Tried Art for the third time in the last five minutes.
Same result.
It rang four times and dumped her into voice mail.
Sophie pushed through the inner doors into a large reception area bathed in the punishing glow of high-wattage fluorescent lights. Moved quickly toward the front desk where a nurse in blue scrubs was scribbling on a patient chart.
The smell of the place was insidious—notes of Clorox, Lysol, stewed green vegetables, desperation.
Sophie had her shield out by the time the woman looked up.
Mid-thirties, attractive despite the total absence of makeup, and surprisingly clear-eyed for the late hour.
“Detective Benington, Seattle PD. Did another detective come through here? Fifties, little overweight, balding—”
The nurse was already shaking her head.
“Nobody but you has walked through those front doors since I came on shift at midnight.”
“His car’s out front.”
“Well, he didn’t come this way.”
“You didn’t hear him pull up?”
“Kind of been busy.” She held up a folder. “Thirty-five patient charts to complete before eight a.m.”
“I spoke to your head of security about five minutes ago, told him there was a possible threat to one of your patients. Jim Moreton.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry, but without a signed release I can’t discuss any patients or even confirm that the person you just mentioned is actually a patient here.”
Sophie leaned in. “Is there another entrance to this facility?”
“On the north side, but it’s only open and staffed during visiting hours.”
“I need you to take me to Jim Moreton right now.”
“Ma’am, HIPAA is pretty clear on the protection of patient privacy.”
“How about the protection of their physical safety?”
“Ma’am, I—”
“Do you understand what I’m telling you? Men may have come here to kill Mr. Moreton.”
The woman stonewalled.
“Tell me you understand what I just said,” Sophie pushed.
“I understand.”
“And you’re refusing to take me to him so I can check on his welfare? You believe the intent of HIPAA is to prevent a law enforcement officer from checking on the welfare of a psychiatric patient who may be in grave and immediate danger?”
Two gunshots erupted, muffled and distant.
The nurse’s eyes grew big.
Sophie pulled her Glock. “Where is he?”
“Acute unit.”
Another gunshot, different caliber.
“Tell me how to get there.”
The nurse rose from behind the desk and came around to Sophie.
“I’ll have to take you. It’s like a maze, and doors don’t open without an ID badge.”
Sophie followed her out of reception and down a long corridor.
“Are more police coming?” the nurse asked.
“Yes, on their way. What’s your name?”
“Angela.”
“I’m Sophie.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“Forget it.”
They picked up the pace, now moving through a series of intersecting short corridors that Sophie would have never been able to navigate on her own.
Straight ahead, the way was blocked by a pair of double doors, each with a square of glass inset at eye level.
Angela unclipped her ID from her scrubs and reached for the card-swipe.
“Hold that thought,” Sophie said, waving her off.
She leaned into the glass window and stared through. The hallway on the other side ran perpendicular to this corridor, and her field of vision only extended for several feet each way beyond the doors.
Sophie strained to listen—nothing but Angela’s elevated respirations and the ever-present hum of the lights overhead.
“All right,” Sophie said. “Go ahead and swipe it, but I want you to hang back until I give the all clear.”
The internal locking mechanism buzzed.
Deadbolts retracted.
Sophie pulled open one of the doors, stepped over the threshold.
She poked her head out into the corridor and glanced both ways.
Nothing but miles of empty linoleum.
Sophie whispered over her shoulder, “All right, come on.”
Angela led her down a corridor that shot between two larger buildings.
The windows on either side were barred, rainwater streaming down the glass.
“What’s going on exactly?” the nurse asked.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. Have you worked with Mr. Moreton?”
“Yes.”
“Is he locked in his room each night?”
“And medicated. He’s a threat to himself and others.”
The corridor banked into a building, and they arrived at another pair of doors, these windowless and steel-reinforced.
“What’s on the other side?” Sophie asked.
“Acute.”
Sophie put her ear against the door. Over the clamor of her own heart, she thought she heard voices, though she couldn’t be sure.
“Angela, give me your ID.” The nurse handed it over without hesitation. “Now I want you to run back down the corridor as far as you can. Find a room without windows and lock yourself inside. Go now.”
The nurse turned and hurried off down the hall, the soles of her Keds sliding across the linoleum as she turned a hard corner and disappeared.
Sophie waited until the echo of her retreating footsteps had almost faded away. Then she turned the card over, lined up the magnetic strip, swiped it through.
The sudden buzz of the locks retracting unleashed a new belt of adrenaline.
She shoved the card into the inner pocket of her jacket, tugged open one of the doors, and got a solid two-handed grip on her Glock as a quiet voice in the back of her mind whispered, You’ve never even drawn your weapon in the field, much less shot it. ‘Lil bit different than the range.
Straight ahead, a nurses’ station.
Two corridors branched off behind it on either side.
She heard that noise again—what she’d thought were voices from the other side of the doors.
Crying.
Someone whispering, Shut up.
The stifled, high-pitched hyperventilation of a person in hysterics fighting to hold it back.
It was all coming from behind the nurses’ station.
Sophie sited it down the barrel of her G22 and announced herself, “Seattle PD. Who’s behind the desk?”
A deep, male voice said, “It’s three of us. We work in this unit.”
“I need you to stand up for me. One at a time, very slowly. Keeping your hands interlocked behind your head.”
“We can’t.”
“Why?”
“They tied us up.”
“Who did?”
“Four men.”
“Are they still on this wing?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they want?”
“They asked where Jim Moreton was. They took my ID card and my key ring.”
Sophie moved forward toward the nurses’ station.
When she reached it, she rose up on the balls of her feet and peeked over the edge of the desk. Two orderlies and a nurse lay on their stomachs on the floor, wrists and ankles bound with Zip Ties.
The smell of gunpowder was strong. It competed with the sweet bite of urine. The nurse was lying in a pool of it, her scrubs around her crotch darkened.
“Anyone injured?”
Headshakes.
“I heard gunshots. Were they armed?”
The nurse’s mascara had run all to hell, her black-rimmed eyes swollen with fear.
She nodded. “Yes, two of them.”
“Where did they go?”
“Jim Moreton’s room.”
Sophie kept scoping ea
ch corridor and glancing back at the double doors she’d come through moments ago. Tactically, this was a dangerous spot—centrally located and vulnerable to multiple points of attack.
She said, “Did another police officer come through here?”
“I think so.”
She yelled, “Art!”
There was no response.
The nurse continued, “I didn’t see him—we were already tied up—but I heard him yell ‘police’ and then the shooting started.”
“What room is Jim Moreton in?”
“Seven-sixteen. Down the hall to the right.”
Sophie started toward the corridor.
“You’re just leaving us here?” the nurse cried.
“Backup’s on the way. Stay quiet.”
“Please!” she begged. “Don’t leave us!”
“Shut up!”
A door slammed somewhere on the wing.
Sophie exploded down the corridor, the heels of her boots pummeling the tile.
Room 701 blurred past.
Full sprint now.
702.
Heart thudding through the slats of her ribcage.
706.
707.
Her elbow clipped a rolling IV stand that toppled hard and went skating across the floor.
713.
714.
715.
She slowed to a stop a few feet away from Moreton’s room. The door was cracked, but no light escaped.
Her lungs burned.
Somewhere on the wing, a patient banged against the inside of their door and warbled incoherently.
Sophie leaned back on the wooden handrail that ran the length of the hallway and inched forward. The smell of gunpowder was strongest here, and under the fluorescent glare, something glinted on the floor—a .40 cal shell casing.
One of Art’s.
Deep breaths.
716.
A small pane of reinforced glass looked into the room.
She peered through the bottom corner of the window.
A little light bled through a curtain on the far side of the room, but it only brightened several tiles on the floor. Everything else lay in shadow.
She eased the door open.
It swung on its hinges without a sound.
Light from the hallway spilled across the floor.
Reaching in, she palmed the wall, running her hand along the smooth concrete until it grazed a light switch.
She hesitated.
Glanced up and down the corridor.
Nothing moved.
That nurse was crying again and the patient beating his door even harder, but she relegated these superfluous distractions to background noise.
She hit the switch—two fluorescent panels flickering to life—and then dug her shoulder into the door and charged.
The door crashed hard into the rubber stop on the wall and bounced back, but she was already past and swinging into the bleak little room.
There was a single bed lined with metal railing and occupied by Jim Moreton.
The man lay on his side under a white blanket, his back to her.
She cleared the far side of the bed and then opened a door beside a dresser, groping for the light switch.
A small bathroom appeared.
She stepped in, swept back the shower curtain.
Cleared the toilet alcove.
She was breathing so hard her vision had begun to populate with throbbing motes of blackness.
She went to the closet, opened the sliding doors.
Ten pairs of identical khaki slacks. Ten long-sleeved button-down shirts—all variations of blue. Three pairs of Velcro shoes.
Otherwise, empty.
She turned her attention to the bed. The wrist she could see wore a padded restraint that was attached to the railing by a leather loop.
“Mr. Moreton?”
As she moved toward the bed, the face on Seymour’s receipt flashed through her mind.
Sunken cheeks. Frown lines like canyons in his forehead. Wild, stringy hair.
The hairline on the back of this man’s head was cropped, and it ran back to a patchy area at the top of his scalp where it had begun to thin.
She knew that bald spot.
Sat behind it every day at the precinct.
Sophie rolled Art Dobbs onto his back.
The left side of his face resembled an eggplant, swollen and shiny. His eye had disappeared into it and the other was turned up into its socket like a cue ball.
“Art.”
She shook him.
Then ripped back the covers.
No blood.
“Art, can you hear me?”
A gurgling noise issued from his nose as air struggled through the grotesque new angle of his nasal cavity.
He was out cold, but at least he was breathing, and he wasn’t shot.
She dialed 911, held her phone between her shoulder and ear as she headed out of the room.
“Nine-one-one, where is your emergency?”
“Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital in Kirkland. This is Detective Benington with the Seattle PD.” Sophie edged out into the corridor. “Shots fired, officer down. Art Dobbs is in room seven-sixteen in the acute unit.” Started moving at a jog. “Four suspects. Armed. Driving a black GMC Savana. They may have kidnapped Jim Moreton, a patient here.” She was approaching an intersection, the floor up ahead smeared with what appeared to be blood.
“What are his injuries?”
“I have to go now—”
“Ma’am, please—”
Sophie ended the call, slid the phone back into her jacket.
The blood smear wasn’t isolated. Footprints—the tread of a dress shoe—continued on.
She swung around the corner and sited down the corridor.
The prints trailed off after a few steps, but the blood trail didn’t.
There was a man sitting against the wall under an exit sign that burned red at the far end—didn’t look like Moreton, but she couldn’t be sure from this distance.
Sophie called out, “Seattle Police! Get on your stomach and spread out your hands!”
The man was fifty feet away.
He turned his head and stared at her but failed to move.
“Did you not hear me, sir? Do you want to get shot?”
He said, “I’m already shot.”
As Sophie moved forward, she saw that he wasn’t lying. The man held his right leg with both hands and he sat in a small, dark pool that reflected the fluorescents redly.
Good for you, Art.
At thirty feet, she recognized him.
Seymour.
He said, “I need a doctor.”
“Do you have a gun?”
He shook his head.
She stopped in front of him.
“Where’d your buddies go?”
“I don’t know.” He was grunting through the pain and blood was still trickling through his fingers. Sophie unsnapped her handcuffs, knelt down, and popped a bracelet around Seymour’s left wrist. The other cuff, she locked to the handrail.
He groaned. “You have to help me.”
“Help’s coming. Keep pressure on that wound. You’ll be fine.”
Sophie grabbed Angela’s ID badge from her pocket and swiped it through the card reader.
The door buzzed and she shouldered her way through into the blinding illumination of a floodlight.
Started jogging along a walkway between the dark buildings.
She was disoriented—no idea of her location relative to the main entrance—and she couldn’t hear a thing over the sound of rain beating down on the grass, the pavement, her head.
She accelerated.
In the distance, she spotted a row of streetlights.
The parking lot.
She was sprinting now, the rain driving into her face, boots streaking through pools of standing water that had collected in the grass.
She broke out from the buildings, crossed a sidewalk, and blitzed into the
parking lot. She was panting, years since she’d run this hard.
Wiping rainwater out of her eyes, she spotted the van in the distance. A trio of dark shapes jogged toward it, carrying something wrapped in white.
Sophie reached a gray Honda Accord and took shelter behind it, rain pouring off her face, lungs burning as she gasped for breath.
Where is my backup?
She glanced through the windows.
The van was fifty feet away.
Three men struggled to carry what appeared to be another man over their heads. They looked like errant pallbearers moving across the barren parking lot.
She got to her feet, and over the roof of the Accord, sited down the men and the van.
Water streamed off the slide, the Glock’s polymer frame beaded with rain.
It was harder than she had imagined—much harder—summoning her voice.
“Stop! Seattle Police!”
The men didn’t flinch, didn’t react.
She yelled it again at the top of her voice.
They were almost to the van. In unison, they dropped to their knees and set the man in white on the wet pavement. One of their number rushed forward to the sliding door, fumbling with a set of keys.
His partners turned.
“Get on the ground!” Sophie yelled.
Never saw them draw.
A pair of muzzleflashes bloomed and the windows exploded.
She squeezed off six shots—no precision aiming, just panicked, general direction, not-wanting-to-die chaos fire—and then ducked behind the front passenger door.
The cold, wet pavement soaking through her pants.
Four gunshots echoed off the buildings, the rounds chinking into the metal of the Honda. Her ears still ringing, she peeked over the jagged range of glass sticking up out of the bottom of the door.
Grazer and Vincent had returned to the van where they were helping Talbert lift Moreton off the ground and stow him inside. She drew a bead on one of them, but she didn’t trust her aim with Moreton in the mix.
Two of the men disappeared with Moreton into the van and the last one—Grazer?—turned and fired three shots at the Accord. Sophie took cover behind the door again as air rushed out of the front tire on the other side, the car sagging forward and away from her.
She heard the van’s sliding passenger door ram shut.
Popped up, double-tapped at Grazer as he rushed around the hood of the van and piled in behind the wheel.
The engine started, and as Sophie ran out from behind the car, the tires spun on pavement for a split second, caught, and then launched the van across the parking lot.
Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Page 96