Had he just heard what he thought he’d heard?
Was Fremont planning to kill Myra?
No, no — that couldn’t be right. They were supposed to take her out to the parking lot and meet up with the nurse lady.
Regaining his balance, Solomon moved toward the kid, watching as Fremont shone the flashlight beam into the darkness and aimed it at the bed.
But the bed was empty.
“What the fuck?”
Fremont stepped past the threshold and swept the light around the room.
The woman was nowhere in sight.
“What is this?” he growled. “Lisa promised me some prime pussy, so where the hell is it?”
Then, as if in answer to the question, they both heard a sound. A faint whimper. Coming from overhead.
It sounded more animal than human.
Fremont aimed the flashlight beam toward the ceiling. And despite Solomon’s concerns about this young punk’s intentions, what he saw there made his entire body go numb.
“Holy shit,” Fremont said.
A moment later, he wasn’t saying anything.
He was too busy screaming.
54
It started to rain.
Blackburn crushed out the last of the Winston and flipped his wipers on, wondering when the hell De Mello was gonna call back and give him that location. He had been headed in the direction of Baycliff just out of instinct, but for all he knew, it was the wrong direction altogether.
He was about to pull to the side of the road, debating whether to try calling Carmody again, in the dim hope that he’d been wrong about that severed ear.
Then his cell phone bleeped.
“I don’t know what the holdup was,” De Mello said, “but they’ve got it pinpointed.”
“Where is she?”
“Baycliff — sort of.”
“Sort of? What the hell does that mean?”
“The tracker shows her up the hill a bit. Somewhere between the new hospital and the ruins. From the satellite photos, it looks like she’s in the trees.”
The pepper trees. They grew like weeds up there.
Not liking the sound of this, Blackburn reminded himself that they were only tracking Carmody’s phone, not Carmody herself. But then the thought of that little detail made him feel even worse.
“You okay, Frank? You sound a little tense.”
“Hunky-dory,” Blackburn said.
“Don’t worry about Carmody, I’m sure she’s fine. The cell signal up there isn’t worth shit.”
He hadn’t told De Mello about the ear.
And what De Mello hadn’t mentioned was that a phone caught in a dead zone doesn’t ring. It goes straight to voice mail.
Carmody’s had been ringing like crazy.
And if her phone was caught in a dead zone, the GPS trace wouldn’t have worked.
“By the way,” De Mello continued, “we just got an anonymous squeal on a possible break-in at Tolan’s house. Hogan and Pendergast are picking it up.”
“Nothing on Tolan himself?”
“Not yet. But he’s bound to show up sooner or later.”
Probably later, Blackburn thought. A lot later.
He thanked De Mello, told him to get his ass home, then hung up.
Sticking his flasher on the dashboard, he flicked it on, hit the siren, and bore down on the gas pedal.
Five minutes later, Blackburn was tearing up the hill toward Pepper Mountain Mesa. As he closed in on Baycliff, he cut the siren and heard a sound — the piercing ring of a fire alarm.
Pulling into the parking lot, he saw no sign of the car he’d left for Carmody, and was surprised to see staff and patients piling out of the detention unit, as well as the hospital proper. While the main building was still lit, the EDU itself was dark, as if someone had cut the electricity.
And this was no orderly evacuation.
The patients were unruly and wild, staff and security having a tough time containing them. Half of them were soaked to the bone, but Blackburn couldn’t tell if this was because of the rain — which was quickly turning into a thunderstorm — or if the overhead sprinklers had gone off inside.
For some reason, it all reminded him of a scene from Night of the Living Dead.
Spotting an OCPD uniform carrying an umbrella — talk about prepared — Blackburn skidded to a stop in the middle of the aisle, jumped out, and ran toward him, showing him his badge.
“What’s happening here?”
“What’s it look like? A fuckin’ mess, that’s what.”
Blackburn gestured toward the detention unit. “Is Detective Carmody inside?”
The uniform shook his head. “I just got on duty, but the guy I replaced said she took off hours ago.”
Shit, Blackburn thought. He’d known it was too much to hope for.
As the cop moved past him to grab one of the wayward patients, Blackburn turned, looking off toward the trees. It was raining fairly hard now and a handful of patients were running for shelter as EDU staff members tried desperately to corral them.
Blackburn followed, crossing the wide lawn toward a narrow pathway with a NO TRESSPASSING sign. He was halfway to it when a hand grabbed his arm.
He turned sharply, expecting it to be one of the nutcases, but was surprised to see it was the old man from The Avenue. The one who said he knew Psycho Bitch.
And he didn’t look good.
His eyes were wide with shock, the front of his hospital garb ripped open and covered with blood. His neck was crosshatched with severe lacerations, his left shin sliced open and bleeding, and he barely had the power to stand. He looked as if he’d been attacked by a wild animal.
“You’ve gotta stop her,” he said.
“Who? Who did this?”
“You know who. The woman. The one who used to be Myra. She’s one of the children now. The children of the drum. Just like Henry.”
Blackburn had no earthly idea what the old man was talking about, could easily have dismissed it as the ravings of a lunatic, but there was something in those eyes of his that told Blackburn he needed to listen.
“Where is she?”
The old man did his best to point toward the trees. It looked as if it was a Herculean effort just to lift the finger. “… In there. You gotta stop her… before she hurts someone else. You gotta…”
He faltered then, falling to one knee, and Blackburn grabbed hold of him. The rain was coming down in sheets now, soaking them both, a pool of bloody water forming on the grass beneath them.
“How did she do this to you? Does she have a knife?”
The old man managed a negative shake of the head, then turned his face toward the sky, letting the rain wash over him.
“Reminds me of Katrina,” he said. “He shoulda taken me then for what I did. Instead, he helped me.”
“Who?”
The old man coughed, bringing up a bubble of blood. “Henry. My brother, Henry.” He didn’t speak for a moment, disappearing into a memory. Then he looked at Blackburn and said, “Can you keep a secret?”
Blackburn knew the old man was dying. Nobody could survive this kind of punishment. “Yes.”
“I’ve been lying to myself all these years. We do that a lot, don’t we? Lie to ourselves.”
Blackburn nodded, his feelings for Carmody immediately coming to mind.
“We keep lying and lying and when you mix that in with all the booze, after a while the truth don’t matter much anymore. The lie is what we remember. The stories we make up to keep us from going crazy for what we’ve done.”
He faltered again, coughing up more blood. Then he said, “I loved my little brother. I don’t know why I pushed him in front of that police car… but… but my instincts just told me to. It was The Rhythm. The Rhythm makin’ me do it. Keepin’ the world synchronized.”