The Secret Friend

32

With the aid of a flashlight, Malcolm Fletcher carefully made his way down a hallway with rotted floorboards, far away from the Boston police.

Fletcher had an excellent visual memory. He remembered the layout of the hospital, having roamed through its corridors lives and lives ago when he was employed as a special agent for the FBI's newly formed Behavioral Science Unit.

In 1954, Hurricane Edna had ripped one of the massive oaks in front of the hospital and sent the tree crashing into the roof, the falling debris crushing most of the floors. Given the exorbitant cost of fixing the floors, the board of directors decided to seal off the passages.

When an electrical fire gutted a good portion of the Mason wing in 1982, the hospital was already under state care. Lawmakers, sensing a potentially lucrative payday, put the land up for sale. A historical society looking to save the hospital, considered by many to be an architectural landmark, the last of its kind, filed petitions and injunctions. Potential buyers were scared off by the threat of significant legal costs and a long, protracted court fight.

For twenty-odd years the hospital had been abandoned, and during that time, the long New England winters had caused significant rot and water damage to the walls and floors. It had taken a considerable amount of patience and skill to find a safe passage to the top floor; the amount of decay and ruin was severe.

Fletcher slid into a room with broken windows. He removed his cell phone, found a signal and called Jonathan Hale.

'I believe I know the man who killed your daughter,' Fletcher said. Darby had left her car unlocked. Her kit was in the trunk. Reed radioed Kevin, the young man parked in the pickup at the end of the road, and asked him to bring the orange box in the trunk to the C wing, which he did, half an hour later.

She took pictures then decided she wanted help processing the hospital room. She bagged the photograph and statue and called Coop from the road.

'Fletcher left us two gifts,' Darby said. 'A photograph and – get this – a Virgin Mary statue. I'm pretty sure the statue is the same one we found with Hale and Chen.'

'Do we know where or how Special Agent Creepy found the statue?'

'We do not.'

'Why lead you to an abandoned hospital, though? What's the point? He could have dropped the photograph and statue in the mail.'

'It's not as dramatic.'

'True.'

'And maybe Fletcher wants us to discover something about that particular room. He deliberately left the statue and photograph inside a patient room that housed violent offenders – the same room he had been to earlier in the day.'

'How long did you say the hospital has been closed?'

'At least twenty years,' Darby said. 'Probably more like thirty.'

'And you think you're going to find the name of the patient or patients who occupied that particular room? Good luck with that.'

'I'll see you in an hour.'

As Darby drove, she thought about Coop's parting words.

When Sinclair closed, the truly violent offenders were most likely transferred to other psychiatric hospitals. The schizophrenics, the patients who were bipolar or manic depressive, would be evaluated and then, thanks to the ever constant squeeze of mental health dollars, treated on an outpatient basis and pushed back into the street. The files had been floating through the state's mental health system for decades. Trying to track down a patient file, even with a specific name, was tantamount to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. ? Coop was waiting for her inside their office.

'Where's Keith?' Darby asked.

'He went home to have dinner with the wife and kids and then is coming back to the lab to help us process the room. Let's take a look at the photograph first.'

After taking pictures, Coop examined the paper. It didn't contain any marks or distinguishing characteristics.

'The woman in the picture, with the hairstyle and clothes, I'm guessing it was taken in the early eighties,' Darby said. 'What are you going to use to treat the paper?'

'Ninhydrin mixed with heptane,' Coop said, flicking the switch for the ventilation unit.

Darby put on the safety goggles and a breathing mask. Coop, wearing a pair of nitrile gloves, sprayed the back of the paper. It turned purple. They both examined the paper, waiting for the ninhydrin to react with the amino acids left by the human hand.

There were no fingerprints.

Coop sprayed the side holding the photograph.

'No prints,' Coop said. 'Lucky for us we already know who he is.'