He spent the next five minutes looking for a telephone and came up empty. Almost every room had wall jacks, but the instruments themselves had been removed when Matron and her crew were cleaning house.
No matter. He would find a public phone somewhere along the highway on the drive back.
He took a final look around the place, saw nothing he had missed the first time and went back outside. His rented Chrysler was the only vehicle in sight, and Remo guessed his three late adversaries must have hiked in through the woods, or else been left behind deliberately, to deal with any problems that arose.
He found a pay phone in Elizabeth, outside a supermarket and made the call collect to Smith. The head of CURE’S voice was crisp, alert.
“Report,” he said, in place of salutation.
Remo briefed Smith on the outcome of his latest visit to Ideal Maternity and waited for a moment while the older man thought it over. When he spoke again. Smith’s voice was grim. “There does not seem to be much choice,” he said.
“No choice at all.”
“You may as well proceed, in that case.”
“Right. I’ll be in touch from Louisville, before I make the move. We’ll send that package off to you, and in the meantime, I’ve got several names you need to check. Find out if they’re available for interviews.”
“Who am I looking for?” Smith asked.
“Some former tenants of Ideal Maternity,” said Remo. “Word is they were graduated, so to speak. I’d like to know what happened to them—and their children, if it’s possible.”
“All things are possible,” said Smith, “if you know where to look and who to ask.”
Chapter 14
Dr. Quentin Radcliff took pride in his self-control. No matter what went wrong or how he seethed with anger inwardly, he cultivated an ability to put the best face on the worst of situations, show subordinates that he was always in control. It was another mark of the superiority that set him apart from common men. As the commercials frequently advised, he never let them see him sweat.
Not even when his life’s work had been jeopardized by idiots.
He stared across his spacious desk, regarding his unwelcome visitor with thinly veiled contempt. Althea Bliss was silent, knowing anything she volunteered could easily be turned against her, used to make her seem incompetent, a liability. She shot a furtive glance at Warren Oxley, seated to the left and slightly behind her, but otherwise she sat and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“You’ve disappointed me, Althea,” Radcliff told her, swallowing an urge to grab a paperweight and fling it at her pale, round face.
“I understand.”
“You do? I wonder.”
“What I meant to say—”
Dr. Radcliff interrupted her. “Do you recall what you were doing when I found you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You had about fun out of luck, as I remember, at the women’s prison down in Talladega. Three distinct and separate charges of brutality before that ugly business with the eighteen-year-old girl.”
The woman’s doughy face showed color for the first time Radcliff could remember, anger and embarrassment combining to suffuse her cheeks with crimson.
“Those were lies,” she said defiantly. “No case was ever filed. I’m innocent.”
“On paper, anyway,” said Radcliff, giving her no respite from his glare. “Your resignation kept the state from filing charges, I believe.”
“I’m innocent,” Bliss insisted, but there was no conviction in her voice.
“Aren’t we all?”
In better times, the former prison guard could be a grim, imposing figure. Five foot, seven in her stocking feet, she tipped the scales around 190 pounds, some of it muscle. Any softness in her face was strictly flab. Her eyes resembled flakes of granite, set above a nose that always put Radcliff in mind of dorsal fins. She overcompensated for her thin slash of a mouth by using too much lipstick, but it didn’t help. Her knuckles bore the scars of punches thrown in fits of rage.
“It’s not my fault,” she told him, sounding desperate. “You have to see that.”
“What I see,” he answered, “is that we have lost our primary facility—a quarter-million dollars for the land and renovations when we moved in, seven years ago—and risked exposure that could cost us everything. If I’ve missed anything, Althea, please be good enough to fill me in.”
“I’ve never lost a girl before,” she said, as if that somehow mitigated the disaster.
“No, I’ll grant you that.” Radcliff believed he was a reasonable man. “You had a perfect record up until last night.”
“It’s not my fault!”
“Please, please, Althea. Don’t be tiresome.”
“But Mahoney and Gutierrez—”
“Are no longer with us,” he reminded her. “At least they saved me severance pay, whereas the girl—what was her name again?”
“Joy Patton, sir.”
“Whereas the girl has simply vanished. Gone kaput.”
“She didn’t kill those two gorillas by herself,” Bliss said.
“Is that supposed to reassure me? Knowing she has allies is supposed to put my mind at ease?”
“I only meant—”
“The background check was very thorough. Mr. Oxley?”
Oxley cleared his throat, referring to a slim manila folder. “Surviving family of Joy Patton consists of a stepmother and half-brother, out in Bakersfield. The brother started trying to molest her at age twelve, apparently succeeded on the day she turned fourteen. Stepmother took his side when Joy complained. Girl headed for Los Angeles and hit the streets. If she has any friends worth mentioning, we couldn’t find them.”
“So.” The tone of Radcliff’s voice was neutral now, dispassionate. “Who could have followed her halfway across the continent and met her in the middle of the night, just when she needed help to get away?”
Althea Bliss could only shrug. “If I knew that—”
“Then you would have some value,” Dr. Radcliff finished for her. “As it is…”
“You can’t blame me for this!”
“The home was your responsibility. You’ve let me down. Althea.”
“No. No, sir!”
“You censor correspondence, I believe.”
“Damn right. Girl writes a letter, we get rid of it and tell her it was mailed. No answer comes, she figures it’s a brush-off.”
“Did the Patton girl write any letters?”
“Not a one.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She could have smuggled something out, presumably.”
“Nobody ever has.”
“That you know of,” said Dr. Radcliff.
“Well…”
“I mean, the orderlies were in and out. There were occasional deliveries. Young women can be most persuasive when they’re motivated.”
“No, sir, you can put your mind at ease on that score. Everyone on staff, I had a private chat the day they joined the program. We were crystal clear about the rules, and what would happen, if they didn’t toe the line.”
“You trusted them?”
“Let’s say I had them covered. On deliveries, we always had them scheduled in advance and kept the girls away from any strangers. There’s no way Joy passed any notes to a deliveryman, no sir.”
“To recap the event, she slipped out of her room—”
“The locks were no great shakes,” Althea told him, interrupting. “You’ll remember we discussed that, and you said it was enough to put the fire alarms on outside doors.”
“Which brings us to her manner of escaping from the house,” said Radcliff.
“Basement window, like I told you. One way or another, she got through the burglar bars and made her way outside.”