I shrugged, closed the gap, fished for my keys.
An eye for an eye.
19
I’d packed my things and was about to lock up for the day when the office phone rang. I sighed, then smirked. Of all the battered third-hand equipment I’d been assigned at The Brink, this yellow-and-black beauty was my favorite. Row of sleepy-blinky extension lights, frayed cord, cracked receiver. It was the Charlie Brown of office phones.
Its broken bell gave another surly trill. I picked up.
“Zachary. A moment, please.” The voice was crisp and formal.
“Of course, Dr. Peterson. What can I do for you?”
“I have reviewed the incident reports you and Mr. Hoffacker filed today regarding your altercation with Martin Grace. Frankly, I’m surprised… and disappointed. Very disappointed.”
I stiffened. “Disappointed?”
“Yes. The patient’s assignment to Level 5 was merely a formality, in accordance with the court’s request. Grace’s files indicated that he was belligerent, not violent. If I had thought your safety was in jeopardy—”
I exhaled, smiling. “Oh, I’m fine, Dr. Peterson. It was a brief outburst, nothing more than that. He was blowing off some steam.”
Peterson clicked his tongue, impatient.
“I become concerned when multiple murderers ‘blow off steam,’ Zachary,” he said. “Your colleague, Dr. Xavier, is of the opinion that the patient would benefit from medication and sedation. Xavier also volunteered to appropriate the assignment, should you feel threatened or overwhelmed.”
I nearly growled into the receiver. Goddamned Xavier.
“With all due respect, sir, Drake is accused of those crimes,” I said. “And while I appreciate Dr. Xavier’s concern for his safety, he hasn’t worked with the man. This was a fluke.”
“Drake?”
Fuck-fuck-fuck.
“Grace. I said Grace.”
“Well, I believe Xavier’s concern was for your safety,” Peterson said.
I snorted. The guy was a snake—and as phony and hollow as the toy he resembled.
“There’s nothing amusing about this, Zachary,” Peterson said. “Grace’s behavior today could be a harbinger. The stress of the impending trial may be influencing his behavior. If I decide that medication or restraints are the best solution, then that’s how it shall be. But your point is well taken: No one at Brinkvale has spent more time with Grace than you. Tell me. Will he become violent again?”
I heard Grace’s voice, bellowing: “Get out of my life!”
“It’s… unlikely,” I replied.
“You don’t sound entirely convinced.”
“That’s because I don’t honestly know,” I admitted. “Look, Dr. Peterson, I’m getting closer to determining Grace’s mental competency, and I’m using information from his past to do that. I need his mind clear, focused, lucid… not reacting to a mule-kick of Dr. Xavier’s dope.”
“There must be something wrong with our connection, because I thought I just heard you criticizing the technique of a Brinkvale colleague,” the old man said.
I winced. “I’m sorry. I’m asking you to trust my judgment. I’m making a leap of faith in my patient. I’d appreciate it if you made one in me.”
The line was silent for a moment. Peterson then gave long hmmm.
“I’ll defer to your expertise,” he said. “But understand that time is very short indeed for Grace. Come tomorrow, you will have three business days to make your conclusions.”
“I know,” I said. “Oh, I know.”
I called Rachael on the drive home, hoping she and Lucas would be up for supper at Stovie’s, an eclectic pub renowned for its beer, bacon cheeseburgers and buffalo wings. Rachael was game, especially for a brew—“I’m feeling like something hoppy, an IPA,” she’d said—but Lucas had bailed for the day. Apparently his “brilliant, exotic chica” had called with dinner plans. Lucas was loyal, but he was no fool.
We met at the apartment and walked the three blocks south to Stovie’s, on Avenue B and East 8th. For decades, the space this bar now occupied had been an appliance store. According to Stovie’s lore—once told to us by its seen-it-all barkeep Mendel—the store closed in the 1980s. Its bankrupt owners left behind their merchandise. Rather than pitch the appliances, Lenny Reynolds—an East Village resident legendary for his industrial art—re—imagined them for use in his new bar. Refrigerator doors became tables. Oven doors became bench seats. Electric stove tops lived on, re-engineered as wall-mounted light fixtures. The chrome of vintage logos glittered from every nook.
And magnets. Everywhere, thousands of refrigerator magnets on every conceivable surface, nearly all of them donated by Stovie’s patrons. There were enough colorful plastic alphabets here to spell out the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Only in the East Village.
The bar would soon overflow with NYU students craving Thursday morning hangovers. Right now, the scene was sedate. Rachael and I sipped our beers as I recounted my traumatic morning with Daniel Drake (I’d cleaned my scratches at The Brink; they looked worse than they actually were), and the session with his father. I even confessed to my hall-wander realization that a sliver of my Drake obsession was fueled by a desire to impress her.
Rachael placed her pint of Klass’ Bitterest on the metal table and frowned.
“Zach, you do impress me. It’s your default setting, babe. I’m smitten, and blind man or no, I’m staying smitten. Call me the luckiest girl in the world… or a five-state radius, at the very least.”
“I second that,” came a lilting voice from behind her. Ida “Eye,” the fourth member of our little tribe. “Yep. Sampled the Zach goods back in high school. Yummy.”
I winked. “Not yummy enough.”
“Oh, no man’s yummy enough anymore,” the forensics lab technician said. “As a matter of fact, I’m waiting on Adrian right now.”
“Now she’s yummy,” I said. Rachael’s Doc Martens clacked against my shin. “Ow! Save me, Eye! Have a seat.”
She slid next to Rachael, grinning. Her brown fingers tapped my ever-present Moleskine sketch pad. It lay open, beside my beer.
“Been thinking about this,” she said. “Can you do a sketch of Ade for me? I want to surprise her with a present. She’s got enough watercolors from me—but I thought I’d give her something special, from the best artist I know.”
I blushed a little.
“Well, Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting fat. I’d be honored.”
She beamed.
“Thanks. So how’s this case going, with the blind guy?” she asked. “I’m reading all about it in the papers. You’ll be a rock star before this is all over, Z.”
“I don’t want to be a rock star.”
“Well, you certainly rock my world,” Rachael said. She rocked her head like a head-banger, her hands raised in a glam-rock “devil’s horn” salute. My cheeks were warmer now. I laughed, fanning my face with my hand.
“So what’s his deal about a ‘dark man?’” Eye asked. “Sounds racial.”
“Oh god, it’s anything but,” I said. I picked up one of my pencils and doodled absently on the sketch pad. “It’s his… well, ‘inner demon’ is the best way to put it. It’s a long story—and honestly, I’m kinda at a loss at this point. We’ve dug up just about everything we can on the guy, and it still doesn’t seem to be enough.
“I mean, we know about the Alexandrov-Russia debacle now; he refused to confront it, and is still trapped within the delusion,” I continued. “We’ve exhausted his personal effects from The Brink… and I don’t think there’s anything more we can glean from the lockbox. It’s like driving in the suburbs: roundabouts and dead ends everywhere.”