by Lisa Gardner
That day, I found her sitting on the edge of the double-size bed in the cramped bedroom, staring at her hands. I crawled onto the bed beside her. Leaned against her, shoulder to shoulder.
My mother had liked Cleveland. The two older women down the hall had taken her under their wing. They had her over on Friday nights to play pinochle and sip Crown Royal. Our apartment was tiny, but nicer than the one in St. Louis. No cockroaches here. No high-pitched scream of the local commuter rail screeching to a stop one block away.
My mother had found a part-time job as a cashier at the local grocery store. She would walk to work in the mornings after seeing me onto the bus. In the afternoons, we’d take long walks through the quiet, tree-lined streets, stopping at a nearby pond to feed the ducks.
We’d lasted a whole eighteen months, even surviving the bitterly cold winter. My mother claimed that the gray slushy snow didn’t bother her at all; it simply reminded her of life in New England.
I think my mother could’ve made it in Cleveland.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her as we sat side by side on the bed.
“Shhhhh.”
“Maybe, if we both said no—”
“Shhhhh.”
“Mom—”
“You know what I do on days like this?” my mother asked me.
I shook my head.
“I think about the future.”
“Chicago?” I asked in confusion, for that’s where my father said we were going next.
“No, silly. The ten-year future. Fifteen, twenty, forty years from now. I picture your graduation. I imagine your wedding. I dream about holding grandbabies.”
I made a face. “Ugh. Never happen,” I told her.
“Sure it will.”
“No, never. I’m not getting married.”
Her turn to smile, ruffle my hair, try to pretend we both didn’t see her shaking fingers. “That’s what all twelve-year-olds think.”
“No. I’m serious. No husband, no kids. Children mean having to move too much.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said sadly, and gave me a hard, tight hug.
I THINK OF my mother as I leave my apartment now, Bella in tow. I have my Taser in hand. It feels melodramatic, creeping down the stairs in my own apartment building in broad daylight. Bobby was right: My apartment was no longer safe. As it went in the world of secret agents and double lives, my cover was blown. So I might as well take Bobby’s advice and hole up in a hotel for a while.
It’s what my father would’ve done.
But leaving meant packing. Packing meant suitcases. Suitcases were kept in my storage locker; one was assigned to each tenant, in the basement below.
I had retrieved items from my storage space countless times before. I told myself that today was no different.
The stair creaked beneath my foot. Instantly I froze. I was on the third-story landing, right outside apartment 3C’s door. I stared at it, my heart pounding, waiting to see what would happen next. Then, in the next minute, I pulled it together, scolding myself.
I knew the tenants who lived in 3C. A young professional couple. Had a gray tabby cat named Ashton who liked to hiss at Bella from beneath the door. Ashton’s attitude aside, we’d all managed to coexist for the past three years. There was no logical reason to suddenly be afraid of them now.
It was more like, why not be afraid of apartment 3C? With no tangible focus for my anxiety, it was easy to look at every dark shadow and see the possible outline of evil Uncle Tommy.
I descended to the second floor, then the first. In the lobby came the hard part. My hands were shaking. I had to work to maintain focus.
I sorted through my ring of keys, finally finding the right one and inserting it in the lock. The side door, old and heavy, groaned inward to reveal a black plunge into the bowels of the centuries-old building. I fumbled overhead until I found the chain for the bare-bulb stairwell light.
The smell was different here. Cold and moldy, like mossy stones or damp earth. Like the smell from Dori’s grave.
Bella scrambled down the narrow wooden stairs without a second thought. At least one of us was brave.
At the bottom, the crude plywood storage structures were bolted against the far wall. As the fifth-floor tenant, I had the storage unit at the end, secured by my own metal padlock. It took me two tries to get it undone. In the meantime, Bella worked the basement perimeter, making the happy woofing sounds of a dog discovering hidden treasures.
I got out my parents’ luggage. Five pieces, pea green, made of some kind of industrial fabric that had been heavily patched with duct tape over the years. The largest piece squeaked alarmingly as I wheeled it along the floor.
And in that instant, I saw so many snapshots of time. My father, that last afternoon in Arlington. My mother, merrily unpacking the suitcase in our first apartment, giddy over the bright Florida sun. Packing up in Tampa. Checking into Baton Rouge. The brief stint in New Orleans.
We had done it. Fighting, building, correcting, warring, grieving. Losing, hating, winning, weeping. We had been messy and tumultuous and bitter and determined. But we had done it. And never, until this moment, had I missed my parents so much. Until my fingers closed around my necklace and I swore that I could feel them standing beside me in this cold, dank space.
And I realized, in that instant, that I would’ve done the same thing if I’d been them. I would’ve moved heaven and earth to save my child. Given up my job, my identity, my community, even my life. It would’ve been worth it to me, too. That’s what being a parent was all about.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I tried to tell them. I had to believe that they could hear me. If only because without that bit of faith, I’d be no better than Mr. Petracelli, drowning in a sea of bitterness and regret.
Onward and upward, my father had always said. This will be the best place yet!
“Onward and upward,” I whispered. “All right, Daddy, let’s get this done.”
I organized the luggage, locked up my storage unit, then whistled for Bella. Given the load, I’d have to make two trips. I started with the largest piece, strapping another piece on top, then hooked one of the smaller bags over my shoulder.
I shuffled my way through the narrow corridor between storage units. Looked up.
And saw Charlie Marvin silhouetted at the top of the stairs, his eyes peering down and finding me in the gloom.
BOBBY WAS HEADING for Sinkus’s cubicle when his cell phone chirped. He checked caller ID, then answered. “You got the fax?”
“Hello to you, too,” said Catherine.
“Sorry. Lotsa things happening.”
“As I can tell from the fax. Well, then, to answer your question, the drawing could be of the same man.”
“Could be?”
“Bobby, it’s been twenty-seven years.”
“You recognized the photo of Annabelle’s father easily enough,” he countered.
“Annabelle’s father interacted with me.” Catherine sounded annoyed. “He argued and pushed me until I grew angry with him. That made an impression. The sketch, on the other hand…What I remember most is my first thought—the man in the drawing wasn’t the man who attacked me.”
Bobby sighed. What he needed now was something more definitive. “But it’s possible this sketch is the same sketch you were shown in the hospital?”
“It’s possible,” she agreed. Moment’s pause. “Who is it?”
“Annabelle’s uncle, Tommy Grayson. Turns out he started stalking Annabelle when she was about eighteen months old. Her family fled from Philadelphia to Arlington in an attempt to get away from him. He found them.”
“Did Tommy know Richard?”
“Not that we know of. Tommy probably got the idea for using an underground chamber, though, by watching your case on the news.”
“Happy to help,” Catherine murmured dryly.
Because he knew her better than most, Bobby stopped walking. “It’s not your fault.”
She didn’t say anything.
“And anyway,” he continued briskly, “now that we know Tommy’s name, the case is almost done. We’ll get him, lock him up, and that will be that.”
“You’ll come to Arizona to celebrate?”
“Catherine…”
“I know, Bobby. You’ll take Annabelle to dinner to celebrate.”
His turn to be silent.
“I like her, Bobby. Honestly. It makes me feel good to know that she will be happy.”
“Someday, you’ll be happy, too.”
“No, Bobby, not me. But maybe I’ll be less angry. Good luck with your case, Bobby.”
“Thank you.”
“And when it’s over, feel free for you and Annabelle to come visit.”
Bobby knew he’d never take Catherine up on that offer, but he thanked her before ending the call.
One detail down, about twelve more to go. He headed for Sinkus’s cubicle.
SINKUS WAS MIFFED, the boy who’d gone to the stadium then looked away at the last minute and missed the game-winning play. He also smelled of sour milk.
“You mean all along this professor knew the whole story?”
“Guess so.”
“Oh man, I spent three hours with Jill Cochran. All I learned is that former mental-ward administrators are tougher than Catholic nuns.”
Bobby frowned. “What, she rapped your knuckles with a yardstick?”
“No, she delivered a blistering lecture on how unfair it is to always assume the worst of the mentally ill. That wackos are people, have rights. Most are harmless, just misunderstood. ‘Mark my words,’ she told me, ‘you find who did this, and I guarantee it won’t be one of our patients. No, it’ll be some fine upstanding member of the community. Someone who goes to church, spoils his kids, and works nine to five. It’s always the normal ones who commit the truly vile acts against God.’ Woman had a lot of opinions on the subject.”
“So, where are the records?” Bobby asked, trying not to sound impatient.
“You’re looking at ’em.” Sinkus gestured to four cardboard boxes, stacked against the wall. “Not as bad as I feared. Remember, the place closed precomputerization. I thought we might be talking hundreds of boxes. But when the facility shut down, Mrs. Cochran knew they couldn’t hang on to piles of patient history. So she condensed down the files to a manageable size. This way, when someone needs information on a former patient, she knows where to start. Plus, I got the impression she was thinking of using her years at the place to write a book. Kind of a tell-all with a heart.”
Bobby shrugged. Why not?
He opened the first box. Jill Cochran was an organized kind of gal. She had divvied up the information by decade, then by building, each decade holding multiple building files. Bobby tried to remember what Charlie Marvin had told them about the hospital’s organization. Maximum security had been in I-Building, something like that.
He went to the seventies and pulled the file for I-Building. Each patient had been distilled to a single page. It still made an impressive weight in his hand.
He came upon the name Christopher Eola first and skimmed Cochran’s notes. Date of admittance, brief family history, a bunch of clinical terms that meant nothing to Bobby, then apparently the head nurse’s own impression—“extrem. dangerous, extrem. sneaky, stronger than he looks.”
Bobby stuck a yellow sticky tab on the page, for future reference. He was confident that the crime scene at Mattapan was the work of Annabelle’s uncle. Having decided that, he was equally confident that somewhere at some time, Christopher Eola had performed his own “vile acts against God.” Regardless of the resolution of the Mattapan case, he had a feeling the task force would agree to continue tracking down Mr. Eola.
He skimmed through other patient files, waiting for something to leap out at him. A neon Post-it screaming, I am the madman. A doctor’s note: This patient is the most likely to have kidnapped and tortured six girls.
Many of the patients came with notes documenting a history of violence, as well as extensive criminal activity. At least half, however, had no background at all. “Admitted by police,” “Discovered vagrant” were very common phrases. Even before the homeless crisis made headlines in the eighties, it was clear the homeless were in crisis in Boston.
Bobby made it through the whole stack and realized it had become one long, depressing blur. He stopped, backed up, tried again.
“Whatya looking for?” Sinkus asked.
“Don’t know.”
“That makes it hard.”
“What are you doing?”
Sinkus held up his own bulging file. “Staff.”
“Ah. Any of them look good?”
“Only Adam Schmidt, the perverted AN.”
“Bummer. Track him down yet?”
“Working on it. What about age?”
“What?”
“Age. You’re looking for a patient who might be Tommy Grayson, yes? You said he was seven years younger than Russell Granger. Had been in and out of prison and/or hospitals since he was what, sixteen?”
“That Russell knew of.”
“So, if he was admitted to Boston State Mental, you’re talking a young man. Teens to early twenties.”
Bobby considered the logic. “Yeah, good guess.”
He started sorting through the patient sheets again, culling down the entire file to fourteen men, including Eola and another case Charlie Marvin had told him about, the street kid named Benji who’d attended Boston Latin while living in the dying mental institute.
Now what?
Bobby glanced at his watch, winced. He’d already burned up an hour and a half. Time to find a dog-friendly hotel and return to Annabelle.
He picked up the fourteen sheets. “Mind if I make copies of these?”
“Be my guest. Hey, didn’t you say Charlie Marvin worked at Boston State Mental?”
“He was an AN,” Bobby supplied. “During his college days. Then volunteered his time as a minister until it closed down.”
“Sure about that?”
“It’s what the man said. Why?”
Sinkus finally looked up. “Bobby, I got decades of payroll ledgers in front of me. Nineteen-fifties till closing. I’m telling you, no Charlie Marvin ever made a dime.”
WOULD YOU LIKE some help?” Charlie called down to me.
“Oh, ummm, that’s okay. I’m coming up.” Bella was already bounding up the stairs. Whereas I found Charlie’s sudden appearance disquieting, she was overjoyed to see her newest best friend.
She hopped, leapt, and licked. I lugged the three bags up the stairs, thinking fast. Last I knew, Charlie didn’t have my address. Where in God’s name had I put my Taser?
Then I remembered. I’d set it down. On the shelf. Inside my storage unit, while I’d pulled out the suitcases. My locked storage unit. I almost turned away, headed back down the stairs. Almost.
“Sounds like you had quite a morning,” Charlie commented cheerfully as Bella and I emerged into the gray light of the building’s lobby. I saw now that one of my neighbors had propped open both front doors. Unloading groceries, no doubt. It would make an excellent headline for the Boston Herald: “Young Woman Brutally Stabbed to Death While Fellow Tenant Stocks Fridge.”
I needed to calm down. I was jumping at shadows again. According to Bobby, Charlie had spent last night at the Pine Street Inn. Meaning he couldn’t have delivered my latest gift. At eye level again, I realized that Charlie wasn’t really that tall, nor large, nor, at his advanced age, threatening. In fact, as I gingerly set down my luggage so I’d be free for defensive measures, Charlie was kneeling and scratching my dog under the chin.
“Some officer called at the shelter, asking about me,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Did he? Sorry about that.”
“Gave me a chuckle,” Charlie said. “Being a ‘person of interest’ at my age. Anyhoo, one of the guys who runs the shelter has a police scanner. Naturally, we tuned in after that. Dispatch menti
oned this address, and being a busybody and all, I thought I’d stop by and check on you for myself. I can’t help thinking some of this is my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“I’m being followed,” Charlie said bluntly. “Least, I’m pretty sure I am. Started the day I met up with Sergeant Warren and Detective Dodge in Mattapan. Wasn’t sure at first. Just kept getting a kind of hinky feeling between my shoulder blades. I think maybe I was being followed again the night I ran into you. And I think the same person who is following me knows something about the mass grave. And maybe something about you.”
“Why something about me?”
“Because you’re the key to that grave, aren’t you, Annabelle? I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but everything that’s going on, it’s all about you.”
My neighbor picked that moment to jog up the stairs, four plastic grocery bags in hand. He gave us a brief nod—what was there to notice, a young woman, an old man, a blissed-out dog—and headed up the central stairs.
Charlie’s eyes tracked the man’s movements, though his fingers never stopped caressing Bella’s ears.
“You know something about Mattapan,” I told Charlie, a statement now, no longer a question.
Very slowly, he nodded.
“Something you haven’t told the police.”
Another slow, thoughtful nod.
“Why are you here, Mr. Marvin? Why are you stalking me?”
“I want to know,” he said quietly. “I want to know everything. Not just about him, but about you, Annabelle.”
“Tell me,” I demanded suddenly, a foolish mistake.
Charlie Marvin smiled. “All right. But seeing as we’re now friends, you have to invite me into your apartment.”
“And if I say no?”
“You’ll say yes, Annabelle. You have to, if you want to learn the truth.”
He had me and we both knew it. Curiosity killed the cat, I reminded myself. But the truth was too powerful a lure. Slowly, but surely, I nodded my agreement.
I MADE HIM go up the stairs first. Seemed slightly less stupid that way. Kept him in my line of sight. I had the suitcases to carry, I told him. If he followed me, I’d probably whack him with one of them accidentally. He had no idea how clumsy I was, I said.