He walked around and climbed in.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you. It was satisfying, but I genuinely didn’t intend it.”
“Maybe I deserved it,” she grumbled. “No Continental?”
“No third car in the garage at all,” he admitted.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Ben’s house.”
“Is this legal? Or ethical?” she asked.
“Legal? No. Ethical…?” Abe considered as they turned onto Misty Lane. “It depends. If the guy is involved, then we’re under a moral obligation. Plus, she could be there, this newest girl, Amber. She could be there right now. And if that car is there, it confirms we’re on the right track.”
“I want to go too,” Hazel murmured. “You said they’re both working at the asylum, right? Ben and the doctor?”
“They were an hour ago,” he said.
He drove past the house on Misty Lane. Like the house at 311 Sapphire, trees surrounded Dr. Crow’s home. Abe pulled onto the shoulder, and they got out.
Hazel took a deep breath and stuffed the paranoia trying to overwhelm her. She followed Abe through the woods, lifting her long skirt to avoid branches poking up from the dense foliage.
“Watch out for the nettles,” she told him as they neared a spiky green plant.
He dodged around them, and they waded through high grass into a clearing.
A large Tudor-style house sat in the center of a vibrant green lawn. A circular driveway curved in front of the house. Behind it, Hazel saw a large garage.
They walked the exterior of the house, peeking in windows and rattling doorknobs, but they found every door locked. When they reached the garage, Abe looked in the window.
“Gotcha,” he whispered.
“What?” Hazel ran to the window and looked in. A dark blue Lincoln Continental filled one side of the garage.
They found an open door and slipped inside.
“Whatever you do, don’t touch the car. Here.” He pulled a pair of disposable gloves from his pocket and handed her one, sliding the other over his left hand.
“You brought these with you?”
“If you’re going to think like the bad guys, you have to act like them sometimes too,” he murmured, drawing back a curtain that ran down the center of the garage.
The other half of the garage contained a bedroom of sorts.
“Do you think he lives here?” Hazel murmured, trying not to imagine what the room felt like in February when snow piled to the little prison-like windows encased in the concrete walls.
A thin mattress sat on a plain, metal frame covered by a threadbare brown blanket. A scarred wooded desk stood along a cement wall, stacked with books. Clothes hung from hangers attached to a metal beam in the ceiling, and a stack of clean laundry sat on top of an over-turned crate.
“I figured as much,” Abe confessed.
“What?” Hazel whispered.
“I assumed Ben didn’t live in the doctor’s house.”
“Why?” Hazel asked.
“Because the guy looks like an outsider, like he’s been rejected most of his life.”
“But if he’s the older son, why would Virginia Crow allow this?”
Abe bent down to examine a pair of hiking boots near the back door to the garage. He kicked them, and fresh mud broke off in clumps.
“I told you what the midwife said about the older son. She saw an abused kid. For all we know, the doctor offered him a room in his garage because it was safer than living with his mother.”
Abe wandered to a closed door.
“This door is locked,” he mumbled.
He shook the handle a second time.
“Here.” Hazel pulled a credit card from the bag slung over her shoulder. She slid it along the door frame, and after a bit of wiggling, they heard a pop.
He cocked an eyebrow.
Hazel shrugged. “You’re not the only one with bad guy skills.”
Abe pushed open the door.
“It’s a records room,” he exclaimed, striding to a series of tall, gray filing cabinets.
“And it would take a century to sift through it,” Hazel said.
“It’s labeled.” Abe pointed at the little cardboard face cards with dates.
Hazel gazed in overwhelm at the records. She couldn’t imagine gleaning anything important in the short time they had.
“Go watch the driveway,” Abe told her.
Hazel moved to the door of the garage, surveying the quiet yard. When a crow burst from the trees, she sprang back, letting out a shaky laugh when she spotted the bird.
“They’re both at work,” she reminded herself.
Hazel walked along the perimeter of the sparse room. A few odds and ends had been stacked on the cement ledge beneath the window. As her eyes roved over the contents, she stopped cold.
One of Orla’s yellow crystal earrings lay on the gray block. Hazel’s fingers trembled as she reached for the piece of jewelry. They were distinctive earrings with a bronze cone base. Orla wore them often, and Hazel was sure she had been wearing them the day she disappeared.
“Abe,” Hazel whispered.
He didn’t respond.
“Abe,” she shouted.
“What? Is somebody coming?” He peeked his head from the doorway, his arms filled with folders.
“This is Orla’s earring.”
He walked across the room and squinted at the earring, oddly placed amongst the other items. A pencil also lay on the shelf, along with a small glass figure of a bear, a set of reading glasses, two keys, and a vanilla-flavored Charleston Chew.
Hazel reached up to take the earring.
“A souvenir,” Abe breathed. “No, don’t touch it. I’m going to take a picture. Let me grab my camera.”
He started toward the door, but stopped.
Hazel heard tires in the gravel driveway.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Out the back.”
They hurried through the back door, Abe’s arms stuffed with folders.
“But she might still be alive. We have to confront him,” Hazel whispered.
“Quiet,” he hissed.
They stood with their backs against the garage, listening.
A door opened, and then closed. Minutes ticked by. The late July sun beat down on Hazel’s face, and she grew lightheaded. She wanted to slide down the brick and sit in the grass.
Dense forest stretched behind the garage, so thick in the peak of summer that some areas were impenetrable.
After several minutes, the truck started, and they heard it backing down the driveway.
Hazel started around the garage, but Abe shook his head.
Moments later the truck returned, the engine idling as a door again slammed as if the person had left something behind.
When it left the second time, they waited several minutes before hurrying around the house and running to the road.
Abe
Abe sat on Hazel’s porch, reading, long after dusk. Hazel had gone to bed, but his eyes devoured the pages of notes.
Crow had been conducting strange experiments at the Northern Michigan Asylum for more than twenty-five years. Some of the material seemed standard - potential diagnoses coupled with the varying amounts of medicine, and then notes on the perceived response. Crow had written about drug interactions, effective versus non-effective therapies, and interesting results regarding placebo affect.
But other folders contained bizarre case studies of patients who predicted the future or read minds. These patients were subjected to a range of disturbing treatments including psychedelic drugs, isolation, and even torture.
In Crow’s garage, Abe had spotted a cabinet drawer labelled Spencer Crow, and he taken several of the folders. He expected standard stuff - birth records, hospital visits, and the like. Instead, he discovered detailed notes about experimentation on the child.