She saw the light on the ceiling above her, as the door opened and closed. A breath of clean air whisked through the stink of the men’s room.
The intruder tried the light switch. She heard the sound of water in the sink. She looked through the crack in the stall door. He was walking back. She hoped he was going to use the urinal, but instead he tried the stall door. He tried it twice. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he thinking: Pretty strange that the door isn’t opening, considering no one else is here? Or was he thinking: I better go to another rest room, this one’s out of order.
She stood there, back against the wall, holding her breath.
She heard his footsteps as he walked away.
She heard him peeing in the urinal. The flush. The door of the room opening and closing.
No sound.
He had left.
Water was still running in the sink.
She figured that she had better get out of there quickly, so she unlocked and opened the stall door and stepped out into the rest room.
He was there. He stood in front of her, blocking her way.
Agnes dropped her purse, gasping. She tried to move, but her limbs seemed to be made of stone.
She couldn’t see his face because of shadow.
He said, “Knew I seen you come in here.”
He reached down and grabbed her around her shoulders. She struggled against him, but he held her tight. He covered her mouth with his hand and took her over to the sink. She managed to work a hand free and slammed it back, hoping to hit him in the face. Instead, her hand went into the mirror, and she felt glass splinters. She grasped one of the glass shards and brought it up to his face and sliced across what she hoped was his ear, when she realized that she could not breathe at all, and that was the last thing Agnes Hatcher remembered until she woke up in the motel room in Las Cruces, her wrists tied together.
“Where am I?”
The man didn’t look at her. He was watching TV. He said, “Las Cruces.”
She began crying.
“I didn’t rape you or nothin’.”
After she finished crying, she said, “please let me go home, mister. Please.”
She knew who he was. He was the manager from the gas station. Mr. Farquhar. She had known him since she was eight.
He said, “Can’t do that.”
She said nothing. Her throat was sore, and she was thirsty. She didn’t want to ask him for a glass of water because she was afraid that he might do something terrible to her. She heard a fly buzzing at the window.
“It’s not awful,” he said. “What I’m gonna do. It’s not awful.”
She shut her eyes and pretended she was Francine and not stupid Agnes Hatcher.
“All I’m gonna do,” he said, “is fulfill my destiny with you.”
“You kidnapping me?” she asked.
“Naw. Can’t call it that. But I know ‘bout who you are…I seen it in your eyes. I know you go in the room to change so other kids’ll think you’re just like them. You and I, we know each other from ways back. Centuries.” He turned to point across to the window, as if behind the curtains and venetian blinds was all of human time. She noticed that part of his ear had been sliced off. I did it, she thought, and her heart beat slightly fast, thinking that she could really hurt him if she wanted. If only her hands weren’t bound. He said, “I been huntin’ you a long time.”
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
He stood and went to the bathroom. She heard water. He returned with a plastic cup full of rusty brown water. He held it up to her lips.
After she took a drink, he said, “Do you remember me?”
She blinked. He seemed to get angry. She was afraid he would hit her.
“You don’t believe me. I’ll show you who you are,” he said. He set the cup down on the night stand, and sat next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. She could smell his sour breath. He squeezed her, and she felt a brief pain as he pinched her. “Look.”
As if she’d been practicing for this all her young life, she said, “My name is Agnes Hatcher, I live in Empire, California. I get straight A’s.”
His eyes grew wide, and then he laughed. “Oh yes, sweet little one,” he said. “You’re hiding from me, I know you’re in there.”
He reached into his pocket and brought out a small, thin-bladed knife. He twisted her head so she was looking at the mirror that leaned against the low dresser.
(Remembering decades later, she thought she’d seen a flicker of it, of that other face.)
He brought the blade up to the edge of her forehead. It was almost a tickling pain as he began skinning her face. He whispered, “Bridey.”
She screamed, but he held her head tightly in place as he continued.
The screams echoed throughout the motel court, and the police were at the room within twenty minutes.
But by that time, the motel room was empty. Her abductor had already packed her into his car, and they were gone down a dirt road that led up into the mountains. It would be six years before she would see the light of day again.
Agnes Hatcher returned to consciousness, in the waiting room of Darden State, blood showering across her fingertips.
In her hands, cupped like a dark red bird.
A human heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Agnes was finished with the woman named Kuehl in less than two minutes. The woman had not had time to cry out, which was for the best. Unlike Donna Howe, the woman was dead, and very quickly.
Agnes Hatcher took the car keys from the woman’s pocket, and her pocketbook. The woman had a Ford Mustang keychain, with a small beeper for an alarm system; forty dollars in cash; one MasterCard. Pictures of husband, children. Driver’s license.
She glanced through the doors to the ward and saw the policeman speaking with one of the therapists.
She went to the double doors. She walked out through them as if she were just coming from a short visit to one of the mentally ill. She remembered a woman’s walk she had once noticed, a sort of rhythm to the way she walked. She could imitate that. In her mind, she pretended she was the woman, and then the walk came easy. No one would notice Agnes Hatcher. They would think it was this other woman, someone who walked with less confidence, with less direction. It took her fewer than three minutes to get to the staff parking lot. She passed no one on her way. It was the afternoon, and even with the police milling around, it was slow, and people were sleepy and inattentive. She held the alarm beeper high up, and pressed it twice. Two high-pitched beeps came from the left of the parking lot. She followed the sound to a blue-gray ‘89 Mustang. She got in, buckled her seatbelt, and put the key in the ignition.
She felt the blood against her skin. It had seeped through Donna Howe’s bulky dress.
It was warm like new milk.
She put the Mustang in reverse, and pulled out of the parking space.
A man in a suit, probably some kind of inspector, waved to her as if he knew her. He had a gray moustache, and very little hair. She thought she had seen him before once or twice.
She smiled and waved, wondering if he could see the blood on her chin. Not caring.
In her head, the one word that had fueled her in the loneliness of her captivity:
Destiny.
As she drove away, within the walls of D Ward at Darden State, she could not know that the second body was found.
She could not know that the police sealed the building within minutes.
Or that Rob Fallon had confessed that the woman named Agnes Hatcher was now hiding beneath the building, in the closed off underground chambers where once upon a time all the patients at Darden had been housed.
Agnes Hatcher knew none of this, but she was assured by her own feeling of her fate that she would reach the only man she had ever loved in time to prove to him that all she had ever done, she had done for him.
She had spent her life searching for him.
And now, they would be together
.
Forever.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“She can’t get out, Trey,” Carly said. “Not with all those people around at Darden. How could she get out?”
Trey shrugged. “Any number of ways. I know her. That was her on the phone just now. With cops searching the place, all the psych techs and doctors are going to be somewhat disoriented. Some of the patients will be acting-out right now because of the commotion. No one is necessarily looking for her, or they’re assuming that she’s somewhere within the gates. To be honest, nobody really knows what she looks like. We’ve got pictures of her when she came in, but her face gets covered most of the time, and she’s been in ten years. She could have a disguise. Who knows with Hatcher? Instead of the Gorgon, she should’ve been called The Chameleon. I’ve seen her imitate people’s voices and mannerisms almost perfectly. She can be anyone she wants.”
“Call Jim. Find out what’s going on.”
“I just tried. The line’s busy. It’ll be busy for the next four hours. I might as well watch the news tonight, I’ll get more information on it than I would over the phone. My assumption is that they know she’s out now. The cops have probably shut down a few miles around Darden. If I were there, maybe I could do something. Maybe not. But I’m here. I’m on vacation. Damn it.”
Carly put her hand on top of her husband’s. She leaned against him. As if with some telepathy, he felt her warmth and love. He drew away from it. He felt cold inside.
Carly let go of him. She sighed. “She’s four hours’ away, surrounded by cops, and she’s probably more than a little disoriented. This is probably the safest place we could be right now.”
“Maybe you’re right. It just has me in knots, what happened. And how the hell did she get this number? What—did she attack Jim? Did she get this from the weekly log? How did she know where to find me?”
Carly raised her eyebrows. “Well, there’s not a lot we can do right now. I know. Let’s go for a walk, okay? Down to the beach.” She stood up and went over to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and withdrew a pair of sweatpants. She slipped into these, and tossed him a pair of khakis.
The world outside, the path down the hillside, all of it was nearly silent against the sound of crashing waves out on the rocks. Because the fourth of July was coming up, banners had been unfurled throughout Avalon proclaiming the upcoming fireworks display on the water. Since it was still early in the week, day tourists were lined up along the docks, waiting to board the boats back to the mainland. The sun had gone beyond the far hills, but was still fairly high in the sky, casting a halo over the small town. Everything in it seemed peaceful and lazy. Carly walked ahead, wrapping her pouch around her waist, wearing flip-flops and sweatpants and that great T-shirt. The smell in the air was vaguely dusty, not as clean as the earlier part of the day, brought by a slight wind from the hills. Trey took it all in at a breath: vacation, he told himself. Vacation. He slipped on his sandals, the Birkenstocks that Carly had given him for his birthday five weeks before, holding onto an old section of wooden fence for support.
“Wait up,” he said.
She turned about, smiling. The sunlight created an aura around her. She drew the small camera from her pouch, and snapped his picture quickly, as if afraid he would lose his expression in the next second.
“Gotcha!” she cried out. She pivoted to the right, and took a picture of the harbor below.
Picture this: A beautiful happy woman, a wife and mother and social worker, caring, loving. With husband and kids. A family. Everything in the world at our feet. Life good for us. And I still can’t enjoy any of this. Not completely. Trey feigned a smile, but it slipped when he caught up with his wife.
She didn’t seem to notice. She took a deep, luxurious breath. “What is that? Hibiscus and—maybe gardenia? Let’s just junk everything and move here.”
She grabbed his arm, shaking it. “Wake up, wake up. I want the happy-go-lucky guy back who I married. I know he’s in there somewhere.”
Trey pulled away from her, and then gave her a sideways hug. His forehead furrowed with worry. “If only I’d been there. I could’ve done something. I know more about Hatcher than the others do.”
Carly, sounding slightly exasperated, said, “That doesn’t matter. They’ll find her inside the gates somewhere. It’ll take six men, but they’ll get her tied down again.”
Wearily, he said, “I don’t know.”
“This job is driving you nuts, Trey. Don’t let it.”
Something in the tone of her voice disturbed him.
“I’m not going to hold it in anymore,” she said.
“Hold what in?”
“This is hard for me to say.”
A minute passed, and it worried him, the way she was acting, the look on her face. They were almost all the way down the path, to the main road. Somehow, he knew what she was going to say.
He touched his fingers to his own lips. He pointed off to some scrub brush on the other side of one of the rows of small cottages.
A doe stood still, watching them also.
Then, it ran off into the underbrush.
“I’d like to wish the world away,” he whispered, kissing her. When he drew back from Carly, it seemed as if his unhappy mood had been passed to her. Her face was etched with concern.
“You have to leave your job, Trey,” she said.
It barely came as a shock to him, this previously unspoken demand. Yet, she looked guilty, as if keeping from saying these words was tantamount to cheating on him or abandoning him.
“Trey, I mean it. Not just think about quitting, but actually just do it. You have to leave your job because I don’t want you like this ever again. And you’re like this all the time. Almost relaxed, almost here with me and the kids, but not completely. You’re always part there, and it consumes you. I can’t manage with half a husband, and I won’t let the kids have half a father. You need to get out.” Carly had never been this direct about her anger over his work. It had always come out in little jokes, or a graveyard humor about the tragedies and near-misses at Darden. Now, she even looked cross. Sometimes, Trey had trouble keeping things in perspective, and it got the dog up in him to be told what to do—to leave his job, not nudged, not asked, not manipulated into leaving it, but to be directly told to leave it.
Then, he calmed down. He felt like a man defeated. She was right. He had to leave his work at Darden.
“It’s funny,” he began. “You get into a place like that when you’re young and you think you can make a difference. You think you can actually save someone. But you can’t. Not just at Darden, but anywhere. My dad was wrong. He always told me you could save someone if you kept yourself strong and prepared, but you can’t. You can only save yourself.”
“Oh, Trey,” Carly said. “It’s not that melodramatic. You can do all kinds of things. It’s just I don’t want our children to lose their father because he’s too tied up in the lives of criminals. I don’t want to lose you, either. We need our life. That place is too dangerous, and you’re too sensitive. I know you’re good at your work, but you need to get more out of life than just work.”
They kept walking, and as Trey glanced down the hillside, he thought he saw the kids down below, near one of the ice cream parlors. Where was Jenny?
“Carly, is that Terry and Mark?”
She looked across the thin slice of the main drag that she could see clearly. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell.”
“Jenny’s not with them,” he said.
“I’m sure she’s around there somewhere. Don’t panic.”
“We’re paying her to stay right with them.”
“Enough.” Carly stopped in her tracks. “Nothing is going to happen to them here. See what that place has done to you? You think everywhere is like that ward. Well, it’s not. Trey, you always go off like this, as if the worst thing’s going to happen, as if everything has to be a life and death situation.”
He could tell that she wished she
hadn’t said those words. Not exactly in that way. Not those words.
Life and death.
The white flash in the dark morning.
The gun.
The shadow against the dark.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
They didn’t even have to talk about it directly.
It had happened, and then it was over.
A year ago, almost. The man had been released from Darden State because some loopy psychiatrist believed that he was “cured,” but Trey had known better. The man was a sociopath named Wilson. And Wilson had told the others on his ward that if he ever got out, he’d hunt down anyone who had ever hurt him, including Trey. Trey had one nightmare after the next about Wilson, what he had seen Wilson do to people, from the autopsy photographs of the family in Long Beach. Trey bought a gun and then spent three months at a target range in San Bernardino learning how to shoot it.
And then, one morning.
When it was still dark.
The noise in the kitchen.
The fear, creeping up the back of Trey’s neck.
Knowing that Teresa’s room was near the kitchen.
Knowing that Wilson was loose and out to get revenge.
Trey went, shivering, with the gun, down the hall, through the living room.
In the dark.
Someone was at the backdoor. By the kitchen.
In the dark morning.
Trey stood in the doorway to the kitchen.
The morning light seemed purple.
The shadow against the dark was the exact shape of Wilson.
Trey could never be sure that he didn’t rewrite his memory. Still, he felt even then that he knew that it wasn’t Wilson, but he didn’t care, because this was an intruder in his house.
He couldn’t even remember actually drawing the trigger back.
All he remembered was the white flash in the dark.
And then, with the light on, seeing the man.
Where the bullet entered.
Trey began jogging down the path on the island, past the summer cottages, past the Zane Grey Hotel, not towards his children, but away from the memory. He had managed to stop thinking about it for four days straight and now it was back. It had him. He could hear Carly calling for him, but he had to run. He had to do something to get the memory out of his head.
[Criminally Insane 01.0] Bad Karma Page 7
