by Mortal Fear
“Jason, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on,” Carol insisted as they waited for the sheriff. They sat at a table across from a Wurlitzer jukebox playing fifties music.
“I don’t know for sure,” Jason said. “But the man shooting at us was outside the restaurant where Alvin died. My guess is that Alvin was a victim of his own discovery, but if he hadn’t died that night, the same man would have eventually killed him anyway. So Alvin was telling the truth when he said someone wanted him dead.”
“This doesn’t sound real,” Carol said, trying to smooth her hair, which was drying in tangled ringlets.
“I know. Most conspiracies don’t.”
“What about Hayes’s discovery?”
“I don’t know for sure, but if my theory is right, it’s almost too scary to contemplate. That’s why I want to get back to Boston.”
Just then the door opened and the sheriff, Marvin Arnold, walked in. He was a mountain of a man dressed in a wrinkled brown uniform that sported more buckles and straps than Jason had ever seen. More important to Jason was the 357 Magnum strapped to Marvin’s oversized left thigh. That was the kind of cannon Jason wished he’d had back at the Salmon Inn.
Marvin had already heard about the commotion at the Salmon Inn, and had been there to check things out. What he hadn’t heard about was any man with a gun, and no one had heard any gunshots. When Jason described what had happened, he could tell that Marvin regarded him with a good deal of skepticism. Marvin was surprised and impressed, however, when he heard that Jason and Carol had come down Devil’s Chute by themselves in the dark. “Ain’t a lot of people going to believe that,” he said, shaking his massive head in admiration.
Marvin drove Jason and Carol back to the Salmon Inn, where Jason was surprised to find out there was a question of charges being filed against him, holding him responsible for the damages in the dining room. No one had seen any gun. And even more shocking, no one remembered an olive-complex-ioned man in a dark blue suit. But in the end, the management decided to drop the issue, saying they’d let their insurance take care of the damages. With that decided, Marvin tipped his hat, preparing to leave.
“What about protection?” asked Jason.
“From what?” asked Marvin. “Don’t you think it is a little embarrassing that no one can corroborate your story? Listen, I think you people have caused enough trouble tonight. I think you should go up to your room and sleep this whole thing off.”
“We need protection,” said Jason. He tried to sound authoritative. “What do we do if the killer returns?”
“Look, friend, I can’t sit here all night and hold your hand. I’m the only one on this shift and I got the whole damned county to keep my eye on. Lock yourself in your room and get some shut-eye.”
With a final nod toward the manager, Marvin lumbered out the front door.
The manager in turn smiled condescendingly at Jason and went into his office.
“This is unreal,” Jason said with a mixture of fear and irritation. “I can’t believe nobody noticed the Hispanic guy.” He went to the public phone booth and looked up private detective agencies. He found several in Seattle, but when he dialed he just got their answering machines. He left his name and the hotel number, but he didn’t have much hope of reaching someone that night.
Emerging from the phone booth, he told Carol that they were leaving immediately. She followed him up the stairs.
“It’s nine-thirty at night,” she protested, entering the room behind him.
“I don’t care. We’re leaving as fast as we can. Get your things together.”
“Don’t I have any say in the matter?”
“Nope. It was your decision to stay tonight and your decision to call the helpful local police. Now it’s my turn. We’re leaving.”
For a minute, Carol stood in the center of the room watching Jason pack, then she decided he probably had a point. Ten minutes later, changed into their own clothes, they carried their luggage downstairs and checked out.
“I have to charge you for tonight,” the man at the desk informed them.
Jason didn’t bother to argue. Instead, he asked the man if he’d bring their car around to the front entrance. He tipped him five dollars and the clerk was happy to oblige.
Once in the car, Jason had hoped he’d feel less anxious and less vulnerable. Neither was the case. As he pulled out of the hotel parking lot and started down the dark mountain road, he quickly recognized how isolated they were. Fifteen minutes later, in the rearview mirror, he saw headlights appear. At first Jason tried to ignore them, but then it became apparent that they were relentlessly gaining on them despite Jason’s gradual acceleration. The terror Jason had felt earlier crept back. His palms began to perspire.
“There’s someone behind us,” Jason said.
Carol twisted in the front seat and looked out the back. They rounded a curve and the headlights disappeared. But on the next straightaway they reappeared. They were closer. Carol faced forward. “I told you we should have stayed.”
“That’s helpful!” said Jason sarcastically,
He inched the accelerator closer to the floor. They were already going well over sixty on the curvy road. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, then looked up at the rearview mirror. The car was close, its lights like eyes of a monster. He tried to think of what he could do, but he could think of nothing other than trying to outrun the car behind them. They came to another curve. Jason turned the wheel. He saw Carol’s mouth open in a silent scream. He could feel the car start to jackknife. He braked, and they skidded first to one side and then to the other. Carol grabbed the dash to steady herself. Jason felt his seat belt tighten.
Fighting the car, Jason managed to keep it on the road. Behind him the pursuing car gained considerably. Now it was directly behind, its headlights filling Jason’s car with unearthly light. In a panic, Jason floored the accelerator, pulling his car out of its careening course. They shot forward down a small hill. But the car behind stayed right with them, hounding them like a hunting dog at the heels of a deer.
Then to both Jason and Carol’s bewilderment, their car filled with flashing red light. It took them a moment to realize that the light was coming from the top of the car behind them. When Jason recognized what it was, he slowed, watching in the rearview mirror. The car behind slowed proportionately. Ahead, at a turnout, Jason pulled off the road and stopped. Sweat stood out in little droplets along his hairline. His arms were trembling from his death grip on the steering wheel. Behind them, the other car stopped as well, its flashing light illuminating the surrounding trees. In the rearview mirror, Jason saw the door open, and Marvin Arnold stepped out. He had the safety strap off his .357 Magnum.
“Well, I’ll be a pig’s ass,” he said, shining his flashlight into Jason’s embarrassed face. “It’s lover boy.”
Furious, Jason shouted, “Why the hell didn’t you turn on your blinker at the start?”
“Wanted to catch me a speeder.” Marvin chuckled. “Didn’t know I was chasing my favorite lunatic.”
After an unsolicited lecture and a ticket for reckless driving, he let Jason and Carol continue. Jason was too angry to talk, and they drove in silence to the freeway, where Jason announced, “I think we should drive to Portland. God knows who may be waiting for us at the Seattle airport.”
“Fine by me,” Carol said, much too tired to argue.
They stopped for a couple hours’ sleep at a motel near Portland, and at the first light of dawn, went on to the airport, where they boarded a flight to Chicago. From Chicago, they flew to Boston, touching down a little after five-thirty Saturday evening.
In the cab in front of Carol’s apartment, Jason suddenly laughed. “I wouldn’t even know how to apologize for what I’ve put you through.”
Carol picked up her shoulder bag. “Well, at least it wasn’t boring. Look, Jason, I don’t mean to be sarcastic, or a nag, but please tell me what’s going on.”
“As soon as I�
��m sure,” Jason said. “I promise. Really. Just do me one favor. Stay put tonight. Hopefully, no one knows we’re back, but all hell might break loose if and when they find out.”
“I don’t plan on going anywhere, doctor.” Carol sighed. “I’ve had it.”
15.
Jason never even stopped at his apartment. As soon as Carol disappeared into her building, he told the cabdriver to drop him at his car and drove directly to GHP. He crossed immediately into the outpatient building. It was seven P.M. and the large waiting room was deserted. Jason went directly to his office, pulled off his jacket, and sat down at his computer terminal. GHP had spent a fortune on their computer system and was proud of it. Each station accessed the large mainframe where all patient data was entered. Although the individual charts were still the best source of patient information, most of the material could be obtained from the computer. Best of all, the sophisticated machinery could scan the entire patient base of GHP and graphically display the data on the screen, analyzed in almost any way one could wish.
Jason first called up the current survival curves. The graph that the computer drew was shaped like the steep slope of a mountain, starting high, then rounding and falling off. The graph compared the survival rate of GHP users by age. As one might expect, subscribers at the oldest end of the graph had the lowest survival rate. Over the past five years, although the median age of the GHP population had gradually increased, the survival curves stayed about the same.
Next, Jason asked the computer to print month-by-month graphs for the last half year. As he had feared, he saw the death rate rise for patients in their late fifties and early sixties, particularly during the last three months.
A sudden crash made him jump from his seat, but when he looked out in the hall he saw it was just the cleaning service.
Relieved, Jason returned to the computer. He wished he could separate the data on patients who had been given executive physicals, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. Instead, he had to be content with crude death rates. These graphs compared the percentages of deaths associated with age. This time the curve went the other way. It started low, then as the age increased the percentage of deaths went up. But then Jason asked the computer to print out a series of such graphs over the previous several months, month by month. The results were striking, particularly over the last two months. The death curves rose sharply starting at age fifty.
Jason sat at the computer terminal for another half hour, trying to coax the machine into separating out the executive physicals. What he expected he would see if he’d been able, was a rapid increase in death rates for people fifty and over who had high-risk factors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, poor diets, and lack of exercise. But the data was not available. It had not been programmed to be extracted en masse. Jason would have to take each individual name and laboriously obtain the data himself, but he didn’t have time to do that. Besides, the crude death-rate curves were enough to corroborate his suspicions. He now knew he was right. But there was one more way to prove it. With enormous unease, he left his office and returned to his car.
Driving out the Riverway, Jason headed for Roslindale. The closer he got, the more nervous he became. He had no idea what he was about to confront, but he suspected it was not going to be pleasant. His destination was the Hartford School, the institution run by GHP for retarded children. If Alvin Hayes had been right about his own condition, he must have been right about his retarded son’s.
The Hartford School backed onto the Arnold Arboretum, an idyllic setting of graceful wooded hills, fields, and ponds. Jason turned into the parking lot, which was all but deserted, and stopped within fifty feet of the front entrance. The handsome, Colonial-style building had a deceptively serene look that belied the personal family tragedies it housed. Severe retardation was a hard subject even for professionals to deal with. Jason vividly remembered examining some of the children on previous visits to the school. Physically many were perfectly formed, which only made their low IQs that much more disturbing.
The front door was closed and locked, so Jason rang the buzzer and waited. The door was opened by an overweight security guard in a soiled blue uniform.
“Can I help you?” he said, making it clear he had no wish to.
“I’m a doctor,” Jason said. He tried to push by the security man, who stepped back to bar his way.
“Sorry—no visitors after six, doctor.” “I’m hardly a visitor,” Jason said. He pulled out his wallet and produced his GHP identity card.
The guard didn’t even look at the ID. “No visitors after six,” he repeated, adding, “and no exceptions.”
“But I …” Jason began. He stopped in midsentence. From the man’s expression, he knew discussion was futile.
“Call in the morning, sir,” the guard said, slamming the door.
Jason walked back down the front steps and gazed up at the five-story building. It was brick, with granite window casings. He wasn’t about to give up. Assuming the guard was watching, Jason went back to his car and drove out the driveway. About a hundred yards down the road, he pulled over to the side. He got out, and with some difficulty made his way through the Arboretum back to the school.
He circled the building, staying in the shadows. There were fire escapes on all sides but the front. They went right up to the roof. Unfortunately, as at Carol’s building, none was at ground level, and Jason couldn’t find anything to stand on to reach the first rung.
On the right side of the building, he spotted a flight of stairs that went down to a locked door. Feeling with his hands in the dark, he discovered the door had a central glass pane. He went back up the stairs and felt around the ground until he found a rock the size of a softball.
Holding his breath, Jason went back to the door and smashed the glass. In the quiet evening, the clatter seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Jason fled to the nearby trees and hid, watching the building. When no one appeared after fifteen minutes, he ventured out and returned to the door. Gingerly, he reached in and undid the latch. No alarm sounded.
For the next half hour Jason stumbled around a large basement he guessed was a storage -area. He found a stepladder and debated taking it outside to use to reach a fire escape, but gave up that idea and continued feeling about blindly for a light. His hands finally touched a switch and he flicked it on.
He was in a maintenance room filled with lawnmowers, shovels, and other equipment. Next to the light switch was a door. Slowly, Jason eased it open. Beyond was a much larger furnace room that was dimly illuminated.
Moving quickly, Jason crossed the second room and mounted a steep steel stairway. He opened the door at the top and immediately realized he had reached the front hall. From his previous visits he knew the stairs to the wards were to his right. On his left was an office where a middle-aged woman in a bulging white uniform was reading at a desk. Looking down toward the front entrance, Jason could see the guard’s feet perched on a chair. The man’s face was out of sight.
As quietly as possible, Jason slipped through the basement door and let it ease back into place. For a moment he was in full view of the woman in the office, but she didn’t look up from her book. Forcing himself to move slowly, he silently crossed the hall and entered the stairwell. He breathed a sigh of relief when he was completely out of sight of both the woman and the guard. Taking the stairs on tiptoe two at a time, he headed for the third floor, where the ward for boys aged four to twelve was located.
The stairs were marble, and even though he tried to be quiet, his footsteps echoed in the otherwise silent, cavernous space. Above him was a skylight, which at that time looked like a black onyx set into the ceiling.
On the third floor, Jason carefully opened the stairwell door. He remembered there was a glassed-in nurses’ office to the right at the end of a long hallway and noticed that although the corridor was dark, the office still blazed with light. A male attendant was, like the woman downstairs, busy reading.
Looking di
agonally across the hall, Jason eyed the door to the ward. He noted it had a large central window with embedded wire. After one last check on the attendant, Jason tiptoed across the hall and let himself into the darkened room. Immediately, he was confronted by a musty smell. After waiting a moment to be sure the attendant hadn’t been disturbed, he began searching for the light. To confirm his suspicions, he would have to turn it on even if it meant being caught.
The drab room was suddenly flooded with raw, white fluorescent light. The ward was some fifty feet long, with low iron beds lined up on either side, leaving a narrow aisle. There were windows, but they were high, near the ceiling. At the end of the room were tiled toilet facilities with a coiled hose for cleaning and a bolted door to the fire escape. Jason walked down the aisle looking at the nameplates attached to the ends of beds: Harrison, Lyons, Gessner…. The children, disturbed by the light, began to sit up, staring with wide, vacant, and unknowing eyes at the intruder.
Jason stopped, and a terrible sense of revulsion that expanded to terror gripped him. It was worse than he’d imagined. Slowly, his eyes went from one pitiful face to another of the unwanted creatures. Instead of looking like the children they were, they all looked like miniature senile centenarians with beady eyes, wrinkled dry skin, and thinned white hair, showing scaly patches of scalp. Jason spotted the name Hayes. Like the others, the child appeared prematurely aged. He’d lost most of his eyelashes and his lower lids hung down. In place of his pupils were the glass-white reflection of dense cataracts. Except for light perception, the child was blind.
Some of the children began getting out of their beds, balancing precariously on wasted limbs. Then, to Jason’s horror they began to move toward him. One of them began to say feebly the word “please” over and over in a high-pitched, grating voice. Soon the others joined in a terrifying, unearthly chorus.