“He’s plenty strong now. Why do you think that is?” I asked.
Hinst finished his cigarette and threw the butt into the courtyard. Lit up another and offered me the pack. Mine wasn’t done, but I took a fresh one anyway.
“You know anything about giants?” Hinst asked.
I shook my head.
“They have something wrong with their pituitary gland, and can’t stop producing growth hormones. Unless they get treated by a doctor, they’ll keep on growing until they die. But here’s the strange thing. They’re not very strong. They’re so big, their bones have a hard time supporting their muscle mass. As a result, they cramp a lot. Something to do with all the sodium in their bodies.”
“So what happened to Lonnie?”
“The doctors fucked with him. They did a procedure that stopped his pituitary gland from producing hormones. By then, Lonnie was six-ten and still skinny as a rail. The doctors decided to beef him up.”
“How? By feeding him?”
Hinst shook his head. The expression on his face was pained. My mind flashed back to the bloody cotton ball and plastic syringe I’d found in Lonnie’s motel room.
“Don’t tell me they gave him steroids.”
“That’s exactly what they did. And boy, did he get strong. Put on a hundred twenty pounds of muscle in a few months. I used to go into that room and see him doing push-ups for a half-hour straight. He was a monster.”
“Weren’t people afraid of him?”
“Sure they were afraid. But the folks running this place didn’t care. Lonnie was an experiment to them, not a person. They didn’t care about him at all.”
“When did Mouse enter the picture?”
“You know about Mouse?”
“He and Lonnie are still together.”
Hinst swallowed hard. Again he shook his head. “Mouse was a criminal. Can’t say I ever heard his real name. He convinced a judge he was crazy, so he got sent here. But he was crazy like a fox. He used Lonnie. They were a team. Even the guards were scared of them.”
“Do you know this area well?”
Hinst nodded. “Sure. I grew up around here.”
“There’s an abandoned farm a few miles north of here. Lonnie and Mouse hid there with a nurse they abducted from this facility. A woman named Kathi Bolger.”
I thought Hinst was going to hit the floor.
“You mean Kat Bolger? Oh, my God. She used to take care of Lonnie.”
“I need for you to tell me about her.”
Hinst ground the tiny butt of his cigarette into the floor, and made a Follow me motion with his hand. Together we walked down the hall to the sleeping quarters.
“This was the last place I saw Kat Bolger,” Hinst said, standing in the room’s center. “Right in this very spot. She was helping push a patient on a gurney.”
“When was this?”
“It was the last day, right before Daybreak was shut down. The state medical examiner had made a surprise visit, and saw all the shit the doctors were pulling. You know, doing experiments on patients without their permission. Like with Lonnie.”
“So Lonnie wasn’t the only one they messed with.”
“No. It was widespread. Later the state went and blacked out all the records, just so no one would find out what the doctors were doing.”
“What happened the day Daybreak was closed?”
“The place was a madhouse, and that’s no joke. The patients were screaming and refusing to leave. This was home for most of them, and they didn’t know where they were being sent to. Bad thing to do to a crazy person.”
“You said Nurse Bolger was pushing a gurney.”
“That’s right. There was an orderly with her. A buddy of mine named Grady. Grady and Bolger were pushing a patient out of the ward.”
“Who?”
Hinst gave it some thought. “Oh, shit. It was Lonnie. Lonnie got sick, and passed out. Grady was sent up to help Bolger move him out.”
“You’re sure this happened on Daybreak’s last day?”
“Yeah. People were flying around everywhere.”
And in all the confusion, Mouse and Lonnie grabbed Bolger and escaped.
“I need to find Mouse and Lonnie,” I said. “Do you remember their last names?”
Hinst scratched his chin. “Let me think. Lonnie’s began with an R. I think it was Polish. I never heard Mouse’s last name.”
“You’ve got to try. It’s important.”
Hinst shut his eyes and attempted to dredge up their names from his memory. After a moment his eyes opened, and he shook his head.
“I’m sorry, mister,” Hinst said.
My spirits sagged. Another dead end.
We started to leave. Walking out, Buster’s nose twitched. He’d picked up a scent. I let him lead me across the room to a closet. He scratched at the door, and I tested the knob. It was locked.
“What’s in the closet?” I asked.
“It was used for storage. Why?”
“My dog thinks there’s something in there.”
“We shouldn’t be messing around in here.”
“I’m going to see what’s inside.”
“Well, I guess I can’t stop you.”
I got a tire iron from the trunk of my car, and used it to pry open the door. Inside the closet were rusted bed frames and a steel drum spray-painted with the word Daybreak. Hinst helped me roll the drum out into the center of the room, and I popped the lid with the crowbar. The smell nearly knocked me off my feet.
“What the hell is that odor?” Hinst said.
I looked inside the drum. Lying on the bottom was a corpse dressed in a green orderly’s uniform. The corpse’s body was broken in several places, and had been folded together like a bunch of sticks. The name tag above his pocket said Grady.
CHAPTER 42
I have seen the dead more times than is healthy. One thing I’ve learned from the experience: The dead don’t talk, but they do scream.
Hinst and I sat on a concrete bench in the cool shade of the courtyard. Hinst smoked cigarettes until his pack was gone. Looking at his profile, I could tell that finding Grady’s body inside the drum would haunt him for a long time.
I had a general idea of what had happened the day Daybreak shut down. Lonnie had played sick. Bolger and an orderly tried to move him. Lonnie killed the orderly, and held Bolger against her will. Mouse put on a stolen orderly’s uniform. Then they forced Bolger to come with them, took her car and escaped, never to be seen again.
“His name was Grady York,” Hinst said after awhile. “We used to go out for beers. He’d been over in ‘Nam, too. I talked to him the morning the place was shutting down. He agreed to meet me after work for a cold one. When he didn’t show, I figured he’d just blown me off. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” I said.
