More Deaths Than One (28 page)

Dr. Brewer fell silent.

“What happened to The Sweeper?” Kerry
asked.

“He died. Harrison didn’t want to believe it,
but it’s true. I signed the death certificate myself.”

“How did he die?”

“He slipped away during the night. It
happens.”

Bob frowned. “Why did you sign the death
certificate? Why not Dr. Rutledge?”

Dr. Brewer shook his head reprovingly.
“You’re like Harrison, looking for mysteries where none exist. I
was the doctor of record, that’s all.”

Kerry narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you
actually see his dead body?”

He gave a snort of unamused laughter. “Now
you sound like my wife. In case you’re wondering why I remember him
after all these years, it’s because my wife and I spent half our
married life arguing about him. To answer your question—no, I did
not see the body. I did not need to. My boss, a great doctor, a man
I respect, told me the patient died and asked me to fill out the
death certificate.

“My wife worked for Rutledge as a psychiatric
nurse. She never liked him, said he had a habit of touching the
nurses inappropriately, so when she claimed The Chameleon didn’t
die, that Rutledge kept him locked in a special room, I didn’t take
it seriously.”

Kerry sucked in a breath. “Your wife saw him
after he had supposedly died?”

Dr. Brewer looked at her in disgust. “No. She
said she heard Rutledge talking about a man in a locked room, and
somehow she got it into her head it was The Chameleon. Sally, the
patient’s nurse, told my wife the patient was an amnesiac Dr.
Rutledge kept in a drug-induced hypnotic state. Every day, for
hours on end, they played tapes of what they knew about his life to
help him remember.

“It drove my wife nuts not knowing the truth.
She said if I had double-checked to make certain he died, then she
would have known for sure.”

Kerry lifted her shoulders. “Why did it
bother her so much?”

“My wife was a romantic, enamored with the
idea of a real-life human chameleon. I tried to explain to her it
was physiologically impossible, but she always came back at me with
that old adage about all things being possible. Then she’d add that
we know so little about the human soul, how could we limit it to
what is known.” He smiled. “My wife was a delightful woman, a truly
inspired nurse, and I loved her dearly, but she had that one tiny
loose screw.”

“May we talk to her?” Kerry asked.

“She’s gone. Died of malaria last year.”

“I’m sorry,” Bob and Kerry said at the same
time.

Dr. Brewer bowed his head. “Yeah, me too. I’d
give anything to have one more silly argument with her about the
man in the locked room.”

After a moment of silence, Bob leaned
forward. “Can you give us Sally’s name and address?

The doctor leafed through a small book at his
desk, wrote on a piece of paper, and handed it to him. Sally
Rutledge, it said.

Bob snapped his head up to look at him.

Dr. Brewer nodded. “Yep. Married the boss. My
wife always claimed Sally blackmailed him into it, that Sally knew
where all the bodies were buried, so to speak, and had demanded
marriage in exchange for her silence. But that simply is not true.
Rutledge fell madly in love with her the first time he laid eyes on
her.” He rose. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have paperwork to
do.”

He ushered them out of the clinic.

To Bob’s relief, the cabdriver was
waiting.

***

They spent the night in a hotel not far from
the Manila airport. Bob watched the gentle rise and fall of Kerry’s
chest as she slept. Then he too fell asleep.

He dreamt.

In his dream, he struggled to sit up.

A nurse hurried over to him. “Lie still,” she
said, smiling. “The doctor will be here any moment.”

Bob looked around at the white room and the
IV snaking into his arm. “Where am I?”

“You had an accident. You’re in a
hospital.”

“I know, but where?”

“The Philippines.”

“Oh, I thought maybe I had been shipped
state-side.” He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the
doctor, a prematurely bald American with the face of a choirboy,
peered down at him.

The doctor smiled, showing large teeth. “Hi,
Bob. I’m Dr. Johnson. How are you feeling?”

“Fair.”

“Do you know why you’ve been
hospitalized?”

“We hit a mine, I think.”

“Very good,” Dr. Johnson said with a
heartiness that made Bob wince. “You had a concussion, a minor head
trauma, but I need to ask you some questions to make sure you’re
okay. What’s your name?”

“Robert Stark.”

“Where were you born?”

“Denver. When can I go home?”

“Relax and take it easy. You’ll be back in
Saigon soon enough.”

“No, I mean when can I go back to Denver?” An
agonizing pain shot through his skull. He clamped his lips together
to keep from emitting a groan.

“What’s the hurry?” the doctor asked. “Got a
girlfriend waiting for you?”

“No.”

“What about family?”

“No family. My father died when I was
fifteen, my mother died of cancer three years later, and I haven’t
seen my brother since her funeral.”

“Considering all that, I can’t imagine why
you want to go back to Denver.”

Bob averted his gaze so he wouldn’t have to
look at the doctor’s cheery face. He tried to think of the good
things that had happened to him, but the memories surfacing through
the pain were all unpleasant. Hadn’t there been good times? There
must have been, but he couldn’t recall any.

“Maybe I won’t go back to Denver,” he said,
suddenly feeling very tired. “But you still haven’t answered my
question. When can I go back to the United States?”

Dr. Johnson raised his eyebrows. “You mean a
medical discharge?”

“Yes.”

The doctor grinned. “There’s nothing
seriously wrong with you.”

Bob shook his head slightly, trying to clear
away the confusion. A bright white pain stabbed him behind the
eyes. He lay still until it dimmed.

“If there’s nothing seriously wrong with me,”
he asked finally, “why am I here?”

“I told you,” Dr. Johnson said with
exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a small, not very bright
child, “you had a minor head trauma.”

“I know, but why am I here in the
Philippines? We were close to Qui Nhon when the truck got blown up.
If I had such a minor injury, why wasn’t I taken to the American
hospital there?”

“You were, but then they transferred you
here. Head injuries can be very complicated, you know.”

It still didn’t make sense to Bob, but
nothing the military did made sense to him.

“You’ve been unconscious for five days.” Dr.
Johnson smiled broadly, as if telling joke. “We wondered if you
were ever going to wake.”

“Five days! I thought you said there was
nothing seriously wrong with me.”

“There isn’t. You sustained no major physical
injuries, but because your brain had been jostled, it shut off your
conscious mind to concentrate all its energies on healing itself.”
Dr. Johnson smiled, looking beatific. “You might sustain minor
memory loss, and you will probably be confused for a while, but
other than that, you should be okay.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

Dr. Johnson shrugged.

“And they’re still sending me back to active
duty?”

“It’s not like you’re being sent into combat.
According to your records, you’re a supply clerk.”

“But still . . .”

Dr. Johnson’s brows drew together. “It’s out
of my hands.” Then his eyes brightened and his voice reverted to
its former cheeriness. “However, I did arrange for you to spend a
few days at Nha Trang to recuperate before you return to
Saigon.”

Patting Bob’s shoulder, he said in a
self-satisfied manner, “You’ll do fine.”

Bob jerked himself awake. The headache he’d
felt in the dream remained with him.

Chapter 25

Bob stood in line next to Kerry, ticket in
one hand, bag in the other, waiting to board the plane for Denver.
His head ached, making it hard for him to figure out what to do.
Would their luck hold? Though long and tedious, the flight from
Manila to Los Angeles had been without incident.

The line shuffled forward a few feet. He had
to decide. Now.

He touched Kerry’s arm. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

Seeing the young man in front of them turn
around and give him a sharp-eyed look, he said, “I need to make a
phone call.”

Kerry gave him a penetrating glance, then
stepped out of line. Together they walked casually away from the
gate.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Another one of
your feelings?”

“Not a feeling. I keep remembering that Sam
and Ted were at the airport when I landed in Denver before. Luck
saved me then, but I can’t count on things working out a second
time.”

She drew in a breath. “Do you think they’re
going to be waiting for us?”

“No, I don’t. I—” Pain stabbed him behind the
eyes.

“We should find a place to spend the night,”
she said briskly. “Or what’s left of it, anyway. You need to get
some rest.”

She led the way outside. They climbed aboard
a shuttle bus that took them to a nearby hotel where they got a
room.

Lying in Kerry’s arms, feeling her fingers
gently massaging his scalp, Bob fell asleep. When he woke in the
morning, the pain that had been with him since Manila was but a
dull ache.

***

Kerry took the first turn at the wheel.

“Not bad for a junker,” she said as she
whipped the 1970 Volkswagen bug past a pickup truck. “But orange?
Wouldn’t it have been better to buy something less conspicuous? Of
course, with all the rust spots it’s more of a burnt-orange, but
still . . .”

Bob smiled. “It’s less conspicuous than that
red gas guzzler you picked out. Besides, the bug is the one car I
know how to drive.”

“Do you still think this is necessary?”

“Not necessary, perhaps, but prudent. The
power ISI has is too great for me to want to take any chances. And
we have the time. I don’t want to proceed with my investigation
until I’ve gone through Harrison’s papers, and it will be a few
days before we get them.”

Kerry chewed on her lower lip. “It looks as
if there was a conspiracy between the military and ISI.”

“Not a conspiracy. Business as usual. The
government, including the military, works for the multi-national
corporations, and the multinational corporations work for the
people who lend them money to stay in business.”

“Are you saying ISI is part of the
government?”

“It’s possible. Ever since the Freedom of
Information Act, the most secret members of the intelligence
community no longer work directly for the government, but for
private corporations like ISI. Private corporations are not
required to divulge information about their activities, and they
are not subject to the scrutiny or control of the politicians.”

Kerry shivered. “My parents raised me to
believe the government has our best interest at heart, but I guess
it isn’t true.”

“Governments have no hearts, and our
interests are at the bottom of the list of their concerns.”

A semi roared up alongside them, rocking the
bug. Kerry gripped the steering wheel tightly until it passed.

“I can’t stop thinking about the poor guy in
the locked room. It must have been horrible for him, being forced
to endure who-knows-what.” She shuddered. “That Rutledge person is
a nasty piece of work.”

“He didn’t act nasty,” Bob said, remembering.
“He seemed more like a bluff and hearty Boy Scout leader than a
Svengali.”

A confused look darted across her face. “What
are you talking about? You told me you didn’t know him.”

“That’s what I thought.” The dull ache in the
back of his head throbbed with an insistent beat.

She laid a hand on his knee. Her warmth
seeped into him, and the beat slowed to a more manageable
cadence.

“What happened to you in Manila? You were
fine when we checked into the hotel, but ever since then you’ve
been a bit distant.”

“I had a dream that night.”

“The jungle?”

“No. The hospital after the incident with the
mine. Every detail was so clear, it seemed real, and I recognized
the doctor. I knew him as Dr. Johnson, but he’s the man pictured in
the newspaper article Dr. Willet showed me in Omaha. Dr. Jeremy
Rutledge.”

“Rutledge? Oh, no!” After a moment she said,
“It was a dream. Maybe your subconscious was playing a trick on
you. Or maybe your headache muddled you.”

“I wish that were true, but the fact is, Dr.
Johnson and Dr. Rutledge are the same man.”

She stared at him a fraction of a second too
long; the VW strayed into the next lane. She yanked it back into
place and focused her eyes on the road for several miles.

When she spoke, her voice was almost
inaudible. “What do you think he wanted with you?”

“My memories, of course.”

“Oh, right. I forgot about your other self. I
don’t get it. How could he steal your memories and give them to
someone else?”

“Drugs, I imagine, and hypnosis. Technically,
he didn’t steal my memories since I still have them. He borrowed
them.”

“You act so blasé about it. Aren’t you angry?
I sure am.” She pounded the steering wheel. “What right did he have
to do that to you? Who made him God?”

Bob stared out the window at the barren
hills. “I suppose I should be angry, but I don’t remember any of
it. Besides, this headache is sapping all my energy.”

“He probably did that, too,” Kerry said
darkly. “I bet he gave you a post-hypnotic suggestion or aversion
therapy or something to make you sick whenever you thought of going
home and to make you horribly sick if you went.”

“You could be right.” Bob massaged his
temples. “Now that I think about it, I started getting headaches
even before I left Thailand, but the headaches I got in Denver were
debilitating at times. I’ve never in my life had headaches that
bad, not even after the mine incident.”