by Ellie Marney
“Gentlemen,” he says when he reaches the two remaining asylum staff members, “we’re all set. Mr. Hannity, is there anything else you need?”
“Nope, I’m all good.” Doug Hannity, a stocky man of about sixty-five, doesn’t look like a smooth-hand “technician” but more like what he is, an old jail screw who knows how to press the right buttons.
“Okay, SWAT has wired up the control booth so they can share vision with the facility’s monitors,” Martino explains. “They’ll give commands to you by radio handset.”
“I tell you, I’ve been working at this facility goin’ on fifteen years—I ain’t never seen a brouhaha like this before.”
“Hopefully it’ll all be taken care of quick, Mr. Hannity. You’re ready to take up your spot? That’s great. Now, Mr. Ashton, I’ve been informed that you need keys, so here they are.” Martino hands over Scott’s keys on the ring, makes a check mark on his clipboard notes.
“That’s incredibly helpful, thank you.” Ashton is a lean, tanned guy, probably in his forties but so fit it’s hard to tell. He must get plenty of exercise running around after patients here at the asylum. Ashton attaches the keys to a lanyard around his neck. “I’m just going to take a pit stop, then I’ll go straight to the control booth. Doug can let me in.”
“Good idea,” Martino says. “But I won’t check you off my list until I hear from you both that you’re locked in. Get on the handset and inform us when you’re present and accounted for.”
“Will do. Oh, and Agent Martino, you’ve got it switched around on your clipboard there. Ashton is my middle name.”
“Really? Ah crap, sorry about that.” Martino points. “So this is you?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” The man smiles. “Hoyt. Anthony Hoyt.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
They meet up at a community ballpark off Savannah Street SE as the sun is disappearing.
Emma arrives first. She’s been trying to stay calm, but her throat is very dry. She doesn’t get out of her car until she sees the headlights from the pickup. When she reaches Bell’s truck, she hears the sounds of argument.
“… no way we can go back in there with you, you know that, right?” Bell winds down his window, so Emma can see and hear the ruckus.
“No, I don’t know that, and I don’t agree,” Kristin says. “He’s my brother, and you’re telling me that I have to just sit here and wait?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. Me and Emma know what we’re doing.” Bell glances out with a Help me expression.
Kristin has her arms crossed and a very uncharacteristic scowl. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You literally just said to me that you’re going behind the FBI’s back on this. There’s no valid reason why I can’t come along.”
“Except you’re not FBI, you don’t know how to defend yourself, you’re emotionally compromised because Simon is your brother, and I swear to god, I don’t understand why you think this is such a great idea!”
“What if there’s a problem? What if you two get arrested for interfering and I’m sitting here, useless, when I could be inside helping? What if Simon’s being disagreeable—”
“Simon’s pretty much always disagreeable,” Emma points out.
“But that’s something I can help with!” Kristin’s scowl becomes stubborn. “If you’re not going to take me with you, I’ll… I’ll follow behind you anyway! You’ll have to tie me up to make me stay in the car!”
Emma sighs. This is wasting time they don’t have. “Bell, let her come. We might need help with Simon, she’s right.”
“Lewis—”
“Talk with me.”
Emma walks toward the ballpark. She hears Bell exit the car, then his heavier tread as he catches up to her near home plate.
“Having Kristin come with us is a bad idea,” he grumbles.
“What do you want to do, Bell, lock her in the trunk?” Emma folds her arms, holding herself together. “It’s less dangerous to have her with us than chasing along behind.”
“Shit. Fine. Scott gave you the keys? Okay, so what are we waiting for?”
“Night.” Emma breathes in deep, looks around. A poisonous orange tints the sky, and the air is still and heavy. “Travis, are you okay? You just met your dad’s murderer.”
Bell focuses off toward second base. “I’m okay.”
“Is that the first time you’ve met him in person?”
“Yes.”
She can see in his face that this is all he’s going to say. Better to stop tapping this vein. “Okay. There’s something else I need to tell you, and it’s the most important thing.”
“What’s more important than—”
“Simon Gutmunsson knows who the Butcher is.”
Bell’s head turns so fast she fears whiplash. “He what? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me more than that.”
“He could be bluffing. He could be goading you—”
“To what purpose? Bell, I’m starting to think we’ve read this situation all wrong. Simon and the Butcher have been communicating, maybe for longer than we realized. I think they’ve been playing a kind of game, and we’ve let ourselves get caught in the cat-and-mouse between two sociopaths.”
“Fuck.” Bell’s hands are hooked on his hips, his jacket pushed back in the same way as the day they first met. “That’s great.”
“Tonight is the endgame, and whoever makes it out alive is the winner.” Emma lets her arms drop. “But Simon’s in a cell—that’s an obvious handicap. And Raymond using him as bait like this is wrong.”
“You feel sorry for Gutmunsson?”
“In a way.” She concedes it reluctantly. “But what matters is that Simon knows the Butcher’s identity. Simon is being transferred tomorrow—when he goes, his information goes with him. And if this operation goes bad, like Annandale, and the Butcher escapes again, goes to ground…” She pauses to give the idea the weight it demands. “We need Simon’s information, Bell. Now more than ever. And Raymond has no idea what Simon’s capable of. If he gets free, we’ll be wishing like hell we only had the Butcher to worry about.”
A moment of quiet, into which they both breathe.
Emma stops gnawing her lip, walks back toward the truck, knowing Bell will follow. In the pickup, Kristin Gutmunsson’s hands are splayed on the bench seat as if she’s trying to glue herself down.
“I’m coming with you. I won’t let you—”
“Kristin, it’s fine.” Emma leans on the rolled-down passenger window. “We talked about it, we decided you can come.”
“You’ll really let me come?” Kristin’s big eyes glisten. “Simon is… I know he can be awful, but I want to help my brother. I want to be there for him.”
“It’s okay, but listen, Kristin—you have to follow our lead. This will be dangerous.” So dangerous. Emma swallows, presses on. “If you can’t follow instructions, we really can’t bring you along. We just can’t.”
“I can follow instructions!” Kristin clasps her hands together. “Oh, thank you! And there’s something else I have to tell you. Not about Simon—about the Butcher.”
“What’s that?” Emma exchanges a glance with Bell through the other window of the car.
“It’s just impressions. From the photos you showed me, and the reports I’ve been following… Like, I know the Butcher wants to be in control of things. And I think he likes knives over guns.”
Emma frowns. “Why do you say that?”
“He didn’t kidnap the teenagers at gunpoint, did he? He knocked them out with some drug—”
“Ether,” Bell supplies. “That’s right.”
“So I think he’s less comfortable with guns. And he’s very particular. He has the victims arranged just so, the way he likes them.… I think he’ll know what the inside of the asylum looks like.”
Emma pauses. “Again—why?”
“He’s a very careful, meticulous person who makes precise plans. If you’r
e planning something, you have to know the location it will all happen.” Kristin nods, confirming to herself. “He’ll know the inside of St. Elizabeths. He’ll have a schematic, or a map of the fire exits or something.” Her fingers twine together. “You may not need any of that information, but if it helps you, or if it helps Simon…”
“Okay,” Emma says. “Thank you for sharing that. Now I need to ask one more time—are you sure you want to come with us? You don’t want to stay in my car, where it’s safe?”
“No,” Kristin says, resolute. “If I wanted safe, I would have stayed at Chesterfield. I don’t want safe. I want my brother.”
Emma catches Bell’s eye. They meet again near the front grille of the truck.
Bell seems unsure. “What do you make of all that?”
“I don’t know.” Emma keeps her voice low. “But she had good insight about the Berryville scene, and she lived with a killer almost her entire life. She’s got an instinct for it—better than mine. Her information may not be useful, but you never know.”
“Okay.” Bell gazes back toward the ballpark’s outfield. “So we need to sneak into an asylum and grill a sociopathic liar for information while making sure he doesn’t engineer a jailbreak. And we also have to avoid another multiple murderer, who—according to Kristin—might know the asylum better than we do.”
“That’s right.”
“And we’ll already be watching out for SWAT, who might shoot us by accident if they run into us.… Lewis, are we crazy to be doing this?”
“It’s starting to look that way.” She makes an uncontrolled huff of laughter, although nothing about this is funny.
Bell’s face is shadowed in the twilight. “Emma, are you okay going back into the asylum? I mean, it kinda makes sense for me to go in, but you don’t—”
“Have you ever dodged a serial killer, Travis?” Emma feels a tide rising inside her, a wave of tension and fear that washes higher as each minute passes. “Because I have. And you need me in there if you want to get out of St. Elizabeths tonight.”
He nods, glances down. “Are you scared?”
“Yes.” Her voice trembles. “Are you?”
He holds up his hands. They’re shaking. “Real tough guy, huh?”
She makes a tiny smile as she puts her hands over his, as he curls his fingers into fists. “Travis,” she says. “You’re doing it right.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hoyt has studied the literature on surveillance psychology, researched perception, attention deficits, and team effectiveness under stress. He’s determined that there are a few key moments in the timeline of a stakeout. He employed this information to useful effect in Annandale, and now he is in the quick of it once again.
The moments immediately after a stakeout is established are good, because everyone is still settling into their positions and nobody expects an immediate threat. People are alert, though, not fuzzy with boredom and the wear of held tension, so he has to be careful.
There is no longer direct entry into Gutmunsson’s room via the old sacristy; that doorway was bricked up in 1962. Visitors must now cross through the foyer, then the great hall and its steel barricade to the oak door to see Simon. During Hoyt’s time working here, it’s been a great inconvenience that Gutmunsson’s room has only one entry, and that the man employed to guard it is never lax.
The very helpful Agent Martino informed him that there are six SWAT officers stationed in the courtyard to the east of the center building. An additional four SWAT officers are stationed inside, in the former kitchen on the east side of the great hall. Their job is to watch the camera footage beamed from the asylum’s control booth monitors.
SWAT personnel will hold their positions until they catch sight of the target. At that point, they will instruct the control booth technician to close the barred gate, then they’ll call in their courtyard reinforcements and execute a dynamic entry through the kitchen and into the great hall.
Including the command agent in the surveillance van out front, the female agent in the foyer, and Martino, the number of active personnel is blown out to thirteen. If Hoyt thinks in terms of numbers of combatants, their positioning, the kinds of weaponry they’re wielding, and the strategies they’re inclined to use, he would be put off. It looks like a complicated problem. But the beauty of his own plan is in its simplicity.
Using the asylum’s own special high-security internal system, he’s going to lock them all out.
The front foyer has no CCTV cameras; the FBI is relying on the female agent impersonating the receptionist to keep them informed. The foyer is not as warmly illuminated as usual, but the agent at the desk has a small lamp positioned to allow her to “work.” A phone sits on the desk as well, plus a box of Kleenex and the ledger that Hannah Lempki—the real receptionist—uses when she herself sits in that chair.
Hoyt walks toward the desk from the left-hand side of the foyer, on his return from the men’s bathroom in the west-wing corridor, where he washed and dried his hands thoroughly.
“Ma’am.” He bobs his head at the agent on the desk as he approaches.
“You’re heading to the control booth now?” The woman is the same age as Hannah—midthirties—but her dowdy tweed skirt suit does nothing to disguise her physical fitness and musculature, and she does not look like a receptionist. “Will you contact Agent Martino to let him know, so he can check you off? Or should I call him?”
The control booth door is behind and to the far right of the sign-in desk. He is passing behind the receptionist’s chair now. “Thanks, I can do it.”
“Great.”
He times it so he is only one step past her. “Uh, excuse me, ma’am?”
His position means she’s forced to swivel awkwardly to face him. “Yes?”
When she turns, his hand darts out with the scalpel. The No. 22 scalpel blade is the largest on the market and is customarily used for bronchus resection; he uses it to open up her windpipe and carotid artery in one quick slash. He’s very good at this now. Before she has a chance to scramble for her weapon, she is already bleeding out.
Once she’s gone, he positions her so she’s slumped on the desk. Using a Kleenex, he removes her gun and tucks it into the desk drawer, making a grimace of distaste while handling the gun. Then he checks himself: a little blood spatter on his shirt cuff and the back of his hand. He rolls his cuffs, wipes his hand with another Kleenex, puts both tissues in the wastebasket, and plucks another to take with him.
He steps smartly over to the front entrance door of the asylum, closes it, and locks it with the two heavy bolts at the top and bottom that are relics of another age. Then he resumes his progress.
It’s time to call Martino and deal with Hannity in the control booth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Now, here is Evelyn Scott’s home in the moonlight. A big pecan tree grows nearby; Scott’s late-model Volvo is parked by the white-railed porch and portico. It’s an old house, the roof slightly sagging.
“Are we breaking and entering?” Kristin’s bright hair is covered by Emma’s scarf.
“Just entering,” Emma says. “No breaking.”
She and Kristin exit the truck. Bell leans over and unlocks the glove compartment, retrieves his gun belt and revolver. The gun is a stainless steel, double-action Colt Python with a six-inch barrel and rubber combat grips. It’s significantly heavier than what he’s been shooting with Emma, and he’s had a lot of practice with it. He gets out and secures the truck, buckles the belt around his hips. Looks up to see Emma watching from the portico.
“Come on,” she calls softly. “Door’s open.”
The house is dim inside. A standing lamp illuminates the downstairs living room, and the curtains are closed. They move through to the kitchen and the back door. The outside air in the rear yard is cooler, and the back garden is overgrown. A path through tall bushes; Bell winces at the sound of three pairs of shoes on gravel. Then a large wrought-iron gate with a modern lock,
set into high redbrick walls. Emma works the gate open and they file through to a lawn area.
There’s a short disagreement over which way to go.
“SWAT could be patrolling nearby,” Bell says quietly. “Keep the volume down.”
Being on the lawn of the asylum from a different side is disorienting, and the buildings loom larger than he remembers. Bell struggles to get a concrete sense of where they are. He’s not as familiar with the asylum as Emma, and he hopes this won’t disadvantage them further.
Emma jogs forward to scout, then back to lead the way. The long, flat expanse of the west-wing wall stretches out to the right, dotted by barred windows. They’re looking for a brown door and they find it at the top of a set of wooden service stairs, deep in shadow.
“Do we just knock?” Kristin whispers.
Emma taps gently and in under a minute, the door opens. It’s the Sikh man who stood at attention in Gutmunsson’s room. Pradeep. Bell’s glad he remembers the name.
“There are only supposed to be two,” Pradeep says, scanning them.
“I know.” Kristin, sotto voce. “It’s my fault, I made them bring me along.”
“She was going to follow us. We had no choice.” Bell hears how his voice sounds heavy. He wishes more than anything that Kristin had stayed in Emma’s Rabbit.
Pradeep ushers them inside an antebellum-style hallway. High ceilings and a gloomy interior that looks like every horror-movie-asylum nightmare Bell has ever had.
“You must be very quiet.” Pradeep’s voice is low, rumbling. “Residents are sleeping. Come this way, please.”
They walk down the dark hallway in the asylum, closed doors on each side. Somebody behind one of the doors is moaning in their sleep. Bell feels goose bumps pop on his skin, lengthens his stride.
Pradeep escorts them to a small wooden door. “This leads to a room off the great hall. Once I lock this door behind you, I must return to my duties here in this wing. I cannot give you the key to open the door—it does not open from the other side.”
“That’s fine,” Emma says. Bell’s not convinced it’s fine. “Thank you, Pradeep.”