by Lisa Gardner
“Also, by virtue of visiting this scene, you may be called to testify at trial. Your name now appears in the crime-scene logbook, which makes you fair game for questioning by both the prosecution and the defense.”
“Okay,” I said, though I hadn’t really thought of that. A trial? Questioning? I decided to worry about that later.
“And in return for this tour, you agree to accompany us to Arizona tomorrow morning. You will meet with Catherine Gagnon. You will answer our questions to the best of your ability.”
“Yes, I agree,” I stated, sharply now. I was getting impatient—and more nervous—the longer we stood there.
Sergeant Warren pulled out a flashlight. “I’ll go first,” she said, “flip on the lights. When you see that, you’ll know it’s your turn to descend.”
She gave me a last measuring look. I returned it, though I knew my gaze wasn’t as unwavering as hers. I had been wrong about Sergeant Warren. Had we met in a sparring ring, no way would I have dropped her. I might be younger, quicker, physically stronger. But she was tough. Down to the core, willfully-descend-into-a-pitch-black-mass-grave tough.
My father would have loved her.
The top of Warren’s head disappeared below. A second later, the opening burst into a pale glow.
“Last chance,” Detective Dodge murmured in my ear.
I reached for the top of the ladder. Then I just didn’t let myself think anymore.
FIRST THING THAT struck me was the temperature. It felt warmer belowground than above. The earthen walls offered protection from the wind and insulation against the late-fall chill.
Second thought—I could stand up straight. In fact, I could swing my arms, walk forward, sideways, backward. I had expected to be hunched over, claustrophobic. Instead, the chamber was positively roomy, even as Detective Dodge joined us in the gloom.
My eyes adjusted, sorting out the quilt of dark shadows intermingled with bright spotlights. I moved to a wall, touched the lightly grooved side, felt hard-packed dirt.
“I don’t understand,” I said at last. “There’s no way one man hand-dug a space this big. You’re talking backhoe, heavy machinery. How can that be going on and no one notice?”
Sergeant Warren surprised me by doing the honors: “We think it started out as part of another construction project. Maybe a culvert for drainage, or just a pit where they harvested fill for another area. In the late forties, early fifties, the facility was racing to erect enough buildings to keep pace with the increasing patient population. You can find half-started foundations, supply dumps, all sorts of stuff all over the property.”
“So this pit was once part of something official?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of people around from those days anymore to ask. You’re talking fifty years.”
I put my hand up, felt the wooden ceiling, moved forward, touched the support beams. “But he did all this? Converted it, so to speak?”
“That’s our guess.”
“Must’ve taken him time.”
No one argued.
“Expense,” I continued, thinking out loud. “Wood, nails, hammer. Effort. Would one of the mental patients really be that organized, have access to leave and reenter the grounds like that?”
D.D. shrugged again. “Everything here could’ve been harvested from the construction dumps on the property. So far, I’ve seen everything from cement dust to tiles to window frames.”
I grimaced at that. “No windows down here.”
“No, not for what he had in mind.”
I repressed a shiver, walked to the far wall. “When do you think he started?”
“Don’t know. There was about thirty years of plant growth over the plywood, so that puts us in the seventies. The hospital was dying by then, the property more abandoned than used. That makes some sense.”
“And he operated for how long?”
“Don’t know.”
“But he must have known this area,” I persisted. “Been a patient at the hospital or maybe even someone who worked there. I mean, to have found this space, to know where to harvest his supplies. To feel comfortable returning again and again.”
“At this stage of the game, anything’s possible.” D.D.’s voice told me she was skeptical, though. I had the sense she was focused on the grounds being abandoned, which meant anyone could’ve been running around the hundred-and-seventy-acre site.
The thought took some of the wind out of my sails. I got my chin up, relentlessly pressing on in my role of amateur investigator.
“You said there were supplies?” I prompted.
“Metal shelving, metal chair, plastic bucket.”
“No bedding?”
“Not that we found.”
“Lanterns, cookstove?”
“No, but two hooks on the ceiling, which may have been used for hanging lights.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he placed the hooks in front of the metal shelves where he stored the bodies.”
I swayed, reached out to brace myself against the cold, earthen wall, then snatched my hand back. “I’m sorry?”
D.D.’s expression had grown hard, her gaze probing. “You tell me. You’re the one pretending to be the witness. What do you see down here?”
“Nothing.”
“Property, grounds—any of this familiar to you?”
“No.” My voice was faint. “I’ve never been here before. I would think”—my hand returned to the wall, my fingers touching it tentatively—“I would think you don’t forget something like this.”
“No,” she agreed harshly, “I don’t think you do.”
D.D. came forward, stood beside me. She placed her hand next to mine, her fingers splayed, palm flat against the cold earth as if to prove she could handle this grave better than I could. “Right where we are standing used to be two long metal shelving units. He used them for storage. It’s where he placed the bodies. One per garbage bag, three per shelf. Two neat little rows.”
My fingers convulsed, nails sinking into the raw earth, feeling the hard, compacted soil dig beneath my fingernails. And at that moment, I swear I could feel it. The deeply embedded evil, a powerful, biting chill. I retreated hastily, my feet moving in rapid little circles, while my gaze scoured the floor, looking for signs of…what? Struggle? Blood? The spot where a monster raped my best friend? Or ripped out her fingernails? Or took pliers to her nipples before he slit her throat?
I had read too many articles, spent too much time being prepped by my father. Why read Goodnight Moon to your child when you can read her 21st Century Monsters instead?
I was going to be sick, but I couldn’t be. My thoughts ran too hard, too fast. I was remembering my seven-year-old childhood friend. I was picturing every crime-scene photo my father had ever shown me.
“What did he do?” I found myself demanding. “How long were they kept alive? How did he kill them? Did they know of one another? Did they have to stay down here, surrounded by corpses in the dark?
“Turn off the lights!” My voice was growing wild, incoherent. “Dammit, turn off those lights! I want to know what he did to them! I want to know how it felt!”
Detective Dodge caught my hands. He pressed my palms together, stilling my jerky motions, tucking my hands back into my chest. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, looking at me with those steady gray eyes until, with a brittle snap, I felt something break inside of me. My shoulders sagged, my arms dropped. The hysteria drained from me, and I was left limp, wrung out, thinking of Dori again and that last summer when neither of us had known that we had it so good.
Dori’s favorite flavor of Popsicle was grape. Mine was root beer. We would save those flavors from the assorted packs our mothers bought, swapping the two each Saturday.
We used to race down the street to see which one of us could skip the fastest. Once I fell down and skinned my chin. Dori came back to see if I was okay, and when she was bending down, I jumped up and went skippi
ng over the finish line just so I could say I won. She didn’t speak to me for a whole day, but I still wouldn’t apologize, because even back then winning mattered more to me than the wounded look on her face.
Every Sunday her family went to church. I wanted to go to church with them because Dori always looked so pretty in her white church dress with light blue piping, but my father told me church was for the ignorant. Instead, I would visit Dori’s house on Sunday afternoons and she would tell me stories she had heard that morning, such as baby Moses, or Noah and his ark, or Jesus’ miraculous birth in a manger. And I would say a little prayer with her, even though it made me feel guilty. I liked the way her face looked when she prayed, the serene smile that would settle across her lips.
I wondered if she had prayed down here. I wondered if she had prayed to live, or if she had prayed for God’s mercy to take her away. I wanted to pray. I wanted to fall down on my knees and beg God to take some of this huge pressure out of my chest, because I felt like a fist had reached inside of me and was squeezing my heart, and I did not know how one person could live with so much pain, which merely made me wonder how her parents had ever gotten through all these years.
Is this what life comes down to in the end? Young girls forced to choose between a life spent running from the shadows or a premature death alone in the dark? What kind of monster did such a thing? Why couldn’t Dori have escaped?
I was happy in that instant that my parents were dead. That they didn’t have to know what had happened to Dori or what my father’s decision had meant for his daughter’s best friend.
But then in the next moment, I felt uneasy. Another rippling shadow in the recesses of my mind…
He knew. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. My father had known what had happened to Dori, and that filled me with a greater sense of unease than even the four closing walls.
I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands came up, cradled my forehead.
“We will have to wait for the forensic anthropologist’s reports to know more about the victims,” Sergeant Warren was saying.
I merely nodded.
“Suffice it to say, we’re looking for someone very methodical, extremely intelligent, and depraved.”
Another short nod.
“Naturally, anything you might remember about that time—and particularly the UNSUB watching your house—would be most useful.”
“I would like to go up now,” I said.
No one argued. Detective Dodge led the way. At the top, he offered me his hand. I refused, climbing out on my own. The wind had picked up, rustling loudly through the dying leaves. I tilted my face toward the stinging breeze. Then I curled my fingers into a fist, feeling beneath my fingernails the grim remnants of my best friend’s grave.
WHEN WE RETURNED to the vehicles, a patrol officer stood waiting for us. He drew Sergeant Warren aside, speaking in a low voice.
“How many times have you seen him?” she asked sharply.
“Three or four.”
“Who does he say he is?”
“Says he used to work here. That he knows something. But he’ll only speak to the officer in charge.”
Warren looked over the officer’s head, to where Detective Dodge and I stood. “Got a minute?” she asked, clearly meaning Bobby, not me.
He glanced at me. I shrugged. “I can wait in the car.”
That seemed to be the right answer. Warren turned back to the patrol officer. “Bring him up. He wants to talk so bad, let’s hear what he has to say.”
I returned to the Crown Vic; I didn’t mind. I wanted out of the wind, away from the sights and smells. I wasn’t thinking of nature hikes anymore. They should bring in bulldozers and raze this place to the ground.
I slumped down in the passenger’s seat, obediently removing myself from view. The moment Detective Dodge crossed to Sergeant Warren’s side, however, I cracked the window.
The patrol officer returned in a matter of minutes. He brought with him an older gentleman with a thick shock of white hair and a surprisingly brisk step.
“Name’s Charles,” he boomed, shaking Warren’s hand, shaking Dodge’s. “Charlie Marvin. Used to work at the hospital during my college days. Thanks for seeing me. You the officer in charge?” He turned expectantly to Detective Dodge, who did a side nudge with his head. Charlie followed the motion to Sergeant Warren. “Oops,” the man boomed, but smiled so broadly it was hard not to like him. “Don’t mind me,” he told Warren. “I’m not sexist; I’m just an old fart.”
She laughed. I’d never heard Sergeant Warren laugh before. It made her sound almost human.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Marvin.”
“Charlie, Charlie. ‘Mr. Marvin’ makes me think of my father, God rest his soul.”
“What can we do for you, Charlie?”
“I heard about the graves, the six girls found up here. Gotta say, it shook me right up. I spent nearly a decade up here, first working as an attendant nurse—AN—then offering my ministering services on nights and weekends. Almost got myself killed half a dozen times. But I still think of it as the good old days. Bothers me to think girls could’ve been dying the same time I was here. Bothers me a lot.”
Charlie stared at Warren and Dodge expectantly, but neither said a word. I recognized their strategy by now; they liked to use the silent approach on me as well.
“So,” Charlie said briskly, “I might be an old fart who can’t remember what he had for breakfast most of the time, but my memories from back in the day are clear as a bell. I took the liberty of making some notes. About some patients and, well”—he cleared his throat, starting to look nervous for a moment—“and about a certain staff member. Don’t know if it will help you or not, but I wanted to do something.”
Dodge reached into his breast pocket, flipped out a notebook. Charlie took that as a sign of encouragement, and briskly unfolded a piece of notebook paper he had clutched in his hand. His fingers trembled slightly, but his voice remained strong.
“You know much about the hospital workings?” he asked the two detectives.
“No, sir.” Detective Dodge spoke up. “At least, not as much as we’d like.”
“We had eighteen hundred patients when I first started working,” Charlie said. “We served patients age sixteen and up, all races, genders, socio-economic classes. Some were admitted by their families, a lot were brought in by the police. East side of the complex was for chronic care; west side, where we’re standing now, for acute. I started out in admitting. A year later, I was promoted to Charge Attendant and moved to the I-Building, working the I-4 unit, which was maximum security for men.
“We were a good facility. Understaffed—lotta nights it was just me and forty patients—but we got the job done. Never used strait-jackets, tie downs, or physical abuse. If you got yourself in trouble, you were permitted to use a hammerlock or full nelson to subdue the patient until backup arrived, at which point a fellow AN would most likely administer a sedative.
“Mostly, ANs were in charge of custodial care, keeping the patients calm, clean, healthy. We’d administer medications as prescribed by the doctors. I received some training in IM—intramuscular—injections. You know, jabbing a needle loaded with sodium amytal in a guy’s thigh. Definitely, it got hairy at times—I lifted a lotta weights just to survive. But most of the men, even in maximum security, simply needed to be treated as human. You talked to them. You kept your voice calm and reasonable. You acted as if you expected them to be calm and reasonable. You’d be amazed how often that worked.”
“But not always,” Sergeant Warren prodded.
Charlie shook his head. “No, not always.” He held up one finger. “First time I almost lost my life—Paul Nicholas. Nearly two hundred and thirty pounds of paranoid schizophrenic. Most of the time, he was kept in seclusion—special rooms that only had a barred window and a heavy leather mat for sleeping. Rubber rooms, you’d call ’em these days. One night when I came on duty, however, he’d been let out. My
supervisor, Alan Woodward, swore Paulie was doing okay.
“First few hours—didn’t hear a thing. Gets to be midnight, I’ve retired to the first-floor office to do a little studying, when suddenly I hear pounding upstairs, like a freight train roaring down the hall. I knock the phone off the hook—sending the signal for help—and race upstairs.
“There’s Paulie, smack-dab in the middle of the Day Room, waiting for me. Minute he sees me, he takes a flying leap. I roll to the side, Paul lands on the couch, flattening the sucker right out. Next thing I know, Paul’s grabbing chairs and hurtling them at my head. I run behind a Ping-Pong table. He gives chase, and ’round and ’round we go, like an old cartoon of Tom and Jerry. Except Paulie gets tired of this game. He stops running. Starts tearing apart the Ping-Pong table. With his bare hands.
“You think I’m exaggerating; I’m not. Guy was pumped up on rage and testosterone. He started with the metal trim on the table, ripped it back and then went to work on it chunk by chunk. Right about now, I’m realizing I’m dead; Ping-Pong table’s only so big, and Paul’s making good progress. Lo and behold, I look up to see two of my fellow ANs finally arrive in the doorway.
“ ‘Get him!’ I yell. ‘We need sodium amytal!’
“Except they’ve gone wide-eyed. They’re standing in the doorway, watching Paulie go to town, and if you’ll pardon the expression, ma’am, they’re shitting their pants.
“ ‘Hey!’ I yell again. ‘For God’s sake, man!’
“One of them makes a choking sound. It’s enough for Paulie to turn. Minute he does, I jump across the table, onto his back, and get him in a hammerlock. Paul starts roaring, trying to toss me off. My fellow ANs finally spring to life and help me tackle him. It still took fourteen grains of sodium amytal and two hours to calm Paulie down. Needless to say, he didn’t get out of seclusion for a while after that. So there’s one name for you. Paulie Nicholas!”
Charlie looked at the two investigators expectantly. Detective Dodge obediently scribbled down the name, but Sergeant Warren was frowning.
“You said this patient, Paul ‘Paulie’ Nicholas, stayed in seclusion?”