Supernatural Noir (30 page)

“Ron’s hamstrings were cut. Katy’s face was bashed to pieces. What average citizen is going to do that? Has the capacity for doing that?”

“Anyone,” Dell said, “is capable of anything, if they hate somebody enough. Ron was probably drunk, as usual, and couldn’t fight back. Katy zonked on crank. Anyone could have done it.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe one of the brothers had a beef. It’s been six years. You know how many of us are in the ground right along beside them now? More than a dozen. Whoever did it had their reasons, and we’ll never know what they were. There are questions we’ll never know the answer to.”

I thought he was right. I glanced at the photos of the brothers on the wall. A lot of them were on death row or dying of emphysema or cancer or failing livers or kidneys. Ron and Katy lived the MC life and died because of it. I knew I’d never find out who had murdered them. Not only had too much time passed, but the truth was that I really didn’t give a shit about them.

But I felt I owed Emily something. I had never said I would help her, and I should’ve. It might have made all the difference.

——

Dell let me take one of the MC’s drop cars home. It would have clean plates and a clean registration, but if they ever needed to abandon it for whatever reason, it couldn’t be traced back to the brotherhood. I drove to an all-night diner, wolfed down a couple of burgers and a jug of coffee, and stared out the plate-glass window up the highway in the direction of Sojourner.

The story of Emily’s escape and suicide hadn’t broken nationwide yet, but it would by morning. It would stir up all the bad news about Katy and Ron’s unsolved murder, and the cops would be buzzing like hornets while trying to dodge news crews. The hospital directors and chairpersons would be holed up in an all-night board meeting someplace. They’d be gearing up for reporters and potential lawsuits. They’d be plotting with attorneys for hours, shoring up their stories, preparing their pretexts. In another day or two nobody would be able to break through their line of defense. I had to go in now.

I drove over to Sojourner and parked off one of the back roads at the far side of the hospital, along a wide field bordered by the high safety fence. I walked along the fence until I came to a spot where the links had been cut low to the ground so it could be peeled up a few inches and someone could crawl through. No matter how many times they repaired it there’d always be a place like this somewhere along the perimeter. Orderlies brought in contraband this way. I was certain it was how Emily Wright had managed to escape the ward. I’d seen the scratches along her back from the loose fence wire.

I’d made a break from Sojourner this way myself many years ago. Standing here now, staring up at the building with its hundreds of cube windows, its harsh white lights burning across time and memory, knowing the kinds of things that went on in there, a sudden rush of rage surged through my chest. I crawled under the fencing and made my way to the employee exit.

I crept along the side of the building, just out of range of the bright security lights. I stood in the shadows and waited. Twenty minutes later an orderly stepped out the door, propped it open with a folding chair, leaned against the jamb, and lit a joint. You could see why they’d hired him. He was tall and massive, with thick arms and wrists covered in twisting black veins. I kept hoping he’d sit and relax, but he wouldn’t. He just smoked his J and stared out at the night looking mean.

Had he been the one? Had he been the one who had crept into bed with her one night and climbed on top of her while she stared over his shoulder and listened to her mother and father talking to her from the other end of hell?

I moved fast, came up on him from the left and hooked him twice under the heart. It was like punching welded steel plating. His breath exploded from his lungs and the sweet scent of marijuana blew into my face. He bounced off the jamb and recovered almost instantly. This wasn’t going to be easy. I worked his short ribs with rapid-fire jabs. He said, “The fuck . . . ?” and swept out one of those tremendous fists. I ducked and he tried again. I dodged and brought a roundhouse up from my knees directly onto the point of his chin. It rocked him. He threw his arms out like he was trying to keep balance on a high wire. It didn’t help. He fell over on his ass with a puzzled expression. He grunted a threat and tried to lumber to his feet. I kicked him once in the throat and twice in the face, and he was out.

I checked his belt and found his keys, then I stepped inside and shut the door.

The sound of the lock engaging put the shits up me. I walked along the empty halls, glancing into the community day room, the group-discussion room, the work room. I could smell the clay they were using to make ashtrays and potholders. The floorboards were thick with shreds of wicker from their weaving of baskets and mats. It’s really what they gave the lunatics to do in order to keep their hands busy.

I unlocked each security door I came to and slid through. Normally there would be three other orderlies on duty, a couple of night nurses, maybe a doctor. I suspected the staff would be light tonight. I eased up the hall and peered around the corner at the nurse’s station. I could hear the soft, fast padding of footsteps far up the corridor. Sounded like a young, heavy woman with an austere purpose. She’d be checking rooms and giving out midnight medication and sedatives to whoever needed it. I stepped toward the nurse’s station thinking maybe I’d get lucky and have time to check through their computer files. I was almost there when an orderly stepped out of the men’s room and turned towards me.

I didn’t give him time to react. I clutched the heavy key ring tightly in my fist and broke his nose. He doubled over, gagging on blood, and I swept his feet out from under him. He went down hard but not hard enough to quit struggling. I gripped him by his hair and banged his head twice on the tile floor until his eyes rolled back into his skull. I dragged him into the nurse’s station and stuffed him halfway behind a filing cabinet.

There were only five possibilities, so far as I could see, of who might have gotten Emily pregnant. A doctor, an orderly, some other staff member, a patient, or a visitor.

The computer system was simple. I did a search and came up with Emily’s file. I went through her list of visitors. There hadn’t been any in six months. Before that, on her birthday, Dell had signed in. He stayed for twenty minutes. I went back further. He’d done the same thing last year, and the year before.

I kept scrolling through the pages reading reports. It all seemed like the same thing. Emily would have moments of lucidity, then fall back into a dissociative state where she was delusional. She’d escaped once before, three months ago, and they put her on a suicide watch.

They tried some serious drugs on her. I thought of her frail frame with all those chemicals punching through her veins. I reached down and gripped the edge of the desk and tightened my hold, the impotent fury heavy in me.

The nurse stepped back in. She had a face like an iron frying pan and arms nearly as thick as mine. She rushed over to me with her hands up like she wanted to box. I jumped to my feet and got in her face. She didn’t intimidate easily and raised her chin to meet me.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

I said, “Someone who spent some time here, which means you definitely shouldn’t fuck with me.”

“I’m calling security.”

I blocked her as she went for the phone. “The two orderlies covering the ward tonight are sleeping. Let’s leave them that way, right?”

Her eyes darted to the pair of feet jutting from behind the filing cabinet.

Even that didn’t spook her much. Everyone who worked at Sojourner was hard. “What do you want?”

“I want to know about Emily Wright.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t give out any information. Leave now, or I’ll call the police.”

I looked at her. She held my gaze for thirty seconds and then turned aside. I chucked her under the chin and stared deep into her face. “You know she’s dead, don’t you? They told you that. A hurricane of shit is about to sweep through this place. I can either make it better or worse. Now, show me her room.”

She led me down the twining corridors, past the dwellings of the other patients. Some would be on the floor lying in shredded sheets like nests. Others managed to sleep standing up. I listened in and heard the same kind of nightly whines, whimpers, cries, chatter, and grousing that I’d listened to when I’d been locked up here.

“This is her room,” the nurse said.

It was smaller than a jail cell. I knew. I’d lived in both. This was worse. I went through her two-drawer dresser and checked her clothing. What they called “visitor’s-day wear.” You had to put on a show for the family or anybody else who came by. The rest of the time you walked around in loose-fitting garments, pajamas or sweats or scrubs or nighties. I didn’t find anything. I went through her personal effects. She didn’t have many. Some state-made jewelry, makeup, brushes, hair clips, toothbrush. I checked under her pillow and went through the blankets.

“Check under the bed,” I told the nurse.

“Why?”

I kept my voice steady. “Just do it, all right?”

“Why don’t you?”

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders and got up close and braced her. “Remember what I said about not fucking with me, lady?”

She got on her hands and knees and peered under the bed. “There’s nothing here.”

When she stood again I showed her the tiny purple plastic house. “This looks like it goes to a board game. Any idea what?”

“No, I’ve never seen that before.”

“Was she close to any of the other patients?”

“No.”

I reared on her. “Think for a goddamn minute before you answer, right? Now, mull it over. Was she close to anyone?”

“I swear, she wasn’t.”

“Any sexual deviants in this wing? Masturbators? Rapists? Flashers, perverts, pedophiles?”

“No. No mental abnormalities or sexual proclivities of that sort. They’re kept in the C wing, where there’s more security. We don’t allow those patients to mix with the rest. Especially not with young girls like Emily.”

“Okay. Any escapees in the last few months?”

She hesitated. “No, not in years.”

“Before her, you mean. She cut out three months ago.”

“Yes, before her.”

“How’d she get out?”

“We don’t know. Maybe the same way you got in.”

I tightened one fist on the keys and the other on the little house. “Was there someone who could have had a sexual relationship with her? A staff member? One of these no-neck attendant fuckers?”

“She was only sixteen.”

“I know how old she was. Answer the question.”

“No. We have strict protocol. There are always several orderlies on hand, and nurses, and doctors. Tonight is—”

“Right, a special case.” I looked through the little cube window of Emily’s cell. You could barely see the glimmer of the moon. “She had a gun with her. Any idea where she could have gotten it?”

“No, none at all.”

“Who was her primary therapist?”

“Dr. Wilkins.”

I remembered that prick. He was old school. A sucker for hydrotherapy back in the day who used to keep the patients in lukewarm bathtubs with canvas covers to force us to stay down. He was the only psychiatrist still performing shock treatment anywhere in the country. I wondered if he was still at it. I wondered how many times Emily had had her pubescent brain singed.

“Is Wilkins here?”

“No.”

He didn’t know how lucky he was. The mood I was in, I wasn’t sure what I might do to him.

I sat on Emily’s bed and laid back and thought about what it might have been like for her to imagine her parents under her small bed, scratching and whispering. I could see Emily doing the same kind of thing that I had done in my time. Curling up in a ball and begging for Mommy.

I walked out past the nurse and let her go rushing back to her station where she’d hit the panic button and get the cops down here. Guards from other wards and wings would come running, but I’d be gone by the time anyone got close.

I walked the halls, unlocked the security doors as I came to them, and slipped out the back door past the orderly I’d knocked out. He was starting to come around. I stepped past him and stuck to the shadows. More lights flashed on across the grounds but I knew my way around them. I made my way back to Dell’s drop car, got in, and drove towards town.

I’d been stupid. I should’ve started with the thing that had caught my attention right at the beginning, a moment after I set eyes on Cecil’s corpse.

The popgun .22.

——

Dell had friends of the club inside the police department. He’d have the autopsy report and paperwork on the gun probably before the sheriff did. I showed up at the clubhouse for three days straight waiting for him to get the call.

When it came I was having a beer with him in the clubhouse, watching the Friday-night town girls playing strip nine-ball with a couple of the brothers.

Dell answered his cell. I watched his eyes darken and knew he was getting the word. His responses were terse. He disconnected. He said nothing for a long time.

“Was she pregnant?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “How’d you know? Did she tell you?”

“How far along?”

“Three months.”

It was time to tell him about my visit to the ward. “She had no visitors, not since the last time you showed up on her birthday. But she slipped out of Sojourner at least once that they knew about. Three months ago. She could have gotten out plenty of other times before she showed up at my place.”

I watched him. He sipped his beer and stared into the scarred wood of the bar top. His blunt features hardened and twitched through a few subtle expressions before his face became stony again.

“She did, didn’t she, Dell? She came to see you.”

He chuckled sadly but with some relief. He wanted to talk about it. “Kid walked here. Can you believe that? About a month ago. Shows up at two in the morning, barefoot and bleeding. She tried the same thing on me that she tried with you.” He gripped his beer mug so hard that he put a hairline crack in it.