Rabbi Scheiner’s eyes were intense, probing. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” said Meyer. “It’s an inherited disorder. You can’t just catch it.”

The rabbi nodded and turned to look out of the alcove at the patients in the ward. “Are you sure?” he asked again.

Chapter Twelve

Baltimore, Maryland

Saturday, August 28, 9:05 A.M.

Time Remaining on Extinction Clock: 98 hours, 55 minutes

After I drove around for twenty minutes I switched on my scramble and tried to make some calls. Church’s line rang through to voice mail. His voice message was: “Speak!” I was tempted to bark, but instead I left a simple request for callback.

Next I called Grace, but she got on the line long enough to tell me that she got outside to “take a butcher’s at a bunch of dodgy blokes with federal badges who have me totally hacked off, so I’d better sort them out.” The more pissed off Grace gets, the more British she becomes. There are times I can’t understand one word in three, and English is my mother tongue.

Finally I got Rudy Sanchez on the phone. A few years ago my dad-who was Baltimore’s police commissioner until a couple of months ago-got Rudy a job as a police therapist, and Rudy’s association with me got him hornswaggled into the DMS. It’s a bit of a sordid soap opera. Rudy still did a couple of days with BPD, and today he’d be at his office near the Aquarium. He was very low profile, so maybe he’d be off the NSA sweep.

“Joe!” he answered, and from his tone of voice I knew that he was already aware of what was going on. “Thank God!”

“You heard?”

“Of course I heard!” he snapped, and said something about the Vice President in back-alley Spanish that was too fast for me to catch anything except vague references to fornication with livestock. When he finally slowed to a crawl, he asked, “Dios mio, Cowboy-are you all right?”

“I’m wearing filthy clothes, I’ve been hanging out with junkies and I’m driving a stolen car that I’m pretty sure someone peed in-”

“Okay, okay, I get it… you’re having a bad day. I hear there’s a lot of it going around.”

“I wouldn’t know, Rude; I’m the spy who can’t come in from the cold.”

“Mm. I guess I’m on the run, too. Sort of,” he said. “Mr. Church told me to go hide somewhere, so I’m sitting in St. Ann’s. They’re painting the place, so it’s just me and a bunch of workmen putting up scaffolding.”

“Listen,” I said. “I called for a couple of reasons. First, to tell you to watch your ass. You’re still officially a consultant psychiatrist for the Baltimore Police. If you get nabbed, play that card. Have them call my dad.”

My father was making a run for Mayor of Baltimore and the pundits were calling it a slam dunk for him. He had friends on both sides of the badge.

“I have him on speed dial,” Rudy assured me. “What’s the other thing?”

“Two other things. The NSA guys came for me at the cemetery.”

“Ouch,” he said. “How are you?”

“I vented a bit by beating on them some.”

“But it’s still with you?”

“Yeah, and that’s the other thing. And Helen’s a part of that, too. In a way. Today started off weird even before I woke up.”

“How so?”

“I know this ain’t the time for this, but it’s weighing on me and I’ve got to kill time until I hear from Church-”

“Don’t apologize. Just tell me.”

“Okay… tomorrow is the anniversary of Helen’s suicide.”

“Oh, dios mio,” he said with real pain in his voice. With everything that had happened over the last two months he had forgotten. “Joe… I…”

“I dreamed about it last night, man. I dreamed about her sister Colleen calling me, saying that Helen hadn’t answered the phone in days. I dreamed about going over there. Every single detail, Rudy, from picking up my car keys on the table by the door to the feel of the wood splintering when I kicked in Helen’s door. I remembered the smell in the hallway, and how bad it got when I broke in. I remember her face… bloated and gassy. I can even remember the bottle of drain cleaner she drank from. The way the label was torn and stained.”

“Joe, I-”

“But here’s the really shitty part, Rude… the worst part.”

He was silent, waiting.

“In my dream, when I walked over to her body, knowing that she was dead and had been dead for days… when I stood over her and then dropped to my knees and pulled her into my arms…” I paused and for a moment I didn’t know if I was going to be able to finish this.

“Take your time, Joe…,” he said gently. “It’ll hurt less once it’s out.”

“I… don’t think so. Not this time.”

“Why, Joe? Tell me what happened when you held Helen in your arms.”

“You see, that’s just the thing… I picked her body up and held it, just the way I did back when it happened. And her head kind of flopped over sideways just like it did. But… aw, fuck me, man… it wasn’t Helen I was holding.”

“Tell me…”

“It was Grace.”

Rudy was silent, waiting for the rest, but there was no more. That’s where the dream had ended.

“I woke up in a cold sweat and I never went back to sleep. Stayed up all night watching Court TV and reruns of the Dog Whisperer. Anything to keep from going back to sleep.”

“Joe, this isn’t all about strength. It’s obvious you have feelings for Grace, and both of you are in a highly dangerous line of work.”

“Shit, I knew you wouldn’t get it,” I snapped, then immediately regretted it. “Sorry, Rude… belay that. What I meant to say is that I knew I couldn’t explain it the right way.”

“Then tell me what the right way is, Cowboy.”

“I…” My voice trailed off as I drove aimlessly through the streets. “I… know that having, um, ‘affection’ for Grace is ill advised. Got it, got that filed away. But there was something about this that felt weird and dirty and wrong. Wrong in a guilty kind of way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like… I failed her. The way I failed Helen.”

“Joe, we’ve been over this a thousand times. You were not responsible for Helen’s life. You were not her protector. She had been rehabilitated back into a lifestyle where all of her doctors agreed she was capable of taking care of herself. You visited as often as you could, more than anyone else. More than her own family.”

“But I took the job with the Homeland task force and that kept me away for days and even weeks at a time. Don’t try to tell me that I wasn’t aware of how that job would impact my regular visits to Helen.”

“Which still doesn’t make it your fault. You don’t rule the planet, Joe. And even if you lived with her, if she wanted to end her life-as she clearly did-she’d find a moment when you were asleep or in the shower and she would do what she ultimately did. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

I didn’t feel like going down that road with him again, so I switched tack. “So why did I see Grace in the dream last night? Are you saying that I feel responsible for her?”

“I hope not.”

“It’s not like we’re in love,” I protested.

Rudy said nothing, and then his phone clicked. “It’s Mr. Church calling me, Joe. I’d better take this.”

“Okay.”

“But Joe…?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to come back to this.”

“Sure, Rude… when the dust settles.”

And it starts snowing on the Amazon, I thought.

I closed my phone and drove, aware that I was driving myself a little crazy.