In addition to the paperwork, there were the personal belongings of a multitude of patients ranging back over a century. Not surprisingly, there was little by way of valuables; mostly it was personal journals, an occasional stuffed animal and clothing. He sorted out several of the diaries and set them with the matching names on the files of interest.
A wealth of blueprints told him what he’d already suspected: Most of the wings on the asylum had been added well after Cherry Hill was up and running.
Three hours later he had a substantial pile of files and notes and had cleared his way through half of the boxes. He’d do more later, but for now, he had enough to keep him—
from thinking about Elizabeth’s screams and the tears of his children as they watched her die, watched him struggling against the thick spikes that nailed him to the wall
—busy.
So he moved back down the long, drafty stairwell and to the room that was, at least for the time being, his home. Amelia was still there, but she’d taken the time to make the beds and had managed to gather him another meal. This time it was peanut butter and apple jelly sandwiches on semi-stale white bread. It would do.
He nodded his thanks and went about the meticulous destruction of the two sandwiches as he started sorting his box-load of files into different categories of potential importance.
“Where have you been all morning, Jonathan?” Her voice reflected her amusement. “That’s the dirtiest I’ve ever seen you.”
“Attic. Box diving. The place is filthy.”
“So are you. I have a key to the staff showers if that will help.”
He nodded and held out a hand, she fished the keys from her purse and tossed them to him. “I can’t remember the last time I had a shower that didn’t come with institutional soap, but with the accident and everything, I’d guess it’s been years.”
“The sad part of that is I know you’re serious.” Amelia laughed and stood up, stretching her body in ways that sent quakes through most men. Crowley focused on his last few bites of sandwich instead of looking at her.
“Everything calmer today?”
“Much, and thank you.” Her relief was obvious. “I can actually talk to men and not have them drool. It’s lovely.”
“No doubt. I’m going to get that shower.”
“I’m going to take a walk. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day out there.”
“Give me twenty minutes and I’ll join you.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Should I be?”
“You expect them to give you a day pass?”
“No, I expect to meet you outside in twenty minutes. Either I’ll have a guard along for the ride, or I’ll manage it.”
“Fair enough.” She shook her head and left the room. He followed a few minutes later and found the staff facilities by looking at the STAFF ONLY doors.
He was in and showered within a few minutes. He had no idea whose soap and shampoo he “borrowed” but it beat all hell out of the waterlogged green bars in the patient facilities.
When he was done he moved out to the hallway and down to Finney’s office. The man wasn’t there, so rather than deal with wasting time and getting a guard to go along for the ride, he simply moved to the front doors.
The guard at the welcome desk moved to intercept him, and Crowley waited patiently.
“Sir, you’re not allowed to leave the building without an escort.”
Crowley looked into his eyes. “Yes I am, Officer Copper. In fact, I can come and go as I please. Make sure you open the door for me when I get back, okay?”
The man’s dark brown eyes glazed over and he shuddered for a moment. “Yes, sir. Have a good time.”
“Good man. Thanks for the help.”
“It’s what we’re here for, sir.”
John stepped through the front doors and into the first fresh air he’d experienced in a long time, smiling brightly.
***
Kimberly finished feeding Alex Granger his food and then meticulously wiped away the spillage that covered his chin. His eyes looked worse today, as did his complexion.
For the first time in weeks he looked at her, really looked, and noticed her existence. Sometimes she could see a hint of intelligence behind his gaze and this was one of the rare occasions that gave her hope he’d recover somehow.
She knew about his past, knew all the things he’d done and hated that aspect of his existence, but no one deserved to die completely alone and forgotten.
Billy, the guard stationed outside of the room for her safety, coughed loudly into his hand. “We gotta get to the next one, Kim.”
She nodded her head. He was a nice guy, but had no patience for dealing with the inmates in the dungeon. The entire place made him uncomfortable as he’d admitted on numerous occasions.
She stepped away from Alex’s cot and headed for the door, but froze in her tracks when she heard him speak. His voice was dry and unused, the words half mumbled, but she heard them clearly enough. “The Dead God is coming. There will be great suffering.”
“Did he just say something?” Billy looked over her shoulder and stared at Granger. He hadn’t spoken a single word since the lobotomy, not once, not ever.
“Alex? What did you say?” She moved back over to stand in front of him. Hoping to hear something, anything.
His usually slack face moved, several nervous ticks erupting as a side effect of the obvious effort it took for him to do more than stare at the wall. “The Dead God. He’s coming. Soon.”
“Who is the dead god?” The question was rhetorical, muttered under her breath.
Granger’s face was trembling and sweaty as he spoke. “My Lord and Master, the eater of souls and flesh.” His voice was still rough and that made the announcement worse.
“Alex? Do you feel all right?”
Granger didn’t answer her. Instead he fell back on his cot and trembled, falling into a petit mal seizure.
“Call for Dr. Harrington, Billy! Get him now!”
For the first time in over six months, Alex Granger was talking, but it wasn’t a sign of improved health, much as she’d wished it might be, merely an indication that something was going on in his head.
Kimberly waited, unsure of what, exactly, was happening and frustrated by the delays. In her excitement, she’d forgotten about the transfer of Granger from Harrington’s caseload to Dr. Sebastian. She waited alone for almost fifteen minutes before the doctor came to examine the man. By then the seizure had ended, and Granger was once again little more than a lump of living flesh.
John Sebastian came into the room and asked her to fill him in. When she was done, he did a careful examination of Granger and ordered a gurney. Granger wasn’t well, and as he’d been forced to adopt the man as his patient, he would do everything he could to take care of the matter.
Kimberly watched as Granger was taken away, and then cleaned up his room a bit. Billy didn’t complain but only because he was too busy being freaked out by the patient’s words. His every action said that he’d been deeply disturbed by the sudden activity.
Kimberly didn’t let it get to her. She might have been in the quiet ward, but she’d seen enough cases of patients suddenly acting out to avoid being affected by one.
Still, even after she was done in the room and had locked the cell door, she had the feeling that someone was watching her. Maybe she’d let it get to her more than she realized.
***
Carl Branaugh finished with his interviews and paperwork just before noon. No surprise, the witnesses to Andrea Tartelli’s death could give him little useful information.
He was just getting ready to pack it in when the ambulance arrived from town and he received a page to call his office. Gritting his teeth, he stood and dialed the captain.
“I’m going to guess there’s a problem, Mike?”
“Yeah, there’s a problem.”
“What’s up?”
“I just got a call from Cherry H
ill about another dead body. They seemed calmer, but I need you to check out the scene before they move the body, just in case.”
“Done, I’ll call you back.”
Every time he’d been at the asylum before, he couldn’t seem to get away from administrators. Today, instead of bothering him they called his boss to report a potential crime scene rather than walking down the damned hall to get his attention.
By the time he found out where the body was supposed to be and managed to get access to the scene the paramedics were already there, confirming the death.
Why the hell do they call an ambulance when they can perform surgeries here? Someone want to answer that one for me?
He didn’t have to flash his badge, everyone already knew who he was. As far as he could tell, and he looked carefully, there were no signs of a struggle, no signs that anyone had bound or forcibly held the victim in place. There were no signs of a hasty mop job on the floor and the sheets were still halfway over the body lying on the cot in the cell.
The man’s face was swollen to the point where it looked like a cherry, both in shape and color. His hands were furrowed into the bedclothes and the bed itself. His mouth was stretched open into a silent scream and his eyes were wide open and as dull as the concrete underneath the cot he lay on. Other parts of his body just looked…wrong. He couldn’t place how, but there were deformities present that shouldn’t have been there.
“His name’s Luis Mercado.” The woman speaking tried to be clinical, but her voice was shaken. She was tall and lean, with a mass of dark hair restrained in a bun. Her face looked like it was unaccustomed to smiling. He couldn’t have said what it was, but something about the woman just rubbed him the wrong way.
“When was he discovered?”
“Only about fifteen minutes ago.” She rolled her eyes as she answered, completely removing the feeling that she was nervous and replacing it with an attitude that was out of place and annoying.
Branaugh looked at the nurse and couldn’t help the expression of shock he wore on his face. “Fifteen minutes ago? It’s after noon, didn’t anyone check on him earlier in the day?” What the hell kind of facility are they running here?
“We’re understaffed right now.” Her tone was waspish and defensive. “A lot of the people who should be here are at home. The lockdown yesterday put them into overtime.”
“So they just didn’t feel the need to show up afterwards?”
“There are union rules that say they can’t make the employees—”
“Screw that.” He looked at the woman’s nametag: L Anderson. “Nurse Anderson, what I’m seeing here looks an awful lot like neglect. I’m betting the coroner will agree with me.”
“I have not been neglecting my duties!” Her reaction was fast and sharp. Branaugh was glad she didn’t have a knife or it might have been shoved through his neck by the time she was done talking. He might have been out of line with his comment, but he doubted it. The corpse of Luis Mercado looked to be at least several hours old.
“You tell me how letting a man in this condition sit here and grow stiff and cold doesn’t qualify as neglect in your book and we can discuss the matter somewhere down the line. Right now, I’m on my way to report this and I’ll make sure your name is properly listed in the final document.”
“How dare you!?”
“It’s easy! I’ve been downstairs handling paperwork for the last fuck up at this hellhole and while I was taking notes, you were picking your goddamned nose and ignoring a potential crime scene! If I find out that anyone was in this room between midnight and now, I’ll assume it was to remove evidence. If you’d been handling your patients the way you’re supposed to, there wouldn’t have been several hours for them to handle fixing everything up!”
He was hot under the collar and reveling in it, what he didn’t understand was why he was so angry. Sure, it was a screw up, but he wasn’t even sure he was looking at a murder scene.
“Anyone? Then I guess you better pull out the cuffs, Mister! I was in here and so were two security guards, a doctor, and these two paramedics!” Her attitude and her snotty expression were almost enough to make him want to swat her, but he restrained himself. “Look! The paramedics have gloves on their hands! Maybe they’re hiding something!”
“Get the hell out of my face, lady, before I find a reason to arrest you.”
That one slowed her down. She blinked and looked at him for a few seconds. Then stormed out of the cell and back into the hallway with as much dignity as she could muster.
Branaugh shook his head again and stood by, waiting for someone from the coroner’s office to make everything official. He couldn’t touch the body himself until Matt Burton or one of his assistants came and said he could.
Ten minutes later, he was in the hallway and apologizing for his behavior to Nurse Anderson, who was equally apologetic. He wasn’t the mildest tempered man on the planet but his reaction had been very out of line and he knew it.
Apparently the nurse felt the same way about her own actions. The paramedics waited and so did Carl. All the while, he heard the sounds of the inmates on the floor as they paced or in a few cases screamed. Everyone around him seemed to be on edge, even the ones who were supposed to be too doped up to notice anything at all.
He looked at Nurse Anderson and shook his head. “I’m sorry again. It must be something in the air today.”
She nodded her agreement as she started setting up several different doses of medication for the patients on the ward.
“Maybe if we’re lucky it isn’t contagious.” She was joking as she said it, or at least trying to make a joke, but the thought bothered him a lot. The inmates on this level were as noisy as a zoo. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if everyone in the whole asylum got up in arms at the same time.
***
In a perfect world, Roger Finney mused, there would be no disagreement with my assessments. Sadly, it isn’t a perfect world.
The proof of his belief was standing in front of his desk, having just arrived on the red eye from California. Detective Rico Montoya was not happy with the current situation. He hadn’t even spoken a word yet, but Finney understood that the man was not pleased.
Somebody had been talking out of turn. That was the only logical reason for the detective to be on the premises.
“How can I help you, Detective?” He kept his face neutral.
“I had a few questions about Jonathan Crowley, wanted to know if I could see him.”
“I imagine that can be arranged.”
“Excellent. Can I see him now?”
“I’ll have to check on what the schedule says for him today.”
The man smiled thinly, his eyes narrowed just a bit. Roger decided at that precise moment that he didn’t much like the detective. He was plain enough in the looks department to be harmless until he got that little challenging grin on his mug.
“As luck would have it, I already checked with Dr. Harrington. According to him there’s nothing special slated for Crowley today.”
Well, that answered who had informed the detective of the change in status. Roger put on his best Cheshire cat smile and sighed apologetically. “Unfortunately, Phillip Harrington is no longer the doctor in charge of Jonathan Crowley’s case. I found his work with the patient to be less than exemplary.”
“Oh.” That took the wind out of the man’s sails.
“So, again, I’ll see what I can arrange for you.”
“That’s all I can ask. Thank you.”
Montoya wasn’t looking as cocky now, but Finney did his best to placate him anyway. “I know you’ve come a long way, Detective. I know that you think the man is responsible for several murders, including his own family. Time will tell, but it’s possible that he’ll be in better position to answer your questions this time around.”
“I hope you’re right, Doctor.” Montoya leaned in a little closer. “Between you and me, it looks like we might have discovered the remains o
f the Crowley family. I’d like to get this resolved once and for all.”
Years of working with the clinically insane had taught Roger Finney to hide his reactions to unexpected news, so he didn’t jump or react in any way to the revelation, at least not on the outside. On the inside, he was decidedly unhappy with the turn of events. Crowley was already volatile and unsettling. Finding out that his family might have been located was going to throw new complications into an already messy situation. “Well, I’ll make sure to let him know as soon as possible. I suspect he’ll be very interested in hearing that.”
Very interested, indeed.
***
Once you got past the whole mental asylum part, the grounds of Cherry Hill were beautiful; well tended lawns and a plethora of trees and bushes that were set around the complex, giving an illusion of beauty.
The air was almost the perfect temperature, and the breeze felt like heaven. After the last few weeks confined inside the Asylum, Jonathan Crowley savored the feeling of the sun warming his flesh and the breeze cooling him off. It wasn’t really freedom, not yet at any rate, but it still felt damned good.
Amelia looked at him and he knew she was reading his emotions. There was nothing to be done about that. Well, there was, but he chose not to bother with it.
“Why do you look so calm, Jonathan?”
“I could ask you the same thing, but I already know the answer.” True enough. Though Amelia Dunlow had the ability to sense what other people were thinking, it wasn’t like she could turn it off or on. She was constantly bombarded by the empathic sensory input, and in a place like Cherry Hill, it probably wasn’t a very pleasant sensation.
“You always do that. Redirect questions with a comment.”
“Yes, I do.”
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