Chapter 1 – Where have all the flowers gone?

Sydney groaned as he roused.

His head felt like it was going to explode, and so did his bladder. He resisted opening his eyes, knowing that the light from the sun – however muted or indirect – was only going to make that explosive headache worse. He also refrained from moving at all, in case movement would make his bladder problem any more urgent than it already was. Very fleetingly, he wondered what time it was – and whether anybody at the Centre would be doing anything that would normally require his presence and so draw attention to his absence. /Too bad,/ he thought to himself in one of the first coherent thoughts of this uncomfortable morning after, /they’ll just have to muddle along without me until I can get myself moving again. Maybe I’ll just call in sick for the day./

Finally he stirred, shifting on the bed to get into a slightly more comfortable position on his stomach – and then froze, his bladder issue completely forgotten for the moment. He was naked. His brows furled in confusion. He always slept in pajamas – he was slightly cold-blooded and didn’t like either to sleep in the raw or to sleep with a window open. What in the world was going on? Certainly he hadn’t been THAT drunk the night before that he’d only managed to get half-ready for bed before collapsing?

He sniffed and resigned himself to having to roll over at least a little so that he could open his eyes and look around. As he did, he groaned – the movement and the additional light against his eyelids was threatening to make his hangover even worse, as he’d known they would. His bladder had also reissued its urgent scream for relief, and now he could taste the bitter residue of too much whiskey on his teeth and back of his throat as well as smell a coppery stench from somewhere closeby. How much had he had last night? Would it do any good to remember? How the hell was he going to get to the bathroom in this shape? Better yet, when would he ever learn NOT to go on benders like this when the Centre revealed its true face to him again – the aftermath made the temporary euphoria of inebriation simply not worth it.

Gingerly he cracked open one eye and peeked over the side of the bed. Yes, there lay some of his clothes from the day before, in crumpled and discarded clumps on the floor, obviously dropped the moment he’d climbed out of them. Then he looked a little higher, expecting to look at the window that overlooked his back yard, and found himself frowning again in confusion. There was no window, only a blank wall covered in faded wallpaper. This wasn’t his bedroom. As a matter of fact, the faded wallpaper looked more like what he’d find in a cheap motel room – certainly not in his comfortable master bedroom at home. Where the hell WAS he, and did he even know where the bathroom was?

He pulled his hands in and groaned as he pushed himself up onto one hip, the covers falling away from his body. He would have grabbed for the blankets again to at least cover his legs until his upper body acclimated to the chill of the room, but there was a wet feel to the place where his hand had been laying that had clung to him as he’d moved. And as he moved it again, the feel of a sticky substance on his right hand caught his attention. Blinking to try to chase the post-alcoholic fog from his eyes and brain, he brought the hand up and stared at it. His entire palm was covered in something – something dark. Something red.

That brought him fully awake in a hurry, and he reached out the hand and tossed back the covers on the other half of the bed. The bottom sheet was covered with whatever it was, and the pillow even had some of the stain near the bottom. Sydney felt his heart begin to pound hard in his chest as he could smell it even more strongly now — and recognized that coppery smell for what it was: difficult to forget, or mistake for anything else. It was stink of blood – LOTS of it. The soaked sheet and partially stained pillow both looked slept-on – as if the person who had been there had just arisen. But if whoever had lain there had been the one to lose all that blood, they wouldn’t be in any shape to move – would they?

His eyes wide and staring and his whole body trembling in shock and horror, he got unsteadily to his feet. A quick glance around the room told him a confusing story. There were pieces of a woman’s clothing scattered about the floor in the same kind of crumpled heaps as his own clothing – as if she had disrobed in just as much of a hurry or disregard as he had. And yet, not a sign of the woman in question was to be seen. He turned his head quickly – wishing in the next moment that he hadn’t as the movement detonated a minor nuclear explosion in his skull – in search of the bathroom. Maybe…

He was going to have to find the bathroom sooner or later anyway before his bladder burst, so he rose first to sit on the edge of the bed with his head hanging, and then he pushed himself carefully to his feet. His steps were uncertain, and he had to lean against the wall with his shoulder, carefully keeping his bloody right hand away from any surface that might attract a stain. It didn’t help his state of mind much to discover when uncovering the rest of his body where he had obviously partially lain in the pool of blood himself for some length of time. The line of sticky dark crimson mess ran from just below his armpit and down to a knee.

He moaned in confusion and horror as he turned the corner and had to use his left hand to open the bathroom door – which was latched but unlocked – so that he wouldn’t leave behind even more bloody smudges. Whoever had been bleeding out in his room wasn’t in the bathroom, and Sydney sighed a small sigh of relief before taking care of his urgent bathroom needs. He really hadn’t been looking forward to discovering a dead body in his bathroom. But his sigh of relief quickly reversed direction into a gasp of true horror when he turned to the sink to wash the blood from his hand and found a straight razor lying by the white ceramic bowl covered in the same red blood.

Once more badly shaken, he stepped into the bathtub and ran a quick shower – one with water that would rinse the blood from his hand and body on the one hand and cold enough to help him wake up a little more on the other hand. He dried himself on a cheap, industrial sized white bath towel and walked reluctantly back into the motel room itself. A few glances about the floor found his boxers dumped halfway under the bed, peeking out from beneath a woman’s blouse. He pulled them on after checking to make sure that they weren’t bloodstained, and did the same with his t-shirt and dress trousers.

Then he located his sports coat, pulled the cell phone from a front pocket, and perched himself precariously on the edge of the one easy chair in the room while he waited for the pre-programmed number to connect.

“What?”

“Parker,” he began in a shaky voice.

“Sydney!” Miss Parker was anything but amused or approachable. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Raines has been raising the roof all morning because you had to choose today to be a no-show. He wanted us in a meeting with…”

“Parker,” he broke into her tirade in a voice that obviously didn’t give a damn about whatever he’d bollixed up at the Centre. “Listen to me,” he demanded tiredly until she finally stopped scolding.

“OK,” she snapped at him in extreme frustration after a moment’s pause. “I’m listening – but this better be damned good or I swear to God I’ll kill you myself...”

He gazed at the crumpled bedclothes and the horrific pool of blood on the bed and closed his eyes against the idea of what might — must — have happened here.. “I need your help. I think ...”

There was a pounding suddenly at his motel room door, and a voice calling from outside, “This is the Dover Police. Open up, immediately!”

“What the hell is that racket, Syd?” Miss Parker demanded, unnerved by his tone of voice and the fact that he’d openly asked for her help. This wasn’t the Sydney she knew. This wasn’t the infinitely calm and independent Centre shrink.

“I think I’m in a lot of trouble, Parker,” he stated as he watched the door be kicked open and uniformed police officers begin to swarm in, some with weapons drawn and pointing threateningly in his general direction. “Something terrible has happened…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Miss Parker stared out into her office without seeing anything as she listened to the sounds of chaos erupt on the other end of the line, and then blinked as the call was suddenly disconnected from the other end. It took her a moment to break loose from her shock to quickly push the disconnect button twice to establish a dial tone on her phone and then dial a three-digit extension.

“Broots here…”

“I just got a call from Sydney’s cell phone, Broots – I want you to tell me where he was calling from,” she demanded brusquely.

“M…miss Parker, I already have my assignment from Mr. Raines, and…” the computer tech on the other end stammered at her.

“Screw Raines and his make-work program,” she barked back, her almost-nonexistent patience wearing even thinner. “Sydney said he thought he was in trouble – I need to know where he is.”

“Sydney?” Broots’ voice easily conveyed its concern. “R…right away, Miss Parker…”

“And call me the moment you have news.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Parker hung up the phone with a decided click and sat back in her office chair. She should have known something was off when Sydney hadn’t shown up to work on time that morning. After all, it was with Sydney that Raines had spent the better part of the day yesterday – and Sydney had come out of that long meeting looking positively morose and behaving in a very uncommunicative and uncooperative manner. As a matter of fact, the last time she’d seen Sydney look quite that unhappy, he’d just been painfully reminded of how the Centre had interfered with his life by ripping away someone he cared about – how it had stolen his family, his future. His son. He’d been standing behind his desk in his office, interrupted by Broots and herself while packing to walk out, and had ended up railing futilely at the Centre and The Powers That Be that had hurt him so badly. She’s only barely talked him out of leaving right then and there.

The thing was, not that she thought about it again a little more carefully, she wasn’t really certain why Raines should have been so out of sorts when Sydney had been a no-show that morning. Unless there had been a project or something on the agenda after all that nobody had brought up because it had needed the psychiatrist’s direct input, the meeting had been mind-numbingly routine. Although… come to think of it, Lyle had been oozing with self-satisfaction every time Raines would explode about Sydney’s tardiness. If she didn’t know better…

Her phone rang and interrupted her reverie, and she grabbed for the handset. “What?”

“He was in Dover, Miss Parker,” Broots reported without a single stammer. “It was the Dover repeater station that had handled the call to you.”

“Tell me, does he have a Centre-issue cell with a tracking device?” she asked after thinking a moment.

“Don’t we all?” her technician asked bitterly in a rare show of bravado and disgust.

“So activate the tracking system and tell me where he is right now. Let me know the minute you have him.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She disconnected the call and immediately dialed another three-digit extension. “Yes, ma’am?” Sam answered his summons with courteous neutrality.

“Bring me a car from the pool and be ready to leave as soon as I get to the garage,” she ordered without explanation.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam replied and disconnected the call immediately.

She rose and was just checking to make sure that the ammunition cartridge in her Smith and Wesson was fully loaded when her twin brother breezed through her office door without knocking. She aimed a quick glower at him as he sauntered to a stop in front of her desk. “And you lecture ME on the virtues of knocking,” she grumbled in a very out of sorts tone.

“What goes around, comes around, Sis,” Lyle shrugged off the complaint. “Think of it as an object lesson. However, I’m here because Dad has something he wants you to do…”

“I’m busy,” Miss Parker replied without looking at her brother again, slipping the weapon back into its holster at the waistband of her pants and reaching for her jacket, “as you can tell. Whatever it is the old ghoul has for me will just have to wait.”

“You know,” he told her in a serious tone, “you aren’t just an independent operator here, doing whatever the Hell you want to. When Dad gives the orders…”

“Save the lecture for someone who gives a damn,” she snapped, as an after-thought pulling another cartridge of ammunition from her desk drawer and slipping it into her pocket. “Tell Raines that I’ll be glad to consider his request AFTER I get back – capisce?”

“What’s so all-fired important that you’re willing to blow off an order from the Chairman himself?” Lyle inquired with narrowed eyes. “A new lead on Jarod that you haven’t shared with me yet?”

She shook her head in exasperation. “Lyle, when are you going to get it through your thick skull that I don’t HAVE to share my leads on Jarod with you? Raines made this a contest where ‘the one who wins, survives,’ remember? Besides, when was the last time you shared one of your real leads with ME?” Lyle opened his mouth to argue, but an upheld hand stopped him before he could get a word out. “Forget it – it isn’t that important. I’ll call you when I get back – and that’s the best you’re going to get from me.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Sis,” her twin warned her.

“So I’ve been told,” she shot back. “And now, if you don’t mind…” She indicated that she expected him to leave her office right then and there.

“Don’t be too long getting back to me, Parker,” Lyle’s tone was even more serious than before. “What with Sydney’s absence, there are questions starting to arise about the dedication of your team to the effort at hand.”

The telephone rang, and she picked it up. “What?” she barked into it.

“Miss Parker?” Broots answered immediately. “I found…”

“Hang on a moment,” she told her colleague and then held the handset against her shoulder. “If you don’t mind,” she told her twin, pointing at the door, “I need to take this call. You don’t have to knock on your way out, you know.”

Lyle gave his sister a strange look and shoved his hands into his trousers pockets as he moseyed toward her door. But she wasn’t about to continue the phone conversation until he was gone, and he finally pushed through the etched glass doors.

She waited until the doors were completely closed before putting the phone back to her ear. “OK. Spill.”

“He’s at the Dover Central Police Station,” Broots reported in a worried tone. “What do you suppose Sydney’s doing at the police station – and a police station in Dover, of all places?”

“That’s what I intend to find out,” Miss Parker snapped and disconnected.

“What have you gotten yourself into this time, Freud?” she muttered to herself as she strode purposefully toward her door and the elevator beyond.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sydney heard the door to the interrogation room open and close, and yet he didn’t raise his head to look at the police officer that had entered. He knew his constitutional rights – knew that he didn’t have to make any kind of statement or answer any questions – and he’d been through enough T-Board interrogations at the Centre that the Dover Police had very little they could throw at him to rattle him. His head was still pounding from the drinking he’d done the night before and he was beginning to grow hungry – but there was no way he was going to communicate these things to the police only to have them used against him just a little while later.

“My name is Officer Miller, and I understand that you haven’t been saying much of anything to any of the other officers who’ve spoken to you, Doctor Green,” the plain-clothed officer began in a very conversational tone as he pulled out the chair opposite Sydney across the table and sat himself down. “Can’t you at least tell us what you were doing in that motel room?”

Sydney relented only so far as to raise his eyes to look at this new interrogator with a knowing and resigned look on his face. “I think not,” he answered in a monotone and then looked back down to where he’d folded his hands on the table.

“You know you’re in some pretty serious trouble,” the officer informed Sydney, as if Sydney didn’t already understand that.

“Am I under arrest?” Sydney asked in return.

“Not exactly,” Detective Miller answered uncomfortably. Despite the reported complaint about screams and loud noises coming from the motel room that they’d raided, the man they’d taken in for questioning had done nothing that they could prove except be found at the scene of a possible murder. He’d not struggled or protested his innocence, in no way resisted being taken in; and despite the horrific scene and the incredibly suspicious circumstances, it just plain wasn’t against the law to be found in a room with a bed on which it looked as if someone had been butchered. What was more, his record was squeaky clean – Dr. Sydney Green, MD didn’t even have a parking ticket to have brought him to the attention of law enforcement before.

“Then am I free to go?” Sydney looked up with a miniscule ember of hope burning in the back of his gaze.

“Not quite yet,” Miller answered with a firm shake of the head. “We’re still trying to figure out what happened. We could really use your help, you know…

The look in Sydney’s eyes transformed into frustrated resignation before he looked back down at his hands again. He’d done enough police-related SIMMs with Jarod in years past that he knew that he could be held without being charged for up to 72 hours. All he had to do was keep his cool and say nothing for the next three days – something he’d done often enough with Raines and the T-Board staff breathing down his neck.

“Where is she, Doctor Green?” Miller asked very gently, hoping that a non-confrontational method would elicit the information they desperately needed. “We know it was a woman – not only were her clothes scattered all over the place, but we found semen on the sheets.” The officer sighed silently. “It’s only a matter of time before we confirm the semen as yours once you give us a sample of your DNA.”

Sydney struggled not to show the shudder that had coursed through him. HAD he slept with a woman the night before? He closed his eyes and tried to remember, but could hardly even remember walking into the tavern near the Blue Cove Inn after work to try to drink away his distress at what Raines was wanting him to do – again. He’d sat down at the bar, in front of a bartender he’d known for the better part of his years in Blue Cove, ordered a double Chivas on the rocks… and everything that came after was still all in an alcoholic fog… wasn’t it?

His musing was interrupted as another officer tapped on the door and came in to whisper to Officer Miller, who then rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to take care of this…”

“Of course,” he answered semi-automatically, grateful to be once more left alone with his thoughts. Thinking about what Raines had demanded of him made him wish he was back in the tavern with another double helping of Chivas in front of him. To restart the Pretender Project with a new youngster… just the thought of how this young person would have been acquired was enough to turn his stomach. And despite the very real draw toward the kind of cutting edge psychological and psychiatric research working with another young genius would involve, he just had too many ethical and moral reservations about the entire premise of the project now to be an effective trainer anymore. But Raines had been determined – and had not been willing to listen to a solid “no!”

Oh yes, THAT must have been why Parker said Raines was so bothered when he’d not shown up for work this morning. Raines had promised to have him introduced to the new Pretender after the meeting – after which, he’d be expected to step right up to the plate and begin training the child as a replacement for Jarod. Sydney put his face in his hands. At this very moment, he didn’t know which was worse: awakening to the possibility that he’d murdered a woman, or awakening to the probability that he’d be expected – required – to repeat each and every sin he’d ever committed with Jarod with another vulnerable child. Either way, he was damned.

He hadn’t murdered anybody… much less murdered a woman… had he? He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands in frustration. Damn it! Why couldn’t he remember anything?

The sound of the door opening behind him cut into that painful self-doubt, and Sydney raised his eyes to look at his interrogator with curiosity. Officer Miller looked anything but happy as he flopped a folder down on the table in front of himself as he resumed his seat. “At least you could have told us you worked for that damned Centre place,” he growled at his witness/suspect in frustration, “instead of letting one of their high-flown lawyers simply come to your rescue without even needing to make a phone call.”

Sydney hid his surprise as best he could. An attorney had been dispatched to him already? Parker must have taken his plea for her assistance seriously. “I’d like to speak to my lawyer, then, when he gets here,” he stated quietly and firmly, knowing that this would hamstring the detective even further.

“She’s here already, and on her way in,” Miller grumbled, collecting the folder and the rest of the documents that he’d had in front of him earlier as the door behind Sydney opened one more time. “He’s all yours,” he sighed in frustration on his way out. The door closed behind Sydney again, and he looked up to see just who the Tower had sent to his rescue – and dropped his jaw.

“You know, you’re damned lucky I’ve kept my license to practice law here in Delaware current, Syd, even though everybody thought I was nuts,” Miss Parker said with exasperation as she slipped into the chair that the detective had just abandoned, putting her attaché case on the table between them. “Now, you didn’t tell me very much at all when you called. What the hell is going on here?”

“Parker,” he breathed, barely believing his luck. “You… you’re my lawyer?”

“For the time being,” she answered, folding her hands on the table in front of her. “What’s going on?”

Sydney threw his hands wide. “I wish to hell that I knew. All I do know is that I woke up this morning with a vicious hangover – and found myself in a bed half-covered in blood.” He heard her intake of breath. “That’s what I thought too. But there was no body… at least, none that I found…”

“What the hell were you doing in Dover?” she demanded.

He shook his head. “I don’t know the answer to that one either. Last thing I remember clearly was walking into the Land’s End Tavern in Blue Cove and ordering a double whiskey.” He ran frustrated fingers through silver hair that looked as if it had yet to have seen a brush that morning. “I don’t know how I got to Dover, I don’t know about any woman…”

“Who said this mysterious body would be a woman?”

“There were woman’s clothing scattered all over the floor… along with mine,” he answered, his voice hoarse with embarrassment. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “And… the officer said… there was semen on the bed…”

“Did you sleep with her, Syd?” Amazingly, Miss Parker’s voice was almost gentle.

“I honest to God don’t remember, Parker!” he burst out in desperation. “I swear to you, I remember getting the drink at the Land’s End – and I can remember absolutely nothing else until I woke up in that motel room just before the police burst in.”

She looked into his face and could see not the slightest sign that he was lying to her. His eyes were wide and frantic and more than a little bloodshot, his face grizzled for lack of a decent morning’s shave. “You look like shit, Freud.” The chestnut eyes touched hers wryly just before he put his face in his hands. “Well,” she continued in a slightly more business-like tone, “the first thing we need to do is get you the hell outta here.” She rose to her feet and went over to the door and opened it. “I need to speak to someone in charge here,” she called out into the room beyond.

“Yes?” Officer Miller replied as he walked up to and through the door again, noting that Doctor Green looked no more complacent or smug than he had when he’d left the room. He, on the other hand, finally felt as if he were on a little bit more solid footing.

Miss Parker struck her most intimidating pose. “I need to know if you are charging my client.”

“We can hold him…”

“…for seventy-two hours before you have to jump one way or the other, I know,” she finished for him. “At least, that’s how it works for people who aren’t important. Doctor Green, however, is essential to several projects back in Blue Cove – his absence is very keenly felt.”

“That may be, Miss Parker,” Miller replied archly, “but I just received the results of our forensics department’s test on the razor blade discovered in Doctor Green’s bathroom covered in the same type blood as was found covering the bed. The good doctor’s fingerprints are all over it.”

Miss Parker’s gaze met Sydney’s in surprise, and she knew that he was just as astounded and appalled at this development as she was. “Well, if it WAS his motel room…”

“The room was registered in the name of Miss Catherine Hallsey,” Miller informed her without need to check his reports. “So the question is, Doctor, what have you done with Miss Hallsey?”

“Don’t answer that, Syd,” Miss Parker barked at the tired psychiatrist, putting a hand on his shoulder to dull the bite of her tone slightly. She looked back at the police officer. “Let me rephrase my question: ARE you going to be charging my client?”

“From the amount of blood on the bed, we’re fairly sure a serious crime has been committed. Your client has been particularly unresponsive in answering any questions. We have preliminary forensic evidence that he was at the very least involved in whatever when on.”

“But you have no body,” Miss Parker reminded him sharply. “Has anybody even reported this Miss Hallsey missing?”

Miller’s face grew stony. “No, but…”

“Then how can you even be sure that you’re dealing with the right crime?” she concluded with an intense stare. “Can you tell me that you’re one hundred percent certain that the blood found at the scene is Miss Hallsey’s?”

The detective’s dark eyes glared at her. “Not yet. But there’s enough circumstantial evidence of a serious crime having been committed that I’m well within my authority to hold Doctor Green for questioning until we have more to go on.”

The look Sydney gave her in response to that told her he wasn’t surprised in the least. “Then you understand that I expect a call whenever you intend to be questioning my client,” Miss Parker announced as she handed over her business card. “And Sydney, I’m advising you as your attorney not to say a word to anybody in here – not to the officers, not to another prisoner, not even to the janitors – got it?”

He nodded in resignation, noting from the expression in her grey eyes that she would be trying to move mountains to get him out of this. When Officer Miller put a hand at his elbow, he rose obediently and, with a final nod of farewell, allowed himself to be escorted from the interrogation room.

Miss Parker collected her attaché case and walked slowly back out the way she came. Something was seriously amiss here — Sydney wasn’t the kind of man who got tanked and attacked other people. And nobody could lose that immense amount of blood and just get up and walk away. This whole situation stank.

As she walked back toward where Sam was waiting with the Centre sedan, she promised herself that she’d get to the bottom of this before it destroyed Sydney’s life.