Head Wounds

by Dennis Palumbo

  “Shouldn’t we…should we call the police?”

  “He hasn’t been missing long enough. Given his history, they’ll say he just wandered off. Left voluntarily. Besides, I’d rather be the one to find him. We don’t know what kind of shape he’ll be in, and some scared cop might overreact.”

  “Christ, no! I’ve always been afraid of something like that happening if Noah…I mean, if he ever…”

  “I told you, I’ll find him.” Maddox would see to it.

  “But, wait…” Her eyes narrowed. “These fake pills…who did this? Was it that pharmacy guy? What’s going on?”

  I tightened my grip on her hands.

  “There isn’t time to explain, Charlene. Noah’s in real danger, and I—”

  “Has someone taken him? That guy?—”

  “Sorry, Charlene. I’ve gotta go. Now!”

  “But…”

  “Listen, I think you and Sally should kick everybody else out of here and close up for the night. Just say it’s a family emergency. Something like that.”

  She stared at me for a long moment, breathing deeply. Then she glanced down at her hands, still clamped between mine. I let them go. Watched her struggle to calm herself.

  “You’re right,” she said at last. “I should close up. God knows I’m useless out there.”

  I brought my gaze up to match hers.

  “I’ll get him back, Charlene.”

  She sniffed loudly, her shoulders straightening. As though willing herself to stay strong. Eyes boring into mine.

  “You see that you do. You see that you bring him home.”

  l l l l l

  Up ahead, beyond the snarl of traffic, I caught sight of Gloria’s motel near PNC Park. A more upscale version of the motel chain Lyle had booked us into, it had two floors, a pool, and a decent-looking restaurant next door.

  It was also perched at the top of a sloping hill. A paved road wound lazily from street level up to the motel entrance.

  I’d already called Gloria from the car to fill her in about Noah and get her room number. Now, having finally navigated the clogged intersection, I drove up the curving road, parked in the near-empty lot, and knocked on her door. But it was Lyle Barnes who answered it.

  “He has Noah,” I said.

  “I know. Gloria called and told me.”

  I followed him across the standard-issue motel room to the queen-sized bed where Gloria sat, glancing occasionally at her laptop on the side table. Its screen-saver was still the posed photo of Sebastian Maddox.

  “Nothing yet.” She gave me a quick nod as I sat next to her on the bed. Briefly clasped my hand.

  “Maddox is enjoying making us wait,” said Barnes.

  “Won’t be a long wait,” I replied. “I can feel it.”

  Barnes remained standing, looking down at the two of us. Lined face grim. Eyes puffy with fatigue.

  “I don’t know about this idea of yours, Doc. Or even whether we can pull it off.”

  “I don’t either, Lyle. I’m just guessing, based on my read of Maddox.”

  “Great. That’s a load off my mind.”

  With that, Barnes began pacing back and forth, clucking his tongue. He was worse at waiting than Gloria.

  Luckily, though, I’d been right about one thing.

  Maddox didn’t make us wait long.

  l l l l l

  He was wearing that same black hoodie.

  As soon as the screen-saver disappeared on Gloria’s laptop, it was replaced by a live-streaming image of Maddox. He’d tilted his camera lens so that we’d see him from the waist up, his face framed by the jacket’s hood. The background was too vague to offer any clues as to his whereabouts.

  I bristled involuntarily. Seeing him dressed that way—exactly as he’d been the night of Barbara’s death—brought a familiar shard of pain. As he no doubt assumed it would.

  “Good to see you again, Danny. Ready for the last act?”

  Unlike on the night of the mugging, his dark green eyes weren’t hidden in shadow. They were lit as though from an inner fire, somehow burning both hot and cold as he glared out from the screen.

  The predator’s blood lust. Incarnate.

  Barnes had come to join Gloria and me sitting at bedside, his righteous outrage palpable. But before the ex-FBI man could say anything, I stopped him with a gesture. Spoke to the screen.

  “Where’s Noah, Maddox? What have you done with him?”

  “Nothing…yet. But I have some big plans for your crazy friend. Which I’m sure you’ll find fascinating. Illuminating, even. From a clinical standpoint, that is.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I think you and I both deserve the chance to savor this final moment. The culmination of our shared journey. Especially the way it’s coming together. We should revel in its…wait, what’s the word I’m looking for?…”

  I paused. “Symmetry.”

  “Ah, you know me so well. Because you’re right about the symmetry. See, Danny boy, tonight everything comes full circle. It ends where it all began. At least, for you and Noah.”

  “Ends where it began…?”

  Gloria stirred. “What’s he talking about?”

  But I kept my eyes on the computer screen.

  “You’re at Ten Oaks, aren’t you, Maddox? The clinic where Noah and I first met.”

  “Yes. A touching meet-cute, right out of a buddy movie. Noah, the poor schizophrenic patient; you, the untested but caring psych intern. Then he goes his way, you go yours. Until, years later, you meet again. And that, as Bogart might say, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  Next to me, Barnes whispered under his breath. “Isn’t that place undergoing repairs?”

  Maddox laughed. “Your sotto voce needs a little work, Lyle. But, yes, at the moment Noah and I have the place to ourselves. The workmen left about an hour ago, and the two security guards are otherwise engaged.”

  Gloria’s tone was flat. “Meaning they’re dead.”

  “Collateral damage, unfortunately.” He spread his hands. “But it was all in a good cause. My cause.”

  I leaned forward, gaze meeting his.

  “Again, two people with no connection to me have died. Very sloppy, Sebastian. Far outside the parameters of your so-called mission. In the military, they call this ‘mission creep.’”

  His knowing smile melted from his face.

  “I don’t like this new attitude I’m getting from you, Daniel. And it certainly won’t help your friend Noah.”

  Barnes and Gloria both gave me worried, perplexed looks, which I studiously ignored. As I hardened my voice.

  “We’re not talking about me, Maddox. Or Noah. We’re talking about you…and how you’re starting to lose it.”

  His cold eyes narrowed. “Careful, Danny…”

  “Fuck you, Maddox. I’m done being careful. All it’s done is get people killed. And now that I know where you are, I’m coming after you. Tonight’s the end, all right…for you!”

  Then, without another word, I slammed the laptop lid shut.

  “Jesus Christ!” Gloria gaped. “What are you doing? He has Noah, remember, and he might—”

  I rose to my feet. “He won’t do anything to Noah. Not until I’m there to see it. Which is my only chance to stop it.”

  Barnes shook his head. “I don’t get it, Doc. You know who we’re dealing with…”

  “Yeah. Someone who’s committed to seeing this thing through to the end. We have to count on that.”

  Gloria got up as well, pulling on a jacket. “Are we still sticking with your plan?”

  I nodded. “I think it may even work better now that we know where he is. That is, if Ten Oaks still has power.”

  “Why?”

 
; “You’ll see.” I headed for the door. “I just hope I got Maddox mad enough to mess with his head. If only for a little while. He’s most dangerous when he thinks he’s in control. So I tried to take that away from him. Gives us an edge.”

  As it turned out, I was wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The cold night threw a starless shroud over the bedroom community of Penn Hills, its rolling contours obscured behind the misting rain. To the west, angry thunder rumbled.

  Ten Oaks Psychiatric Hospital was located just within the town limits. With only a few lights glowing behind its many windows, nestled in the bank of trees that inspired its name, it loomed forbiddingly as I drove through its iron-wrought front gates. Surrounded by acres of landscaped lawns and gardens, it was a sprawling, gable-roofed building that had been—over a hundred years ago—the opulent home of one of Pittsburgh’s earliest industrialists. Now it served the clinical needs of the most severely disturbed grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those same wealthy families.

  Nearing the massive double front doors, I blinked against the harsh klieg lights buried in the rain-churned mud, trained on the temporary sheds, trucks, and construction equipment being used for the building’s repairs. Though it wasn’t until I’d parked on the empty gravel lot and trudged around the eerily silent vehicles and stacks of copper tubing that I saw the security guards’ shack. It was larger than the kiosk at Bassmore Cemetery, but its single interior light and forlorn look in the black rain prompted a similar shudder of dread.

  Taking my flashlight from my pocket, I forced myself to approach its opened doorway. I was less than a dozen feet away when I shone my light inside and saw the bodies.

  Two men, of indeterminate age, both in the uniform of a well-known security company, lay next to each other, limbs intertwined. Blood still pooling beneath them from the gunshot wounds to their heads.

  At least, what was left of them. Which wasn’t much. Their skulls were shattered, caved in, bits of brain and pulpy flesh splattered against the shack’s walls. Clinging in fat drops to a file cabinet, a Playboy calendar, a framed photo on the desk.

  Involuntarily blinking against the horrific sight, I forced myself to keep thinking clearly. To process what I saw. Even in the diffused glow of my flashlight, I could tell each man had fallen victim to a high-powered weapon. Maybe a rifle, fired from a distance. Maddox had claimed to have one up at Bassmore.

  I shook my head, as if to literally dislodge the abhorrent, blood-draped image from my mind, then started moving again. Veering past the guard shack, and guided by my flashlight, I slowly crept to the building’s entrance. The gilt-edged doors were barely discernable in the darkness, but I was able to find one of the large handles and turn it.

  Unsurprisingly, the door swung open easily. An invitation from Sebastian Maddox.

  For a moment, I hesitated. I’d told Barnes and Gloria, who’d followed me here, to wait out on the street till I contacted them. I knew that Maddox would be watching my approach from somewhere within the building, and that if he saw I wasn’t alone there’d be no predicting how he might react.

  I stole my hand into my pocket, assuring myself that the throwaway cell was still there. Then I pushed open the entrance door and stepped inside.

  In the dark, the spacious reception area seemed even more expansive than in daylight. I swung my flashlight beam around the room, giving me mere glimpses of the familiar high-end furnishings, wall prints, and admission desk. Then I aimed the light up at the huge circular skylight, its glass dome opaque against the night, rattling as raindrops pounded down on it.

  It felt strange, being alone in the broad, unlit space that I’d once crossed daily on my way to the patient quarters and therapy rooms beyond. The extensive main body of the clinic was separated from the bright, welcoming reception area by a series of locked, heavily reinforced doors whose primary purpose was to muffle the anguished cries of the broken souls within.

  Making my way slowly along the polished hardwood floor, swinging my flashlight beam waist-high in front of me, I looked for some sign from Maddox. Some indication of where I was supposed to go.

  I found it. The doors to the patient wards were at the rear of the reception area, so it wasn’t till I’d gotten close enough to shine my light on them that I saw that one was wide open.

  This time I didn’t hesitate but went straight through into the corridor, one of the main arteries linking the patient rooms and staff offices. My flashlight beam bobbing ahead of me, I headed down the narrow, shadowy hall, past the closed doors of the staff lounge, medical bay, and exercise rooms.

  At the end of the corridor was the service elevator, its doors standing open as well, its starkly lit interior disconcerting in the relentless dark of the hall.

  When I stepped inside the elevator cab, I noticed that the “Stop” button had been pushed, which accounted for the doors being locked in position. I also noticed that the only lighted button on the array above it read “Roof.” Three floors up.

  Again, my hand slipped into my pocket for the cell. But I knew better and didn’t withdraw it. There was every chance that Maddox could, if not see me, at least have bugged the service elevator so that he could hear me.

  A chance I couldn’t take.

  So I depressed the elevator’s holding button, and the scratched, paint-flecked doors slowly rumbled closed. Then I pressed myself back against one of the elevator’s walls as it began to rise.

  l l l l l

  The rain had increased in intensity, thick drops hitting the roof’s flat, tar-papered surface like falling pebbles. Even with the aid of my flashlight, visibility was severely limited from the moment I stepped out of the elevator and heard its doors close behind me, taking its interior’s blazing white light with it. The weathered stone gables at the roof’s corners appeared merely as blurred, hulking shadows, their majestic peaks indistinguishable in the gloom.

  Squinting against the rain and the darkness, aware of my progress across the roof only by the sound of my shoes scraping against loose cinders, I moved with a deliberate slowness. One foot in front of the other, swinging my flashlight beam in an arc before me.

  Where was I supposed to go? What was I supposed to find?

  And what had happened to Noah?

  Then, suddenly, something raw and desperate inside me gave voice to my frustration. My growing panic about my friend.

  “Maddox!” I shouted over the rain. “Where are you?”

  I took another few steps, anger rising.

  “Maddox, where the fuck are you? Where’s Noah?”

  Nothing. No smirking laugh, no mocking retort.

  “Where’s Noah, Maddox? What have you done to him?”

  It was only then that I heard the familiar, arrogant timbre of his voice. Amplified, mechanical. From a speaker.

  “What have I done to Noah? Only grant him his fondest wish. His heart’s desire.”

  I whirled, sharpening my ears. Trying to get a bead on where his voice was coming from.

  I made another sweep of the roof with my light.

  “Where is he? What are you talking about?”

  “See for yourself, Danny. See little Noah, happy at last.”

  Suddenly, some kind of floodlight flared on to my right, illuminating a broad swath of the rooftop to my left. Eyes momentarily stabbed by the light, I staggered back.

  Then, turning, I saw what that light revealed.

  It was Noah Frye, standing with his back against the wall of a large, box-like structure probably containing the clinic’s air and heating system. Rough-bricked, peaked with shingles sluicing rainwater. Squat and ugly.

  But all I saw was Noah himself. Though his feet were flat on the tar-papered roof, his arms were outstretched, his face contorted in agony. Head lolling.

  Even in the pouring rain, I could see the blood trailing from his hand
s, mixing with the water pooling at his feet. A swirling eddy of red and black.

  The backs of his outstretched hands were each flush with the wall. Cruelly held there by thick nails, driven deep into his palms.

  Noah had been crucified.

  l l l l l

  It took an eternity of seconds to accept the unspeakable reality of what I was seeing. Then, shoving my flashlight into my free pocket, I started running toward him.

  I wasn’t three feet away when his head rolled up, terror-filled eyes blazing into mine. His voice like grinding glass.

  “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

  His body had already begun to slump, its weight pulling against the flesh of his hands where they were nailed to the wall. Tearing against tendons, muscles, bone.

  With a cry, I threw myself against his body, trying to hoist it up with my own. To relieve the pressure on his ravaged hands, his distended arms.

  “Noah! It’s me! I’m here!”

  Whether he heard me, or even comprehended what I’d said, I’ll never know.

  With his rain-drenched hair matted in wild ringlets, his eyes streaming tears, he rolled his head up again, face pointing to the heavens. A wild, animal cry of pain, of intolerable agony, exploding from his lips. Primal. Heart-rending.

  Half-mad with my own grief, I began frantically looking around the rain-soaked roof for something to pry the nails out. At a loss, I went around the corner of the brick shed and spotted a small wooden access panel. Probably used to enter when the machinery within needed repair. I ran up and kicked at the wood. It was old and splintered, but from the deep thud I could tell it was pretty thick. Good.

  Crouching beside the panel, I dug my fingers into the edge of one of its sides and pulled. I heard a dull crack, and, pulling harder, broke off a length of rough, jagged wood. About the size and thickness of a two-by-four.

  I ran back to Noah and wedged the piece of wood under the broad head of the thick construction nail buried in his left hand. Bracing my knee against the brick wall, I tried to use the wood as a lever to work the nail out. At first it wouldn’t budge, so I began wrenching the wooden stave back and forth, widening the hole, hoping to loosen the nail’s bite in the wall. Ignoring Noah’s panicked, guttural screams.