“Patient believes he is an earthbound ‘catalyst’ for human suffering and death,” the doctor wrote. “His interaction with others incurs the interest and wrath of an otherworldy, monstrous entity he calls several names: ‘The Inkstain,’ ‘Chernobog’… and, most commonly, ‘The Dark Man.’”
I shuddered at this, and at something vague and wicked and smiling very far away in my mind—and at the lyric I’d been absently tapping on the desk as I’d read.
A little death without mourning, no call and no warning. Baby, a dangerous idea. That almost makes sense…
A dark man.
I placed the pencil on the desk. I read another page.
The murders had ended two years ago. The same year Grace went blind.
3
There were more pages in Grace’s report, most of them from the district attorney’s office—that gothic letterhead was as familiar to me as the lines on my palms—but I didn’t get to them. The silence of my office was shattered by skeleton song.
I jerked, nearly knocking the papers to the floor. I fumbled for my satchel. My cell phone played another round of cheerful xylophone music—I call it skeleton song, since bone-white rib cages are always used as xylophones in the cartoons—and then it went silent. I rummaged in the canvas bag, retrieved the phone and looked at its screen. Lucas had sent me a text message. I was thankful for the interruption. I flipped the device lengthwise and slid out its tiny keyboard. His IM flashed on the LCD.
STILL ON FOR GRAM? MEET AT Well7 @ 5?
“Yeah,” I sighed, again brushing the hair from my eyes. “You bet, bro.”
I typed this on the pad, added the words IT’LL WORK OUT, CALL IF YOU NEED ANYTHING and hit “OK.” An animated pinwheel spun on-screen as my little phone talked to the cell tower sixty feet above and a half-block away. That blessed thing is the only reason we Morlocks get phone reception in the bowels of The Brink.
The phone beeped. Message sent. I slid the thing closed.
I leaned back in my chair, exhaling through my lips, feeling my body deflate as another emotion swept over me. The chair’s springs squealed. I barely noticed.
Gram. She had warred with her cancer for four agonizing years—a physical and mental Hatfield-and-McCoy feud inside her—and then six months ago she’d emotionally checked out. She never told the family this, never told “her boys” that the pain was too much, that she finally wanted to join Grandpa Howard (who’d been gone for nearly twenty years), that she simply didn’t have the steel for it anymore. No. She never confessed. But I knew. That mischievous, defiant glimmer in her gray eyes had vanished a half-year ago. I think my father knew, too.
But Lucas was different. Maybe it was his youth or his wide-eyed, adventurous soul that stopped him just short of understanding this truth, like a happy dog on a chain bolted to a doghouse. To that end, Lucas had clutched the hope, as bright as it was bittersweet, that Gram would recover, that the treatments would work, that the radiation and the chemo pumping into her veins would eventually do some goddamned good.
Gram gave up six months ago. But her body held on, driven by either Taylor Family Loyalty or sheer stubbornness (these things are not mutually exclusive) until last week. She wasn’t talking at the end. She was just breathing. Sleeping and breathing.
And then, she was just asleep.
My boundless, bouncing baby brother was dealing with her death the best way he knew how—by channeling his frustration and emotions into his two current passions: filmmaking and parkour. Gram was cremated today, and her memorial service was tonight, at Selznick and Sons in the Upper East Side, near where my father lived. I would meet Lucas at “Well7”—my brother’s peculiar nickname for Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park—at five o’clock. We’d stop by my apartment for brisk showers and shaves, and get to the service by seven. Rachael would meet us there. My father would likely arrive an hour after that, freshly stressed from his day at One Hogan Place, where he would undoubtedly have unleashed appropriately hellish retribution upon deserving ne’er-do-wells.
Dad had called last night and left a voicemail on my cell phone, telling me he might be late to the service. I swear to God, if he’s late to his mother’s funeral, it’s a done deal he’ll be late to his own. I hadn’t yet shared this news with Rachael, who was baffled by my father’s workaholic tendencies. She had good reason to be; my dad once told me he was so busy, he’d never even changed the passcode to his telephone messages from the “1234” default.
I turned back to the reports on my desk and shuffled through the papers until I again spotted that distinctive letterhead. These documents gave a macro view of the prosecution’s position for the upcoming trial—thankfully, there was no legalese to bulldoze through—and they confirmed what Dr. Peterson had told me. Martin Grace was staring down a howitzer barreclass="underline" one count of homicide, and circumstantial evidence indicating eleven others. With Grace’s alibis, I doubted the lawyers could pin all of the deaths on him, but they were giving it their fear-of-John-Houseman Paper Chase all. Things were not looking good for the blind man.
Hell. Come to think of it, things weren’t looking good for me, either.
I glanced up at the letterhead.
New York County District Attorney’s Office.
William V. Taylor, District Attorney.
By lunchtime, my mind was throbbing from a Google-, DSM-and textbook-powered crash course in psychosomatic blindness. (Did you know that, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, conversion disorders are very uncommon, representing only three percent of mental hospital admissions each year—and even fewer cases deal specifically with sight loss?) I was half-jumping at shadows, at Dark Men. Rattled. Something more than Martin Grace’s graphic, delusional death visions was gnawing at my brain. It was something cold and faraway, familiar… but ultimately unreachable.
At noon, I was thrilled to escape The Brink, if only for an hour. I surfaced and sat beneath Primoris Maximus, the hospital grounds’ spectacular oak tree. Primoris’ name was bastardized Latin meaning, “The first, the most important.”
And it was. The tree was so old, awesome and iconic that a stylized rendition of its image played brand-friendly logo for the hospital. It was triumphant this time of year, leaves ablaze in autumnal amber and crimson. A crisp breeze rushed through the grass around me, rustling the large art pad in my lap, giving the sketch pencil resting on its surface a good reason to roll about.
I had just finished reviewing the notes I’d taken in my office, and slipped the smaller Moleskine sketchpad back into my satchel. Before coming topside, I’d concocted a vague strategy on how to approach Martin Grace, and had even settled on a personal mantra for my sessions with him: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound… he’s blind, but help him see. The man was a musician. It suited him.
I reached into the wrinkled brown paper bag resting by my thigh and pulled out a Granny Smith apple. Lunches in The Brink’s cobwebby cafeteria might be free for employees, but they’re ashen, antiseptic things. Withered green beans, flavorless chicken breasts, meatloaf so soggy it was better suited for sloppy joes. Give me ten-cent fruit from a Chinatown street vendor any day. Make that every day.
I took a bite, grinning and grimacing at the apple’s blissful tartness. The rest of my lunch—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and yogurt—would have to wait.
The crux of my strategy with Grace was to learn more about his vision loss. This event two years ago had prevented him from killing even more people—or more appropriately, had coincided with the end of death around him. Unlike Dr. Peterson, I wasn’t convinced that Grace had committed these crimes. According to the report, even investigators admitted that his alibis were solid.