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Why hadn’t I asked him where he’d be staying?
Why?
Why?
Why?
My mind turned fuzzy. Muddled.
No, Daphne. No. Hold it together. For your baby.
I breathed in, out, in again. I placed my hand over my mouth and inhaled once more. Hyperventilation. I just needed carbon dioxide so I wouldn’t pass out.
Couldn’t pass out.
Had to maintain composure.
For my baby.
For me and for my baby.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mom asked.
I nodded, my hand still over my mouth. The light-headedness began to subside.
Thank God.
Patty brought me a glass of water. “Drink,” she said.
I nodded again and took a sip. Then another. Mom and Mazie bustled around, checking on Jonah and me intermittently.
I was aware.
I might not be perfect at the moment, but I was staying aware.
Then a cry.
My baby’s cry.
I stood, went to him, picked him up from his bassinet, and hugged him to my breast. “Are you hungry, sweetheart?
“I’m taking him to the bedroom to feed him,” I told everyone. “Come get me when the police arrive.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Brad
A couple of fifty-dollar bills to the night watchmen got me into Piney Oaks. Another hundred to the night nurse got me Wendy’s file and an escort to her room.
No wonder my old man had chosen this place. Everyone had their hand out. Money surely did talk.
“She has one of our only two single rooms,” the nurse said.
“No roommate?”
“No. The doctor insisted she be kept isolated. She’s asleep now.”
“I won’t wake her. I just need to make sure she’s medicated as the doctor said.”
“I assure you she is. I just administered her meds an hour ago. She gets them every six hours.”
“Orally?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “Are you sure she’s taking them?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Steel. I watched her swallow them.”
“I see.”
Good thing I brought a flashlight. I fully expected to find a stash of spit-out pills somewhere in Wendy’s room.
First thing I did was shine the light on Wendy’s face. I half expected to see a stranger, but it was Wendy. Definitely Wendy. I’d seen her asleep enough times to know what she looked like.
I only had a little bit of time with the file, so I fired up the flashlight and began reading.
Wendy Madigan
Sex: female
Age: twenty-one years
Two years of college completed, major in journalism
Intelligence quotient: 165
Yeah, she always was brilliant.
Next of kin: Warren and Marie Madigan, Snow Creek, Colorado
Medication: Valium, ten milligrams four times daily
Wow. That was a lot of Valium. But Valium didn’t keep a person so out of it that she couldn’t function. Maybe it relaxed her enough that she wasn’t thinking about hurting me or anyone else.
But this was Wendy. I wasn’t sure I was buying it.
Diagnosis: antisocial personality disorder
What the hell was that? Apparently I had some research to do. Wendy had never struck me as antisocial. Maybe my father had paid Dr. Pelletier for that diagnosis.
I’d have to pay him a visit. The problem? The last time I saw him, my father had pointed a gun at his head.
Oh, well. He had an office here in the city. I’d pay him a visit tomorrow. I shuffled the files back together.
Time to search the room.
If I were a stash of sucked-on pills, where would I hide? I looked around the room, shining my light. I walked toward the door on the adjacent wall and opened it. Ah. A bathroom. Complete with a toilet—
Shit.
She didn’t have to hide her pills. All she needed to do was flush them. Damn! Had my old man arranged for her to have a single room? Having a roommate watching her every move wouldn’t have been a bad thing.
Of course…a stash of Valium had its own benefits. She could use it to her advantage. And Wendy would use everything available to her advantage. I checked the bathroom first because I could shut the door and turn on the light. The towels were the size of large washcloths.
This was a mental hospital. Large towels could be used to hang oneself.
No drawers and no cabinet. This was the barest of bathrooms. I pulled the lid off the toilet tank. I half expected to find one of those newfangled zippered plastic bags full of little white pills.
But nothing.
Not a damned thing.
I left the bathroom and turned the flashlight back on. Really, there was nowhere to hide anything. No drawers of any kind. No closet. These people had no freedom at all. Nowhere to stash anything that could potentially hurt them or another.
Which was a good thing.
I picked up Wendy’s file, left the room, and returned it to the night nurse’s station.
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s nice to see you again. I know she appreciates your visits.”
“I’m not so sure she— Wait a minute. What do you mean ‘it’s nice to see me again’?”
“You were here last night, remember?”
“Actually, I wasn’t.”
“You’re Bradford Steel, right?”
“I am, and I was home last night. Most certainly not here.”
“Then someone who looked an awful lot like you was here, Mr. Steel, and he also paid me a hundred dollars to see Miss Madigan.”
