Shades of Eva (61 page)

“Listen to me, Mitchell.” Anna’s tone was
very serious. “I want you and Abigail to turn yourselves in. I know
your pasts. Ben does too. If any of the tests he gave you are
accurate, then you need help. I’m offering this place to you. We
can help you, and we can help Abigail. We have a veterans unit here
for trauma survivors. She would be a wonderful mentor to some of
the patients, and she’d also benefit.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of the offer. She
was offering us…committals, in exchange for leniency. She made
mental illness sound like amnesty. They knew my freedom depended on
my addiction, and that troubled past I’d cooked in Ben’s office.
But that wasn’t entirely cooked. In fact, much of it was accurate.
I hadn’t lied to Ben—about much anything except a few names. The
offer was almost…noble.

I looked into each of their eyes. At once, I
felt a peace beyond understanding…an acceptance beyond anything I’d
ever experienced from a group of virtual strangers. They valued my
freedom, and also my sanity, and more importantly, they were
justifying the fight Abby and I had just engaged in.

Never in my life had adults offered anything
close to the gifts that had just been offered to me in so many
unspoken words. These were abstractions with words like
charity
and
beneficence
and
pity;
gestures I
hadn’t been offered in a long, long time.

And so I thought again of my mother, the
person who had become the central figure in all of this. It was,
after all, her story that Abigail’s mother—and before that, Emily
White—had asked someone to look into. But I needed to hear it from
these people—that Mom wasn’t mad, that they not only believed her
story, but that they believed she was misplaced here, and beyond
that, that she was sane, and beyond that even, that I wasn’t as
insane as I thought I just might be.

“Why was Mom sent here? Why was she left
here so long?” I said.

I was looking primarily at Anna, but anyone
could have answered. Anna responded. “Your mother knew
things…things she wasn’t supposed to know…things about your
grandfather, and his past. Knowledge can set you free, Mitchell,
but it can also bind you. I think her awareness cost her her
freedom, and in many aspects, her life. She didn’t belong here, and
neither do you, but there were things we could offer her, and
things we can offer you.”

Just to hear Anna Norris say that—Anna, the
voice of this place, this Asylum—was validation beyond anything I’d
expected. But the question remained: “What awareness are you
talking about?”

Anna answered. “Her sister Dorothy claimed
she was Virgil’s daughter from a previous marriage. She was Eva’s
half-sister, Mitchell. Your grandfather didn’t believe this, and so
he didn’t accept her. Dorothy challenged him—about his treatment of
Eva—of his treatment of her—of your mother, and of Elmer. Your
mother and Dorothy challenged him to come clean; to come clean to
his wife, to Ellie, and to the family, and to except Dorothy, but
he wouldn’t for some reason. They all challenged him—even Brad’s
mother, and she threatened to take him to court. He didn’t respond
well.”

Ben interjected. “Sometimes there’s no good
answer, Mitchell. Sometimes people do evil things to just erase a
problem. He thought the problem was his daughter’s curiosity. I’m
very sorry for what my brother did to your family. If I could have
prevented it, I would have.”

Ben’s words took a lot of the sting out of
the anger that I was holding onto. It helped ease me into mourning,
which was what Abigail had been trying to do.

Suddenly, Anna got more to the point.
“Mitchell, I want Abigail to come in and talk to me.”

I shook my head. “She’ll have to decide on
her own.”

“This has to end tonight,” Anna argued. She
was pleading, in a way. “I know what Abby wants. I know what she’s
done. She has no choice at this point. She can have her aunt’s
artwork, but I’m not giving it to you, and I’m not giving it to Ben
or to Brad. If she wants it, she has to talk to me.”

“I don’t see how you can protect her,
especially in here,” I countered, pleading Abby’s case. “She killed
a gang member. They’ll go after her, and she’s not just going to
lay down for anyone.”

Anna leaned closer to me. “I’m not asking
Abby to give up. I’m offering her sanctuary, as an alias,
Mitchell—not as Abigail Angstrom.”

I was surprised by that. I wasn’t quite sure
what Anna meant. “An alias?” I asked.

“We are concerned with Abby’s spirit, and
her safety, not her name,” Anna replied. “If getting her treatment
means changing her name to protect her, then we’ll see to it that’s
what happens.”

I was almost speechless.

All I knew my entire life was natural
consequences. All I’d been taught was to live up to personal
responsibility. All I’d heard recently was how important it was to
call things by their right and true name—right words like rape, and
surnames names like Rennix. And now these people, the very ones who
seemed the most insistent on calling things by the right name, were
offering Abby a false identity to protect her in lieu of turning
herself in. It wasn’t adding up.

“You’re going to help maintain an alias for
Abigail, who you know shot and killed a man in cold blood, in order
to protect her?”

Anna was quick to respond. “Again, if that’s
what it takes!” Anna grew very determined. “Listen to me, Mitchell.
This place has dealt its fair share of punishment. Good people have
gotten hurt in the name of science, and bad people have been sent
to the streets who should have been straightjacketed and locked up
in here. We’ve made plenty of mistakes, but this place is concerned
with justice above all else—not with punishment. People who’ve done
terrible things can be held accountable without being held to some
strict moral code that demands additional punishment for morally
ambiguous actions.”

“Morally ambiguous?”

Anna continued. “We put people to death in
this country every day. We send our children—children like
Abigail—off to fight a war of questionable merit, sanctioning them
to kill in the name of patriotism or freedom without the best
protections. 600,000 US veterans went away to Iraq and Kuwait
without the protection they needed. They were exposed to depleted
uranium, toxic smoke, chemical and biological agents, and now they
are returning sick, and the government is denying almost all of
it—and why? To protect their own pockets and their future
recruitment?

“Our veterans return wounded and sick, and
they often times wind up in places like this because the government
has no use for them once they’re out of the service. These are
ambiguous issues, Mitchell. If this place has taught me anything,
it’s that things aren’t painted in black and white. They’re painted
in stark, vivid color. I believe Abigail took a life because she’s
broken, and she’s been disappointed beyond belief, and I believe
Jackson Greer deserved what he got! That said, the violence has to
end. Killing Ully isn’t going to solve anything. It can end here
without punishing either of you any further. Do you understand what
I’m offering you?”

“I’m trying.”

Anna stood up and walked toward me. “Ben and
I know what you’ve done, and so does your father. You’ve committed
fraud, infiltrated a mental hospital and violated HIPAA regulations
by pilfering confidential records; you’ve impersonated an officer
of the law; aided and abetted a fugitive in the person of Abigail
Angstrom; conspired to extort your uncle out of $1.2 million and
tampered with human remains—and we don’t care.

“We don’t care because you haven’t hurt
anyone and you’ve brought justice to your mother and to your
brother. Abigail’s brought justice to her family, and to
yours.”

There was a moment of silence in the room.
This time, Ben spoke. “Mitchell, in life we have to make choices.
This is one of those times. I’m afraid that what things have come
down to for you is the choice between your freedom and honoring
your brother by turning yourself in.”

I looked to Ben with anxious eyes.
“Mitchell, if you know anything about who might have shot Sophia
Bermicelli, or where Elmer’s remains are, you can bring justice to
Elmer by turning him over to us. You can bring Sophia justice if
you know what happened to her. Ully deserves to be prosecuted, not
executed.”

“Abby can have the rest of her things,” Anna
said, “but she has to come in to get them. And she has to bring me
the toolbox and Elmer’s remains. That’s all. Maybe she knows what
happened to Sophia. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe you can have your
freedom and prosecute Ully, as well. This place does not take
freedom any more. It gives freedom. But Abby needs to stop what it
is she’s about to do.”

My hand was fingering the telephone in my
pocket like a talisman, wondering what I should do or say as if
tapping that phone was somehow prompting Abby to take over.

Anna walked to the doorway and opened the
door, gesturing that I was free to leave. Ben stepped aside. I was
free to go, but I never felt as trapped as I did that night. The
telephone was never as quiet, either. I knew Abby had heard the
conversation. I knew Anna and Ben and my father knew Abby was
listening. The phone was on and it was transmitting just as it
should, but why wasn’t Abby calling?

I took the phone from my pocket and stared
at it.

We all stood there for a moment looking at
that phone, looking at me, waiting for me to dial, waiting for the
ring that never came. I flipped the phone on and instantly a
distant ring began echoing through the building. It wasn’t a
telephone ringing, though—it was an alarm sounding. And it was
sounding very loud.

I looked up to the wall adjacent
to
the door where a red box was blasting an alarm and a light above it
was strobing violently. An officer entered the room, and said,
“There’s a fire somewhere. We have to get everyone out of
here.”

Ben followed Anna out, and Brad followed
them.

I stepped into the doorway. Anna was
standing behind the officer, and Ben and Brad behind her. She gave
me one last smile, and we all walked away.

I knew the reason why my phone hadn’t rung.
I think everyone else in that room knew it, too. It was the same
reason why the alarm had just sounded, though none of us were brave
enough to vocalize it. The Coastal State Asylum for the Insane was
about to go up in flames.

As we were being led out of the halfway
house, I heard a voice over the guard’s two-way radio. He said that
a bomb threat had been made, and that we had five minutes to
evacuate everyone.

My father and I exchanged a look on our ways
outside onto the lawn that early morning. It was a look I’ll never
forget. We were each remembering Mom, and specifically that old
poem of hers about two sons. I remember the exchange; it was the
sort of exchange that spoke of disbelief.

When everyone was out, there was one
prisoner conspicuously missing. I knew in an instant who he was,
and so did Ben, Anna, and my father. It was then that I heard the
first of several explosions. The first bang came from the pump
house at the top of the water tower, and the second, from somewhere
to the east in Ward C. It was the prison. And then a larger blast
came from the base of the water tower.

Hundreds of people were running now a full
sprint. Others were pushing wheelchairs across the lawn in a panic;
some were carrying people. Smoke was beginning to billow out from
some of the windows that hadn’t been closed in the lower levels of
Ward C where Ully was being held, and also from its roofline
indicating the entire prison Ward was now ablaze.

***

Mitchell

An officer was hollering for everyone around
us to stand aside. He was ushering me through a sea of firefighters
and smoke, wondering aloud, how in the hell Abigail had gotten into
the pump house at the top of the water tower, the central control
for the water works, including the sprinkler system. How the hell
was I supposed to know? I told him, all the while remembering that
all of those accesses were in the blueprints to the place: the
manhole cover access leading into the hydraulics basement; the
tunnel access connecting it to the crawl space beneath the water
tower; the shaft system with its ladders climbing the height of the
structure. Abby knew how to shut the place down, and she knew how
to blow it up.

Nothing worked as far as water was
concerned. You couldn’t even bleed a drop from a drinking fountain,
and the prison division was heating up like a metal pan in a hot
stove.

I had been given a ventilator to wear by
firefighters. Ully had been asking for me, specifically. He was
screaming for me, in fact. It was hard to hear what the
firefighters were telling me over all of the other noise, but I
knew what they wanted me to do. I just wasn’t prepared for what I
was about to see.

Staff had evacuated everyone minus two
people: Abigail and my uncle Ully. There was a SWAT team standing
by in full gear, heavy armor, and ventilated just inside the
entryway to Ward C. Two officers flanked my sides. One told me that
the place was clear according to all counts, but there was a
hostage situation that needed tending to.

We moved to a bank of video monitors in a
guard station adjacent to the main hallway corridor leading into
the prison’s main floor where Abigail and Ully were. Abigail had
taken Ully hostage and had barricaded them in. A camera operator
had panned to cell 17 about midway down the corridor. This was
Ully’s cell. Ully was standing about as far deep into it as you
could get, and he looked more panicked than I was feeling. He
wasn’t moving. His doors appeared locked tight, and they were.

The operator then focused on an area in the
hallway just outside that cell where I could see Abigail standing.
She had my uncle locked in his cell, and had him at gunpoint. The
rest of the corridor was empty, but slowly filling with smoke. The
sight made me shiver.