My Lost Daughter (46 page)

“You're a good woman,” Shana said, managing to touch Lee's hand as she tucked in the sheet. “I understand your position. You have to tell me what you know, though. I swear I won't mention your name.”

“I can't,” Lee said, moving away from the bed. “People make promises they can't keep.”

Shana felt helpless. She couldn't let the woman leave, not when she might have information that could clear her. Then she thought of Alex. “You know Alex, don't you? The police claim there's no one by that name on the patient roster.”

Lee's anxiety intensified. She rubbed her hands on her black skirt. “I wouldn't talk about that man, Shana. Not that man.”

“Did he leave the hospital already? Is that why he wasn't listed as a patient?”

Lee stared through the open doorway. “He's right across the hall.”

The way the bed was positioned, Shana couldn't see beyond the nursing station. “Close the door, Lee. No one will be able to hear you.”

Lee's chest rose and fell as she contemplated her decision. Finally she walked over and closed the door, then returned to stand
beside Shana's bed. “His name isn't Alex. Don't ask me his real name because I don't know it. All I know is he can do whatever he wants. When he wants to leave, he leaves. Sometimes he comes back in the middle of the night. One of the other nurses told me he keeps a car in the side parking lot.” She stopped and sucked in air. “He even has a set of keys!”

Shana couldn't believe her ears. “Are you certain? Alex has keys to the doors in the hospital?”

Lee nodded, her lips compressed. “I have to leave.”

“No, please, you have to tell me. Is it money? Is Alex paying Morrow or some other staff member to stay here? He told me he was hiding from the IRS.”

Lee leaned over the edge of the bed again. “Someone told me he owns part of this hospital.”

“Who ordered the restraints?” Shana was outraged. She felt as if she had been raped again. “Was it Morrow? Call him and tell him I want to see him. Please, Lee. No one will know you told me. You have my word. Something terrible is going on here in the hospital. I'm not saying Alex is involved or that he killed Norman, but if he can come and go as he pleases, he can also give other people access to the hospital. Do you understand?”

“I shouldn't have told you. I have to go now.”

“If it turns out Norman didn't commit suicide, whoever killed him is diabolical.” Shana's eyes flashed with intensity. “What possible reason could anyone have to kill a person like Norman? This was murder for the sake of murder. The killer enjoyed it. His next victim may not be a patient. How would you like to run into this maniac in a dark corridor? Think about me. How can I defend myself if I'm strapped to the bed? You have to release me, don't you see?”

Beads of sweat were glistening on Lee's forehead. She left and returned a few minutes later, pulling a pair of surgical scissors out of her pocket. “I'm cutting the restraints where they're attached to the bed. That way, if someone comes in, all you have to do is keep still and it will look like they're still on.” Once she finished the arms, she moved to the legs. “If someone asks me if I did this, I'll
deny it. Dr. Morrow is out of town until tomorrow, and Peggy has already left for the day.” She pulled the sheet back over Shana and returned the scissors to her pocket. “We may all be out of a job anyway. Norman's family has already hired an attorney.”

“Who told you about Alex?”

“You ask too many questions,” Lee said, leaving the room and closing the door behind her.

 

The police had seized the clothing she had been wearing, so Shana was back in the disgusting green pajamas. She paced inside the small room, the hours clicking off in her head. The police could burst through the door with a warrant any minute, but knowing how bureaucracies worked, she assumed the paperwork wouldn't be processed until the following day.

Every sound caused her to jump. Alex as part owner of this contemptible hospital was enough to make her blood boil, but Alex as a homicidal maniac who might kill just to keep her within his grasp was truly terrifying.

She had to get in touch with her mother somehow. Had Lily been calling and the staff had prevented her from receiving her calls? It wasn't like her not to call. She should have put it together by now. She thought of sneaking out and trying to use the phone, but it was ten at night and Betsy was on duty. If they found out someone had cut the restraints, the blame could fall on Lee and she didn't want anything to happen to her.

Her mind raced as she tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle. The hospital, as she saw it, was Alex's playground. He couldn't have simply purchased a few shares of stock in the hospital or they would never allow him to do the things she suspected he'd done. After achieving success in the business world, he must have decided to purchase his own mental hospital for reasons she couldn't fathom. A prince, the patients had called him. What better place to set yourself up as a prince and play the ultimate game? The majority of the patients were weak and pliable. Because Whitehall was privately owned, the risk of discovery was minimal.

Something Morrow had said came to mind. He said a person had reported them for their unscrupulous practices, but that person lacked credibility as he was a former patient. Maybe that person was Alex, and he knew enough to not only close the hospital's doors but to have criminal charges brought against Morrow and the other psychiatrists.

What Lee had told her was hearsay. It might be nothing more than rumor and insinuation. Betsy had accused her of murdering Norman, so it wasn't far-fetched that the staff had conjured up Alex as some type of villain. The man was assertive and smart, and had won the support of most of the hospital population. This alone placed him on the opposite side of the fence in regards to the nurses and attendants.

If Alex had paid a large sum of money to disappear inside Whitehall, it only made sense that being able to come and go as he wished would be part of the bargain.

Another scenario came to mind. Alex could have slipped underground to avoid a financial disaster, but once inside, he'd gone mad. He seemed so lucid, so normal. She went to the bathroom and stared at her image in the mirror, seeing a woman with ghostly pale skin and hollow eyes. Wondering how much weight she had lost, she glanced down at her body and saw her ribs and her pelvic bones protruding. Whitehall had done the trick. After less than a week, she now looked like an addict.

Like a person trying on shoes, Shana kept coming up with different scenarios to see if they might fit. If Alex was one of the primary owners of Whitehall, this might provide him with enough clout to manipulate the psychiatrists and force them to administer whatever medication he selected to specific patients. Her bet was the hospital was a hotbed of corruption before Alex ever appeared on the scene. Being an astute businessman, he may have figured out they were kidnapping patients and used it as additional leverage.

At a few minutes past three in the morning, Shana dropped down on the edge of the bed, exhausted and wired at the same time. Maybe Alex handpicked some of the patients. Now that she
thought about it, it was hard to imagine that a psychic like May would have the kind of insurance Whitehall required. Norman and Karen probably had insurance coverage as they had been previously employed and they both had legitimate medical and psychological problems. Most insurance plans had a cap, though, and from what she gathered, Norman and May had been at Whitehall for quite some time.

Shana got up and started to pace again, and then stopped herself, afraid she was going to end up like poor Milton. Milton! She'd forgotten all about Milton and the cat killings. Could his self-proclaimed aberrant behavior have escalated into murder? Through posthypnotic suggestion, or by utilizing the arsenal of drugs the hospital had at its disposal, Alex could have turned Milton into a killer.

Her energy was finally depleted. She removed the green pajamas, climbed under the sheet, and instantly fell into a deep slumber.

 

The cat and mouse game was over. A horrendous crime, which Lily had been certain would end up in the hands of a jury, had now been resolved. All the months of preparation, the dozens of motions, the time spent selecting the jury, along with the hours of court time were wasted. The jurors were stunned when they were dismissed. Just like that, it was over.

Noelle Reynolds was either beginning to suffer guilt over killing her child, or Richard Fowler had convinced her that life in prison with no chance of parole was a far better outcome than a death sentence. Silverstein was devastated, of course, but Lily was relieved. Since her calendar had been blocked off for the next two weeks to cover the trial, she would now have time to devote to Shana. She went to Judge Hennessey's office and requested vacation leave. Amazingly, the old buzzard agreed.

“We settled the Reynolds case,” she said, sticking her head into Chris's chambers. “Life without parole.”

“Are you happy with that?”

“I'm thrilled.” Seeing he wasn't busy, she came in and took a seat in front of his desk. She was somewhat jealous because he had such a large, well-appointed office, while her office was crap. Although she'd been a prosecutor for most of her career, Chris had received his judgeship long before her. She was the last judge appointed to the Ventura bench, so she had the worst chambers. He had mahogany bookcases and a gorgeous desk, plus a ton of open space. Her office wasn't much bigger than a walk-in closet.

“I told Silverstein from the outset that the death penalty would never fly,” Lily told him. “Fowler pulled a fast one on us. He managed to get a psychologist to give the Reynolds girl an IQ test. She scored seventy, which means she's borderline retarded.”

“You're kidding me. She seemed far too manipulative to be developmentally disabled. And why didn't Silverstein know about this before now? It should have been revealed during discovery. Fowler can't drop a bomb like that and get away with it.”

Lily smiled because he was politically correct to an extreme. She would never use the word “retarded” in public, but she was talking to her lover in the confines of his office, where she should be able to say anything she wanted. The phrase “developmentally disabled” covered too broad a spectrum of physical and mental disabilities.

Chris was giving her a curious look so she quickly became serious again. “Richard Fowler was formerly one of the best prosecutors the DA's office ever had. If he stumbled onto something during the course of the trial which he thought would better his client's case, he was obligated to bring it to the court's attention, particularly something of this nature. I'm certain you're aware that the Supreme Court recently ruled that a mentally disabled defendant can't be put to death. Fowler must have had this brainstorm after we went to trial. He had her tested a week ago, and just got the results back the other day.”

“Do you think it's true?”

“Yes,” Lily told him, having had time to think about it. “Something had to be wrong with her, don't you see? No one could be
that cruel, nor could they be that stupid. According to Fowler, her father, Dr. Reynolds, spent a fortune hiring tutors and other professionals to work with her. It's sad, really. He desperately wanted her to be normal. He knew she had problems, which might be the reason he wanted nothing to do with her when she got pregnant. She told the psychiatrist that she'd been on birth control since she was fourteen. When she gave birth to the child, her father should have stepped in and made certain both she and the boy were taken care of properly. He's partly responsible for the child's death.”

“The press will have a field day. First she's the devil and now she's pathetic.”

“No one will care.” Lily shrugged her shoulders. “The reality is less interesting than what everyone believed. Evil is exciting. What happened here is frightening. People know it could happen to them. Unfortunately, we can't pick our children.”

“What about the arsenic and the Ajax?”

“The kid must have eaten the Ajax, even if it did taste like shit. Maybe the mother forgot to feed him. As to the arsenic, they found only a trace of it in his system. Everyone has daily exposure to arsenic because it's a naturally occurring chemical element that's normally found in water, soil, indoor house dust, air, and food. Of course, you know that.”

“So you're going to have some time on your hands.”

“I just got out of Hennessey's office,” she said. “He agreed to let me take two weeks' vacation. I'm going to try to figure out what to do about Shana. Something's not right, Chris. I can feel it. I had a terrible dream about her last night. We've had arguments over the years, but she's never gone this long without speaking to me.”

“Are you going to fly up there?”

“Yes,” she said, standing to leave.

Chris walked over and embraced her. “You're doing the right thing. Unfortunately, I have to be on the bench. We'll talk more at lunch, okay?”

Lily sighed. “I'm going home. I'll pick up some food for dinner. Then I'm going to pack. If I have to, I can stay in Shana's apartment.
I've got to get her out of Whitehall. You were right all along, Chris. She doesn't belong in a place like that.”

He nodded. “I'll do whatever I can to help you.”

 

“We have to get you dressed,” Lee said, finding Shana sprawled out on her bed naked. “Your mother's on the phone.”

Shana rolled over and squinted. Light was streaming in through the window. She tried to wake up but something was pulling her back under. She closed her eyes and fell back to sleep.

Lee was working frantically. She placed the leather restraints she had cut into a plastic garbage bag, and then attached the new ones she had brought from the supply room to the bed. “Wake up,” she said, shaking Shana by the shoulder. “Your mother can get you a lawyer. Peggy has a doctor's appointment and everyone else is at lunch. Otherwise, they wouldn't let you speak to her.”