by Ed Gorman
This was what Jenny saw, Gretchen with her keys, when she came around the same right corner Gretchen had taken a few moments earlier.
Gretchen got the door open and waved Jenny inside hurriedly.
The place was a large, square storage room. Large bags of everything from peat moss to dry puppy food to road salt were stacked ten high and five wide against one wall. Against another wall were boxes of everything from laundry soap to tampons to glassware. There were also new rakes, new sealed window frames, new toilet bowls. The hospital was a big operation.
Gretchen passed quickly through this room. Jenny followed her down a short, shadowy corridor to a second door. The jangle of keys again as Gretchen bent to match key to lock.
And that was when the alarm sounded.
It was an impressive alarm, whooping, looping, an audio spear jammed deep into the ear canal. It could reduce most people to quivering heaps in moments. It not only reached your hearing, it reached your soul. Jenny clamped her hands over her ears.
Gretchen pushed into the second room. A massive furnace and air-conditioning unit crouched in the center of the concrete floor like a giant and obstinate alien machine.
Gretchen hurried past the equipment to a far wall where another door had been built into the wall.
Gretchen took from her pocket a device that looked like a phone beeper. She pointed it at the door and pressed one of four buttons on the device. The door swung slowly open. There was nothing beyond the door but more concrete wall. Which made no sense.
Jenny could hear them shouting. Barcroft and some others at the first door now. Like Gretchen, they'd have keys. It wouldn't take them long to get in here.
Jenny wondered if Gretchen had finally lost all her sanity. How could a blank wall be an escape route?
Gretchen pressed a button on the black device she held in her hand. At first, nothing happened. Then Jenny heard a noise, a rumble really, as something heavy-but what?-began to slowly move.
The wall began to move. To the right. And the more it moved, the faster it moved, revealing a small circular tunnel opening. The tunnel material seemed to be aluminum.
"I sure hope you're not real claustrophobic," Gretchen said over her shoulder, as she crawled into the dark tunnel.
"I'm very claustrophobic," Jenny said.
"Then this really isn't going to be any fun for you."
Then Gretchen was gone, swallowed up by the cold, grave-smelling gloom inside the tunnel.
Shouts now, closer. Barcroft and his men.
Jenny could hear them at the second door. It sounded like a large mob of them. Only moments away.
The tunnel opening was built low into the wall for easy access. She climbed inside. The darkness and the chill overwhelmed her. She could feel herself shrinking from the tomblike passage that awaited her. Clawing, clawing to be set free. Getting lost in utter blackness. But she needed to escape Quinlan. Had to.
She crawled deeper inside. Far down the tunnel, she could hear Gretchen moving fast.
The second door burst open and the people rushed in. Only one door away now. She had to hurry. Gretchen must have been able to hear her, too. The door was beamed shut, apparently with Gretchen's remote device. The darkness was utter and complete now.
Jenny began to make her way through the grave-narrow tunnel.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
When she was finished talking, Mrs. Cummings led Coffey back into the house from the patio, and to a small, nicely appointed room on the second floor. The windows had louvered shutters on them, the wine-red carpet was deep and plush, the desk was mahogany, and armchairs real leather. The walls were covered with various plaques and other mementos from Cummings' police years. He'd been a good cop.
She said, "The police went through his desk. They didn't find much. He wasn't a stupid man. He knew not to leave important things in a desk." She reached into the pocket of her slacks and took out a small, folded piece of white paper. "This is a combination to a safe. You'll find it on the floor of the closet over there. Covered by carpeting. The police didn't find it. Why don't you look through it?"
"I really appreciate this."
"It's for his sake." She looked wistful. "He was the only man who ever knew how to love me. He gave me my space, but he wasn't foolish enough to give me too much space because he'd knew I'd roam on him if he did." She was getting teary again. "There won't ever be another one like him, not in my life there won't, anyway. So I want them to pay for what they took from me. Understand?"
"Very well," he said, thinking of his wife and daughter. "Very well."
"Good," she said, "now I'm going to go downstairs and play some of the CDs he liked and start working on a good, hard drunk that'll take up most of the evening."
As soon as she turned and started to leave, he went to the closet, and began to pull up the edges of the carpeting, looking for the safe.
***
Jenny wanted to go back. She hadn't gone more than four feet into the tunnel when she was overwhelmed with terror. She couldn't see anything, she was starting to have trouble breathing, and the space was so confining she could barely wriggle around. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the steady progress being made by Gretchen. Not far behind her, she could hear the shouts of Barcroft and the others as they burst into the room where the tunnel opening was.
All sorts of fears played on her mind. What if the tunnel collapsed? What if Quinlan decided to block both ends of the tunnel and smother them to death? What if there were poisonous snakes or rabid rats in here? Thinking the latter, she again shrunk in upon herself. She could almost feel a snake, cold and slick, slithering over her hand and wrapping itself around her arm. She could almost see a rat, ruby eyes aglow in the gloom, approaching her, waiting to rip into her flesh with its filthy, ragged teeth. She was paralyzed here, her entire body filling with dread from some anticipated disaster that would end her life.
And then she got sick of it. Of her fear. Her whining. Her paralysis. She'd been given a chance to escape and here she was whimpering, indecisive. It was time to catch up with Gretchen, to take advantage of this opportunity.
She started moving again, slowly at first-she hadn't quite banished her notion of snakes and rats-but with ever-increasing speed.
She was even getting used to the feel of cold aluminum on the palms of her hands, and the grave-smell of the earth surrounding her.
She thought of Quinlan and how he'd set her up at the two motels. It was time for her to fight back. She'd been so weak all her life. But she would be weak no longer.
Just as long as there weren't any rats or snakes.
***
Coffey was sitting at Cummings' desk when Rachel came in.
"You've been up here over an hour," she said. "Thought I'd bring you a little refreshment." She waggled a fifth of Dewar's at him.
"Afraid I'm an alcoholic, Mrs. Cummings."
"Really? You don't look it."
"Been off the stuff for a while now. Don't look as bad as I used to."
"I just hope it isn't catching," she said, as she sat down in one of the leather armchairs, "your teetotaling, I mean. I'd never get through this without my friend here." She kissed the neck of the bottle with erotic fervor. Then she looked at him. She was a beautiful but sad lady, sad long before her husband was murdered. "I've got a drinking problem, too, I'm afraid. And someday I may get around to doing something about it." Then, "Did you find anything?"
"Yes," Coffey said. "I'm pretty sure I know who killed your husband and Foster and why."
"Really? Already?"
"Already." he said.
She sipped a drink from the glass she held. She'd set the scotch bottle on the deck. "It was Quinlan, wasn't it?"
"Did your husband tell you what he was working on?"
"A little. But that's who I figured it was. I've never seen him work harder on a case. He was obsessed with it. He thought that this was the case that would make him a national figure. He had a nice business here in Chicago, but h
e wanted to have offices in LA and New York. That was his ambition. He met a producer at ABC about a few weeks ago and told the guy what he was working on-no names of course, not breaking any confidences I mean-and the producer got very excited. He liked the hospital angle. He said he was sure he could get the case on one of their prime time news shows. My husband was real excited. Real excited. I think he worked harder on this case than any he ever had. And I think it was paying off."
"So do I," Coffey said, indicating the folder he'd found in the safe. The folder lay open, four neatly typed pages inside it. Coffey had been over the pages several times. He needed to familiarize himself with them, so when he called Detective Ryan, he'd sound as if he knew what he was talking about.
"Now what?"
"Now I call a homicide detective I know." Actually, he'd hoped to be alone when he made the call.
Rachel made it easy for him. "Maybe I'll make myself a ham sandwich. This booze is hitting me harder than I wanted it to. You want a sandwich?"
"No, thanks."
"It's very good ham."
"I appreciate the offer. But thanks, anyway."
As soon as she left, he picked up the phone and called Maggie Ryan.
***
Jenny was moving much faster now but still cautiously. A dark tunnel like this, you could run into practically anything.
She couldn't hear Gretchen any longer. She wondered if something was wrong. Could Gretchen already be out of the tunnel, waiting for her up top? Gretchen had given the impression that this was a long tunnel and would take some time to traverse.
So where was Gretchen? Jenny tried whispering for the other woman, but her whispers didn't seem to travel far. There was no way Gretchen could hear her.
The tunnel ran straight for quite a while. The first turn was actually a subtle curve. She had no problem making the turn. And a few moments later, she ran into the opening.
In the dark this way, she couldn't see the shape of the thing. She had to feel it, it was the only way she could get an impression of it. It was an opening in the side of the tunnel. She felt around it. Aluminum. Another aluminum offshoot off the tunnel.
But where did it lead?
She wasn't sure what to do. She wished she could see. She wished she could hear Gretchen. Had something happened to Gretchen? Was this some kind of trap? Then she remembered something Gretchen had said, something about a surprise. Was this the surprise?
She continued to grope inside the opening. She even poked her head into it an inch or two. The smell was different in the offshoot. It still smelled of grave, it still smelled of aluminum, and yet neither smell was quite so overpowering in the offshoot.
Should she enter it? Is this where Gretchen had gone? Why hadn't she let Jenny know what was going on?
There was only one way to find out.
A shard of headache stabbed into her right eye. She was so consumed by the tunnel and the offshoot that, for a time, she'd completely forgotten the events that led her to be in the tunnel. Quinlan. The mind control. The murders. The headaches. She could still very well be a murderer. The blood of two human lives on her hands… the grief she would have caused so many people…
She took the offshoot. She moved very slowly. Somehow, the offshoot felt even more confining than the main escape tunnel. She had a moment of panic when claustrophobia overwhelmed her. She gasped two, three times trying to get her breath. She wondered where this led. What was she going to find when she got there? The river? Open forest? What?
Slowly, her pace increased. The darkness grew even darker. She had a moment when the whole situation struck her as dreamlike. Only a dream, and a terrible one at that, could duplicate this for its sustained menace.
She wanted to cry out Gretchen's name-the way she would in a nightmare-but she knew better.
All she could do was go ahead. Knees starting to ache very badly. Palms numb from the cold aluminum. Eyes useless.
Go on ahead and see what awaited her.
***
"I like the X-Files, too, Mr. Coffey. But that doesn't mean I believe in all that crap."
"Mind control isn't crap."
"I'm not a brain, Mr. Coffey. And I don't pretend to be. I'm a homicide detective. A good one. Not a great one. But a good one. And I II tell you something, in order to keep my job, and do what the citizens of this city expect from me, I have to rely on evidence. Hard, clear evidence. And you know what, Mr. Coffey? You know the evidence I have? I have eyewitnesses who saw her at the murder scenes. I have her fingerprints all over the murder rooms and all over the murder knives. This is the kind of case I've prayed for ever since I became a detective, Mr. Coffey. Open and shut. Simple as hell. And that's what the jury is going to say, too."
"You're not even going to listen to me, are you?" he said.
"I already have listened to you, Mr. Coffey."
"Quinlan's job in the CIA was with a secret unit that worked with drugs and hypnotherapy to break down personalities and turn them into moles for various branches of the government. In other words, mind control."
"You can't hypnotize somebody into killing somebody else," she said. "I may be a dumb cop, but I know that much anyway."
"You can't turn them into killers with hypnosis alone," Coffey said, "but you can when you combine hypnotherapy and drugs. That's already been proved."
On the other end of the phone, Margie Ryan sighed. "What exactly do you want from me?"
"When Quinlan brings Jenny in, hold Quinlan, too. That's all I'm asking. I have a friend in the DA's office. I want him to question Quinlan."
"What do I hold him for, Mr. Coffey?"
"Just tell him there are a lot of unanswered questions that you'd like to go over with him. I'll have Dick Feldman there whenever you need him."
"Feldman, I like." She paused. A beeping sound. "There goes my beeper, Mr. Coffey. I have to go. I'll think about it. Get back to me in a couple of hours."
"I appreciate it," Coffey said.
But she'd already hung up.
***
Jenny sensed the wall before she actually saw it. If it was a wall. She couldn't be sure.
All she knew was that, not long after she took off the offshoot of the main tunnel, she encountered some sort of blockage.
Despite the darkness, she could sense a different texture to the thing that ended this part of the tunnel.
She put a hand out. Felt soil, and beneath the soil, metal. And behind the metal, very faintly, she heard a noise. She wasn't sure what the noise was. It was just a… noise.
She was ready to back up, which wouldn't be easy. Putting a car in reverse was simple; putting a human body in reverse was another matter. She was especially worried about getting around the corner of the offshoot.
A light appeared. She put a hand forward and pushed hard. The blockage gave way.
An electrical light. Revealing what appeared to be a concrete floor and a green-painted wall. Some sort of room, apparently. That's what had been on the other side of the metal sheath.
"C'mon in," a familiar voice said. Gretchen.
Jenny moved forward as quickly as she could. Crawling would never be her favorite method of traveling.
The room was long and narrow. There was a couch, chair, small bookcase crammed with paperbacks. There was a table covered with plastic quarts of bottled water. Nothing fancy, to be sure.
"There are a couple of people who know about the main tunnel," Gretchen explained, "but only Quinlan and I know about this little room."
"What's it for?" Jenny said, getting to her feet, brushing herself off.
"In case the place ever gets raided, you know, like in Waco."
"He hides in here?"
"Once in a while. He's real paranoid. See that door?" Another large door built into the wall. "There's a tunnel behind that door, too. It leads to another tunnel. It leads to a point in the woods. Quinlan figures if all else fails, he can escape through this one."
"That's where we're going?"
/> "Yes."
"Could we hurry, please? I just want to get out of here. I'm really getting claustrophobic."
Gretchen glanced around. "I sort of like it. It's so private. I hope I can get Quinlan to come back here with me someday."
Jenny walked over to the door, put a hand on the silver safety knob. She hoped to hurry Gretchen along.
Gretchen said, "I heard you had some very nice times together."
Her tone made Jenny nervous. Gretchen could sound just fine for a time and then slip deeply into her Mad voice. She was there now, and it was eerie.
"I really want to get going, Gretchen."
"Is it true? You and Quinlan had some really nice times?"
Jenny sighed. "I thought we went through all this. He's all yours."
"People always talk about you. About how obsessed with you he was." She looked as if she wanted to cry. "He may still be."
"Oh, I don't think so, Gretchen. I really don't."
Gretchen had been standing against the opposite wall. Now she started across the narrow room with its fluorescent light on the ceiling and its dust-laden, still air making Jenny feel dirty and raspy.
Gretchen put her hand on Jenny's shoulder. "I think he still loves you." The anxiety and sadness were back in Gretchen's eyes.
"He never loved me, Gretchen," she said softly. "He couldn't have me. And that hurt his ego. That's what it was all about."
"A smart girl," Gretchen said, leaving her hand on Jenny's shoulder, "that's how she'd play it with Quinlan. Hard to get. That's what I should've done, but I didn't have the strength. I never did, with guys, I mean. Any time I wanted a guy, I always went after him. And they don't like that, guys don't. Not guys worth having anyway. I always went right after them, and they weren't interested in me in the least."
Jenny realized that she would have to spend a few minutes here bringing Gretchen down from her perch. "But you're learning, Gretchen. That's the important thing. You're learning not to throw yourself at men."
