David Baldacci - Simple Genius

Michelle slipped back to her room where sleep didn’t come easily. She tossed for several hours, her mind racing with possible theories that would explain what she had seen, each one more unlikely than the last.

She woke early and went down to breakfast. After that she attended another group session that Horatio had arranged for her. Then she had a one-on-one with a therapist. After it was over, Michelle made a beeline for Sandy’s room and found her there. With other people.

“What’s wrong?” Michelle said. A doctor, two nurses and a security guard were gathered around Sandy’s bed. The woman was lying there thrashing around and moaning.

One nurse turned to her. “Please return to your room, right now.”

The guard stepped toward her, his hands out. “Right now,” he said.

Michelle turned and left, but she didn’t go far.

A few minutes later her vigil was rewarded when the group left Sandy’s room and passed her. Sandy was strapped to a gurney and there was an IV in her arm. She appeared to be sleeping now. Her Secret Service training kicking in, Michelle continued to run her gaze down the woman’s arm to her hands. What she saw puzzled her deeply. Sandy had always been so meticulous about her appearance.

Michelle waited until they were out of sight and then she hustled to Sandy’s room and closed the door behind her. She felt a bit guilty about taking advantage of Sandy’s illness to search her room. But only a bit.

It didn’t take long because the woman had brought few personal possessions with her. One thing that she wasn’t seeing puzzled Michelle. No pictures of family or friends. Then again, Michelle hadn’t brought any of those with her either. But from the loving way Sandy had talked about her late husband, Michelle would have thought she’d have at least one picture of the man. Yet with the horrific way it had ended, maybe she didn’t want a reminder.

She looked around the room and her gaze settled on the bouquet of flowers. She examined the table the bouquet was on, tracing her finger across the veneer of fine dirt particles. Her gaze went to the floor, where she could see a few bits of dirt as well. That’s what had puzzled her about Sandy’s hands. There was dirt on them. As though she’d-

Michelle raced across the room and flattened herself against the wall next to the door. Someone was out there. The door opened slowly. Michelle ducked down away from the glass opening so the person couldn’t see her through it.

As the person came in and walked toward the bed, Michelle silently slipped around the door and through it. She glanced back and saw Barry advancing toward Sandy’s bed. She raced down the hall and to the nurse’s station.

“I just saw someone sneak into Sandy’s room, I don’t think he’s supposed to be there since Sandy’s sick,” she said to the nurse on duty there. The woman rose immediately and walked quickly down the hall.

Michelle fled back to her room and almost collided with Cheryl, who was coming out sucking on her straw. Michelle didn’t want to be alone right now in case Barry came to give her a little payback for ratting him out. Michelle clearly couldn’t count on the nurse she’d told keeping her identity confidential. In fact she might be mad at Michelle for making her rush to Sandy’s room only to find Barry there. As the bastard had said, he could come and go pretty much as he pleased.

“Hey, Cheryl, you want to talk or something?”

Cheryl stopped sucking momentarily and looked at Michelle as though she was seeing her for the very first time.

Michelle started speaking quickly, “I mean we’re roommates and all and we really haven’t gotten to know each other. And I think it says somewhere in the patient handbook that we all ought to try and relate to each other as a form of therapy. You know, a little girl-to-girl soul searching.”

Michelle’s invitation was so obviously insincere that Cheryl simply walked past her after giving her straw an extra loud slurp. Michelle slipped inside the room and pressed herself against the door.

Twenty minutes passed and Barry didn’t come for her. She wasn’t physically afraid of the man. She had already sized him up as a bully who would turn and run the first time he was struck back harder than the blow he’d delivered. But he could hurt her in another way, by making allegations against her. Or he might slip some stolen drugs in her bed. If people believed him over her, what would happen? Would she be stuck in this place against her will? Would she go to prison? Her chin sank to her chest as a horrible depression dropped solidly on her shoulders. Sean, come and rescue me from this place. Please. Then the obvious occurred to her. She was here voluntarily. She had checked herself in, she could check herself out. She could leave right now. She could go to the apartment Sean had gotten for them, chill out for a day and then go down and join him. He would probably need her help right about now anyway.

He always needed her at some point on a case.

She burst out the door and almost ran into the nurse standing there.

Michelle blinked and stepped back. “Yeah?”

“Michelle, Sandy wants to see you.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s stabilized. And she wants to talk to you.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss that.”

Of course you can’t, Michelle grumbled under her breath as she followed the woman down the hallway. But then her pace quickened. She did want to see Sandy. She wanted to see her very much.

HORATIO BARNES DROVE HIS RENTAL CAR out of the Nashville airport. An hour later he was in rural Tennessee looking for the small town where Michelle Maxwell had lived when she was six years old. He found it after several wrong turns and some time-consuming backtracking. He reached the small, crumbling town center, stopped and asked for directions at the hardware store and drove out of town heading southwest. He was sweating because apparently his rental fee didn’t cover a car with functioning air-conditioning.

The neighborhood where Michelle had lived clearly had seen better days. The homes were old and dilapidated, the yards ill-nourished. He checked house numbers on the mailboxes until he found it. The Maxwell house was set off the street. It had a large front yard with a dying oak anchoring it. On one limb was a tire hanging from a rotting rope. In the side yard was a 1960s-era Ford pickup up on cinder blocks. He saw the jagged dead stumps of what looked to be the remains of a privacy hedge that had run across the front of the house.

The paint on the clapboard siding was peeling away and the screen on the front door had fallen off and was lying on the steps. Horatio couldn’t tell if the place was inhabited or not. From its piecemeal look he reasoned it was an old farmhouse. Presumably the original owners had sold the bulk of the land to a developer and the neighborhood had sprung up around their homestead.

He wondered what it would have been like for the young girl to grow up here with just her parents, the beloved sons having moved on to manhood. Horatio also wondered again if Michelle’s conception had been an accident. Would that have influenced how her parents treated it? From experience Horatio knew that one could cut both ways. Which way had it cut with you, Michelle?

He pulled his rental to the edge of the graveled shoulder, got out and looked around, wiping the sweat off his face with his handkerchief. Apparently there wasn’t an active neighborhood watch program because no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Probably there was nothing here worth stealing.

Horatio walked up the gravel drive. Part of him was waiting for an old hound to lumber around the corner of the structure with teeth bared just looking for a plump leg to bite. However, no animal or person came forward to greet or attack him. He reached the porch and peered inside the busted front door. The place seemed abandoned, or if not, the current inhabitants were setting a new standard for minimalism.