David Baldacci - Simple Genius

“Sounds like you have the routine down pat.”

“Oh, honey, I’m at the point where I see the questions coming before they even ask them. It’s cat and mouse stuff, only they haven’t figured out that I’m the cat and they’re the mouse.”

“You ever try and address whatever’s actually making you depressed?”

“Hell no, then it gets way too complicated. The truth will not set me free, it’ll just make me suicidal. So until they let me out of here, I dance my little jig”-she slapped the wheels of her chair-“figuratively speaking of course, and Sandy goes with the flow, so long as they keep giving me my pills.”

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“When people tell you you’re paralyzed from the waist down, you think to yourself, ‘Okay, that’s a real bitch, but at least I can’t feel anything hurting.’ Wrong with a capital fucking W. What they don’t tell you is how much being paralyzed hurts. The bullet that took my legs away is still inside me. The quacks said it was too close to my spine to remove. So it just sits there, that little nine-millimeter son of a bitch. And every year or so it moves a tiny bit. Ain’t that something? I can’t move but it can. And the real zinger is the quacks say that if it ever hits against a certain place on my spine, I might just drop dead, or lose the feeling in the rest of my body and become a full-fledged quad. How ’bout that? Isn’t that just too screwed up for words?”

Michelle said, “I’m really sorry. My problems don’t seem like such a big deal now.”

Sandy waved this remark off. “Let’s go get some breakfast. The eggs are for shit and the bacon looks like pieces of tire tread and tastes worse, but at least the coffee’s hot. Come on, I’ll race you.” Sandy took off and Michelle, smiling, trotted after her, then grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and sprinted down the hallway, Sandy screaming with laughter the whole way.

After breakfast, Michelle met with Horatio.

“I talked with your brother Bill again.”

“And how is Bill?”

“Good. He doesn’t see you much, though. That goes for the rest of the family.”

“We’re all busy.”

He handed her the letter from her mother.

“I was at your and Sean’s apartment and picked it up. I know you haven’t seen the place, but it’s really nice. I’m glad I got to see it before you trashed it like your truck. Speaking of major landfills, ever think of cleaning your Toyota out? I mean just from the perspective of preventing bubonic plague.”

“My truck might be a little messy, but I know where everything is.”

“Yeah, about two hours after I eat spicy Mexican I know what’s inside my colon, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it. You want to read the letter from your parents? It might be important.”

“If it were, they would’ve reached me some other way.”

“Do they keep in touch with you?”

Michelle crossed her arms. “So is this parents day with the shrink?”

Horatio held up his notepad. “It says right here that I have to ask.”

“I talk to my parents.”

“But you almost never visit them. Although they’re not that far away.”

“Lots of kids don’t visit their parents. It doesn’t mean they don’t love them.”

“True. Do you feel like you have a chip on your shoulder being the only girl and your big brothers and father being cops?”

“I prefer to think of it as healthy motivation.”

“Okay, do you like the fact that you pretty much can physically dominate any man you come across?”

“I like to be able to take care of myself. It’s a violent world out there.”

“And being in law enforcement, you’ve seen more than your share of that. And it’s men who commit the vast majority of violent crimes, isn’t that right?”

“Too many men tend to lead with their muscle instead of their mind.”

“Do you still want to hurt yourself?”

“You have the most awkward segues of any person I’ve ever met.”

“I like to think of them as something to wake you up in case you were starting to doze off.”

“I never wanted to hurt myself in the first place.”

“Okay, I’ll just check that one off in the ‘I’m lying my ass off’ box, and we’ll move on. So what do you see as the problem? And how do you think I can help you?”

Michelle looked nervously away.

“It’s not a trick question, Michelle. I want you to get better. I can sense you want to get better. So how do we get there?”

“We’re talking, isn’t that something?”

“It is. But at this rate I’ll be long dead and buried and you’ll be sucking your dinner through a straw before we figure out what makes you tick. There’s no rule against going for the point of least resistance.”

Michelle blurted out, “I don’t know what you want from me, Horatio.”

“Honesty, candidness, a real desire to participate in this exercise we call soul searching. I know the questions to ask, but the questions don’t help if the answers to them mean nothing.”

“I’m trying to be honest with you. Ask me a question.”

“Do you love your brothers?”

“Yes!”

“Do you love your parents?”

Again she said yes. But Horatio cocked his head at the way she said it.

“Will you talk to me about your childhood?”

“Is that what every shrink thinks? It all comes down to crap that happened when you were a kid? Well, you’re running down the wrong road.”

“Then point me in the right direction. It’s all up in your head. You know it is, you just have to suck it up and have the courage to tell me.”

Michelle stood, trembling with rage. “Where the hell do you get off questioning my courage, or my ability to suck it up? You wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in my shoes.”

“I don’t doubt it. But the answer to your problems is between your left and right frontal lobes. It’s a distance of about four inches and quite remarkable in that it contains trillions of bits of thoughts and memories that make you, you. If we get to just the right piece of you stuck away up there we can reach the point where you’ll never pick another fight with a guy hoping he’ll send you straight to the morgue.”

“I’m telling you that didn’t happen!”

“And I’m telling you, you’re full of shit.”

Michelle balled up her fists and screamed, “Do you want me to hurt you?”

“Do you want to hurt me?” he shot back.

Michelle stood there, glaring down at him. Then she let her hands drop, turned and walked out of the room, this time leaving the door open behind her, perhaps symbolically he thought, if unconsciously.

Horatio remained in his chair, his gaze on the doorway. “I’m pulling for you, Michelle,” he said quietly. “And I think we’re almost there.”

AFTER DINNER IN THE MANSION’S dining room Sean and Rivest went back to Rivest’s cottage to drink. After some wine and three vodka martinis Les Rivest fell asleep in his living room armchair after promising to meet with Sean the next day. That left Sean, who’d only sipped on his gin and tonic, to slip out and take a stroll around Babbage Town. Rivest had given Sean a security badge with his photo on it. The badge didn’t enable him to enter any of the buildings other than the mansion unaccompanied, but it would prevent his being stopped and detained by the compound’s security force.

Rivest’s bungalow was on the western edge of the main grounds and off the same graveled path as three other cookie-cutter residences. Near Rivest’s place was a far larger building. As Sean walked past it he noted the sign over one of the two front doors. It read: Hut Number Three. It seemed to be split into two equal premises. Sean watched as two uniformed guards armed with Glock pistols and MP5s came out the left front door and walked off, presumably on their rounds. That was a lot of firepower. But for what?