The Stolen

26

I sat by the side of the bed, thinking about how much time

I'd spent in hospitals recently. Jack had been taken to

Bellevue, where he was diagnosed with acute alcohol poisoning.

I'd heard sketchy things about Bellevue, some of which were confirmed upon seeing several men clad all in inmate orange walking handcuffed through the halls. I just prayed the doctors here understood how important this patient was, and had passed their medical board exams with flying colors. Unfortunately, I was getting used to white hospital walls. The antiseptic smell. The forced, sad smiles on concerned friends and family members.

My ex-girlfriend, Mya, was finally at home after recovering from several surgeries after her body was shattered by a ruthless sociopath earlier in the year. I'd stayed by

Mya's bed for weeks, comforting her mother when we didn't know if Mya would pull through, then comforting

Mya when she went through the agony of rehabilitation and coping with the murder of her father by the same man who'd tried to end her life.

When you give yourself to someone, you carry the responsibility of not just being a friend or confidant, or even a lover, but giving yourself to them when they need it most. I knew Mya had desired for us to get back together, and perhaps the most difficult part of those weeks was being a friend while keeping my distance. Physical pain went away, or could be stunted through medication. It broke my heart to deny her my affection when she probably needed it most. But she would have been hurt more later knowing my heart still belonged to another woman.

Seeing Jack lying in bed made me wonder just what I could, or would, give the man. Perhaps I'd been too emotionally reserved. Or perhaps not given enough.

The doctors had measured Jack's blood alcohol level at an astonishing. 19, well over double the legal limit in New

York.

An IV was hooked into his right arm, tubes in his nose pumping oxygen, his breathing slow and steady. A bag dripped fluids into his veins as they attempted to flush out

Jack's poisoned system. The doctors also informed me they would be testing for cirrhosis of the liver. They guessed-correctly-that this kind of drinking binge was not limited to last night.

A doctor entered the room. He was middle-aged, wore thick glasses on his thin nose. His eyes were red, tired. He flipped through the chart at the foot of Jack's bed, then checked out the readings on the monitors by the bedside.

He scribbled in the folder, then placed it back.

"How is he?" I asked. "Dr…"

The doctor turned, then said with a faint smile, "Dr. Brenneman. I've seen worse."

"You didn't see him before they cleaned him up."

"There's always a worse, trust me. But he's lucky you found him when you did. The biggest danger with alcohol poisoning is aspiration and asphyxiation. He could have literally choked to death on his own vomit."

"Ordinarily, I'd say he owes me a drink for saving his life, but…"

"I don't think that's the wisest course of action,"

Brenneman said.

"When will he wake up?" I asked.

"Well, that's all up to him. We're going to keep him for a few days and monitor his fluid levels, make sure his liver functions are all up to par, but he's not unconscious or anything like that. Just sleeping."

"Got it. Thanks, Doc, I appreciate it. And I'm sure Jack does, too."

He waved his hand, dismissing any gratitude. "I'm actually a fan of Mr. O'Donnell's work," he said. "I followed his reportings on the mob wars a few years back.

All that violence with Michael DiForio and his murder, it's all so tawdry and terrible, but I just couldn't turn away.

They never did find the man who killed DiForio, did they?"

"No, they didn't."

"Scares you to think there's someone out there walking the streets dangerous enough to kill the head of a major organized-crime family, and slippery enough to get away with it."

"I know what you mean," I said. "So did you recognize

Jack right away?"

Brenneman laughed. "Are you kidding? The man's a New

York legend." Then his brow furrowed, as concern melted into his features. "To be honest, that's what upsets me the most. I've been around enough alcoholics not to judge, but you never expect to see such a, well, legend suffer like he has.

To do to his body what he has. For some reason, and forgive me for saying this, but I guess I expected more from him."

"Yeah," I replied. "I guess we all did." Brenneman nodded, turned to leave. "Hey, Doc, mind if I ask you one more question?"

"Absolutely," he said, clutching his clipboard to his chest.

"What could cause a person to lose their memory? Not permanently, but, like, a chunk of it. A few years. What could punch a hole in someone's life?"

"Well, a few things. I assume you're referring to a kind of anterograde amnesia. Most of the time amnesia is the result of some traumatic damage to the brain, specifically the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobes. Anterograde, in which there is usually what's called a 'hole' or

'blackout episode,' happens as the result of a chemical imbalance. It's commonly referred to as Korsakoff syndrome."

"What happens when someone is a victim of Korsakoff?"

"Basically, it's a degenerative brain condition that's brought on by a severe lack of thiamine-or vitamin B1- in a person's brain. Thiamine helps metabolize fats and carbohydrates in the body."

"Thiamine-is this a natural substance? Does the body produce it?"

"No, it's like any other vitamin, it has to be absorbed in the system from outside. There's vitamin B1 in dozens of everyday foods, from bread to meat, vegetables, dairy.

You'd almost have to go out of your way to deprive yourself of it.

"Is there any way this chemical imbalance-or Korsakoff syndrome-could be induced?"

"Absolutely. Have you heard of GHB or GBL?"

"Date-rape drugs, right?"

"That's the lay term for them, yes. In effect, what those drugs do is induce a form of retrograde amnesia.

Ironically, GHB is sometimes prescribed to help combat alcoholism." Brenneman looked at Jack. He figured I was asking these questions because of him. "GHB and

Rohypnol, especially when mixed with alcohol, can be a potent and often lethal mixture."

"But aren't the effects of those drugs pretty shortterm?"

"Assuming they're not ingested in lethal amounts, yes, they generally only cause memory lapses of four to ten hours. And though that's not a tremendous amount of time, in the grand scheme of things, people who use them for nefarious purposes can accomplish an awful lot of evil in that time."

"What about long-term anterograde amnesia? Are there any ways to induce Korsakoff syndrome in a way that could affect the brain for months or even years?"

"In severe cases, people either born with dangerously low levels of thiamine, or whose levels are brought down to a certain level, can experience a form of long-term anterograde amnesia. The damage is done to the medial thalamus, and if left untreated, if thiamine levels are left below a certain level, the memory loss can be long-term, or even permanent." Brenneman eyed me. "Ironically again, alcoholism is one of the most common causes of long-term anterograde amnesia."

Again he eyed Jack. And while Jack would face a tremendous struggle in his battle against the bottle, the more pressing fight was to uncover what had happened to Daniel

Linwood and Michelle Oliveira. Jack was in good care. I couldn't say the same about Girl X.

Suddenly I heard a buzzing sound, and Brenneman's hand went to his coat. He took out a small pager, clicked it, then said, "I've been summoned. Nice to meet you,

Mr…"

"Henry Parker," I said.

"Mr. Parker." He looked at Jack. "Please, take care of him. More important, get him to take care of himself."

Then Brenneman left.

I stayed with Jack for another half an hour. I just watched him breathe, waiting for him to wake up. Half wanting to go over there, shake his drunken ass until his eyes opened, letting him have it about how he was throwing his life's reputation away. How he was in danger of throwing his legacy away. Instead I sat there, watching the tubes drip, the machines beep, thinking about how the man who single-handedly brought the New York Gazette to prominence had to be carted out of his house like a derelict.

After half an hour I couldn't sit there any longer, so I left and called Wallace from the street.

"How is he?" the man said.

"About what you'd expect, only worse."

"I knew Jack was drinking, more than usual, but I had no idea it was this bad."

"So you knew he was developing a problem." I was this close to screaming at my boss, and I didn't care.

"Yes, but he was still turning his stories in on time and he was still a valuable member of the team here."

"Wallace, we both know his stuff hasn't been top-notch in a while."

"So Jack's lost a little off his fastball. But he's still faster than most reporters, and he's got enough smarts, contacts and writing chops to make up for anything he's lost."

"He doesn't have to lose anything, it's being taken from him, bottle by bottle. He's worked for you for what, thirty years? And you repay him by turning a blind eye?"

"Watch it, Parker," Wallace snapped. "You haven't been here long enough and you haven't known Jack long enough to judge either of us. We'll get O'Donnell the help he needs. Right now your only job is as an employee of this newspaper. Assuming you still want to be."

"Of course I do," I said. "More than ever."

"Good. Then show it."

Wallace hung up. I felt a great anger surge through me.

Both at the runaround I was getting on the Linwood/Oliveira kidnappings, and now this. I'd looked up to Jack for so many years, spent so much of my childhood idolizing this pillar of a man, to see him reduced to a lump under a hospital throw rug was like seeing a baseball bat taken to fine crystal. That's one thing I'd learned in my years as a reporter. Every person, no matter the pubic perception, had demons. And the higher regard in which you held them in, the greater the disappointment when you realized their demons were as common as anyone else's. I refused to believe that Jack O'Donnell was a common alcoholic. The kind of guy who scrounged around his cabinets for that one drop of Knob Creek he knew was left. Jack had a gift that defied all of it. And once he got help, he could polish that crystal back to a shine.

I took a cab back to my apartment. Last night I couldn't wait to get to the office. Today I couldn't bear to spend another minute there. I needed a respite, if only brief.

I threw my stuff on the couch, went into the kitchen and found a Corona nestled behind a jar of pickles. The beer tasted flat, but I didn't care. It had alcohol and that's all I wanted right now. I needed a moment to feel oblivious, blissfully ignorant, to have that feeling all alcoholics must have when they pop the first top of the day and know that, pretty soon, the world outside wouldn't bother them for much longer.

Before I could get to the second sip, my phone rang.

The caller ID read "Amanda." I picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Henry, everything all right? I've been trying to reach you all day."

"Not really. Jack was admitted to the hospital this morning. Alcohol poisoning. I walked in on him sitting in a pile of his own vileness."

"Oh, God. I remember a while ago you thought he was drinking too much."

"Yeah, I just never thought it would get this bad."

"I'm so sorry to hear that. I called you at the office, and got worried when I couldn't find you. After the past few days my mind's been all out of whack."

"I'm at home now. Having a beer. Feel the same way as you."

There was a pregnant pause, and then Amanda said,

"Mind if I come over?"

Without waiting, I said, "No. That'd be nice."

"Be there in half an hour."

After we hung up, I got up and poured the rest of the beer into the sink. Then I sat on the couch and waited.

I wondered: Would Dmitri Petrovsky still be alive if we hadn't followed him? Possibly. But what the hell was he mixed up in?

I still didn't know exactly what his link was to Danny and Michelle. He was their pediatrician, but somehow he was connected to my friend the Chesterfield-chainsmoking sociopath. One more trail to follow. I needed to know who that man was, who lived in that house, and what

Dmitri Petrovsky knew that made necessary his permanent silence. One thing was for certain, my digging had opened a can of worms someone very badly wanted kept closed.

I looked around my apartment. Humble even by humble's standards. I knew when I moved to New York that it was one of the most expensive cities in the world, but nothing prepared me for three-dollar cups of coffee or twelve-dollar movie tickets. I was paying about sixty percent of my income to a landlord I never met, who took longer to fix my air-conditioning than it would have taken me to install a hot tub into a Buick Skylark. I had no idea how long it took Jack to make a decent living, but I hoped it wasn't too long in the waiting.

Twenty-five minutes later my buzzer rang. I peeked out the window, saw Amanda standing on the street. She looked up at me, waved. I let her in.

She came upstairs and sat down across the couch from me. Hands folded under her chin. Her hair fell over her shoulders, worry lines at her eyes. Though she was still beautiful, the past few years had aged her slightly. We'd been through so much together, yet strangely I'd known this girl for less than two years. I still saw that brown hair and remembered that on the day we met, despite the circumstances, she had made everything stand still, if only for a moment. Women like Amanda, who were beautiful almost in spite of their lack of effort, beautiful without trying at all, they didn't come along too often.

We sat there in silence. It was the kind of quiet I hadn't experienced with many other women. I longed for that sense of confidence. Of comfort.

After a few minutes had passed, Amanda said, "What do you think the cops will do now?"

"You mean the dedicated men and women of the Hobbs

County PD? Probably nothing. I'd bet my life savings that the same guy that mistook me for a barbecue started that fire, but I can't imagine the cops will work very hard to prove it. They want to wipe this whole mess under the bed and be done with it."

"What about Petrovsky?"

"I don't know. They claim they never found a body, either in the driveway or inside the bonfire. All they did was file a missing persons report when his secretary said he didn't show up at work. Petrovsky isn't married, no children, no real family in the States, so until enough time has gone by they won't have anything breathing down their necks. And the press won't be putting pressure on them if there are no weeping widows or no orphaned children to plaster on the front page to stir sympathies."

She looked sad. "It's like a crime was never even committed."

"It wasn't," I said. "Until a body turns up. Or we catch these assholes."

"If someone is willing to kidnap two children, kill a doctor, torture you and set a house on fire, I have a feeling they wouldn't think twice about disposing of a body."

"Tomorrow," I said. "We start from the other end. We've been looking for what happened to Michelle Oliveira and

Daniel Linwood, who kidnapped them and why. And we haven't made a lot of headway on that end. So now we follow this." I took a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. Tossed it at Amanda. She uncrumpled it, read it.

"The receipt," she said. I nodded.

"Toyz 4 Fun," I replied. "Let's see who was buying a young girl some early Christmas presents. And I'll bet whoever it is has another child. Someone who hasn't been reported missing yet. Someone who in a few years is meant to be another Danny Linwood."

James Keach walked down the off-white hallway, still shaking after nearly tripping over an old man and his walker, just thankful he didn't rip the old guy's IV from his arm. James's jacket was unzipped, one hand in his pocket while the other one hung loose. Just like Paulina had taught him.

Be cool, she said. If anyone asks, you're visiting a relative. It's okay to be nervous-nobody likes being in a hospital-but nurses and orderlies are trained to sniff out anyone who doesn't belong. You belong, right, James?

Just tell yourself you belong and you'll act like it. Just don't be a pussy, James, and you'll be fine.

He still couldn't get over that word. His friends used it in casual conversation all the time, usually out at bars or while watching lumberjack competitions on Spike TV.

He'd never been called one. And to be called that name by a woman, his boss, on a regular basis, was something

James still hadn't come to grips with.

Once this task was complete, he was going home, getting under the covers and sleeping. Tomorrow he'd be joining his father on a golf outing with Ted Allen, and he'd need to be up for that. James knew his father had cashed in a favor in getting Ted Allen to hire him at the Dispatch.

That didn't bother him much. Everybody had connections and used them. That was the point. Besides, wouldn't you rather get a recommendation from a close friend than have to slog through identical resumes from overachieving losers? That he got stuck working for Paulina Cole was something totally unexpected. Unlike any boss he'd ever worked for, Paulina actually scared the piss out of him.

James felt the thin camera in his pocket. Point. Click.

Done.

That's it. This guy from IT, Wilmer or Wilbur or Wilfred or something, showed him how to use it. Idiot proof was his term. James laughed at that. Wondered who the idiots were they had to design it for.

He knew the tip was good. Paulina's tips always were.

And while James was used to Paulina's volcanic temperament and mercurial attitude, James had noticed something different about her the past few weeks. Her moods had swung heavier, her demeanor more vicious, her attitudes more severe. Like she was gearing up for something big, steeling herself. Though he'd been running errands for her for going on a year now, she was never totally candid with him. He knew she was working on something big, but she refused to share the details.

In good time Jamesy, she'd said.

He counted off the doors as he walked down the hall.

703.

704.

705.

706.

He was there.

But the door was closed.

It wasn't supposed to be closed. He hadn't expected it

to be closed. He assumed it would be wide open, people coming and going, nobody noticing a thing. But opening a hospital door, man, someone would definitely notice that. If not a nurse then another patient. He couldn't see inside. A curtain was drawn. If a nurse was in there she'd sure as hell see him, and there was no way he could get it done without drawing suspicion and ruining the whole thing.

James stepped back. Took a breath. Leaned against the wall. He knew this was the very antithesis of what Paulina had advised, but fuck it, he needed a moment to regroup.

What should he do? Open the door, waltz in, pray nobody was in there? Or wait. Maybe someone would open the door and pull the curtain back. Make it easy for him.

A minute passed. Then five more. He was sweating.

He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, saw the leather come away wet and shiny.

Time to sack up, Jim. Show the queen bitch what you're made of.

James stepped in front of the door and reached for the handle. He gripped it, closed his eyes and began to pull.

Just then the door swung outward, nearly knocking

James off his feet. When he regained his balance, a pretty nurse was standing in the doorway. She was staring at

James. His heart was racing. Ohcrap, ohcrap, ohcrap, ohcrap, ohcrap, ohcrap…

Then the nurse smiled, whispered to him.

"Are you here to see Mr. O'Donnell?"

James gulped, managed to eke out a "Yes, ma'am. I'm his nephew."

"That's sweet of you to come. He hasn't had many visitors. Mr. O'Donnell is resting right now," she said.

"But if you want to sit with him, go right ahead."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

The nurse held the door for James. Easy as pie.

When the door eased shut, he stepped around the curtain and saw the man in bed.

He was much older than his picture in the paper.

Thinner, too, his face with a sickly gray pallor. He was breathing steadily, tubes in each nostril, an IV in his arm.

James quickly took the camera out of his pocket.

He whispered, "Say cheese, Jack."