The Sullivan Gray Series Box Set

by H. P. Bayne

  “Meet me at Benny J’s,” Dez said. “I can be there in half an hour.”

  Thankfully, Miss Crichton hadn’t been expecting a meal at the Riverview diner as, Dez noted, she’d brought Pax along.

  Dez hadn’t bothered to go inside, opting to hold down the seat in his SUV next to an expired meter while he waited for his neighbour to show. He rolled down the window as she approached, waving her over.

  Miss Crichton opened the rear door to let Pax in, and Dez was immediately treated to a slobbery greeting. Meanwhile, Miss Crichton climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Well, this is rather cloak and dagger, isn’t it?” she said, a thrill in her voice and a light in her eyes that likely hadn’t been there in decades.

  “Something like that. Mind if I drive for a bit? I don’t want to sit in one place for too long.”

  “Of course. But may I ask why you seem so reticent about drawing attention to yourself?”

  “I was with Brennan when he died, and some people want to ask me questions. And, no, I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “Of course you didn’t, dear. Anyone who knows you would know that. Anyway, as it happens, I’m rather glad you’ve seen fit to meet in private as there’s something rather delicate I need to tell you about.”

  “Concerning Lucienne?”

  “Yes. At least, I believe so. Perhaps we can find somewhere quiet to talk?”

  Dez opted for the multilevel parking lot at the Riverview L-train. During weekdays, it provided a place for area commuters to leave their cars while they went to work downtown, thus preventing them from paying the exorbitant rates in the lots around their shiny new places of business. That meant an abundance of vehicles on hand and plenty of opportunity for Dez to hide in plain sight should police be actively searching for him. He had to circle to the sixth floor before he found a spot, and he backed in, keeping his plate obscured while allowing him to keep an eye on the area.

  “Very wise,” Miss Crichton said, tapping the side of her nose with an index finger.

  Dez replied with a brief smile before getting down to business. “So what was it you wanted to tell me?”

  “It occurred to me after I left you that I was rather too quick to leave the situation. But I wonder if I might ask you for a little more information before I divulge something I might otherwise live to regret.”

  Dez had his own reservations on that point, but hoped a little quid pro quo would benefit him in the long run. In any case, Miss Crichton had proved herself ten times over today. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “This Lucienne you mentioned. She’s the woman who’s staying with you?”

  “Not staying, exactly. She was just there overnight, maybe will be a bit longer. Like I said, I’m helping her with something.”

  “And you can’t tell me what you’re helping her with?”

  “Sorry, Emily. That’s not really my information to share, and she’s sworn me to secrecy on that point.”

  “I understand. May I at least ask you this much? Can you tell me her last name?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because she looks very much like someone I once knew. And once you said the name …. Anyway, I saw her come back, and I tried to speak with her, but she just ran off.”

  “What? When?”

  “Shortly before I called you. In fact, it was seeing her that spurred me into calling you about her.”

  “And you think knowing her last name will help?”

  “I think it will, yes.”

  Dez thought about it a moment before deciding he had far more to lose by not cooperating—namely Sully if he couldn’t find a way to get to the bottom of this.

  “It’s Dule. Lucienne Dule.”

  This time it seemed it was Dez who’d spoken the magic words—only, in this case, Miss Crichton wasn’t as pleased as he had been when he’d heard the same first name emerge from the older woman’s lips.

  “Emily? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Desmond …. It can’t be …. It can’t be.”

  “Emily?”

  As quickly as the moment had hit, it passed, and Miss Crichton turned to him with a story in her eyes. He’d seen that look before and, when it happened in the confines of her apartment, it typically meant his chances of escape were next to nil until he finished his coffee and cake and grasped the moral of the story.

  “Did I ever tell you what I did for a living prior to my retirement?”

  Dez resisted the impatient sigh standing ready on the tip of his tongue. “You told me you were a nurse.”

  Miss Crichton nodded. “Yes. A psychiatric nurse. I worked at Lockwood. For thirty-five years, in fact.”

  Dez was no longer hoping for a way to end the story early. “And you knew Lucienne Dule while you worked there.”

  “She was a patient. Very young at the time, just a slip of a girl, really. And very sweet.”

  Miss Crichton paused—or at least it looked like a pause to Dez, rather than an end to the conversation. She was thinking, likely through what she could share and what she needed to hold back. If no one else could appreciate that, Dez certainly could. But when the pause continued to a point that had Dez worrying Miss Crichton might not emerge with the full truth, he decided he needed to meet her midway.

  At any rate, the way she struggled told Dez his neighbour was solid when it came to keeping secrets. If he shared one of his own, it was a safe bet she’d keep it.

  “I don’t know if this will help you out,” he said. “But you remember the brother I told you about, the one I’m looking for?”

  Miss Crichton appeared relieved for the lifeline, and nodded.

  Dez took a quick breath and forged on. “Lucienne Dule is his biological mother.”

  The smile Miss Crichton had been wearing fell away. “And what did you say his name was?”

  “Sully. Well, actually, it’s Sullivan, but pretty much everyone who knows him calls him—Are you all right?”

  Miss Crichton had turned now, back toward the windshield, horrified shock in her expression. Words passed her lips, a whispered mumble that sounded to Dez like, “That’s impossible.”

  “Emily? Are you okay?”

  She nodded slowly, the nod of a trauma victim unable to locate the line between reality and nightmare.

  Dez gave Miss Crichton a moment, but when that didn’t get them anywhere, he laid a hand on her shoulder. That broke the spell, had her looking over to him.

  “I’m sorry, Desmond. You must think I’ve lost my marbles.”

  “No, but you’ve definitely got me a little worried over here.”

  “Have you found him yet? Sullivan, I mean?”

  Dez shook his head in the negative. “I’m trying. I’ve been working my ass off. But it turns out Brennan took him somewhere against his will and now Brennan’s dead. I’m working against time here, and I’m hitting roadblocks all over the place. I can’t explain why, but I keep thinking if I can unravel the Dules, I’ll find Sully.”

  “You think they know more than they’re letting on?”

  “One of them does, anyway. Lucienne’s mother.”

  “Lorinda.” Miss Crichton said the name like she was rolling vinegar over her tongue.

  “Clearly you’ve met her.”

  “She’s an awful woman. Now, I’m not usually one to judge, especially someone who’s lost a child. But Lucienne didn’t belong in that place. She wasn’t mentally unwell, you see. She had a gift. One that scared her.”

  “She could see the dead,” Dez said. “She told me. So can Sully.”

  “Lorinda was a very religious woman, and she turned more fully to her faith after her baby boy was taken from her. I spoke to her once about Lucky, and—”

  “Lucky?”

  “That’s what Lucienne liked to be called. She hated her given name. Thought is was too old-fashioned. Anyway, Lorinda told me even if Lucky wasn’t insane, she needed to be there, if for no other reason than to be pur
ified over her brother’s death. ‘Purified.’ That was the word she used.”

  “Did Lucienne ever talk to you about her little brother?”

  “The baby was named Artie, and he drowned in the tub, I understand. The girls had been left in charge of him, but they were just children themselves. Lucky was five or six and the other one ….”

  “Rhona.”

  “Yes, that’s right. She was a couple years older. The father, I heard, was a drinker, and he’d been off somewhere on a bender at the time. Anyway, Lucky started seeing her brother’s ghost and, eventually, she was seeing spirits everywhere. It terrified her. She looked to her family for help, but Lockwood was what she got, instead. And for people like Lucky, people who don’t truly belong in an institution, Lockwood can be a terrifying place.”

  Dez was well aware. “How long was she there?”

  “Two years, give or take a couple of months. Back then, a parent could commit a child of fourteen, and that’s exactly what happened.”

  “What about Rhona? Did you ever see her?”

  “Only once, after Lucky left Lockwood. She turned out very like her mother, that one. I suppose I can’t blame her. There were only two ways to deal with Lorinda. One was to agree with her on all matters; the other was to leave.”

  Given that, it seemed strange Rhona should have dropped off the face of the earth. “So Rhona was close to her mother?”

  “As close as anyone could ever get to Lorinda, I guess. My understanding is Rhona agreed to be ‘saved’ after Artie’s death, so she started going to church with her mother, soaking in everything she could learn about the faith. Lucky rebelled, and she ended up where she did because of it.”

  “Must have thrilled Lorinda when Lucky got out and ended up getting pregnant,” Dez said.

  “What?” The way Miss Crichton had asked it made it clear she wasn’t looking for a repeat; the surprise was written all over her.

  “But you knew the name Sullivan,” Dez said. “You must have known about his birth.”

  “I did. In fact, I was one of the few who did.”

  Another long pause had Dez cutting in with another question. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t get out and get pregnant, Desmond. She gave birth inside the institution. Sullivan was born inside Lockwood.”

  Now it was Dez’s turn to utter the “What?” that begged no repetition. “But she said …. She said she got pregnant in high school. She said she slept with a lot of different boys and didn’t know the father.”

  “No. If that’s what she’s told you, she lied. There were no boys, certainly none her own age with whom she had any contact in that manner. There was only one, a man.”

  Miss Crichton drew in a breath as if preparing to dive head first into a deep pool with no immediate expectation of resurfacing.

  “Desmond, Sullivan’s father is Dr. Roman Gerhardt.”

  27

  Dez dropped Miss Crichton and Pax a block from home, not wanting to get too close lest his fears be correct about the police watching for him. He travelled a few blocks before deciding he’d better pull over, realizing he wasn’t paying adequate attention to his driving when a protracted horn honk told him he’d inadvertently blown a red.

  He’d put his phone onto silent earlier, wanting to enable an undisturbed conversation with Miss Crichton. Now he discovered Forbes had tried him seven times in the past hour, leaving him to debate calling him back.

  But not now. He had too much else on his mind; he’d never be able to keep his head fully in the game with Forbes, leaving him open to any tricks the guy might have up his sleeve.

  Then there was the fact Dez and Miss Crichton had sworn each other to secrecy on what they’d each shared, about Lucienne, about Sully, about Dr. Gerhardt.

  Gerhardt, it seemed, had been conducting his little experiments far longer than Dez had realized—more than two decades, in fact—having discovered the same thing about Lucky Dule he’d later learned about Sully. Lucky didn’t suffer from psychosis or any other mental disorder; the things she could see were real. And something about that fascinated the doctor, made him want to learn more about it.

  Only it hadn’t stopped there with Lucky.

  Miss Crichton said the girl would be taken once a week for her “treatments” with the doctor, with those dates eventually coming closer and closer together until the two were meeting sometimes once per day. Lucky had become quiet, withdrawn, refused to speak to anybody. Eventually, she’d simply refused to speak at all.

  Miss Crichton had tried, coming each day to the girl in an attempt to figure out what was happening. To someone with a backlog of experience with psychiatric patients, it was clear something was very wrong, and it was just as obvious Lucky didn’t feel free to speak about it.

  Then one day, she found the girl, then fifteen, in her bathroom, vomiting violently. That time, she did speak. The outcome was more unsettling than her silences.

  “I sometimes wonder what it’s like,” she’d said once Miss Crichton had settled herself on the floor next to the girl.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  Lucky’s reply had been devoid of emotion, as if she were already halfway to the state she referenced with her unsettling words.

  “To be dead.”

  In the end, Miss Crichton had learned Lucky was of no mind to commit suicide, was far too terrified of the spirit world she witnessed. She’d been taught “suicides” went to Hell and she’d since decided, based on her own observations, that people could remain in this world too—trapped between worlds while they searched for the answers that would provide them with the same peace as those who had crossed over quickly.

  But, like Sully, Lucky didn’t see those who had already found peace. Just those tortured souls growing increasingly desperate as their confinement on earth went on and on without the help they needed.

  And Lucky, at that point, needing help of her own, was in no position to lend a hand to anyone who came calling. At just fifteen, she was pregnant, and it took Miss Crichton little time to learn the awful truth. The institution’s new chief psychiatrist—at that time, as now, the only psychiatrist—had become obsessed with the teenager.

  Lucky had refused his advances, but one didn’t deny the man who held all the cards in that place. And, through threats and promises and increasingly intimate touches to which she’d in time grown accustomed, he’d eventually worn her down until, one day, he took her fully. And while Lucky hated Gerhardt for what he was doing, she hated herself too—perhaps more, for her own helplessness and inability to fight back, for what she believed were the allowances she’d granted this man with her own body.

  Nothing Miss Crichton said could change the girl’s mind, could convince her this was as much rape as if he’d violently forced himself on her. Lucky had been unwilling to let go of the guilt, wearing it just as intently as that involving little Artie.

  Miss Crichton had made some quiet inquiries, heard whispers of other wrongs committed by the doctor. But no one would come forward. Even in those days, times were tough in Kimotan Rapids, few jobs to be had, particularly for those with their training. So Miss Crichton learned to wear her own guilt for a couple of months as she continued to question but ultimately did nothing to help Lucky, whose sessions with Gerhardt continued.

  Then, one day, Lucky didn’t come back.

  After two days with no sign of her, word went around that Lucky had died, had committed suicide, hanged herself in her room using her own nightdress. It was said a young orderly, Larson Hackman, had found her, had removed the body quietly in the middle of the night so as not to upset the other patients.

  It wasn’t good enough, not for Miss Crichton, and she dared to do what she should have done before and went to Gerhardt. She was startled to see genuine signs of distress in the man’s countenance as she expressed her doubts about Lucky’s death, demanding to see the body.

  She was told it was too late. They’d contacted the family who had asked she
be buried on site. That, he said, had already been done. Miss Crichton asked if police had been notified. Gerhardt’s expression soured as he warned her about job loss and worse, should she seek to involve the authorities in their business. They were, he insisted, entitled to deal with their own here, and he would see to it Miss Crichton herself was “dealt with” if she pushed the issue.

  That night, as Miss Crichton crossed the street with her shopping, she was hit by a car. The vehicle fled the scene. Of the few witnesses, no one could provide an accurate description.

  Miss Crichton spent a month in hospital with numerous broken bones and a severe concussion as well as internal bleeding, thankfully mended through surgery.

  Her first visitor had been Gerhardt and, through the haze of pain and the medication meant to take it away, she’d been aware of him peering down at her.

  “You really must be careful, Emily,” he’d said. “I’d hate to see something like this happen again.”

  Once she’d been released and sent home, she bought her first handgun.

  But the worry for Lucky proved heavier than for herself and, after a couple of months of physiotherapy, Miss Crichton was able to return to work. There, she began to suspect Lucky was not, in fact, dead, but had been confined somewhere by Gerhardt once her pregnancy could no longer be concealed or explained away as simple bloating or weight gain.

  Miss Crichton had searched. First in the now-disused wing of the facility, blighted as it was by black mould, crumbling walls and bad memories of hideous Victorian-age procedures. Then she’d turned her attention to rumours of a passage that ran between that wing and the doctor’s residence on the hill behind.

  She’d enlisted the help of the building’s retired caretaker, a man named Nate Waterston who had once taken quite a shine to Nurse Crichton. He was old enough to remember the tunnel, was one of few people still at Lockwood who, having lived through the threat of the Cold War, had known the tunnel as an emergency bunker should the need arise.

  One night, they entered the old wing, flashlights in hand, and went in search of the entrance.

  They’d entered the darkest section of the wing and descended a flight of stairs, the blanketing dust interrupted only occasionally by largely covered-over footprints and the trails of rats. It was clear the doctor, and anyone else who might be using the tunnel, were entering from the house.