This was one of the things he could do: watch who was coming and going in a way that you never could in one of those giant hospitals in a metropolitan area.
“He’s having a heart attack!” the driver shouted at Ronny as the car came to a stop in front of him.
Ronny nodded. “Don’t move him. They are on their way out and-” He didn’t have time to finish when two orderlies and two nurses arrived with a stretcher.
As soon they got the man out of the car and onto the stretcher, the driver threw the car into Reverse and screeched out of the parking lot.
Ronny stared at the retreating Benz, trying to memorize the plates. He thought he had it, but he wasn’t sure. The car had been moving too fast. Who leaves someone in that condition at the hospital and then drives off? A criminal, Ronny thought. Or a drunk. Either way, he should call the police.
The man was on the stretcher now. They were rushing him into the E.R.
Jeeze.
He’d seen a lot in the four years he had been working in Greenwich. Rich folk cried no different than poor ones. They sat down in the parking lot in the middle of the afternoon and curled up in a little ball and just wept. He’d seen kids, no older than his sister’s kids, riding up in fancy cars, stubbing out their cigarettes, running in to pay a visit to Mom or Dad and coming back out jabbering on their cell phones. He’d seen mothers bring in babies turning blue and ambulances delivering patients with every ailment and injury there was.
But he had never seen a man, stark naked, with restraints on his ankles and wrists, wheeled into the emergency room at four o’clock in the afternoon. Hell, at any time.
And he hoped that he never would again.
Sixty-Three
The front door was shut, but not locked. Opening it, I called out Daphne’s name. No response. Running, I went from the foyer, to the living room, through to the kitchen, into the den, the whole time calling her name. Over and over.
“Daphne? Daphne? Daphne?”
Silence.
This was not the kind of house to leave unlocked. Besides, where was Daphne? She was an agoraphobic who had not left the house in six months, and yet she wasn’t home now, when our session was scheduled? And where was Nicky?
Alone, any of those things would have concerned me, but together with seeing those horrific paintings, I was seriously alarmed.
Had Daphne read the articles about the men who had been killed, men who she, too, had known from her more active days as a participant at the Scarlet Society, and used her talent with brushes and paint to give voice to her nightmares?
Yes, that had to be it. It was the only possible explanation.
I walked into the studio. Maybe Daphne was there, in a corner I hadn’t seen. Maybe she was wearing headphones and hadn’t heard me calling out.
The light splashed through the windows onto the gruesome canvases.
They were portraits of powerlessness.
“Daphne? Daphne?”
No answer.
There were three doors in the studio besides the main one. The first led to a bathroom. Daphne wasn’t there. The second opened on a supply closet and she wasn’t in there, either. As I closed the door, I thought I heard something and turned, scanning the room. Static was coming from the monitor on the marble fireplace mantel. I moved closer to it. A monitor picking up noises from where? I carried it with me as I moved toward the third door.
The first thing I saw was the red light that washed over the cabinets and tabletops. The smell was stringent and sharp. I hadn’t known what it was the first time I’d been to the house and I’d mistaken it for something else in Jordain’s office, but I understood now.
Daphne had told me that she took photos of her subjects and worked from them, as well as working from life. Of course she would have a darkroom of her own.
The ruby glow illuminated the bottles of chemicals and the plastic baths. The trays were empty, but there were at least a dozen photographs hanging from clips on a line running from one end of the narrow room to the other.
Dozens of shots of a face. Devoid of everything but desperation.
It was the face I recognized from the painting.
Where was Daphne?
I still had the monitor in my hand, and when it came to life I almost dropped it. The noise sounded like an animal in trouble. Or was it a human being moaning?
My fear suddenly surged into panic. I tried to figure out what to do.
The groans continued.
I ran from the studio, back out to the foyer, looking, searching for some clue that would tell me where Daphne was-because by now I was sure she was at the other end of the monitor.
Nothing in the living room. Nothing in the den. Nothing in the kitchen. But in the pantry off the kitchen there was a door flung open. Had it not been open, I never would have seen it-it was disguised to look like shelves.
Down a flight of steps.
In my hand, the moans continued.
Into a dark wine cellar where I was greeted with dank earth smells.
Wine and vinegar, sour smells.
And something else.
Putrid human smells. Urine. Feces. Filthy flesh.
In a house? In this house?
“Daphne?”
The moaning was no longer coming just from the monitor. Now I could hear it in the distance. It was down here with me. Not far.
Gagging on the odors I was following, I continued calling out Daphne’s name and listening for the returning squawks. Could Daphne be making those sounds? There was more than one person moaning. Who was she with? Where were they?
I went through another opened door, this one disguised as a shelf of wine bottles. Down three more steps. How low into the earth was I descending?
The scent of human waste was overpowering me. For one second, I wondered if I was going to be able to go on. Breathe through your mouth, I thought. Don’t even allow yourself to smell this. I pulled out my cell. No signal. Damn.
I took the last step and found myself in a large, windowless chamber. The center of the earth. The basement’s basement. And facing me, as my eyes adjusted to this deeper darkness, lurid proof that there is no limit to the depravity of the human mind.
Sixty-Four
Four men were lying tethered to hospital gurneys. I didn’t want the carnage to be real, but it was.
Who brought these men here? And where was Daphne?
Sweat rolled down my back. My legs shook so badly I had trouble standing.
My mind was not functioning.
Arrrg.
I heard the sound and screamed. What was happening?
The dead do not talk.
They do not moan.
But these men were moaning.
In the gloom, I saw the bright red marks on the soles of their feet. Numbers painted-of course, painted-painted in red.
2
3
4
5
There was no number 1.
Why was that gurney empty?
Where was number 1?
The chorus of grunts entreated me. When I was an intern on the psychiatric ward at the hospital, I had seen faces like these. They were drugged, sedated.
Thorazine.
Damn it.
None of us had thought of it-the men were not dead.
Damn it.
All of us-Jordain, Perez and I-had been looking for a serial killer. I’d studied everyone I met connected with the Scarlet Society for just one woman who exhibited any of the personality traits of a mass murderer: a psychopath with no regard for human life. A monster who killed for thrill and sexual satisfaction.
We all knew the stats.
Eighty-eight percent of serial killers are Caucasian men aged twenty to forty. More than seventy percent of them operate in a specific location or area. In a chart of serial killers’ childhood development characteristics created in 1990, the three most dominant behaviors included daydreaming, compulsive masturbation and isolation.
They are dominant, powerful and controlling men. Who often have trouble perceiving the difference between themselves and God. Many believe that God is, in fact, telling them what to do.