by James Swain
Sonny kicked him in the ass and lifted him off the ground. “Find them.”
Burton pulled off the lids and started looking. It took awhile, but he eventually found the tags stuffed inside a wad of receipts. He wiped the tags on his shirt, and gave them to Sonny, then tried to shake Sonny’s hand to show there were no hard feelings. Sonny growled at him, and Burton lowered his arm.
“See you around,” I said.
CHAPTER 39
I awoke the next morning feeling like I’d stepped back twenty years. My rented room above the Sunset looked like my old college dorm room. A few sickly pieces of furniture, and a mattress on the floor. Buster lay beside me, head resting on my chest.
I hit the beach and took my dog for a long run, followed by a hard twenty-minute swim. I was sucking down my second cup of java when my cell phone rang. Sonny moved down the bar, and I took the call.
“I thought we were having dinner last night,” Burrell said, sounding pissed.
“I’m sorry. I had to help a friend recover some stolen goods.”
“How many times did you hit the guy?”
“I didn’t lay a hand on him, Your Honor.”
“I’ve heard that line out of you before.”
An elderly couple came into the bar and inquired about breakfast. Seven in the morning and they were both dressed like they were going to church. I was soaking wet from my swim, and saw them stare at me. I headed outside.
I stood in the building’s cool shade. The tide was up, the crash of waves as loud as a passing train. I lifted the phone to my face. “Sorry about that. How did your search for the file on Daybreak go?”
“Not good,” Burrell said.
My spirits sagged. If I couldn’t identify Lonnie and Mouse outside of their first names, I’d never find Sara. “What happened?”
“I went to the police stockade like you suggested. The Daybreak file was stored in a box from 1990. It’s pretty thick-maybe a hundred pages long. I took it home, and read through it over cold Chinese.”
I made a mental footnote to take Burrell out to dinner someday soon. Otherwise, she’d probably never speak a civil word to me again.
“What did the file say?” I asked.
“I couldn’t read half of it. The pages were blacked out with Magic Marker. There was a memo in the front of the file that said the information had been censored from the file to protect the rights of the patients.”
“Was there a roster of patients’ names?”
“Yes. It had been blacked out as well. I took the page to the lab, and had a tech scan it with ultraviolet light. Unfortunately, the Magic Marker had wiped out the writing. The tech said it was hopeless.”
I leaned against the building. Hopeless. It was a word that rarely slipped into my vocabulary, yet it was exactly how I felt right now.
“I scanned the pages that were legible into my computer, and e-mailed them to you,” Burrell said. “Maybe there’s a clue hidden somewhere in those pages.”
“How many pages did you send?”
“All of them.”
That had probably taken Burrell a few hours. I felt like a real heel.
“I’ll go look at them right now,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back last night. I owe you dinner.”
“Yes, you do,” Burrell said.
She was gone before I could say good-bye.
Dogs do not know failure, at least not any I’d been around. They treated each day like a new adventure, their spirits never wavering. This was especially true for Buster. He rode to my office with his tail wagging, ready for whatever challenges the day held. I wanted to share his enthusiasm, but it was hard. I was running out of road.
I parked by Tugboat Louie’s front door. Thirty seconds later, I was in my office, booting up my computer. I went into e-mail, and opened Burrell’s missive. The pages she’d sent to me were hard to read, but that didn’t stop me. I was determined to read every line on every page, no matter how long it took.
Several hours later my cell phone rang. I had a splitting headache from staring at the computer screen, and I pulled myself away and looked at the face of my phone. It was Jessie, the light of my life. I turned away from the computer to speak with her.
“Hey honey, how’s it going?” I answered.
“I’m okay. How are you? I hadn’t talked to you in awhile, and wanted to see how things were going. Mom called me this morning, and I filled her in. I thought you were going to call her. You said you would.”
Another broken promise. I’d left a trail of those recently. But the fact was, my job was the reason Rose and I were no longer together. Calling my wife when I was in the middle of a job would only exacerbate the problem, so I hadn’t called. I said, “I know this is going to sound like a lie, but I haven’t had a moment free.”
“Are you still looking for Sara?” my daughter asked.
“Yes. It’s consuming every minute of my day.”
“Some kids are going around campus saying that if the police don’t find a missing person within forty-eight hours, they almost never do. Is that true?”
“No, honey, it’s not.”
Jessie went silent. Normally, she had more words in her than a dictionary. I guessed the loss of her friend and teammate was starting to sink in.
“I want to help,” my daughter finally said.
“What about your classes?”
“I’m done for the day.”
I hesitated. I normally didn’t get my family involved in cases, only Jessie had already helped me link Mouse and Lonnie to three other abductions.
“You’re on,” I said.
“Great. What do you want me to do?”
“There was a mental health facility in Broward called Daybreak that got shut down. I want you to go online, and see what information you can find about the place. I’m interested in finding a list of patient names.”
“Are these the guys who kidnapped Sara?”
“Yes. Their first names are Lonnie and Mouse. If I can find out their last names, I can contact social security, and learn where they’re originally from. It’s a slim lead, but I need to have it run down.”
“I’ll get on it right away.”
“Thanks. Please don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
“I won’t tell a soul,” my daughter said.
I spent the rest of the morning and a few hours into the afternoon pouring over the Daybreak file on my computer. The majority of what I read was medical mumbo jumbo that didn’t have any bearing on my search. Whenever I did run across something that felt promising, I was met with the black line from a Magic Marker.
By the time I reached the last page, my brain was fried and I didn’t know any more than when I’d started. I needed to take my frustration out on something, and chose the plastic garbage pail beside my desk. My kick sent it clear across the office, where it bounced off the wall and left an ugly bruise. I should have felt better, only I didn’t.
My cell phone rang. It was Jessie. Perhaps my daughter had found the information that had so far eluded me, and I excitedly flipped open my phone.
“I hope your morning was more productive than mine,” I said.
“I’m pulling my hair out,” Jessie said. “I Googled Daybreak, and found over ten thousand places where it’s referenced. I went to a few hundred of those places, and tried to find your information. Every time I thought I’d found what you were looking for, the site told me that the information had been deleted.”
More bad news. Buster had retrieved the garbage pail and brought it back to me. I pulled open my desk drawer and tossed him a dog treat.
“I did find one thing that looked promising,” she said.
I sat up straight in my chair. “What’s that?”
“I found a website called browardoddities. com. It’s got all sorts of crazy stuff about Broward County posted on it, including some information about Daybreak. I did another search, and discovered that a guy named Ray Hinst runs the site. I searched
his name, got his number, and called him. Hinst lives in Broward, and sounds like a decent guy. He told me that he worked as an orderly at Daybreak. He offered to give you a tour of the place, if you’re interested.”
“Hinst gives tours?”
“Yeah. He said a lot of thrill-seekers like to go into the buildings, but don’t like to go alone. I guessed you’d want to hear what Hinst had to say, so I arranged a tour for you. Hinst agreed to meet you at Daybreak’s front gates at three o’clock.”
I checked the time. I was going to have to move fast if I was going to make it.
“This is really great,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Maybe I can be your assistant one day.”
Jessie’s words sent an icy finger down my spine. Nothing would have made me happier than to have my daughter working by my side. But not at this. I had seen too many bad things to want my only child to follow in these footsteps. Anything but this.
“We’ll have to talk about that sometime,” I said.
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes, it’s a promise.”
“Good-bye, Daddy.”
CHAPTER 40
I got onto 595 and punched the gas. My Legend was old but the engine still had some kick. I pushed the speedometer up to seventy, and kept it there.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Jessie how much Ray Hinst was going to charge me for a tour of the Daybreak facility. Not that it really mattered; I would give him every bill in my wallet to hear what he had to say.
I weighed calling Rose. She deserved to hear what was going on, especially my two visits to the hospital. Those things mattered to her. But something told me that I shouldn’t. We got along great when I wasn’t working, but right now I was working. Better to wait until the case was done before we hooked up again.
Soon I was in the western part of the county. Fewer buildings, more farmland and pastures, lots of dirty pickup trucks on the road. It reminded me of growing up, which didn’t seem so long ago.
Highway 27 appeared. I headed north on it. A mile up the road I spotted a dead possum on the side. My daddy used to think that road-kill was a sign of a healthy forest.
To me, it just meant that people drove too damn fast.
I found the entrance to Daybreak and turned. The road was unpaved, and my car lurched violently every few yards. Buster was leaning out the open passenger window, and I grabbed him by the collar to make sure he didn’t fall out.
Reaching the entrance, I hit my brakes. The guardhouse was boarded up, and had “No Trespassing” signs plastered on its sides. I looked around but didn’t see Hinst.
I drove into the facility. The buildings looked more ominous at ground level than they had from the chopper. Vandals had knocked out all the windows and spray-painted black graffiti on the walls. It gave the place a ghostly feel and made me understand why thrill-seekers would come here. I parked in the courtyard, leashed my dog, and got out.
“Are you Jack?” a gravelly voice asked.
I turned around. A man in his early sixties wearing battle camouflage and a safari hat had materialized behind me. Buster curled his upper lip and let out a menacing growl. Hinst was good. I hadn’t heard him approach.
“That’s me,” I said. “This is my dog, Buster.”
“I’m Ray. I’m not particularly fond of dogs. Your daughter said you were interested in a tour. My going rate is fifty bucks an hour, paid up front.”
I gave Hinst a hundred-dollar bill, hoping it would soften him up. He stuffed the money into his pants pocket while giving me a hard look.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“You don’t look like the people that normally come out here, that’s all.”
“What do they look like?”
“Weirdos.”
“I’m weird on the inside.”
“Your daughter said you were interested in the place, but didn’t elaborate.”
Jessie hadn’t told Hinst that I was working on a case, or that I was an ex-cop. That kind of information normally put people on the defensive. Better for Hinst to think that I was some local yokel looking to kill an afternoon. I smiled loosely.
“I always heard stories about this place, figured it was time to come out, and take a look.” I took out my trusty pack of gum, and offered him a stick. Hinst’s eyes told me that he wanted a piece, yet he shook his head. Still didn’t trust me. “I mentioned it to my daughter, and she went online and found your website. You know how kids are.”
“Don’t have any kids. Where do you want to start?”
“Your call.”
“Follow me. We’ll go to Building A first. That was where they kept the real crazies. Keep your mutt on a short leash. I don’t want him biting me in the ass.”
We crossed the courtyard to Building A. Hinst walked with a slight hitch, and seemed to favor his left leg. It looked painful, yet didn’t seem to slow him down.
Hinst entered the building, and I followed. We walked down a short hall, and passed a number of windowless cubicles. The ground floor was carpeted with flaking paint that blossomed from the walls and ceiling like rose petals. Hinst produced a flashlight, and pointed its beam at a stairwell in front of us. With Hansel-and-Gretel-like caution, someone had tied the end of a spool of purple yarn to the bannister. The thin purple line unspooled up the flight of stairs and into vast darkness on the next floor.
“Whoever used the yarn was probably coming in here for the first time,” Hinst explained. “They didn’t want to get lost. You don’t want to get lost in here.”
“No, sir,” I said.
Hinst started up the stairs. “This place used to be a small city. Had its own power plant, fire station, hospital, movie theater, even its own bakery. World unto itself.”
“How many patients?” I asked.
“At its heyday, about five thousand. This building held the bad ones.”
“Bad in what way?” I asked.
Hinst squinted over his shoulder at me. “This building housed the criminally insane, the guys that were never getting let back into society. We had blood drinkers and cannibals and people that if you let out on the street, they’d kill every single person in sight until you hauled them back in. It was a horror show.”
“Did you ever work in this building?”
“Yup. Got out of the Marines in ‘72 and took a job here working security. Stayed until they shut the place down.”
We had reached the top of the stairs. Still talking, Hinst trailed off to my left and went down another hallway. I followed him, feeling my skin tingle. I had finally found someone who could answer my questions.
Hinst entered a room and shut off his flashlight. Sunlight streamed in from a dozen barred windows, revealing a massive kitchen with canopies of an exhaust fan system that stretched across the ceiling like the wings of a giant aluminum bird.
“This was where the grub was fixed,” Hinst explained. “Next door was the dining room. It was sort of funny. When we brought the crazies in here and fed them, they calmed down, just like in the army.”
Our next stop was the sleeping quarters. The room was large and low-ceilinged to the point of feeling claustrophobic. A number of metal beds had been piled up in the corners, their rusted box springs hanging out like innards.
“What about in here?” I said.
“Nothing happened here,” Hinst grunted.
He started to leave. I sensed that he didn’t enjoy being in this space. On the other side of the room was a wall covered with drawings done in black ink. The drawings were grotesque; in one, a man was swallowing a woman whole, with her feet dangling from his gaping mouth. In another, a zombie warrior held a sword dripping with blood in one hand, a decapitated head in the other. I crossed the room for a better look.
“That’s just some shit somebody drew,” Hinst said.
“An inmate?” I asked.
Hinst didn’t reply, which only confirmed my suspicion. I got up close to the wall. The drawings were definitely t
he product of a sick mind.
“You gonna spend all day in here?” Hinst asked impatiently.
I ignored him and moved down the wall, soaking in every image. Drawings told you a lot about a person, and the emotions swirling inside of them. The artist responsible for these images had gone over to the dark side a long time ago.
At the end of the wall, I stopped. Staring back at me was a drawing of a giant. The giant held a man by the throat, and was squeezing him so hard that the man’s eyeballs were exploding out of his skull. The giant looked like Lonnie.
I turned around to ask Hinst a question, and found him gone. I crossed the room and went into the hallway. Hinst was leaning against a wall, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He tried to light it with a paper match, only to drop the packet of matches to the floor.
Picking the matches up, I lit his cigarette.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a deep drag.
I rested my hand on his arm. Hinst looked like he’d seen a ghost. Or worse, a roomful of ghosts. He lifted his eyes from the floor to look at me.
“Tell me what happened in there,” I said.
CHAPTER 41
Nothing,” Hinst said.
I tightened my grip on his arm. “In the other room there’s a drawing on the wall of a giant, and he’s killing a man with his bare hands. That’s Lonnie, isn’t it?”
Hinst’s head snapped. “You know about Lonnie?”
“Yes. I’m chasing him.”
“Jesus Christ. I thought for sure someone would have killed him by now.”
Hinst took another drag on his cigarette, went to the barred window at the hallway’s end, stared out at the courtyard. “I used to think that I’d never stop having nightmares about Vietnam. Then I came to work here, and had new ones.”
“How did Lonnie end up here?”
Hinst looked at me, saw something in my face that made him reach for his pack. He offered me one. I hadn’t smoked in years, yet I took the cigarette anyway, and filled my lungs with smoke.
“Lonnie got sent here as a kid,” Hinst said. “Mother and two sisters raised him. He was a giant, and he was also retarded. When he got a little older, he started to hump one of his sisters, so his mom made him live in the basement. I guess that changed him.”
