The Secret Friend (16 page)

48

Malcolm Fletcher stood in front of a glassless window inside the dark, dusty remains of Sinclair’s top floor, watching the main road. He had selected this location for its strong cellular signal and its sweeping view of the campus, one aided by the use of a pair of excellent night-vision binoculars equipped with infrared technology. With the flick of a switch he could locate the heat signatures of anyone sitting inside a car or van, conducting surveillance.

The binoculars pressed to his eyes, Fletcher surveyed the area. Reed’s security staff patrolled the campus in shifts, focusing their attention on some of the more unorthodox ways one might enter the hospital. There were several points of entry, and many ways in which one could escape without being seen.

As he continued his campus search, Fletcher thought about the man he had seen on Emma Hale’s garage surveillance tape. The man had made one critical mistake: he had turned around before the elevator doors shut. The security camera caught a brief glimpse of the man’s face. It was enough. Fletcher captured the frame on his computer. The video-enhancing software did the rest.

The man who had retrieved the necklace from Emma Hale’s home bore a striking resemblance to a patient named Walter Smith, a twelve-year-old paranoid schizophrenic burned in a gasoline fire. Drifting back through time, Fletcher replayed his first encounter with Walter.

The young boy sat on the bed inside his hospital cell, his head a hairless, red-clay mask of strips of scars and stitches and healing skin. A pair of glasses with thick lenses magnified the severe damage to his left eye. It was wide-open, unblinking.

Walter’s arms were wrapped around his stomach. When he wasn’t dry-heaving into the wastebasket, he gnawed on his tongue as he rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to stop the trembling.

‘I need Mary,’ Walter said, pleading. ‘I need you to take me to her.’

‘Where is she?’

‘At the chapel. Please bring me there so Mary can take away the pain.’

Hanging on the walls were pieces of construction paper holding remarkable, detailed drawings done in crayon and magic marker of a young boy free of scars and disfigurement holding the hand of or hugging a woman dressed in long, blue flowing robes with a red heart painted on the front of her white tunic.

‘Mary’s gone,’ Walter said, his voice strangling on tears. Clutched in his good hand was a small plastic statue of the Blessed Mother of God. ‘Dr Han put the medicine in my veins and it sent Mary away again. I need to talk to my mother, I’m lost without her. Please bring me to the chapel.’

Fletcher was snapped from the memory by the vibration of his cell phone. He answered the call but didn’t take his eyes away from the binoculars. The heat signatures of four men were running through the woods, heading for Reed’s heated trailer.

‘Yes, Mr Hale?’

‘I watched the DVD.’ Hale’s voice was thick with bourbon. ‘Is this the man who killed my daughter?’

‘I believe it is. His name is Walter Smith.’

‘You know him?’

‘I met Walter while he was a patient at the Sinclair Mental Health Facility in Danvers. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic – the worst type, actually. His particular delusion is difficult to treat even with the proper medication, which, I’m sure, Walter is no longer taking. The medicine prevents him from hearing Mary.’

‘Who’s Mary?’

‘The Virgin Mother of God,’ Fletcher said. ‘Walter believes the Blessed Mother speaks to him. Walter’s real mother poured gasoline on him while he was sleeping. The burns covered over ninety per cent of his body, including his face. His mother died in the fire, and Walter was brought to the Shriners Burn Center in Boston for treatment.

‘Walter survived two burns. His left hand was severely disfigured the previous year, when she put his hand into a pot of boiling water after she caught him masturbating. She didn’t bring her son to the hospital. She treated him at home, where he was home-schooled.

‘When it became clear that Walter was schizophrenic, he was placed at Sinclair. He was a patient there for many years. When it was forced to shut its doors, my guess is Walter was released into either a low-risk group home or back into the general population.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I came to know Walter through his friendship with a sociopath named Samuel Dingle, a man the Saugus police believed to be responsible for the deaths of two women who were strangled and dumped along Route One. Saugus police asked me to interview Dingle because they had misplaced a key piece of evidence, a belt used to strangle one of the women. I had several sessions with Sammy. At the time, he wasn’t ready to confess his sins. I had to wait until we spoke again, years later, in a more private setting.’

‘How can you be sure the man on the tape is Walter Smith? It could be someone else.’

‘Walter’s been to Sinclair recently.’

‘Why? The hospital is abandoned – I tried to buy the property years ago but it was tied up in legal tape. Why would he go there?’

‘To visit Mary, his one true mother,’ Fletcher said.

‘Walter goes there to talk to the Virgin Mary?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been to the hospital?’

‘Yes. In fact, I’m here right now, waiting for the police to arrive.’

‘How did they find out about Sinclair?’

‘I called them here.’

‘You
called them?’

‘They’re already here.’

‘Do they know about Walter Smith?’

‘No. Mr Hale, I want you to listen to me very carefully.’

For the next ten minutes, Fletcher explained to Hale what was going to happen. When he finished, Hale was silent.

‘There is no way the police will be able to connect you to this, but I can’t prevent them from focusing their attention on you.’

‘Does Karim know?’ Hale asked.

‘We’ve discussed the matter at length.’

‘He approves?’

‘He does. However, since we have no choice but to involve you, Dr Karim and I both agree that the decision is yours. If you change your mind, you know how to reach me, but don’t take too long. The preparations have already been made.’

‘How long do I have?’

‘An hour,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’d suggest you leave for New York this evening. Dr Karim has searched through a national patient database called the Medical Information Bureau. Walter sees a doctor at the Shriners Burn Center, but the MIB contains an old address.’

‘Can you find him?’

‘Karim can’t access the Shriners database. I plan on doing that myself later this evening. I suspect I’ll find Walter in the next few days. In the interim, you may want to give some significant thought as to what you asked during our initial conversation.’

‘I haven’t changed my mind.’

‘After I hang up, I want you to call Detective Bryson and tell him about the DVD you received in the mail. Tell him what you saw, and please make sure to give him the mailer.’

‘Your name is on it.’

‘Along with my fingerprints,’ Fletcher said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The police already know I’m here. I want them to think I’m acting independently.’

‘Won’t the FBI find out?’

‘By the time their task force arrives, I’ll be gone.’

A black Mustang tore its way up the winding road.

‘I’ll contact you shortly,’ Fletcher said. ‘If you change your mind, you know how to reach me.’

Darby McCormick stepped out of the car and showed her ID to the two security guards standing outside their truck. Apparently she had called ahead to let them know of her arrival.

The young woman was, by all indications, bright and fearless; but would she keep pushing until she found the truth? It was time to find out.

49

Darby paced outside the room where she had found the photograph and statue. The two undercover Boston detectives who escorted her were somewhere in the dark, watching.

She pushed the button for the backlight for her watch. It was almost nine and Malcolm Fletcher still hadn’t called.

The ancient building groaned around her. Down the hall, wind blew through a window, the sound like a high-pitched scream.

Darby felt the hospital’s presence as though it was a living, breathing entity like the Overlook Hotel from
The Shining.
She didn’t believe in ghosts but she knew there were places in this world that were haunted, where men had performed unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence against each other, where the cries of the damned lingered for eternity. As she waited, she wondered about the possible secrets waiting for her inside these walls.

Her phone rang. She grabbed it, heard silence on the other end of the line. Then she realized her phone was set to vibrate.

The ringing was coming from inside the patient room.

Darby had already mounted the tactical light on her SIG. She turned it on and found a cell phone lying on the floor behind the steel door.

‘Step out of the room and turn to your left,’ Malcolm Fletcher said. ‘At the end of the hallway, you’ll see a stairwell.’

Darby saw the stairs. They led only one way: down.

‘Don’t worry about the stairs or the landings,’ Fletcher said. ‘They’re secure.’

Darby moved the beam of her tactical light around the cold, empty rooms. ‘What happened to Jennifer Sanders?’

‘Ask her yourself,’ Fletcher said. ‘She’s waiting for you downstairs.’

‘I know you’re in here. I know you’re watching me right now.’

Fletcher didn’t answer.

‘I’m alone,’ Darby said. ‘Show yourself. We’ll go downstairs together.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to endure this journey alone.’

‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me your agenda.’

‘I thought you wanted to know the truth.’

‘Then tell me.’

‘Telling you the truth doesn’t carry the same impact as discovering it for yourself.’

‘Tell me where you found the statue.’

‘The historian Ian Kershaw said the road to Auschwitz was paved with indifference,’ Fletcher said. ‘It’s time for you to choose. You need to make your decision now.’

Darby looked back to the stairs, thinking of Emma Hale and Judith Chen. She thought about Hannah Givens. She wondered if the answer to Jennifer Sanders’ disappearance was, in fact, waiting somewhere below her.

She thought of Jennifer’s mother clutching the crucifix tucked underneath the cellophane wrapper of her cigarettes and took the first step.

Descending into the awful dark, Darby was aware of her physical senses – the hollow feeling in her legs; the sweat collecting underneath her arms and hardhat; the way her footsteps echoed and thumped along with the rapid beating of her heart.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Nervous,’ Darby said. ‘Scared.’

‘Are you claustrophobic?’

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

‘You’ll see in a moment.’

Darby reached the bottom floor. She saw the steel door marked ‘ward 8’. She hadn’t searched this area over the weekend because it was locked. Reed had said the area was too unstable and refused to let anyone through, forcing the search teams to find alternate routes.

A padlock was lying on the floor. The lock had been sawed off.

‘I’m here.’

‘Open the door,’ Fletcher said.

The corridors went straight ahead, to her left and right. They were narrow and pitch black and in the thin beam of her flashlight they seemed to stretch for miles.

‘Your destination is straight ahead,’ Fletcher said. ‘When you reach the end of the corridor, turn left and travel halfway down the next hallway until you see a maintenance door.’

Exposed pipes ran along the walls, near the ceiling. Almost every door was shut. The floors were frozen with ice. Darby heard a humming sound and then realized it was her blood pounding against her ear drums.

The cold darkness pressing against her, she made her way down the main corridor, the ice slippery beneath her boots. She remembered a line from Dante, how hell wasn’t burning with fire but rather a place where Satan was frozen in a lake of ice.

Darby turned left into another maze of corridors. On a wall of chipped white and blue paint was faded lettering with arrows pointing to the different locations inside the hospital. The frigid air smelled of dank pipes and mildew. She moved into the corridor, listening for sound and watching for movement.

Ten minutes later, she found the door marked ‘
MAINTENANCE
’.

‘I found the door,’ Darby said.

Malcolm Fletcher didn’t answer.

‘Hello?’

No answer.

Darby checked the phone. The signal had dropped. She was too far underground.

She placed the phone on the floor. Leaning against the door, she pressed down on the handle with her elbow and pushed it open.

50

The maintenance room was empty.

Darby tucked the phone in her pocket. The room was a closet and held nothing but rusted shelves. The middle and bottom shelves were empty, but the top shelf held rusted tools, metal pails and old bags of cement. Under the centre bottom shelf and lying against the wall was a large metal ventilation grille, the kind used to heat and cool large buildings.

Darby got down on one knee and shined the thin beam of light against the grate. Beyond it was a vent about thirty feet long; it curved off to the left. Standing at the end of the vent was a small statue of the Virgin Mary.

There was no way Malcolm Fletcher had crawled through the vent. The man was too big, too wide to fit through this narrow space.

Are you claustrophobic?
Fletcher had asked.

Was Fletcher waiting for her on the other side? Or had he led her here to find something?

Darby checked her phone. No signal. She could backtrack, locate a signal and call Bryson; or she could crawl through the vent now.

She saw the Blessed Mother’s sorrowful expression in the beam of her flashlight. Darby removed the tactical light and holstered her SIG. She rolled her flashlight across the vent, then got down on her stomach and crawled inside.

Malcolm Fletcher waded through the knee-deep snow on the western part of Sinclair’s campus. His Jaguar was strategically parked behind a grouping of dumpsters, safely out of view – at least for the moment.

His years of living on the run had taught him the importance of carrying only minimal possessions. A small suitcase held his clothes. His briefcase held the more important items – surveillance gear, listening devices, and GPS units. The false passports were practically worthless. Since 9-11, Interpol had stepped up its restrictions at airports.

Fletcher popped the trunk. He tucked his FBI badge and supporting credentials in his suit jacket pocket. He had already procured a new sidearm, a 9mm Glock, courtesy of a Roxbury gang-banger who suddenly became very eager to unload his illegal firearm after his wrist and nose were broken. Fletcher took the other items he needed and shut the trunk.

A laptop sat on the front seat. The padded cone of the headphone pressed against one ear, he typed on the laptop to activate the remote transmitters he had strategically placed inside the lower level. He heard the sound of a young woman’s laboured breathing and the clang of metal. Darby McCormick was crawling through the heating vent.

So close,
he thought, grinning.

Malcolm Fletcher started the car. Cecil’s soft, haunting piano music played over the speakers as he drove away.

Tim Bryson sat in the cramped passenger seat of a Honda Civic parked at a Mobil gas station on Route One. His partner, Cliff Watts, stood outside, smoking.

Bryson had picked the location in case he needed to move to the hospital. If there was a problem, he could be at the front doors in less than three minutes.

For the past hour he had talked to Bill Jordan. His men had reported that Fletcher had left a cell phone inside the patient rooms. He had called Darby on this phone, so there was no way to listen in on the conversation.

The two undercover detectives watched Darby descend the stairs. Several minutes later they followed and found the sawed-off padlock on the floor.

Beyond the door was a maze of corridors. The last report was that they still hadn’t found her.

Another troubling note: the panic button with its GPS unit was no longer transmitting. Jordan had lost her signal.

Darby was too far underground, Jordan said. He had sent her a text message asking her to check in but she still hadn’t responded. Given her location, it was possible that she hadn’t received the message. Jordan still couldn’t hail either of his men.

Bryson’s phone rang.

‘Still no word from Darby,’ Jordan said.

‘Give her some time.’

‘I don’t like her wandering down there alone without knowing what’s going on. We should move some more people inside.’

‘And if Fletcher is watching, he’ll see them and bolt.’

‘Or he could be inside the basement with her,’ Jordan said. ‘We’ve already mapped out the terrain. The building plans are shit – half the passages are either sealed off with rubble or locked. The place is a goddamn maze, but we managed to find a way to the basement level. I can have them there in half an hour – Wait, hold on.’

Bryson heard mumbling. Then Jordan was back on the line: ‘A black Jaguar just pulled out of the western part of the campus and it’s moving fast. It was parked behind some dumpsters. The driver will be at your location in under a minute.’

‘You just discovered this
now?’

‘We had to do this on the fly, Tim. This place is massive – we couldn’t see that part of the campus from our location. You think it’s your boy?’

‘Last time he was here, he was driving a Jag. Who else could it be?’ Bryson leaned forward in his seat, thinking fast. ‘I won’t be able to block off the main road by myself. How soon can you get someone here?’

‘Lang’s on his way. He should be there –’

‘Shit, he’s here.’ Bryson watched the black Jag pull onto the highway. He banged on the window, got Watts’ attention and motioned him inside the car. ‘I’m going to follow. How many men can you spare?’

‘The second van’s already on its way. Call Lang, coordinate everything through him. He’s got you on his GPS so he won’t lose you.’

Watts started the car.

‘Move inside the hospital,’ Bryson said to Jordan. ‘Pull Darby out of there.’