Chimera Read online

  “Christina Smollett,” Chapel said, glad as always that he had Angel to smooth the way for him. Without her it might have taken hours to get this far.

  “Christina? We have a Kristin Smollett,” the nurse told him. “Huh. Ruth? Ruth!”

  An older woman in a starched white uniform came to the window of the nurses’ station and peered out with sharp eyes.

  “Ruth,” the male nurse asked, “Christina Smollett. Is that the same as Kristin?”

  “Yes,” Ruth told him, handing him a manila folder. “She’ll be in her room this time of day. Dinner’s in an hour; be sure to be done with your visit by then, sir.”

  “It shouldn’t take that long,” Chapel assured her.

  The male nurse led him down a long corridor. He leafed through the folder while they walked. It looked like it was Christina Smollett’s medical record.

  “Funny,” the nurse said. “I’ve been working here six years. I always thought her name was Kristin.”

  “She never corrected you?” Chapel asked.

  “You haven’t visited her before, have you?” the nurse inquired. He caught Chapel trying to read over his shoulder, and he snapped the manila folder closed.

  “No,” Chapel admitted.

  The nurse gave him a shrewd look, but then he shrugged. “Somebody like Kristin, somebody who’s been taking antipsychotic medication for a long time, it kind of . . . eats away at them. It keeps them from acting out, and it makes the disturbed thoughts go away. But it doesn’t leave a whole lot else in there.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Looking at her medication history, it’s like reading a book on the history of nasty pills. The stuff we give here now is okay, it’s all new wonder drugs. But back in the eighties she was mainlining Thorazine, and that stuff turns you into a zombie. I’d be pretty surprised if she can even remember her name.”

  MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:07

  The nurse unlocked a door and gestured for Chapel to head into the room beyond. “I’ll be out here when you’re done, so I can check you back out.”

  Chapel thanked him and stepped inside.

  The room was small but not cramped, pleasant without exactly being comfortable. There was a bed and a dresser inside, and one window that looked like it couldn’t be opened. Christina Smollett was sitting on the bed. She might have been fifty or seventy. Her hair was long and gray, and it looked like it had been carefully brushed on one side and left tangled and knotted on the other. She wore a sweat suit, and she was staring at the one piece of ornamentation in the entire room, a picture taped to the wall. The picture was of Tom Selleck, a twinkle in his eye and a cocky grin half hidden behind his famous mustache.

  She didn’t move at all when Chapel came in. She didn’t seem aware of his presence. He walked over in front of her, not wanting to block her view of the picture but needing to get her attention. “Ms. Smollett?” he asked. “Christina?”

  She blinked when he said her name, but didn’t move her head. Her lips were curled in a simple smile. “He always looks so nice, in his shows,” she said. “Like he would be friendly if you met him.”

  She sighed happily.

  Chapel took a deep breath. “Christina, my name is Chapel. I need to ask you some questions. I need to know if you’ve ever met a Dr. Helen Bryant or a Dr. William Taggart.”

  She stuck out her lower lip and shook her head in the negative. “I know lots of doctors, though, and they don’t always tell me their names. I’ve known a whole bunch of doctors. Doctors like me. They say I’m a perfect patient.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Chapel told her. “How about Franklin Hayes? He’s a judge. Have you ever met a judge?”

  “Oh, no. There would have been a judge at my commitment hearing. But they didn’t take me to that. Mommy said they didn’t want to upset me. I used to be very easy to upset.” She looked back at the picture on the wall. “Do you think he would be nice, if you met him in person?”

  “Tom Selleck?”

  “Is that his name? I . . . I have trouble with names sometimes. I’m sorry. I’m being a terrible hostess. Can I offer you a cup of coffee? If you’re hungry, I could probably make something.”

  Chapel glanced around the room by reflex, but of course there was no coffeemaker in the room, much less any kind of kitchen facilities.

  This was going nowhere. Christina Smollett’s mind was mush, to be callous about it. She wasn’t there. He took the kill list from his pocket and ran down the rest of the names, but she just shook her head at the sound of each one.

  What on earth did this woman have to do with chimeras and kill lists and CIA secret projects? He couldn’t see any connection at all. More to the point, why would the detainees—the chimeras, as he was coming to think of them—want to kill this woman in the first place? She was no danger to them or anybody else.

  If she had ever known a secret, a secret that could damage national security, it was long gone.

  “You’re very handsome,” she said, and looked down at her hands. A blush spread across her cheeks. “I don’t see a lot of white people in here. Most of the nurses are Spanish or Negroes.”

  “ . . . okay,” Chapel said. “Christina, it was nice meeting you, but I think I should go now. Be . . . well.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and for once Angel was no help. “Be safe.”

  “You look nice. Nice and handsome. That’s a very good combination in a gentleman caller. I don’t get as many gentleman callers as I did when I was younger,” she told him. “Will you come again, Mr. Selleck? Please tell me you’ll come and see me again sometime. I’d like that very much.”

  Chapel stood up and walked over to the door. “Perhaps, Christina. I’m, uh, very busy with work right now, and—”

  “You know what they say, a young lady with no social connections is at high risk of recidivism.” It sounded like something a doctor might have said to her once. “I could backslide. I could lose all the wonderful progress I’ve made if I don’t get to see people sometimes. If I don’t get to talk to people, get social stimulation, if I—”

  She stopped talking then.

  Her face went white and her eyes very wide.

  Chapel looked down and saw she had grabbed his arm. His left arm. Her fingers squeezed at the silicone that was wrapped around the motors there.

  She grabbed the fingers of his artificial hand and brought them up to her face to look at them more closely. And then she started to scream. Piercing, hysterical cries of utter terror.

  “You’re not real! You’re a robot! You’re a robot!”

  Chapel pressed up against the wall to one side of the door as Christina ran around the room, grabbing the blankets off her bed, tearing the picture of Tom Selleck off the wall. She held them close to her like armor, like they could protect her.

  “He’s a robot,” she shrieked as the nurse came into the room. “He’s not real! Don’t let him touch me. Don’t let him put that thing inside me! Don’t let him touch me!”

  The nurse stared at Chapel as he took Christina’s shoulders and tried to calm her down.

  “I have an artificial arm,” Chapel tried to explain. “A prosthetic. She grabbed it and—and—”

  “Just go. Get out—Ruth can check you out,” the nurse said. He turned to Christina and tried to shush her, his hands stroking her arms.

  “You’re not real! You’re a machine man!” she shouted.

  Chapel hurried out i
nto the hall and down toward the nurses’ station, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Christina wasn’t running after him. At the station the nurse named Ruth leaned out through her window. She looked at him, then down the hall toward Christina’s room.

  “I, uh,” Chapel said. “I seem to have—”

  “This is a psychiatric hospital, sir,” Ruth told him. “It happens. It’s best if you just leave now.”

  “Not a problem,” Chapel said. He signed the form she put in front of him and headed for the locked doors that led off the ward.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:16

  Julia’s receptionist was taking advantage of this very weird day to catch up on her filing. Portia Artiz loved her job, but she didn’t know what to make of any of the things that had happened so far. The morning had been perfectly normal, a parade of dogs and cats coming through the front room, phone calls and forms to be filled out. Then Julia had said she was going to her mom’s place for lunch and everything had just gone weird.

  First Julia had called to tell Portia to cancel all her appointments, but she wouldn’t explain why. She’d been crying on the phone and Portia begged her to say why, but Julia had a way of not letting anybody in. Portia blamed that on her mother, who everybody said was such a saint but the couple of times Portia met her she’d been a real frosty bitch.

  Oh, man, she shouldn’t even think things like that. Julia’s mom was dead, attacked by some weirdo looking for drugs. The very thought made Portia’s skin crawl. They got junkies in the office all the time, looking to score from the supply of animal tranquilizers they kept in a closet at the back of the office. Most of them were scrawny little guys, no threat to anybody but themselves. They were more annoying than dangerous—they came up with the craziest stories about why their pets needed the drugs really bad, right away, and they just didn’t give up. Half of Portia’s job was getting rid of them, threatening to call the police if they didn’t leave. What if one of those guys was as jacked up and dangerous as the one who got Julia’s mom, though? Portia shivered as she bent over the filing cabinet.

  Someone rapped on the glass door behind her, and Portia jumped right into the air. She gave out a little squeak and turned to see a man standing at the door, a big guy with a smile on his face. Probably another junkie, she thought, until he held up a police badge and pressed it against the glass.

  He started laughing and Portia realized she must look hilarious, jumping straight in the air like that. He chuckled wildly and she couldn’t help herself, she had to join in. She giggled behind her hand and shook her head as she opened the door. “You scared me half to death,” she said, still laughing. “What can I do for you? If this is about that guy who came back here earlier, the one with the concussion—” she started.

  “Nope,” the man said, and then he grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, hard. Portia’s vision started to dim as she struggled for breath. “Not him. I’m here for your boss.”

  MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:17

  While Chapel waited on the roof of Bellevue for his helicopter he spoke to Angel, trying to figure out why someone like Christina Smollett would be a target for the chimeras.

  “She’s definitely not CIA,” Angel said.

  “Definitely. But then why is she on the list?” He crumpled the list in his hand. “Maybe this is all a snipe hunt. Maybe the list is meant to send me down the wrong path. Maybe I’m wasting my time chasing phantoms just so the CIA can have a good laugh at my expense, and—”

  “No. The list is real. The names are all there for a reason,” Angel said, and any trace of flirtation or sultriness was gone from her voice. “Every one of those people is marked for death, including Christina Smollett.”

  Chapel looked up at the sky as if he would see Angel floating there.

  Interesting.

  Very interesting.

  “You know things you aren’t telling me,” he said.

  “Now, sugar,” she said, her voice softening again. “You already knew that. Don’t be silly, there are all kinds of secrets that I can’t—”

  “In fact, you knew all about Christina Smollett before I came here on this fool’s errand,” he said, very carefully.

  “How could I know that?”

  “Because you called here, back when I asked you to let the targets know they were in danger. You knew she was a patient in Bellevue, you must have—because you talked to somebody here. Her doctors, the security guards—somebody.”

  “I . . . spoke to them. Yes.”

  “You didn’t mention that before I got here. You let it be a little surprise for me. We’re not exactly on the same team, are we, Angel?” he asked. “I’m trying to save lives here. I’m trying to stop a bunch of killers. And you’re not on board for that. Not fully. You have another agenda you’re working here, and it’s not about keeping these people alive.”

  He waited for her reply. For her to try to smooth things over, to explain things away. But she didn’t say anything.

  Eventually the helicopter came to pick him up.

  IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+12:22

  Seen from the roof of Bellevue the sky over New York City was a deep blue-black. Up this high Chapel could even see a few stars, though most of them were lost in the haze of light that seemed to rise from the city like mist. On the western horizon a last streak of pink marked where the sun had gone down.

  Out there, Chapel thought, out past that sunset there are three more of the bastards already moving toward their targets. Implacable killers moving fast, like sharks that had caught the scent of blood. And he had just thrown away the best weapon he had to find and fight them.

  “Angel,” he said, “please come in. Angel?”

  There was no response.

  “Angel,” he said, “I’m sorry if I was rude.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Sir?” the pilot asked, leaning across the crew seats of the chopper and shouting over the noise of the engine. “We need to get airborne.”

  Chapel nodded and climbed into his seat. A helmet waited for him there—he picked it up and started to pull it on when he realized he would have to take the hands-free unit out of his ear for it to fit.

  His main connection to Angel. Well, she could reach him through the helicopter’s radio if she felt like talking. He put the hands-free unit in his pocket and pulled the helmet on. Adjusting the microphone, he asked the pilot, “What are your orders?”

  “Sir, I’m to take you to Newark Airport; that’s just the other side of the Hudson River. There you will find a civilian jet waiting for you to take you wherever you want to go. I’m supposed to ask you where that is, sir. They need to file a flight plan before you arrive or you won’t be able to take off.”

  Where indeed? The next names on the list, in geographical order, were in Atlanta and Chicago. He had to pick one and hope that he wasn’t haring off after another distraction. If he chose the wrong one, if he wasted time on another red herring, he could be sentencing an innocent person to death. He pulled the crumpled list from his pocket.

  He tapped his artificial fingers on his knee. The target in Chicago was named Eleanor Pechowski; the one in Atlanta was a Jeremy Funt.

  Angel might have been able to help him. She might have told him which of them was a higher-value target for the chimeras. But Angel wasn’t talking to him.

  He remembered something he’d heard Teddy Roosevelt had said. In a crisis, the best thing you can do is the
right thing. The second best was the wrong thing. The worst thing you could do was nothing.

  He had to make a decision. He had to just pick one.

  “Atlanta,” he told the pilot. “I’m going to Atlanta next.”

  So he could start this whole crazy chase over from scratch.

  “Might as well settle in, sir. This’ll take a little while,” the pilot told him.

  Chapel nodded and looked out his window. They were already lifting off the hospital roof. The helicopter made a wide arc around a skyscraper and headed west, toward the sunset. At least he was making some progress.

  It had been a long day and he felt like closing his eyes, maybe even getting a little sleep. The very first thing they taught him in the army was how to sleep wherever he might be, whenever he got the chance. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down his racing mind. Tried not to think about dead doctors and monsters that were part human and part something else.

  Before he could nod off, though, he felt his phone jump in his pocket. He let it vibrate for a second, wondering who could be calling him. Maybe it was Angel, he thought. Or Hollingshead calling him to bitch him out for the way he’d treated Angel.

  It was neither of them. The phone listed the number as having a 718 area code. He vaguely remembered that was the code for Brooklyn.

  He only knew one person in Brooklyn. “Julia?” he said, answering the call. “Did you think of something that I needed to—”

  “Chapel!” Julia said. She was shouting, but he could barely hear her over the noise of the helicopter. Only a few words got through. “Chapel, you—to come—man here—police—says he’s police—don’t know who else to—think he’s—kill me!”