by Lisa Gardner
Being labeled a target offended me. I straightened up, shoulders squaring, balance shifting. Dodge nodded approvingly, and immediately I wondered if that hadn’t been his intention. The thought left me more off balance than Sergeant Warren’s perpetually sour look.
Dodge headed over to the sergeant. I followed in his wake, arms hugging my body for warmth. The afternoon was gray and chilly. Leaf-peeping season, easily the most beautiful time to be living in New England, had peaked two weeks ago. Now the brilliant crimsons, bright oranges, and cheerful yellows had succumbed to muddy browns and dreary grays. The air smelled damp and moldy. I sniffed again, caught the faint odor of decay.
I had read about the Boston State Mental Hospital site online. I knew it started as the Boston Lunatic Hospital in 1839, before becoming the Boston State Hospital in 1908. Originally, the compound had housed a few hundred patients and operated more like a self-sustaining farm than a role model for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
By 1950, however, the patient population had ballooned to over three thousand patients, with the compound adding two maximum-security buildings and an enormous wrought-iron security fence. Not such a tranquil place anymore. When deinstitutionalization finally closed the hospital in 1980, the community was grateful.
I expected to feel an eerie chill as I entered the grounds, maybe goose bumps rippling down my arms as I sensed the presence of a lingering evil. I would gaze upon some spookily Gothic structure, like the abandoned Danvers mental hospital that still towers over I-95, spotting—just for an instant—a pale, haunted face peering from a shattered window.
Actually, from this vantage point, I didn’t see the two remaining buildings at all. Instead, I gazed upon a thicket of snarled bushes, capped by an enormous hundred-year-old oak tree. When Sergeant Warren followed a narrow trail through the shrubs, we entered a yawning expanse of drying marsh grass that winked gold and silver in the rippling wind. The view was lovely, more of a nature hike than an impending crime scene.
The ground firmed up. A clearing appeared on our right. I saw what appeared to be some sort of refuse pile. Warren halted abruptly, gestured toward the overgrown heap of debris.
“Botanist started poking through that,” she commented to Dodge. “Found the remains of a metal shelving unit similar to what we saw in the chamber. Sounds like the hospital had a lot of those kinds of shelves. I’ve got an officer combing through archive photos now.”
“You think the supplies came from the hospital itself?” Detective Dodge asked sharply.
“Don’t know, but the clear plastic bags … word is, they were commonly used in government institutions in the seventies.”
Sergeant Warren started walking again, Detective Dodge falling in step behind her. I brought up the rear, puzzling through their exchange.
Suddenly, we passed through another copse of trees, burst into a clearing, and a brilliant blue awning rose up before me.
For the first time, I paused. Was it my imagination, or did it seem quieter here? No birds chirping, leaves rustling, or squirrels squawking. I couldn’t feel the light wind anymore. Everything seemed frozen, waiting.
Sergeant Warren marched ahead, her movements determined. She didn’t want to be here, I realized. And that started to unnerve me. What kind of crime scene scared even the cops?
Underneath the blue awning were two large plastic bins. Warren removed the gray lids, revealing white coveralls made of a thin, papery fabric. I recognized the Tyvek suits from all the true-crime shows on Court TV.
“While technically the scientists have already processed the scene, we want to keep it as clean as possible,” she said by way of explanation, handing me a suit, then one to Detective Dodge. “This kind of situation … you never know what new experts might step forward with something to offer, so we want to be prepared.”
She stepped into her own coveralls briskly. I couldn’t figure out what were the arms and what were the legs. Detective Dodge had to help me. They moved on to shoe coverings, then hairnettings. By the time I got it all figured out, they’d been waiting for what felt like hours, and my cheeks burned with embarrassment.
Warren led the way to the back of the awning. She stopped at the edge of a hole in the ground. I couldn’t see anything; the depths were pitch-black.
She turned to me, blue gaze cool and assessing.
“You understand you cannot share what you see below,” she stated crisply. “Can’t talk about it to your neighbor, your coworker, your hairdresser. This is strictly on the QT.”
“Yes.”
“You may not take any pictures, sketch any diagrams.”
“I know.”
“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 d
umps 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 skipping 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 ca
n 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.”