Betrayal (30 page)

Another deputy radioed for a helicopter.

“What do you think happened here?” Flinn asked.

Annie looked at the victims as a horde of paramedics descended over them.

“I don't even want to think about the headlines,” Flinn went on, “but this looks like we've got a love triangle here. Drew was with both the mother and the daughter.”

“Obviously,” Annie said.

“Kid's a regular Don Juan.”

She shook her head. “Something like that.”

“Grab her ID in case she's got any medical issues,” Annie said. “His too.”

A deputy picked up Brandy's purse from the nightstand, and then he fished Drew's wallet from his pants pocket. In doing so, a condom fell out.

“At least he practiced safe sex,” he said.

“No offense to the victim,” Annie said, letting out her feelings about Brandy Connors Baker for the first time, “but I don't think any sex with her could be considered safe. Not unless you like cuddling up to a cobra.”

Chapter 34

CARMINE ANGELO AND HIS EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD SON, Ricky, were fishing for Dungeness crab on the other side of McNeil Island in what had been the worst single haul of their year. It had been a lousy year by anyone's standards. Father and son had been at each other's throats all day, starting in the morning. It was supposed to be a fun outing before Ricky shipped off for army boot camp and then, more than likely, the Middle East. Carmine had chided his son for the past year, telling the kid that if he didn't get his grades up, he'd end up being a house painter or something even worse.

A soldier was worse.

Carmine did not want Ricky to come home in a flag-draped box. He loved his boy with all his heart.

“Dad,” Ricky said, looking out at the water. “Check it out.”

Across the bow about twenty yards away, they could see a girl swimming frantically toward them. She approached quickly, closing the gap between them. As the waves smacked against the side of the boat, Ricky Angelo managed to lean over and grab Taylor, and Carmine hoisted her up. A second later, she was lying on the saltwater-splashed floorboards of the boat.

Taylor started to cough.
Hard.
She was freezing. She was as cold as she'd ever been. Carmine wrapped an old green blanket around her.

“My sister,” she said, her eyes widening with terror. “My sister is in trouble. We've got to get her. We were on McNeil. She fell into a well or something.”

Carmine went for his radio. “What were you doing on the island?” Ricky asked.

Taylor's lips were almost blue by then. Her wet hair was tangled with seaweed. She was scared and frozen, but she was alert enough just then to lie. “We were just looking around,” she said, shaking. “Just exploring.”

As she lay there, Taylor could hear the older man radio for the coast guard. She turned her focus back to her sister as the boat moved toward the old dock in front of the prison.

“Bring that,” she said, pointing at a supply of coiled-up rope and the gill net that had been used to no avail by Carmine and Ricky that day.

Jumping off the boat onto the dock, Taylor took two grimy oyster-shucking gloves and a flashlight sitting on one of the benches and headed back to save her sister.

CARMINE, RICKY, AND TAYLOR hovered over the small hole in the basement floor of the old Fitzpatrick house. Even though she was shaking in that way Hedda did after a soaking rainstorm, Taylor felt enough adrenalin to take charge.

“You,” she said to Carmine, a man old enough to be her father, “uncoil the rope. And, you,” she said, looking now at Carmine's son, “you are going to tie it down over there.” She pointed over to the old boiler that sent heat through steel pipes up to the upper floors of her mother's childhood home.

Her mother.
In the midst of the turmoil surrounding her, Taylor almost forgot that their mom had been the reason for this disaster. If she had been honest, none of this would have happened.

The Angelos did what they were told. And they did it at breakneck speed. Taylor Ryan, who was half frozen in the water a moment ago, was somehow surging. She was commanding them. She had an authority in the midst of the chaos. She was like that mom who'd made the rounds of the morning news shows when the YouTube video went viral showing her lifting up a car that trapped her daughter.

Taylor was unstoppable.

“Okay,” Ricky said, “what's next?”

“You and your dad are going to pull me and my sister up,” she said. “I'm going down there to get Hayley.”

“You can't do that,” Carmine said. “You're in no condition. You're too weak.”

Taylor shook her head, her hair now only damp, stuck like glue to the nape of her neck. The man was right, but Taylor wasn't going to give in.

“I don't want to get in an argument about a girl's lack of upper-body strength,” she said. “I get it. I know you're stronger than me. That's why both of you need to be up here. You need to get us out.”

Without saying another word, the slender teenager put on the oyster gloves, went toward the opening, and kicked the rope into the darkness. She put the flashlight in the waistband of her pants, grabbed the rope, and, just like that, was over the edge.

“Send down the net when I tell you,” she called up to the dimly lit faces of the father and son.

THE SOUND OF RATS AS THEY SQUEALED was the first thing Taylor noticed all around her. She stomped her feet, and the emboldened rodents scattered a little—not far, but not underfoot. As far as rats went, she figured that prison rats had to be the lowest of the low. The sound they made and the stench of their feces and urine made her sick. She pointed the light all around, sending stabbing beams into the corridor.

Nothing.

“Hayley! I'm here! Where are you?”

She waited a minute to hear a response, but those disgusting rodents refused to be put on
PAUSE
.

“Knock it off!” she screamed in her now very raspy voice. “I have to find my sister!”

Rats, apparently, weren't good listeners. They kept at it, squealing and milling around, running over her feet.

She followed the corridor until she found Hayley on the concrete slab, her phone in hand, and her eyes open to tiny slits.

“You're alive,” Taylor said, starting to cry and wondering why she would fall apart at that moment.

Hayley nodded slowly. “Get me out of here.”

Taylor called up into the darkness. “Send down that damn net. We need to get my sister out of this hellhole.”

Hellhole.
Taylor had never used that term in her life. Yet at that moment nothing else could have been more appropriate.

“Mom,” Hayley said. “Mom . . .” Her voice faded into stillness.

“Don't talk,” Taylor said. “We can talk later.”

When the net found its way to the wet and filthy floor, Taylor dragged her sister into it, lashing it shut with the end of the rope dangling from the basement above.

“Get her up. And then send it down for me. Hurry!”

A RESCUE HELICOPTER FROM KING COUNTY swirled over the dark waters of Puget Sound, scattering choppy black-and-white spray over its frigid surface as it lifted skyward, flying away from McNeil Island to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Hayley and Taylor were on stretchers, cocooned in silver thermal fabric like a pair of baked potatoes from an all-you-can-eat buffet, barely warm. Hayley was in dire straits. She might have been alive, but she looked dead. Her skin was chalk, save for a streak of red across her cheek, an abrasion from when she tumbled into the dark.

Taylor had certainly had better days, but she knew in the end she would be fine. It was Hayley she was worried about. Hayley deserved to live.

She just had to.

“Hang on,” Taylor said. “We're going to make it.”

Hayley didn't reply. And yet, under her eyelids, her eyes moved rapidly back and forth. The sixteen-year-old was processing something.

Just what it was, her twin had no idea.

Seconds after the helicopter touched down on the slate-gray roof of the hospital, a swarm of emergency-room personnel took over.

“I got this one. Hayley, right?” a young Puerto Rican doctor said, rolling Taylor toward the double glass doors.

“No, I'm Taylor. That's Hayley,” Taylor corrected wearily.

And just as the emergency bay doors
whooshed
open, Taylor realized why Olivia had been murdered.

Chapter 35

VALERIE RYAN HAD WORKED in the south wing of Puget Sound Hospital for two years, but she had never ventured into Maria Ortega's room. There were many reasons for that. Maria was a barely functioning schizophrenic who mostly just sat and stared at the blank wall and the window overlooking the courtyard. Maria was also not her patient.

She didn't know her, so a personal visit was out. Yet after speaking to Tony, Valerie felt a compulsion to see her.

Valerie had passed by room 123 hundreds of times and purposely never slowed, never turned, to see the woman inside.

She just didn't want to.
Couldn't. Wouldn't.

Maria Ortega had been incarcerated for almost three decades. She was in her forties, but a lifetime of being closed up inside most of the day had kept her skin from the sun. With few wrinkles, she looked to be about twenty-five. She was also small and thin. Many of the patients in the institution ballooned in their weight over time, a combination of drug side effects and helpings of starchy foods designed to keep them feeling full and satisfied.

It was near shift's end and the corridors were quiet, except for the sound of the patient in 113 who always cried out whenever she was being examined by a doctor or nurse.

“You are hurting me! Don't touch me! Don't! I'll tell on you!”

Valerie used her key card to open Maria's room, taking the clipboard with the patient's information and stepping inside. It was a little dark, so she flipped a switch to brighten the space. The walls were white and blank, save for two posters—one of a pair of pandas and another of a sunset over a rocky beach.

It looked like the Washington coast, maybe Ruby Beach
, Val thought.

The bed was covered in a rainbow quilt and was perfectly made. Along the top of a bolted-down dresser, with its pair of bolted-down lamps were a water pitcher, a plastic drinking cup, a clock, and a well-worn copy of the Holy Bible.

The place was so quiet, so still, that it felt empty, lifeless. Valerie scanned the room. Her eyes quickly landed on the figure of a woman in a chair, silhouetted in the window facing a row of winter-naked maples. The glass was streaked with rain.

“Maria?” Valerie asked.

The woman in the chair stayed quiet.

Valerie looked over her chart. Maria Ortega was on sedatives. The dosages were high, but Valerie was a nurse who knew that most of the doctors at the hospital had a good grip on what was best for their patients. The hospital was not one of those places in which the insane were warehoused and forgotten.

At least it hadn't been that kind of a place for years and years.

Valerie inched toward the rain-soaked window. Maria appeared to be mumbling something over and over. It was unclear if she was saying words or just running random noises from her vocal chords because the vibrations calmed her. Some patients did that.

“Maria? I'm Nurse Ryan,” she said, though after reviewing the chart she didn't expect any response.

Patient can speak but chooses not to. Patient understands commands and readily complies with instruction. Occasionally, patient will speak one-word answers, yes or no.

Maria kept her face toward the window. “I know who you are,” she said, in a voice that croaked slightly. Her warm breath condensed on the glass.

That was more than a one-word response.

Valerie felt her heart rate accelerate a little. It was a strange feeling, but one she knew well: fear. Even so, she felt compelled to get closer, to better hear what Maria was saying.

“You do?” Valerie asked.

“Come next to me,” Maria said in her crackly whisper.

Valerie leaned forward, and with rocket-like speed Maria grabbed her hand and clamped down with surprising force. Valerie winced a little and tried to relax. To try to pull away abruptly was entirely the wrong move in that type of situation, and the psychiatric nurse knew it. Maria was like a grizzly bear holding on. To get away, Valerie knew that she had to play dead. Her hand went limp, but it didn't help her break loose.

“My brother told me you worked here. Small talk,” Maria said. “He says things to me and I pretend not to hear.”

“Your brother?” Valerie asked, trying to pull away but not acting like it was urgent that she do so.

“Don't be stupid,” Maria said. “You know all about me and my family.”

Valerie wasn't sure why she'd gone in there, but what was happening just then had not been her reason. At least she didn't believe so. She tried once more to retract her hand, but Maria would not let go.

“Let go of me,” Valerie finally said, calmly.

“I had good reason to do what I did,” Maria said.

Valerie shook her head, trying to catch the light in Maria's eyes. She wanted to see a flicker of something that indicated that Maria knew what she was saying and doing just then.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Valerie said.

Their eyes met for the first time in that hospital room, though they'd been connected by circumstances for years.

“You do,” Maria said, relaxing her grip but looking right into Valerie's unblinking eyes. “And because of you, I'm here. I wish that you had let my brother die. It was his fault too. He's not without blame. He could have done something to stop it. If he had, none of it would have happened. Your hands are dirty too.
You
put me here.”

Valerie Ryan took a quick step backward, away from Maria. Her heart was racing, and she felt a little disoriented. Something was wrong—very, very wrong. She had done what was right. She had never doubted that. She was certain that Tony had not deserved to die.