The Cure Read online

  To my parents, Ron and Sandy,

  and my sister, Pam,

  for their undying love, support, and encouragement

  Special thanks to Mike Koenigs, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, for sharing with me what it’s like to enter a prison and enclose oneself in a confined space with a ruthless killer, all in the name of science.

  You’re a braver man than I.

  PROLOGUE

  ERIN PALMER SHOVED the tip of a huge slice of pizza into her mouth and ripped off a piece hungrily. “Mmmm,” she said. She was starving.

  She was already on her second bite while her parents and little sister, Anna, were still reaching toward the gargantuan pie in the center of the table to pick up their first slices.

  “That was amazing, Erin,” said her father, in an exaggerated tone. “You’ve got hands like a magician.” He turned to Erin’s mom. “Did you see that, Cheryl? She was so fast, it almost seemed like there was a piece already missing when the waiter put it on the table.”

  Her father was teasing her, but Erin knew he wasn’t really troubled by her bad manners. He had already apologized for getting such a late start on dinner. It was a little after seven thirty and they usually ate at six. Anna had eaten a big snack after school, but Erin had been at soccer practice at the time with other sixth graders from around the area, and hadn’t eaten in what seemed like forever.

  “We do have talented children,” noted her mother in amusement.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to try tennis, Erin?” asked her dad. “I mean, you’re amazing on a soccer field. But anyone with hands that quick should find a sport where you can actually, you know … use your hands.”

  Erin groaned. Her parents wouldn’t miss one of her games for the world, but she knew her dad wasn’t a fan of soccer, even though he claimed otherwise. “I thought soccer was your favorite sport,” she challenged playfully.

  “It is,” replied her dad with an impish grin. “I mean, if I had the choice between winning a million-dollar lottery or watching a soccer game—well, that would be a very tough call.”

  “You should take the lottery, Daddy,” suggested Anna sagely.

  Kids, thought Erin. There were just certain things they didn’t get. While Erin was almost twelve, her little sister was only eight and a half. “He was just kidding, Anna,” she said. “It really wouldn’t be a hard choice.” Erin turned to her father. “Be honest, Dad, if I wasn’t playing, would you ever watch soccer?”

  “Well … maybe a few games every four years during the Olympics,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Ah-ha,” said Erin triumphantly. “I knew it wasn’t really your favorite sport.”

  “Erin, any sport that you or Anna play is my favorite sport,” her dad replied earnestly, and her mom nodded in agreement. Looking into their adoring eyes, Erin knew they both absolutely meant it, which made her feel warm inside. They had a way of doing that. Her parents were funny and smart and kind, and they loved her and Anna with a passion that showed every instant of every day.

  The Palmer family continued chipping away at the massive pizza, although at an ever-diminishing rate as their hunger began to ebb. When they had finished, and were waiting for the bill, Ted Palmer announced that he needed to stop by his office for just a few minutes on their way home.

  “How come?” said Anna.

  “I have to check up on Mrs. Sinclair’s puppy. A black Lab. I spayed her late this afternoon and Mrs. Sinclair asked me to keep her ’til morning.”

  “What’s her name?” asked Anna.

  “I told you,” replied her father with a straight face. “Mrs. Sinclair.”

  “Daaad,” squealed Anna. “Come on. You know I meant the dog.”

  “Catherine.”

  Anna took a second to digest this. “The dog’s name is Catherine?”

  Her father nodded. “Really. I swear it. I might have gone with something else. But then again, she’s not my dog.”

  “Is she cute?” asked Anna.

  Ted Palmer rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? Have you ever seen a black Lab puppy that wasn’t absolutely adorable? They don’t make them any other way.” He paused. “The truth is that dogs actually evolved to be cute. To be irresistibly adorable and appealing to humans; the species at the top of the food chain.”

  As a veterinarian, he had explained the theory of evolution many times to his daughters. Erin totally got it, but she wasn’t sure Anna did. At least not completely.

  “Interesting,” said Erin’s mom. “Never thought about it, but I guess the first species that evolved to become man’s best friend got a pretty good deal.”

  “A great deal,” said Ted Palmer. “There are almost eighty million dogs in this country. And most of them are treated like royalty. Meanwhile, wolves, which are superior to dogs in every survival characteristic there is—with the exception of their appeal to humanity—are an endangered species.”

  “What about cats?” asked Anna.

  “Good point. Cats have a different friendship with humans than dogs, but they haven’t done too badly either.”

  “I think I might want to be a vet someday,” said Erin out of the blue.

  A slow smile came over her father’s affable face.

  “Yeah, me too,” chimed in her little sister.

  “Sure,” said her mom wryly. “No kid ever dreams of being a patent attorney.”

  “Not true, Mom,” said Erin quickly. “Um … that was my second choice.”

  “Sure it was,” said Cheryl Palmer with a grin.

  “Girls, you’re both very young,” said their dad. “If you decide to become vets, that would be great. But a lot can happen between now and then—so you should keep your minds open to other things.”

  “Like becoming a patent attorney?” said Erin.

  “Now let’s not get crazy,” said her father, fighting to keep a straight face.

  Her mother threw a balled-up napkin at him while both girls giggled.

  Minutes later they had left the restaurant and were heading toward Ted Palmer’s office, sure they would never need to eat again. Night had fallen and the sky over the serene town of Medford, Oregon, was spectacular, as usual. There was no industry for many miles around, and although the Oregon rains came all too often, when the sky was clear the star field and moon were dazzling.

  The Palmer Pet Clinic was located in a secluded wooded area about a quarter of a mile from any other sign of civilization along a narrow, semi-paved road. Douglas fir trees and ponderosa pines surrounded the clinic and towered above it. It was a serene, tranquil setting that Ted Palmer thought pets and their owners alike would appreciate. He had decorated the inside with posters of puppies and kittens in humorous poses and had painted each room either a light blue or mint green.

  They pulled around back, and as soon as her dad unlocked the door, Erin and her sister raced ahead to where they knew the black Lab would be—past two exam rooms, through an inner door, and inside a large room that was a combination pharmacy and recovery area.

  The cage of interest was on top of a long table in the middle of the room. Anna reached the crate the dog was in first.

  She let out a bloodcurdling scream. A scream unlike anything Erin had ever heard come from her sister. A primal scream as loud and shrill as only a girl of eight could produce.

  The puppy had been butchered. Mutilated.

  Erin saw the dog only seconds after her sister and thought her heart would explode. She fought to take a breath and comprehend what she was seeing. She couldn’t bear looking at the poor animal, but she couldn’t look away. Physically couldn’t. As though she were paralyzed. The animal had been crippled and both of its floppy black ears had been sliced off. Its downy-soft black
fur was matted with dried blood over the entire surface area of its small, broken body.

  Erin seemed unable to turn her head, but threw her eyes out of focus so they wouldn’t continue to take further inventory of the damage to the poor dog. She bent over and vomited onto the floor just as her parents came charging through the door in utter panic, able to tell the difference between a scream of absolute horror and a more run-of-the-mill variety their youngest daughter might issue.

  Erin’s father took one glance at the black Lab’s remains and gently but hurriedly pulled both of his daughters away from the crate, ushering them into their mother’s arms, one on each side. Erin turned and emptied the remaining contents of her stomach onto the floor and then pressed into her mother’s side once more.

  Ted Palmer spun around the room, searching for something—anything—he could use as a weapon in case whoever did this was still on the premises.

  It was too late. Alerted to their presence by Anna’s screams, a man was standing calmly near the opposite door to the room, waving a gun with its barrel extended to an unnatural length. Even though Erin was still a few months away from her twelfth birthday, she had seen enough action shows on television to recognize the long attachment as a silencer immediately.

  The man approached and the entire family retreated as he did so, their backs against a table along one wall. Above their heads a strip of wallpaper, three feet wide, ran along the border between wall and ceiling, depicting the repeated image of a Dalmatian puppy playing with a ball.

  The intruder tilted his head as if annoyed. “My luck has really been bad this week,” he said as though looking for sympathy. It was as if the bad luck he was speaking about involved something mundane, like a paper jam while he was printing, rather than being interrupted after mutilating a helpless animal.

  “Take anything you want,” said Ted Palmer. “Just leave us alone.”

  The man smiled serenely, but did not reply.

  “If you tell us what you’re doing here,” said Cheryl Palmer, “maybe we can help you.”

  “The cops have been after me,” the intruder explained, as though trying to be cooperative. “I don’t think they really understand me,” he added, as if he couldn’t figure out how this could be. “But that isn’t uncommon, I guess. Anyway, I’m trying to keep a low profile. The cops almost had me a few miles from here, but I gave them a head fake and came this direction on foot. I assume this is your pet clinic,” he said, looking at Ted Palmer. “When I stumbled across it, I knew it was perfect. You’re kind of out of the way, and you’ve been closed for several hours. I thought this would be a great place to stay out of sight for the night.” He shook his head as though reprimanding a child. “And now you’ve ruined that.”

  Erin found it almost impossible to breathe, as if her throat had constricted entirely closed. She pressed even more tightly into the crook of her mother’s arm and watched her father’s face. She could tell his mind was racing furiously. “Sorry about that,” he said calmly. “I’ve got some bigger crates in another room. You can padlock us inside until you’re ready to leave. We won’t cause any trouble. You can stay the night like you planned.”

  “No,” he said sadly. “I appreciate the offer. But I’m afraid that won’t do at all.”

  In that tiny instant something inside Erin felt a dread beyond dread. It was an instant frozen in time that presaged a horror beyond comprehension. The intruder was clean-cut and looked normal in every way, but his eyes were totally … dead. Lifeless. As if they weren’t connected anywhere. There was no feeling. No emotion. No mercy.

  He moved his arm just slightly and fired at Erin’s mom in one smooth motion, and her entire face seemed to explode. Ted Palmer screamed and lunged at the man, but a slug exploded through the center of his body, just above his stomach, and blood spouted from him like water from an opened fire hydrant. His momentum carried him three more steps before he crashed into a glass bank of pharmaceutical cabinets, filled with a variety of bottles and other medical equipment. Several pieces of glass drove into his face, neck, and arms, releasing additional streams of bright red blood to add to the gore and exposed intestines.

  Noooo! screamed Erin internally; a wail of anguish that wasn’t vocalized but which permeated every inch of her body and mind, threatening to tear away her sanity. Anna screamed beside her, her vocal cords not paralyzed, but the scream barely registered with her older sister. Erin felt weak and dizzy and her heart thundered in her chest. Both of her parents had been taken from her between one blink and the next. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

  The intruder glared at Anna with such withering, dead-eyed intensity that her screaming stopped as though he had thrown a switch. He tilted his head and sniffed. “Did someone puke in here?” he said, glancing down at the floor for the first time and seeing two separate piles of semi-digested pizza and breadsticks.

  “Let’s go in the other room and get away from this mess,” he said calmly, his expression not changing in the slightest.

  Both girls were sobbing and whimpering uncontrollably now. The intruder pulled little Anna away from her fallen mother and locked an arm around her waist with an iron grip. Anna tried to bite his arm, but it was a halfhearted effort through hysterical sobbing and he backhanded her across the face so hard Erin thought her sister’s head might fly off. Anna screamed through her tears, her face a rictus of pain and terror.

  “Don’t do that again,” said the man.

  He turned his cruel, cold eyes on Erin. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. Don’t dawdle.” When she hesitated he kicked her leg with the front of his hard shoe. The pain was so great Erin thought her leg might be broken, and she nearly lost consciousness, something part of her realized she would have welcomed.

  “Let’s move,” he said again.

  The man carried Anna with him into the adjoining room and Erin limped behind him. He found a dog collar and slipped it over Erin’s neck, leashing her to a desk.

  “Stay here,” he ordered, moving a few yards away and clamping his large palm over Anna’s tiny mouth. “Since you both interrupted what was supposed to be a private evening, you deserve what you get,” he pointed out.

  He turned to face Erin. “So here’s what I’m going to do,” he said calmly. “I’m going to see how much pain your sister can take. And then I’m going to kill her. While you watch. How does that sound?”

  Erin had slumped to the floor without being aware of it and was making mindless mewling sounds. She was still conscious but paralyzed in mind and body. The horror of what she had seen, and what was happening to her and her sister, had overwhelmed her mind’s capacity to absorb shock, and her centers of reason were retreating deep within her consciousness, creating an out-of-body persona to take over and buffer the horror her mind could not have survived otherwise.

  “No objections?” said the man. “Good. Remember, this is your fault. You had no business coming here after hours.” He smiled serenely. “Do you know what sex is?”

  Erin continued whimpering, making no reply.

  The intruder produced a scalpel from some unknown location, one with dried blood covering it from the helpless puppy he had butchered, and stabbed it into Anna’s arm. She screamed over and over again into the man’s palm and writhed against him, trying to get free, but he held her body and mouth with a force she couldn’t begin to break. He removed the scalpel from her arm and glared at Erin with his ice-cold eyes. “Answer my question or your sister gets punished.”

  He paused. “So let me ask again, do you know what sex is?”

  Erin fought to reply, but couldn’t. She had learned about sex in health class that year and had had a short discussion about it with her parents. It was disgusting, and it had been hard for her to believe this is how babies were really produced, but the answer to his question was yes. She struggled with all of her might to form this simple word, but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.

  Erin’s eyes turned to her sister, a wonderful, innocent g
irl she couldn’t have loved more. She was suffering horribly. And Erin couldn’t utter even a single word to save her further pain. She felt so ashamed. But she could barely breathe through her sobs, and she couldn’t find a way to speak.

  The inhuman monster raised the scalpel to strike again when Erin, out of desperation, managed to move her chin up and down a single time, hoping a nod of yes in response to his question would satisfy him.

  “Good,” he replied. “Now we’re communicating. Now, do you know what anal sex is?” he asked with a warm smile.

  Anal sex? Erin had a vague idea the word anal might have something to do with the butt, but she had no idea what the butt could possibly have to do with sex. Once again she was unable to speak, but she was able to—barely—shake her head no.

  “No?” said the man, obviously delighted by this response. “Well, I have good news for you. You’re about to find out. Your sister here may scream, but trust me, she’s going to enjoy this. I promise. And then when I’m done, I think I’ll skin her alive. Do you know what that means?”

  Erin wasn’t sure but she managed to nod. Anything to get him and his dead eyes to stop talking to her, asking her questions. The man was pure, distilled evil. How could anyone be this cruel? And he was so calm. He might have been talking about the weather as he spoke of torture and murder. He had killed her parents, two wonderful people who would never hurt anyone. And he was about to do the same to Anna and her. He would destroy their bodies and end their lives with as little thought or regret as someone else might have when turning off a light.

  He reached for his waist and seconds later his pants fell down around his ankles. Erin was still sobbing but had no awareness that this was the case. All the pain and horror in the world had turned into an ice pick, stabbing at her psyche, robbing her of her mind and her will to move. Her will to live.

  Deep inside her consciousness a tiny voice was ashamed of her behavior. She could easily remove the collar from around her neck. She should run. Scream. Get help. Somehow attack this monster. Find a weapon and come at him.