The Secret Friend

As he continued his campus search, Fletcher thought about the man he had seen on Emma Hale's garage surveillance tape. The man had made one critical mistake: he had turned around before the elevator doors shut. The security camera caught a brief glimpse of the man's face. It was enough. Fletcher captured the frame on his computer. The video-enhancing software did the rest.

The man who had retrieved the necklace from Emma Hale's home bore a striking resemblance to a patient named Walter Smith, a twelve-year-old paranoid schizophrenic burned in a gasoline fire. Drifting back through time, Fletcher replayed his first encounter with Walter.

The young boy sat on the bed inside his hospital cell, his head a hairless, red-clay mask of strips of scars and stitches and healing skin. A pair of glasses with thick lenses magnified the severe damage to his left eye. It was wide-open, unblinking.

Walter's arms were wrapped around his stomach. When he wasn't dry-heaving into the wastebasket, he gnawed on his tongue as he rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to stop the trembling.

'I need Mary,' Walter said, pleading. 'I need you to take me to her.'

'Where is she?'

'At the chapel. Please bring me there so Mary can take away the pain.'

Hanging on the walls were pieces of construction paper holding remarkable, detailed drawings done in crayon and magic marker of a young boy free of scars and disfigurement holding the hand of or hugging a woman dressed in long, blue flowing robes with a red heart painted on the front of her white tunic.

'Mary's gone,' Walter said, his voice strangling on tears. Clutched in his good hand was a small plastic statue of the Blessed Mother of God. 'Dr Han put the medicine in my veins and it sent Mary away again. I need to talk to my mother, I'm lost without her. Please bring me to the chapel.'

Fletcher was snapped from the memory by the vibration of his cell phone. He answered the call but didn't take his eyes away from the binoculars. The heat signatures of four men were running through the woods, heading for Reed's heated trailer.

'Yes, Mr Hale?'

'I watched the DVD.' Hale's voice was thick with bourbon. 'Is this the man who killed my daughter?'

'I believe it is. His name is Walter Smith.'

'You know him?'

'I met Walter while he was a patient at the Sinclair Mental Health Facility in Danvers. He's a paranoid schizophrenic – the worst type, actually. His particular delusion is difficult to treat even with the proper medication, which, I'm sure, Walter is no longer taking. The medicine prevents him from hearing Mary.'

'Who's Mary?'

'The Virgin Mother of God,' Fletcher said. 'Walter believes the Blessed Mother speaks to him. Walter's real mother poured gasoline on him while he was sleeping. The burns covered over ninety per cent of his body, including his face. His mother died in the fire, and Walter was brought to the Shriners Burn Center in Boston for treatment.

'Walter survived two burns. His left hand was severely disfigured the previous year, when she put his hand into a pot of boiling water after she caught him masturbating. She didn't bring her son to the hospital. She treated him at home, where he was home-schooled.

'When it became clear that Walter was schizophrenic, he was placed at Sinclair. He was a patient there for many years. When it was forced to shut its doors, my guess is Walter was released into either a low-risk group home or back into the general population.'

'How do you know this?'

'I came to know Walter through his friendship with a sociopath named Samuel Dingle, a man the Saugus police believed to be responsible for the deaths of two women who were strangled and dumped along Route One. Saugus police asked me to interview Dingle because they had misplaced a key piece of evidence, a belt used to strangle one of the women. I had several sessions with Sammy. At the time, he wasn't ready to confess his sins. I had to wait until we spoke again, years later, in a more private setting.'

'How can you be sure the man on the tape is Walter Smith? It could be someone else.'

'Walter's been to Sinclair recently.'

'Why? The hospital is abandoned – I tried to buy the property years ago but it was tied up in legal tape. Why would he go there?'

'To visit Mary, his one true mother,' Fletcher said.

'Walter goes there to talk to the Virgin Mary?'

'Yes.'

'You've been to the hospital?'

'Yes. In fact, I'm here right now, waiting for the police to arrive.'

'How did they find out about Sinclair?'

'I called them here.'

'You called them?'

'They're already here.'

'Do they know about Walter Smith?'

'No. Mr Hale, I want you to listen to me very carefully.'

For the next ten minutes, Fletcher explained to Hale what was going to happen. When he finished, Hale was silent.

'There is no way the police will be able to connect you to this, but I can't prevent them from focusing their attention on you.'

'Does Karim know?' Hale asked.

'We've discussed the matter at length.'

'He approves?'

'He does. However, since we have no choice but to involve you, Dr Karim and I both agree that the decision is yours. If you change your mind, you know how to reach me, but don't take too long. The preparations have already been made.'

'How long do I have?'

'An hour,' Fletcher said. 'I'd suggest you leave for New York this evening. Dr Karim has searched through a national patient database called the Medical Information Bureau. Walter sees a doctor at the Shriners Burn Center, but the MIB contains an old address.'

'Can you find him?'

'Karim can't access the Shriners database. I plan on doing that myself later this evening. I suspect I'll find Walter in the next few days. In the interim, you may want to give some significant thought as to what you asked during our initial conversation.'

'I haven't changed my mind.'

'After I hang up, I want you to call Detective Bryson and tell him about the DVD you received in the mail. Tell him what you saw, and please make sure to give him the mailer.'

'Your name is on it.'

'Along with my fingerprints,' Fletcher said.

'I don't understand.'

'The police already know I'm here. I want them to think I'm acting independently.'

'Won't the FBI find out?'

'By the time their task force arrives, I'll be gone.'

A black Mustang tore its way up the winding road.

'I'll contact you shortly,' Fletcher said. 'If you change your mind, you know how to reach me.'

Darby McCormick stepped out of the car and showed her ID to the two security guards standing outside their truck. Apparently she had called ahead to let them know of her arrival.

The young woman was, by all indications, bright and fearless; but would she keep pushing until she found the truth? It was time to find out.

49

Darby paced outside the room where she had found the photograph and statue. The two undercover Boston detectives who escorted her were somewhere in the dark, watching.

She pushed the button for the backlight for her watch. It was almost nine and Malcolm Fletcher still hadn't called.

The ancient building groaned around her. Down the hall, wind blew through a window, the sound like a high-pitched scream.

Darby felt the hospital's presence as though it was a living, breathing entity like the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. She didn't believe in ghosts but she knew there were places in this world that were haunted, where men had performed unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence against each other, where the cries of the damned lingered for eternity. As she waited, she wondered about the possible secrets waiting for her inside these walls.

Her phone rang. She grabbed it, heard silence on the other end of the line. Then she realized her phone was set to vibrate.

The ringing was coming from inside the patient room.

Darby had already mounted the tactical light on her SIG. She turned it on and found a cell phone lying on the floor behind the steel door.