Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(101)

She didn't say anything.

"And anyway," he continued briskly, "now that we know Tommy's name, the case is almost done. We'll get him, lock him up, and that will be that."

"You'll come to Arizona to celebrate?"

"Catherine…"

"I know, Bobby. You'll take Annabelle to dinner to celebrate."

His turn to be silent.

"I like her, Bobby Honestly It makes me feel good to know that she will be happy."

"Someday, you'll be happy, too."

"No, Bobby, not me. But maybe I'll be less angry. Good luck with your case, Bobby."

"Thank you."

"And when it's over, feel free for you and Annabelle to come visit."

Bobby knew he'd never take Catherine up on that offer, but he thanked her before ending the call.

One detail down, about twelve more to go. He headed for Sinkus's cubicle.



SINKUS WAS MIFFED, the boy who'd gone to the stadium then looked away at the last minute and missed the game-winning play. He also smelled of sour milk.

"You mean all along this professor knew the whole story?"

"Guess so."

"Oh man, I spent three hours with Jill Cochran. All I learned is that former mental-ward administrators are tougher than Catholic nuns."

Bobby frowned. "What, she rapped your knuckles with a yardstick?"

"No, she delivered a blistering lecture on how unfair it is to always assume the worst of the mentally ill. That wackos are people, have rights. Most are harmless, just misunderstood. 'Mark my words,' she told me, 'you find who did this, and I guarantee it won't be one of our patients. No, it'll be some fine upstanding member of the community. Someone who goes to church, spoils his kids, and works nine to five. It's always the normal ones who commit the truly vile acts against God.' Woman had a lot of opinions on the subject."

"So, where are the records?" Bobby asked, trying not to sound impatient.

"You're looking at 'em." Sinkus gestured to four cardboard boxes, stacked against the wall. "Not as bad as I feared. Remember, the place closed precomputerization. I thought we might be talking hundreds of boxes. But when the facility shut down, Mrs. Cochran knew they couldn't hang on to piles of patient history So she condensed down the files to a manageable size. This way when someone needs information on a former patient, she knows where to start. Plus, I got the impression she was thinking of using her years at the place to write a book. Kind of a tell-all with a heart."

Bobby shrugged. Why not?

He opened the first box. Jill Cochran was an organized kind of gal. She had divvied up the information by decade, then by building, each decade holding multiple building files. Bobby tried to remember what Charlie Marvin had told them about the hospital's organization. Maximum security had been in I-Building, something like that.

He went to the seventies and pulled the file for I-Building. Each patient had been distilled to a single page. It still made an impressive weight in his hand.

He came upon the name Christopher Eola first and skimmed Cochran's notes. Date of admittance, brief family history, a bunch of clinical terms that meant nothing to Bobby, then apparently the head nurse's own impression—"extrem. dangerous, extrem. sneaky, stronger than he looks."

Bobby stuck a yellow sticky tab on the page, for future reference. He was confident that the crime scene at Mattapan was the work of Annabelle's uncle. Having decided that, he was equally confident that somewhere at some time, Christopher Eola had performed his own "vile acts against God." Regardless of the resolution of the Mattapan case, he had a feeling the task force would agree to continue tracking down Mr. Eola.

He skimmed through other patient files, waiting for something to leap out at him. A neon Post-it screaming, I am the madman. A doctor's note: This patient is the most likely to have kidnapped and tortured six girls.

Many of the patients came with notes documenting a history of violence, as well as extensive criminal activity At least half, however, had no background at all. Admitted by police."

"Discovered vagrant" were very common phrases. Even before the homeless crisis made headlines in the eighties, it was clear the homeless were in crisis in Boston.

Bobby made it through the whole stack and realized it had become one long, depressing blur. He stopped, backed up, tried again.

"Whatya looking for?" Sinkus asked.

"Don't know."

"That makes it hard."

"What are you doing?"

Sinkus held up his own bulging file. "Staff."

"Ah. Any of them look good?"

"Only Adam Schmidt, the perverted AN."

"Bummer. Track him down yet?"

"Working on it. What about age?"

[page]"What?"

"Age. You're looking for a patient who might be Tommy Grayson, yes? You said he was seven years younger than Russell Granger. Had been in and out of prison and/or hospitals since he was what, sixteen?"

"That Russell knew of."

"So, if he was admitted to Boston State Mental, you're talking a young man. Teens to early twenties."

Bobby considered the logic. "Yeah, good guess."

He started sorting through the patient sheets again, culling down the entire file to fourteen men, including Eola and another case Charlie Marvin had told him about, the street kid named Benji who'd attended Boston Latin while living in the dying mental institute.