It was like a storage closet time machine.
She looked back – the guys with her looked scared shitless. For C.O's working with the criminally insane, they didn't exhibit any sense that this was going to be a routine take-down.
Her depth perception was off, too. It was the problem of her eye – a psychopath had taken one eye the year before. She didn't intend to have another one drawn out by a whole new set of psychos.
When they got to the end of the corridor, where it shifted to the left, she pressed her back against the wall. Gave her guys a quick glance of – be ready for anything, boys – and then, holding her Glock up, she swiftly turned the corner.
She swore under her breath.
Another long hallway loomed, and it looked as if at the end of it, it branched off in two directions.
The lights here were old hanging bulbs with metal back-shades above them. Must've been fancy in the '50s, she thought.
A series of rooms lined the new corridors, and each doorway was empty of even a door. As Jane went along, she had to check each doorway in case the Chilmarks were hiding in them.
She turned back to the other officers, waving for them to keep up.
When she looked in one of the rooms, she saw at least a dozen large traps – and each had one dead rat in them. Another room was filled with wheelchairs. Still another had broken glass all along the floor.
She moved faster – she could see in the dust on the floor their footsteps. Not clearly, but enough of a swipe in the grime that had built up that the killers had continued down at least to the end of the corridor.
Just as she got to the end, she saw a man kneeling down just to the left of the wall's edge, and she drew her gun up. He had blond hair, tamped down with sweat and what she assumed was blood. His face dripped with blood, and his hands were behind his back. A strip of cloth had been wrapped tight around his mouth, and there was blood coming from his lips. He was breathing through his nose such that his nostrils flared and then closed as if he were gasping for breath. His eyes widened as he stared at her.
A hostage, she thought, and immediately pulled back against the wall, and turned about to tell the guards behind her.
The lights flickered – just once.
She saw a blur of movement as a woman leapt from one of the doorways they'd passed, some large metal instrument in her hands, coming for the guard who was furthest back.
The lights overhead began flickering again – this time almost as the strobe lights had upstairs. She noticed it all at once – the hostage, then the woman leaping almost as if she were a lion going after its prey; the two guards directly behind her saw her expression, and began to turn to look back.
And then, they were plunged into darkness.
Chapter Forty
"Someone's shut off the switch," Trey said.
"The guards wouldn't do it," Hannifin said. "They wouldn't."
Trey strained to listen, as if he'd hear their voices.
"I hate waiting here," she said. "Just waiting. God knows what's happening."
"It's just the lights. Maybe Jane shut them off for a reason."
"I know where it is," Hannifin said. "The switch. It's in that wheelchair graveyard area."
"The what?"
"The main switch. There's a bunch of old wheelchairs just collecting dust. If you wait, if it works right, the emergency lights will come on in a few minutes."
The only light that entered the stairwell was from the door behind them.
"It's strange in the dark," she said. "My main studies have been about seeing what we do exposed to daylight. The secrets. The dark places. But if you sit in the dark sometimes, you remember things. Things you might want to forget sometimes."
"It'll be okay," he said, sensing the weight of her words – she was thinking too deeply, too seriously. He wanted to try and offer her some comfort.
"Other doctors here knew we'd been a couple," she said. "But we've been doing our best to hide it."
"Sure. I never guessed. Well, I mean, 'til now."
"Everybody keeps secrets from somebody."
As she spoke, he felt the darkness below them – and the unanswered questions it posed – was not worth dwelling on. He sat there, wishing he could lighten her mood. Wishing whatever darkness she now felt within her mind could be allowed to escape into the light of day. He remembered what Brainard had told him about psychiatrists. How they sometimes were in the profession for the very reason that they themselves needed to untangle their minds.
"Trey," Hannifin said. "I'm worried about him. All of them down there. Even Doc Chilmark."
"They have flashlights," Trey said. "Just like this one. Don't worry." He drew a long slender flashlight up and flicked it on. He shined it down into the dark. The light bounced off peeling walls and the open cabinets and storage closets.
"The emergency lights should be up by now."
"Jane knows what she'd doing," Trey said.
A sound like a distant pop. Then another.
And another.
Gunfire.
Chapter Forty-One
Jane felt heat rise beneath her skin, as she turned around. She couldn't shoot. She couldn't even see. There was the sound of a scuffle behind her; one of the men shouted; another shot and a brief brightness; for the barest moment, she thought she felt a hand on her neck; she wrenched away from it, pivoting around to bring her gun to eye level, ready to shoot. Her hands trembled. You've been through worse. Hang on. Hang on. You can do it. You can get through it.
Then, silence.
She crouched down, figuring she was less of a target closer to the floor. Then, she lay down on her stomach, and keeping her elbows bent and holding the gun upward in case she detected movement near her.
A terrible sound began somewhere not far from her in the dark.
It was a slicing and ripping, and then a wet slurp of a body as it was being cut open.
A groan, but so faint it was as if it were far away.
Chapter Forty-Two
Trey held his breath as long as he could. Hoping that it had gone the right way below them. In the dark. Beyond the first corridor of the underground.
Susan Hannifin said, "We've got to get down there. Trey. If they've shot anybody. The patients, or…well, if anyone's hurt. I've got to."
"Dr. Hannifin, no," Trey said.
But Hannifin stepped around him and began running down the stairs to the floor below. He kept the flashlight on her as she went. He didn't know what had come over here, and part of him wanted to race back down to the checkpoint at Ward D, but he didn't like the odds of any of this.
"Damn it," Trey said.
He thought of Jim Anderson, just beyond the doorway behind him. Thought of what he would've done to save him, if he'd only gone to the Canteen with him.
What two people could do that one could not.
He thought of Jane, and even of Dr. Brainard and Lance Victor. Their faces in his mind. He imagined them dead, throats slit like Jim's had been. Nothing but meat in the end. Nothing but a plaything for the human monsters who couldn't even understand what they were doing when they killed.
He thought of the good and bad of life, and wanted the good to come out this time.
He followed Hannifin into the underground, calling out to her to wait for him. "I got the flashlight, damn it, hang on," he said.
Chapter Forty-Three
Lights flickered up from the edges of the hallways. They bathed the peeling walls in a hazy blue. For Jane, it flattened out the vision in her eye further – she could no longer tell the distance of objects and people. She scootched behind a doorway, rising to a crouching position, keeping her Glock at the ready.
Down the hallway, the patches of blue light did not permeate every square foot of the hall – the emergency lights were only at the ends of the corridor and in every other room along it.
Behind her, she saw two bodies on the floor. One of the guards lay on his back and continued to shiver as blood poured
from his throat; his gut, also, had been ripped open. Another, several feet behind him, was so covered with blood she couldn't even see his face or scalp.
She felt a panic seize her as she glanced back and forth, trying to make out who else was there.
Then, from down at the nearest end of the hall, one of the guards stepped forward. He looked at his feet as he came. She had not gotten a good look at him when he'd joined up with her to explore this area. He was young – too young to be facing what he now had to face.
Behind him, the woman.
Bloody Mary.
Focus. Come on, focus, Jane kept telling herself. But there was something about the blue lights and the shadows between them that weren’t helping with her vision.
Bloody Mary must have something in his back. A gun. Something, Jane thought. Okay, you'll get through this. You will. If you aim, you'll miss him. You'll wing her. But that may be enough for her to drop him, and then you'll get a clear shot.
"We're going to perform surgery today," Mary said, her voice calm and smooth as if none of this had any effect on her. "Today. My son. He's a doctor. He's a healer. There are too many to be healed in this world."
"Let him go," Jane whispered, then repeated herself in a normal tone. Or as normal as she could get it. She held her gun steady. She began to look for ways of distracting Bloody Mary so that she'd let the guard go for a split second.
She heard a noise behind her. Quickly, she turned her head to the side.
The hostage that she'd seen in the hall on his knees was far back in the shadows of the room she'd chosen. She could just make him out. Her eye began tearing up. Or else the sweat on her forehead had dripped down into it. She swiped at it with her hand.
The man with the gag over his mouth had begun crawling toward her. She had no time to signal him to stay where he was. She had to turn around and keep watching Bloody Mary.
When she glanced out into the hall, Bloody Mary had stepped closer with the guard in front of her, a shield.
Suddenly, the young guard began trembling, and his eyes went wide. His legs seemed to be buckling; Jane saw the strength in his the structure of his body collapse as if he had just lost all muscle coordination.
The guard's mouth opened wide in a scream, but no sound came out.
He dropped to the ground.
Bloody Mary stood there, her dress soaked with blood, her hair wild, and a long cutting saw of some kind that had scissor-like attachments.
Jane knew she had a split second to act. She took fast aim, but heard someone running toward her from behind.
She had to turn – she had no choice. As she did, she saw that she and the hostage had not been the only ones in the room.
Doc came running for her as if he were about to throw a shot-putt – and at the very last second, she saw the Taser, and before she could react fast enough, her gun went off in her hand, and she felt the bite of electric shock when the probes of the Taser connected with her left hip.
Chapter Forty-Four
Doc got down on all fours beside the woman who'd just dropped. "A cop," he said. "Cool."
Behind him, Lance Victor began to make bleating noises under his gag. Doc turned around. He pointed his finger at him, "You just keep still from now on. You hear?"
As he looked at Lance, Doc was sure he saw a shadow behind him. Not like the other shadows when people got healed. These were shadows that lived down here.
The ghosts that the other patient had told him about.
From the doorway, his mother reached down and stroked his scalp. He felt good when she touched him. Safe. He looked up at her. "I see shadows all around us."
"Good ones?" she asked.
"I think so. I don't feel the fears. Not like I did in the dark. I felt them when the lights went out. I felt them crawling from all the cracks in the walls."
"I'm sorry about the dark," she said. "But we had to shut it down. They might've hurt you."
"I know," he said. "You kept me safe. Where'd you put my father?"
"Back there," Mary said, cocking her head to the side to indicate any number of rooms behind her. Beyond the bodies of the guards. "Come on, sweetheart. Let's go."
"I have your bag, still," Doc said, pointing toward a stack of magazines in a corner. Just visible over the tops of them, a grocery bag.
"Good. Get it. I'll go get your father. We'll heal him soon."
"What about this one," Doc swiveled around to look at Lance Victor who had slipped to the floor and could not get back up with his hands tied behind him.
"Yes," she said.
"And this one?" He looked down at Jane who lay there, her eyes closed.
"She'll be up soon. Let's get her bound. Check the supply closet up the hall. I bet there's some restraints still in it," his mother said.
Chapter Forty-Five
Trey switched the flashlight off when the blue emergency lights came up. Dr. Hannifin walked ahead of him.
"Slow down," he said.
"They're down there. You heard the shots. That they haven't come back…" she stopped, and glanced back at him.
"Dr. Hannifin," he said. "Susan. Let's go back up. The lights are up. Jane and the other guards know what they're doing. I'll take you back upstairs. We'll see if the ward doors are open yet. There'll be someone to help them if anything happened."
"I know where they're taking him," Dr. Hannifin said. She no longer seemed like a superior, a psychiatrist. For the first time, in that pale blue light of the corridor, he saw her as a frightened person. A woman who had held something back. "He told me about her. He told me about what she does. What they did. He never lied to me, Trey. He loved her. Too many years ago to bother me. He loved her. A patient. He brought her here, and they…they did things. Nothing sick. Not like what was in her head, I'm sure. She fucked with him then. She's fucking with him now. She's going to gut him, Trey. She told him that years ago. She told him after she'd been released. After he worked hard to get her released. Believing she had been badly treated. Believing her lies that the patients she'd killed had provoked her attack and had keyed into the triggers of her psychosis. He believed she was a victim, Trey. Oh god." Susan slid down to the floor, her face in her hands.
Trey went and sat beside her, putting his arm around her. "It's all right. It'll be all right."
Susan began weeping. "Please forgive me, I can't believe I'm doing this," she said. She pushed her tears away with her fingers. "I'm not weak. I'm not. I hate doing this. But ever since they brought him in, I knew."
"That Doc is his son."
Susan nodded. "I knew it was all there. I knew she was out there again. I thought we were both safe."
Trey felt a chill spread over him. "You felt unsafe before?"
Susan Hannifin didn't reply.
"Dr. Hannifin," he said.
"She came to his house once," Hannifin said, and then cleared her throat. "She came to his house. I was there. I didn't know who she was. I was just staying for the weekend. She said she was an old girlfriend. Robert has had many girlfriends. Lovers. I'm not blind to that. I've been around the block, too. You know, you can have a medical degree, be top of your class, and research the human mind into its darkest corner. And still, still…you just don't fathom what you yourself are willing to go through when you love someone. You reach a point when you say to yourself, I forgive him. I can move beyond this. His past is nothing. He was younger then, and foolish. It's none of my business. But she told me about their games."
Trey drew her close to him. "Susan. Let's go back up. We don't need to be here."
"They played games, she told me. Games where he'd tie her up. Games where he and another doctor – the one she married, Massey – tied her up on a table here. They took turns. Well," she wiped at her face again. "Well, I knew it was a lie. It was a lie. I know Robert well enough. We've been seeing each other for almost six years. I know his…his ins and outs. He's not like that. But the worst thing that she told me was that he had asked me to play games
with him, too. She knew it. She said we were alike. We both loved him. We both would do anything for him." She paused, and then heaved a sigh. "I knew that much was true."
Trey leaned back against the wall. He didn't want to hear anymore. None of it surprised him, and he passed no judgment on anyone else's private lives. He didn't like hearing about them. He didn't like hearing this story, either. He wished she had never begun talking about it.
He just felt an overwhelming sadness for her as they sat there. She loved Robert Brainard too much. And Brainard was basically a jerk and possibly a creep. Maybe he was the smartest man alive. Maybe he made love like Don Juan. But he wasn't worth what this woman had put into him. She loved him above all else. Trey could tell by the way she said his name. Some women did that. They loved their men beyond their own sense of happiness.
Trey felt he loved Carly like that, too. He understood. He would put her first every single time that he could. He'd failed her sometimes, but as he thought of his wife in that twisted corridor, he sent a little prayer to her and to the kids. Dad'll be safe. Dad loves you. Honey, I love you. I'll be home again. Promise.
"I never mentioned to him that she came by. I never mentioned what she said to me. Until Chilmark came in, I didn't really have to think about it. She was elsewhere. Even when Dr. Massey died, well, Robert had cut himself off from that lunatic years before I met him. But when I saw her picture, in the files yesterday, Trey. When I saw that face again, I remembered her well from her visit to his house. I remember how she told me that we had a lot in common. And when I asked her what she meant, she didn't have to tell me. It wasn't just him. It was that other thing. That thing women don't talk about with men. Or in their jobs. It was that thing where despite all our training, all our education and disposing of the nonsense of thinking the man is everything and the woman is nothing…sometimes, certain women give it all for a man. Sometimes, the things a man shares with a woman, in the dark, in the places of secrets, becomes a place of surrender of all the civilized ideas of what is right and wrong."
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 55