City Dark(15)

“This should be a barrel of laughs, then,” Joe said to Aideen. He flipped Hathorne’s photo so that it wasn’t staring up at him. Rain, turning to sleet, slashed against his office window. “Drinks after work if this weather lets up? I think a few of us want to take you out before you leave on Friday.”

“Maybe. I’ll see how Ben’s feeling. He may be fine just hanging with the kids tonight.”

“I hope to see him again soon,” Joe said. “Please give him my best.”

Joe wouldn’t see Ben alive again, though. Aideen’s and Ben’s lives would become shrouded in hospital care and then hospice care, and Ben would be dead that October, just before the presidential election.

“I will.”

“And thanks for the tip, Aid.”

She offered a slight grin. “I’m always looking out for you.”





CHAPTER 13


Saturday, July 15, 2017

St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center

Ogdensburg, New York

11:59 p.m.

Aaron Everett Hathorne was in perfect health, right down to his hands and fingers, which suffered no arthritis, even though he was sixty-eight. It had always been that way; Hathorne had a brilliant constitution and was never seriously ill. He remembered one of the mothers of his child victims lamenting that fact to a judge during his criminal trial in 2000. Her son, whom Hathorne had victimized while he was practicing medicine, had died of leukemia. The mother, Hathorne remembered, had made quite a scene before the judge at sentencing, crying and carrying on about how unfair it was that he, Dr. Hathorne, was in such perfect health when her own son had died just before the trial. Hathorne remembered being amused by it. As if his health and that of the boy were somehow cosmically connected. As if God cared.

Because he had no arthritis, Hathorne had adapted very well to the screen keyboards on the so-called smartphones (sometimes borrowed, sometimes purloined) he used to communicate with the outside world. He had been at St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center for a year, but he had quickly identified and recruited two individuals to assist him. One was a family member of another patient, the other a staff member. These two individuals, separately and unbeknownst to each other, would bring things in for Hathorne or smuggle them out.

The staffer, easily bribed, had power and access. The family member was liked and trusted within the facility, so she was also valuable. An aging mother with a son confined as a psychiatric patient, she was a needy, stupid woman whom Hathorne could readily manipulate. It was as simple as pretending to understand what afflicted her son and then promising to help him in a way that the doctors apparently could not. Through these two people, Hathorne could obtain things such as additional computer hardware and concealed packages from his contacts on the outside.

A few of his contacts were ex-cons like him or undetected criminals. Some, though, were part of an ongoing legal and investigatory team Hathorne paid a pretty penny for. His family loathed him, but they were rich, and he still had access to a hefty trust fund. He paid for things such as practical goods and information and surveillance. So far, few things had proven more valuable than a simple smartphone, in this case an iPod Touch, with which he could connect to an internet signal. The hospital didn’t allow this, of course, but Hathorne had devised a way to connect to a virtual private network, or VPN. He could explore the whole internet with the VPN, including its very dark side, and he could communicate with anyone he wanted. He still used regular computers for illicit communication at the psych center, but it was more difficult to get away with than it had been in prison. Hathorne was unimpressed by any of the St. Lawrence staff, be they educated or not, but they were head and shoulders above the idiots he had encountered in the DOC.

It was nearly midnight, and Hathorne was resting on the narrow bed in his locked room. The lights were out, and a thin sheet covered him. Silence blanketed the facility. He could crack the window above his desk in the corner and sometimes hear owls in the surrounding woods. He had to admit, SLPC was a pleasure dome compared to his previous accommodations.

His heart burned with hatred anyway. He didn’t belong here. He had “done his time,” to use that vulgar expression describing the odious power of the government. He had been caught, and he had paid for it. Maybe not as robustly as he deserved, because the government only knew about, much less proved, a fraction of the crimes he had committed. Regardless, why did the government get to say what were crimes and what weren’t, anyway? He had needs. Children filled them, and he healed them in exchange. That was all over now. An actual child’s touch was beyond his ability to secure. There were photos, though, and videos and stories. He had tapped into them from prison, gotten caught for it, and paid for those sins also.

And then it arrived: a short, neutrally toned letter from the Office of the Attorney General informing him of his status, now as a “respondent.” After all of it—the trial, the sentencing, the years of drudgery and misery in upstate prisons—now they wanted to keep him confined even longer. And how? With some constitutionally twisted, punishment-in-disguise “public safety” law that only meant he would be demonized further, dragged through the machinations of the court system for a second time, and then confined to a locked hospital. Possibly forever.

Hathorne had fired off lawsuits against everyone involved, of course. His legal and investigatory team was handsomely paid and ready to work tirelessly for him. The case for proving he had a “mental abnormality” was strong, but it could be beaten. He was ready to stalk and sue everyone attempting to keep him confined. For a while, things looked as if they were turning in his favor. Ultimately, though, there was one man at the center of the effort who had made it stick. One man who had dredged up the old victims and set them up to testify so compellingly. One man who had arranged the cadre of doctors declaring him a danger with their interminable psychobabble. He was about to be released—the law had no choice—but then along came this one man and his pathetic crusade. One man, Hathorne was convinced, had snatched freedom from him. One undeserving, unhinged, stinking, sweaty drunkard of a state lawyer—Joe DeSantos. Now it was Hathorne’s turn. He was going to put an end to Joe DeSantos, and so far the man was making it laughably easy for him.