Phoenix: A Hunter Novel

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Phoenix: A Hunter Novel Page 6

by J. V. Speyer


  Five minutes later, all three were gathered in the living room, with their laptops and their pants, to discuss the search for Luis.

  Kevin had dressed in jeans and a white Henley. Donovan wasn’t used to seeing him in anything but the standard fed suit, so the sight was a little jarring, but they were in this for the long haul. They should all be as comfortable as they could.

  Donovan glanced at his watch. Eight o’clock. What was Luis doing now? Was he cold? Scared? Fighting off some kind of terrorist?

  Kevin cleared his throat. “All right. So I’ve been getting updates while the two of you were sleeping. Here’s what we knew before we got a visit from Captain McCreepypants. Morello, the lawyer, has mostly been ruled out as a suspect. It’s possible that he might have been involved, I guess, but SSA Holcombe has spoken with him extensively and says he seems genuinely concerned about Luis’ welfare. Morello’s defended other clients in cases Luis has worked, so if he was going to do something he’d probably have done it before now.”

  “Valid.” Donovan clenched his jaw so hard it hurt. He’d been counting on that lead. “Was he able to give us any direction to look?”

  “Too many and not enough, I guess. He has four clients being defended in upcoming trials that Luis has worked, and he’s also cocounsel on Carlos Gomes’ appeal.”

  “You’re kidding.” Donovan recoiled. “That’s a state charge. I thought Morello specialized in federal crimes.”

  “Oh, who knows why he’s on this case?” Kevin threw up his hands in disgust. “The problem is, none of the four federal clients are facing the kind of time that would make pulling a stunt like this a smart idea. Granted, some people are so scared of jail they’ll do anything to avoid it, none of this makes sense.”

  “Could it have something to do with Fred?” Donovan swallowed past his nausea at the mere thought. “Fred’s in jail, but he’s got plenty of supporters. It’s possible one of them’s involved. And someone in law enforcement would absolutely be able to get the testimony schedule, which would explain that message we got.”

  Alex shuddered, which had to hurt considering the condition of his shoulder. “Yeah, I hope I never get another clue that way again. It was definitely helpful though. What are the odds we can ID everyone in that courtroom?”

  “Pretty high, now that you mention it.” Kevin’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Security for the Gelens trial is tight. Given the accusations against him, there’s some concern that a victim or relative of a victim will take matters into their own hands. Some people are concerned that a client might be afraid Gelens will share too much information about his little black book, so to speak, and decide to clean up the mess. They’ve been logging everyone who goes in or out, and making sure they’re disarmed as well.”

  “So you’ll be able to get a list of spectators?” Donovan leaned closer, as if proximity to Kevin’s laptop could somehow speed things up.

  “Hopefully. It might not be for a couple of hours, or even till morning. It depends on the techs.” Kevin ran a hand through his hair, hit send, and leaned back. “So. Let’s work with Lightfoot’s information. Alex, your phone—I assume you sent it with the GPS enabled.”

  “Yeah, and it can’t be disabled unless the phone is destroyed.” Alex sagged in his chair. “This dead guy said Luis is in an old abandoned insane asylum, right?”

  “There’s tons of them in Massachusetts.” Donovan ran through a list in his head. “Thirty-five, I think. They’re all kind of hot spots for crap. When I used to be out on patrol it was just one more thing to look out for—kids sneaking out to go break into the abandoned buildings and party or hunt for ghosts or whatever. Which—sure, I was a kid once too. You always want to explore.

  “And then you get bit by a rat and need a round of rabies shots. Or you fall through a rotten floor and have to be evacuated. Or someone who’s camped out there for whatever reason takes exception to you intruding on ‘their’ space and comes after you.” He rolled his eyes. “All nothing but trouble, but there’s so many of them all over the state it’s impossible to narrow them down.”

  “We know the ‘EMT’ transferred him to another vehicle.” Kevin pulled up a map on his laptop screen. “Here. We may not know the make or model, but we know it happened in Newton.”

  “Doesn’t really help.” Alex pointed to the pinned location on Kevin’s map. “The golf club is close to both I-90, I-95, and Route 20. She could have gone anywhere.”

  “True.” Donovan pushed the image of Luis, unconscious and strapped to a gurney in the back of a van, from his mind. He could only function if he took the personal aspect out of it. “And Massachusetts isn’t so big she couldn’t have gotten to most of those locations by the time we saw Captain Lightfoot. That said, this woman wouldn’t have kept him alive if she didn’t have an agenda. And that agenda probably involves keeping him relatively close to Boston, right?”

  Alex and Kevin seemed to consider that for a moment, and then Alex nodded. “Looks like it, anyway. She’s not going to go kidnapping federal agents for fun. This isn’t a comic book. We can probably eliminate any of the facilities in the western part of the state.”

  “Let’s eliminate the ones still in partial use too, and the ones still patrolled on a regular basis. She’s not going to risk getting caught by some rent-a-cop or local guy.” Donovan pulled up a list, readily available on the internet, of the state’s abandoned hospitals.

  “What about all these places that say they were demolished?” Kevin pointed to the list on Donovan’s screen. “They’re probably useless.”

  “Not necessarily. A lot of old buildings are supposedly demolished, but when you visit the sites, you still find huge parts of the buildings remaining. And the cellars would be the most likely parts still there. That’s why I’m not ruling out places like Metropolitan State Hospital or Danvers State Hospital, which they turned into condos. There are still pretty extensive grounds around the buildings that are mostly reclaimed by nature, where you can find indicators of what used to be there. I literally tripped over a cemetery by Metropolitan State Hospital once, after they ‘demolished’ the site. It’s still there. We’re going to have to figure out a way to search all of them.”

  “Leave that to us.” Kevin set his jaw grimly. “If Luis is in one of these places, we’ll find him. Hey, Alex, are you getting anything from that phone?”

  Alex shook his head. “Nothing yet. If he’s in underground, in one of these old buildings, in the woods? We might not. The signal might be too weak. He’ll find a way, if he can.”

  Donovan had to hope Alex was right.

  Chapter Five

  Luis’ stomach settled once it had processed the water Lightfoot brought him. It was a small mercy, considering how close the rats were getting. His logical brain told him not to focus on the rats since he couldn’t control them, but the emptiness of the room and the darkness surrounding him made it difficult to concentrate on much else.

  He forced himself to think about what he knew. As near as he could tell without testing or observing the patient—himself—the kidnapper had dosed him with some kind of sedative. He suspected ketamine, but again, he couldn’t be sure. His explosive reaction was a common side effect, especially since the attacker hadn’t been able to calculate an appropriate dose.

  Was there an appropriate dose? Luis couldn’t imagine that there was.

  Skitter skitter skitter.

  The rats were getting closer. He closed his eyes, since they weren’t doing him any good anyway, and it helped him to focus on his other senses. Yes, now that he wasn’t devoting so much energy to trying to see, he could hear one of the little rodents closer than the others.

  Something brushed against the cuff of his dress pants.

  He lashed out, kicking the offending rat away from him. The rat yelped in pain, and Luis did feel bad about hurting it. Repulsive as it was, the rat was just an animal. Luis was in its world now. As far as the rats were concerned, Luis was just an interesting
new food source.

  He didn’t have to agree, but he could appreciate their point of view.

  The other rats withdrew when he kicked the first scout away. At least he’d accomplished that much. Donovan would be proud, if and when Luis made it back to him.

  Just as he rid himself of one threat, another one materialized. He smelled the ghost before he saw her. She didn’t smell as terrible as Lightfoot, which meant she might not be so much a threat as a companion, but he couldn’t count on that under the circumstances.

  The ghost took shape before him, her sickly glow muted in the all-encompassing darkness. Her hair was cut short in what looked like a bob, but it was disheveled and seemed to be clotted with blood. One side of her face drooped, like a wax candle that had partially melted, while the other side was perfectly made up into a permanent rictus. Her head seemed permanently tilted, as if her neck had been snapped at some point.

  She wore a plain gray dress that came past her knees, with high stockings. She didn’t have any shoes.

  “Aren’t you a handsome thing? Although you’ve made a mess. They’re going to be mad that you made a mess.” She tsked at him, wagging a finger. “They’ll put you in the hole, you know.”

  “In the hole?” Luis blinked. “Who are you?”

  “Oh. You’re new here. You don’t even have your hospital clothes. I’m sorry. My name’s Millie. I’m technically not supposed to be out of my ward, but they’ve stopped yelling at me by now. I don’t think they care, as long as I don’t make a mess.”

  Luis ran through what he knew about this place. “I see. Millie, I seem to have . . . ah, lost a few days. Do you know what year it is?”

  Millie laughed at him. “Well, you’re in the right place, that’s for sure. Although . . . I’m not certain myself. Everything happened so fast . . .” Her image blinked for a moment, as if a film projector was malfunctioning. “The last thing I remember was 1924. Yes, that’s right. I think I was here for six months by then?”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “But it doesn’t matter, dear. No one’s really supposed to leave. No one gets better.”

  Luis nodded slowly. “I see.” From what he knew about treatment for mental illness back in the 1920s, cures were more incidental than the result of any “treatment.” “Millie, how long have you been here?”

  “I’m not sure.” She tilted her head even farther, the only movement it seemed capable of. “But we can’t leave, so what’s the point of counting? Have they taken you to your room yet?”

  “No.” Luis fought back a wave of hysterical laughter. “They seem to have left me here to, um, wait for an escort. Or hospital clothes, or something. I’m not sure. They didn’t tell me.”

  The melted half of her face twisted into a grimace. “That’s not good. I’m not sure where the equipment is, but they might want to give you another treatment.” She shuddered. “You know. As punishment for making a mess. They don’t like messes.”

  The smell of burning flesh briefly overrode the stink of decay, and Luis understood. Electroshock therapy wasn’t used until 1938 at the earliest, but if Millie had been a ghost by then she’d have witnessed its use—and its abuses, especially in an overcrowded hospital. “Well, that’s definitely to be avoided.” He’d spent enough time in clinical settings to understand what was going on, or what she thought was going on. “Millie, did anyone ever tell you what your diagnosis was?”

  She turned away, just a little bit. “Disobedience.”

  Luis bit the inside of his cheek. Plenty of women had been committed for “disobedience,” which covered a range of sins between “declining sex with an abusive or adulterous spouse” to “being in the way when a husband wanted to bring his mistress under his roof.”

  “I’m sorry.” He tried to stand up a little straighter. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”

  She blinked at him in incomprehension. “But I was disobedient. And I can’t see where I would make a different choice. I’ve earned my place here, I’m afraid, and since I continue to disobey, I don’t imagine things would have gone any other way. Why are you here?”

  Luis couldn’t tell her the truth. She didn’t seem to know she was dead. “I’m not sure. I was at work, I passed out, and now I’m here.”

  “Perhaps you suffered a fit.” She raised an eyebrow. “People who suffer fits have to be cared for in hospitals, of course. Everyone knows that. No one could possibly care for them at home.”

  Luis bit his tongue. Millie was stuck in 1924. She wouldn’t know about actual treatment for epilepsy. Most people in Millie’s time didn’t know about the conditions in public psychiatric facilities either. Part of him suspected they didn’t want to know, but he pushed it aside.

  “I don’t have a history of seizures—fits—but anything is possible. Do you know where we are?”

  She smiled blandly, teeth and jaws showing through gaps in her flesh. “We’re in the hospital.”

  Luis counted to five. “Of course. Do you know where this hospital is?”

  She laughed. “It doesn’t matter where the hospital is, sir. We’re never leaving. Even when we die, we stay here.”

  The disclosure was enough to give Luis pause. “Seriously?”

  “Oh, yes. Perhaps some families choose to claim the remains of some of their people, but most of us will be laid to rest in the hospital cemetery.” She pointed to the left. “It’s a kindness, really, and of course, digging the graves is therapeutic.”

  The bile rising in Luis’ throat had nothing to do with his reaction to the drug his captor had used against him this time. He tried to tell himself his predecessors in mental health had done the best they could with the tools they had, but seeing it firsthand made it hard to believe. “Of course. I just feel like it would help me to orient myself.”

  The melted half of her face fell. “I’m sorry. I simply don’t know. When they brought me here, it was in a kind of truck, like a police wagon, and it was entirely dark. I don’t think we went far, but of course, I’m insane. I don’t suppose I’d be able to tell reliably.”

  Luis bit back a scream. This poor woman had finally accepted what she’d been told. He could only see it as a tragedy. “Where did they bring you in from, Millie?”

  A slight wind picked up, which should have been impossible in a sealed basement. Luis had gotten used to the effect.

  Millie’s glow increased, and her clotted hair floated around her head. “I don’t like to think about it. I’m not supposed to talk about the time before.”

  Luis held his hands up. “That’s fair enough. The absolute last thing I want to do is upset you, Millie. You’ve already been so kind to me.”

  The wind died down. So did Millie’s hair. “It’s nothing. I hope the doctors help you find your room soon. You don’t want to have to sleep in the treatment room, and of course, you’ve made a mess. They’ll be angry about the mess.”

  A flash of intuition hit Luis. He took off his jacket and mopped up the evidence of his reaction to the drug as best he could. The jacket was already a complete loss, so he wasn’t sacrificing anything by the gesture.

  Millie beamed at him. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t want you to get in trouble for something I did.”

  The air grew colder by at least fifty degrees and fouler by an order of magnitude. Even Millie seemed to notice, although maybe she picked up on the way Luis’ teeth chattered just before Captain Lightfoot winked into existence.

  “Who on earth is this?” She gaped at Lightfoot. “How did he simply appear here?”

  Luis smiled. “This is my friend, Captain Lightfoot. He’s a . . . a liaison, I guess, to law enforcement.”

  “He looks like a ghost!” She pointed at Lightfoot’s neck. “Look, you can see the mark from where he was—” She covered her mouth with one hand.

  Lightfoot took off his hat and bowed deeply. “I’m Captain Lightfoot, at your service, madam. And yes, I’ve been deceased these two hundred years, give or take a decad
e. I suppose this great oaf hasn’t bothered to break the news to ye?”

  Millie’s melted eye widened. “I’m—I’m dead?”

  Lightfoot swatted Luis with his hat. “Ye can’t sugarcoat it, Luis. We’re dead, not stupid.”

  “I didn’t want to upset her. She’s already had enough trauma, and she’s been so kind.” Luis rubbed at his arm where Lightfoot had hit him. “Millie, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it does seem as though you might be slightly dead.” He glowered at Lightfoot. “There are kinder ways of telling a person, you know.”

  “Dead.” Millie reached for her throat. “It’s . . . a lot to take in. It does explain why I’m not confined any longer, I suppose.”

  “And why the equipment you remember isn’t here anymore.” Luis managed a smile. “The hospital is abandoned.”

  She fixed him with a stare. “And yet here you are.”

  Lightfoot laughed. “Aye, here he is. Luis here is a federal officer. He’s been kidnapped, and the woman chose this place as a place to keep him until her demands are met. I suppose it seemed as good as anyplace else.”

  “And I’m just . . . here.” Millie’s shoulders slumped. “With the others.”

  “There are others down here?” Luis caught her eyes, or at least where her eyes should have been.

  “Sure. They tend to stay where they were put though. They’re obedient.” She laughed now, a sound like a bell. “I suppose I never was.”

  “Millie, I promise once this is over, I will find a way to help you. I’m not an expert at any of this, but I will find some way of freeing you.” Luis braced himself for even more cold. “You don’t deserve this.”

  Millie shone for a moment. “I don’t suppose I do. I don’t know how I can possibly help you though. I didn’t even know I was dead.”

  “It’s not about what you can do for me, Millie. You deserve better, and if I possibly can get it for you, I will.” He glanced toward the doors. “Everyone does.”

  Lightfoot gave him a soft smile, which shouldn’t have been possible given his ghastly appearance. “First things first, lad. Ye’ve got to get out of here. I’ve been to yer man in that house of yours. He’s with your friends Kevin and Alex. Talking with them was like bashing me head into a brick wall, especially since they can’t see me. I had to write on the bathroom mirror, and it’s a good thing Kevin isn’t awful to look at because it took far too long.”

 

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