I took her in the back room to shoot her up. She resisted at first, unwilling to be drugged by some complete stranger but, after I showed her my degree in hypnotherapy, my state medical license, my federal pharmaceutical license and the pictures of me and the Native American shaman getting ready to share a peyote experience, she relented and let me tie her up and slap a homemade cocktail into her arm.
She tried to show me how brave she was by fighting the narcotics but the undercurrent of haloperidol in the mix dragged her down. After a few minutes, her eyes closed and her breathing slowed. She was pretty to start with and only got more luminous as the tension drained out of her body.
It happens to most of us. Most.
While I waited for the chemicals to fully active her brain, I went through her pockets: just a set of house keys, a tube of lipstick — Clinique Wild Berry — and the leather case. The case contained thirty-four dollars in various bills, three credit cards — two Visas and a department store card — a number of punch-cards from various local establishments — four coffee shops, a video rental store, a burrito shop and a dry cleaner — several receipts and two pieces of ID. One was her driver's license that gave her name as AnnaBeth Halvorson and her place of residence as somewhere north of 125th, and the second was an ID card for a local chain of 24-hour gyms. The other item of interest was one of my business cards, an older style that I had ran out of a year or so ago. I recognized the handwriting on the back of the card and went out into the main office to make a call.
"Gloria," I said when Dr. Matthews' receptionist answered. "It's Potemkin."
"Hello, Harry. How are you?"
I stared at the drawn blinds that insulated me from the city. "Good enough. You?"
"I'm fine." Her brittle voice shifted slightly. All business today. No time for idle chatter. Not for me, not anymore. "Dr. Matthews is with a patient right now. Can I take a message for him?"
I looked down at Gloria's rolling script. "I wanted to talk to you actually."
"Really?" She already knew.
"AnnaBeth Halvorson," I said. "Is she one of Dr. Matthews' patients?"
"Ah, Harry, you know I can't tell you about his patients."
"Even when you send them to see me?"
Her voice dropped a few decibels, a conspiratorial whisper that would have been sexy if I had been paying for it. "She's haunted."
"By her dead twin sister. So she told me."
"Dr. Matthews thinks she's schizophrenic. He wrote a number of prescriptions, but they didn't help. They just made it worse."
"What? What did they make worse?"
"The presence. She got mean." Gloria paused for a second and I heard the rustle of paperwork on her desk. "She was early to an appointment a few days ago and she didn't want to sit by herself in the waiting room. She came out and talked to me. She needed someone to talk to."
"Isn't that why she's paying Dr. Matthews?" I played the role of Gloria's confessor, her priest to whom she could tell her secrets. Gloria was just a secretary and I was just a black market hack — neither of us was qualified in the eyes of the establishment to discuss what made people tick — and we transgressed through the wire networks of the world.
"He's just going to dope her in submission," Gloria whispered. "He doesn't have any idea what's wrong with her. He doesn't believe she is haunted."
"But you do?"
"I do, Harry. You know me. I have a feeling for these sorts of things." Yes, you warned me once, and I didn't listen.