“Ahriman uses cheap muscle?” Martie asked, either because she hadn’t quite leaped to the understanding that Dusty had reached — or because she didn’t want to believe it.
“Nothing cheap about them. They’ve got good retirement plans, excellent medical coverage, full dental, and the use of a plain-Jane sedan during working hours. Anyway, they’d brought a videotape, and they play edit for me on the TV in the den. On the tape was this young boy who’s a patient of mine. His morn and dad are my patients, too, and close friends. Dear friends.”
The physician had to stop. He was choking on rage and outrage. His hand was clamped so tight to his beer that it seemed the bottle would burst in his fist.
Then: “The boy is nine years old, a really good kid. Tears are streaming down his face in the videotape. He’s telling someone off-camera about how he’s been sexually molested, since the age of six, by his doctor. By me. I have never touched this boy in that way, never would, never could. But he’s very convincing, emotional, and
“The boy was a patient of Ahriman’s,” Dusty guessed.
“No. These three suits who have no damn right to be in my house, these well-tailored thugs, they tell me the boy’s mother was Ahriman’s patient. I didn’t know. I’ve no idea what she was seeing him for.”
“Through the mother,” Martie said, “Ahriman got his hands on the boy.”
“And worked him somehow, with hypnotic suggestion or something, implanting these false memories.”
“It’s more than hypnotic suggestion,” Dusty said. “I don’t know
After resorting to his beer, Roy Closterman said, “The bastards told me… on the tape, the boy was in a trance. When fully conscious, he wouldn’t be able to remember these false memories, these dreadful things he was saying about me. He would never dream about them or be troubled by them on a subconscious level, either. They would have no effect on his psychology, his life. But the false memories would still be buried in what they called his
The advocate for Ahriman, in the corridors of Dusty’s mind, had wandered to far reaches, its voice fainter than before and no longer convincing.
Martie said, “You have any guesses who those three men were?”
“Doesn’t matter much to me exactly which institution’s name is printed on their paycheck,” Roy Clostennan said. “I know what they smelled like.”
“Reeked of it,” the physician confirmed.
Evidently, right now, Martie didn’t fear her violent potential as much as she feared that of others, because she put her hand over Dusty’s and gripped him tightly.
Panting and the pad of dog paws sounded in the hail. Valet and Charlotte returned to the kitchen, played out and grinning.
Behind them came footsteps, and a stocky, affable-looking man in a Hawaiian shirt and calf-length shorts entered the kitchen. He was carrying a manila envelope in his left hand.
“This is Brian,” Roy Closterman said, and made introductions.
After they shook hands, Brian gave the envelope to Dusty. “Here’s the Ahriman file that Roy put together.”
“But you didn’t get it from us,” the physician cautioned. “And you don’t need to bring it back.”
“In fact,” said Brian, “we don’t want it back, ever.”
“Brian,” Roy Closterman said, “show them your ear.”
Pushing his longish blond hair back from the left side of his head, Brian twisted, pulled, lifted, and detached his ear.
Martie gasped.
“Prosthetic,” Roy Closterman explained. “When the three suits left that night, I went upstairs and found Brian unconscious. His ear was severed — and the wound sutured with professional expertise. They had put it down the garbage disposal, so it couldn’t be sewn back on.”
“Real sweethearts,” Brian said, pretending to fan his face with his ear, exhibiting a macabre je
“Brian and I have been together more than twenty-four years,” the doctor said.
“More than twenty-five,” Brian amended. “Roy, you’re hopeless about anniversaries.”
“They didn’t need to hurt him,” the physician said. “The video of the boy was enough, more than enough. They just did it to drive the point home.”
“It worked with me,” Brian said, reattaching his prosthetic ear.
