Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

She wiped the corner of her eye with a finger, then took a deep breath and let it out in one loud huff. “Speak true words? Okay. I have to be careful what I say here. I will do no harm. In therapy with me, Clay has claimed that, during 2008 and 2009, he was assigned to a secret prison in Romania named White Fire. He has also denied ever setting foot in Romania. I don’t know what is true and what is only in his mind. Yet.”

I took a hop of faith. “Romania. Where he met Briggs Spencer.”

“Clay says he did, then denies it.” Paige Hulet sat looking at me with an oddly hopeful expression.

I remembered what Evan Southern had said of Deimos. A nickname for someone Clay knew in the war. Made another hop: “Deimos is Spencer.”

“Deimos and Phobos,” she said, “are nicknames Clay uses for Briggs Spencer and his partner, Timothy Tritt. They ran this alleged prison. They were identified in the Senate report on torture, as you know. But again, at other times Clay says he has never been in a secret prison in Romania or anywhere else.”

Suffocating, this tangle of contradictions. “Is Clay in therapy with Spencer here?” I asked.

“Irregularly,” she said. “Neither man has acknowledged those sessions to me.”

I tried to collect this disorderly information into an orderly whole. It was like trying to herd lizards. “What is the white fire Clay wants to bring to Spencer?”

“He has not spoken to me of bringing anything to Spencer,” she said.

“He told Evan. And Sequoia.”

“Maybe he trusts them more than me.”

“Is that what his paintings are about? White fire?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “He gives up so little at a time.”

“Did he ever mention dolls to you? Folk dolls — swordfighters he’d brought home and given to his parents?”

Her brow bent with confusion. “Never.”

I went to the window and looked down at the glittering swimming pool and the partners wading around in it, and the white-clad staff maintaining order. I looked at her and she must have seen the cynical amusement on my face. “Anything else in his file that might be just a little bit made up?”

Dark eyes, dark flash. She stood, flipping open the satchel. “I’ve told you what I know. And I hope you find what you need on his computer.”

She told me how to get printouts from Clay’s laptop through the security office, if needed. Floor six. Then pulled a visitors’ clip badge from her satchel and dropped it to the computer desk.

“You asked about medications,” she said. “The next meds break is in half an hour, in the Lyceum. You’ll need this to be anywhere on the grounds unescorted. Clay was always good about taking his medications. But you should ask the dispensary nurses about that, since I’m so difficult to believe.”

“I will.”

She reached into the satchel again and set a thick envelope next to the badge. “Yours, complete with Dr. Spencer’s raise. Cash. Maybe you should put it in a bank. Or are bankers as difficult to trust as doctors?”

“Far easier, Doctor.”

“You’re being an ass just to anger me.”

“I’ve been downgraded from hominid to ass.”

She shook her head and held my gaze, and I could feel her hostility waning. Instead of hostile she looked undecided, as if she’d caught herself in the act of something and wasn’t sure how she would be judged. She struck me as a person long on trial with herself. She latched the satchel, smoothed her pants somehow primly, though they were without a wrinkle. “I’m afraid for Clay,” she said.

“I’m afraid for the people around him.”

“I hope you find him in time.”

“In time for what, Dr. Hulet?”

“I don’t know. The worst fears come from what we do not know.”

I doubted that, shrugged.

“And Mr. Ford? I have a few more true words for you. My name is Paige Ann Hulet. I don’t think you are an ass or an ape. And it’s been five years, but I used to be a good dancer.”

The sound of her words seemed to hover for a moment before being consumed by the sound of the air conditioner in Clay Hickman’s room. “I don’t get you,” I said.

“Truths are always complicated.”

“Some are simple.”

“Tell me if you find one.”

Clay’s laptop computer, bolted to the desktop for security, was an older machine. He had scratched elaborate doodles on it with a sharp object. So much for pen and pencil forfeiture. But the laptop had medium-speed Internet capability, good graphics, and email set up with an Arcadia.org address. His desktop wallpaper was an Air Force SERE emblem featuring an eagle trapped within barbed wire. The slogan at the bottom read: RETURN WITH HONOR.

I saw that his last email had been sent on the previous Monday at 8:05 a.m., the day he escaped. I recognized the recipient — San Diego KPBS TV host Nell Flanagan. I was a fan of her show.

Dear Ms. Flanagan,

I enjoyed yesterday’s piece about the Navy dolphin training program. I would like to remind you again of the much better story that I have to tell you. (See my earlier email.) I may be out of touch for a few days and wanted to give you plenty of time to consider.

Best,

The next-to-most-recent email was sent just ten minutes earlier, to one John Vazquez.

Yo Vazz,

Just checking in. Head is clearing as the walls close in. Gods on the lawn and black hoods in the shadows. Dr. Paige my guiding light. White fire to Deimos!

Soon,

The word soon jumped out at me. How soon? And was John Vazquez an old war friend? The old war friend?

Vazquez had replied two hours later, about the time Clay and Sequoia Blain were digging Clay out of Arcadia.

Hey Claymore,

They’re working me to death here but I got nothing better to do. Laura mostly happy and Michael is great. Have yourself a kid some day. Glad the head is clearing. Mine okay. Miss the smoke but anything beats White Fire. I can come down to San Diego and see you sometime. Don’t say “soon” if you don’t mean it!

Later,

In Clay’s address book I found John Vazquez in Redwood Valley, California. North of Ojai, in the direction Clay and Sequoia were headed. I emailed Vazquez on my phone, told him Clay Hickman was in trouble and I was trying to help him. I told him there was a possibility that Clay was on his way there. I asked Vazquez to contact me immediately.

More silence from Sequoia. I texted her again:

Back on the computer I scrolled through Clay’s sent and received emails over the last months, noting that John Vazquez was his most frequent correspondent. Clay’s second-favorite correspondent was Daphne, the estranged sister who had never visited Clay in Arcadia.

Hi Clay,

I like the pictures of your paintings but I wish you were happier and could paint happier subjects. Maybe if you got yourself some yellows and whites you’d find yourself with more optimism. I’m glad you have a good doctor. I miss you but I understand why you don’t want to see me. I am happy now that I’ve separated myself from Rex and Patricia and Kayla. So relieved to be free of them. Mel and I are very happy and my own paintings are selling very well at the gallery. I can’t believe I’m 30 this Wednesday!

Hugs,

I noted that there were no solicitations and no junk mail, and that Clay’s trash box was empty. It figured that DeMaris, and probably Paige Hulet, screened his correspondence, trying to keep Clay insulated from the world.

Randomly, I read some of Clay’s sent mail, going back in time from his Monday email to John Vazquez. Names I recognized: Paige Hulet, Evan Southern, and Timothy Tritt — Briggs Spencer’s former partner.