“No, it’s not that…” He pauses, and right then I know he could get it if he tried.
“Please,” I say. “You owe me. We’ll be even.” Sometimes you have to be shameless.
“I’m calling in a favor of my own here for you,” he tells me, just to show he’s really sacrificing. He doesn’t want me coming back to the well a second time.
“I appreciate it. This closes our accounts until I fucking claw my way back up and you need me again.”
He laughs. He likes that I’m sounding like the old Ann Saybrook, the pre-spinout Ann Saybrook. A.E. Saybrook—that’s my byline. I send him the photo of the commitment certificate.
While I wait for him to call back, I make a sandwich and scan oldDuluth Tribunenews stories from the year before 34’s commitment. The paper appears to cover all of northern Minnesota. I make a list of all assault and murder cases from fourteen to eighteen months back. After that I expand my search geographically, out through all of Minnesota and then northern Wisconsin.
I show up the next night early as a way of Donny-proofing my arrival. I do my rounds, stopping for an extended one-sided conversation with Patient 34. “I’m looking into your case, pal,” I say. “What do you think?”
For just a moment, I think I catch a hint of agony in his unfathomable eyes. Physical pain? Mental pain? Anguish?
“Do you not want me to find out? It’d be fine for you to tell me that, too.” Not that it could keep me from it at this point. But he’s free to tell me. I really just want him to say anything to me.
“You’re good. You can almost make me think it never happened. Like maybe I dreamed it.Almost. But I know it happened. You should tell me your name and save me time.”
I fit the cuff and pump it up.
“I always find out in the end.” Usually I get the subject to tell me, though.
People like to talk to somebody who gives a shit—that’s basic human nature. Sometimes easy questions get you the best stuff. Like if I’m talking to a cook, I get her to explain something about dicing vegetables. Or with a mercenary, maybe I ask about how he decides what to put in each pocket.
“Mercenaries have a lot of pockets, did you know that?” I rest my hand on his forearm, just above the band that traps his wrist. I can’t imagine how alone he must feel.
The night shift is lax, so I stay a bit longer than usual. I tell him about my childhood idol, Harriet the Spy. I tell him about the trailer where I grew up in Idaho, and how Greyhound buses would pass by three times a day. My sister would dream of being one of the people on the bus going somewhere glamorous, like L.A. I’d just want to know their stories. It seemed like the buses were forever passing us by. “I wonder if you feel like that. You have to. Oh, and newsflash—did you know Donny has ‘FUCK THIS’ tattooed on his fingers?”
Something flickers in his eyes.
“Right? Fuck. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.” Without thinking, I slide my fingers under his. Loosely grasping his hand. It feels natural. Like the two of us alone against the world. Then I drop it, because what am I doing?
I get the fuck out of there.
My guy calls me a few hours later. There’s no record of the hearing even happening.
“But you saw the certificate. The hearing happened. The psychiatrist’s office confirms it.”
“But I sent the image to my guy, and the file isn’t there. Here’s what he found interesting—the data is kept in a database, and he noticed a blank row on the batch for that date. The formatting was weird. It was kind of a flag to him.”
“What does it mean?”
“He said the blank row could possibly have happened because somebody entered something by mistake and they deleted it and didn’t take out the row. But he thinks it’s more likely that there was a deliberate deletion at some point. Looks like you’re on to something.”
There was a time when I would have been thrilled about this. But not now. I’m worried about 34.
“Does your guy have any next-step thoughts?”
My guy reads me off his notes. There are things I could file for. Another name who could chase the paperwork deeper, but I’d have to give him some serious juice, meaning serious money. Which I have none of.
And then there’s the option of fingerprinting the patient. Yeah, I can get his prints, but getting them run on IAFIS—the FBI’s national database—would take more juice.
I thank him for his time. Favor burned.
Chapter Nine
Lazarus