Raveled

by McAneny, Anne

  Ray perused them, taking his responsibility seriously. “Sure do.”

  “I know I’m pushing the limits here,” I said, “but if you talk to Julia, would you let me know if Jasper’s morning visitor ever showed up, and if so, who it was? It’s important.”

  Ray looked like he was ready to punt. “I really can’t. If this turns into anything with the police, they’re not going to appreciate me playing secret informant.”

  The glint in his eye told me he would actually relish such a role. Since I’d summed Ray up as a trustworthy confidante within moments of our first meeting, I decided to use a tool from my box of goodies that I rarely broke out. “Ray, I’m going to tell you the truth.”

  The gravity of my voice shook him into silence. “This visitor, if he or she existed, may have done something to Jasper to put him in the infirmary in the first place.”

  Ray gasped. “What—you mean like poisoned him?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “But Jasper wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why would anyone poison him?”

  I squeezed the yearbook a little tighter in my hand. “That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Can I count on you to keep me posted about what goes on here? The sooner I get word of things, the better.”

  The glint traveled to Ray’s other eye, and then to the confidential grin on his lips. He no doubt imagined himself rolling through the opening credits of a James Bond film. “Why not?” he said. “You have some strange power over me, young lady. The power to make me behave very badly.”

  I gave Ray the best flirtatious smile I could muster. “Thanks, Ray. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked in a hushed tone.

  “Library. Need to catch up on some old high school material and my laptop’s dead in the car.”

  Ray looked at me like I was a new patient checking in. Then he tapped his cheap sports watch that probably had an underutilized lap timer. “It’s almost two in the morning. Library’s closed.”

  I was back on New York City time. I sighed. “If I dig up a power cord, can I plug in in the lobby?”

  Ray shook his head. “Sorry. Restricted. Can’t have the patients getting too much access to the outside world. It depresses them.”

  “What about behind the desk? Can I use your computer?”

  “We don’t have real internet access. Closed network. There’s a way to break through it but they monitor it all the time ever since the great porn incident of 2011.”

  “Ray, you dirty dog.”

  “It wasn’t me! It was Julia. She’s such a perv.”

  “Is there any place in town that’s still open?”

  “Not that I know of. Let’s see, the doctors’ offices here have access but there’s no way you’re getting in those.” Ray pondered, sighed, then pondered some more. His huge shoulders heaved up and down, reminding me of an Olympic power lifter gearing up for the final round barbell. “There is one room here.”

  “Great!” I said. “Lemme grab my computer.”

  “Wait. It’s not exactly… well, the docs use it once in a while if they absolutely have to. Used to be in what we called our maximum security wing.” Ray did the obligatory finger quotes. “It’s at the end of the third floor.”

  I couldn’t care less. I was pretty sure the internet looked the same from any floor. I went out and grabbed my laptop while Ray waited. It took me five full minutes to dig through a bag of junk I’d hauled down from New York and thrown in my mom’s car when she picked me up at the train station. I’d been too lazy to bring it in the house yet. My charger cord had settled at the bottom, beneath a bag of Kenyan coffee beans that a friend had insisted I give to my mom. Remembering Ray’s comment about my lack of gifts for Jasper the other day, I brought the beans into the lobby.

  “Hey Ray,” I said, tossing the bag at him. “A small token of my appreciation. Supposed to be the best.” The non-commercial label seemed to impress him and he nodded approvingly.

  “Much appreciated,” he said, setting it on the counter. “Now come on. I can’t leave the desk for long. I’ll explain about the room on the way. And if you’re too uncomfortable, you don’t have to use it.”

  “You’d be amazed how far you’d have to go to make me uncomfortable.”

  Ray grabbed a big chain of color-coded keys, supplied one more look of melodramatic hesitation, then led the way. I grabbed the yearbooks and followed.

  Although Jasper and I were thirty pages away from each other in the yearbook, I sure as hell hoped we were on the same page now.

  Chapter 25

  Enzo… sixteen years ago

  Enzo froze at the sound of the shattering glass. He hadn’t heard a gunshot so he knew the window hadn’t been penetrated by a bullet. A brick, maybe? No, no follow-up clunk, and it would’ve smashed into Bobby’s car. Enzo listened in two directions, one ear tuned to the office, the other to the garage. He needed to decipher what he would face when he walked into the garage—and there was no question he was going in. One thing he’d learned from living in the middle of nowhere with a big family involved in illicit dealings: better to cut off challengers at the knees than to let them get their footing and gain superior position. Especially when other lives were at stake.

  Enzo focused on the sounds from the office, where Mr. Artie and Kevin probably still lay incoherent and useless. But sound would mean movement, and movement might mean assistance. He didn’t want to be alone on this, but a caution signal kept flashing in his head. The office contained the guns, and if a tanked-up Artie or Kevin planned to charge into the garage wielding a loaded firearm, Enzo didn’t want to be anywhere near the bullet’s trajectory.

  Silence from the office. And then, from the garage, the tinkle of small shards of glass hitting the concrete floor. Enzo knew exactly what was happening. An intruder had broken the window with either a punch or a rock and was clearing away the jagged edges so he could reach an arm in to unlock it. He’d seen his cousin do it a few times to abandoned businesses, just for fun or to score a few bucks.

  Enzo entered the garage, his footsteps like wind across grass. He moved swiftly behind the Mercedes, then waited near the rear of Bobby Kettrick’s Chevy, hoping his eyes would adjust quickly to the darkness that surrounded him like a heavy blanket. His breathing seemed loud and he prayed the noise would be drowned out by the raising of the window that scraped through the garage like a knife to the ear. Whoever was outside would be in here in the next twenty seconds. Enzo had no great desire to play hero and his mind felt a couple clicks behind from that blazing liquor, but he had no choice. He crept as close to the window as he dared, his head nearly bumping the shelf but bringing the stolen tools into view. He grabbed the heavy wrench that Mr. Artie had placed there and was about to shout for all he was worth to frighten the intruder away when he caught a flash of whiteness. No mistaking it for anything else. That was Bobby Kettrick’s hair, the only thing unable to remain obscured in this viscous darkness.

  Why the hell would Bobby break in again? Maybe he’d remembered the evidence he’d left in his trunk like an idiot. Well, Enzo thought, maybe a stupid Chicano could teach this all-American boy a quick lesson in manners.

  Enzo’s brain may or may not have worked out the best scenario in its alcohol-infused state that night, but in the split second that remained to make a decision and take action, he saw only good outcomes.

  Bobby Kettrick stuck his head and half his body through the window and shined a small flashlight into the garage. In the same moment that the beam of light landed squarely on his own car, a heavy-gauge, 100% steel wrench landed squarely on the back of his wavy-haired head. Bobby slumped over the peeling wood window frame and deflated like a punctured balloon.

  Enzo, high on the idea of capturing the favored son of Lavitte red-handed, yanked the rest of Bobby’s limp body in. No easy task. Bobby weighed 190 pounds easy. Exhausted, Enzo stood over his quarry and savored the moment of lording a spic’s power over rogue royalty. He gave Bobb
y a jarring kick in the ribs and told himself he was trying to rouse him. Nothing. One more vicious strike in the hip region satisfied Enzo in more ways than one. “Score!” he said in a loud whisper as Bobby’s torso rocked back and forth lazily.

  Enzo thought back to the way Bobby had treated him on the spring soccer team for one-and-a-half seasons. Like dirt, like a scrub, like a third-class citizen. In a popular practice drill that involved Bobby trying to steal the ball from Enzo, Bobby had caught Enzo’s shin with his cleat—several times. One Tuesday afternoon, the bruise was so bad, Enzo could barely walk. As he’d hobbled down the road towards home, Bobby had driven by with a carload of teammates, beeped at Enzo and flipped him off. The sound of the group laughter still echoed in Enzo’s brain like a sore that kept scabbing over but never healed. Despite Enzo’s excellent attitude and advanced footwork on the team, Bobby’s inexplicable animosity towards him had spread to the other players and Enzo soon became a loner on the field, a body taking up space. The lack of passes in his direction went unnoticed—or unacknowledged—by the portly coach who worked for Bobby’s dad as an errand boy during the summers. The coach wasn’t exactly picking up milk and dry cleaning for the Mayor.

  Enzo recalled the day the coach had made an unexpected appearance at Rodriguez Family Day in the park, also known as Sunday. The Rodríguezes flocked to the park every weekend like geese to water, hogging all four picnic tables and eating and drinking as if they’d starved all week. Then they’d burn off the calories in endless games of soccer and baseball.

  The rotund coach had pulled up in a car much fancier than anything he could have afforded on his own. He’d lowered the tinted window and swiveled his no-neck head toward Enzo’s Uncle Tito. The uncle, a brash moonshiner who loved to regale others with tales of his narrow escapes, had transformed into a subservient cad at the sight of the blubbery futbolista. He’d scurried towards the coach’s extended ham hock of an arm and deposited a big wad of cash into the stubby digits at its end. The coach’s head had rotated forward again, his wiggly chins following a moment later. The arm had retracted as the window rose up. The transaction had taken no more than nine seconds but it had made a lifetime impression on Enzo. He’d kept his mouth shut and his eyes lowered as he quit soccer the next week. It wasn’t a tough choice. The coach belonged to Mayor Kettrick and when the choice came down to disciplining the boss’s son or helping out the kid whose family bowed to the boss, the boss’s son would always win.

  Enzo’s third kick, a solid strike to Bobby’s shin, elicited a deep groan from its recipient. Enzo crouched down as he worked up a big wad of phlegm to spew on Bobby’s face. The entitled brat’s deep, bottomless breathing gave the impression that he was dozing rather than unconscious. A stale combination of alcohol and pot emanated from his mouth and pores, although Enzo wondered if some of the stink might be coming off his own body.

  Grabbing Bobby by the chin, Enzo rolled the sculpted head to the right and left, wondering what made this asshole so appealing that everyone walked on eggshells around him. Bobby’s smooth skin and perfect complexion made Enzo wince, his own having gone through a rough patch lately. The guy probably never had a zit in his life. Enzo swallowed back his spit and released the flawless head. Nothing he could do would make up for the things Bobby had done to others. There was only one real way to free Lavitte from Bobby Kettrick’s current and future grasp. The thought made Enzo wonder if Mr. Artie had locked up the guns.

  Enzo gazed at the prone, muscular body again. If this wasn’t the silver platter Mr. Artie’d been talking about, what was? Here lay the thief himself, signed, sealed and delivered, with a few extra bruises for insurance. Of course, Enzo could take it one step farther, put a real exclamation point on the situation. He couldn’t resist. He dragged Bobby’s body to the rear garage door of the first bay, where the old Mercedes was parked. He dropped the legs with a painful thud onto the cold floor and walked towards the Chevy. A rat dashed out from underneath. It knocked over a hubcap, sending a loud clatter through the night and a jolt of surprise through Enzo’s heart. Sensing unwanted company, the small rodent made a beeline for the tight space beneath the corner tool chest.

  “Shit,” Enzo said, certain that his pounding heart would awaken Bobby. As he glanced at his quarry, he worried for a moment that the rat might start chewing on him in the middle of the night. Then he smiled and his thoughts grew darker. He popped the trunk of the Chevy.

  Chapter 26

  Allison… present

  I closed the door behind Ray, assuring him I’d be just swell by myself, but when I turned around to face the bleakness of Room 331 alone, I immediately regretted the sound of Ray’s fading footsteps. You’d think if anyone would be comfortable around the murder of children, it would be me, but Ray was right. Being in the room itself hit too close to home. The drywall hadn’t even been repaired.

  Apparently, a woman who’d spent most of her life in ritzy institutions had been released due to a change in her family’s financial situation. She’d been sent to live with her sister while new arrangements were made for a facility in Wyoming where a psychiatrist had agreed to include her in a study of paranoid schizophrenics. But two weeks in the big world had proved too much for the woman. She’d killed her young niece while the girl’s mother took a new puppy into the back yard. Snapped her neck and outlined the body in ketchup, proudly showing it off to the mother when she returned with the yapping dog in her arms.

  Needless to say, the patient was disinvited from the Wyoming study and ended up in Ravine’s special wing while awaiting a verdict on her ability to stand trial. Ravine had followed all the rules and met at least the minimum security requirements to house such a patient but they hadn’t counted on every possible circumstance.

  One of the nurses who worked in the wing had brought her autistic daughter to the hospital on her day off. She’d left the daughter playing games on a handheld tablet at the nurses’ station while she went to deliver a birthday present to an elderly patient. The nurse had swiped her card and entered the eight-digit code to open the doorway into the maximum security wing. The girl must have listened, consciously or subconsciously, and somehow knew which number made which chime. She’d immediately turned the notes of the code into a song and hummed it repeatedly to the point where one of the aides picked up on it and began to hum along.

  Not long after, the girl had removed a security card from an open drawer and, on a whim, swiped it and entered the musical code. She’d proceeded to the maximum security wing where meals were being delivered; perhaps the sounds of so many doors opening and closing had drawn her in.

  At some point in the previous six months, the female patient, brilliant in her own way, had carved into her drywall just deeply enough to locate the wires that connected to the physicians’ offices on the floor above. She’d hacked their internal system with a small tablet on which she’d been allowed to play word games and had gained access to the automatic locking system on the doors. She’d never tried to break into her own files or perform an internet search. Hadn’t seemed to harbor any desire to leave, just wanted to know that she could. It was later reported that she’d often repeated the phrase, “The world is a big place but it gets a little smaller whenever I’m out in it.”

  Ray hadn’t gone into details, but said they’d found the girl lying tranquilly on the floor, outlined in a rope of the patient’s hair that she’d been weaving since her arrival, one plucked strand at a time. No one had noticed the bald spot, or the damage to the drywall. Of course, Ravine’s credentials as a maximum security psychiatric hospital had been revoked immediately.

  The hallway could hold regular patients when necessary, but currently remained vacant.

  “We fill that wing last,” Ray had said, “because we haven’t had the time or budget to renovate. The rooms are too claustrophobic for most people. Besides, I swear, these people with psychiatric challenges, it’s like they have a sixth sense. They know when something’s up and they flip out in th
is room. I don’t tell you this to scare you, Allison, but it wouldn’t be fair to keep you in the dark. In case, well, you know.”

  In case what? In case I was one of those mentally challenged people who might flip out? In case the girl’s ghost came floating out of the floor humming the lock code? I’d decided not to ask. But Ray’s lack of details had almost been worse than hearing the grisly truth.

  “On the upside,” he’d said with his voice lacking an upside, “that room gets internet service now.”

  I looked around. The heavy bars on the window would have kept daylight to a depressing minimum. The random dents in the sheetrock made me wonder about their source. Scratches on the drywall above the bed seemed to offer some hieroglyphic message. What had created them? Fingernails? Bones? Teeth? A plastic spork? Would my father have ended up in a place like this, with people like this for company?

  I sat down at the solitary desk. It was set at a skewed angle a few feet from the nearest wall. Why? Why not pushed up against the wall? Why not at least parallel with a wall? Its cockeyed placement made me shiver. It was as if the doctors had given up on correcting its location when they found it shoved around by poltergeists for the third time. I plugged in my laptop and looked around while it brought itself to life. I didn’t know how Ray could relay that story and not expect me to imagine the face of the killer, the confusion of the child, the desperation of the mother, or the twisted workings of the patient’s mind. The laptop binged loudly enough that I worried it might wake a sleeping patient. Until I remembered, there were no patients in this wing. I was quite alone.

  I yanked my cell phone from my purse to be sure I could get service up here. Yes, three bars. I set it on the desk—parallel to a damn wall. The air conditioning clanked on through the covered vent on the floor. At first, it sounded like someone banging on a pipe, then the cold air squealed its way through the plastic seal that had been fitted over the metal edges of the original cover. Why didn’t they just make a plastic vent cover and eliminate the metal altogether? The squeal sounded like a shriek with the sound turned down. It carried the tone of a cry of horror, but not the volume—the kind of yell an autistic child might make.