When She Was Bad Part 9

At the neighboring table, the burly psych techs exchanged knowing glances. "Don't they make a cute couple?" said Wally.

Patty grinned. "Multiples in love," she said. "Imagine the possibilities."

6.

The message-waiting b.u.t.ton on the in-room telephone was blinking when Lilith returned to the observation suite after lunch to wait out the last few hours of her captivity-the less contact with the staff, she and Max had agreed, the slimmer the chances of their respective masquerades being uncovered.

Lilith picked up the handset, pressed the lighted b.u.t.ton, and was informed by the switchboard operator that Dr. Cogan had called her again-twice. Lilith thanked her. Yeah, I'll get right back to her, she thought. When h.e.l.l needs a Zamboni.

She hung up the phone and lay down, looking up at the ceiling. The acoustic tiles were white and textured like the surface of the moon-Lilith discovered that if she held her breath and let her eyes drift out of focus, it felt as if, instead of lying on her back looking up, she was skimming low over that desolate moonscape, looking down at a land of barren white rocks and sharp black shadows....

Four o'clock. Another hour to kill. Max's skin was beginning to crawl. He sat up, looked around the little blue room for something to occupy his mind. Lyssy's books, most of them Christmas or birthday presents from Dr. Al, were chronologically arrayed on a recessed shelf, ranging left to right from the Suesses and Sendaks suitable for the three-year-old mentality with which Lyssy had arrived, through the Robert Louis Stevensons and Harry Potters of his so-called childhood, to the required high school reading-Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the rest of that aging canon.

But there was nothing Max might have chosen for himself. No Stephen King, no Thomas Harris, no true crime or graphic novels-in short, nothing to engage the interest of your average American adolescent, not to mention a thirty-one-no, thirty-two- year-old sociopathic alter.

Ditto for the pitiful collection of PG-rated videos Lyssy had accrued over the last few years. Charlotte's Web, Old Yeller, The Princess Bride, Time Bandits. Max tried watching television for a little while, but sitting there staring at the screen was too much like being in co-consciousness. He limped over to the window. From here, he could see a sliver of the tiled roof of the director's residence peeking through the arboretum pines.

His thoughts drifted back to the last time he and Lyssy had been over there. It had been, what, six, eight weeks ago? The girl, Alison, had taken Lyssy up to her room, ordered his attendant to wait outside. She and Lyssy sat together on her little bed while she gushed on and on about her new boyfriend, some lummox from the football team. From her point of view Lyssy might as well have been one of the cute little stuffed animals propped up against the headboard, but life-size, with a marvelous ability to nod on cue.

Things would be different tonight, though, Max promised himself. His hand found its way into his trouser pocket and he began fondling himself through the fabric, thinking about how soon all that sweet pink virginal softness would be his. And if revenge was indeed the priority, it would be doubly-no, triply sweet. Because the suffering he'd be inflicting directly on Corder, the fear, the pain, even the man's death, would be chump change compared to the sheer delight of drinking in Dr. Al's helplessness and humiliation as he watched his wife and daughter being raped and tortured. That, as they say in the credit card commercials, was going to be priceless.

And it would be only the beginning. Though their plan called for Lilith and Max to lie low with her biker friends until the heat died down, afterward there would be plenty of opportunity to settle old scores, and plenty of old scores to settle. Pender, for instance, the fat old G-man who'd gunned him down three years ago, costing him his leg and very nearly his life-Max would definitely be looking him up.

Then there was Dr. Irene Cogan, who'd almost become the last of the strawberry blonds to go through the processing plant. But Max, after breaking out of the Monterey County Jail, hadn't kidnapped her and brought her up to Scorned Ridge for her hair, but rather for her professional services. He'd been having trouble controlling the other alters-that's how he'd been captured in the first place-and figured that with the help of a good psychiatrist, he could tighten his hegemony over the system.

And like everyone he'd ever trusted, she'd turned on him. Taken his confidences and ground them into the dirt. Talk about a breach of professional ethics-just thinking about her had his free hand tightening around the hilt of an imaginary knife.

But grasping even an imaginary knife was a mistake-suddenly, in his mind's eye, Max pictured Kinch sitting up in the darkness like a corpse rising from an open coffin, and his half-hearted erection wilted like a week-old stalk of celery....

A telephone rang. From the twilight land halfway between dreaming and waking, Lilith reached out and fumbled the receiver off the hook. "H'lo?" she murmured, cotton-mouthed from sleep.

"Lily?" A not-unfamiliar female voice jarred Lilith into full consciousness.

Oh f.u.c.k, she thought. "Dr. Cogan?"

"Yes, I-Wait a minute, who is this?"

Double f.u.c.k-Lilith realized suddenly that she'd used her own voice. She faked a cough, tried again. "Sorry, I must have had something stuck in my throat."

She waited for a response, heard only a puzzled silence, hastened to fill it. "Listen, Dr. Cogan, I really want to tell you about everything that's been happening, but now's not a good time, 'cause..."She glanced at the clock-radio bolted to the nightstand: 5:15 P.M.-she'd slept the afternoon away. "'Cause I'm just getting ready for dinner. Maybe I could call you back later tonight. How's that? Or come to think of it, tomorrow morning'd be even better. I'll call you back first thing tomorrow morning, I promise."

Lilith hung up without waiting for a reply. The phone began ringing again; when it stopped, she took the receiver off the hook and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face.

7.

After showering, Max dried and powdered his stump. He loathed the sight of it-the way the surgeon had drawn a flap of skin underneath the femur and reattached it to the back of the thigh with a sort of tucked-in curl made it look a little like a shrimp's head.

His newest prosthetic leg was handsome, though, with a locking knee-joint and a contoured pink calf instead of a stark t.i.tanium rod. It was held on by suction, too-no more c.u.mbersome harness. And once he was dressed (Lyssy's favorite outfit, comfortable chinos and a dove-gray corduroy shirt, gray socks, black sneakers) there was no way anybody could tell him apart from a two-legged man-at least as long as he was standing still.

Just after five o'clock, Wally arrived. He'd changed from his hospital whites into baggy shorts and a green bowling shirt worn unb.u.t.toned over a ribbed wife-beater undershirt. Sandals, no socks-the Big Lebowski look. "Happy birthday, dude," he said, producing a small gift-wrapped box from behind his back. "That's from the whole staff-we all chipped in."

Max tore it open greedily-it was an MP3 player, with earphones and software. "Wow," he Lyssy'd. "Wow, thanks, this is-I don't know what to say."

"We thought it would come in handy in-Well, you know."

In jail, thought Max. Yeah, I know.

Patty and Lilith were waiting for them at the arboretum gate. Patty too had changed out of her whites, into a denim shirt and wide-bottomed jeans with the seat worn shiny. Lilith was wearing the tight hip-hugger jeans she'd arrived in, and a dark-brown, V-neck, cashmere sweater that showed both her figure and her glossy brown hair to best advantage.

Patty gave Lyssy a hug and wished him happy birthday. Lilith kept her eyes trained on the ground as she wished him the same. Little-girl voice, diffident posture-but was it a disguise, or had the alter switched back to her original personality since lunch? Once again, Max realized that he had no way of knowing for sure.

"We never did work out that pa.s.sword, did we?" he whispered out of the side of his mouth, as he and the girl walked on ahead together, trailed at a distance of ten yards or so by their escorts.

"What pa.s.sword?" said the girl. "Who are you, anyway?"

8.

Irene had finally managed to contact Lily from the taxicab, she told Pender when she returned to the hotel. Only it wasn't Lily, she went on to explain, it couldn't have been. "She called me Dr. Cogan. She's never called me Dr. Cogan-not once in all these years. It's been Dr. Irene this, Dr. Irene that from the time she was four."

"Dr. Cogan is probably what Corder calls you," suggested Pender, who was wearing his horseblanket-plaid slacks and a periwinkle polo shirt. "Maybe she picked it up from him."

"And the way she rushed through the call, like she couldn't get rid of me fast enough? I'm telling you, it was Lilith, it had to have been. And the only reason she'd be trying to trick me into thinking she's Lily is if she had something up her sleeve-something like, say, escaping?"

"Well gosh, Irene, in that case maybe we ought to get her moved to some kind of maximum-security facility where-Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered-she's already in one."

She blew him a juicy raspberry. "Not funny, Pender."

"M'dear, you spent half of last night talking my ear off about how hard a time you were having letting go of Lily, but how you knew it was the right thing for both of you. You sure this isn't just more of the same?"

"I don't know, maybe you're right, Pen. Only.... "Sitting on the edge of the bed, scarcely aware of what she was doing, Irene had unwrapped a complimentary pillow mint and popped it into her mouth before she remembered she couldn't stand the taste of peppermint. Genteelly, she spat it out into a tissue, and tossed the tissue into the wastebasket.

"Only what?" prompted Pender.

"If I were Al Corder, I'd want to be told."

"Call him, then."

"I tried, but he must have left for the day-all I got was his voice mail. They won't give me his home number either-it's unlisted."

Pender's cetaceous brow creased in thought. "I could be missing something here, but if Corder's already left for the day, maybe he's not the person you need to talk to. Our flight's at ten-thirty, right?"

"Yes, but we're supposed to be at the airport no later than nine thirty. Oh, and I got us an extension on the checkout time, but we still have to be out of our rooms by six-thirty at the latest or we'll get charged for an extra night."

"Which gives us a couple hours to kill. We might as well stop by the hospital after dinner, see if we can w.a.n.gle a visit with Lily. If not, maybe we could talk to whoever's in charge, give 'em a heads-up. At the very least, it'll be one less thing for you to worry about. How's that for a plan?"

"How about before dinner," Irene suggested.

"Fair enough," said Pender. "Can I have your other mint?"

CHAPTER FIVE.

1.

Al Corder changed into khaki slacks and a soft old blue-and-brown-checked flannel shirt, worn tails-out to cover his paunch, then he transferred the contents of his pockets-wallet, coins, fifty bucks in a $-shaped money-clip, a hospital pager, and a Swiss Army knife-from the suit pants to either the khakis or the top of the bureau. As he tossed the suit into the dry-cleaning pile in the closet, Cheryl emerged from the bathroom in her slip and began rummaging through her bureau.

"You done in the bathroom?" he asked her, patting her plump rear as he brushed past her.

"Yeah, go ahead."

But he quickly doubled back, stooped in a Groucho Marx crouch, to ogle the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s dangling fatly beneath the thin fabric of her slip as she bent over to search the bottom drawer of her bureau. "Why, I haven't seen a pair of melons like that since they closed the farmers' market." He waggled his eyebrows and tapped the ash from an imaginary cigar.

"Steady there," said Cheryl, but she allowed her husband a quick fondle before changing into a dark blue skirt and a white cotton blouse with a moderate neckline-over the last year or so, she'd caught Lyssy staring at her chest with more than pa.s.sing interest. She crossed the hall and rapped at Alison's door. "You almost ready, honey?"

Alison opened the door wearing below-the-navel jeans and a skintight sleeveless top that barely reached the bottom of her rib cage. "Oh, Allie, you're not wearing that, are you?"

The girl looked down at herself. "Well, yeah, Mom-I appear to be," she observed drily.

"At least put on a sweater."

"I'm not cold."

"It's not your temperature I'm worried about," her mother retorted.

While mother and daughter fought their age-old battle, father ran an electric razor over his five-o'clock shadow, then splashed on some Old Spice aftershave, which he preferred to the designer brands his wife and daughter continued to give him every Father's Day. Cheryl and Alison were still arguing in the hallway when he left the bedroom. "Holy cow, is that what you're wearing?" he asked Alison guilelessly.

"I'm not a baby anymore!" she shouted. "Why don't the two of you just grow up!"

2.

It took Max a few seconds to recover from his near-coronary over Lilith's ostensible failure to recognize him.

"Just messin' with your head," she told him with a wink and a grin.

"If you ever do that again, I swear I'll-"

But the psych techs had caught up to them. "Let's get moving, Lyssy," said Wally. "You don't want to be late to your own party."

The sky was Portland pewter, with a fitful summer breeze rustling through the pines as the patients and their escorts hiked through the arboretum. Wally unlocked the gate; the little procession ducked through the arch-topped door set into the spike-topped brick wall.

Everything felt different on the other side. The openness, the wide lawn, the heavenly smell of new-mown gra.s.s, the rusting swing set, the clothes drying on the line-a delighted Max spread his arms and turned in a clumsy circle, like a Bizarro-World version of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. "Wa-ow," he said-the two-syllable wow was the cornerstone of his Christopher Walken impression.

"Wow what?" said Lilith.

Max glanced around to be sure the psych techs weren't watching. "No walls," he whispered. "No f.u.c.kin' walls."

Silver cardboard letters spelling out Happy Birthday dangled crazily from a string across the top of the front doorway of the director's residence; it was the director himself who answered the bell. "The gals are in the kitchen preparing the, ah, birthday repast," Alan Corder announced as he ushered the four of them inside. Lilith said she wanted to help, so Patty accompanied her into the kitchen. Soon, Max mouthed to Lilith as they parted; she nodded curtly and turned away.

But just how soon, not even Max could have predicted. The menfolk had just repaired to the living room, which was decorated with helium balloons and crepe-paper party streamers. Corder was still at the sideboard fixing their drinks-orange soda on the rocks for Wally and "Lyssy"; a weak Scotch and soda for himself-when Patty and Lilith pa.s.sed the living room on their way upstairs.

"Everything all right?" called Corder.

"Lily's feeling a little queasy," replied Patty. "Mrs. Corder said for us to use the guest bathroom."

Five, ten minutes later-Max was on the sofa sipping his soda; Corder and Wally were in the matching green leather recliners that flanked the fireplace-Lilith returned alone. "Patty had to take a dump. She said for me to wait for her down here," she announced as she plopped onto the sofa next to Max, breathing hard.

d.a.m.n, he thought, be a little more careful with your language, would you? Take a dump was pure Lilith, not like Lily at all. But Wally and Corder didn't seem to notice anything amiss-they were too busy talking shop. Without mentioning names, Wally seemed to be complaining about one of the other psych techs, who was not, in Wally's opinion, pulling his fair share of the load. As Corder promised to look into it, Lilith slipped something into the crack between the sofa cushions. Max shifted position to cover the motion with his thigh as he reached down and felt- A knife. A steak knife with a sharp serrated blade a good four inches in length. Obviously Lilith had purloined it from a cabinet drawer while she was in the kitchen earlier. But as his fingers closed around the handle, Max sensed Kinch stirring in the darkness. Quickly Max slid the knife point-first into the front pocket of his chinos, and the stirring subsided.

And now the ball was in his court. "Hey, Wally?"

"Yeah, Lyss?"

"I think maybe I have to go to the little boy's room." Infantile, sure-but very Lyssy.

"You can use the one off the kitchen," said Corder.