Apocalypse Island (45 page)

Jennings was part of the original investigative team and he had to admit to himself that there were doubts in his mind as well.

No matter. A year later the kid, high again on some designer drug, died in a fiery car crash. As far as the system was concerned justice had prevailed.

“Listen,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of time. I need access to a chopper.”

“I think I can do that,” Wilder told him. “I’ve got friends over at Channel 12. Problem is I can’t get access without them getting in on the action.”

“I don’t like it,” Jennings said.

“It might be the only way. I’ll make a call, see what I can do. Where are you now?”

“On foot just coming out onto Westbrook Street at the back of International Parkway. Cops everywhere and I’m trying not to get noticed. Be careful.”

“See you in a jiffy.”

Jennings hung up from Wilder and made another phone call.

Chapter 113

Just up the hill from the pier was a general store, now closed, and a row of fishing shacks and boathouses set along the rocky shoreline. Beyond the shacks Wolf saw houses, some with lights still burning in their windows. The unpaved lane split just beyond the store. The right lane snaked along the shoreline past houses and cottages, the left lane continued up the hill to the giant hulk of a building that had once been the orphanage. He remembered there being a church just beyond the orphanage, but he’d seen no activity around the building on the day the band had been photographed here and had assumed it too, was abandoned. Now he saw lights on in the church windows.

There was a tall wrought iron fence surrounding the orphanage building—some of it lying in ruin—with a gate at the front which stood wide open.

He stepped up to the open gate. Something beyond his ability to understand was drawing on him, calling him home. He shuddered at the thought. The rain had ceased momentarily but the wind continued to blow steadily, whipping surrounding trees against a black sky. Chains of lightning pulsed inside the clouds turning the building, the fence and the tree trunks the color of old bones. He stopped and gazed up at the building as emotions worked in him. The orphanage stood a full four stories tall. It was old and gothic and unquestionably eerie silhouetted against the dark tree-covered hillside. Here is where the cross had been emblazoned, as though contrived to be visible from the city clear across Casco Bay. But it wasn’t so much the cross that drew Wolf’s attention as a tall second-story window, now glassless, beside it. He stood staring at the window and was overtaken by a strong sense of Déjà vu. Tears filled his eyes.

Something moved beyond the window, subtle, like a splash of liquid fire and the memories came rushing back, so strongly now that they threatened to drag him to his knees with despair. He saw fire licking from windows and doors, and roof timbers collapsing. He heard the desperate screams of children and remembered crawling beneath rising plumes of smoke to show them the way out. He remembered everything in that moment.

On shaky legs he stepped through the open gate and moved toward the building.

Chapter 114

“It’s been a hell of a day,” Wilder said with a sigh. They were on their way downtown, weaving through traffic.

Jennings grunted out an ironic laugh, wondering if her day could actually compare to his. “I think that’s an understatement,” he replied. He saw that Wilder was dressed casually tonight, as though she had just returned from a jog in the woods; jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her hairline higher and more severe than Jennings had imagined. Actually he was having trouble keeping his eyes off her. He thought that she was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. But there was something odd and mysterious about her that had always puzzled him. When she looked directly in his eyes his knees weakened and he felt captured, like a moth to a flame.

“I don’t understand what happened with Frank,” Jennings continued. “They say he was found dead at my place on Long Lake. I left there an hour ago and I didn’t see his body. Blood yes, but no body. Something is very wrong. It just doesn’t add up.”

Wilder braked at a red light and her fingers tapped rhythmically on the wheel. “So you don’t know that he’s actually dead?”

“No, I guess I don’t. Only what Lou Abrams told me. He said it came from Robeson.”

“But Robeson’s dirty.”

“Yeah, I guess he is.”

“Tell me what you know about him.”

As Wilder accelerated once again through Friday night traffic, Jennings explained his suspicions about Robeson’s involvement in the events on Apocalypse Island.

“So you’re sure he was involved?” Wilder said.

“Well, no, not exactly, but when I confronted him he didn’t exactly deny it. He’s at least in the pockets of the feds who are desperately trying to cover something up over there.”

“You mean what they did to those children?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Wilder shot Jennings a sidelong glance. “You don’t sound very convinced.”

Jennings frowned. “Something’s been bothering me about this whole case. I understand why the government would want to cover up illegal experiments on children, but according to what Robeson said, that’s the least of it.”

“And he wouldn’t elaborate?”

“No, but he said it was something nobody could ever know about. I can’t imagine anything worse than what they did to those kids.”

“Why would he lie about Cavanaugh?” Wilder asked.

“I could think of a number of reasons; to throw me off balance; to make me lose focus; find an excuse to bring me in, get me out of the way. You want more?”

Wilder did not reply.

“I
am
off balance,” Jennings continued. “This case is bugging the shit out of me, and I’m not used to feeling this way. Murder cases are never easy, but most are at least logical. This one’s got everyone spinning in circles.”

Still Wilder made no reply.

“What do you think the killer is trying to tell us by carving a cross on each of his victims and then crucifying them?” Jennings asked. He was looking directly at Wilder.

Wilder gave Jennings another quick, sharp jab of a look. “How should I know?”

“Just thought you might have a theory.”

“Maybe he isn’t trying to tell us anything,” Wilder said. “Maybe he’s just a total nut job that likes to torture young women. What if it’s that simple?”

Jennings shook his head. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Robeson and a federal agent named Spencer told me that the experiments done on those kids caused some sort of psychosis in them, and that they believed that’s who’s been committing the murders. I’m not sure I buy that explanation.”

“Why not?”

“Why would experiments on kids, no matter how diabolical, cause the same kind of psychosis in all of them? It just doesn’t make sense to me. There has to be something else.” Jennings pulled one of the
Bad Medicine
fliers from his pocket and flashed it in front of Wilder. “I think the killer’s telling us everything we want to know right here.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” she asked, glancing several times at the band poster.

“That the answer is right before our eyes. Everything we need to know is there on Apocalypse Island. Someone very dear to me has been trying to get me to see it and I wouldn’t listen to her. I wish I had.”

Wilder nodded grimly and kept on driving.

Chapter 115

The chopper was running at idle when they arrived. Besides the pilot, who introduced himself as Josh Ricker, two other people were waiting. A man and a woman. The woman Jennings recognized as Faith Masterson, an investigative reporter for Channel 12 News. She’d brought a cameraman along and introduced him as Bill Hendrix. After a round of quick introductions Jennings said, “All right, I want everyone to listen carefully to what I have to say. I don’t know what we’re going to find over there. There are a lot of unanswered questions concerning Apocalypse Island. The first sign of trouble and you guys are out of there. Understand?”

Everyone agreed. Just the same, Jennings was feeling apprehensive about the whole situation. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Wolf had told him on the phone, and he was nearly certain that dragging all of these people into an unknown situation was a recipe for disaster.

The pilot welcomed them and helped them aboard. The chopper was an older model Bell Jet Ranger but it appeared to be well maintained. Jennings took the shotgun seat beside the pilot. The other three passengers strapped themselves into the rear seat and a few moments later they were airborne, the city sliding away beneath them. Soon they were out over black water. Lightning stitched long trails above the clouds as wind and rain buffeted the aircraft.

Chapter 116

Wolf found a large wooden slab door but it was padlocked. He looked around the junk-filled yard until he found an old and broken piece of the wrought iron fence. It was about four feet long and felt sturdy enough in his hands. He wedged it behind the padlock’s hasp, and with a sharp, downward tug the screws pulled easily from the wood. He stepped up and kicked the door open. The room he stepped into was empty except for a pale mound wrapped in a sheet of plastic against the far wall. He went over and nudged it with his foot. The heavy sack rolled over and a face appeared through the window of opaque plastic like a ghost rising up out of a well, the eyes bulging and bloodshot.

It was Dr. Hardwick.

His face was horribly distorted, his mouth stretched open, as though he’d died in the middle of a scream. There was an electrical cord wrapped around his neck.

“Jesus,” Wolf whispered, stepping back in recoil. He was overcome with a strong sense of dread. Although he now understood that Hardwick was involved much more profoundly in his life than he could ever have imagined, he could not understand what he was doing here or why anyone would want to kill him. Even so, the vague mutterings of understanding were beginning to piece themselves together in his mind.

Outside, the muted sound of thunder rolled across the island.

There was another door on the far wall. It appeared to be made of reinforced steel and was secured with a modern and sophisticated locking system. Wolf knew instinctively where it led; to the place where all the terrible things had happened, where the root of his fears waited patiently for his return. He pulled Laura’s gun from his belt, aimed and fired directly into the lock. It took four rounds but the lock finally gave way. The explosions inside the closed room were deafening. 

He opened the door and stepped out onto the upper landing of a massive set of metal stairs. His hands shook as a swell of nausea rose in him. He tried not to think the thoughts that wanted to intrude.

Swallowing back bile, he made his way carefully down the stairs. The huge basement was divided into several chambers that were separated by deep, offset archways, impossible to see into one room from another. The first room was illuminated by rows of fluorescent strip-lighting attached to the ceiling. But instead of casting bright white light, the glow from above was more subdued, bile yellow, as though the aging bulbs were made of flesh and subject to the same frailties as living things. It was inconceivable that these lights had never been turned off. More than twenty-five years had passed and some sort of twisted life still burned beneath Apocalypse Island.

Aboveground the building was a plain brick late-Victorian structure, but down here the underpinnings were much more modern, and formidable. Even so, Wolf felt like he was entering the ancient catacombs beneath Rome, a place of deceptions and terrible secrets.

As he entered the second room a serpentine shadow slithered away from him across the floor, out of the yellow light and around the corner of the next archway into the next chamber. It was as if a guide had been sent to show him the way.
Come on,
the guide seemed to say as it slithered.
Follow me. I know the way.

Wolf wondered if he was willingly stepping into hell.

He knew that Laura was down here somewhere, a captive of evil, and he needed to find her lest she become lost to the same darkness that had held sway over his life for so long.

Wolf stepped into the next chamber. Like the ones that had preceded it, the chamber was empty but lit by still more fluorescent strips. He knew what lay beyond. His intellect said laboratory, but the visceral, animal part of him screamed
torture chamber!
And beyond that, the pulsing blue light was waiting.

Chapter 117

“There’s an old airstrip down there,” the pilot said. He was circling, maneuvering the helicopter lower so that he could get a better look. The only light other than the chopper’s landing lights was the nearly constant lightning strikes above the thick deck of clouds. “The military supposedly abandoned it years ago,” Ricker continued. “But they still use it. Portland’s air traffic control picks up blips going in and out of here all the time. I know most of the guys who work ATC over there and they tell me they’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Jennings was not surprised at what Ricker was saying. The secrecy surrounding this island was legendary. He leaned forward and looked out the cockpit window. He saw a couple of ragtag buildings through the windswept rain, probably old aircraft hangars, and several other smaller buildings. Parked near one of the smaller buildings was a black helicopter. He turned around in his seat and scrutinized the other passengers. His eyes fell on Wilder. She stared back, hypnotic. She was so beautiful he almost couldn’t breathe. He turned back around trying not to think about her.

“What do you hope to find down there?” Ricker asked.

“Someone I care very much about,” Jennings replied. “Beyond that I don’t have a fucking clue.”