Forgotten Place (39 page)

Or was I simply restrained in the
dark?  My fingers started a quick exploration.  Smooth,
but not cold like stone brushed against nerve endings that now must
serve as eyesight.  There were no cracks or crevices where
mortar had cemented stone or brick into a wall.  It felt
like... wood.

Awareness flooded my consciousness. 
Was this the bed in the middle of that treatment room?  Had I
been tied to it?  Almost simultaneous to my terror, I realized
that my legs were not restrained any more than my arms were. 
Nor was I lying down.  What the hell?

I'm standing?  Barely
conscious but standing?
  I tried to
shift my position, but wherever I was, the tight fit had me wedged
in like a sardine in a very small tin can.

"This is not good," I whispered.  "Oh,
Johnny, where are you?  Please don't be so angry that you
don't bother to look for me this time!"

The sound of a heavy object impacting stone
froze my frantic movements for a moment.  Laughter
followed.

"You dumb son of a bitch.  I can't
believe you came out here sniffin' after your girlfriend without
bringing your little minions along for the ride.  Hey Carl,
when they said love is blind, you think they really meant
stupid?"

That voice I recognized.  It was the
guard that tricked me into the stairwell a little while ago. 
Or had it been longer than a little while?  I heard another
thud and a soft groan.

"Bigger they are, the harder they fall, eh,
Carl?"

"Shut up, Mike.  We need this done
before the boss gets here.  He'll want to get started right
away."

"You like this shit too much," Mike
said.  "Just like that creepy ambulance detail gig."

Ambulance gig? 
Oh lord.  Those weren't real paramedics that
tried to save McNamara and Southerby!  Datello hired these
thugs to make sure both men died!

I pressed my ear to the
wood and listened closely.  Who did they have outside my
prison? 
Your little
girlfriend...

Was it Johnny?  It couldn't be. 
Oh no... no-no-no.  Zack?  I'd gone to the party with him
tonight.  Is it still tonight?  Did my babbling about the
ADA knowing where I was necessitate his abduction?  Did they
think Zack knew where this disk was too?

"He's ready.  Go let him know. 
I'll keep an eye on this one," Painless Carl said.  I
suspected that whatever he had in mind was the polar opposite of
painless.  My heart ached for what my foolishness was about to
cause Zack.  I twisted my body in an effort to determine the
dimensions encasing me.  If only I could get some
leverage...

My left shoulder, throbbing
now despite Painless Carl's promise not to inflict more injury, was
wedged against what I suspected was the door to my coffin. 
The thought sent a chill up my spine.  Cold beads of sweat
erupted on my forehead. 
Dear God,
are they going to bury me alive if I don't cooperate?

A third voice joined the fray when Mike
rejoined Painless Carl.  The deep timbre struck an oddly
familiar chord, but because it was so spotty, words hushed and too
low to understand let alone identify, it remained unknown. 
The raucous laughter was unmistakable, even if I couldn't
distinguish Mike from Painless Carl from the newcomer.  The
jeering tones increased.

My heart broke for Zack.  Should I be
one of those infamous atheists praying my heart out in the fox
hole?  What if they killed him?  I would die of guilt if
my stupidity, that tendency toward impatience cost an innocent man
his life.

A low hum vibrated through the wood against
my ear, then a loud snap, a pop... the arc of electrical
voltage.  The answering shriek of pain, muffled though it was,
made me remember the padded tongue blade I saw on the instrument
tray earlier.  How much earlier? 

My fingers scrabbled against the barrier
that blocked me from whatever atrocity was being committed. 
Finally, they encountered something other than smooth wood. 
What was it?  The crack that could provide my escape? 
No, they were grooves, not very long, evenly spaced, lacking
uniform width...

Nausea roiled in my
gut. 
Oh dear God, save
me!
  Foreign words, prayerful and the
most sincere things I'd ever uttered fired from my brain into the
cosmos like automatic weapon fire.  The marks were clawed into
the wood by someone else's fingernails. 

Voltage crackled through
the air again, drowning out wicked laughter.  Shrieking, a
terrible sound the likes of which I hadn't heard before continued,
faded and ended on a low moan. 
Poor
Zack.  Oh God, please forgive me for all my selfishness. 
I'll do the right thing.  I'll stop lying to people. 
Please, take me instead of Zack.  Don't let him
die
. 

I wanted to cover my ears but I couldn't
free my hands from the confines of the tight space.  The
cycles of voltage seemed to stretch longer and longer. 
Between the bouts of torture, that low unknown voice spoke. 
The whimpered responses left no room for doubt.  Whoever this
sick bastard was, he was asking Zack for information he didn't
have.

"I say we use the pick," Mike laughed, "then
haul that bitch out of the closet and let her see what's in store
for her if she refuses to cooperate."

The low rasp rippled
through the wall, muffled but unmistakable. 
"Doc..."

"Oh my
God!
"  The shrieking was mine
this time.  "Johnny!  Oh, Johnny!  Stop hurting him
you bastards!  I'll kill you, I swear to God I'll kill every
last one of you!" 

Frantic, I started slamming one fist against
the door without enough leverage to do more than make a pathetic
thump against the wall.

"Are you ready to cooperate,
detective?"  Painless Carl's voice dripped venomous
glee.  "What did I tell you?  Fastest way to get the
bitch to cooperate was to go after the guy she loves.  Works
like a charm every time."

I jammed my aching shoulder against the
door.  "I'll tell you anything you want to know, just stop
torturing him!  You'll kill him, you ignorant fools!"

The taunting whisper was so close, it could
only have come directly from the other side of the door to my black
cage.  "But Helen, that's rather the idea.  We could've
had this all dispensed when you came to see Jerry the first time,
but you didn't bring the right escort."

Air rushed into my
lungs.  "
Sykes
?  Is that you?"

He laughed.  "They told me how bright
you were.  Too little too late, sweetheart.  Tell me what
I want to know now, and I'll put Orion out of his misery
quickly.  Otherwise, I may be tempted to take Mike's advice
and lobotomize him... and let him live out the rest of his
miserable existence drooling and shitting himself.  Is that
what you want?"

"No!" the sob tore from my throat.  "I
swear to you, I don't know where the disk is.  We've been
looking for it.  I only know where it isn't.  Please
don't hurt Johnny.  Torture me.  Kill me.  I don't
care what happens to me, just leave him alone.  Please leave
him alone."

Sykes chuckled.  "It would seem our
friend was wrong about you, Helen.  You're not quite the
faithless bitch he led me to believe you were.  Tell me, did
you love your husband as much as you do Orion?"

I froze while the blackness around me
quaked.  That was it.  It was the confession I sought all
along.  Danny Datello was pulling the strings, the man
orchestrating the search for David Ireland's disk.

A little steel fused into my spine. 
"Why don't you have my cowardly ex-cousin-in-law come down here and
finish me off in person?  That is, if he has the balls to
actually kill someone."

"That's a measure you find important, isn't
it Helen?  Who has the guts to kill.  Who simply leaves
it in the hands of those who enjoy the task.  Did you enjoy
killing Danny's cousin?"

"No," I rasped.

"Oh, so someone held a gun
to
your
head and
made you pull the trigger?"

"I should've done it slower.  He didn't
deserve to die so quickly," I spat.  "Open this door, you
gutless son of a bitch.  Face me like a man – if you've got
the nerve."

"Is that what Daddy would do?" Sykes
taunted.  "Would he want out to see his killer, to look him in
the eye before the end came?"

"You're not fit to wipe his ass," I
whispered.  "You're spineless, just like Datello.  You
can kill me, Sykes, you can kill Johnny, but you'll never find what
you're looking for.  And people will never stop coming after
Datello until he's rotting in prison for the rest of his life."

"Such bravado, such certainty," Sykes
began.  But the sound of iron crashing against stone drowned
out everything for a moment.

Then I heard it, the sweetest voice I'd ever
known.  "Darkwater Bay PD!  Drop the... battery
cables!"

Sounds of scuffle, a single shot fired, and
then yelling battered the wall to my prison.  I started
jamming my shoulder with all my weight against the wood.

"In here!  Open the door, I'm in
here!  Tony Briscoe, I'm in here!"  I screamed until I
was hoarse, unable to process what was shouted back at me.  I
kept ramming against the wood with as much might as the restrictive
space would allow. 

The door popped open and I tumbled out into
Devlin Mackenzie's arms. 

"Jesus," he rasped.  "You're
bleeding."

"Let go of me," I shoved away on unstable
footing and nearly fell in my rush to get across the space to the
middle of the room where Johnny lay on the wooden bed, freshly
stained from the indignity he suffered.  I tore the leads from
his temples and cupped his face.  Glassy eyes met mine.

"Johnny... oh, baby, I'm so sorry," I
wept.  "I'm so, so sorry."

"Miss, you need to step aside."

I glanced up at the face of a sober
paramedic and immediately suspected that he wasn't the real
deal.  "You're not touching him, damn you!  Not until I
see your credentials.  ID, license, name of your
supervisor!  Right now, damn you, right now!"

Crevan's arm slipped around my waist and
pulled me backward.  At the same time, Johnny's body stiffened
and started to convulse.  His eyes rolled into the back of his
head.

I let out an anguished cry
and tore free from Crevan's restraining arm.  "Let me
be
!"

"Maybe it would be best if she came along in
the ambulance," the other paramedic said.

"So you can finish what Datello
started?  Do I look crazy to you?"

Briscoe arched one eyebrow.  "You
aren't seriously asking that question, Helen, because frankly,
yeah, you do look a little crazy right now.  I realize you
been through some sorta trauma here –"

My ears tuned him out.  Wild eyes
scanned the room.  Mike, the armed security guard, lay glassy
eyed on the floor with a large dark red pool seeping out from his
chest.  Painless Carl had the boot of a uniformed officer
pinning his back down to the floor.  Sykes in his cheap three
piece suit looked as smug as if he'd made off with the Mona Lisa
out of the Louvre.  I stomped toward him. 

"I will kill you if it's the last thing I
do, you son of a bitch!"  I hissed, my nose close enough to
nearly brush his.

He grinned.  "Good luck proving
anything, you murderous bitch.  Your word against mine. 
I'll see you in hell before I say a fucking word.  I want an
attorney."

Crevan and Devlin restrained me this time
before I could claw Sykes' eyeballs out of his skull.  The
paramedics caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. 
Johnny had an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose and still
jerked violently from the improperly performed electroconvulsive
therapy. 

"Let me
go
!"

"Calm down, Helen," Devlin murmured in my
ear.  "They're trying to help him.  Don't you want him to
get medical attention?"

"Yes," I sobbed, "but you don't
understand.   They used fake paramedics to make sure
McNamara died.  Please don't trust these guys, Devlin. 
They'll kill Johnny if we don't stop them."

One of the paramedics looked at
Crevan.  "Give her a gun."

"
What?
"  Many stunned voices
spoke in unison.

"We need to get this guy to the hospital
now.  If she's gonna interfere, give her a gun to protect
them, and send us on our way.  I know who I am, that I'm
legit.  She doesn't.  Give her the gun and let her
protect this guy until she figures out we're trying to help."

I tore Crevan's weapon out of his holster
and chambered a round.  "No funny business.  I'm not
fucking around, do you hear me?"

"Ma'am, we've got to start an IV and get him
out of here.  He needs lorazepam to stop these seizures before
his brain is completely fried."

That sounded about right.  "Do it," I
nodded curtly, "but I want to see the vial before you medicate
him."

The first paramedic I accosted spoke to his
partner without breaking eye contact with me.  "Fair
enough.  Louie, let's get to work." 

I tucked the gun in the waist of my leggings
and followed the gurney down the dark, earthen hallway. 

"Helen, you need medical attention
yourself.  You're bleedin' all over the back of your shirt,"
Tony said.

"I don't care!  Let go of me, Tony, or
so help me –"

"Don't you wanna know who you just
threatened to kill?"  His hand thrust out and held the
elevator doors.

"It's Monte Sykes, administrator of this
hospital."

"Well, if that don't beat all," Tony shook
his head and chuckled.  "No, that ain't who he is,
Helen.  You just went toe to toe with the devil himself, Mr.
Mitchell Southerby."