The Chemist

Not a true psychotic, she hoped. Just a fractured man who didn’t want to give up the person he thought of as himself but who needed the release the darkness gave him.

She felt comfortable with this assessment, and it changed her plan a little. There was a great deal of performance to what she did. For some subjects, the very clinical and emotionless persona worked best – white coat, surgical mask, and shiny stainless steel; for others, it was the threat of the crazed sadist (though Barnaby was always more successful with that play; he had the face and hair for it – unruly spikes of white, I’ve-just-been-electrocuted hair). Every situation was slightly different – some feared the darkness, some the light. She’d been planning to go clinical – it was the most comfortable role in her wheelhouse – but she decided now that Daniel would need to be surrounded by darkness to let that side come to the surface. And Dark Daniel was the one she needed to talk to.

She did a little evasive driving on the way in. If someone had been tracking Daniel’s clothes or possessions, she didn’t want that person coming along any farther on this trip.

She considered the possibilities again for the millionth time. Column one, this was a very elaborate trap. Column two, this was for real and a million lives were on the line. Not to mention her own.

During her long drive, the balance finally shifted to rest solidly on one side. This wasn’t a government agent in her car, she was sure of that. And if he was an innocent citizen, picked at random to draw her out, then they’d already missed their best opportunities to bag her. There hadn’t been one attack, not one attempt to follow her… that she’d seen.

She thought of the mountains of incriminating information on Daniel Beach, and she couldn’t help herself. She was a believer. So she’d better get to work saving lives.

She pulled into the farmhouse drive around eleven, dead tired and starving but 95 percent sure that there was no trail that could lead either the department or de la Fuentes to her doorstep. She looked the house over quickly, checking to see if anyone had broken in (and died, as he or she would have upon opening the door), and then, after disarming her safeguards, she drove the car into the barn. As soon as she’d pulled the barn door shut and reset the “alarm,” she went to work getting Daniel prepped.

All the other tasks were done. She’d bought timers from a Home Depot in Philly and plugged lamps into them in several rooms of the farmhouse; like a traveler leaving for a few weeks, she made certain that the place looked occupied. A radio was plugged into one of the timers, so there would be noise, too. The house was good bait. Most people would clear that before progressing to the dark barn.

The barn would stay dark. She’d constructed a kind of tent in the middle of the barn space that would hide light and muffle sound, while also keeping Daniel completely ignorant of his surroundings. The rectangular structure was about seven feet high, ten feet wide, and fifteen feet long. It was constructed of PVC pipe, black tarps, and bungee cords, and lined inside with two layers of egg foam duct-taped into place. Rough, yes, but more functional than a cave, and she’d handled that in the past.

In the center of the tent was an oversize metal slab with black accordion legs that could be adjusted for height. It had been on display in the barn – for authenticity, no doubt – and was some kind of veterinarian’s operating table. It was bigger than she needed – this vet had been dealing with cows, not kittens – but still quite a find. It was one of the items that had pushed her over the edge into renting this extortionate tourist trap. There was another metal-topped table that she’d set up as a desk with her computer, the monitors, and a tray of things that would hopefully only be props. The IV pole was next to the head of the table, a bag of saline already hanging. A wheeled metal cart from the kitchen was positioned beside the pole; a mass of tiny but ominous-looking syringes were lined up in easy view on a stainless-steel tray. There was a gas mask and a pressure cuff on the wire rack below the syringes.

And of course, the restraints she’d bought on eBay, prison-medical-facility grade, which she’d chained into place through holes she’d laboriously drilled into the stainless-steel slab. No one was escaping from those restraints without outside help. And that helper might need a blowtorch.

She’d left herself two exits, just openings in the tarp like the partings in a curtain. Outside the tent she had a cot, her sleeping bag, a hot plate, a small refrigerator, and all the other things she would need. There was a little three-piece bathroom attached to the bunkhouse, but it was too far away for her to sleep in, and there was no tub anyway, just a shower. She’d have to forgo her usual arrangements this weekend.

She used movers’ straps to haul Daniel’s inert form out of the car and onto a refrigerator dolly, bumping his head a few times in the process. Probably not hard enough to cause a concussion. Then she wheeled him to the table, set it to its lowest height, and rolled him onto it. He was still deeply under. She positioned him on his back, arms and legs extended about forty-five degrees from his body, then raised the table. One by one, she locked the restraints into place. He would not be moving out of this pose for a while. The IV was next; luckily he was fairly well hydrated, or maybe he just had really great veins. She got the line placed easily and started the drip. She added a parenteral nutrition bag next to the saline. This was all the sustenance he would get for the next three days, if it took that long. He’d be hungry, but his mind would be sharp when she wanted it to be. She put the pulse oximeter on his toe – he’d be able to pull it off a finger – and the dry electrodes on his back, one under each lung, to monitor his respiration. A quick swipe of the electric thermometer across his forehead told her that his current temperature was normal.