Kenny looked shifty, Reggie aggrieved, as he hustled her out of the office and herded her in the direction of a battered pickup.
Erin stuffed her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunched against the wind. ‘Are you sure it’s no trouble?’ It was a long way, and the roads were slick with ice.
‘Nah, I can tell it’ll be slow today. Besides, I wouldn’t feel right keeping a doc from her patient.’ He let the words hang in the air, as if hoping she’d reveal a salacious detail he could repeat to his mates.
Strapped in the passenger seat, she studied the skeins of ice forming on the windscreen as the truck fishtailed on the macadam. Reggie turned on the defroster and switched the radio to a pop station.
‘It’s not often I get away from the garage.’ He wiped the fogged glass with his hand. ‘Most days you’ll find me under the chassis like a regular grease monkey. Not for long, though. I’ve got my eye on a little place in Florida. Right on the water, where the fishing’s good,’ he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘About time I retire. My back’s shot, and the economy’s all gone to hell.’ He peered through the gloom. ‘We’re dying up here.’
Too keyed up to respond, she let his words pass over her.
He flipped the dial on the radio and glanced at Erin.‘Visiting a patient, huh? That must be something. Regular folks like me can only imagine what goes on over there.’
Silence filled the cab. Long silences were her stock-in-trade, though he wouldn’t know that. Naturally, he was curious. They all were. In any town with a psychiatric hospital, especially one for the criminally insane, rumours about what went on behind the razor wire must run wild. Nuthouse. Loony bin, psycho ward, insane asylum. She wondered what the other good citizens of Atherton called it.
‘It’s not what you think,’ she said, holding her chilly hands close to the heating vent. ‘The patients are usually well cared for, even in a state facility like Greenlake. Straitjackets and manacles… those things are only in the movies.’
‘If you say so.’ He scratched the stubble on his jaw. ‘Sure was a panic around here a few years back. One of those, waddya call ’em, inmates escaped. Took the cops more than a week to find him. Axe murderer, was what I heard. Some of the parents wanted to keep their kids home from school till he was found. Finally caught the guy skulking around some lady’s garbage cans at night. Not a half a mile from my house. Gave my wife the whim-whams. It all turned out okay in the end, but folks were pretty shook up at the time. I thought the crazies were locked up for good, but turns out they can get out on a day pass and roam around the city, just as they please. Who knew?’
She shifted in her seat. An escapee from Greenlake? She could only hope it wasn’t Tim Stern. They passed a cluster of derelict buildings on the side of the motorway, faintly illuminated by the yellow glow of the sodium lights.
Her fingers were still cold, and she pulled on her gloves. ‘How long will it take to fix my car?’
Reggie made a sharp turn to the right and coasted down the exit ramp through the gloom. ‘Can’t say till I look under the hood.’ He pulled a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. ‘Give me a call when you’re done. With any luck, you’ll be back on the road this afternoon.’
A red light appeared in the mist, and Reggie braked hard as a huddled mass of pedestrians, shapeless in their parkas, shu?ed across the intersection. When the light changed, he turned right and skirted around the fag end of an industrial estate. In the distance, a crenulated shape emerged in the mist. Shipwrecked in the middle of a wasteland, the gothic edifice couldn’t be anything other than what it was: an asylum for the insane. But not in the good sense. Nothing about the place suggested sanctuary. More like the end of the road in a madman’s vision of hell.
‘Almost there,’ Reggie said. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’d getchya there on time?’
*
At the massive front gate, a guard examined her ID with exaggerated care before waving her through. It was a good hundred yards from the guardhouse to the main entrance, and by the time she traversed the gritty path, Erin managed to complete a relaxation technique she liked to do before entering a locked ward. A few minutes of focused breathing and mindful visualisation designed to shield her psyche from whatever madness awaited.
We’re all mad. Did you think you could escape?
She jerked around. But there was no one there. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, trying to calm the thump in her chest. At the base of the stone steps, she refastened the knot of hair at the back of her neck and approached the steel doors, reminding herself she was a doctor consulting on a case, not a woman about to meet a man who had a connection, however remote, to her past. The blackened bricks and barred windows towered over her, blocking out the sky.
With any luck, she’d be finished in an hour and back on the road to Lansford. If her car was up and running, that is, and the forecasted snowstorm failed to arrive. She didn’t relish the thought of spending the night here.
8
In the narrow entry hall, not much bigger than a coffin, Erin showed her ID to a guard seated behind two inches of Perspex. Before passing through a metal detector, she emptied her pockets and placed the contents in
