Vengeance Before Virtue

by Tyler Porter

  Soon, we will be together again, and all of those hopes and dreams of yours will have been made a reality. I have already taken the first step and have arranged for our mutual problem and her rat to be taken care of. Now it is only a matter of time... that sweet, sweet moment until we can become one all over again. Until then my love.

  Forever yours,

  Claire

  Chapter 16: Reunion

  The Aller Cove Asylum for the Criminally Insane was an hour and forty-five minutes south of Chicago. Matt made it there in an hour and twenty. He quickly parked and, after being sure to stow the small silver revolver that he still had under his seat, hurried inside to check in. A small, round woman with eyeglasses that were too big sat typing on a computer behind a large reception desk. To her left was the door into the asylum which could only be opened remotely from the control room.

  “Who ya here ta see, darlin’?” she asked without looking up from her screen.

  “Claire Johnstone,” he answered.

  That got her attention. She looked up from her computer, studied his face for a moment, and then removed her glasses.

  “Ohhh, you must be Matthew.”

  “Yes ma’am, Matthew O’Bannon.”

  “Yeah, she blabs on about you all the time sweetie. You’re the reason she has to be kept in quarantine half the time.”

  “I’m the reason?”

  “Oh yes, she starts going on about you, and if another patient or a worker even looks slightly uninterested, she just goes for ’em. She’s put four nurses in the hospital and seven other patients that she only has access to during group therapy. Needless to say, your little love bird is a handful, young man.”

  “Please, don’t call her that. When can I see her?”

  “Just as soon as I can get a room reserved for you, I will get you set up and bring her right in. Would you like a coffee while you wait?”

  He felt like he hadn’t slept in days. The doze off while waiting for the jet and the couple of hours during the flight were all he’d had. Coffee and adrenaline were his only hope of continuing on.

  “That would be great, actually.”

  “Go ahead and help yourself, over there, in the corner.”

  As if being there wasn’t quite bad enough, the coffee that crawled out of the dirty pot was comprised more of grounds than actual coffee. Still, he tried his best to drink it; it just required more chewing than one would expect out of a beverage. He checked his watch frequently⸺every two or three minutes⸺because a single minute passed with the speed of a century. It was fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds before the lady behind the counter stood up and let him know that a room was ready.

  The small box they called a meeting room was not so different from an interrogation room at a police station: two metal chairs bolted to the floor and a metal table in between which was also secured the floor. The difference in this room, however, was that the walls were padded. The padding was white, he guessed to make it seem a little less threatening. The only other difference that he could see was the lack of the double-sided mirror on the wall which generally provided ample cover for the group of people observing from the other side.

  There was no mirror or window in the room, in fact; even the door did not have a window. The door itself was grey, heavy, and made of solid steel. As he sat there waiting for the moment that he never thought he would be a part of, he began thinking that this small room seemed more like a cell than a meeting place. Add in a hard mattress and a steel toilet bowl, and it would certainly pass as a prison cell.

  He was certain that, since the room was technically outside of the secure, locked-down patient area, these precautions were in place to ensure that no patient would be able to escape should they somehow break free of their restraints. This of course caused Matt to consider the fact that if a patient were to get free, and someone happened to be distracted and not watching the camera, it would also make for a nice way to keep a potential victim from escaping as well. These thoughts were coursing through his head when the knock came at the door.

  After the knock, there was a brief moment of silence, and then it opened. A security guard stepped in first, then moved to the side to allow her to step in. He looked her over top to bottom, but there was nothing left of the sweet, bubbly assistant he once knew. The caring individual who had been the glue between himself and his employees. The woman who always invited him to dinners and get-togethers with her friends to make him feel included in something other than work. That woman was gone. All that remained was the person standing in front of him.

  She wore a grey jumpsuit and her hands were cuffed together and connected to a steel chain wrapped around her waist like a belt. Her feet were also chained together. Her nails were painted black and her blonde hair was unkept. It looked like she fussed with it constantly, or scratched at her head a lot. Maybe both. The thing about her that gained his attention the fastest and kept it were the two things that had changed so entirely since he last saw her. The two things that used to be a center of care and comfort, but that had changed into dead seas of hatred. Her eyes.

  Distant and cold, just like the day she had tried to seduce him in his office. That was the first time he had seen that cold, deadly gaze. After that it had come and gone in times of frustration, and Matt had tried to ignore it. But at some point, it had come and not gone. That look stayed in her eyes all the way up until she murdered Will Chaser and turned the gun on Matt. She had the same look now as she stared at him.

  No smile, no emotion, just a blank stare. The emotion was all held in her eyes. She sat in the chair across the table from Matt and waited as the guard secured her chains to the chair, restricting her from moving. After double checking his work, he left the room, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  “Hello Claire.”

  Chapter 17: The Mystery Continues

  “I knew you would come back for me,” she said.

  “Claire, I’m here because of the letter you sent me.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I guess I have to just be happy you’re here. It doesn’t matter why.”

  “Well, actually it does matter why. In your letter, you said that you had our mutual problem taken care of.”

  “Yeah, that skanky bitch and her little ankle biter.”

  “Andi and Riley are their names. But what did you mean by that? When you wrote that you had them ‘taken care of.’”

  “I meant exactly that. They were taken care of, moved out of the way, disposed of. You and I both know that they were a barrier to our love, Matt. We were meant to be together, but that slut had her claws in you so deep, you just couldn’t see it! It’s alright though. I’ve forgiven you for that, and I have fixed the problem. Now we can get on with our life!”

  “There it is again.”

  “There what is again?”

  “You said ‘fixed the problem.’ ‘Fixed the problem,’ ‘taken care of,’ ‘removed the barrier.’ What does that actually mean!? Where are they!?”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t like when you raise your voice at me. That usually means that you’re going to hit me soon.” Claire began to cower as she spoke.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t hit me! Please don’t hit me again!”

  “What? Stop! I am not going to hit you! I’ve never hit you!”

  “Ah! Stop yelling at me!”

  “Okay, okay,” he said bringing his volume level down to just above a whisper. “I’m sorry okay? I’m sorry for raising my voice.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry. I like when you hit me anyways,” she said with a wink. Trying to ignore the comment, he continued.

  “Look, I don’t know what you meant when you wrote that you had them ‘taken care of,’ and clearly you don’t plan on telling me what you meant, so I can only assume you meant that you made them go away forever?”

  “Ugh, you just get me! You know what I want to say before I even say it. One more reason why God brought our worlds t
ogether. It’s true love.”

  “Claire, you couldn’t have done anything to them. You have been locked up in here for months.”

  “Has it been that long? It seems like it was just the other day.”

  “It wasn’t, and yes it’s been that long. That being said, they are missing. I can’t believe that this could be a coincidence, so please just tell me. Did you hire someone to take them? Are they hurt?”

  “No, no. I didn’t hire anyone! I don’t have access to money, Matthew. Of course, when they told me that rule, I told them it wasn’t a big deal because my husband has lots of money. And you do! So I don’t really have to worry about that.”

  “Claire, did someone help you? Did you ask someone to take them? To hurt them?”

  “Well, he offered to help. I didn’t ask.”

  “He? Who’s ‘he?’”

  “Ha, hahahahahaha!!!!” She laughed loud and hard, throwing her head back with her mouth open wide. “Baby! For being my husband, you don’t know anything about me!”

  “Tell me, Claire, what don’t I know. What do I need to know?”

  “My little brother! My only sibling. Duh! He comes to see me all the time! He said he would help us with our little problem. He said it was not an issue.”

  “Where is he now? What is his name?”

  “Uh oh...”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Sorry baby, looks like we are out of time.”

  Like clockwork, just seconds after she finished her sentence there was a knock at the door. The security guard returned and announced that time was up. He walked over and released her chains from the table, hands first, then he bent down to unlink her legs. This proved to be a major mistake. As he bent down, she grabbed his head with both hands and drew him in. Once she had him close enough, she bent down and sunk her teeth into his neck, immediately resulting in blood spewing out of the puncture wound.

  The guard yelped in pain as Matt jumped out of his chair running around the table. He tried to pull her off, but her grip on his neck was like that of a lion on a gazelle. She would not release him. It was at least thirty seconds before a second guard arrived to help, and then both men tried to pull her off of the downed guard. In the end, the new guard ended up having to use his taser on her to get her to release the man’s neck.

  The shock didn’t take her completely out of consciousness. Just enough that they could get her off of him. As they grabbed her arms and made her stand to leave the room, she smiled at Matt, blood dripping down from the corners of her mouth. She tilted her head to the side and kept smiling as she spoke.

  “I love you so much! I did it for you. He tried to come between us. I did it for you! I’ll see you soon, my love. I will see you tomorrow! The sun is shining so bright now, you have to see it with me!”

  She struggled against the guards, but eventually they were able to force her out of the room. A third guard showed up and apologized before making sure he was alright. He thanked Matt for stepping in and assured him that this kind of thing didn’t happen often, mostly just with Claire. He explained that they had been given special training just for her.

  The third guard showed him to the exit, and he walked through the door back into the lobby with the short woman behind the desk. After the door closed behind him, he approached the desk again.

  “Excuse me.”

  “No, we don’t do conjugal visits.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Conjugal visits⸺we don’t do those.”

  “Yes, I heard you. What exactly is that?”

  “It’s a sex visit. They do them in prisons. Prisoner’s spouse shows up, they can help out the legal system with a small fee, and spend a few hours together. We don’t do them here on account of the fact that our patients are legally and criminally insane.”

  “Understood, but uh, that was not my question.”

  “Oh, sorry ‘bout that. We get that question a lot.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Yeah, lots of horny bastards out there. Anyways, what was your question darlin’?”

  “Would it be possible to see a log of her visitors? She said that her brother visits her often, and it is very important that I find him.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry honey, we can’t release that type of information. I tell you this though, if it helps⸺she has never had a single visitor until you. Not one.”

  “She just told me that he comes to see her all the time.”

  “I am the only receptionist that works here. No one sees a patient without seein’ me first and signin’ in. And I can promise ya, she has never had a visitor. Most of the folks we have in here, they don’t really know what they’re sayin’ half the time anyways.”

  “Understood. Another question then, is the warden around? I’d like to ask him a few questions also.”

  “Sorry darlin’. He’s been on vacation for the last week. He’ll be back in a few days if ya wanna come on back.”

  Matt nodded to show his understanding, but he was more concentrated on his confusion. It would have been believable that her talking about a visitor was just gibberish, but to make up a family member? On top of that, Andi and Riley really were missing. Claire really had sent that letter claiming she had made arrangements to have them taken care of. These were not just coincidental events. Maybe Claire got a letter out to someone else as well, but if the asylum wasn’t going to share her visitor log sheet⸺that was apparently empty⸺they definitely weren’t going to tell him who she was sending letters to.

  He sat in the Phantom in the parking lot of Aller Cove debating within himself. Was it possible that Andi had possibly taken a commercial flight back to Council Grove? Was it a possibility that she had simply lost her phone and somehow plans had changed? He knew that she had some extended family out there; maybe she had decided it would be safer to go visit one of her cousins somewhere where no one knew where to find them.

  Nothing on the list seemed very probable to Matt, but what choice did he have other than to believe that everything was okay and that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for them not showing up to his building and for her not answering her phone that he’d called fifty-three times. In that moment, he had a choice. He could sit there thinking about all of the possibilities that could have happened with Andi and Riley, or, he could accept that there wasn’t anything he could do about it in that moment and get back to Kansas where his little sister was counting on him.

  One thing at a time, he thought. He could only solve one problem at a time, and as much as it killed him to admit it, the only problem that he had all of the parts to was back in Kansas. He knew where his sister was; he knew where to find her; and he knew how to get her away from that gang, safe and sound. He did not know where Andi and Riley were, or if they even needed saving, so he put the car in drive and took off toward the airport.

  The flight seemed longer this time around. It surprised him how long an hour and forty minutes could feel. He tried to nap and was able to slip in and out, but got no solid sleep during the flight. Immediately after landing, he got off of the plane with the three cash bags and returned to the Tahoe that was there waiting for him. He loaded up the cash and drove straight to The Wet Bar. It was midday, so there were only a few barflies in the place.

  He did not see any members of the biker club and the door in the back of the bar was unguarded. He made his way toward it with his bags. Neither the patrons nor the bartender paid any attention to the fact that a random man with three bank bags was walking through the bar intending on going into the back room which he was sure was supposed to be for employees and the bikers only.

  He quickly opened and slipped through the door, closing it behind him. As he began moving down hall, he could see that the door at the end, which had been Mariah’s prison, was sitting open just a little. Once he arrived only a foot or two away from it, he saw the footprint next to the knob; someone had recently kicked it in. He put his ear close to the door before moving inside to
try to pick up on any movements going on inside the room, but he heard nothing. Holding the bags, slung over his shoulder, with his right hand, he reached out with his left and pushed the door open.

  The bags dropped to the floor in the hallway⸺not purposely, but as a result of the shock. Matt looked around the room, and recognized so many of their faces. He knew some of them by name, but the one face he did not see was Mariah’s. Part of him was relieved, but another part of him was terrified. Because whoever had been here before Matt had her now, and whoever had her was most likely the one who had turned all of these bikers, now laying on the concrete floor of that room, into corpses.

  Chapter 18: Massacre in Alta Vista

  Matt stepped over two bodies so that he could make his way into the center of the small storage room. He looked all around him, studying each lifeless face. The scent of blood was so heavy in the air that it should have made him vomit, but he had spent a lot of time around blood. The scary part was he was starting to get used to the sight and smell of it.

  In the corner of the room, one biker was propped up against the wall. The body appeared to have been stabbed multiple times, possibly shot, but there was no question that his face had been slashed several times by some sort of blade. Matt had to get very close to see past the blood and lacerations to recognize the man. It was Bran, the former VP of the club and the man who had threatened to do unforgivable things to Mariah. The man who had led an ambush on Matt in the alley in Council Grove.

  As he knelt there looking at Bran, and feeling no remorse or sympathy for the fate that had come for him, the realization hit him. He was standing in the middle of a crime scene. He was sure this had not yet been reported, since the bodies were still laying here and there was no yellow crime scene tape or anything warning the public not to enter. Before leaving, he had to do two things.