The 13th (6 page)

TG and Billy were a mile down the road from the asylum when Billy finally got up the courage to say it.

“I told you not to fuck her.”

TG didn’t take his eyes off the road. But his voice was sharp as glass. “Just for that, you’re getting under the hood of her piece of shit Nova and figuring out what the hell’s wrong with it. That, or you’re pushing it all the way back to the shack.”

Billy thought it best not to answer.

The lab coat folded very neatly after he creased and laid it on the counter. Barry Rockford appreciated a good crease. He knew it was just a sign of a mental fixation that begged to become an obsession, but frankly, my dear, he didn’t give a damn.

There was a reason Barry—that’s Barry Rockford, MD, PhD, thank you—had taken his family inheritance and a silent siphon of offshore investor funds and moved out here to lab-rat land. And obsession had a lot to do with it. But it wasn’t an obsession with fabric folding.

After twenty years in a lab at MIT, his focus was on more organic problems. Barry Rockford had published dozens of papers on his research in the pages of journals like
Science
and
Genetics
. His pa
per on in vitro stem-cell mining had generated the largest avalanche of mail the
New England Journal of Medicine
had ever received. It had also gotten him barred from ever submitting another paper there. Which was laughable, since, after all, weren’t they the ones who’d agreed to publish his research in the first place?

He didn’t care. The stem cells were just the means to an end. And more and more, the end was just the beginning.

Barry pulled out the chart on the girl in room seven. The dipshit boys had brought her in two weeks ago from Oak Falls. She’d been a little roughed up when she’d gotten here—apparently the boys hadn’t expected her to pull a knife when they cornered her in a parking garage. But the bruises were finally starting to fade. Amazingly, the Neanderthal hadn’t broken a rib or her jaw, but it would be a couple more weeks before the evidence would be completely gone.

No matter. The patient wouldn’t be fully conscious for the foreseeable future to complain.

The chart read, “Diagnosis: extreme psychosis. Dangerous to self and others. No next of kin identified. Treatment recommended: long-term sedation and therapy.”

His lips turned in a slight smile as he skimmed the description and the subsequent notations on her “treatment” since arriving. The diagnosis would certainly have been news to the girl who had no doubt been leading a typically unsatisfied life of unfulfilling relationships and insolvable debt before being set upon by two thugs in the dead of night. Although, she had proved adept with a knife, as the dressings on Billy’s chest would attest, if he admitted to anyone that they were there.

He read the last notation in the chart and grinned.
It was time to start on the next phase of her treatment. Her cycle had begun again.

Dr. Rockford stood, and called down the hall for his head nurse.

“Amelia!”

She appeared in a heartbeat from the exam room.

“Yes, Doctor. The new girl seems to be stabilized.”

“I read your notes on room seven. Shall we begin tonight?”

“If you are ready, Doctor,” Amelia said. There was a slight glint to her eyes as she said it. As if she was baiting him.

“I’m always ready,” he said. “Bring the restraints and we’ll begin.”

The room was pitch-black and the bed sucked. Those were the first two thoughts that entered Jackie Meyer’s head when she blinked open her eyes. The room swam before her, like she’d downed an entire bottle of vodka before slipping beneath the sheets. But…she didn’t drink when she was ’tending. And she didn’t remember going home with anyone.

She tried to clear the fog from her head and think.

Had she worked Teehan’s Irish Bar last night? Was it Saturday or Sunday, and little Jack was sleeping over at Becky’s so she could work the weekend shift and clear the good tips? Fuck, where was she? And who was she with?

She tried to move her arm to feel the other side of the bed but it wouldn’t budge. It was as if her body
were a block of ice. Melting away the sleep, but still solid as iron.

Damn it. She’d made rules for herself: no drinking on the job, and no dates on the spur. She had a son to take care of now, and the days of waking up in strange rooms were over.

So where the hell was she?

She felt strange. Not really drunk. Not high…She couldn’t describe it. Her brain was tripping into gear but the rest of her might as well have been tied to a rack. And the response when she tried to move anything, even her eyebrow, was a fuzzy burn of blue in the back of her head. Like dull sparks that didn’t light the fire.

Jackie found she could move her tongue.

That was one muscle that responded. She licked the inside of her gums and grimaced. Her teeth felt like mossy stones. Ugh. And her mouth felt hot. Dried out.

What had she done last night?

Focus.

Think.

Remember.

What was the last thing…

There was Jack…She remembered leaving him with Becky. His ice blue eyes had opened wide and he grinned with wet pink lips and gave her a kiss. “Night night, Momma,” he’d said, a warm lump of a boy in his blue dinosaur one-piece. “Night, kiddo,” she’d said, giving him a big hug and thanking Becky who stood behind him, arms crossed and waiting to take the boy to his weekend bed.

Was that last night? Last week? It all seemed strangely distant. But it was all she could pull up. Work at the bar. Yellowed lights blearing over fifty bottles of booze…rowdy customers…a college kid buying shots of Jaeger for his girlfriend…a stubbled
regular slurring, “I’m all right, I’m okay,” over and over while holding out his glass for more…

The memories were a blur, almost overshad-owed in sepia, as if she were watching someone else’s old film. But they seemed like the last things she could dredge out of her memory.

There were pins and needles in her arm. Damn it.

She hated that. Especially since she couldn’t seem to move a muscle to calm them. One, two, three, she counted mentally…and threw herself to the side.

Her body didn’t move.

But maybe her finger did. She tried again.

One, two, three…

Her arm flopped. And, oh shit did the pins and needles come on then. She opened her mouth to cry out and then thought better of it. She didn’t know who she’d be waking yet, and it seemed oddly important that she remember that.

She tried again to piece together the night before, but instead of bar scenes, she found herself seeing the eyes of a man looking down at her. He wore a white lab coat or smock—as if he was a doctor.

“Relax,” he told her. Something pinched her arm, and his eyes drew in very close to hers. “Everything is going to be all right now.”

There was a cold sensation in her arm, and something tugging at her waist. The doctor pulled at something by her thigh, and cold washed over her as her coverings slipped away. Then his hands were on her, rubbing the places that hurt, and the places that felt good. She could feel sensation returning all over her body in a wash of pricks and feather tickles.

“Everything is going to be all right now,” he said again. And then a nurse put a hand on her brow. “Just lay back and enjoy it,” the woman suggested.

Enjoy it?

Something cold pressed between her legs, some
thing slimy and cool. She flinched, but the nurse again rubbed her brow. And then something definitely
not
cold pressed itself there, something warm and fleshy and she fought to stop its entrance, but then she realized that her arms were strapped and her legs were strapped and the doctor was leaning over her, grinning, ice blue eyes like daggers stabbing their poison into her soul, as his wide, thin lips bent down to touch her own…

“Oh shit, shit, shit,” she moaned again. The pins and needles had gotten worse and she could make a fist. Where am I? Who was that man?

She tried to think again about the night she’d left Jack with Becky and the people she’d served at the bar. It all seemed a very long and foggy time ago. But then she did remember one thing. At the end of the night, near last call, two hicks had come into the bar. They’d pulled up stools and ordered beer…but had seemed half trashed already. When she’d told them it was last call and that they’d have to drink fast, the bigger one had grinned and said he could do it fast, could she?

Then what?

She struggled through the fog to remember.

She saw the doctor, big chin and scary eyes looking over her.

She saw the hick, laughing at two A.M. and staggering out the door with his buddy in tow.

She saw a big hand cupped across her face as she tried to put her keys in the lock of her car. “I told you I was fast, didn’t I?” he said, and then there was a cloth over her face and a smell like turpentine and then…

She was able to move her arm and she reached her hand across the bed and confirmed what she suspected.

The other side of the mattress was empty, but she already knew that. She hadn’t gone home with some loser after last call, and she hadn’t gotten drunk on the job.

Some asshole had kidnapped her. But why?

She ran her arm up and down the mattress, and then massaged her face. It felt thick, and weird. Almost like someone else’s. She touched her other arm, and massaged the biceps for a while until the needles began and left, and she could raise it. They both felt feeble and weak, but she ran them down her ribs to her hips. Something wasn’t right.

She was thicker than she’d been yesterday, and this wasn’t water weight. Slowly she slipped her hands across her abdomen, and stifled a gasp when she reached her belly button.

Jackie wasn’t just bloated.

Jackie was pregnant. Majorly pregnant.

And when she’d left little Jack at Becky’s, she’d not only
not
been knocked up, but she hadn’t been with a man in something like six months.

She moved her hands across the definitely distended belly and her eyes welled up.
Oh my God,
she thought.
What did they do to me?

And then a scarier thought interjected:
And where’s Jack?

Light suddenly flooded the room as the door swung open, and Jackie blinked, trying to make out who was there. She could barely hold her eyes open, but there was a fuzzy man at her bedside just like that. And a stern, black-eyed woman.

Hands stroked her head and she heard a voice say, “She’s come up.”

“So soon?” the woman answered. “She’s had a heavy dose.”

“After a few weeks, the body adjusts,” the doctor said.

Weeks?

“Time to do a little harvesting,” he continued. “Let’s take her back down. I don’t want her jumping in the middle of the procedure.”

Jackie reached her arm toward the fuzzy pancake of the doctor’s face and tried to grab on. She slapped against something warm, but then her arm was flat on the bed, and the nurse whispered in her ear.

“This won’t hurt a bit.”

Then something stabbed her in the shoulder, and it did hurt, more than a bit, but she really didn’t have the strength to scream. Or to talk for that matter.

She remembered suddenly, sitting with another woman on a couch. They both wore light blue and flower-patterned cotton robes, and they both just sat there on the couch, happy to be out of bed. They stared at a white wall. The white wall made them feel good. Complete. She remembered the white wall was all she ever wanted to look at.

Jackie felt everything slipping away, as if her consciousness were a sink of water, and the drain had just been opened.

Someone poured Drano in my head,
she thought as her eyes closed.

There was a pain in her belly then. Something sharp. It slipped inside her and pricked and poked, and she hoped it stopped soon. She wanted to cry, but her eyes had died.

“That’s it,” the doctor’s voice said. “That’s just what we needed.”

Then the pain slipped away. And so, for a long while, did Jackie.

“Helloo Castle Point,” the woman said on the other end of the phone. Christy smiled, and said simply, “Hello” and “What can I do for you?”

“This is Marie from the Oak Falls PD. Who’s this?”

“Officer Christy Sorensen, Castle Point. What’s up?”

The other woman sounded nice, and certainly exuberant, but there was an edge to her voice.

“We’re a little concerned up here, I guess you’d say. Thought we should check in with our neighbors. Is Chief Maitlin around?”

Christy shook her head, though the other woman couldn’t see it. Why talk to an underling if the “real” sheriff was in town. Well…at the moment, he wasn’t!

“Sorry,” she said. “Chief’s out grabbing some lunch. What can I help you with?”

“Don’t know that you can,” the woman said. “Just wanted to see if you’ve been running into any odd cases lately.”

“Odd how?”

“Well…” The woman paused. “We’ve had a half dozen missing persons reports over the past three months. Two of them in the past two weeks. And so far, not a one has popped up. We weren’t too concerned at first ’cuz they were just transients…kinda folks who come and go without warning. But…over the past month, we’ve had a couple
disappear who just don’t meet that description at all.”

“What do you mean?” Christy pressed.

“Well, last night, someone reported that the owner of a hair salon didn’t come home.”

“One-night stand?” Christy asked.

“That’s what I would have said. If there weren’t so many other cases to consider. But…here’s what’s really making this look scary.”

“What’s that?” Christy asked.

“Every one of these missing persons is over eighteen but under forty, and was last seen at a bar,” the woman said. “And every one of them has been a woman. We’ve got a snatcher I think. But God knows what he’s doing with ‘em. No bodies have turned up.”

“Damn,” Christy said. “We’ve not really seen anything like that here…though there was a woman reported missing last night. But she’s been the only one since I’ve been on the force.”

The other woman got a condescending tone. “And how long’s that been, hon? I don’t think we’ve talked before.”

“Just eight weeks. But the point is, we’ve not had a rash of body snatchers in Castle Point.”

“Well,” the other woman drawled. “I’d guess you might want to be on the lookout for those. Let the chief know I called, huh?”

The line clicked.

Christy swore under her breath. It was hard enough making it as a woman cop without another woman cutting your legs out. Bitch.

She hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair, enjoying the slowly ascending creak as it bent backward.

She would tell the chief about the call when he got back, sure. But she had a feeling that he would point
in the same direction she was in her head now. It was the end of summer, and people came and went this time of year. But not usually without warning.

On the other hand…what was new in the area? Castle House Asylum. The place that had the chief’s gut in an uproar. The place had opened just a month or two before Christy had started, and that would jibe with right around the time of the Oak Falls disappearances.

And hadn’t the doctor said it was a home for one particular type of lunatic?

Women?

Christy picked up the phone and dialed the Oak Falls PD. She hadn’t been a good cop on that call. After all, how could CPPD do anything if they didn’t know what or whom they were looking for?

“Hi, Marie,” she said as a now-familiar voice picked up the line. “About those missing persons you’ve had. Can you give me their names, and some more information…”

When she hung up the phone, she had a list of names, ages and dates. With a little help from Google, she soon had photos to go with those statistics courtesy of MySpace and Facebook and other social networking sites. It was amazing the kind of stuff people posted in the public domain, she thought, after skimming through the photo album of an Oak Falls grade school teacher who’d posed grinning lasciviously for the camera while clad only in a snake.

Armed with photo printouts of a bunch of missing women, Christy decided it was time to take a little drive back to Crossback Ridge. If she couldn’t spy on the asylum undercover any longer, she might as well stroll in without compunction through the front door.

The front door was opened by a woman straight out of a business-magazine ad. She was tall, thin and
had a mass of long dark hair pulled back in a bun. She wore black-rim glasses that wouldn’t have been out of place in a black-and-white Spencer Tracy film. Christy thought she put on her lipstick and rouge too red, but then inwardly slapped herself for being uncharitable. She personally preferred not to wear makeup at all, if possible, so who was she to judge?

“Hi, I’m Officer Christy Sorensen, from the Castle Point Police Department,” she said extending a hand. The other woman shook it making the least possible connection between their palms.

“Yes,” the woman said. “We’ve met. I’m Nurse Spellman—you might not recognize me since I was in uniform last time you were here. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Christy kicked herself mentally. Of course! This was the woman who’d assisted the doctor with the biker kid. “I remember now,” she apologized. “I’m so sorry!”

She stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, and gestured around at the marble pillars that framed the gorgeous entryway in white. “I was here the other day to make our welcome visit to the asylum when our accident sidetracked things a bit. We try to stop by all of the new businesses in town during their first few months of operation, just to say hi, get to know the owners, see if you have any questions…things like that.”

Nurse Spellman raised a thin black eyebrow and then slowly shook her head. “Don’t think we’ve got any questions,” she said. “We’re pretty self-sufficient here. Have to be when you’re running an institution like this—we have to stay pretty separate from the outer world for the patients’ sake.”

Christy put on her sweetest smile. “I understand completely! Which is even more reason for us to have a good relationship. If anything ever did happen
out here—a break-in, or break-out—it’d be good if we knew how you did things here, where things were, you know—the lay of the land. Care to give me a quick tour while I’m out here?”

The nurse looked visibly ill at ease. “I don’t know,” she began.

Just then a male voice echoed into the broad entry hall. “Amelia? Do we have a visitor?” he said. Heels clicked across the glossy granite tile, and Christy confirmed that it was, indeed, Dr. Rockford.

His lips split into a knowing grin as he extended a hand. “Officer,” he said. “We meet again so soon. What brings you to our little center? Nothing traumatic, I hope? Our biking friend, is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” she said, gripping his hand. “Saw him just this afternoon, in fact.”

“Officer Sorensen came for the tour,” Nurse Spellman offered.

The doctor pursed his lips. “I suppose that could be arranged. Though there’s not much to see.” He laughed then and put his hand up to point at the crystal chandelier dangling from the ceiling covered in murals of astrological figures. “I mean, this looks grand and all, but once we’re inside the regular halls, it looks just like any other hospital or ambulatory care facility really. White walls, fire doors, crash carts…We’ve been inspected and certified by the state, you know? So it all is up to speed, and probably, to an officer…fairly boring.”

She shrugged. “Honestly, I’d just love to see what you’ve done with the old hotel. The place was basically a haunted house for the last twenty or thirty years from what I hear.”

“So they say,” he agreed. “All I know is it was plenty dirty and run-down, and we’ve only salvaged a part of it so far. But sure, I can walk you through the part we use.”

He gestured for her to follow and led the way across the grand entry to a hallway that instantly dropped the “grand” quotient. The carpet looked old—a dull brick red shot through with random twirls of faint gold. It remained thick—the only sound as they walked was of their breath and pant legs rubbing together. The walls had recently been painted a calming cream.

“This area wasn’t too difficult to clean up,” the doctor explained. Then he pushed open the door to an exam room. Christy was sure it was the same room they had taken David to. “But rooms like this,” he added, “we had to strip to the studs and remove and replace the tile so that we could meet all the health code standards. Took us all spring.”

He flipped the light off, and walked through a shadowy corridor filled with paintings. “I think you were here the other day—this was an old wing of the hotel dedicated to art from its patrons, and we’ve kept it intact.”

Christy noted one piece that was obviously new to the collection. Its frame was cheap black metal instead of classic mahogany, and instead of a lush outdoor scene, this one seemed luridly chaotic. A mass of orange and red and yellow paint, with swirls of deep emerald and factory blue, the picture reminded Christy of an explosion. Still, she looked back over her shoulder at it as they passed. It almost seemed as though there was a face peering out of its insane collage. She found herself staring deeper into its abyss, and a warmth began to grow deep in her abdomen, a familiar tingling. The last time her chest had ached like that was when her last boyfriend at the academy had pressed his mouth inside her uniform to…

“…and here is the main O.R., should we need to perform any procedures,” Dr. Rockford said, flipping
a light on quickly and gesturing toward two emergency patient tables on wheels in the center of the long room. Scalpels and other instruments were arranged on a tray between the tables, covered with some sort of protective plastic.

He flipped the switch off again and led Christy up a wide flight of stairs that curved to the right and around in a spiral. She tried to shake off the strange feeling that had literally made her knees weak, and clung to the stair rail, forcing her attention to admire the intricate carving of the balustrade, made of some rich, almost glowing hardwood. While this place may have been abandoned for years, clearly some of its original beauty had remained unharmed. She crossed her arms over her strangely aroused nipples and pinched the skin of her inner arms, hard. After a moment, the erotic wave passed, and she began to look around at the subject of the tour once more.

The second story of the old hotel was bright and airy—tall windows cloaked by gold gilt draperies opened the world to the hallway every few feet. Here the carpet truly showed its age, as the light gave it no chance to hide. Worn patches and wide faded stains marred its once rich surface.

On the left side, a series of white doors lined the corridor. Small placards had been posted beside each entry, labeled simply ROOM 1, ROOM 2, ROOM 3.

“These are the patient rooms,” Dr. Rockford said. “We have about a dozen with us right now, but we’re hoping to triple that by the end of the year.”

“What size staff do you have?”

He chuckled. “Astute question. It’s just me and Amelia right now, with a couple part-timers helping to run the phones and handle odd jobs. We’re actually looking for a groundskeeper right now. We don’t
need a lot of staff with this small of a client base, but we will certainly be looking to hire some qualified personnel from town once more patients arrive.”

They passed rooms six and seven, and then turned a corner where the numerical series continued to climb. Christy swore inwardly as none of the doors were open. “Where do you get your patients from, Doctor?” she asked.

“We’re a private facility, so it’s via referrals only,” he said. “I worked with MIT and a number of other institutions for many years, so there are many great physicians out there who know my specialty and will send me patients who fit what I do.”

“And what is that, Doctor? What
do
you deal with?”

He paused, and turned to face her. “Officer, if you’re worried about the safety of people in Castle Point…”

She put up her palms. “Not at all, Doctor. I was just wondering what you specialized in. Why put all this effort into setting up a facility out here in the boondocks like this? It must have cost you a fortune just to modernize it.”

Rockford nodded. “We had a private grant, but yes, it was expensive. But the privacy was necessary, and I’d appreciate your force’s help in maintaining it. Our specialty, if you’d like to call it that, is helping mentally disturbed pregnant women. Often these are women who have been violently raped or brutalized by their lovers, and have reached the point of catatonia at least once. I’ve worked over the past several years in developing a sedative treatment regimen that is both safe for the unborn child and yet keeps the mother distanced from the demons that could lead her to harm herself and her baby.”

As the doctor said the words “pregnant” and “rape,” Christy felt a tinge of warmth begin again between her thighs. She grimaced at the feeling. What the hell was wrong with her?

“It seems very quiet,” Christy said, surreptitiously pinching herself again. “Are there patients in the rooms we’ve been walking past?”

He nodded. “This is the first and main wing, and it’s quiet because this is a sleep period for our patients.”

They turned another corner and Rockford pointed out the view. The windows faced the downslope of the ridge, and a lush curve of deciduous oaks and elms and others mixed with the occasional spike of pine filled the horizon.

“I have to say that this was one of the reasons I really wanted this property. The countryside is just gorgeous. Perfect for helping our patients relax.”

They rounded another corner and Christy noted that the rooms here were no longer labeled. The walls also were a dull orange, paint faded and cracked from years of neglect. Cobwebs clung to the corners of the ceiling. “I take it you’ve not worked on this yet,” she said.

He shook his head. “This is our next project. That will finish the first quadrant of patient rooms. This hotel has four quadrangles, you know. We haven’t needed this space yet, so it’s not been a priority. But we’re getting close to needing it now, so it won’t be long. Know any good painters? We brought our last crew in from the coast. I’m not paying for that again.”