Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(5)

Some neighborhoods had won. Mattapan obviously had not.

Another light. Bobby slowed, glanced at his watch. Eight minutes to ETA. He swung his car left, looping around Mt. Hope Cemetery From this angle, he could peer out his side window as the enormous no-man's-land that was Boston State Mental Hospital finally came into view.

At one hundred and seventy acres of lushly wooded inner-city green space, the Boston State Mental Hospital was currently the most hotly contested development site in the state. It was also, as former home to a century-old lunatic asylum, one of the spookiest damn places around.

Two dilapidated brick buildings perched on top of the hill, winking down at the population with windows gone crazy with shattered glass. Huge overgrown oaks and beeches clawed at the night sky, bare limbs forming silhouettes of gnarled hands.

Story went that the hospital was built in the middle of forested grounds to provide a "serene" setting for the patients. Several decades of overcrowded buildings, strange midnight screams, and two violent murders later, the locals still talked of lights that randomly came on the middle of the ruins, of spine-tingling moans that whispered from beneath the crumbling piles of brick, of flickering silhouettes spotted among the trees.

So far, none of the tales had frightened off the developers. The Audubon Society had secured one corner of the property, turning it into a popular nature preserve. Major construction was currently under way on a brand-new lab for UMass, while Mattapan buzzed with rumors of public housing, or maybe a new high school.

Progress happened. Even to haunted mental institutions.

Bobby turned around the far corner of the cemetery and finally spotted the party. There, in the left-hand corner of the site: Giant beams of light burst through the skeletal beech trees, pushing against the dense, moonless night. More lights, tiny pinpricks of red and blue, zigzagging through the trees as additional police cars sped up the winding road toward one corner of the property. He waited to see the outline of the former hospital, a relatively small, three-story ruin, come into view, but the patrol cars veered away, heading deeper into the woods instead.

D.D. hadn't been lying. BPD had a scene, and judging by the traffic, it was a big one.

Bobby finished his loop of the cemetery. One minute to ETA, he passed through the yawning black gate and headed for the ruins on the hill.

[page]

HE CAME TO the first patrol officer almost immediately. The BPD cop was standing in the middle of the road, wearing an orange safety vest and armed with a high-beam flashlight. Kid looked barely old enough to shave. He arranged his face into a fine scowl, however, as he scrutinized Bobby's shield, then grunted suspiciously when he realized Bobby was with the state police.

"Sure you got the right place?" Kid asked.

"Dunno. I plugged 'crime scene' into MapQuest and this is what it spit out."

Kid regarded him blankly Bobby sighed. "Got a personal invite from Detective Warren. If you got a problem, take it up with her."

"You mean Sergeant Warren?"

"Sergeant? Well, well, well."

Kid slapped Bobby's creds back into his hand. Bobby headed up the hill.

The first abandoned building appeared on his left, multipaned windows winking back twin reflections of his headlights. The brick structure sagged on its foundation, front doors padlocked shut, roof disintegrated from the inside out.

Bobby took a right, passing a second structure, which was smaller, and in even greater disrepair. Cars were stacking up roadside now, parked bumper-to-bumper as detectives' vehicles, ME's van, and crime-scene technicians all vied for space.

The spotlights beckoned farther out, however. A distant glow in the shrouded woods. Bobby could just hear the hum of the generator, brought in on the crime-scene van to power the party. Apparently, he had a hike ahead of him.

He parked in an overgrown field next to three patrol cars. Grabbed a flashlight, paper, and pen. Then, on second thought, a warmer jacket.

The November night was cool, down in the forties, and frosted with a light mist. No one was around, but the beam of his flashlight illuminated the trampled path blazed by the death investigators who'd come before him. His boots made heavy tromping sounds as he went.

He could still hear the generator, but no voices yet. He ducked beneath some bushes, feeling the earth grow marshy beneath his feet before firming up again. He passed a small clearing, noticed a refuse pile—rotting wood, bricks, some plastic buckets. Illegal dumping had been a problem on the ground for years, but most of that was by the fence line. This was too deep in. Probably leftovers from the asylum itself, or maybe one of the recent building projects. Old, new, he couldn't tell in this kind of light.

Noise grew louder, the hum of the generator building to a dull roar. He ducked his head into the collar of his jacket, shielding his ears. As a ten-year veteran patrol officer, Bobby had attended his fair share of crime scenes. He knew the noise. He knew the smell.

But this was his first scene as a bona fide detective. He thought that's why it felt so different. Then he cleared another line of trees and came to an abrupt halt.

Guys. Everywhere. Most in suits, probably fifteen, eighteen detectives and easily a dozen uniforms. Then there were the men with the graying hair in the thick woolen overcoats. Senior officers, most of whom Bobby recognized from various retirement parties for other big guns. He spotted a photographer, four crime-scene techs. Finally a lone female—if memory served she was an ADA, Assistant District Attorney