This place needs a garage sale, I thought, poking into yet another disorganized storeroom.
“Janet!” I called, not feeling very hopeful. Did I get turned around when I got off the elevator and start out in the wrong direction to begin with? It was the only explanation. I’d retrace my steps back to where I started, then follow the same routine heading the other way.
I turned left out of the passage I’d been exploring and strode toward the series of intersections I’d passed on the way in. Far up ahead I could see where the corridor I was walking along extended into the darkness. Toward what—rooms with earthen floors and the remnants of chains in the walls? I’d be glad when I found Janet. The complete silence and stillness of the air in the place was oppressive enough without imagining what kind of horrors had been carried out there in the name of psychiatry.
I passed the first intersection and quickened my pace. The rapid clicking sounds of my shoes matched my heartbeat as I walked. I kept my eyes on the darkness ahead, knowing that’s where I’d turn right and be back near the elevators.
I passed the second intersection. In spite of telling myself to calm down, I was nearly running now.
Suddenly, in the murky archway I’d been watching, I thought I saw movement—a shadow against a black background stepping away from the light.
“Janet?”
There was no answer. I started to slow up, not taking my eyes off that dark corridor up ahead.
“Who’s there?”
Still no answer. I was stopped now, listening to my own breathing and trying to see into that blackness farther back in the archway.
“All right, this isn’t funny. Who’s there?”
Silence. Complete stillness, except the sound of my own breath. I started to back away, keeping my eyes on that corridor. I had seen something. I was sure of it—a form in the dim light at the entrance way.
I was all the way back to the intersection I’d just passed when the lights went out.
I couldn’t see a thing. I didn’t hear a sound, not even my own breath anymore. I was suddenly holding it in the stillness of that place. The complete absence of light pressed against me. For a second I felt dizzy, unsure of where was up or down. When I finally exhaled, the sound startled me, it seemed so loud in my ears. I tried to inhale through my open mouth, to make as little noise as possible. Whoever was up ahead remained completely silent.
Then I heard the steps.
They were a softer sound than my own shoes had made. A kind of padding sound, like a paw or a foot wrapped in cloth.
I wanted to scream at whatever was advancing toward me, but I didn’t dare give away where I was standing. Instead I crouched down and removed my shoes. I’d been about a hundred feet from the mouth of that corridor when the lights had gone out. The padding noise came steadily toward me. How far away now I’d no idea. I reached blindly out to my right side trying to feel the wall. Nothing. I stood and took a step toward where I thought the wall would be, holding my shoes in my left hand and groping ahead with my right. I still felt nothing.
The soft sound kept coming up on my left. I took two steps ahead, then three, four. Still nothing. I must be in the intersecting corridor, I thought, trying to fight off panic. I quickly took four more strides into what I hoped was the side passage, then stood completely motionless, attempting to take controlled breaths through my open mouth. I slowly turned back toward the sound of the approaching steps. Would whoever it was turn the corner and touch me? Or go by, heading straight off down the passage in the direction I’d just come from?
I could feel my heart pounding, and the sweat in the small of my back. was like ice. The padding was very near, almost passing in front of me. Then it stopped.
I didn’t breathe, didn’t move, didn’t even blink in that complete blindness. But I could hear whoever was there breathing. It was little more than the sound of air moving in that totally stagnant place. For those seconds my ears rang in the silence between his breaths. If my stomach gurgled, I’d be discovered. I didn’t know there could be such absolute quiet.
Then the padding began again, moving off to my left and receding in the distance. I still didn’t move, but strained to hear the fading sound, every last soft puff of it.
When I was sure I couldn’t hear anything more, I felt for the wall on my right, then worked my way back to where the passages intersected, my hand telling me when I was at the corner. I stopped and listened for any sound from the left but again heard nothing. I immediately turned right and felt my way along the wall as quickly and as quietly as I could. I couldn’t see a thing and kept blundering into recessed doorways as I rushed to reach the next corner and the corridor to the elevators. I didn’t think I heard any padding steps coming after me, but I didn’t stop to make sure. I could tell I was getting near the final intersection because I started to smell the damp musty air.
Had I missed the turn? I wondered in a flash of new panic. Had I blundered straight into the passage where the figure had come from and into God knew what? The odor was cloying in my nostrils. It seemed so much more pungent now than before, like wet earth. Had I missed the turn? Just when I was about to stop and reverse direction, my fingers slipped around the corner I was looking for.
I paused and listened. Nothing.
I made the turn and headed for the elevators. I switched the shoes to my right hand and felt along the wall at my left so as not to go by the sliding metal doors in the dark. I kept trying to be quiet but was practically running again as I barreled ahead in the darkness. As I remembered it, there were no obstacles to speak of that I’d crash into.
Suddenly, way up ahead, there was a break in the blackness—a small round white light set in the wall I was hurriedly feeling along. The elevator button.
I redoubled my pace, keeping my eyes fixed on that tiny light, still fumbling with my left hand on the wall at my side. I was almost there—another twenty feet—and was about to run for the doors when I felt my fingers slide over the top of another human hand.
Before I could scream, it had seized my forearm and yanked me forward. I now rocketed toward that tiny light, head first. I felt another hand grab me behind the neck and further propel me straight at it. It got as big as a train light right between my eyes as my head crashed into the metal door frame. After so much darkness the white explosion in my brain was spectacular.
Chapter 7
The patient seemed to be doing well, at least that’s what a man’s voice kept saying.
“...going to be fine, just a concussion...”
It must be somebody pregnant, because I could hear Janet sounding very worried. “Oh thank God!” she said. “For a second I was even afraid he was dead, finding him lying down there in the dark.”
No, it couldn’t be Janet’s patient. “He’s” don’t have babies. But I couldn’t get my eyes open to see whom she was talking about. Whom had she found lying in the dark?
Then it came back in a rush.
The figure, the padding footsteps—someone had knocked me out.
My eyes flew open, and I sat up. “What happened!” I demanded, ignoring the ache in my head and trying to focus on the two faces in front of me.
“Oh, Earl, what a relief!” said the blur on the left. It was Janet’s voice again.
“Whoa there, Dr. Garnet, lie back,” ordered the man’s voice, and the form on the right moved closer. I could feel his hands pushing gently but firmly on my chest. “You’re okay, but it was quite a hit. You’ve been out more than five minutes, as far as we can figure, and we want to do a CT.”
“Janet! What happened. Did he hurt you?” I asked anxiously, turning again to the shape on my left. “Who was it?”
My vision suddenly cleared in time to see her warm smile fade and the concern in her gaze slowly turn to wide-eyed amazement.
“Pardon?” was all she said.
“Someone jumped me in the dark and knocked me out,” I explained, puzzled by her response. “It must have been whoever was ch
asing me. Did he hurt you?”
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed, suddenly looking alarmed and turning to the young man beside her who I could now see wore a clinical jacket.
“Oh boy,” he uttered, moving back from me. “He’s really confused. I better get my staff man.” He turned and walked out of the curtained cubicle I was lying in. From the sounds around us— beeping monitors, shouted orders, the spring and click noise of an ambulance stretcher having its legs extended—I knew they’d gotten me to ER.
“I’m not confused!” I protested to Janet. “What’s he talking about?”
She gave me a smile as phony as Bre-X. “Now just relax. Earl,” she said, patting my hands and looking as if she were about to cry.
I took her hands in mine.” I’m all right, Janet,” I told her emphatically, sitting back up. My head hinted otherwise, but I ignored the pain.
“Wait a minute,” she protested, pushing me back onto my pillow. I was wearing a neck collar, so my head and trunk flopped down in tandem, like a wooden doll’s.
“Ouch.” I winced, the change in position setting my head throbbing again.
“You’re not to move. Earl,” she cautioned, her tone of voice intense and full of concern.
“What happened” I asked again.
When the lights had gone out, Janet told me, she had come out of the archives department and felt her way back to the elevator. The room actually was in the opposite end of the subbasement; I’d taken the wrong direction to begin with, as I’d belatedly realized. She’d been rumbling her way along in me dark like I had, but at a lot slower and safer pace. When she’d heard a thud in the dark ahead of her she’d been frightened but had continued to approach the elevator door, albeit more slowly. She’d become terrified when she tripped over my body. She had only realized it was me after she’d gathered her wits and pressed the elevator button. When the door opened, a shaft of light had fallen across my face. She’d checked my vitals, then gotten help, and everyone, including Janet, had assumed I’d tripped in the dark and knocked myself out.
When she finished speaking, I lay there, feeling her fingers stroke my head, thinking. Should I tell her what had really happened? It would scare her terribly, as if she wasn’t worried enough as it was. “What did they tell you was the matter with the lights?” I asked instead.
“The maintenance people said a circuit breaker had closed down for some reason,” she answered, clearly puzzled by my question. “When I ran for help to get you up here, one of them went to check the panel. He turned the lights back on, no problem.”
“Was that panel in the abandoned passageway leading under the old psychiatric hospital?”
“I think that’s what he said. I know he went up that way, but frankly, I was too worried about you to pay much attention to anything else. Why?”
“And the lights stayed on? They didn’t short out again?” A faulty breaker would likely blow a second time, but a single timely outage would suggest a hand at the switch.
“No, they stayed on,” she said, once more sounding a bit alarmed and looking over her shoulder. “Where’s the damn staff man?” I heard her mutter.
I had to tell her. She had to know for her own safety.
“Janet, there’s a point to what I’m asking. It’s not brain damage. I’ve got one more question. Are there other corridors leading back to the elevator from the asylum end of the subbasement besides the one we were in?”
“Earl, what are you going on about?”
“Janet, I’m okay,” I insisted, grabbing her arm, and then I explained what had happened.
When I finished, she didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
Tears welled up in her eyes. Her lips quivered a few times. “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident? Maybe you tripped, and the force of the fall only made you think you were pushed.”
I hadn’t imagined the hands on my back and neck, I thought, but said nothing.
“And are you sure it was a person you heard when the lights went out,” she asked, “not a rat that came on down the corridor in the dark? I hear there are some big ones under the old asylum, and maybe—”
“If it was a rat, it was a two-legged one,” I interrupted, speaking as gently as possible. No matter how shaken she was about my being attacked, I couldn’t let her deny and rationalize away what had happened; From now on there would be no more illusions about the need to be careful. “I could hear whoever it was breathing, Janet,” I added, nudging my point home while recalling those endless seconds with a shudder.
She sat on the edge of the bed, staring off at the curtains, then absently brushed back a golden strand of hair from the side other face. I watched her lovely familiar profile as she stayed quiet with her thoughts.
I could only guess at what she was thinking. Her greatest weakness was her absolute, belief in her own invincibility—her long hours, her defiance of fatigue, her relish to take on cases none of her colleagues would touch—all that made her great and yet could lay her low. She’d been so sure someone had killed those nurses; still, it was completely within her character to be equally incredulous that the very same evil might strike back at her or at someone she loved.
She looked paler than usual, and under the harsh fluorescent lights the fine lines of her forehead, jaw, and neck gave her me delicate appearance of a porcelain figurine. So vulnerable, I thought, with a sudden rush of apprehension for this strong woman who was such a force in my life.
The muscles around her lips tightened, and she turned to speak. “All right, here’s what we’ll do,” she began, sitting up straighter, appearing to take charge. “Michael’s right about one thing. Until we have proof that there is a killer behind the Legionella cases, you can’t afford to be telling wild tales about a phantom.” But her voice had a brittle edge to it that occasionally broke and belied the determined expression on her face. “Even if we told somebody what happened in the subbasement tonight, they could dismiss it,” she continued, speaking more quickly, almost to herself. “They’d say that the person you saw was some derelict who’d snuck in and was trying to use abandoned parts of the old asylum as shelter or that the person who shoved you into the elevator had simply acted reflexively, to protect himself when you barged out of the dark, and then panicked, running off when he saw you were hurt.” She was speaking ever more rapidly, as if racing through her thoughts aloud, her tone harsher. I didn’t like the desperation I heard. “And who knows, maybe that’s what happened after all—oh, Christ I’m stupid!” she exploded, angrily snapping off her own train of thought. “I’ve probably gotten us both into something that’s way over our heads— something that at the very least needs the police. And for the life of me I don’t know how we’re going to get a single shred of evidence to make anyone believe us.”
The words poured out of her, like the tears that started down her cheeks. I’d rarely seen Janet cry. I sat up, rather awkwardly, and put my arms around her. At first I felt her stiffen—she hated losing control—then she hugged me back, hard. I felt her body start to heave as she lost the battle to contain her sobs, and I felt my own tears roll down my face onto her slender magnificent shoulders. I held her like that until her crying ended and I felt her body relax against mine. She never noticed when the resident came through the curtain with his staff man, and I waved them away.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you I’m scared,” she sniffled when she spoke again, “especially after what happened to you tonight. God, I’m sorry, Earl, to have been so blind.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “You were the least blind of all. No one else even thought of the Phantom.”
“Yeah, except you warned me about what might happen if we got close.” She pulled away and reached into her lab coat pocket for a tissue. “But if that was the Phantom and my looking at those charts was what brought him down on us, then there must be something in those records that can help us find out who he is,” she said slowly, starting to sound less shaken.
“Hold
it. Nancy Drew,” I said. “As your trusty sidekick, I’ve had enough knocks on the head for tonight.”
She smiled, gently ruffled my hair, then laughed and gave me another hug. The closeness felt good, but from my experience in ER I knew the relief we were both feeling at that moment was the kind that always follows a near miss. It was part of the shock, and temporary. Already, as I hugged her back, I was thinking. This guy probably gives out worse things than bumps on the head, things like Legionella. “Janet, who besides me knew you were going to look at the old files on the Phantom cases?” I asked, still holding her.
Janet’s expression strained again when she pulled away, and once more her eyes filled with worry.
“No one. I was tired of being scoffed at.”
“So only Cam, Michael, and I heard your Phantom idea?”
She nodded.
“Have you seen a lot of any one person today, someone who could be watching your movements?”
“No,” she answered quietly.
“Then how did he know you were there?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “Or could we be wrong in assuming whoever it was had gone down there tonight to find you? Maybe the person was there for another reason, and I disturbed him, wandering around.”
“Wait a minute,” Janet said. “Are you changing your mind and saying that getting attacked tonight had nothing to do with the Legionella deaths, that those crazy excuses I made up might be true?”
“Not at all. Whoever turned out the lights came at me and somehow was waiting back at the elevator for me. And that judo push propelling me into the door was certainly no panicky grab. At the very least the person didn’t want me snooping around. I’m just suggesting that maybe it wasn’t connected to your going over files on victims of the Phantom.”
“So apart from making me feel less guilty about that knock on your head, where does that leave us? You’re not seriously suggesting your figure in the dark has nothing to do with the Legionella cases?”
Death Rounds Page 8