The Insane Train (26 page)

“They released Doctor Baldwin several days ago,” Hook said to Roy.

Roy looked at him over his shoulder. “Where did he go?”

“Don't know,” he said. “Baldwin didn't leave a forwarding address. Maybe he had a little thinking to do.”

Roy pulled out on the highway and brought the truck up to a mild lope. As they rattled along, Hook lit a cigarette and thought about what Doctor Anderson had said. Was it possible that someone else had been giving Baldwin drugs without his being aware of it?

There were certainly any number of people who had access to drugs, almost anyone under the employ of the asylum. Security was lax at best. Many times he'd seen the medical-supply cabinet unlocked.

For that matter, drugs were available in other places as well. If access defined the crime, if there was a crime, even Andrea could not be eliminated.

The real question, the one that had eluded him from the beginning, was, Why? It made more sense if Doctor Baldwin was procuring the drugs himself. He had access and an addiction that needed feeding. But that failed to explain the other calamities that had befallen the asylum.

“You're sure quiet for a yard dog,” Roy said. “You have gas?”

“Jesus, Roy, you ever censor yourself before you say something?”

“You got to hear words before you know if they're proper,” he said. “Anyway, that was sure enough a pained look you had on your face.”

“I'm worried about Andrea,” he said.

“Why don't you just call her, Hook?”

“It would be impossible for her phone to be connected this soon.”

Roy rolled down the window and hiked his foot up on the clutch pedal.

“Couldn't you call the Barstow police?” he asked. Hook looked over at him.

“No,” Roy said. “I suppose not.”

By the time they pulled into the fort, the sun had dropped. Roy turned on the dock lights and backed in the truck. Hook helped carry in the supplies. When he went out to get the last twenty-five-pound bag of sugar, it was gone.

“Where'd the sugar go?” he asked Roy.

“I carried it in already.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I was working while you were smoking. It ain't no wonder you're a yard dog. You wouldn't last ten minutes in a real job.

“About that girl, Hook,” he said, leaning against the fender of the truck. “I figure she's on her way home. Things were pretty sour around here with Helms. Andrea wasn't one to put up with it.”

“Thanks for the lift,” Hook said.

Hook stopped by the guardhouse to report to Helms what he'd learned about Baldwin's release. Mixer met him at the steps.

“You still here?” Hook asked.

Mixer went to the corner of the porch, circled a couple of times, and lay down.

The lights were out downstairs, and Helms's office door was open. Hook made his way up the stairs and knocked on the door. Animal sounds came from the cells, sounds made by creatures whose lives consisted of little more than a cell and a bunk and the misery within.

Shorty opened the door. His shirt was unbuttoned to expose a hairless chest. A gold chain with an agate pendant hung about his neck.

“Doctor Helms left several hours ago,” he said. “She had some kind of meeting.”

“You're here alone?” Hook asked.

“Just me,” he said. “But these bastards are locked up and I ain't.”

“Just remember these folks are insane, Shorty. They aren't stupid.”

“Stupid enough to be here,” he said. “Anyway, I have my axe handle back there to do the talking if it comes to it.”

“You haven't seen Doctor Baldwin, have you?”

“He's in the hospital over to Woodward,” Shorty said.

“Thanks,” Hook said.

At the bottom of the stairs, Hook paused. Moonlight shined through Helms's office window and across her desk. He could see her telephone and, next to it, her coffee cup. A stack of papers had been set to the side.

Eddie would be fuming by now, wondering why he hadn't called. Eddie could heat up fast when someone challenged his authority. If Hook got another Brownie, he could end up sleeping on a gunnysack under a bridge.

He slipped into Helms's office and sat down at her desk. The moonlight fell over his shoulder. Helms's scent lingered in her office like funeral flowers. He looked out the window for any signs of her. She would not approve of his using her phone.

He picked it up and called Eddie.

“Hello,” Eddie said. “Hook here, Eddie. Just wanted you to know that I'm back.”

“Do you ever call during work hours, Runyon?”

“Some of us work longer hours than others.”

“What the hell is going on with you, Runyon?”

“What do you mean, what's going on? I'm working security for the railroad and giving them back my goddang paycheck for a wrecked truck.”

“I get a call from Wichita police,” Eddie said, “something about them picking up a yard dog for soliciting a hooker, and I'm thinking that might be Runyon they're talking about. But then they say this yard dog was bumming a Santa Fe freighter, and I'm thinking, Christ, even Runyon ain't dumb enough to hobo on the railroad where he works.”

“It isn't what it seems.”

“It never is,” he said.

“Look, I'll be winding this thing up soon. You still need me down at El Paso?”

“Hell, Runyon, Mexico is empty. They all rode the train to Chicago.”

“I got a few loose ends, Eddie. The railroad doesn't like loose ends.”

Eddie paused on the other end. “Frenchy says he can get something out there in a matter of days.”

“Thanks, Eddie.”

“Course, if you got something against legal transportation, you could always hop a freighter and ride the rails down to El Paso, maybe pick up a hooker or two along the way.”

“You're a hell of a supervisor, Eddie. I'll be ready.”

Hook sat in the darkness. The last time he'd talked to Andrea she'd been in this office on this very phone. He turned his chair around and looked at the filing cabinets that sat under the windows.

On impulse, he opened the files and leafed through them. He pulled Helms's and Yager's personnel folders. The details Andrea had given him were spot on. Helms's academic career could only be described as stellar, and her recommendations for Yager glowed, were without reservations, and left nothing to be read between the lines.

He reached for a cigarette, hesitated, remembering what Roy had said about Helms's objections, and put it back into the pack.

He pulled over the file lying on the desk. It was marked “personal.” He thumbed through the sheaf of papers. In it he found Helms's old research papers, monthly bank reports, letters, a photograph of a young Helms standing next to a man, his arm around her shoulders. She leaned away, her face absent of emotion. Hook realized that the man next to her could be no other than Frankie Yager.

He started to close the folder when he spotted a yellowed newspaper clipping near the back. Several of the creases had given way from having been folded and refolded many times. He turned to let the moonlight fall on the article.

Hook leaned back in the chair. At last his search for “why” may have come to an end. Revenge had driven crime since the beginning of time, and Bria Helms must surely have had need to avenge the death of her parents.

But then Yager could just as easily have been the one responsible. He'd had opportunity in every situation: the fire, Elizabeth's plunge from the trestle, even the food poisoning.

Hook took out his pack of cigarettes again but then set it aside. He drummed his fingers on the desk. The destruction of the asylum had continued after Yager's demise. In the end, only one person remained who might want it destroyed.

Hook took the photograph from the folder and studied it again. Yager's infatuation with Helms showed in his face, the way his arm drooped over her shoulders. Perhaps he had been no more than her dupe, an instrument of her retribution.

Once Helms knew that Hook had exposed Yager's past, she could have arranged Yager's death. Maybe she had withdrawn Smith's medication or replaced it with the placebo, allowing Smith the full force of his aggression against Yager. Hook had seen her take the green bottle from the cabinet that very day. In the end, maybe Bria Helms just didn't like getting her hands dirty when it came to killing people.

But could she have nourished such hatred for such an extended period of time? Could anyone? She would have had to overcome her situation, both parents gone, and she little more than a teenager at the time. There would have been an education to complete, and then she would have had to pursue Baldwin halfway across the country to destroy him.

And what about Yager, a man of limited intelligence and appeal? She would have had to recruit him; given him whatever price he'd required to carry out her plan; and, in the end, have him brutally murdered. Why hadn't she just killed Van Diefendorf at the outset? There had been ample opportunity. And through all this, she would have placed herself in danger of discovery.

Could Bria Helms have held all this together over the years to destroy everything that her nemesis had tried to build?

Hook turned and studied the moon, which had climbed into the blackness.

It would never have been enough for Bria Helms to simply destroy the sick mind that had set the fire. She would have had to destroy the principle behind it and the man who had sworn to once again turn madness loose upon the world.

And then the question came to Hook like a jolt of electricity. If Bria Helms had discovered Andrea's involvement, would she retaliate with the same deliberate cunning as she had with the others?

His heart beat in his ears at what he knew to be the answer.

Lights flashed in the window. Closing the file, he stepped into the darkness and squeezed behind the door.

The click of Helms's footsteps were singular in the night.

She paused. He could smell her perfume in the stillness and knew she must be standing in the office doorway.