Forgotten Place

by LS Sygnet

  My spirit wilted at what I saw. This was no pharmacy. It was a long abandoned treatment room. A table bearing an old stained mattress was bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. Leather restraints were still attached at the four corners. Another chair that looked like an implement designed for dental torture sat off in one dank corner. The deep metal tub once used to immerse patients in icy water for hydrotherapy was adjacent to the chair.

  Two walls were decorated with built in construction that didn't look as old as the wooden bench bed. The first was lined with a series of cabinets. The long doors were narrow and stretched from floor almost to the ceiling. I wondered what they might contain that would necessitate deadbolt locks and no doorknobs. A long wooden counter had been built against the opposite stone wall. Stainless steel trays held a variety of implements, from padded tongue blades to electrodes and something that looked suspiciously like an ice pick lay on one shiny tray.

  "That's right, detective. Get a good look. Soak it all in and think long and hard about how far you're willing to take this before you're willing to answer our questions."

  "Like what?" I whispered. Screw the law, I was ready to babble like a fool right now. Plan A, the one in which I simply found Datello on the street and gunned him down in cold blood and forgot the consequences that would attach suddenly seemed like the most rational plan in the world.

  Carl gripped my ponytail and jerked backward hard. I cried out from the pain that shot through my shoulder. He hissed over it into my ear, "Like where that goddamn disk is!"

  Something harder than stone smashed into the back of my head. White lights burst in tiny explosions on the backs of my eyelids before the world faded to black.

  ~

  When my eyes fluttered open, I wasn't sure where I was or what had happened to me. At least I assumed my eyes were open. The world was pitch black again. I tried to move, but found that I was wedged tightly into a very confined space.

  Or was I simply restrained in the dark? My fingers started a quick exploration. Smooth, but not cold like stone brushed against nerve endings that now must serve as eyesight. There were no cracks or crevices where mortar had cemented stone or brick into a wall. It felt like... wood.

  Awareness flooded my consciousness. Was this the bed in the middle of that treatment room? Had I been tied to it? Almost simultaneous to my terror, I realized that my legs were not restrained any more than my arms were. Nor was I lying down. What the hell?

  I'm standing? Barely conscious but standing? I tried to shift my position, but wherever I was, the tight fit had me wedged in like a sardine in a very small tin can.

  "This is not good," I whispered. "Oh, Johnny, where are you? Please don't be so angry that you don't bother to look for me this time!"

  The sound of a heavy object impacting stone froze my frantic movements for a moment. Laughter followed.

  "You dumb son of a bitch. I can't believe you came out here sniffin' after your girlfriend without bringing your little minions along for the ride. Hey Carl, when they said love is blind, you think they really meant stupid?"

  That voice I recognized. It was the guard that tricked me into the stairwell a little while ago. Or had it been longer than a little while? I heard another thud and a soft groan.

  "Bigger they are, the harder they fall, eh, Carl?"

  "Shut up, Mike. We need this done before the boss gets here. He'll want to get started right away."

  "You like this shit too much," Mike said. "Just like that creepy ambulance detail gig."

  Ambulance gig? Oh lord. Those weren't real paramedics that tried to save McNamara and Southerby! Datello hired these thugs to make sure both men died!

  I pressed my ear to the wood and listened closely. Who did they have outside my prison? Your little girlfriend...

  Was it Johnny? It couldn't be. Oh no... no-no-no. Zack? I'd gone to the party with him tonight. Is it still tonight? Did my babbling about the ADA knowing where I was necessitate his abduction? Did they think Zack knew where this disk was too?

  "He's ready. Go let him know. I'll keep an eye on this one," Painless Carl said. I suspected that whatever he had in mind was the polar opposite of painless. My heart ached for what my foolishness was about to cause Zack. I twisted my body in an effort to determine the dimensions encasing me. If only I could get some leverage...

  My left shoulder, throbbing now despite Painless Carl's promise not to inflict more injury, was wedged against what I suspected was the door to my coffin. The thought sent a chill up my spine. Cold beads of sweat erupted on my forehead. Dear God, are they going to bury me alive if I don't cooperate?

  A third voice joined the fray when Mike rejoined Painless Carl. The deep timbre struck an oddly familiar chord, but because it was so spotty, words hushed and too low to understand let alone identify, it remained unknown. The raucous laughter was unmistakable, even if I couldn't distinguish Mike from Painless Carl from the newcomer. The jeering tones increased.

  My heart broke for Zack. Should I be one of those infamous atheists praying my heart out in the fox hole? What if they killed him? I would die of guilt if my stupidity, that tendency toward impatience cost an innocent man his life.

  A low hum vibrated through the wood against my ear, then a loud snap, a pop... the arc of electrical voltage. The answering shriek of pain, muffled though it was, made me remember the padded tongue blade I saw on the instrument tray earlier. How much earlier?

  My fingers scrabbled against the barrier that blocked me from whatever atrocity was being committed. Finally, they encountered something other than smooth wood. What was it? The crack that could provide my escape? No, they were grooves, not very long, evenly spaced, lacking uniform width...

  Nausea roiled in my gut. Oh dear God, save me! Foreign words, prayerful and the most sincere things I'd ever uttered fired from my brain into the cosmos like automatic weapon fire. The marks were clawed into the wood by someone else's fingernails.

  Voltage crackled through the air again, drowning out wicked laughter. Shrieking, a terrible sound the likes of which I hadn't heard before continued, faded and ended on a low moan. Poor Zack. Oh God, please forgive me for all my selfishness. I'll do the right thing. I'll stop lying to people. Please, take me instead of Zack. Don't let him die.

  I wanted to cover my ears but I couldn't free my hands from the confines of the tight space. The cycles of voltage seemed to stretch longer and longer. Between the bouts of torture, that low unknown voice spoke. The whimpered responses left no room for doubt. Whoever this sick bastard was, he was asking Zack for information he didn't have.

  "I say we use the pick," Mike laughed, "then haul that bitch out of the closet and let her see what's in store for her if she refuses to cooperate."

  The low rasp rippled through the wall, muffled but unmistakable. "Doc..."

  "Oh my God!" The shrieking was mine this time. "Johnny! Oh, Johnny! Stop hurting him you bastards! I'll kill you, I swear to God I'll kill every last one of you!"

  Frantic, I started slamming one fist against the door without enough leverage to do more than make a pathetic thump against the wall.

  "Are you ready to cooperate, detective?" Painless Carl's voice dripped venomous glee. "What did I tell you? Fastest way to get the bitch to cooperate was to go after the guy she loves. Works like a charm every time."

  I jammed my aching shoulder against the door. "I'll tell you anything you want to know, just stop torturing him! You'll kill him, you ignorant fools!"

  The taunting whisper was so close, it could only have come directly from the other side of the door to my black cage. "But Helen, that's rather the idea. We could've had this all dispensed when you came to see Jerry the first time, but you didn't bring the right escort."

  Air rushed into my lungs. "Sykes? Is that you?"

  He laughed. "They told me how bright you were. Too little too late, sweetheart. Tell me what I want to know now, and I'll put Orion out of his misery quickly. Otherwise, I may be tempted to take Mike's
advice and lobotomize him... and let him live out the rest of his miserable existence drooling and shitting himself. Is that what you want?"

  "No!" the sob tore from my throat. "I swear to you, I don't know where the disk is. We've been looking for it. I only know where it isn't. Please don't hurt Johnny. Torture me. Kill me. I don't care what happens to me, just leave him alone. Please leave him alone."

  Sykes chuckled. "It would seem our friend was wrong about you, Helen. You're not quite the faithless bitch he led me to believe you were. Tell me, did you love your husband as much as you do Orion?"

  I froze while the blackness around me quaked. That was it. It was the confession I sought all along. Danny Datello was pulling the strings, the man orchestrating the search for David Ireland's disk.

  A little steel fused into my spine. "Why don't you have my cowardly ex-cousin-in-law come down here and finish me off in person? That is, if he has the balls to actually kill someone."

  "That's a measure you find important, isn't it Helen? Who has the guts to kill. Who simply leaves it in the hands of those who enjoy the task. Did you enjoy killing Danny's cousin?"

  "No," I rasped.

  "Oh, so someone held a gun to your head and made you pull the trigger?"

  "I should've done it slower. He didn't deserve to die so quickly," I spat. "Open this door, you gutless son of a bitch. Face me like a man – if you've got the nerve."

  "Is that what Daddy would do?" Sykes taunted. "Would he want out to see his killer, to look him in the eye before the end came?"

  "You're not fit to wipe his ass," I whispered. "You're spineless, just like Datello. You can kill me, Sykes, you can kill Johnny, but you'll never find what you're looking for. And people will never stop coming after Datello until he's rotting in prison for the rest of his life."

  "Such bravado, such certainty," Sykes began. But the sound of iron crashing against stone drowned out everything for a moment.

  Then I heard it, the sweetest voice I'd ever known. "Darkwater Bay PD! Drop the... battery cables!"

  Sounds of scuffle, a single shot fired, and then yelling battered the wall to my prison. I started jamming my shoulder with all my weight against the wood.

  "In here! Open the door, I'm in here! Tony Briscoe, I'm in here!" I screamed until I was hoarse, unable to process what was shouted back at me. I kept ramming against the wood with as much might as the restrictive space would allow.

  The door popped open and I tumbled out into Devlin Mackenzie's arms.

  "Jesus," he rasped. "You're bleeding."

  "Let go of me," I shoved away on unstable footing and nearly fell in my rush to get across the space to the middle of the room where Johnny lay on the wooden bed, freshly stained from the indignity he suffered. I tore the leads from his temples and cupped his face. Glassy eyes met mine.

  "Johnny... oh, baby, I'm so sorry," I wept. "I'm so, so sorry."

  "Miss, you need to step aside."

  I glanced up at the face of a sober paramedic and immediately suspected that he wasn't the real deal. "You're not touching him, damn you! Not until I see your credentials. ID, license, name of your supervisor! Right now, damn you, right now!"

  Crevan's arm slipped around my waist and pulled me backward. At the same time, Johnny's body stiffened and started to convulse. His eyes rolled into the back of his head.

  I let out an anguished cry and tore free from Crevan's restraining arm. "Let me be!"

  "Maybe it would be best if she came along in the ambulance," the other paramedic said.

  "So you can finish what Datello started? Do I look crazy to you?"

  Briscoe arched one eyebrow. "You aren't seriously asking that question, Helen, because frankly, yeah, you do look a little crazy right now. I realize you been through some sorta trauma here –"

  My ears tuned him out. Wild eyes scanned the room. Mike, the armed security guard, lay glassy eyed on the floor with a large dark red pool seeping out from his chest. Painless Carl had the boot of a uniformed officer pinning his back down to the floor. Sykes in his cheap three piece suit looked as smug as if he'd made off with the Mona Lisa out of the Louvre. I stomped toward him.

  "I will kill you if it's the last thing I do, you son of a bitch!" I hissed, my nose close enough to nearly brush his.

  He grinned. "Good luck proving anything, you murderous bitch. Your word against mine. I'll see you in hell before I say a fucking word. I want an attorney."

  Crevan and Devlin restrained me this time before I could claw Sykes' eyeballs out of his skull. The paramedics caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. Johnny had an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose and still jerked violently from the improperly performed electroconvulsive therapy.

  "Let me go!"

  "Calm down, Helen," Devlin murmured in my ear. "They're trying to help him. Don't you want him to get medical attention?"

  "Yes," I sobbed, "but you don't understand. They used fake paramedics to make sure McNamara died. Please don't trust these guys, Devlin. They'll kill Johnny if we don't stop them."

  One of the paramedics looked at Crevan. "Give her a gun."

  "What?" Many stunned voices spoke in unison.

  "We need to get this guy to the hospital now. If she's gonna interfere, give her a gun to protect them, and send us on our way. I know who I am, that I'm legit. She doesn't. Give her the gun and let her protect this guy until she figures out we're trying to help."

  I tore Crevan's weapon out of his holster and chambered a round. "No funny business. I'm not fucking around, do you hear me?"

  "Ma'am, we've got to start an IV and get him out of here. He needs lorazepam to stop these seizures before his brain is completely fried."

  That sounded about right. "Do it," I nodded curtly, "but I want to see the vial before you medicate him."

  The first paramedic I accosted spoke to his partner without breaking eye contact with me. "Fair enough. Louie, let's get to work."

  I tucked the gun in the waist of my leggings and followed the gurney down the dark, earthen hallway.

  "Helen, you need medical attention yourself. You're bleedin' all over the back of your shirt," Tony said.

  "I don't care! Let go of me, Tony, or so help me –"

  "Don't you wanna know who you just threatened to kill?" His hand thrust out and held the elevator doors.

  "It's Monte Sykes, administrator of this hospital."

  "Well, if that don't beat all," Tony shook his head and chuckled. "No, that ain't who he is, Helen. You just went toe to toe with the devil himself, Mr. Mitchell Southerby."

  Chapter 35

  I threatened the triage nurse with grave bodily harm if she tried to get anybody to examine the laceration on the back of my head. I didn't care if it was gushing like Old Faithful. My mind was on one thing and one thing alone: was Johnny going to be all right? Beyond that, I felt no need to apologize for my raging paranoia toward the paramedics that finally stopped his seizures five minutes before rolling into the ambulance bay at MSUH. I did not deem it necessary to explain to hospital security why I would not be giving custody of Crevan's Glock to them.

  The only thing that mattered at all in the grand scheme of things was that Johnny was hurt, and it was my fault. Not sort of my fault. I was as responsible for what happened to him as if I'd stood over his body, applied the electrodes to his skin, and zapped him with battery cables myself.

  Tony and Crevan weren't far behind the ambulance.

  "Don't make me wrestle you for that gun," Crevan thrust one hand forward and demanded his sidearm.

  "You ready to level with us about what happened out there at Dunhaven tonight, Helen?" Briscoe wore the bulldog face, the one that announced to the world that the only thing that would save me from explaining myself was a deep coma, and that was iffy.

  "What did it look like happened?" I paced the high gloss off the shiny tiles outside the trauma room, where I was absolutely denied entry.

  "Don't get smart with me, missy. That man in there happen
s to mean the world to a lot of people, and even though I doubt he'd blame you for what happened to him tonight, I got a feelin' that's exactly whose fault it is. Did you or did you not ditch him to serve a search warrant at Dunhaven without proper backup?"

  The trauma room doors burst open, and Johnny's unconscious body was pushed through on another gurney. I started to follow. "Where are you taking him? What's happening?"

  A doctor in putrid green scrubs stepped forward. "Are you his next of kin?"

  Two voices barked an emphatic no while I insisted that I was. "I love him," I told the doctor. Tears fell so fast they barely touched cheek before dripping to the floor. "You've got to tell me if he's all right. Please."

  Fortunately for me, the doctor took pity where Briscoe and Conall's well had long ago run dry where I was concerned. He cupped my elbow and led me to the side of the hall. "Commander Orion is heavily sedated with a drug called lorazepam that was used to stop his seizures. I understand from the paramedics that delivered him tonight that he was subjected to some kind of dark ages version of electroconvulsive therapy."

  "Yes, yes," I whispered thickly. "Please tell me he's going to survive."

  "Of course he is. Right now, we're taking him upstairs to radiology for a CT scan of his head. It's just a precaution. I don't think he's going to suffer any long term ill effects. At most, the contact burns on his forehead will be a little uncomfortable for a few days, and he may experience some minor memory loss, nothing important though. We're talking about very short term memories. He won't wake up with anterograde amnesia or anything like that. We're going to keep him over night and monitor his brain activity to make sure we've really stopped the seizures. In a few days, he'll need another electroencephalogram done to make sure he's not having mini seizures. He could be on some medication to prevent them until his brain recovers from the jolt he took tonight."

  I wanted to hug the doctor, to kiss his feet and bear his children if that's what would convince him of my gratitude.

  "When you say memory loss," Crevan butted into the conversation, "what exactly are we talking about here?"