Allan only nodded. If Reed thought he could discourage him from going, the man was mistaken. Allan was determined to get back down into the tunnels one more time before the old place was demolished. Not that he expected to find anything else. He agreed with Reed to a certain extent—the old mental hospital was naturally the sort of place that inspired horror stories. Still, he and Wren had discovered a baby bottle. Perhaps it had been dropped by the child of a staff member and never recovered.
“Thanks, detective,” he said with a nod. “I appreciate it. I’ll mention you and Detective Torres in the acknowledgement of my book.” He rose and Wren did the same. “When can we expect to hear from you? I imagine you have to make some sort of arrangements, right? You’ll need to clear it with the current superintendent or something, I suppose.”
“Nope.” Reed shoved his rolling chair away from the desk. He stood, his weapon visible in a holster on his hip. “I’m the man in charge. The place is a crime scene, remember? Gorse turned the keys over to me. We’ll meet you over there—same place as yesterday.”
“You mean now?” Allan asked, surprised.
“Now’s as good a time as any,” Reed said. He lifted his chin at his partner, who unfolded his arms and reached for a windbreaker hanging on a wall hook near the file cabinet.
“All right then. Let’s go.” Allan turned to Wren, smiling. He gave her the thumbs up sign.
She regarded him thoughtfully, her brown eyes wide with surprise. But she seemed a little frightened too. He made up his mind not to put her through the ordeal again.
~*~
Wren chewed her lower lip as she and Allan made their way back to the parking lot. The morning’s events had taken an unexpected course. “You must have been a bit surprised when the detective agreed to let you go back down into the tunnels,” she said.
He grinned at her with considerable charm. “I’m flabbergasted, as my old granny used to say.”
They laughed together.
Wren felt the gentle stirring of something deeper than happiness. It took her by surprise. She felt slightly embarrassed by the unexpected emotion. “Do you really expect to find human remains?” she asked, sobering.
“No, not at all,” Allan admitted. “But I want to look around one more time before the place is razed. Besides, someone took a shot at one of us—all of us. I want to know why. Perhaps the shooter meant to scare us away, hoping we would never go back down there again. It makes sense, in a perverse sort of way.”
“It doesn’t make sense at all,” Wren disagreed. “The unexplained shooting has involved the police. What if they investigate the tunnels and find something—the very thing someone might have hoped we wouldn’t discover?”
“I see what you mean,” Allan replied.
A flare of anger lit his blue eyes with righteous indignation. Going back to the asylum was not just a simple case of curiosity for him. Of course, he would want to include these explorations in his book. Readers loved that sort of hands-on research. But he was dealing with issues surrounding his mother’s death too. He seemed convinced that she’d died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps it was all nothing more than a grieving child’s imagination. Surely, Mrs. Partner had died of natural causes as a result of her fall. Otherwise, the family and hospital would have looked into the matter. Right?
“You don’t have to come this time,” Allan said, placing his hand under her elbow. The gesture was almost a caress.
Wren struggled silently with a long list of fears, doubts and even ambitions. She couldn’t explain any of it at the moment. She couldn’t even explain why she’d brought the anonymous letter with her to the office this morning and had not yet shown it to him or why she felt reluctant to do so in the first place.
Last night, after Pippi had been tucked into bed with a drink of water and a chapter from the book they were currently reading, Wren had curled up on the couch, reflecting about the short sweet years she’d been married to Peter. When she considered the part of her life that stretched out ahead of her now, without him, she felt a dismal hopelessness she feared could never be overcome.
As sinister as yesterday’s experience had been, Wren felt that in some small way it made her a part of something larger and more important than Allan’s book project. The incident connected her—even if only in her own mind—to the life of Dorothea Dix, the dedicated reformer. The unexplained shooting also had succeeded in taking her mind off her other troubles, if only for a little while. She’d even spent an hour or so reading additional material about the woman online, how Dix’s impassioned pleas on behalf of the indigent insane had made such a difference, both in the United States and in Europe. If exploring the tunnels again could, in some way, help to rectify a wrong, she wanted to be a part of that, too.
“I’ll drop you off at the office first,” he said in a gentle voice. He let his hand drop to his side.
“I want to come with you to the tunnels. I do.”
“Are you sure?”
Wren nodded. She really meant it. Of course, she could hardly explain her reasons to Allan, who stood looking down at her now with both pity and concern in his expression. He’d only laugh at her sense of Christian duty. Or would he?
“All right then,” he said, rewarding her with one of his transforming smiles. He glanced down at her feet. “I see you’re wearing appropriate footwear.”
Leather boots with the thick nonskid soles and a knee-length denim skirt was short enough that she shouldn’t get any filth on the hem like yesterday when her jeans got muddy. “But what about you?” she asked, indicating his expensive brown leather loafers and khaki slacks.
“I have a pair of hiking boots in the trunk of my car.” Allan popped the trunk and retrieved the boots, along with two long, hefty flashlights. He handed her one nearly the length of her forearm. “I think this one will do the job better than the pink princess one you carried with you yesterday,” he teased.
“That belongs to Pippi,” she told him, blushing slightly.
“I figured as much,” he said. A smile lit his eyes. “Why do you call her Pippi? Is it short for Phillipa?”
“No, Penelope. My mother nicknamed her Pippi when she was just a baby, and it stuck,” Wren explained. The very thought of her young daughter caused her heart to swell with a love so intense it hurt. She contemplated how close she’d come to being accidentally shot and how that would have affected her daughter’s life. Was the shooting connected to the anonymous note about Peter’s death? If someone had killed Peter on purpose, was she next on the list? And if so, for heaven’s sake, why?
The disturbing riddle had her so preoccupied she barely paid attention to Allan when he opened the car door for her and mentioned several books he wanted her to order through the college’s library loan program—books he needed to continue his research on Dorothea Dix.
The drive from the police station to the asylum grounds was a short one. As they turned into the circular driveway near the main entrance, Allan parked in the exact location he’d parked yesterday.
The two detectives had already arrived.
Wren opened her door and stepped out of the car. She experienced a slight feeling of dread and one of déjà vu—today’s crisp autumn weather was the same as it was yesterday. The charm of the hospital grounds, despite their long neglect, was just as noticeable as it had been the day before. It must have been a lovely place in its heyday, perhaps even peaceful, despite the overcrowding.
A gray squirrel darted across the parking lot. She smiled. Pippi loved squirrels and chipmunks. “By the way, where did all the patients go when the state shut the hospital down?”
They trod across the unmown lawn to catch up with the two detectives waiting for them by the back door to the kitchen. A piece of plywood had been taped over the shattered window. Long strands of bright yellow tape draped here and there declared the spot a crime scene.
“Most of them were relocated to other mental hospitals across the state. Some of the elderly were
placed in nursing homes and others are being treated with drugs on an outpatient basis. Some live in group homes or with their families—if they’ll take them,” Allan explained.
Detectives Torres and Reed fumbled to find the right key to open the door.
Yesterday, she’d experienced a rush of excitement. Today, she felt apprehensive. A tickle of dread crept up the back of her neck. She hoped Allan was wrong. She didn’t want to discover human remains.
Torres glanced at her boots and the huge flashlight she carried and gave her an approving nod. He carried two yardsticks.
“What are those for?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” Torres told her.
“Here we go,” Reed said, yanking open the groaning door.
The two detectives led the way.
Allan insisted on bringing up the rear. He smiled at Wren, giving her a reassuring pat on the arm. He looked much younger when he smiled, almost boyish. He must have been a beautiful child.
As they passed through the massive kitchen complex before entering the doorway that led to the tunnels below, a stale odor wafted toward them. The dank smell was unpleasant. She hoped fervently they wouldn’t find anything too nasty.
“Last chance to turn back,” Allan whispered. “If you want to stay upstairs in the kitchen, I’ll understand. Or if you’d rather return to campus, I’ll give you the keys to my car.”
“No, let’s go. I’m fine.” She shuddered all the same.
“You’re cold?” he prompted.
“No, I’m fine. A goose walked over my grave, that’s all.”
“I wonder where that colloquialism came from,” Allan mused and indicated with a flick of his hand that they needed to catch up with the detectives. Then he called out. “It’s best to stay on the track as much as possible. Less slippery that way.” His voice echoed through the long, dark tunnel.
“Can’t explore the alcoves from the middle of the rails,” Reed pointed out.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Torres said.
“It’s just a food transportation tunnel, gentlemen,” Allan told them, mimicking Gorse’s refrain from the day before.
Wren smiled in the dark.
Detective Reed gave an amused snort. “OK, Professor, where do you suggest we begin to explore for corpses?”
“Let’s start with the alcove next to the one where we found the baby bottle,” Allan suggested, leading the way. “Did the police come down here at all yesterday after we left?”
“One or two of the more curious officers poked around for a while,” Torres admitted.
“Find anything?” Allan wanted to know.
“No bodies, if that’s what you mean,” Torres told him. “They turned up a broken locket—empty inside—and the remains of a plastic comb.”
“To be honest, they didn’t look very hard,” Reed admitted, running a large hand through his short hair. “There was no reason to. They hadn’t heard all of your wild suppositions about rape victims and medical experimentations. What did they keep in there?” Reed indicated one of the brick alcoves.
Allan launched into a recital of what Gorse had told them yesterday regarding the food tunnels, the storage areas, and the food preparation that took place in the massive kitchens.
The further they penetrated into the gloom, the more Wren’s imagination conjured various horrifying scenarios. She could almost hear the hiss of desperate whispering and quiet sobbing.
As Torres had observed earlier, the place was downright creepy. “So what are we looking for exactly, besides skeletons?” Torres asked in an offhand manner. “Chains on the walls? Manacles and shackles? Some sort of torture chamber?”
Wren gave small gasp and Reed turned around, chuckling. “He’s joking.”
“There is a torture chamber of sorts upstairs,” she told him, remembering the hydrotherapy rooms. When the detective didn’t pursue the subject any further, she guessed he thought she’d been joking too.
“I have no idea what we’re looking for exactly,” Allan confessed. “Let’s just poke around, like this.” He took one of the yardsticks from Torres and made his way slowly into an empty alcove. Allan began to probe the mud with the yardstick, as if poking holes in the bottom of a piecrust. However, the muddy floor beneath their feet was not smooth like a piecrust. It was lumpy and uneven in places where water had trickled and flowed, carrying silt and dirt. There was a lot of trash too—the occasional pile of grime-crusted cigarette stubs, old labels from canned goods, a shattered light bulb.
Torres placed his hand against one of the brick walls inside the nearest alcove. “You don’t suppose someone is walled up down here behind the bricks, do you?” he asked. “Like in one of those Edgar Allan Poe stories?” He gave Wren a wink.
“Don’t know,” Reed replied, grinning. “I guess we’ll find out when the demolition starts in the next week or so.”
By their teasing banter, the detectives didn’t believe they’d find anything of interest down here. But the alcoves would make great hiding places. The tunnels were long and wide, the alcoves deep and large. The rumbling of food trains along the tracks would muffle other softer sounds, such as whimpering, for instance. To take her mind off the memory of that forlorn bottle discovered yesterday, she focused her attention on the mud squelching beneath her boots. In some places, the ground was cold, fairly dry, but gritty.
“How far will we go?” she asked of no one in particular. Her fingers now stiff with cold, she shoved her free hand into the pocket of her denim jacket. With a quick sweep of her flashlight, she guessed they were more than halfway through the tunnel.
The three men—each in a different alcove—were poking and probing the walls and the mud.
“There’s nothing down here,” Reed declared, turning toward her with a shrug. “We might as well go back now.”
“Not so fast,” Torres called from the shadowy recess on the left. There was a hint of something ominous in the urgency of his tone.
Wren turned her flashlight on the detective as he poked behind an enormous wooden pallet shoved against the brick wall.
A stirring of dread rose when Allan strode forward to join Torres, grim and edgy. “You’ve found something, detective.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.
“Hold this,” Torres said, handing his flashlight to Allan as Torres poked more deliberately at something lodged behind the pallet. “Reed, you’d better come take a look at this,” he called to his partner.
The three men formed a tight knot around the narrow space between the wall and the pallet.
Wren leaned against the outer brick wall of the nearest alcove. Cold dampness seeped through her jacket and her long-sleeved flannel shirt. She shivered as one of the detectives retrieved a pair of thin disposable gloves from his pocket and then pulled them on with an efficient snap. When she sucked in a quick gulp of air, she realized with surprise that she’d been holding her breath.
Detective Torres assumed a squatting position and began tugging at something resistant with layers of mud. It looked like an old-fashioned, rectangular tin box—the kind crackers or cookies used to be packed in.
Allan murmured something to the two other men. Torres brushed off the dried mud and wriggled the rusty lid open.
Just as she considered joining them, Allan turned. “Wren, stay where you are. Don’t come over here.”
She froze, her throat suddenly dry, her pulse beginning to pound. The suspense was agonizing.
By their rigid stances and their concentrated examination of the open tin, she knew they’d found something awful inside.
When Reed stepped back, uttering a violent expletive, her worse fears were confirmed. The detective pulled a cell phone from his pocket.
“That won’t work down here,” Allan said. “You’ll have to go back up to the kitchen.”
Reed headed back with purpose in his long-legged stride. As he passed Wren, he paused to give her a frown. “Looks like your boss knew what he was talking about, af
ter all,” he said. The teasing banter was absent from his tone.
“Human remains?” Wren’s throat constricted as she spoke the vile words.
“Without a doubt,” was the detective’s grim reply. “And an infant’s at that.”
5
The dank, fusty smell of the tunnels lingered in Allan’s nostrils. His heart was heavy as stone. His wild speculations had been right. How he wished he’d been wrong. Sitting behind the steering wheel of his vehicle, he turned toward Wren. She was shivering, despite the warmth penetrating through the windshield.
“Hey, are you all right?” He grasped her wrist and felt her pulse pounding.
Wren responded with a quick jerk of her head.
“I want you to take my car back to campus.” He released his grip to fish in his pants pocket for the keys. “I’ll catch a ride back with Reed and Torres.”
Both detectives were pacing in the parking lot, talking on their cell phones. They were probably placing a number of “all hands on deck” calls. Soon the back parking lot of the desolate, old asylum would be crawling with police and crime scene techs. And reporters too, once the news leaked out.
“You’re staying?” Wren’s voice sounded quiet and steady, but she looked at him with wide, anxious eyes. “Don’t you have classes this afternoon?”
“I’ll call the secretary and have her leave a note on the board in the classroom. The students can use this time to work on their research papers.”
Allan mentally kicked himself for allowing Wren to come with him. Today’s experience was worse than yesterday’s. The remains tucked away in the large cookie tin had been so very small. It made him ill just contemplating how the tiny body had come to be hidden. The institutional authorities would no longer be able dismiss the rumors that had circulated about the place for decades.
“Those two won’t like it much,” Allan said, indicating the two detectives. “But I’m part of this investigation now. It will be the opening chapter in my book. I’ve got to see it through. You understand, don’t you, Wren?”
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