Nightjack Read Free Page B

Ganooch. Pace said he’d heard the name before, in the papers, but that was all. Inside himself something shuddered with a crazy glee.
    The detectives had a prescribed way of interviewing him. All three pairs asked the same questions in the same fashion. First about the Ganooch, then what they called the Ganucci crime family. Then they mentioned the fire at the restaurant and Jane’s death, and then they talked about his burns. As soon as he started discussing his scars they asked him if he knew how to use a serrated Trident field knife with a stacked micarta handle.
    Pace said he didn’t even know what a serrated Trident field knife with a stacked micarta handle was or how to use one or where he might get one. The cops always leaned in when he said that, searching his eyes. He stared back at them, complacent, bearing his truth, and again there would be that tremor within himself, somebody giggling.
    The detectives would thank him for his time and shake his hand. All six of them eventually. It seemed very important that they each make some kind of contact and squeeze his hand as hard as they could, trying to crush it. Every time he let out a pained gasp and flinched away. The cops would try to hide their smug smiles, but they couldn’t keep the arrogance out of their faces.
    Once he woke up in his room seated at the table with these strong plastic cuffs tying his ankles to the legs of the metal chair. Dr. Brandt sat on the other side of the table watching him, jotting notes, already involved with a conversation that Pace was only now coming in on. She said, “You don’t remember?”
    “What don’t I remember?”
    “Why you’re here.”
    “No.”
    “We think you’ve...hurt several people.”
    “You think so? You don’t know?”
    “At this point the police aren’t certain. That’s why they’ve been interviewing you so frequently.”
    “Isn’t it a violation of my civil rights to be held here then?”
    Dr. Brandt smiled at Pace, that same condescension mixed with that same something else. Jesus, she must’ve really practiced it. Her face, so lovely it had become a kind of devastation. Between moments of falling in love with her he thought, this lady is going to destroy me, or I’m going to snuff her. He looked over the side of the table at the curve of her thigh beneath the plaited skirt. The pulse in his ankles throbbed against the plastic cuffs. “You’re under extreme emotional duress. And you signed a voluntary committal.”
    “I did? When?”
    “When you were brought in.”
    “While I was under extreme emotional duress? Wouldn’t that nullify the ‘by choice’ quotient of the word ‘voluntary’?”
    Dr. Brandt said nothing, but her smile reached her eyes and grew more authentic.
    “I think you folks are definitely exploiting the situation and abusing my civil rights,” Pace said.
    “Do you feel persecuted?”
    “Only to the extent that I’m currently tied to a chair.”
    “That’s for your own protection as well as our staff and the other patients.”
    He touched his throat and felt the bruises and needle pricks there. He thought if Jane were here right now, she’d probably break Dr. Brandt’s jaw. It was a soothing image for a second, until the stink of burning flesh filled his nostrils. He turned his head aside and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Dr. Brandt was in a different position. Time had clearly passed. He couldn’t tell how much. He wondered if it was the same day, the same conversation. The drugs they were pumping into him were fouling up his sense of time. It was called aphasia , and they were giving it to him.
    He took the chance that only a minute had passed by. “Who am I supposed to have hurt?”
    “I’m not at liberty to say.”
    “Who is?”
    She cocked her head. “Pardon?”
    “Who is at liberty to say?”
    “I’m not at lib—” She cut herself short, caught her bottom lip between her teeth and worked it back and forth A defensive, delaying