Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

On the desk lay a short stack of the Journal of Psychiatry, all the same issue from three months ago, with “Soul Wounds” by Paige Hulet called out on the cover. I took one and flipped to the article and read a paragraph at random. I looked at her picture at the end. She looked better in real life. Especially with her dress off.

I rolled back from the desk for a wider view of Paige’s work space. Stopped just short of the treadmill. Studied her diplomas on the wall, arranged at eye level above her computer monitor. Tustin High School valedictorian. UCLA, with a major in biology and a minor in French, summa cum laude. The Keck School of Medicine of USC. Columbia University Medical Center psychiatry resident. Proud of her achievements, I thought.

Around this core of lauds and laurels hung framed photographs of Paige with various patients at Arcadia. Recognized some of them. It looked like the pictures had been shot spontaneously — some taken outside in the woods or around the pool, others in the art studio and the recreation rooms and the Lyceum. Most of the patients looked relaxed. Some looked wide-eyed with excitement, or maybe they were just aping the clichés about the mentally disturbed that they all surely knew too well. I saw trust on the faces of those men and women, and the satisfaction this trust was bringing their lovely doctor. Paige looked happy. Several were of Clay Hickman, who looked very much as he did in the pictures Paige had supplied to me: a young slender-faced man with a mop of blond hair and different-colored eyes. In one shot, she faced the camera while he looked at her, and the contentment in him was obvious. The healer, he’s thinking. My lovely healer. She seemed as happy as he did. Something in her expression. Achievement. See what I’ve done. I looked at that picture for a long beat, wondering how a mind fails. Not like a heart, or a plan, or the fuel pump of an airplane. No. More complicated, maybe, or at least less understood. Sitting there, I felt humbled that, even through the sludge of psychotropic drugs and hallucinogens they were shoveling down him, Clay Hickman could still find moments of genuine joy.

Then, farther out from the doctor/partner shots, was Paige’s personal history: as a girl with her mom and dad, beach trips, camping. Paige in a barnyard holding an orange cat, and tennis, tennis, tennis. Crestview League singles champion of 1992 and 1993. I was surprised that she was three years my senior. Didn’t look it. She looked then like she did now: serious and smart. Paige looking up from a book. Paige with girlfriends. Later, Paige being graduated from UCLA, summa cum laude. Deans’ lists. Not quite smiling. No boyfriends on that wall. And no Daniel that I could see. Only a few pictures of Paige as an adult, other than those with her partners at Arcadia. A few with Mom and Dad again, aging well apparently.

Back in the guest bath, I opened the door on the opposite wall of the two-sink counter, stepped in, and found a light. It was smaller than the home office and furnished very simply: a twin bed along one wall, a chest of drawers, a small desk with a wooden chair and a lamp. I turned on more lights. A French Open poster hung above the desk. I was pleased to see that its setting, Roland-Garros, was in big type. Beside it was a poster of Rafa Nadal sliding on clay. A window faced west and I could see the lights of the naval installations out on Coronado.

The room smelled fresh and clean, but felt unused. I opened the closet: a few blouses and light jackets hanging at one end, jeans and trousers at the other. Shoes on the floor, sweaters on the shelf. I heard a siren wailing far down and away.

Back in the darkened living room, I found the remote and raised the blinds. Watched the lights of San Diego twinkle on the black surface of the bay. Considered the bottle of vodka, from which Paige Hulet had had to guzzle to attempt sex — after the restaurant cocktails, wine, and digestifs on the town. Plenty of courage, Doctor. She may have been the summa cum laude doctor of medicine and I just an average man, but it was pretty clear to me that she needed more than courage.

I went in and sat near her on the bed. She uncurled onto her back and I saw the faint sparks of light reflected in her eyes, and then they disappeared.

I kissed her lightly, lingering just a moment to gather in her breath, an undertow of alcohol, and the smell of her body. I ran my fingers through her hair. Faintly and very far away, from under the hum of the sleeping city, I heard Justine’s voice. No words or syllables, even, just its rhythm and timbre. I felt noted by Justine, not blamed. Then she was silent. Don’t go. Don’t stay.

I walked around Paige Hulet’s hushed lair one more time, went into each of the rooms, just trying to register it all. Had the feeling that I wouldn’t see it again.

Downtown San Diego was quiet at four in the morning. The moon was gone and the mist was April cool and the formerly busy sidewalks were all but empty. I backtracked my way through the alleys to Fifth, followed it to the parking lot. My truck was where I’d left it, one of only a few vehicles still waiting for their drivers. As I stepped onto the darkened lot I saw a figure on the far side of it, hands in his hoodie pockets, trotting away from me. Solid-looking guy, spring in his step. Then footsteps behind me. I turned to see a man in a ball cap hustling across the street ahead of a coming car. He glanced back at me and picked up his pace.

The newsstand across the street had opened. In the fog the gas lamps flickered and a man wrestled a bundle of newspapers from a truck. Coffee steam rose from a service window on the sidewalk. Another man stood near that window, sipping from a white cup, looking at me. Big fellow. A leather duster. Wide face, thick mustache, a shaven head that caught the flickering light. Calm, like he was daring me to connect him to the other two men who had slunk off into the darkness. A linen-supply truck parked along the curb in front of me. When I walked around it and looked over at the newsstand, Bald Mountain was still there, his back to me, choosing a paper off a rack.

Shade goes well with a warm day, a cold beer, and a stack of almost-overdue bills. Reclining on a patio lounger under the palapa, I wrote out checks to SDG&E and for propane. Water and phone. I paused to look out at the pond and the rolling hills beyond. My mind drifted easily back to last night’s strange twists and turns. Pretty, uptight Dr. Paige Hulet, dressed to kill, then undressed and drunk but still trying to heal me. Her past highlighted on the wall of her office.

Dick and Liz sat to my right, closer to the barbecue, and closely side by side, to better dispute and berate each other. Wesley Gunn lay on the chaise longue on the other side of me, fending off the bright sunshine with dark glasses. His black eyes were at their worst on this, the second day since his run-in with the Tijuana pimp. He had earbuds in and the player resting on his stomach and one foot keeping rhythm. Lindsey and Burt had gone into town.

I looked down at my stomach, shorts, legs, and feet. Pale from winter. Wondered what Paige Hulet had thought, then realized I’d never taken off my clothes. I thought about Bald Mountain and his two confederates waiting near my truck. Were they part of the Arcadia/DeMaris crew? If so, had they followed the transmitter on my car, or were they staking out Paige’s penthouse? Possible. I had to figure that if Briggs Spencer was worried enough to follow his own PI, he was worried enough to surveil his own employee, too. Or, maybe some grudge from his unrequited passion.

“So, how’d the date go anyway, Roland?” asked Liz. “You didn’t get home until sunrise. And you looked very GQ when you left here in that suit.”