"My ear's clean," Floyd said.
4
“It’s a series of cells, operating rooms, administrative offices,” Trey said. “Not much different from what's above. Just think of it like that. He may have squirreled himself down in one of the tunnels, and then we're a little screwed. But it's just a big basement if you think about it."
"Big frickin' basement," Jim grinned. “Back when lobotomies and shock treatment were the norm. And drunks got put away.”
Trey nodded, grimly. “The dark ages of psychiatry.”
“They still do shock treatments in Mercato,” Floyd Nelson said. “At least, that’s what I heard.”
“They may want to, but they don’t," Trey said.
I hate going down there, he thought. No matter what anyone said, nobody who worked in the aboveground hospital liked going below. Most of them forgot about it. Most tried not to think about it, below their feet as they walked the corridors of Darden.
And then, he went and drew the door back.
“I once had to go down there with two others because the pipes had some problems," Jim Anderson said. "There are tunnels heading all over the place. Rooms so small it makes you want to run out of there fast. And I did, believe me. I found a place where there was an incinerator.”
“A furnace?” Trey asked.
“An incinerator. Back in the day, when someone with tuberculosis died, they had to burn the body on the premises, by law. I hated even seeing that thing. Big old ugly metal furnace that looks like it could fit six people comfortably, and twelve if you stacked 'em. Creepy, creepy. I wish they’d just fill it with concrete and brick the whole thing over.”
“How far does it go? A mile?” Floyd asked. "When I was down there it looked like it went on forever."
“The whole length and breadth of the grounds above us, pretty much. If Fallon’s down there right now, he’s staying put, though. Some of the wings of the underground got caved in. Like back where they found the burial area. But I don’t think anyone’s gone exploring down here for at least a decade. Who knows?”
"I heard somebody tried to escape under the street coming up from down here," Jim Anderson said. "But that was before my time."
He toggled a couple of switches just inside the doorway. A green-yellow light came on, and then a red one, just inside the narrow corridor that awaited them.
“Gentlemen,” Trey said. “Start your engines.”
“Sort of exciting in a weird way,” Jim said, turning back to look at the Corrections Officer. “Hey, Floyd, you ready for a take-down?”
And that's when they heard someone coming up behind them. Well, smelled him first. It was as if Calvin Klein himself wafted in the air – the strong cologne was smothering as it moved ahead of the man who wore it, the man who walked rapidly toward them.
Trey glanced behind his back — Lance Victor and his cameraman in the doorway, camera's red light on, Lance looking like he had just won the lottery.
Chapter Thirteen
1
"No, no, and no," Trey said. "Floyd, escort Mr. Victor and his camera guy – what's your name?"
"Carl," the cameraman said.
"Okay, Floyd, let's get Carl and Mr. Victor back to the Canteen, please."
"I just want to get a shot or two down there," Lance Victor said. His face was shiny with sweat, and his hair had matted against his scalp. "We can do it on low-light, so you won't even notice us."
"I'm sorry, sir," Floyd Nelson said. "I've got to ask you, for your own safety, to step back into the other room until we've come out of here."
"I've been in riots before," Lance said. "I've had a murderer point a gun at me when the camera was on. It's all right. I know you will handle this guy. This just would really make the series click."
"I'm sorry," Trey said.
"Look, this guy could rip your face off," Jim said, his face turning grim. "I've seen him tear a man limb from limb."
"I've met this inmate," Lance said. "Robert Fallon. I doubt he could tear anyone up."
"Then you've never seen him at his best. He's in here for slicing a woman up. Well, several people, actually. Sometimes he scalps them. Nobody's here just because they committed a nice neat murder," Jim said. "You ever see a staffer with one eye? Or the ones who limp a little? Attacks are the norm."
"No matter what," Trey said, "we have a responsibility to the patients to protect them from this kind of exploitation. Even if we took you down there, Mr. Victor, your network would never be able to run that segment. You know that. Without our explicit permission, and the permission of the state, you can't expose a patient like this. Now. Go back into the Canteen. Or go find one of the administrators to take you on a tour of Ward D. You can probably sit in on a group. All right?"
Lance Victor drew his cell phone out of his pocket, flicked it up, and tapped in a number. He spoke into the phone and then passed it to Trey.
Trey put it to his ear, and heard the voice of the Executive Director of Darden State. James Willard. "Trey, we've given him access. The state has approved this."
After he closed the phone up, he tossed it back to Lance. "Stay close. Do not start interviewing anyone. Do not talk to the patient if you see him. If he comes for you, scream as loud as you can so that we hear you. If you and your camera guy decide to go off on your own, we can't guarantee your safety. Also, and listen up, there are some high voltage wires down there, not all of them secure. My advice is, don't touch one if you see it hanging from the ceiling. And one command. Do not talk to me. Do not ask me questions. Do not stand directly behind me at any time once we're down there. Stay back at least three feet. This is for your own safety. Understood?"
Both Lance Victor and his cameraman, Carl, nodded. Carl asked, "What's it like down there?"
Floyd Nelson grinned, glancing at the others. "I've been down twice already since July. It's not all that bad. Just some old administration offices, some corridors that don't really lead anywhere anymore. Rooms, basically. Crumbling a little. Messy. But it's just like you'd expect old offices to look that haven't been used in a long time."
"It's not precisely a dungeon," Trey said. "At least not where we're going."
2
The corridor within the doorway to the underground led to the stairway down. It was metal, and had been built in 1994 when the old staircase had given way after nearly a century of neglect. The steps and banister were almost ornate in structure, and shivered slightly with so many people on it. “Maintenance guys come down here more than anybody,” Trey said, and turned his flashlight on as he descended the staircase. The light below grew feeble as they went down, and Trey felt as if he sensed something bad here.
"Jesus," Jim said. "I wish we didn't have five people going down. It's gonna make Fallon panic."
"It'll be okay," Trey said. "We'll handle it. I'm betting that Rob wishes he hadn't run down here at all at this point."
"I heard a few other patients got down here," Lance said, his voice hushed as if he were entering a cathedral.
"Nobody got out if that's what you're hoping," Floyd said. "The guys have been working for a few months on the big rewiring project. Lifting grated, ripping out ceilings, and then repurposing and adding abatements. We got some high voltage wiring down here, though, so don't stand around touching pipes or nothing."
Something not as right as he had hoped it would be. He had anticipated that Rob Fallon would just be here hiding, maybe playing with himself or even hurting himself, which he’d sometimes done.
“Why’d this guy come down here anyway?” Cameraman Joe asked, shining his light in the dimly lit room far below, which took on a greenish cast from the lights above. Water dripped from heavy pipes that ran along the walls and ceiling.
“Who knows? He saw an opportunity," Trey said.
"He wants to escape," Lance whispered.
"What?" Jim Anderson asked as if this were the most lame-brained thing he'd ever heard.
"I always do my research," Lance said. "I know a patient got
out through here about ten-twelve years ago."
"That ain't true," Jim said. "There's no way."
Trey put his hand on Jim's shoulder. "Yeah, someone tried to. Didn't get far. But somehow made it out to the middle of Jackman Boulevard."
"Pipes," Lance said, pointing to the wide green pipes of the ceiling. "The wiring guys told me some of those tunnels caved in over the past thirty years. You follow the big green pipes and eventually you're somewhere just outside the fence. It's impossible to get through there now, though. It's all clogged up."
"I know Fallon too well," Trey said. "He's not interested in escape, believe me. It's more likely he's just down here playing with himself."
"I don't feel great about this," Joe said, lowering his camera. "Lance, look, let's just stay up top here."
"We're getting the stories of Darden," Lance said. "Now, switch it to low-light and keep it on your shoulder."
"I don't want chatter down there, unless it's me, Jim, or Floyd. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," Lance said without much humor in his voice.
Trey looked over at Floyd who remained back a ways, as if he didn’t want to look down into the underground area known by most staffers as “the Pit.”
Floyd Nelson leaned against the wall, his sight wandering from door to door and then back again. Floyd must hate this part of his job. Trey didn't even like to admit to himself how creeped out he was about going down these stairs into the underground tunnels and warrens.
“Robby's smart,” Jim said. “Holy crap, look at that.” He shined his flashlight over in a corner.
A pile of dead rats, their stomachs ripped open.
“I guess the rat poison worked,” Floyd said.
“Poor little guys,” Jim said. “I know it’s softie of me, but I hate seeing dead animals. Even rats. I like rats.”
“But not in the food,” Floyd Nelson said, and Trey was sure he heard the familiar smack of gum again coming from the guard's mouth.
3
By the time they reached the bottom step, Nelson’s hand had begun trembling enough for Trey to notice. “It’s okay, Floyd. It’s Fallon. He’s doesn’t bite like some of the others.”
“Not unless you get cozy with him,” Jim added.
When Trey stepped down on to the floor, the planks creaked. The floors were made of slats of wood raised over a stone and concrete surface. Not the original wood, but a more recent addition, mainly raised up because of flooding that occurred now and then when the rains came through southern California.
At the floor level, Trey noticed the smell more than anything. It was an awful mix of mustiness and mildew and even the rotting rats, as well as something that reminded him of a swamp. He never liked thinking about the underground when he was above it. He felt it was part of the shame of Darden's past – back when, instead of medication, they used what now seemed like medieval tortures on the patients. He didn't like thinking about the kind of asylum Darden was in the late 19th and early 20th century. Whenever people bemoaned the use of medication or the compassion of modern-day criminally insane hospitals, he wished they had seen the evidence he had of the past: of the operating rooms, the treatment facilities, and the cells that were known as "night cages" by the patients themselves because they were kept in isolation and darkness.
4
Trey walked ahead of the others, shining his light into the dimmer areas. The overhead lights were unstable, flicking in the main entry foyer, which was nothing more, at this point, than a big empty room with cracking wood-slat floor and exposed wiring and pipes all along its walls. Straight ahead, the first corridor down, and to the left a large room-length square hole where a window had once been. Inside, old file cabinets, a pile of rubble and another pile of tools left by the construction and repair crews that came down occasionally. He didn't like to anticipate fear. Not in his work, not in his life. His wife had told him, "Don't die twice," and it was a huge lesson for him about dealing with fearful situations. He knew she had meant, "Don't suffer before you have to," and he tried to apply that whenever faced with situations that raised the hackles of his old fears.
But since the Red Angel killer – a man who was now a heavily medicated patient in Ward D – Trey had begun having nightmares about work and life that had not subsided. What bothered him the most is that sometimes, when he woke from the nightmares, he wondered if patients at Darden State didn't experience the same sense of dislocation and anxiety that he felt. He had heard about it happening – a certain confusion of mind when working so close with the criminally insane population, sociopaths, especially.
"They get inside you," Dr. Brainard had told him years before. "And you have to do what you can in life to leave this place behind every day you walk out that door. Because once you stop leaving it behind, once you take Darden State with you, it's too late. You are no longer helping the patients. You're becoming one of them. And you'll start self-medicating. You'll begin to hallucinate in the same way the patient does. It's the close working quarters that do it, and I can't advise anyone to stay on the psychiatric technician staff for more than fifteen years. I think it's a mistake to make this your life's calling."
It had been bad for Trey before. When Agnes Hatcher had escaped awhile back, he'd gotten caught up in her delusions to some extent. And with the Red Angel killer, he'd had images in his mind he'd never be able to erase: the memories of the most horrifying thing he'd yet experienced in life. He could name patient after patient that had no effect on him – terrible murderers, sociopaths, and psychopaths. But something of his feeling of safety had eroded in the past year, despite his new position at Darden and his consulting work with Jane Laymon.
His mind had begun to believe too much in the nightmare, and not enough in the positives of life.
Being in the underground did little to brush away these fears.
But with a reporter and cameraman nearby, he wasn't about to mention it. He just took a few deep breaths, and toggled a light switch near the entrance to the corridor as they all stood before its darkness.
"Let there be light," Jim said, like a voice of comfort beside him, as the flickering fluorescents above them came up.
Chapter Fourteen
1
“This is the back way. The main entrance is at the opposite side. It’s completely sealed off from the grounds above,” Jim Anderson said. “Twenty rooms on this level, twenty-five below.”
Lance Victor looked down at his feet, then back at the others. “Below? There’s another floor underneath this?”
Trey nodded. “They used to call it the Bunker. But before that, they were the cages.”
“Night Cages. That's what they called 'em. They kept them all there,” Jim added.
"Loonies," Floyd said. Floyd Nelson still hadn't quite gotten the hang of calling the patients by their more politically-correct designations.
“People who were ill,” Trey corrected him. “Back then, it wasn’t a forensics hospital. They weren’t all murderers. Patients with tuberculosis were housed in the same area as those who were violent schizophrenics, and beside them were sociopathic killers, and in the next bunk might be a woman who had been put there by her husband, just because she was menopausal.”
“Gay men and women, too,” Jim said. “Just because they were gay and somebody with power over them put them here. Shock treatments. Insulin-induced shock. Thoracic surgery. And all of them having to live together. Before meds. Well, before really effective meds.”
“Sounds like a torture chamber,” Lance said.
Trey glanced back at him. Lance Victor kept back a ways, and Joe, his eye behind the camera, moved it around to take in the sights of the hallway.
"It's got some kind of night vision?" Trey asked. "That camera?"
"Yeah. It can get a reasonably decent image with almost no light at all."
"With luck, the lights'll come up as we go. But if they don't, I may have to ask you to use it to look around in the dark."
"Sure," Joe said, his
voice utterly serious.
“The few times I’ve been down here, I always get the heebie-jeebies," Trey said.
“Makes me want to just go back upstairs and wait for this guy to come up on his own," Jim said.
“Knowing Rob,” Trey said, “He’s terrified right now. Poor guy.”
And that’s just where he was – they had followed the old corridor down past the empty administrative offices, past where any light reached, and they found Rob Fallon nearly shivering under one of the old operating tables.
Trey stood at the entrance to the room. It was a medical theater, although not particularly large, it had seating for about ten on raised platform that overlooked the room and its three metal tables.
“Rob, it’s okay. You can come out,” Trey said, shining his flashlight near Rob’s hand, which stuck out from beneath the table.
“I can’t,” Rob said, his whisper echoing in the chamber.
“It’s okay. We’ll just go back up and get settled.”
“She brought me down here,” Rob said.
“Who?” A shock went through Trey: had someone else come down here with Fallon? Had Fallon managed to seduce another female employee?
“The girl,” Rob said.
“Where is she?”
“By the door.”
Trey shone the light in the doorway below them.
“There’s no one there.”
“That’s what she wants you to believe.”
“Let’s go back up,” Trey said. “Maybe she’ll come with us.” He motioned to Jim and Floyd to step back quietly. Then, Trey leaned over the railing, and turned about, hanging over the edge of it, his flashlight between his teeth. He jumped the few feet down, landing in a crouching position.
Rob Fallon scootched back under the operating table.
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 46