Mind Games (24 page)

It was late afternoon by the time they finished analyzing Dana’s cryptic notes correlating to the articles in
Psychology Today
, featuring interviews with Dr. Theodore Von Langley. Aside from the interviews, her father had had the audacity to contribute numerous editorials. She was surprised he hadn’t approached the publisher about having his own column. Even with what they had uncovered, she clung to hope that when she and Derrick arrived at Our Lady of Sorrow, an institution for the criminally insane, and retrieved Dana’s and Katie’s brain scans, the doctor who ordered them would not be her father. Maybe her father had an accomplice and hadn’t masterminded the brain surgery treatments alone.

Sickness filled her belly and roiled with every turn Derrick took. She was sick over Dana’s heinous actions. Sick she had dated him. Sick her father might have treated this violent and deviant man and didn’t even try to caution her away from him. Would her father have put her at risk to save himself from crimes he had committed? The sickness swirling deep in the pit of her stomach slowly winded its way up and up. Her stomach twisted, urging her to let go of hope for her father.

Derrick reached across the car’s console and rested his hand on her thigh. He had lost his sister. Her heart ached for him. The fractured memories of her mind locked into place with the puzzle pieces Dana had left far behind.

The hospital doors squealed open. She smelled the heavy antiseptic pine scent trying to project the image of a sterile, healthy environment. Death and illness would not mask itself no matter how many nurses, candy stripers, or custodians scrubbed and sprayed at it. No, the sickness always prevailed.

She and Derrick both wore white lab coats. She posed as a medical student, assisting Dr. Derrick Sloan. They made it past the big-busted redheaded woman at the front desk. She had menacing brown eyes that Sparrow didn’t trust. Derrick flashed his credentials. The woman nodded them through with narrowed eyes. Her teased and stacked hair bobbed on top of her head. The scrunched look on her face had questioned Derrick’s story about coming to visit a patient of Dr. Von Langley’s, but she didn’t deny he had a patient or patients here. This was the living evidence they needed to prove the sins of her father.

The redheaded woman reached under her desk and pushed a button, unlocking the door. They stepped inside the corridor. Sparrow fought back the nausea threatening to christen the scent of lemony freshness oozing from floor to ceiling.
She gulped at the smell, thinking she might hurl. Bright lights reflected off the pristine white walls, but she knew the darkness hidden under the paint. The walls held the sounds of the cries now spilling under the locked doors.

Sparrow likened the mental ward to prison. The exterior of the building had high block walls with razor-wire fence, and the interior had individual rooms about the size of a prison cell with locked doors. The armed guards added to the prison-like charm. Once they locked you in, you had no chance of escape.

That had been the fear Dana lived with if he had revealed the therapist who had mistreated him. Even his final journal entry remained cryptic. Perhaps he thought that if he had not succeeded in taking his own life he would have ended up here?

The floors gleamed, and her shoes squeaked with each step she took. She assumed Derrick knew the way to medical files, and they weren’t blindly going toward the light. The white walls, white floor, and white ceiling created the illusion of a too-well-lit tunnel, but this was not the corridor to heaven. Hell lurked behind closed doors and stained the white walls covered in paint and disinfectant.

“Sparrow, we’re almost at the lab where they keep medical files. Tony is getting a warrant, but whatever I find I’ll be stealing on our way out. The redheaded monster didn’t ask to see the file in my hand on our way in, so let’s hope she’s as careless on our way out.”

She glanced at the enormous envelope in Derrick’s hand with X-rays given to medical students to evaluate. He’d called upon his friend who was an orthopedic surgeon for the fake X-rays. On their way to Our Lady of Sorrow they’d stopped by Cedars and picked them up from him. It was all a disguise to smuggle Dana’s CT scans out, if they weren’t too late. Derrick had worried about the possibility that Dr. Von Langley had hustled over here after Dana’s death to destroy any potential evidence.

They reached a white door with a white plaque and black letters that read
Medical Records
. Derrick reached for the door handle and turned it. His head fell back against his neck, and he shook it. “Damn, it’s locked.”

“Now what?” she asked, almost relieved they couldn’t get in, since she was ready to get out.

“You’ll need to go back to the redheaded monster and tell her Dr. Sloan needs the key,” he said in a hushed voice.

“What? Don’t you think she’ll realize our mistake not asking for it? Let’s just go.”

“No. We’ll have that search warrant. We can’t waste time. If she gives you a hard time, tell her Dr. Von Langley is with a patient and needs these records.”

“Fine.” She squeaked down the hall.

Now was her chance. Derrick wouldn’t know if the woman offered her the key or not. She could go back and tell him they had to leave and find another way to procure the records. Maybe Derrick would decide to go on rounds in the Mobile Health Clinic RV, and that would buy her time to go and confront her father. She wanted to ask him about her visions, about Katie, and if Dana’s claims were true. She owed it to him. He was her father. Would her father look her directly in her eyes and deny he’d killed Katie, an innocent teenage girl?

She reached for the door handle, knowing the scary redhead waited on the other side. She had less than sixty seconds to make a decision. Without looking back, she could feel Derrick’s eyes on her like those damn flowers in her father’s flowerbeds. The Barbie display for the Alternative Doll Convention popped in her mind’s eye, but was quickly suppressed by the image of her father digging a shallow grave then dragging a body through the dirt. Her hand shook and the door handle rattled, and through the small square window her eyes met the redheaded monster’s eyes. Fearless, she pulled back the door.

“I’m sorry, we’ll need the key to medical records.”

“You know, missy, Dr. Von Langley has never sent anyone over here to check on a patient. Furthermore, what are the two of you doing trying to get into Our Lady of Sorrow’s medical records?”

She pushed back from the desk and placed her thick, pale, freckled hands against her wide hips.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, Mrs. Wrenfield. I’m just a medical student trying to make it through rounds.”

The woman’s eyes showed she doubted Sparrow’s story.

“Uh-huh. Have you been here before?”

“No.”

The woman glanced down at her bosoms then back at Sparrow.

“How’d you know my name is Wrenfield? I’m not wearing my nametag. My shift ended just before you walked through the door.”

She picked the name badge up from the desk and held it between her pudgy fingers.

“You must have had it on when we came in. I’m sure I saw it,” Sparrow said. “It’s a habit. You know, trying to remember all the doctors’ and nurses’ names. I’m always looking at name badges and trying to commit them to memory.”

The look on the woman’s face softened. She smiled at Sparrow through closed lips. The fib seemed to smooth things over with Wrenfield, whom Sparrow suddenly remembered meeting when her father brought her here. Her past continued to erupt since the hypnotherapy session she’d had with Violet Crosby. She patted herself on the back for the quick save, and said a silent prayer the woman wouldn’t recognize her.

“You’ll make an excellent doctor, especially if you call the nurses by their names and not ‘hey you.’ I know. I’ve been a nurse too long,” she said, slouching down and reaching into a desk drawer. “Here.”

Nurse Wrenfield handed Sparrow the key to her father’s demise with a smile.

“Thank you.” It didn’t seem like the appropriate thing to say, but she had said it anyway.

“When you leave, Nurse Leighton will be on duty. Give my regards to Dr. Von Langley.”

Sparrow nodded and turned her back on Nurse Wrenfield. She pulled open the door and made her way back down the sterile hall toward Derrick, clutching the key in her sweaty hand.

“You okay?” he asked her, and opened his hand. He waited for her to deposit the key in his palm. He turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, ushering her in front of him. “Sparrow, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She hesitated, trying to push back the tears threatening to fall from her eyes.

“I know where he buried her.”

“What?” He dropped the key on the linoleum floor with a ping that seemed to explode across the silent room. Her body started to shake, and she wrapped her arms across her chest to hold herself together. Derrick came to her, gently cupping his hands over her shoulders. “Where?”

“In the flowerbeds near the potting shed.”

“My God,” he muttered, wrapping her in his arms. “How can you be certain?”

“Another memory surfaced, and it flashed like a picture in my mind. You know the Barbie display for the Alternative Doll Convention I’ve been working on?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think my repressed memories are coming out in that project. Actually, I think being here is triggering my memory too.” His hands slid down her arms, and he squeezed her hands. His courage and strength fortified her. “When I went to get the key, I called Nurse Wrenfield by her name. Suddenly, I remembered who she was from the trips I made here with my father. I nearly blew our cover.”

“I’m sorry. I should have never put that much pressure on you.”

He squeezed her hands again.

“Come on, let’s just find what we’re looking for and get out of here. We’ve got to make it past Nurse Leighton on the way out.”

*               *               *

“Right.”

He let go of her hands and picked up the key from the floor and then went to the alphabetically ordered file cabinets, searching for the set labeled S. He rolled open the middle drawer, searching for a file with the last name Sloan. If Dr. Von Langley conducted a research study using brain scans to discover deformations and then performed surgery to sever or remove the abnormality, odds were in Derrick’s favor he’d kept the CT scans. He would bet money Dr. Von Langley stored his research notes in his home office.

He pulled the file from the cabinet, slammed it down on the counter next to him, and yanked the CT scans from the interior. “This is it.” He illuminated the X-ray light and hung the black-and-white films next to each other. “There is nothing wrong with this brain scan. She was normal. Normal!” His voice had jumped several octaves, and he waited for some hospital official to bust through the door and question his shouting. No one did. He ripped down the X-ray and shoved it back into the folder.

He slammed the file shut and pulled open the top drawer of the file cabinet labeled S and started digging through the records for a file labeled “Sargent, D.” His fingers flipped through the tabbed files from front to back, searching and searching. He needed to find that file. Sweat trickled at his temples. He didn’t like the anxious ripples cascading over him. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. “Damn.” He took the phone from his pocket and looked at the message display.
Where are you?
He texted back,
Our Lady of Sorrow, meet at Sparrow’s in one hour.

Sparrow came closer to him, trying to read the text messages. “Tony will meet us at your place in an hour.” He slipped his phone back into his pocket and continued looking for Dana’s file. Within minutes he had it, and illuminated the black-and-white film. He studied the scans carefully. He took a deep breath. “This doesn’t look good. There’s a thinning in the frontal lobe.” Derrick removed Katie’s CT scan from the file and held it up next to Dana’s. “See the front part of the brain on hers? It’s fuller, whereas Dana’s is narrow.” He pointed to the differences with a pencil. “Dana’s accusations might not hold up in court. A good defense attorney can probably argue this to your dad’s advantage, considering Dana continued to seek treatment from your dad. Until, and this is according to Dana, your dad cut him off from the women, sex, and drugs.”

“Sounds like you’re making a case for him.”

“I’m trying to anticipate what we’ll need to do to convict him. Let’s go. We need to find Tony and turn over what we know to the police. Someone with a neuroscience background needs to look at these scans.”

“Derrick, maybe I should go to my father and try to talk to him? I can’t believe he would have done these things. He loves helping kids.”

He expected her denial and that she would want to go to him. She didn’t want to believe her father was the inhumane monster he was. Could he blame her? If someone accused his father of something, he would feel the same way. He shut off the light and removed the CT scans, placing them in their respective folders.

“Let’s talk to Tony first.”

He crammed the files into the fictitious folder he had carried in and shoved them under his arm. She opened the door, and they made the long walk down the too bright, too white corridor. They slipped past Nurse Leighton, who only smiled at them when they left.