Already dead, p.17
Already Dead, page 17
“Maybe,” Chase said in a dry voice.
Then she spent the next thirty seconds to a minute feeling about her body and taking in her surroundings. It was like Groundhog Day.
There was a monitor on her finger, and an IV in the back of her opposite hand. She winced when her fingers prodded the wound by her throat. The bandages were fresh, and if the sensitivity was any indication, the stitches beneath were also new.
Chase sucked in a harsh breath. It burned.
“Mrs. Adams, you need to rest.”
Yep, Groundhog Day.
Audrey sighed. The woman knew that she was wasting her words.
“Thank you,” Chase said hoarsely. Then, when it looked as if the nurse was about to leave, Chase called her back. “I need to speak to Dr. Heinlin about the girl who tried to kill me. I need—”
Chase suddenly started to cough, and she felt severe pain spreading from her wound to the entire circumference of her throat. Audrey stepped forward to help her, but Chase refused. She wiped the back of her mouth with her hand after the coughing fit passed.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. Dr. Heinlin—” The door behind Audrey opened and a doctor entered, his head down, his eyes on a clipboard. “Okay, well, he’s here.”
“How are the stitches healing, Mrs.—” the doctors’ eyes shot up, “—Agent Adams.”
Chase did her best to sit up and managed a half-decent job.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Audrey said. “Dr. Heinlin, please try to convince her to stick around this time?”
Dr. Heinlin made a face similar to the one that Audrey had made earlier. He set the clipboard down and then looked Chase in the eyes.
“Have you ever heard of Cotard’s syndrome?” he asked.
Chase frowned.
“If this is about me—”
“No, it’s not about you, Agent Adams. This is about the person who tried to kill you. I assume that’s why you came back, right?” he pointed at her throat. “And not for a regular check-up, am I right?”
Chase said nothing.
“Yeah. I think that the person who is attacking you is suffering from Cotard’s Syndrome.”
“Never heard of it.”
The doctor licked his lips, his expression severe.
“It’s rare. Very rare. It’s a condition that has various symptoms, some of which can be quite—”
Chase cleared her throat. This was normally the time where she would interject, where she would say something along the lines of, get to the point and stop mansplaining, but Dr. Heinlin, experienced as he was, held his hand up.
“As I was saying, a person with severe Cotard’s can experience various symptoms but—” he held up a finger, once again preemptively cutting her off, “—but the most alarming is that they believe that they are dead.”
Chase expected Dr. Heinlin to expound on this but when he didn’t, she repeated what he’d just said.
The words sounded strange coming out of her mouth.
“A person with Cotard’s—am I saying that right, Cotard’s—believes that they are dead? Like, dead, dead?”
Chase was familiar with psychopathy and sociopathy in which the sufferers place no value on others’ lives, but this?
“Are they suicidal?” she asked.
The motion that Dr. Heinlin made was neither a nod nor a shake—it was somewhere in between.
“Not classically so. They make no conscious effort to end their lives. They don’t actively self-harm either. They actually believe they’re dead. And because of that, they stop bathing, cleaning, eating, taking care of themselves. Some can suffer from delusions, think that they’re ghosts, think that everyone else is a ghost… the list of potential symptoms is vast, but the theme remains the same: they do not think they are alive.”
Chase’s eyes widened, as did her nostrils as she was transported back to the alley behind E-Tronics. She smelled the girl, saw the glint of the knife, felt it pierce her flesh.
“Jesus,” Chase whispered. “We were saying it all along… they looked like they were already dead. They smelled like they were dead… but we didn’t once consider that they thought they were dead.”
The doctor frowned.
“They?”
Chase nodded.
“Yeah, they.”
“But—”
Chase, fearing that the doctor was going to start mansplaining again, raised her voice.
“You’re sure that the girl who attacked me suffers from Cotard’s?”
“Sure? No. Fairly confident, however. It was a differential for the decreased anterior insular cortex volume and given her physical condition… yeah, confident. I believe that the person who attacked you thought—thinks—that they’re actually dead.”
Chase took a deep breath. More burning.
“Are people with Cotard’s prone to violence? Murder?”
Dr. Heinlin cocked his head.
“No. Not traditionally. Typically, the damage they do is restricted to their person.”
The doctor fell silent.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Chase grumbled. She shook her head, only to immediately regretted it. It felt as if porcupine quills were lodged in her throat. “Why the fuck did she attack me? And why the white dress?”
“The white…?”
“Never mind. I’m just trying to understand. This—” Chase pointed at her bandage, “—this was no accident, doc. She stabbed me, tried to kill me, and then tried to kill herself. Why would she try to kill me?”
This time, when Chase cleared her throat, it was to encourage speech, instead of discouraging it.
Dr. Heinlin sighed heavily.
“I’m no expert in Cotard’s syndrome, and a psychiatrist would—”
“Just tell me, please. Enough of this song and dance already. I get it, it’s not your specialty. You’re not an expert. Fine, but I’m a fucking pin cushion and I’m trying to figure out why.”
The doctor stiffened.
“My best guess?”
“Yeah, your best—”
“Someone told her to. Somebody told that girl in the ICU to kill you, Agent Adams. That’s my best guess.”
Chapter 41
Floyd stepped back into E-Tronics and put his hands on his hips. The key rings, one looped through each thumb, jangled loudly.
“What were you looking for?” he mumbled out loud, as his eyes scanned the shelves.
If only I’d been here two minutes earlier… if only I hadn’t hesitated at the door, he scolded himself, I could have just asked her why she was here.
The more he thought about it, the more Floyd was convinced that this was no ordinary robbery. The woman, whoever she was, likely entered from the rear, then moved to the front to lock the door and turn off the light just in case someone passed by. Next, she began searching for something until Floyd interrupted her by fumbling with the lock. And that said nothing of the fact she had a set of keys. Where the hell did she get those from?
“And what were you looking for?” Floyd repeated.
The only thing he was sure of, was that it wasn’t a phone charger.
Instead of wasting his time with the generic items on the shelves, Floyd returned to the entrance and approached the cash register. It was locked, but the key was on the ring—both rings—and he opened it. He estimated that there were close to two-hundred dollars in there, but when he lifted the tray, he found nothing of interest.
Frustrated, Floyd placed both hands on the glass counter and peered around the shop.
He was starting to get that feeling again, the feeling of being totally and utterly useless.
It was something he was unfortunately familiar with. It started back in New York City with the suicide girls: while Chase and Detective Dunbar were running around town, making progress, Floyd was either moping in his car or trembling on someone’s doorstep. He’d been so debilitated that he’d nearly been late to the church, to Blessed Sacrament, and Father David…
He shuddered at what could have happened to Chase and millions more.
But now, in Charleston, West Virginia, far from the bustle of New York City, the feeling was even worse. It was worse because he’d been so close.
Martin.
Martin with his filthy apron and his fucking soup.
Floyd could have grabbed him. But instead, he’d not only let him get away, but he’d spooked him. It would have been better if he’d never even showed up at the homeless shelter, in the first place.
Shaking his head in condemnation, Floyd moved from the front of the store to the employee’s lounge. It was a tiny room, with just enough space for a table, a couple of chairs, and a small fridge.
Running out of ideas, Floyd opened the fridge. Inside, he found a can of Fresca and two bottles of Sinai hot sauces. He swore, then flicked the small flap that separated the freezer from the fridge.
It lifted for a second, then snapped back into place.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” A smile crept onto his lips as he lifted the flap and held it open while taking his cell phone out of his pocket at the same time.
His first inclination was to call Chase, but he quickly quashed that idea. She’d been through enough. If it were up to him, Chase would still be lying in a hospital bed resting.
Truthfully, he was a little surprised that Director Hampton had let her on this case, given what had happened in New York… and Albuquerque… and Washington… and… and…
Floyd called Tate instead and he answered on the first ring.
“What’s up, my man?”
“We should meet up. I think I’ve found something,” Floyd said, his eyes still locked on the items in the freezer.
“I knew you could do it, Kemosabe. Look at that, all by your lonesome, too!”
“Ha, ha, funny guy.”
Tate’s voice grew serious.
“I’ve got something to show you, as well.”
“It’s probably too small to see, but okay.”
“Oh, now who’s the funny guy?”
“Anyway, I’m thinking that we need to pay Henry another visit,” Floyd said. He reached into the freezer and pulled out the large plastic bag.
“That’s the first good idea you’ve had all week,” Tate said. “I’ll pick you up in ten.”
Chapter 42
“You have to understand, Agent Adams, Cotard’s sufferers can be very, very impressionable.”
Chase was still finding it difficult to wrap her mind around this strange condition.
“The dead can be influenced?”
The doctor made a face, clearly not impressed by her attempt at humor. The issue was that Chase wasn’t trying to be funny. She was just trying to understand why she’d been attacked.
“They’re not actually dead.“ Dr. Heinlin paused to scratch his chin. “In all my years in medicine, I’ve only come across one patient with Cotard’s, and that was years ago when I was a resident. A patient was admitted into the psych ward and the consensus was that she was suffering from some sort of drug-induced psychosis. She refused to eat or drink, and she was filthy. Emaciated, on the verge of multiple organ failure from years of neglecting her nutrition. Just waiting to die. I spoke to her, tried to understand. She told me that she was a spirit amongst the living. I asked her how she’d died, and she didn’t know. Didn’t know anything except that she was dead. A few days after she was admitted, one of the nurses got fed up with her smell—she would just defecate and urinate on the spot—and lost her cool. Literally screamed at the patient to clean herself up. And she did. It was eerie the way the woman listened.”
Kill.
The word comes from nowhere and everywhere and it fills every putrid pore and every fetid cavity.
Kill.
Chase squeezed her eyes together tightly.
“So, you think that this girl was told to kill me?”
When there was no answer, she opened her eyes. The doctor was again moving his head in a noncommittal circular gesture.
“I… it’s nearly impossible to perform a psych eval at this point, but if she has Cotard’s, then maybe. Someone in her state… she would have no intrinsic motivation. None. That being said, if her hallucinations and delusions are powerful enough, then there is another option.”
“Which is?”
“She might have thought you a demon.”
Chase scoffed then winced at the pain in her throat.
“She’s not wrong.”
Kill.
But the white dress had Chase leaning toward the first option.
“There are many things about Cotard’s that aren’t known, considering how rare it is and the diversity of symptoms.”
“Wait a second. If she was told to kill me, then—” Chase stopped and raised her hand to her throat.
Dr. Heinlin frowned.
“If we are proceeding with that assumption, then, yes, she was likely instructed to kill herself, as well. Luckily, she wasn’t good at either.”
This case had gone from bizarre and now verged on the supernatural.
Her thoughts suddenly went not to the girl in the alley who had attacked her, but to the vagrant who had killed Roger.
And the moment her skin had touched the corpse in the morgue.
Chase had been instantly overwhelmed by the void, the darkness. The complete and utter emptiness of it all.
Cerebrum had done nothing to change her opinion on religion, or life and death, for that matter.
Why hadn’t I seen it sooner?
The woman’s unspoken expression of death was fairly close to Chase’s expectations.
Darkness.
No, not darkness. The notion of darkness suggests the presence of light.
There is no light.
There is nothing.
At the time, Chase had thought that her voodoo was broken. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Could it be that her subconscious had picked up on something? The idea that the girl—based on her appearance and smell, prior to her death—thought she was dead?
Chase shook her head slowly from side to side, which ignited the pain in her throat. But rather than distract her, this focused her thoughts and rooted her in the present.
Dr. Matteo would be so fucking proud.
“Doc, you said that this was a rare disease. Exactly how rare is it?”
Dr. Heinlin blew air.
“Extremely. It’s more common in younger people, women, primarily, who have a history of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, that sort of thing. There’s also…” he trailed off as if not comfortable discussing this anymore.
“What?”
“Chase, much of what I’ve told you so far is just general medical knowledge. And doctor-patient confidentiality…”
Chase glared at the man. She couldn’t believe that he was pulling this card now.
“Okay, okay, I guess because she doesn’t actually have herpes…” it was as if the doctor was trying to convince himself to continue speaking. He did a decent job of it, too. “We found metabolites of a popular herpes medication in the woman’s blood.”
Chase’s jaw fell open.
“Like I said,” Dr. Heinlin continued slowly, “she doesn’t have herpes. I did a quick literature review and discovered that there are reports of a rare, but real, side effect of valacyclovir treatment.”
It suddenly clicked.
“Cotard’s syndrome,” Chase whispered.
“Yeah, rare, but…”
Chase stopped listening.
“My phone! I need my phone!”
“It’s—”
Chase reached for the side table and pushed her badge and wallet aside, the former of which fell to the floor. Her fingers found her phone and she immediately brought it to her ear.
“Floyd? Floyd!”
Chapter 43
“Get in.”
Tate leaned over and opened the passenger door.
Floyd jumped into the car and then held up the bag from the E-Tronics freezer.
Tate looked at it, then at Floyd.
“Had an outbreak, did you?”
Floyd chuckled despite himself. Then he glanced at the bag. It contained more than forty cardboard boxes with ‘Valacyclovir Tablets, USP, 1 gram’ written on them.
“Something like that.”
Take pulled away from the curb so violently that Floyd was thrust back into his seat.
“In a rush?”
“Meh, haven’t slept in a while.”
Once they were on the road, Floyd told Tate about the woman who had broken into E-Tronics and ran. He showed his partner the two key rings and the process by which he’d come to find the drugs. He also explained that he was sure the woman was there looking for them.
“Was she a zombie?” Tate asked.
“What? Oh, no, she seemed normal.”
“Huh,” Tate said to himself.
“What did you—”
“Check this out.” Tate tossed a photograph in Floyd’s direction.
He looked at it.
“Hey, that—hold on.”
Floyd got out the photo that Chase had taken from Roger’s trailer. He compared the faces of the two women.
“They’re the same.”
“Yep. Margaret said that this girl, the one in the photo, whose name happens to be Becca, was basically adopted by Henry and Roger. She said they took her in, cleaned her up, all that kinda shit.”
Floyd wasn’t surprised that the head of the homeless shelter had shared so much more information with Tate than he. After all, that was the man’s specialty. Still, it was a little annoying.
Floyd brought the photo that Tate had given him close to his face. The girl had dirt smeared on her cheeks and her hair appeared greasy. Her eyes—it was tough to tell from the image—but to Floyd, they looked vacant.
“And we’re sure she that this Becca isn’t the one who killed Roger? I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time—”
“According to Chase, DNA has ruled that out.”
Neither man spoke for a good three minutes until Tate said, “What do you think is going on here, Floyd?”
