by David Hosp
Sydney looked for a long time at Golden. “And that’s what my sister wanted to talk to you about?”
“Well, that’s what we did, in fact, talk about. But your sister was also looking for much more specific information about what went on here before I arrived, about who was responsible, and who participated in what activities—information I wasn’t able to provide.” Sydney gave Golden a quizzical look, and the older woman continued. “You see, dear, we never really found out exactly what went on here. As I said, based on what we found, we can make some pretty educated guesses regarding the types of ‘treatment’ patients were subjected to, but we don’t have any specific information about any of the activities.”
“How is that possible?”
“When our predecessors abandoned the Institute, someone absconded with all of the records. Or destroyed them—we were never really able to find out. It took more than a month to determine who all our patients were, how long they’d been here, and what was really wrong with them.”
Sydney was shocked. “Wasn’t anyone ever prosecuted?”
“I’m afraid not, dear,” Golden said. “Our priority at the time was to help the children who had been left here to rot. We left the investigation into any wrongdoing to the law enforcement people in the state, and as far as we ever found out, nothing ever came of the inquiries.”
Sydney was indignant. “It’s hard for me to believe that nothing was ever done about what went on here.”
“I understand your feelings, but you really shouldn’t be that surprised. Remember, these were society’s unwanted children. No one cared to face our collective responsibility in leaving them here and turning a blind eye. In addition, without the records of what went on, it would have been difficult to prove anything, and none of the children here had any interest in facing their tormenters in court. You also need to remember that this was 1968. There were so many ‘greater’ injustices in the eyes of the country at large that were being fought over. The last thing anyone in the state wanted was to drag this issue out into the open.”
“So my sister left here without getting any of the information she was looking for,” Sydney concluded.
Golden looked hesitant for the first time of the afternoon. “I don’t know about that,” she said. She cast a glance at Mayer. “I decided that there was really only one person who might be able to give her some of the information she was looking for.”
“Who was that?”
Golden hesitated again. “Willie Murphy,” she said at last.
“Good heavens, Sandy!” Mayer exclaimed. “What on earth were you thinking?”
Golden squared her shoulders in her chair defiantly. “I was thinking that Willie might be able to help Ms. Creay,” she said. “And maybe even that Ms. Creay might be able to help Willie.”
“Who is Willie Murphy?” Sydney asked.
Mayer ignored the question. “You had no right,” he said. He sounded more disappointed than angry.
“Who is Willie Murphy?” Sydney repeated her question.
Golden addressed Mayer. “Aldus, I’ve been trying to reach him—really reach him—for more than three decades. I thought if he wasn’t able to talk to me, then maybe he’d be able to talk to her. He’ll never really be well until he lets some of what happened out.”
“You still should have talked to me first,” Mayer said.
“Please!” Sydney said forcefully, and all eyes turned toward her with a look of surprise that suggested that they’d momentarily forgotten she was in the room. They looked back and forth among one another, clearly hesitant to speak. The silence in the room was oppressive, and made Sydney feel uneasy. “Who is Willie Murphy?” she demanded again.
z
“He’s a class-A dickhead, isn’t he?” Cassian commented. They were riding back into the city, without any firm answers. Nonetheless, Cassian had no doubt how he felt about Leighton Creay.
“Yeah,” Train agreed. “He’s not stupid, though. He’s not going to give us anything easy on him, and he knows he doesn’t have to talk to us unless we drag his ass in on a warrant. If we do that, you can be damn sure he’ll lawyer up so fast that we won’t find out what he’s had for breakfast.”
“He’d probably even enjoy the opportunity to rub it in our faces.”
“No doubt,” Train said. “On the other hand, no matter how big an asshole Creay is, it still doesn’t mean that he killed his ex.”
“No, it doesn’t. But I’d really like it if he did. I’d love to nail the smug little bastard.” Cassian was fuming quietly. “Sitting up there in his country club with his smart-ass remarks. He’s the kind of asshole who’d make a seriously satisfying bust.”
Train looked at his young partner. “You want him, then you gotta find a way to go after him.”
Cassian nodded. “I’ll start digging through his finances—find out how much money he’s got and where it’s coming from. That’ll give us a better idea of what he’s up to. I’ll also start asking some discreet questions about who he’s been hanging out with recently. He’s probably too smart to have done this himself, and I’m guessing his alibi will hold up, but it’s still possible that he hired someone for the job.”
“Sounds good.”
“It’s not going to be the easiest thing in the world to build this case, Sarge. You know that, right?”
“I know it,” Train said. “That’s why I’m so glad I’m working with such a fucking genius.”
Chapter Thirty-one
THE MUSIC REACHED her while they were still on the stairs, working their way down through the intestines of the huge brick building that served as the Institute’s central structure. Sydney could hear the humming of the overstressed electrical system struggling to feed the requirements of the medical facility, and it reminded her of every other public building she’d ever been in, where the needs of today are satisfied by pushing the technology of yesterday to the limit. She could hear the notes, though, through the constant buzz and the dark depression of the basement, cutting the air in a precise yet carefree fashion, echoing off the cement and steel. Bluegrass. Sydney recognized the tune as a variation on one of Dr. John’s classics, and knew enough about music to appreciate the skill with which it was being played.
“He’s quite gifted in many ways,” Sandra Golden said with a sad smile. “It’s tragic to think of what he might have done with his life under better circumstances.”
“He was here when you arrived in 1968?”
Golden nodded. “He was. He was nineteen at the time, and as near as we could tell, he’d been kept alone in a dark cell for over a year. He was barely human when we found him— curled up in a ball, covered in his own excrement, babbling softly to himself. It took six months before we could get him to start speaking coherently, and even then, he seemed to have forgotten everything that happened to him before we got here. Either that or he’s simply chosen never to talk about it. In any case, I’ve been working with him for a long time to try to chase the demons from his mind, but he doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. When your sister got here, I thought maybe she’d be able to get him to remember more.”
“I don’t understand, if he was nineteen in 1968, then he must be in his fifties now.”
“Fifty-seven last month,” Golden confirmed.
“Then how can he be a patient here? I thought this was a juvenile facility.”
“Oh, he’s not a patient,” Golden explained. “He’s our maintenance man. You see, we treated him for over a year after we arrived, but after a while, because of his age, we had to transfer him to another facility where they tried to get him ready to enter the real world and have a productive life. When they ultimately released him, things didn’t go well.” She shook her head. “How do you prepare a person who’s been locked up in his own private hell for most of his life to deal with the ‘real world’? He drifted from job to job without any success, got taken advantage of, got used—got tired, I guess. Then he turned to drugs and disappeared for over a y
ear. I remember feeling responsible—like there was something more I should have done.” Sydney could hear the stress in Golden’s voice.
“Then one day, about five years after he’d left our care, he showed up again. It was during the winter, and we were having one of those freak ice storms we sometimes get out here. It was cold and dark, and I was looking out my window, dreaming about better weather, when I saw him. He was standing in the field in front of the building, just looking up, still as a statue. He was in terrible shape; battered and drug addled. We rushed him inside, and took care to nurse him back to health. Then, while we were trying to figure out what to do with him, our generator broke. In a big-city hospital, that’s not that significant a problem, because you’ve got the power company, and you’ve got backup power supplies. Out here it’s just us, and no one could figure out what was wrong. He was just starting to move around a little better, and he asked if he could take a look at it. He said he’d worked briefly for an electrician, and thought he might be able to help. Sure enough, he had the place up and running in a matter of hours, and it occurred to us that this might be the best place for him. He’s a natural with machines. And this way, we were able to keep trying to help him.”
They rounded a bend in the narrow basement hallway, and the music grew stronger. Sydney could see a light drifting through a doorway at the end of the corridor. Golden stopped her at the threshold. “He prefers to be alone when he plays,” she explained. “I think this song’s almost done.”
Standing at the doorway, half blocked by the doorjamb, Sydney could see a shriveled man with white-gray hair slumped over a guitar on a wooden chair behind a gray metal government-issue desk. His eyes were closed, and his fingers flew across the fretboard of his beaten old six-string. His ivory skin was so pale it was almost translucent, and his shoulders were pinched together, swimming under a heavy denim work-shirt that looked at least two sizes too large. Sitting there in the wan light of the single bulb in the lamp on his desk, he looked to Sydney like an apparition—a middle-aged Boo Radley whose alabaster fingers danced nimbly upon the guitar without even seeming to touch it, producing a melody at once sad and hopeful.
When the music ended, Golden poked her head into the room. “Willie, it’s Dr. Golden. I have a visitor with me. Can we come in?”
At first Sydney thought the man hadn’t heard, because he sat eerily still, eyes closed, straining as if to hear something. “Ain’t done yet,” he said in a quiet, even voice.
Golden signaled for Sydney to keep quiet and still for another moment. After a brief pause, the man opened his eyes and placed the guitar carefully into a weathered case that lay open against the wall. “Wasn’t dead yet,” he said, seemingly to no one in particular. His head was still down and he was flicking the catches closed on the guitar case.
“Who wasn’t dead yet?” Sydney asked Golden, still unsure whether to engage the strange man directly in conversation.
“The music,” the man answered Sydney’s question himself. He sat up and looked at the two women by the door. Something in his eyes gave Sydney a start. They were pale blue, flecked with white and pierced by pupils the size of pinpricks. But it was something behind the eyes that unsettled her. “The music wasn’t dead yet,” he explained. “It was still out there, hangin’ on to the air, tryin’ to get out. I had to wait till it was gone.” Sydney had no idea how to respond, and wondered whether he was being serious or merely playing with her.
“Willie,” Golden said, walking into the little office ahead of Sydney, “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. This is Sydney Chapin.”
Willie nodded, but did not extend a hand. “Hello, Miss Sydney,” he said.
“Hello, Willie,” Sydney replied.
“Sydney wants to talk to you about Elizabeth Creay, the woman who came to visit you a few weeks ago. You remember Ms. Creay, don’t you?”
“I remember her.” Willie nodded. He looked at Sydney again. “You got her eyes,” he said.
“She was my sister.”
“Willie,” Golden said softly, “Sydney’s sister Elizabeth was killed recently. She was murdered. You understand? Sydney wants to know what you talked about with her.”
Willie shook his head. “I had me a bad feelin’ for her,” he said. “She carried death with her. She was nice, though. I’m sorry, ma’am.”
All at once Sydney felt a rush of emotion over the loss of her sister. She choked it down. “Thank you, Willie,” she said, her voice quavering.
Willie nodded. “I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Golden said, withdrawing from the room.
As the door to the tiny office closed, Sydney felt lost once again, and a little uneasy in the presence of Willie Murphy. There seemed to be some power to him—a confidence born, perhaps, of the knowledge that he’d endured the worst inhumanity his fellow man could inflict and had survived. There were wounds, that much was clear from his posture and the drawn expression, but they had not overtaken him.
“Your sister seemed like a good woman,” he said, breaking the silence between them. “Sometimes you can tell, just from bein’ in a person’s company, whether they good or bad. I got to feelin’ she was good.”
“I think so,” Sydney agreed.
Willie looked down at his hands. They were the only part of him that conveyed any physical strength. They were disproportionately large, and the calluses and grime on them made them seem less vulnerable than the rest of him. “So what you wanna ask me?”
Sydney cleared her throat. “I wanted to know what you talked with her about.”
Willie took in a deep breath, expelling it in a long sigh. “We talked ’bout a lot of things.”
“Can you remember anything specifically?”
He nodded. “Reckon I could.” He looked up from his hands and faced her, his eyes meeting hers and drawing her in. They were luminescent, and the light they gave off seemed to rival the illumination from the lamp on his desk. “I told her ’bout my job; what it is I do here, and how I take care of all the buildings. I told her how I know somethin’ ’bout bein’ a patient here, so I can sympathize with those poor souls here now.”
“Did you talk to her about what it was like when you were a patient here?”
He nodded slowly. “I told her how I got here, first.” He closed his eyes slowly as he cast his memory back to his conversation with Elizabeth Creay and beyond. “How I was shipped here from Richmond after my parents was killed in a car crash in nineteen an’ fifty-seven. How they took me to a room in the state hospital the day my daddy—he held on longer than my ma—passed on, and how they put a test in front of me and told me to answer the questions. I told her how I screamed at them.” A dark smile crept across his face. “Damn, but how I screamed at them.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her again. Sydney could see the anger behind them. “You imagine that? Eight years ol’ and they want me to take a test less than an hour after I watch my daddy gone to heaven?” He shook his head in disgust. “They heard things outta my mouth I don’t think they’d ever heard before. I was kickin’ and screamin’ and throwin’ the papers at anyone who came near me till two big ol’ security guards tackled me and held me down. I remember this doctor—some long-necked, evil-lookin’ man—speakin’ down at me and sayin’, ‘This one’s ready for the Institute, eh boys?’ ” He laughed and a tear rolled down his cheek. “I don’t think I’d remembered that day till your sister came here and started in on me with all her questions. I thought the docs here were somethin’ with they questions, but your sister got ’em all licked.”
“What happened when you got here?” Sydney asked.
He shook his head. “You too, huh?” He sat back in his chair and looked down at his hands again. “That’s what your sister kept pushin’ at.” His eyebrows drew together, knitting a scowl. Sydney couldn’t tell whether it was an expression of anger or sadness. “Some things are better left buried in the past,” he said at last.
“But my sister made you remember?
”
“Some.” Willie moved his mouth like he was chewing on something distasteful. “I’d started remembering some on my own over the years, but I always buried it again. Your sister started pokin’ just underneath the surface, and some of what was shallow came out.”
“What was it?” Sydney was breathless.
“Beatin’s mainly.” He looked at his knuckles as though searching for a scar long covered over. “They could deliver a beatin’ somethin’ awful. Not like what you’d imagine it’d be, or what you see in the movies, or what you read about. Worse. Much worse. So bad you piss blood for a month, prayin’ that you’ll piss your life away, ’cause you know if you heal it’s gonna start all over again.”
“Do you remember who beat you?”
Willie Murphy scoffed at the question. “It was all of ’em. Guards mainly, but sometimes the docs, too.”
“Would you remember who they were if you saw them?” Sydney asked. “Would you be willing to testify against them if you had the chance?”
“We talkin’ ’bout stuff that happened forty years ago, mainly. You think anyone’s gonna listen to the words of a moron ’bout somethin’ that long ago?” Sydney looked away in embarrassment. “Yeah, Miss Sydney, that’s the official diagnosis I got when I came here: moron. They say they stopped using the word, but that’s what’s on my papers.”