Raveled (20 page)

Chapter
26

Allison… present

I closed the door behind Ray, assuring him I’d be just swell by myself, but when I turned around to face the bleakness of Room 331 alone, I immediately regretted the sound of Ray’s fading footsteps. You’d think if anyone would be comfortable around the murder of children, it would be me, but Ray was right. Being in the room itself hit too close to home. The drywall hadn’t even been repaired.

Apparently, a woman who’d spent most of her life in ritzy institutions had been released due to a change in her family’s financial situation. She’d been sent to live with her sister while new arrangements were made for a facility in Wyoming where a psychiatrist had agreed to include her in a study of paranoid schizophrenics. But two weeks in the big world had proved too much for the woman. She’d killed her young niece while the girl’s mother took a new puppy into the back yard. Snapped her neck and outlined the body in ketchup, proudly showing it off to the mother when she returned with the yapping dog in her arms.

Needless to say, the
patient was disinvited from the Wyoming study and ended up in Ravine’s special wing while awaiting a verdict on her ability to stand trial. Ravine had followed all the rules and met at least the minimum security requirements to house such a patient but they hadn’t counted on every possible circumstance.

One of the nurses who worked in the wing
had brought her autistic daughter to the hospital on her day off. She’d left the daughter playing games on a handheld tablet at the nurses’ station while she went to deliver a birthday present to an elderly patient. The nurse had swiped her card and entered the eight-digit code to open the doorway into the maximum security wing. The girl must have listened, consciously or subconsciously, and somehow knew which number made which chime. She’d immediately turned the notes of the code into a song and hummed it repeatedly to the point where one of the aides picked up on it and began to hum along.

Not long after,
the girl had removed a security card from an open drawer and, on a whim, swiped it and entered the musical code. She’d proceeded to the maximum security wing where meals were being delivered; perhaps the sounds of so many doors opening and closing had drawn her in.

At some point in the previous six months, the
female patient, brilliant in her own way, had carved into her drywall just deeply enough to locate the wires that connected to the physicians’ offices on the floor above. She’d hacked their internal system with a small tablet on which she’d been allowed to play word games and had gained access to the automatic locking system on the doors. She’d never tried to break into her own files or perform an internet search. Hadn’t seemed to harbor any desire to leave, just wanted to know that she could. It was later reported that she’d often repeated the phrase, “The world is a big place but it gets a little smaller whenever I’m out in it.”

Ray hadn’t gone into details, but said
they’d found the girl lying tranquilly on the floor, outlined in a rope of the patient’s hair that she’d been weaving since her arrival, one plucked strand at a time. No one had noticed the bald spot, or the damage to the drywall. Of course, Ravine’s credentials as a maximum security psychiatric hospital had been revoked immediately.

The
hallway could hold regular patients when necessary, but currently remained vacant.

“
We fill that wing last,” Ray had said, “because we haven’t had the time or budget to renovate. The rooms are too claustrophobic for most people. Besides, I swear, these people with psychiatric challenges, it’s like they have a sixth sense. They know when something’s up and they flip out in this room. I don’t tell you this to scare you, Allison, but it wouldn’t be fair to keep you in the dark. In case, well, you know.”

In case what
? In case I was one of those mentally challenged people who might flip out? In case the girl’s ghost came floating out of the floor humming the lock code? I’d decided not to ask. But Ray’s lack of details had almost been worse than hearing the grisly truth.

“On the upside,” he’d said with his voice lacking an upside, “that room gets internet service now.”

I looked around. The heavy bars on the window would have kept daylight to a depressing minimum. The random dents in the sheetrock made me wonder about their source. Scratches on the drywall above the bed seemed to offer some hieroglyphic message. What had created them? Fingernails? Bones? Teeth? A plastic spork? Would my father have ended up in a place like this, with people like this for company?

I sat down at the solitary desk. It
was set at a skewed angle a few feet from the nearest wall. Why? Why not pushed up against the wall? Why not at least parallel with a wall? Its cockeyed placement made me shiver. It was as if the doctors had given up on correcting its location when they found it shoved around by poltergeists for the third time. I plugged in my laptop and looked around while it brought itself to life. I didn’t know how Ray could relay that story and not expect me to imagine the face of the killer, the confusion of the child, the desperation of the mother, or the twisted workings of the patient’s mind. The laptop binged loudly enough that I worried it might wake a sleeping patient. Until I remembered, there were no patients in this wing. I was quite alone.

I yanked my cell phone from my purse to be sure I could get service up here. Yes, three bars.
I set it on the desk—parallel to a damn wall. The air conditioning clanked on through the covered vent on the floor. At first, it sounded like someone banging on a pipe, then the cold air squealed its way through the plastic seal that had been fitted over the metal edges of the original cover. Why didn’t they just make a plastic vent cover and eliminate the metal altogether? The squeal sounded like a shriek with the sound turned down. It carried the tone of a cry of horror, but not the volume—the kind of yell an autistic child might make.

I couldn’t take it. I
needed to open the door. As I walked over, I had to fight my conviction that the door would be locked. I reached out and it opened, but it was one of those weighted doors that closed automatically in case the nurse’s hands were full as she exited with a dinner tray, or a dead body. I checked the latch—the part that made the satisfying click so you knew were safe—but it had been removed. It made me think of a person with a missing tongue. Maybe it was that kind of squeal in the vent. A tongueless one.

I let the door c
lose, took a deep breath, and swallowed my fear.

The scent of the room filled my head. What did death smell like anyway?
Like a decomposing raccoon in the sewer where the hawks and vultures couldn’t get to its carcass? Once that stench entered your system, there was no clearing it out quickly. It wasn’t like a sneeze after inhaling pepper. No. Every time death entered a living, breathing human being, it boasted of its presence with a thick, acrid taste and made itself comfortable for a while. When it finally departed, it sucked out a bit of the life it wished it still had. That was why a person who got a good whiff of it always felt queasy. Death had ripped out what it needed, leaving the victim to fill the gap.

But the smell of a
horrific death—a child’s death—had to be different. Why hadn’t it felt that way with Bobby or Shelby? Why was I so much more horrified at the thought of this autistic girl? Despite the curious condition in which Shelby’s broken body had been found, I’d never been able to muster the sympathy I should have. I’d never cried over her loss. Or Bobby’s. Had I been too outraged over the accusations against my father to give a moment’s empathy to the victims? I’d once tried to stop being
Allison Fennimore, daughter of
Arthur Fennimore,
and had imagined being simply
Allison, Lavitte Citizen
. I’d yearned to feel the emotions that swirled in the eyes of people who looked at my family with such revulsion because I’d wanted to understand them. I never got there. Maybe I was looking in the wrong eyes. Maybe the people who truly felt for the victims didn’t seek the spectacle of a trial, didn’t get off on others seeing their outrage. And maybe none of the spectators in the courtroom were as innocent as they liked to believe. Who among us was?

One
answer flashed in my mind. The autistic girl who’d entered this room at the beckoning of a maternal figure. That was innocence stolen. And still, was I mustering true sympathy for the girl? I hadn’t even cried when my own father died. After I’d been released from my mother’s grasp, I’d turned from the hospital room and walked to the elevator, staring at the scuffed brown shoes of my reflection while awaiting its arrival. When we’d returned home, I made two hard-boiled eggs for my mother and forced them on her before putting her to bed with a valium left over from Kevin’s foot operation a few years prior. She’d slept while I cleaned the kitchen.

I should have cried then. At least then.

My laptop dinged again to indicate it was going to go to sleep if I didn’t entertain it. I shrugged away all thoughts of death and mourning and walked over. I typed in
Periodic Table of Elements
.

Al and Clar—and all their element friends—burst to life in full color before me. Black for solids, blue for liquids, red for gases. This interactive, computerized version offered a huge improvement over the boring, two-dimensional poster on Dr. Duncan’s wall at Lavitte High. I could even turn up the temperature and watch Al convert from a solid to a liquid to a gas. Ah, sweet distractions. I got to work. It took me fifty-five minutes to crack the code, an interval that would have disappointed Jasper.

Jasper’s message had instructed me to add.
The sum total of the atomic numbers of aluminum, silicon, phosphorous, sulfur, chlorine and argon equaled 93, and they were in the third row down on the chart. When I turned to page 93 in the third yearbook, Jasper had underlined specific words in the faintest of blue lines. Anyone else would have missed them, but I scanned that page for all it was worth. He clearly hadn’t intended for the code to last long. It must have been his back-up plan in case our meeting didn’t happen.

On th
e first page Jasper led me to, he had underlined the words
letter
and
floor
, which were located in picture captions about Tony Ashford’s varsity
letter
and the renovated gymnasium
floor.
On Tony’s face, he’d faintly written another chemical combination. When I added up those atomic numbers and noted their row on the chart, I went to the appropriate yearbook and uncovered the words
well
and
evidence
. I could scarcely contain my excitement as each new word revealed itself. Thirty minutes later, I had my message from Jasper. It pointed to a destination in The Willows Trailer Park.

As I processed
what it could all mean, I stared at the dull, grimy walls surrounding me. Slowly, their scratches, stains and smells wormed their way into my consciousness. I reached in, yanked the worm out and cast it against the floor. I had no time for such emotion. I wiped my trembling hands on my pants, slammed my laptop shut and prayed that the hiding spot Jasper had chosen was better protected than the little girl who had entered this room, the one I couldn’t well up a tear for.

Chapter
27

Allison… present

Ray hadn’t given me any instructions about calling before leaving Room 331 room so I ventured out on my own, the yearbooks in my laptop bag pulling like dead weight on my shoulder. I was about to take them out and hold them in my other arm when the elevator doors opened to reveal the pensive face of Detective Blake Barkley.

We did the s
hocked stare thing for a good four seconds.

“Detective,
what a weird surprise.”

“Really? I always run into people I know in psych wards in the middle of the night.”

“Perhaps you need to reconsider your social circles.”

He smir
ked. “I have been. Lately.” The way he maintained eye contact when he said it gave the comment a flirtatious pang that my brain accepted against all contrary instincts.

“
Going up?” he said.

“Down, actually.”
I did break eye contact, figuring the leap from delicate innuendo to blatant fellatio jokes might be too much for the champion grinner.

He gingerly stepped off the elevator as the doors began to close
and we stood alone on the third floor. The emptiness of our surroundings encroached upon me like a suffocating entity with wicked intentions. I pushed the elevator button. “Why don’t we talk in the lobby? Ray might be wondering where I am.”

“Sure,” he said. The
elevator opened immediately, like an overbearing chaperone who’d never actually left. We stepped on but the chilling emptiness followed. Now it was the two of us—and it—in a smaller space.

“You okay, Allison?
You look pale.” His head tilted with concern. “Not claustrophobic, are you?”

“
No. Just not sure we’re the only two on here.”

He laughed
, filling the space with a puff of warmth. “Didn’t expect you to be scared of ghosts.” He leaned towards me and whispered, “Promise not to tell anyone, but this place gives me the heebie-jeebies, too.” His warm, sweet breath filled my ear with a moist heat and tickled the tiny hairs on my neck. I managed to avoid shivering, but barely. Despite my advancing years and endless hours spent in the company of drunken flirts, this aura of romance was foreign to me. In my adult life, I’d only had one serious relationship that lasted longer than three months. The male half, skirting the border between Asperger’s and genius, had made a living in front of a screen with his back to the world, and I, the not-so-soft female complement, had let him be however he needed to be each day. The options had run the gamut. Even with that unspoken, laissez-faire arrangement, we existed like red rubber balls bouncing around an empty white room, two opposing round entities that never quite fit in a structure of sharp corners and flat walls. We’d lived separate lives, occasionally deflecting off one another, never intersecting, darn good at mutual exclusivity. Colliding with full force at times, we’d even explode in ecstasy simultaneously—but never together—then rebound to our separate corners where he lived a life isolated from his foster care past and I stayed exhaustingly busy, trying to forget I had a past at all.

Under the watchful but measured gaze of Detective Barkley,
I shifted the bag on my shoulder to make it look like it didn’t contain four stolen books from the recently deceased’s room—the same room he’d probably been on his way to search.

“You know I’ve got to ask
,” he said.

“Ask?” I said in an obvious stall
as I let my eyes blink languidly. It gained me a few seconds of postponement but not enough to throw him off the trail.

“Come on
,” he said, nudging me with his elbow. “It’s not like I don’t know why you’re here. I gave you the files, remember? Jasper was one of Bobby’s best friends.”

“How could I forget?”

“You know what happened, then?” he ventured.

“Yes.
Can’t believe he’s gone.” Oh yes I could. People don’t leave coded messages in old yearbooks unless there’s a viable threat hanging over their heads.

“Maybe we can help each other
out,” he said confidentially, trying to break through walls I’d spent years constructing. “What do you know?”

I was at a disadvantage
. I had no idea what Ray had already confessed. Trusting my instincts, I put my money on Ray having kept his mouth shut. “Know? About Jasper? Not much, I’m afraid. I left my laptop here the other day and Ray set it aside for me.” I tapped my bag.

“
On the third floor?” Detective Barkley said, his expression curling in on itself. “Couldn’t he have kept it behind the front desk?”

“Sticky fingers
at old Ravine, I guess. Ray seems to be the cautious type.”

“
And you came to get your laptop… in the middle of the night?”

I glanced at my cell phone to check the time
, stalling so blatantly it was embarrassing, when the perfect answer hit me. “Not the middle of the night for me, Detective. It’s barely closing time. I’d still have a ton of work to do.”

“I forgot
,” he said, only slightly defeated. “You must keep crazy hours.”

“No crazier than yours, apparently.”

“I love the night shift,” he said. “Gives me time to bike and run during the day.”

Or practice your jump shot.

“So why were you coming to see Jasper the other day?” he asked.

Damn.
I hadn’t jumped quickly enough on the biking-running diversion. Men loved to talk about their muscles, and Detective Barkley had plenty to brag about in that department, but I’d let it go. Now we were back to Jasper, whose teenage face pressed into my ribs, maybe trying to shout out the truth to Detective Barkley, maybe trying to bite me sharply to keep me silent.

“
Like I told you at our first meeting,” I said, “my brother thinks Jasper and Smitty know more than what they told the police. I wanted to see if I could jar Jasper’s memory. But when I got here the other day, he was already sick.”

We arrived at the lobby, the bright lights and intact walls a welcome sight. Detective Barkley gestured for me to exit first. We continued our conversation
only two steps from the elevator since he still needed to get to his original destination. Hopefully, Ray hadn’t left any obvious signs that the yearbooks had been taken from Jasper’s room, like an I.O.U. with his signature.

“You were
Jasper’s only registered visitor on Thursday,” Detective Barkley said.

“
Was I?”

“
According to the log.” He flicked his eyebrows up and left them there. “Even though your name was crossed off.”

“
Hmp,” I said.

His
brows came down and the left one formed a curious arc on one side. “As in marker right through your signature. But still readable when held up to the light.”

Why hadn’t I just ripped that page out and eaten it?

“Oh, right,” I said. “I did that on my way out because I never got to see him.”

Barkley
furrowed both brows this time. He was like a cartoon dog, after all, his expressions big and animated. Any moment now, the Road Runner might come along and knock him off his feet while an anvil fell towards his head.

“My turn,” I said. “Why are you here? This isn’t exactly your jurisdiction.”

“You know how gossip travels in Lavitte. Faster than anything else in town.”

“
Justice,” I said. “They serve that up pretty quickly.”

“
Touché. Anyway, word of Jasper’s death reached me pretty fast. And his name was fresh in my mind after reading your dad’s files. Seemed too coincidental that I’m reading the guy’s name one day and he shows up dead soon after.” His hand went behind his right ear to straighten a hair that wasn’t the least bit out of place, forcing me to resist the inexplicable desire to reach out and run a finger or two through his tempting brown locks. “Tell you the truth,” he continued, “I was a little worried about you.”

“
Me? Why?”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll turn out that Jasper
died of natural causes, but look at it from my perspective. Everyone in town knew that I gave you the documents that got you searching for Jasper Shifflett.”

“
They knew how? From Delorma?” The name reflexively carried a sneer whenever it left my mouth.

“Of course. Or ten other people in the department. Next thing I know, Jasper
’s dead. So I had to wonder, was someone worried about what you might say to Jasper, or about what Jasper might tell you?”

Nail on the head.
Strong work, Sherlock.

“Oh come on, Detective, that’s not all that
occurred to you. I’m a Fennimore and vigilantism’s always in vogue. Surely, you considered the possibility that I discovered incriminating evidence against Jasper and decided to take the law into my own hands.”

The smirk again.
It made his eyes crumple up like a puppy ready to lick its owner. Woof. “Only for a second,” he said. “But a straight-A student wouldn’t be so obvious, right?”

Rather a trick question
. I settled for returning his inquisitive gaze with an innocent one of my own. The bag on my shoulder grew heavier.

“
So,” the detective said, crossing his arms like a yearbook poser and letting his head fall a few degrees to the left, “did he?”

“Did who what?”

“Did Jasper have something he wanted to tell you? Surely, you weren’t arriving here unannounced the other day. There must have been a preliminary phone call.”

“You
’re familiar with Laurel and Hardy’s
Who’s on First
skit, Detective?”

“
What’s on second.”

“
That’s the one. Talking to Jasper was a lot like that. I’m not even sure he remembered who I was.”

“
I doubt that.” Behind the full-lipped grin danced lightning rods eager to connect in a forceful ground strike. A regular circuit board of activity twirled and pirouetted behind the chiseled face. “Besides, he agreed to meet with you.”

“I was once told by an inebriated bond trader that I had a voice so sexy, it could
melt Kryptonite.” Total lie. “Maybe Jasper was responding to that.”

“
I guess it couldn’t cut through his coma, though. You went to the infirmary against regulations, as I understand it. Did you talk to him?”

The knives were out, even though he continued to stand a single step closer to me than
the rules of personal space dictated. If I extended my arms to his broad shoulders, we’d practically be embraced in a threatening tango.

I feigned embarrassment with a practiced bite to the lower lip
and a measured flutter of my lashes. “I’m ashamed to admit that I fainted before I even got to Jasper’s room. The nurses will confirm that.”

“They already have.”

Damn. Detective Barkley was giving me a bigger run for my money than the waitresses who tried to cheat me out of my cut.

“Sure you’re not overqualified to be working in Lavitte, Detective Barkley?”

“Oh, quite sure I am.” Spoken like a future president. He seemed to resist the impulse to wink.

Ray
hustled across the lobby and stopped just short of crashing into us. A worried undercurrent shined out through his small eyes. “Everything okay over here? I guess you two have met.”

Detective Barkley glanced at Ray, then
slowly back to me, and I could see the circuit completing itself. He nodded ever-so-slightly to himself.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Everything’s fine, Ray
. Thanks. Ms. Fennimore and I go way back. And forward, too, I hope.” Not at all like red rubber balls.