Angel of Darkness (13 page)

I had to choose. I could follow Connie, although there was nothing I could do to protect her. Or I could find out who lurked in the trees and find out what I was up against.

I hurried toward the thicket and my feeling of dread grew stronger the closer I got. Bartlett pear trees had been planted a number of years before in an effort to mask the unit for the criminally insane from the families of the less violent patients.

The wooded area was no bigger than the width and length of a basketball court, but enough trees had grown up, with bushes and vines linking them, to create a thick undergrowth that the groundskeepers protected in order to provide homes for the rabbits that delighted residents like Harold Babbitt. Birds flew out of the trees with a flurry of flapping wings at my approach, aware somehow of my existence.

Beyond the undergrowth lay a grove shrouded in permanent dusk. Its floor of leaves had been tramped down by human traffic and was littered with candy bar wrappers, juice boxes and the tiny paper cups staff used to dispense medication. This was probably a trysting spot for patients who'd found love at Holloway. But they had not been the ones who had scared Lily and left a haze of darkness behind them. I could feel it surrounding me: evil of an uncertain nature, as if it were not yet sure of its power. There was a deep hunger there, too, lingering, and I think that was what frightened me the most. Evil alone can simply exist, maybe even bide its time for centuries. But an evil fueled by hunger was dangerous. It would look for and find happiness to feed on. I feared whoever had been in the tiny clearing and what they might do next.

Up ahead, near the front gate, the main path curved to the left where it led to the parking deck overpass. There was no one manning the front gate. There never was after seven p.m. You had to buzz and wait for an orderly to hurry down from one of the units, unlock the heavy metal gate and check your credentials before letting you in. There should have been someone stationed there after the events of the day, and the fact that the guardhouse was dark, and that there would be no way to call for help if something happened, told me that Holloway's administrators were still clinging to the hope that Vincent D'Amato's murder had been an isolated incident brought on by his own actions.

I thought I saw a movement in the guardhouse, a shifting of the shadows cast by the street light a few feet down the sidewalk. Connie, oblivious to anything but reaching her car, turned away from the brightly lit main entrance toward the stairs that would take her over the road into the parking garage. Her shoes made a clacking sound as she hurried up the steps to the pedestrian bridge. A gate barred the entrance to the overpass, but Cal had given Connie an electronic entry card like those given to the staff to make it easier for her to visit Michael after hours. She unlocked the gate and hesitated. In front of her, the overpass tunnel seemed uncharacteristically dark. There should have been lights on to guide staff coming off the late shift. Someone had turned the lights off, and I wondered how – and why. Connie hesitated, unsure of what to do. She had to reach her car to get home, but the tunnel made her uneasy, especially after the events of the day.

She looked behind her, checking the path. Seeing no one, she pulled out her cell phone and held the brightly lit screen out in front of her like a candle. It didn't help much, but it gave her courage as she stepped into the darkness. I hurried toward her, determined that she not be alone. She was already a quarter of the way over the arching walkway by the time I arrived. I was just in time to see the shadow of the man careening toward her and hear the heavy clump of his shoes. Connie gasped and stepped back, shutting her cell phone so that she'd be hidden by the darkness. It did no good. The man headed straight for her. Connie gave a scream and turned toward the entrance, ready to run. The man reached out and grabbed her arm.

‘Connie?'

It was Cal, her fiancé. He held a flashlight and cast the light across Connie. She was standing flat against the sides of the overpass, looking terrified.

‘It's me, Connie. It's Cal.'

Connie did not move from her spot. ‘What the hell are you doing out here in the darkness?' she said. ‘You scared the crap out of me.'

‘I had a report that the lights were off in the overpass,' he said. ‘That's just what we need, someone to trip and hurt themselves and sue Holloway. There are still family members leaving and they have to be able to get their cars. I can't figure out how it happened. It looks like somebody flipped the fuse and then pried off the switch. I can't find the damn switch. I'm not a maintenance man, for Christ sakes, I'm just an administrator.'

He stopped, aware of how strident he sounded. I think it was the first time he had ever appeared less than in complete control to Connie. I could sense he felt ashamed, but I could have told him that Connie was used to flaws in her men. That he would probably be even more attractive to her now.

‘Can you walk me to my car?' Connie asked him. ‘I am now officially creeped out.'

He agreed immediately, then took her arm and started guiding her through the darkness, his flashlight beam leading the way. I tried to get a sense of how he felt. I wondered if he had been the one I sensed in the clearing. But the overpass was filled with the sadness, fear and anger that lingered from the presence of distraught family members. It was impossible to separate out what came from him, or from Connie, and what had been left behind by others.

They reached the other side of the overpass and the bright lights of the parking garage. Connie's car was only a few spots down the row. Cal, as usual, held the door open for her. I could tell Connie was angry at him for ignoring her all day in favor of other, bigger problems. Though she understood how difficult his day had been, he had failed to understand how very much she feared for Michael so long as he stayed at Holloway. She started to get into the front seat but stopped abruptly – and I knew what was coming next. She was going to tell him, to his face, how she felt. Connie was good about that. It had done no good with me, of course, as there was nothing I had loved better than standing there while she listed all my failings and shortcomings. God help me, I think I had enjoyed it. It had felt good to have someone else validate my low opinion of myself.

How Cal would take it, I did not know.

I decided not to stay and find out.

I headed back to Holloway, determined to search out the cause of the darkness that I had felt lingering in that clearing. But as I emerged from the overpass entrance into Holloway again, I stepped into a haze of wanton lust and evil so thick it almost made me gag.

Whoever had been in that clearing had been right behind me – and right behind Connie. What he had wanted from her was unspeakable.

I looked around but saw no one. I searched the grounds, I searched the grove, I even checked on Otis Parker. He was still locked in his room, still ranting at what his lawyer would do once word got through to him that he was being confined without cause.

I now had proof of two important facts: whoever had followed Connie had not been Otis Parker. And Vincent D'Amato had not been Parker's partner. Which meant that, whoever had killed Darcy Swan for Otis Parker was alive and well – and had access to Holloway.

NINETEEN

A
thousand nights or more I had failed my son, but I would not fail him that night. There was no reason to think that Otis Parker's partner would come after Michael, but I was not willing to take that chance. He meant too much to me and, though I had little to give him, what I had was his. I would watch over him for as long as it took to find out who – or what – was roving the grounds of Holloway, seeking victims.

Through the long hours of the night, I stood guard as my son slept. Michael looked years younger without the worries of his waking hours weighing down on him. My love for him was so overwhelming that I felt a physical ache where my heart used to be. How can people say that heartache isn't real? Or deny the fact that its pain is proof that we exist beyond the confines of our physical bodies? I felt it that night for my son: the fear of loss that comes with love; the panic that it might be taken from me.

The sun finally rose, and with it came an overcast spring day, the kind that reminds you that winter is still lurking in the wings. Though no one else at Holloway was out and about yet, Maggie and Calvano were waiting by the front gate for the morning guard to appear, coffee cups in hand as they stomped their feet and rubbed their arms to get warm in the cold morning air. Both looked as if they had managed a few hours of sleep and were equally determined to get back to work. It was amazing how much Calvano had changed since his time with Maggie. All he had needed was someone to show him the way.

‘You did tell them we'd be here first thing in the morning?' Maggie asked Calvano.

He nodded and sipped at his coffee. I'd pegged him for a latte man and was glad to see he knew better than to flaunt a five dollar coffee in front of another cop.

‘You can handle this on your own, right?' Maggie asked. She looked longingly at their car. ‘I want to head over to the diner while you run employees through the system. That would save us some time.'

‘Go, go,' Calvano assured her, waving her away.

Their partnership was starting to click. Calvano was going to track all the employees that Parker could have come in contact with at Holloway, and Maggie would start filling in the blanks of Darcy Swan's life by driving out to the diner where she had worked after school each day. It wasn't much of a choice – I hitched a ride with Maggie.

The Freeway Diner was a battered silver train car propped up on cinder blocks on the edge of town. Ugly concrete additions had been built around it at some forgotten point in time. I knew the place well because it had the best poor man's coffee in town. I used to go there to sober up before reporting to work on my worst days. ‘Coffee,' I'd tell the waitress, ‘And keep it coming.' I'd add four teaspoons of sugar to each cup and sip until I could stomach scrambled eggs and donuts on the side, hoping the combination of caffeine, sugar and protein would get me through enough hours to convince myself, if not my co-workers, that I could make it through another day.

As I followed Maggie inside the diner, I suddenly remembered that I had last been there the day that I died. I'd broken with my traditional hangover habits that morning and ordered pancakes instead. Halfway through, I'd felt nauseous from mixing Scotch and beer the night before and walked away, never knowing that the half stack of pancakes left behind would forever represent my last meal, or that the wad of dough and syrup in my belly would be the last thing I ever ate and ended up carefully weighed on the coroner's scales. It felt odd to be back, as if I were visiting another world.

It was early on a Saturday morning and the only customers in the diner were retirees living in the cheap apartments adjacent to a shopping strip a quarter mile away. They sat together at their booths, nursing their coffees, knowing to the dime what they could afford to spend on breakfast out. I'd probably have ended up just like them had I lived: making the most of free coffee refills and slowly eating my scrambled eggs and toast special to make the moment last.

Darcy Swan had been one of the teenage waitresses manning the front tables, to bring more customers in the door. Like the other young girls working there, she had probably told herself every day that she would never be one of the worn-down middle-aged women who stood out back taking turns sneaking smokes and wishing that they could just enjoy the damn cigarette inside the diner like in the good old days.

I sat behind a trio of old men, where I could vicariously enjoy their coffee and eavesdrop on their conversation, while Maggie waited to see the busboy who had reported Darcy Swan missing the day after her body was discovered.

The old men were swapping medical horror stories. I'd never even had the chance to talk about my prostate and creaky knees and heartburn after eating tacos.
Had I finally found a silver lining to my untimely death?
They were arguing about whether diabetes was a big deal at their age, when a pimply-faced boy with an immense bush of wild curly hair that hung down to his shoulders took a seat across the booth from Maggie. He looked like nothing so much as a sheepdog who had yet to be shorn. He had an unnaturally low voice for his age and was embarrassed by it. He looked down at his hands and answered Maggie's questions with monosyllables, forcing her to drag every detail out of him. Yes, he had known Darcy Swan from school. She had been at the diner for more than a year, which was six months longer than he had been working there. She had been the nicest of the waitresses, at least according to him, and had been the most generous in sharing tips. She had asked him about his progress as a guitar player nearly every day. She had not laughed at him like the other waitresses often did.

I realized that the boy had seen Darcy Swan as no one else in her life had seen her. To him, she had been a kind and sophisticated woman, one he had loved from afar. She would always stay that way to him now, and perhaps there was something beautiful in that.

Maggie pressed him hard on who had been in the diner the night that Darcy disappeared. Was anyone acting peculiar? Have there been any fights, had Darcy broken up any disagreements? Had she had any trouble with customers?

No, the boy insisted, it had been a slow night, the same as any other night, really, with the booths filling up with regulars, and a couple of long-haul truckers here and there, and maybe a lost tourist or two. As always, a few carloads of drunken college kids had arrived late that night to order cheeseburgers medium rare and take full advantage of free refills on their sodas as they attempted to mop up all the alcohol in their system before weaving down the highway back to campus.

No, he said, the college kids had liked Darcy, no one gave her a hard time. Everyone had liked Darcy. He remembered that she had been dropped off at work that night by another waitress who would stop by her house and give her a ride to work when she needed one. Darcy had an old Toyota that was always having trouble and he was pretty sure it had broken down earlier that day. He did not know how she had gotten home after her shift. The only unusual thing that he could recall was that Darcy had wanted to clock out an hour early and, since it was slow, the cook – who was also the diner's owner – let her leave.