Red Web

by Ninie Hammon

  Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum.

  Everything around her shook.

  She couldn't breathe, felt dizzy, stepped drunkenly back from the wall and—

  The world instantly righted itself.

  Color returned.

  The bells fell silent.

  The only smell was … Brice's aftershave. He stood beside her now, had taken her arm.

  "You looked like you were about to faint."

  She wanted to voice the scream that had been crawling up the back of her throat. But her mouth was dry and no words formed.

  "What did you see?"

  "I have absolutely no idea."

  She tried to describe the sensation of foreignness, the sounds and smells, but nothing she said came anywhere near the reality of it.

  "I didn't connect to Christi. Unless Christi was on LSD. I connected to … what? Maybe I'm the one having a psychotic episode."

  She'd been joking, but hearing the words said aloud granted them substance. Maybe she was losing it. She didn't often think about Oscar but she thought about him now. The bullet snuggled up somewhere in/near her frontal lobe. Was Oscar messing with her? The doctors had told her that he could cause all manner of damage, anything from paralysis to death. Distorted reality, deformed sensory perceptions — and a whole bunch of other really scary stuff could be lurking in the haunted chasm between paralysis and death. It seemed a more reasonable explanation than suspecting an eleven-year-old was taking hallucinogenic drugs.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She waited until the digital readout on the nightstand clock clicked over from 4:59 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. before she actually got out of bed. Maybe she had slept. She'd tried. Took a hot bath. Drank warm milk — yech! Turned off her phone to silence the telemarking calls.

  Then she lay in the dark watching the numbers change on the clock one after another the whole night. Seemed like it, anyway.

  As she sat on the edge of the bed, feeling around with her toes on the dark floor for her slippers, Bailey wanted only one thing … no, wrong word, not wanted, never wanted, but needed. She needed to run.

  She dressed quickly and headed out the door into the still darkness, the rhythm of her New Balance shoes slapping the sidewalk, soothing, predictable. Normal.

  Darkness still puddled in the valley between the mountains, even though it was sunrise out there on the flatlands, the dawn sky shifting through ever brighter shades of gold, crimson and azure — color — not the hideous black-and-white world she'd glimpsed yesterday in the park. Banishing the images as soon as they formed, refusing to allow her mind to haul out the sound of bells or the smell of roses, she kept going, moving faster, increasing the speed of the splat, splat, splat of her shoes.

  She had played sports in school, but there was always a game involved, a ball, a communal activity. Running had never appealed to her until …

  Yeah, her life was divided into two parts and in Part One, she had been a team player. In Part Two, she had gone solo. It had been self-preservation, of course. In Albuquerque almost two years ago, sitting in an anonymous house in an anonymous neighborhood, no friends, no one to talk to, nothing to … and one day, she had just walked out the door. She didn't have anywhere in mind to go, she just had to move, like she was running away from her grief and fear.

  She had walked for hours that day. In the wrong kind of shoes. She hadn't cared. She remembered how foreign that walk had been, how otherworldly — in the desert heat when she was accustomed to snow crunching under her feet this time of year, passing cactus and yucca plants as gardens, looking up at Sandía Peak, the mountain rearing up out of the desert floor, stark and rocky.

  By the time she got back home, her feet, in Crocs no less, were blistered. But she was tired and she actually slept that night. She got Band-Aids, covered over all her blisters, put on used sneakers and walked the next day. And the next. She bought running shoes, covered her still-healing feet with more Band-Aids and began to jog. She liked the sense of fleeing that running gave her, like she was moving away from something, leaving something behind. She liked that it took effort, actually enjoyed the stitch in her side because that was a physical pain and she used it to mask the emotional pain that was cutting her in two.

  The more she jogged, the farther she had to go to accomplish her pain goal. And then she finally ran far enough one day to tap into what she'd heard about but never experienced. A runner's high. The sense of wellbeing and euphoria were not complete for her, of course, but tempered. But it was the first time she had felt anything approaching good in the months since she'd been violently yanked out of her life, away from everything and everyone she knew or cared about, and secreted away in the night.

  So Bailey had continued to run. She wasn't training for anything, but she discovered a competitive spirit in herself she hadn't experienced since she played team sports in school. She wanted to go farther than she had gone the day before, run faster.

  She did other physical things in the ensuing months she never would have believed she'd do. She'd taken up yoga. It had helped calm and center her. She'd even taken two classes in kickboxing, for crying out loud, only because she ran past the same storefront gym every day and watched the participants through the glass. She decided she might be able to put a skill like that to good use someday, given that there were dangerous men who would kill her if they knew she was alive. She'd been good at kickboxing. Surprisingly good.

  But none of the other activities gave her the satisfaction, the sense of wellbeing that running did. It became as much a part of her daily routine as brushing her teeth. She particularly enjoyed it on the days Sparky visited. The little dog didn't run, he pranced along beside her.

  She rounded the corner of her block and broke into the all-out sprint she always tacked onto the end of a run, and spotted Dobbs and T.J. sitting on her porch in the growing dawn light.

  Sparky dashed out to meet her, prancing/dancing along beside her as she ran up the sidewalk.

  "What are you doing up so early?" Bailey asked Dobbs between gasps. "Mattress catch on fire?"

  T.J. teased him unmercifully for "lying a'bed" in the morning. T.J.'s ear was always tuned to an imagined reveille.

  "Why are you sitting out here? You know where I keep the key."

  "So's every burglar in the tri-state area. Under the mat? Seriously?"

  "I left you a message last night," Dobbs said. She hadn't yet turned on her phone. "The private investigator I hired was able to access the records at the Bateman hospital, some of them."

  "Legally?"

  "I don't know. I didn't ask."

  "Plausible deniability," T.J. put in.

  "Starting at Crenshaw County Hospital, he traced Caitlyn to Stonybrook Manor, where she stayed less than two months before the place was closed down by the state. His report will detail the whole story, but he's giving us everything new he finds out immediately. He found the admission records for Caitlyn Whitfield, on November 21, 1997 at the Margaret Mitchell-Bateman Hospital."

  He stopped.

  "Now for the bad news. It seems there was a flood in the basement of the hospital in April of 2001, a pipe burst in the basement — it'll all be in his report — and lots of old records were destroyed."

  "Cut to the chase," T.J. said.

  "Zankoski was able to find Caitlyn's admission record but no record of her discharge. She is listed on patient records until 1999. Whatever happened to her — discharge or death — happened between then and when there are records that survived the flood."

  "So she was there until 1999, at least. And she wasn't there after 2001."

  "Correct."

  "Swell. So we don't know—"

  "There's more. He was also able to access hospital employment records for the time between 1999 and 2001, by department. So he has a list of the employees who'd have been working in the chronic care ward when she was there."

  "That it?"

  "Three of the people on that list are still working there — a nurse, a doctor
and an orderly."

  Bailey's breathing had returned to normal from her run, but now she couldn't seem to catch her breath.

  "And you two are here while the chickens are still in their pajamas because you think we ought to go talk to those people, right?" Their communal nod couldn't have been more perfectly choreographed if they'd been practicing it for years. Which they had. "In Huntington?"

  "It ain't like that's on the other side of the moon."

  Dobbs looked her up and down. "You're not one of those women who take a couple of hours to get ready, are you?"

  Ten minutes later, Dobbs pulled his Jeep out of her driveway.

  It was obvious to T.J. that the investigator Dobbs hired had hacked into the records of the Margaret Mitchell-Bateman Hospital, but that was in the category of things you was better off not knowing. Zankoski'd found out that Dr. Leonard Nisole was the physician of record for chronic care patients at the hospital when Caitlyn had been there. His offices were in a medical office park, not in the hospital. He was semi-retired now. If they wanted to talk to him, they'd need to make an appointment with him.

  They'd save that as a Hail Mary if they weren't able to locate the other two leads. Lamar Howard had been an orderly twenty years ago at the hospital and he was still an orderly now. According to timecard records — that the investigator would only have been able to see if he hacked into the computer system — Howard would be at work at the hospital today.

  Nurse Naomi Mason had been a licensed practical nurse twenty years ago. Now she was a registered nurse, the charge nurse on the third-floor chronic care wing. She was scheduled to work today on the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift.

  Bailey, Dobbs and T.J. were sitting in the hospital parking lot in Dobbs's Jeep at seven-thirty.

  "I figure the best approach is the least intrusive," Dobbs said. "We go to the information desk and ask to see Lamar Howard. See what happens."

  "How about only one of us goes?" T.J. said. "Let's not put all our eggs in one basket if it doesn't work."

  T.J. went to the information desk in the lobby of the hospital, introduced himself and said he was looking for Lamar Howard.

  Easy peasy. The woman working the desk, a nice, plump woman with white hair who reminded T.J. of Tweety Bird's grandmother, looked at a computer screen and said, "Lamar is working today on Two West. The elevators are over there."

  Bailey followed T.J.'s example. As he crossed to the elevators, she went to the little old lady in the information booth. T.J.'d told her to say as little as possible, but she musta cooked up a story in her head because when she asked to see Naomi Mason, she kept right on talking.

  "She's my aunt. She left her cellphone at my house yesterday and I'm sure she's frantic for it." She held up a cellphone as proof. "I was in this part of town so I thought I'd drop it by."

  T.J. rolled his eyes. When you was lying, the less you said the better off you was.

  "You can leave the phone here with me, dearie," the woman said cheerily. "I'll see she gets it."

  T.J. was amazed Bailey didn't stumble, but she went right on like a pro.

  "Thanks so much, but I need to find out if she's going to be at Joey's birthday party on Saturday. I won't take but a minute of her time."

  "She's the charge nurse, so I'm sure she's busy."

  "Just a minute, please."

  "Alright, she's working on Three North." Bailey walked to where T.J. and Dobbs were waiting for the elevator, and suddenly froze. She looked around, fearfully.

  "What's got you spooked?" T.J. asked.

  "Don't you hear it?"

  "Hear what?" Dobbs asked.

  "You really don't hear it?"

  "I can't say with any degree of certainty that I don't since you ain't told me what it is I'm supposed to be hearing."

  "That scraping sound." She shook her head as if to clear it. "Scratchy. You don't hear it?"

  "I don't hear nothing scraping."

  Dobbs shrugged, too.

  Then Bailey's face relaxed.

  "It's gone now. It was grating, worse than fingernails on a blackboard."

  "Is this anything like when you heard music when you was connected to Macy Cosgrove?"

  "Maybe. I don't … but it can't be. I'm not connected to anyone, remember. The little girl in that picture is dead. So where could the sounds be coming from?"

  The elevator door opened. Dobbs waited in the lobby while T.J. and Bailey got on. T.J. got off on the second floor and left Bailey to ride up to the third.

  When T.J. asked a nurse's aide to point out Lamar Howard, she indicated a man pushing a linen cart down the hallway toward the linen closet. T.J. approached him.

  "Are you Lamar Howard?"

  "Yeah, what you want?"

  "Like to talk to you for a minute, if you don't mind."

  "And what if I do mind? I'm busy." The man turned away from T.J. and continued down the hallway. T.J. took two steps and caught up with him.

  "I just need to ask you a couple of questions."

  "What about?"

  T.J. took a deep breath. "I'm looking for a little girl who was a patient in this hospital in 19—"

  "You can stop right there. I ain't 'lowed to talk about patients."

  He turned away again.

  "I don't want medical information. I just want—"

  The man turned on him then.

  "You tryna get me fired or somethin'? I done told you. I don't talk 'bout patients. You wanna know 'bout patients, go ask the nurses or the doctors. Leave me be."

  T.J. watched the man walk away, thought about giving it one more shot and then decided not to. This man wasn't the kind who noticed things. He was a keep-his-head-down-and-do-his-job kinda guy. He wouldn't likely remember a patient here last week, let alone twenty years ago.

  T.J. got back into the elevator and rode it down to the lobby to wait with Dobbs for Bailey to return from her meeting with the nurse. He hoped Bailey'd had better luck than he'd had.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Naomi Mason was a tall woman, big boned, but not heavy. She had curly brown hair with gray at the temples, a hawkish face, with riveting brown eyes and a beak nose. Her hands looked more like the hands of a lumberjack than a woman who put in IV needles and operated life-and-death equipment. She was seated behind the nurse's station counter working on patient charts when Bailey approached her.

  "Excuse me. You're Naomi Mason, aren't you?"

  "Yes, how can I help you?"

  "I just want to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't mind."

  "Questions about what?"

  "I'm looking for a girl who was a patient here in 1999—"

  "If you're looking for patient information, you need to go down to medical records. That's on the first floor."

  "I don't want medical information. I'm just trying to find a girl who was transferred here from—"

  "I am not allowed to give out patient information. You'll have to—"

  "Her name was Caitlyn Whitfield and she was just a little girl." Bailey hadn't intended the plea to come out so plaintive, but her emotions had been rubbed raw by the scraping, scratchy sound. The sound she heard but T.J. and Dobbs did not.

  As soon as Bailey said the girl's name, Naomi's eyes opened wide.

  "Are you a relative of—?"

  "No," Bailey said, but hurried on. "I don't want medical information about her. I'm just trying to find out what happened to her. I know she was in a car wreck in 1997, her parents were killed and she was in a catatonic state … and then she was sent here and the records were destroyed and I—"

  Naomi held up her hand and turned to the other nurse seated at the counter beside her.

  "Will you watch the desk for a few minutes? I'm going on my fifteen-minute break a little early."

  When the other nurse nodded, Naomi led Bailey to a door marked "Nurse's Lounge." The small room that smelled of old coffee was empty.

  "Have a seat," she said and crossed to where the coffeemaker sat on a counter besi
de an assortment of coffee mugs, rinsed out and sitting upside down on a towel. The nurse picked up one that had a picture with the caption "Mount Rushmore from the Canada side," and showed the backsides of four men, bent over so their heads would show on the other side of the mountain. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

  "No, I'm good."

  Suddenly, Bailey heard an odd hissing sound, not so much like steam escaping from a teapot but more like a snake. She looked around, suddenly apprehensive. The sound grew louder and louder until Bailey wanted to put her hands over her ears to make it stop. Then it was gone. Hissing and then no hissing. There and gone. Bailey was glad the nurse hadn't seen her reaction to … Yeah, that's right — to what?

  The nurse sat down across a small table from Bailey, picked up one of the sweetener packets out of a bowl, tore it open and began to empty the contents into her cup.

  "I remember Caitlyn Whitfield, alright. I'll never forget her. Why are you looking for information about her after all these years?"

  "It's a really long story and I don't mind telling it to you, but you don't have much time and I really need to hear what you have to say."

  The nurse picked up a swizzle stick and stirred the sweetener into the coffee, took a sip and grimaced.

  "I was an LPN, just got my cap, and this was my first job. I hadn't been here but a couple of weeks when they brought in this little girl, a transfer from … I can't remember—"

  "Stonybrook Manor."

  "Yes, Stonybrook. She was catatonic. Totally non-responsive. Her eyes were open, she blinked, but when you looked into those eyes there was nobody home. She wasn't on a feeding tube like so many of the PVS — permanent vegetative state — patients. Every morning, one of the aides would go in, crank up her bed and feed her. You put a spoon to her lips and she would open her mouth, take the bite and swallow it. Had to be something like applesauce or mashed potatoes, something she didn't have to chew or she'd get choked. When you put a straw to her mouth, she would drink. She wore a diaper, was incontinent, so the aides had to change her."