A Gathering of Diamonds - an excerpt

Epilog

Louisiana Mental Hospital 1984

Ain’t nothing good gonna last forever. The words to the song played in my mind backdropped by the metallic drone of a medical device dripping mental comfort into a vein in my arm. It meant I didn’t have to think or face reality.

I’d lain on the same bed for more months than I cared to remember, my reality reduced to the metallic drip, which had become a mantra to my mental pain. Only one thing helped me maintain my sanity: the pretty nurse who I could never really see because my eyes wouldn’t entirely focus, never failed to check on me when she came on shift. This particular night, she whispered something in my ear.

“Open your eyes. I have something important to tell you.” I heard her, subliminally as much as anything. I didn’t want to think about what she had to say. “Please, open your eyes for me.”

I struggled to speak, and she gasped when I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Julia,” she said.

“Thanks for taking such good care of me, Julia.”

“You are alive,” she said. “The other nurses said you never speak.”

“I had nothing to say until now. What do you have to tell me that is so important?”

“A package arrived for you a while back. I think it’s from your brother,” Julia said.

“Why didn’t someone give it to me?” I asked.

“The other nurses think of you as a dead man.”

“I’m not dead,” I said. “Just a little drugged up.”

“They keep you that way instead of putting you in a padded cell. I turned off your psychotropic drug drip when I came on shift. Nothing is going into your veins right now except water.”

“You’re not afraid of me?” I asked.

“I don’t believe you’re dangerous. I brought the package with me. I opened it for you.”

“What’s in it?” As I struggled to focus my eyes, she placed something in my palm. “I can’t see it. Please tell me what it is.”

“I think it’s an uncut diamond. A black diamond,” she said. “There’s a note with it.”

“From my brother?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What does it say?”

“It says, ‘I need your help.’ Bill.”

I pulled the needle out of my vein and struggled to sit upright. “Why would my brother be in trouble?”

“There’s a letter in your file from the Fayetteville, Arkansas police department,” Julia said.

“Fayetteville?”

“The location of the University of Arkansas.”

“Please, open it and read it to me,” I said.

Julia extracted the letter and began to read. “Dear Mr. Logan, I’m sad to inform you that your brother Tim has gone missing in the Ouachita Mountains. The region covers many miles of wilderness in the Ouachita National Forest. Local police have given up on the search and believe there is a good chance your brother is dead.”

“My God!” I said.

“What do you want to do?” Julia asked.

“I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” I said. “Tim needs me.”

“You can’t just leave. It’ll take a week before the hospital will let you go.”

I rolled off the side of the bed, promptly falling on my face. Julia put her shoulder beneath my arm and leveraged me to my feet.

“That’ll be too late. Do I have clothes?” I asked.

“Your belongings are in storage,” she said.

“Here at the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get them for me?”

“I’ll lose my job,” Julia said.

Clasping her hand in mine, I stared into her big blue eyes. “I don’t want you to do that. Can we somehow make it look like I escaped?”

“They’ll know I helped you. Someone other than you would have to turn off your drip.”

“If the electricity goes off, how long will it take before someone from maintenance checks on it?” I asked.

“A backup generator comes on automatically,” Julia said. “It’s only happened a couple of times since I’ve worked here. It doesn’t take long before the place is swarming with electrical workers.”

“What if just the electricity in this room were to malfunction?” I asked.

“It sets off an alarm at the nurse’s desk. The nurse on duty would buzz me to check on it.”

“Then I have an idea,” I said. “Please get my clothes. I promise not to get you into trouble.”

I waited alone for ten long minutes in the dimly-lit room. Julia finally returned with a suitcase and a box of my personal belongings. My wallet was intact, complete with driver’s license, an unexpired credit card, and about a hundred dollars in cash.

“You won’t get far on foot,” she said. “Please don’t steal a car.”

“How far is the airport from here?” I asked.

“About ten miles.”

“Is there a phone I can use?”

Julia pointed to the phone by my bed. “I don’t think anyone has ever used it. Who are you going to call?”

“A taxi to take me to the airport. If this credit card still works, I’ll rent a car.”

“But then they’ll know where you’re going,” Julia said.

“I’m not a fugitive, or guilty of any crime I know of,” I said.

Julia watched the door as I changed out of my hospital gown into familiar clothes that no longer fit me. She was a handsome woman, six inches shorter than I was, with curly blond hair and a slightly crooked smile that went perfectly with her big blue eyes. A metallic pitcher of ice water sat on a wheeled tray near the bed.

“What’s the story on the pitcher of water?” I asked.

“Maintenance puts them in every room, even if there are no visitors.”

I used the phone to call a cab, then grabbed the pitcher of water. An electrical outlet sat beside the bed, six cords plugged into it.

“Give me twenty minutes, then pour water on this connection. It’ll short out the drip and all the other instruments. Toss the pitcher on the floor near the connection. It’ll look like I accidentally knocked it off the tray by the bed. By the time you report me missing, I’ll be on my way to the airport.”

“Oh, Tom, are you going to be okay?” Julia asked.

“I’ve never been okay a day in my life. Why start now?”

Julia put her arms around my shoulders, her hug the most reassuring mental stimulus I could remember feeling in many years.

“I’m going to pray for you, Tom,” she said.

Grabbing her shoulders, I kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Julia.

“Where will you go?”

“Though I’m not sure, for the first time in ten years, I’m excited to be on my way.”

Chapter 1

A white-tailed doe racing across the road roused me from a flashback and sent adrenaline buzzing through my brain. Slowing the red Mustang I’d rented at the airport, I clutched the wheel as pain behind my eye nudged me back to reality. Beyond the hood stretched the foothills of northern Arkansas. It was early autumn, the colors around me as bright as a fresh coat of paint.

I’d left Mandeville at dawn, stopping only once in Little Rock for gas and a cold drink. Though the last few miles were missing from my memory, the narrow highway forced me to concentrate on driving and forget the reason I’d come here in the first place.

Heat devils rose off the blistered blacktop. Early October sun warmed the skin on the back of my neck. After cresting the next hill, I saw a tall building topped off with a clock tower crowning the horizon. Its windows glimmered in the afternoon sun, and I didn’t have to check the map to know I’d reached Fayetteville.

The college town lay nestled in a bowl-like valley in an ancient range of rolling hills. It had weighed on my thoughts for the past thirty days as I pulled into a filling station to stretch my legs and top the gas tank.

A massive sandstone courthouse occupied one corner of the town square. Shops and stores rimmed its periphery, people in shorts and casual clothes browsing store windows and soaking up the late afternoon sun. A man clad in overalls and clutching an oily red rag interrupted my thoughts.

“Help you?” he asked, his hillbilly twang making his question sound foreign.

“Fill it up,” I said, leaning away from his black-toothed grin.

He used the oily rag to dab his sweaty neck, a rumpled welder’s cap crowning his bald head. I could smell his breath, stale from last night’s whiskey when he rested his hairy forearms on the door of my car. The dagger tattoo on his hand looked as if he’d put it there himself.

“Where you from?” he asked, likely as curious about my accent as I was of his.

“New Orleans.”

“Kid in school here?”

“Something like that. Which way is the college?”

“Down the road a piece,” he said, pointing his nicotine-stained finger.

“Is that the courthouse next door?”

“That and the police station.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d have much crime around here.”

“About the same as the hair on a mangy yellow dog,” he said.

I waited for him to smile. He didn’t. Instead, he stole a cockeyed glance at me to see if I had. When I obliged, he rubbed his chin and spat a glob of tobacco juice on the concrete.

“What’s the population?” I asked.

“Bout thirty thousand when school’s out. Twice as many counting college kids,” he said, wiping his mouth with an oily hand.

“Is there someplace nearby to get a sandwich and cold drink?”

“College strip around the corner,” he said. “Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” I said, saluting him as I drove out of the parking lot.

I cruised down the brick pavement. It didn’t take long to find the bustling square that reminded me of a similar area near the LSU campus in Baton Rouge. Fall semester had begun, scores of students in cars, on bicycles and more on foot, crowding the four-block quadrangle. After parking in a vacant alley between a tee shirt shop and barbecue joint, I went inside for a sandwich.

Boisterous students were still pouring into the café when I exited a half hour later. Though late afternoon heat remained, the sky had begun turning the color of turquoise, the humidity so high it almost felt like a kick in the groin when I took a deep breath. I had only a moment to think about it as I noticed a uniformed woman gazing into my car, frowning as she scribbled something on a notepad.

“Problem, officer?”

“Your vehicle’s in a no parking zone.”

She had a pleasant voice and spoke in neutral Midwestern tones instead of the pervasive twang of the man at the filling station.

“I didn’t see a no-parking sign,” I said.

“Because there isn’t one. You’re blocking an alley,” she said. “I could have had you towed.”

“Sorry. I’m from out of town.”

The young cop stared at me and shook her head. “You know what they say about ignorance of the law?”

Glancing away from her cool stare, I read the tag on her uniform that said her name was Armstrong. Officer Armstrong was no taller than five-three, her short hair sun bleached almost white. She had expressive eyes the same hue as the darkening sky. I marveled at how every straight seam of the young woman’s uniform defied the heat and humidity.

“Uncle,” I said.

 Officer Armstrong didn’t smile. “Can I see your driver’s license?” I fished it out of my wallet and handed it to her, waiting as she made a notation on her pad. “Is this your car, Mr. Logan?”

“I’m renting it.”

She returned the license to me, along with a traffic ticket.

“The courthouse is closed for the day. You can pay this tomorrow when it reopens.”

“Thanks, Officer Armstrong,” I said.

She didn’t react when I used her name. Ignoring my eye contact, she said, “Next time watch where you’re parking.”

I watched as she strolled to a tan and white police cruiser, her tires spinning in loose gravel as she hurried away and disappeared over the hill. Raising my car’s canvas top, I switched on the air conditioning full blast.

It was late when I reached the hillside college, shades of crimson and pink already draping the surrounding hills. Though the person I was looking for had likely left for the day, I decided to give the place a look. As I parked and walked toward the largest of several stone buildings, hazy clouds began masking the sky and a sudden chill permeated the air.

Overhead, a hawk floated in a thermal updraft as cyclists, laboring up the steep grade, passed on the street. A jogger brushed past on the sidewalk, almost knocking me down. It wouldn’t have taken much. After thirty days flat on my back in a hospital bed, my muscles labored from the strain of the hilly campus. Finding the front entrance locked, I found an open door in the back.

Down a darkened hallway, someone hummed as he pushed a broom across the floor. The tune echoed inside the empty building, reminding me of the interior of a cave. For a moment, it threatened to overload my fragile mental state.

The cleaning person could have been on the third floor or ten feet away. It didn’t matter. The drifting sound caused a predictable reaction. I began to feel the madness starting to return. Against my will, my thoughts started racing back to distant murky memories. This time, it didn’t happen.

The red glow of a nearby fire alarm returned me to reality, though it left me with a throbbing head. I was looking for a water fountain when a light radiating from an open door revealed a name on the glass that read Dr. Theodore Fridel. I rapped on the window to get the attention of the man sitting behind a desk.

“Help you?” he said, opening the door.

Dr. Fridel looked nothing like I had imagined. Instead of old and gray, he was probably on the front side of thirty. Didn’t matter because he seemed older as he gazed at me with myopic eyes trapped behind thick-framed glasses. His hair and mustache were coal black, the same color as his eyes. They clashed with his peach-colored sports jacket and zigzag tie he’d probably bought at a garage sale.

“I’m Tom Logan,” I said. “You were my brother’s thesis adviser.”

Understanding replaced Fridel’s initial disbelief as he pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

“Your brother?”

“Half brother. Much younger.”

“I see,” he said. From the way he blinked his eyes and frowned, I could tell he didn’t. “How can I help you?”

“I’m trying to find out what happened to Bill.”

“I’m sure you read the police report. . .”

I held up a hand to stop him. “I was hoping you could add something. Explain why my brother seems to have vanished without a trace.”

“Regrettably, it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. Though I was Bill’s thesis adviser, we were never close. Your brother was quite secretive.”

Our father and both our mothers were young when they’d died. Old enough to be Bill’s father, I was present during most of his formative years. Secrecy was only one of his unusual traits of which I was well aware.

“Maybe you can tell me something about this,” I said.

Reaching into my shirt pocket, I pulled out a small leather pouch. Professor Fridel’s mouth opened when its sparkling contents rolled across the desk.

When he regained his senses, he said, “Is this a diamond?”

  

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.