Brad Aiken: Questioning the Tree

I flopped back and stared at the ceiling. My first glimmer of hope for a brighter, more productive existence in a very long time had been smeared all over the Net. All I had to look forward to now was District Clinic Thirteen.

The phone rang. Doug’s number again.

“Doug?”

“Dr. Jenkins?” A monotone, unharried voice that was clearly not Doug’s.

“Yes?”

A face came up on the screen, a generic clean-cut young male face adorned with a police cap. “This is Officer Harvey Cornell. Turn your vid on, sir.”

I pulled a sheet around me and complied. Only my face would show on his phone, but it was still discomfiting to sit there with nothing on talking into a vid phone. “What’s this all about, officer? Is Dr. Barnes okay?”

“He’s fine, sir. Your number was the last one he called, just a few minutes ago, and we want to know why.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“We got his version, sir. We want yours.”

I knew they’d review the transcript of Doug’s phone call. Don’t’ be stupid, I reminded myself before answering . “He’s my old partner. I ran into him yesterday for the first time in years and gave him my number, so I guess it was at the top of his recent calls list. He sounded like he was in some kind of trouble. I guess in his rush to call someone he hit my number first.”

“What do you know about the clinic, sir?”

“Uh, he told me about it yesterday, you know, when we were catching up on each other’s lives.” I fought against my instinct to wipe the sweat off my brow. The screen was small; maybe he wouldn’t notice the gleam. I turned from the light.

“And you didn’t turn him in?”

“I wanted to give him a chance to right it himself first. Warned him about one of his people, that she’s a straight shooter. I guess he didn’t take my advice, huh?”

“You’ll need to come down to the station, sir. I’ll be there in ten minutes to pick you up.”

“But…” the line went dead.

Ten minutes.

Crap.

I threw on some jeans and a relatively clean shirt, brushed the stale wine breath off my teeth and paced in front of the door until the chime sounded, sending my heart crashing against the inside of my chest wall.

“Intercom on.” The green light next to the door came on. “Hello?”

The animatronic receptionist from the lobby greeted me. “Good morning, Dr. Jenkins. There’s an Officer Cornell here to see you. Shall I let him in?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Doctor.”

I damped the sweat off my brow and rubbed the palms of my hands against my pants.

The chime sounded again. “Yes?”

“It’s me, Doctor. Officer Cornell.”

“Front door, open,” I commanded.

The door responded dutifully, and Officer Harvey Cornell entered with a vague scent of musk preceding him. A neatly pressed navy blue uniform accented his athletic physique, right down to the gleaming patent leather boots.

“Dr. Jenkins,” he said, removing his hat and smoothing back the neatly cropped black hair held in place with a hint of gel. “Ready, sir?”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Then why can’t we just talk here?”

He motioned to the door. “You’ll want to come with me, sir.”

Sometimes no answer is an answer you don’t ignore.

The animatronic offered a cheery good-bye as we passed and made our way to the unmarked car waiting by the front entrance. A female officer sat perched in the driver’s seat. Cornell opened the back door and I ducked in. He shut it behind me and I instinctively tried the handle, which of course did nothing.

On the way back to the station, he rode shotgun and didn’t say another word to me. I could see the two of them conversing on the other side of the translucent barrier that separated us, but I don’t know how to lip read. I only had the chatter of my own mind to keep me company.

As I sat there, every possible scenario flashed through my mind. Maybe they spotted me casing the clinic that afternoon, but that wouldn’t be enough to arrest me on. They must have seen me pull up that evening, almost go in. But they can’t arrest you for almost , can they? Hell, they didn’t have anything they could pin on me. I’d been a damn boy scout at the clinic all these years; I hated myself for it, but I never gave them anything to hang me with. And what did they have now? My name in Doug’s phone, a call, a drive-by at the mall during clinic hours? Nothing. They had nothing. Still, they could make my life miserable if they wanted. I’d been a damn poster boy for the District Clinic System, ignored what I knew was right to spite the health of my psyche, and they were going to screw me anyway. Great.

The flashes of panic were knocked from my thoughts by the sound of the car coming to a stop. We were parked outside the station. Cornell opened the door and escorted me into the building, where we wound our way through a maze of busy cubicles and into a sealed interrogation room. There was no mirrored glass, but there was no doubt we were being recorded.

He sat across a polished steel desk, facing me, but staring intently at a computer screen to his right. His face remained expressionless as he read silently and periodically tapped on the screen.

I cleared my throat, quite unintentionally, and was speared by a “don’t do that again” look from across the table. A few minutes later, Officer Cornell sat back against his chair.

“Doesn’t look too good for you, Doctor.”

“What doesn’t look good? What are you accusing me of, being friends with Dr. Barnes?”

“You should be more careful who you associate with.”

“Since when did that become a crime?”

He stared me further back into my seat, then stepped out of the room. I squinted in all directions trying to locate the camera. Christ, they can’t lock me up just for thinking about going to that damn clinic, can they? I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and damped off my face. Stay calm , I coaxed, but my body wasn’t listening. I tucked the fraying wet tissue into my pants pocket as the door popped open and Officer Cornell re-entered.

He sat down and tapped on the screen, looked at me for an excruciatingly long three or four seconds, then focused his attention back on the monitor.

I scooted around on the cold steel seat of my chair in a futile effort to get comfortable.

Cornell looked up again. “Look, Doctor. Let me be blunt.”

Finally. I’d have rather been arrested than have to sit in that seat any longer, staring at the machine that called himself Officer Cornell.

“We’ve got video surveillance that shows you hanging out in front of Barnes’ clinic this afternoon, and then driving by again tonight, just before we got there.”

I could feel the heat rising up from under my shirt and thanked my lucky stars he didn’t have me hooked up to an autonomic monitor to graph my anxiety. Not that he needed one.

“He was my friend. I was just curious.”

“Don’t insult me, Doctor.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“Look, we may not have anything damning on you, but with the video, the phone call, your connection to Doctor Barnes… well, let’s just say it’s pretty clear what your intentions were. You were more than a little tempted to join his party, weren’t you?”

Before I could answer that every-chamber-loaded question, he stopped me. “You were lucky as hell tonight, but don’t count on luck to strike twice. That space you have been flying under the radar in has just gotten considerably smaller.”

The tension permeating every fiber of my being had begun to ease. They were going to have to let me go. “So I’m your new assignment?”