I guess I absorbed more than I thought. That’s the only thing that would explain why, when I woke up again and found myself back in my room, I decided (in an obsessive-compulsive, I’ve-got-to-do-this-and-I’ve-got-to-do-it-now sort of way that I blamed on the aftereffects of the drugs) that I needed to concoct some brainy invention that would allow me to escape.
I rushed around the room, scooping up everything I could find.
Then, for an hour or more, I found myself staring at a toothbrush, a hospital gown that I had—so far—managed to avoid changing into, and the entire contents of my purse (minus the missing cell phone, of course). Lipstick, compact, blusher, perfume, mascara, eyeliner, hand sanitizer, hand lotion, lip gloss, tampons, breath mints, wallet. Everything a girl could ever want or need. Except an idea of how to use it all to get out of there.
MacGyver, I was sure, would cobble together something simple yet brilliant.
Pepper Martin?
Not so much.
Exhausted, I flopped back on the bed, my brain tired and my stomach queasy from the fatty bacon I’d never had a chance to finish. I don’t know how long I lay there staring at the tiles of the drop ceiling and wondering what to do next. I do know that it was frustrating, but it beat worrying about what was going to happen to me if I stayed in Doctor Gerard’s clutches. If history repeated itself—and as much as I tried, I couldn’t think of a reason it wouldn’t—I was about to become a statistic. Just another one of the missing.
I wondered if Doctor Gerard had pegged me correctly as someone no one would come looking for.
My dad? No way he could.
Mom? Between her tennis league, her yoga class, and her book club (they didn’t read a thing, it was an excuse to meet at the martini bar down the street from her condo) and my schedule as detective to the dead, we talked maybe once every couple weeks. She wouldn’t even know I was gone for days, and by that time, something told me it would be too late.
Quinn?
We hadn’t exactly promised we’d see each other again when I returned from Chicago, but I kind of figured we would. If he did, too, he might show up on my doorstep, and if I wasn’t there...
I twitched the thought aside.
If I wasn’t there, Quinn would go on his merry way, no doubt about it. I wondered if he’d ever bother to stop and think of me again.
Of course, there was always Dan.
There was a time this thought would have actually made me feel better. After all, Dan had once saved my life. But now I suspected that he was so hell-bent on contacting Madeline, he’d do anything to make it possible. Even if that meant locking me up in some loony bin and turning his back when Doctor Gerard poked around inside my brain.
Had I tipped my hand with Dan when I told him I’d spoken to Madeline? Or was it the comment about the missing patients that had sealed my fate? Was that why I was being held prisoner?
My stomach rebelled again, and this time, it had nothing to do with greasy bacon or runny eggs. My heart bumped and lurched, but even the bumping and the lurching weren’t enough to kick my brain into gear. What the hell was I going to do to get myself out of the predicament I’d gotten myself into?
The daylight outside my room faded from afternoon to evening, then disappeared altogether, and the ceiling tiles above my head washed out from white to gray. Still, I was no closer to figuring out how I could escape.
Except for those ceiling tiles, of course.
The idea hit, and I sat up like a shot. I didn’t know how often they did a bed check or how early breakfast might be served the next morning, but I wasn’t taking any chances; I didn’t have a moment to lose. My boots were next to the bed, so I slipped them on, turned on the light, then carefully and quietly positioned the room’s one and only chair so it was close enough to the dresser for me to step from one to the other. I was all set to start climbing when I decided I’d better take my purse, too. It was, after all, a Juicy Couture. I slipped the shoulder strap over my neck and left shoulder, and with my hands free, I got to work.
Lucky for me, the dresser was sturdy. Luckier still, the first ceiling tile I tried moved easily. I slid it aside and waited, my breath caught behind a tight ball of anticipation in my throat. One minute went by. Then another. There was no sound from out in the hallway, nobody running to see what I was up to, no alarms. In fact, the only sound I heard was my heart beating double time in my chest.
Before my heartbeat could deafen me, I stuck my head into the hole in the ceiling and took a look around. The nearly total darkness took a while to get used to, but once my eyes adjusted, I saw confirmation of what I’d thought when I took that walk to the dining hall: the building was old and once upon a time long ago before the drop ceiling had been added, the real ceiling was twelve feet or more from the floor. There wasn’t plenty of room, but there was room enough to move around between the new ceiling and the old. At the same time I prayed I wouldn’t run into any of the spiders that had coated the space with webs, I hoisted myself into the opening. There were support beams between the tiles, and I sat down on one, cautiously eased the tile I’d moved aside back into place, and squinted into the darkness.
I was in a maze of air-conditioning ducts, electrical wires, and years of accumulated dirt. I knew when I scrambled up into the ceiling that I was facing the doorway. That meant if I crawled straight ahead, I would be over the hallway outside my room. I also knew the desk—and the attendant who manned it—were down the hall to the left. On my hands and knees, I went to the right.
I am not a good judge of distances, and in the dark, it was hard to say how far I’d come to begin with. I only knew when it felt like far enough. When another passage intersected the one I was in, I went to the left, listening as I did for any sounds from below.
The place was as quiet as Garden View at midnight.
If this was a good thing or a bad one, I couldn’t say. I only knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in the ceiling. I stopped, and choosing a ceiling tile at random, I hooked my fingers under it—and broke a nail. Past caring, at least until I could get out of there and schedule a manicure, I latched on tighter, winced when another nail snapped, and moved the tile aside.
I found myself looking down into a room with an open doorway on the left. Beyond it, there was a light on in the hallway. Through the mishmash of light and shadows, I saw what reminded me of the biology lab back at my high school. Never the scene of any academic triumphs, at least not for me. On my right, the wall was lined with glass-fronted bookcases. There were windows on another wall. Yes, they were barred. In the center of the room were a dozen or more individual lab stations, complete with Bunsen burners and sinks. Carefully, I lowered myself onto the countertop of one of the lab stations, and from there, I hopped to the floor.
I didn’t dare move from the spot, not until I was sure the coast was clear. I had just about convinced myself it was and that it was time for me to dart out of the relative safety of the lab and into the hall to try and find a door that led outside when I heard a voice.
It was a man, and he was headed my way.
I ducked under the lab station, curled into a ball, listened, and waited.
“Everything’s secured.” The man’s voice was punctuated by the bleeping sound of a walkie-talkie. “Gonna take another swing through the east wing, but I’m guessing we’re set for the night. Then I’ll—shit.”
The walkie-talkie beeped and squawked before another voice responded. “What’s up, Glenn? Something wrong?”
“Just the lab.” Glenn was right outside the door, close enough for me to hear the exasperation in his voice. And close enough for him to hear me if I lost my nerve and whimpered. I dug the fingernails—broken and unbroken—of one hand into the palm of the other as a way of reminding myself to stay focused and keep quiet. “Somebody left the door open again and damn, I didn’t bring the keys. I’ll have to come back to the security desk to get them, then head back up here. You’re still down there, right, Dwayne? You wa
nt to wait for me to get back, then we can duck into the stairwell for a smoke?”
Dwayne’s confirmation came with another squawk. “No problem, buddy.”
I waited until the echo of Glenn’s footsteps died away before I dared to budge. Looking back on it, maybe that’s where I made my mistake. I should have moved faster, sooner. The way it was, I pulled myself out from under the lab station, inched over to the door, and took a look around. The hallway outside the lab looked much like the other ones I’d seen earlier that day, except that way down at the end of this one, there was a door marked with a red exit sign.
I had just started toward it when I heard Glenn’s footsteps again.
Apparently, the security desk was not as far away as I’d hoped.
With no place to hide in the hallway and no other options, I scurried back into the lab, shot under the lab station I’d just crawled out from under, and listened, helpless and losing heart, as Glenn arrived. When he pulled the door shut and locked it, there was nothing I could do but wait for him to leave.
Grumbling a curse, I looked back up at the dirty, dusty, cobwebby hole in the ceiling and knew I had no choice but to get back up there and return to my room. Of course, that didn’t mean I couldn’t take a moment to look out the windows and think about life on the outside.
I had just gone over that way when the clouds outside parted and a nearly full moon shone above the waters of Lake Michigan. Its light glistened against a few snow-flakes that floated past the window. It tipped the lake water with silver and glittered against the coating of ice along the shoreline.
It also glanced against the glass-fronted cases in the room, and when it did, something in them caught my eye.
Curious, I closed in for a better look.
“Patient XK545.” I read the label on a glass jar just inside the door, then looked beyond the paper label to the contents.
“Holy shit!” I jumped back as fast as I could, but even if I wanted to (and believe me, I wanted to), I couldn’t look away. I stared in stunned horror at row after row of glass jars that filled the shelves.
Each one of them was labeled with a patient number.
Each one contained a human brain.
“So, how are we feeling this morning?”
The last thing I was in the mood for was chipper, and Doctor Gerard, with his tweedy suit and cheery voice, was definitely going for chipper.
With a sneer of epic proportions, I let him know I didn’t appreciate it. “I feel like shit. That’s all that matters. And it’s your fault. What the hell did you shoot me up with yesterday? And why? What the hell is going on around here, Doctor, and—”
“I am so sorry about that.” We were in his office, and morning sunlight streamed through the windows. It was nearly as bright as his smile. “Forgive me, Pepper, but you have to understand, there are certain scientific procedures—”
“Screw your scientific procedures.” I wasn’t in any frame of mind to sit down and get comfortable, but after the walk from my room to the cafeteria for breakfast (where I didn’t see Ernie or the oatmeal lady, come to think of it, and where everyone else was as stoned as they had been the day before), and from the cafeteria to Doctor Gerard’s office, I was wiped out. I plunked into his guest chair. Set right next to it was a table with two china cups and a plate of flaky croissants. They sure as hell looked better than the scrambled eggs and toast I’d had for breakfast, but I wasn’t taking any chances. There were more ways to drug a girl than simply by pumping the poison right into her veins, and I was too smart to fall for any tricks.
“And screw you, too,” I told the doctor.
“I can’t blame you for feeling this way.” There was one of those thermal coffee carafes on the credenza behind his desk. He got it, filled one cup, and looked my way.
“No?” I guess my expression—the one that had I don’t trust you, buster, written all over it—told him everything he needed to know. “I can prove it isn’t spiked, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Doctor Gerard took a sip of coffee. “The croissants are drug free, too. You don’t need to worry about them. Go ahead.” He set the carafe near my elbow, and when he did, the aroma of coffee filled my nose. One sniff and I knew this wasn’t the watered-down version they served in the cafeteria. This was the real deal and it smelled heavenly. I waited for him to take another drink, and when he didn’t choke or pass out, I figured it was safe to take a chance; I poured myself a cup.
I gulped it down, hot and black, and without the sweetener I always added. Doctor Gerard beamed me a smile. “There. Now we’re on better footing.” There was a chair next to mine, and he sat down in it. His long-sleeved blue shirt was so starched, it crackled as he settled himself. “You have trust issues. I can understand that. I haven’t been as forthcoming as I might have been.”
“Oh, you’ve been plenty forthcoming.” I wasn’t exactly sure what the word meant, but I liked the way it sounded when I added an acid twist. “And now you’re going to go forth right now and pick up your phone and make a call and then a cab is going to be coming to get me. I’m getting out of here.” To prove it, I stood.
“Not yet.” The doctor put a gentle but insistent hand on my arm. “We’re almost done with our testing, and I have to tell you . . .” He stood, too, and he was taller than me. When he looked down, his eyes glittered with excitement. “The tests I’ve done, Pepper . . . The results I’ve seen...You’re the only one I’ve ever met who really might . . .” He was so overcome, he couldn’t finish.
I wasn’t all that emotional. Not when it came to ghosts, anyway. I backed out of his reach. “You mean when it comes to talking to the dead, right? What, you didn’t believe me when I told you I could do it?”
“I’ve heard it before. Dozens of times.” The doctor turned and walked behind his desk. There was a mountain of file folders on it, and he picked up a batch of them. “So much promise! And so many people who I thought just might . . .” He dropped the folders back on the desk where they landed with a smack. “They disappointed me. All of them. Then I saw your brain scans. You’re the answer to my prayers, Pepper. You’re the key to the whole mystery. Working together—”
“Hold on there, Hilton.” I held up a hand to stop him. Since I’d been unable to resist and I’d just grabbed a croissant, it dropped flaky crumbs around me. “Who said this was a partnership?”
He leaned forward, his palms flat against the desktop. “But it can be! It will be! Don’t you see? Working together, we can change the world!” His voice shook when he said, “Go ahead. Do it now. Call on one of the dead.”
“Call on? You mean like demand they show up? I can’t just—”
“Of course you can. And don’t worry about all the messy little details. We’ll get our attorneys involved later and—”
“Lawyers?” OK, it might have been the drugs messing with my mind, but honestly, I didn’t think so. I finished the croissant, brushed the crumbs from my hands, and got down to business. “Why do we need lawyers to talk to ghosts?”
“We don’t. Not now. Not when you’re simply demonstrating.” The doctor rubbed his hands together. “But once we’re in full start-up mode, then, of course, I wouldn’t expect you to not get some portion of the profits. After all, you—”
“I’m the one you think can get Shakespeare to spit out the words of his next play. And Einstein the formula for . . . for whatever a guy like that would come up with a formula for.” I chewed over this new thought. “You want to contact the dead to make money from them?”
His laugh was a little nervous. “You make it sound so vulgar. And besides . . .” He smiled in a way that reminded me of the greasy bacon I’d eaten for breakfast the day before. “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Until I know you can really do it . . .” His look was expectant. “Go ahead, Pepper. Don’t worry about doing anything difficult. Not this early in our study. We’ll forego Shakespeare and Einstein and the rest of them for now. You can simply talk to one of the ghosts you’ve a
lready been in contact with. The ones you mentioned that day in my office. Gus Scarpetti or Didi Bowman or—”
“Madeline Tremayne?”
I wasn’t imagining it. The light was too good in the office for it to play tricks on my eyes. Doctor Gerard’s face really did get pale.
He ran his tongue over his lips. “Madeline? My former assistant?”
“One and the same.” Something told me that for the first time since I woke up and found myself wherever the hell I was, I had the upper hand. I used it to my full advantage. “Want to know what she has to say?”
Doctor Gerard’s smile fluttered. “Of course I do. Madeline . . . my goodness . . .” Like he was trying to take it all in, he blinked fast. “How I’ve missed her! What has . . . what has she told you?”
Night of the Loving Dead Page 17