was her little secret.

  She glanced around Amherst’s Psychotic Disorders Unit. Was there a more depressing place to spend the holidays? Across the dayroom, an African-American woman named Delsy slammed her pajama-draped body against a steel-reinforced window, cursing her private demons in a shrill Southern cadence. Near Delsy, a gray old woman clamped hands over her mouth as drool trickled between her weathered knuckles. Wasted lives, drowning in madness.

  Stuffing hands into the pockets of her powder blue pajamas, Cori walked to a patient standing bolt upright, dressed in jeans and a tattered sweatshirt. She circled him. Deep in a catatonic stupor, he did not blink, twitch a muscle, or even seem to breathe. His outstretched hand appeared stiff and waxy. Immobility had reduced his bare feet to swollen bluish purple lumps. He looked like a statue in the dayroom, a monument to the tragedy of schizophrenia.

  As she reached to touch his hand, a rumbling voice stopped her. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  She jolted around to see a man dressed in hospital-issue white shirt, black belt, and white pants. Tall and athletic, he was a striking figure on the psych ward. “Name’s Mack Shaw. I’m a psychological technician, not to mention your new case manager. You must be Cori.”

  She nodded. Looking at the patient, she said, “Can he hear us?”

  “Not sure Harley wants to.”

  “He hasn’t moved for hours. Why is his hand raised?”

  “The forces of good and evil are waging war on his fingertips. If he tilts one finger, it shifts the balance in favor of evil. I hope for Harley’s sake, good kicks evil’s butt real soon.”

  The young man stared ahead, his face an expressionless mask.

  “We’ll let Harley get back to his private crusade,” Mack said, taking her arm in a gentle escort. At five three, she felt like a little kid, walking beside him. “I got called in to work on Christmas Eve,” he grinned. “Just like Santa Claus.”

  “I don’t expect Santa makes any stops here.”

  He shook his head. “Too bad, huh? This place could use a visit from ol’ Saint Nick.”

  “Why don’t you do it?”

  “Dress like Santa?” Mack chuckled. “Y’all think these folks want a black Santa?”

  “Why not? You’d be great.”

  “Don’t have the body.” He rubbed his belly. “Santa would kill to have abs like mine.”

  “Ever hear of pillows? Stick two up your shirt and you’re ready to go.”

  “And do what? Have these people sit on my lap and tell me all their Christmas wishes? What they want, I can’t deliver. Santa don’t know how to take away madness and replace it with sunshine.”

  A doctor stared at her from across the dayroom. His white lab coat provided a stiff cover for his hunched frame. Hooded dark eyes and tousled brown hair gave a sinister cast to his face. Realizing she had caught him staring, the peculiar man turned his attention to a nurse.

  Mack looked over. “You know Doc Usher? He’s bright, but a little strange. Maybe it’s the company he keeps. Unlike the other psychiatrists, he works with only one patient.”

  “Which one?”

  “Sorry. That’s a big secret.”

  “I like big secrets,” she said. “Do you know Usher’s patient?”

  “Don’t know the guy’s real name, but I’ve met him.”

  Dr. Usher shot another look at her. He walked with the nurse into an office.

  “Tell me about him. Is the patient here in the dayroom?”

  “Didn’t you catch the part about it being a secret?” He grinned, shaking her hand. “Nice meeting you. Happy holidays.” Mack took four steps, then stopped. He looked back and stared into her sparkling blue eyes. “Cori Cassidy, huh? And how old are you?”

  “Twenty-two,” she answered, running fingers through her short blonde hair.

  “You have schizophrenia?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Good answer.” Mack looked around. “Get this. Unlike everyone else in here, I had a nice conversation with you. We’re two regular people talking here.”

  Oh my God, she thought. He figured it out.

  “Ever hear of Nellie Bly?” he asked.

  Cori shook her head.

  “She was a reporter in the 1880s. Back in the day, mental hospitals treated people like animals. Nellie Bly went undercover as a patient to investigate Blackwell’s Island insane asylum in New York City. After her editor freed her, she exposed the hospital in a book called Ten Days in a Mad-House.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Mack? You think I’m a journalist?”

  “Are ya?”

  “Promise you. I’m not a reporter.”

  “Scout’s honor?”

  “I was never in Girl Scouts.”

  “Not even Brownies?”

  “I look awful in brown. It was a fashion choice.”

  He waved his finger. “I got my eye on you, girl. You hear?”

  She made a soft nervous laugh. That was too close. He almost found out the truth.

  Cori spied Mack Shaw working the floor fifteen minutes later. She closed her diary as he ambled toward her. Built like a linebacker, he seemed as gentle as a kitten. Although not a kitten you’d want to piss off.

  “Hey, Cori.” He glanced around the pink-tiled dayroom. “Remember when I said Doc Usher sees only one patient?”

  She arched a blonde eyebrow. “Thought that was a big secret.”

  “Mm-hmm. You tell me your secret, I’ll tell you Doc Usher’s secret.”

  “I don’t have a secret.”

  “Sure you do. You’re not crazy. Why are you in a psych hospital?”

  “Let me get this straight.” She flicked her short hair. “If I tell you why I’m here, you’ll tell me about Usher’s patient?”

  “I’ll do better,” he vowed. “I’ll show you his patient. C’mon. Let’s talk.”

  Mack led her to a quiet corner of the dayroom. She curled her legs on a battered sofa. He straddled a chair, crossing his massive arms over its back.

  He caught her tucking blonde hair behind her ear. “Used to have long hair, didn’t ya?”

  “Until last Tuesday.” She made a sweeping motion across her arm. “Chopped off thirteen inches. Made my head feel lighter.” She glanced down. “My mom passed away from leukemia. I donated my ponytail to Locks of Love in her memory. They make wigs for kids suffering hair loss from chemotherapy, alopecia, and burns.”

  “Nice tribute.” He rested his chin on his arms. “You go first, Cori. Spill your secret.”

  “Okay, here goes. I’m a first-year grad student at Johns Hopkins. I want to be a psychologist. Or at least I did a week ago.”

  “This place change your mind?”

  “Don’t know,” she confessed, suddenly interested in her French manicure. “Maybe.” She took a breath. “This fall, I had a cool psychology professor named Joe Berta.”

  Mack nodded. “Been on the floor a couple times. Good guy.”

  “One day after class, Berta invited me to join a research project. Sounded crazy at first. He wanted to replicate a famous study by Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan.” She looked around. “Back in 1973, Rosenhan sent eight ‘pseudopatients’ to mental hospitals. None had a psychiatric disorder. After being admitted for schizophreniclike symptoms, each pseudopatient acted normal. They stayed in hospitals anywhere from seven to fifty-two days.”

  “Why lock up sane people?”

  “To see if the staff could tell the difference between pseudopatients and real patients. Get this: not one staff member figured out that the pseudopatients were normal. The label of schizophrenia blinded everyone. Well, almost everyone. The real patients could tell the
fake ones. How ironic is that?” She laughed. “One guy came up and said, ‘Why are you here? You’re not crazy.’ Another patient accused a pseudopatient of conducting an experiment.”

  He grinned. “I can hear the fake patient saying, ‘Yeah, I am, but don’t tell anybody.’”

  “Exactly. Rosenhan’s study embarrassed the psychiatric community. It proved the context of mental symptoms could make a bigger impression than the symptoms themselves.”

  “Yeah, but that was in seventy-three. You think the same thing would happen today?”

  “That’s what Berta wants to find out. He admitted me and seven other pseudopatients to different mental-health centers. We got to pick where we wanted to stay. I picked this place.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’ve been here five days. What’s the verdict?”

  “Even though I acted normal, everyone has treated me like I’m psychotic. Until tonight.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me. One question, though. Why’d you pick Amherst?”

  “Ever hear of Simon Guthrie?”

  “’Course,” he chuckled. “Famous psychiatrist. There’s a painting of Dr. Guthrie in the lobby. He founded this hospital.”

  “He was my grandfather. He died when I was four. When I saw Amherst on Berta’s list, I decided to come here.”

  “I wonder if Albert Usher could tell you’re a fake patient.”

  “Speaking of him,” she said, “it’s your turn. Tell me about Usher’s secret patient.”

  “I’ll do better. When my break comes up, I’ll introduce you to his patient. I promise it’s the craziest shit you’ve ever seen.”

  Chapter Six

  Varenna, Italy

  Erich Metzger existed as a nonentity. It was the story of his life.

  An Interpol agent had described him as “the most feared assassin on the planet.” Certainly the most expensive, Metzger thought. Certainly the best.

  At seventeen, he had joined a skinhead gang that dabbled in hate crimes. Boredom more than anger motivated him to carve a swastika into the forehead of an old man in a wheelchair. After his arrest, he didn’t serve jail time. Instead, the judge assigned him to the German military. As a soldier, Metzger demonstrated unusual skill as a marksman. After his parole ended, two former KGB operatives hired him as an assassin. He found their money easy to accept. The assignment proved more difficult, not from a technical standpoint but from a psychological one.

  He was hired to assassinate his mother.

  He understood why the men wished for Truda Metzger’s demise. In the years after the Berlin Wall crumbled, she became a cunning politician who opposed black-market operations. Her enemies vowed to kill her. The only question was, who would be the assassin?

  He took the assignment because he could provide a humane death.

  He made certain Truda Metzger did not suffer.

  After assassinating his mother, he found he could kill without anguish. All fear and apprehension vanished with her death. A liberating feeling. It wasn’t that he enjoyed killing. It was that he excelled at it. But this one, tonight, he would enjoy. How could he not?

  He awaited General Santiago Rojas in an eighteenthcentury villa nestled along the Italian Alps. Basking in the hospitality of admirers, the old man took refuge in a sleepy fishing village hugging Lake Como. Few people knew Rojas hid among the Italians. He moved often. It was a matter of survival.

  Named after the capital city of Santiago, General Rojas had ruled his native Chile with an iron fist. After masterminding the bloodiest coup in his country’s history, his dictatorship crushed anyone who dared oppose him. Rojas supervised the torture and execution of political prisoners and suspected leftists of every stripe—farmers, politicians, schoolteachers, bankers, factory workers. A gleeful sadist, his torture sessions made Uday Hussein’s cruelties seem like the work of a child plucking an insect’s wings.

  Metzger remembered one case that surpassed all others. When a British journalist interviewed a single mother on the street, she had chastised the general’s regime. That night, Verónica Piñera was arrested and taken from her children. Police imprisoned her in a coffin at La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace.

  Days later, she was brought before Rojas and beaten with a rubber truncheon. Electrical shock was delivered three times a day, continuing until Verónica lapsed into convulsions. He summoned her two small boys to witness their mother’s torture. As they watched, General Rojas sprinkled flesh-eating beetles across her exposed body. Verónica Piñera shrieked as the greedy parasites tore into her skin. Death came, slowly and painfully, hours later.

  If torture ever became an Olympic event, Metzger mused, gold medals would strangle the general’s neck. Scores of people around the globe wanted him brought to justice, but not American intelligence. The CIA had cataloged his abuses, but ignored them because General Rojas had been an ally once against Communism’s threat in South America.

  Now in his eighties, the general was in failing health. Nonetheless, he had escaped arrest in London after an attempt to extradite him. There would be no trial. Neither the general’s wealthy friends nor the CIA could stop Metzger. He didn’t care about human-rights violations. In a curious way, he admired the man’s ability to elude execution. In the last decade alone, fourteen assassins had tried to kill Rojas. That streak of failure would end tonight.

  Metzger moved to the window. The Italian Alps glowed in ghostly moonlight. What occupied Rojas’s mind when he stared at the snow-flecked mountains? Did northern Italy’s operatic countryside conjure bittersweet memories of the Chilean Andes?

  Voices drifted from outside the bedroom suite. He moved behind the drapes.

  Two men stood silhouetted in the doorway, chattering in Spanish. Lights brightened the spacious bedroom as a man named Cristóbal searched it. Breathing with silk pressed against his face, Metzger watched the bodyguard check the window. He didn’t look behind the drapes. Cristóbal declared the rooms secure and assured the general he would stand guard. Rojas bid him good night and closed the door. Metzger was alone with General Rojas. At last.

  Distant church bells serenaded the new hour as he waited to assassinate the old dictator. Now ten feet away, Rojas wrapped his plump body in a bathrobe. Moving to a chair, he smoked a cigar and enjoyed a snifter of fine brandy. Metzger shook his head. Enough waiting. He emerged from the drapes.

  “Buenos noches, Señor General,” he greeted in passable Spanish.

  Rojas jumped to his feet, dropping the cigar. Metzger motioned with the gun for him to sit. The general looked small and pathetic. Not at all like a monster.

  “Who are you?” the general demanded.

  “For you, I am Death.”

  Rojas chortled. “You are mistaken. I am Death.”

  “For weaker men, yes.” Metzger walked around the chair. “Do you remember me?”

  “Your face means nothing to me.”

  “Your son-in-law knew me.” He picked up the smoldering cigar, studying it. “Your aide hired me to assassinate Vicente eight years ago. I’m sure your daughter has not forgotten. Is she still angry with you?”

  Worry glazed Rojas’s face. “Metzger? Is it you?”

  “Fresh from hell.”

  The old man pointed to the door. “I have a bodyguard. Cristóbal has served me well for years. Others wished to kill me. Cristóbal stopped them all.”

  “Cristóbal does not frighten me.”

  “Make a sound and he will.”

  “If you insist.” He aimed his pistol at the television and fired. The bullet pierced the screen, bursting light and glass. The general turned toward the door.

  “You see? He is gone,” Metzger explained. “I arranged for Donata to visit Cristóbal.”

  “Who is Donata?”

  “A whore.” Metzger smiled. “But a beautiful whore. I understand this man, Cristóbal. Courage is in his heart, loyalty is in his brain, but another organ commands him when he sees a beautiful woman.” He flipped the cigar into Rojas’s lap
. The general batted it to the floor. Cursing, he examined the burn on his flabby thigh.

  Metzger began tying him to the chair.

  “I have great wealth.” Rojas looked up with sad eyes, affecting the look of a wounded dog. “How much to leave me alone? Name your price.”

  “I’ve named a price. Someone paid it. They will be disappointed if I do not kill you.”

  “Whatever they paid, I’ll double it. Triple it.”

  “The price you pay tonight is to die. Nothing more.”

  “I cannot honor your request, Señor Metzger.”

  “And I cannot take time to torture you properly. I must board a plane for the United States to kill another man.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I suppose there is no harm in telling a dead man. I have been contracted to kill John Brynstone.”

  “Is he important?”

  “Yes, although he doesn’t realize it. He is a man who knows too much. That kind is always dangerous.”

  “A politician?”

  “A scientist.”

  “Why kill scientists? They are not important,” Rojas chortled. “Who is paying you to murder Brynstone?”

  “A powerful man. He calls himself the Knight.”

  Rojas narrowed one eye. “Is the Knight paying you to kill me?”

  “Do you remember Verónica Piñera?” Metzger asked, tightening the final knot. “On a balmy Chilean night long ago you beat her. You electrocuted her. Then you invited her sons to witness her murder.”

  The general laughed. “She learned a lesson that night.”

  “So did her sons. They escaped your country. A British family adopted them. Today, the sons of Verónica Piñera are wealthy. And they hunger for revenge.”

  Rojas’s lip quivered.

  “As I said, I cannot torture you in a more deserving manner. For that, I apologize to your countless victims. But be assured I have studied your methods. You were a master of torture—sleep deprivation, noise, and isolation. Even hypnosis. It takes time. And that I do not have.”

  Rojas sneered. “Then what do you have?”

  “I have these.” Metzger pulled out a jar brimming with flesh-eating beetles. “Remember how you sprinkled these hungry creatures over Verónica Piñera’s naked flesh?” He lowered the jar before the general’s eyes. Beetles swarmed inside, their armored shells resembling polished obsidian. Color drained from Santiago Rojas’s face as Metzger unscrewed the lid.