Iron House (29 page)

“Your friend Jacobsen made that happen. They’re trying to force him out, shame him into facing their questions. Typical cops.”

“They’ll drag him through the mud, won’t they?”

“Drag him. Trample him. Cops are all about pressure points.” Michael glanced at Ronnie’s house, then started the engine. It was a few minutes after five. The sun would be down in three hours. “Let’s get out of here.”

They rolled off Ronnie Saints’s street; neither of them looked back. Abigail sank into her seat and asked, “What did you find out?”

Michael said nothing. He was thinking.

“Michael?”

He turned right, and the road opened up. Another turn and they were out of residential, two lanes gone to four, light industrial dotting the roadside. He was thinking of Julian and Abigail Vane, of the things he’d learned, and of the names on that piece of paper. He didn’t know exactly where he was, not on a map, but the sun was setting and he planned to follow it down.

“Iron Mountain is west?”

She nodded, looked at him oddly. “What happened in there, Michael?”

Michael gave her a look that he knew was equally strange. They’d been allies, but things felt different, and Michael had to get his head around that fact. He had to interpret, and decide. So, he kept silent as the car slid from the shadow of a wooded peak into a burst of flat, yellow sun. He put his eyes back on the road as Abigail glanced at the navigational system and cleared her throat.

“We’ll go right a few miles up, then straight for ten miles. After that, it gets complicated.”

“How?”

“Back roads and deep woods. No major roads go from here to Iron Mountain.”

“How long?”

“Forty miles, but it gets bendy. Maybe an hour and a half.”

“Okay.”

“Are we going to Iron Mountain, Michael? And if we are…” She struggled with the very concept. “Can you please tell me, why?”

He considered how much to say, and the order in which to say it. It was no small thing, this collision of past and present, so he spoke with caution. He told her of Ronnie’s girlfriend, and of Andrew Flint. He told her about the box of cash, and then about Billy Walker, Chase Johnson and George Nichols. “Hennessey, Ronnie Saints and those three. They’re the ones that ruined Julian’s life.”

“I remember Andrew Flint,” she said. “A nervous man to have such responsibility. He seemed in over his head but eager to do better things.”

“And the others? Walker? Johnson? Nichols?”

“I know who they are.”

Her voice was brittle, unforgiving, and Michael knew she’d heard stories of the things those boys had done. There was too much anger in her voice, too much bitter feeling. Julian had told. He’d painted pictures with his words, and with the ink of his eyes. He’d opened up and let her see the pain, because Julian, Michael knew, was the kind of boy who had to share. His strength was in the goodwill of others, in strong, knowing hands and souls that had not broken so young.

“What are you not telling me?” she asked.

Michael drove as Asheville fell away and the road twisted higher into the mountains.

“Michael?”

“Does the name Salina Slaughter mean anything to you?”

“Salina?” She hesitated, then said, “No.”

“Are you certain?”

“It’s familiar sounding, but like a name I heard on the radio. I can’t place it.”

The road bent right then left; lumber trucks hammered past in the opposite direction. He looked for reasons to doubt, for lies or twisted truth, but her posture was relaxed, her eyes clear and unflinching.

“Michael…”

“I’m thinking.”

The highway twisted, rose.

“About what?”

“Nothing,” he said, but that was false.

There were five names on the list.

Abigail Vane’s was number five.

“Powerful, isn’t it?” Abigail looked sideways. “Coming back.”

They were at the crest of the last high pass, the valley spread out below and Iron Mountain rising up on the opposite side, a great slab of stone touched with light so soft it did not seem real.

Michael nodded, wordless.

“That’s the town of Iron Mountain.” Abigail dragged herself taller, pushing her hips back in the seat and clearing her throat as Michael worked the car down the mountain. Last sun was on the valley floor, a long spill of gold that made the river shine. “It’s not as pretty as it looks.”

“Where’s the orphanage?”

“Through the town and four miles out the other side. The mountain hangs over it.”

“I remember the mountain,” Michael said, then drove them out onto the valley floor. They crossed small streams that would eventually feed the river, passed barbwire fences and bottomland pasture. Michael strained for a sense of connection, but only the mountain made sense. It piled up as they drew close: low, blanketed slopes and then the massive thrust of granite. The valley itself was three thousand feet above sea level; the mountain soared up another two, its face splintered, its crown brushed dark green.

“Are you all right?” Abigail asked.

“I’m fine.”

She touched his arm. “Past is past.”

“I may have heard something about that.”

“And yet we can all use reminding.”

She squeezed his arm, then let it go. They passed small houses on low lots, everything poor and dirty. “Not much here,” Michael observed.

“The town was built on mining and lumber, but the coal played out.” She tilted her head. “Most of that is national forest and can’t be logged. The private holdings were timbered out years ago. Sawmills folded when that happened. Trucking firms. A paper company. All gone.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I made it my business to know. I wanted you boys, and came prepared. Money. Knowledge.” She pointed. “Left here, I think.” Michael turned onto Main Street, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “None of this has changed. Twenty-three years and I still remember.”

And she did: package stores and open bars, bent people in red, cracked skin. They passed an open diner, a gas station. A few of the storefronts were boarded up. People watched them pass, and the watching made her uncomfortable. “Did you know that Iron House was an asylum before it was an orphanage?”

“What?”

She hugged herself. “For the criminally insane.”

Nine minutes later, Michael parked the big Mercedes in front of tall, iron gates. The columns were familiar, a memory of straight, hard fingers rising up through fallen snow. He’d touched one as he ran, knife in his hand, neck craning back.

The gates were new.

So was the chain-link fence.

Michael climbed from the car, Abigail following. The fence was eight feet high and ran off in both directions. Chain hung from the gates, a large, brass lock clanging as Michael shook the gates. Through the bars, Iron House humped up against the foothills, massive and dark.

“Frightful, isn’t it?”

He looked down on Abigail, then back at the gothic sprawl of the place he’d once called home. The building jutted up, its brick black with age, its stonework eternal and unchanged. Sunset put yellow stain on the high, slate roof, but below the soffits and the high third floor everything else looked gray and abandoned. The ruined wing stretched across the same ground, but its back was broken now, walls crumbled, small trees pushing through the rubble. The rest of the building didn’t look much better. Shattered windows gaped, shards of glass jammed like teeth in the rotted frames. Ivy climbed the broad, front steps, and weeds stood chest-high in the yard. The place radiated a sense of neglect and institutional decay. It looked forgotten and obscene.

“When did it close?”

Abigail shook her head. “I’m not exactly sure. Some years after I brought Julian home.”

He stared at the nightmare building, the smaller ones that hunkered down in its shadow. High grass bent in a hiss of wind. The river ran black as oil. “You say this was an asylum?”

“That’s why it was built so far from anything important. Why it was built so big and so strong.”

Michael struggled with the idea, but looking at the two high turrets and the broad sweep of stairs he remembered some of the things he’d discovered as a child, roaming the subbasement. Small, low rooms with iron rings bolted to the walls. Chairs with rotted leather straps. Strange machines rusted solid.

“It was built right after the Civil War,” Abigail said. “Many of the patients were soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress. Of course, back then the affliction had no name. People wanted to do right by the soldiers, but they wanted to forget, too. The war was hard on this state. A lot of suffering. A lot of pain. The Iron Mountain Asylum was built to hold five hundred patients, but quickly overflowed to four times that many. Then, six. Damaged soldiers. The deranged. Some truly god-awful criminals feeding off the ravages of war. There’re books on this place if you care to read them. Stories. Pictures…” She shook her head. “Awful things.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I read up after Julian came home. I was trying to find some kind of insight. You know how it is when you’re grasping.”

She closed fingers on empty air, and Michael felt anger boil up. Kids in an asylum ...

“What else?” he asked.

“There was never much oversight, never enough money; it got really bad near the turn of the century. Patients were naked and filthy, the medical practices barbaric. Bleedings. Ice baths. Muzzles. Overcrowding was terrible, illness systemic. There were deaths.” She took a breath, discouraged. “Eventually, there was enough public backlash to get the politicians involved. They closed the asylum after its conditions were deemed inhumane.”

“So, they made it into an orphanage.”

“A few years later, yes.”

“Perfect.” Michael eyed the gunmetal sky, the road that ran empty in both directions. “That’s just perfect.”

“What do we do now?”

Abigail hugged herself, and Michael jerked hard on the gate. Beyond it, the drive ran off, cracked pavement and weeds pushing through. He put his forehead against two of the warm, iron bars. He wanted a plan, a course of action, but in that moment he was more in the past than not. He saw boys in the yard, heard voices like far, faint cries.

“It’s not always pretty, is it?” Abigail put her hands on the bars. “Coming back to the place you’re from.”

Michael shook his head. “I thought we’d find answers here.”

“What kind of answers?”

“Andrew Flint, maybe. Something to tie all this together. A direction.” He looked at the wreckage beyond the fence. “Somehow, this is not what I expected.”

As if sensing his distress, Abigail said, “It’s okay, Michael.”

But it was not. Michael thought of asylums and prison and the cage of his brother’s mind. “If they arrest Julian,” he said, “the things that keep him sane will crack. Walls. Pillars. Whatever props him up will fail. He’ll go to prison or to another asylum. He won’t survive it.”

“But the lawyers…”

“The lawyers can’t save him, Abigail.” Michael struck one of the heavy bars with the flat of his hand. “You think Julian’s mind will make it to trial? You think he’ll survive a year in lockup while the lawyers collect their fees and drag the case out? While Julian’s abused in one of the few institutional settings worse than that?” He jabbed a finger at the ruins of Iron House. “I know people who’ve pulled time—hard men and violent—and even they’ve come out a shadow. For Julian, it would be like throwing a rape victim in with a pack of sex offenders. Scars are so deep, they wouldn’t have to touch him to break him. No. Even if he’s acquitted, he won’t come back the same. We need to either prove he didn’t do it or give the cops another suspect. We need to
understand
so that we can take steps.”

“Surely it’s not that bad.”

“Have you ever seen the inside of a prison?”

Michael put both hands on the bars as rage built and a weight settled on his chest.

Julian, schizophrenic.

Children in an asylum.

He thought of his years on the street—the hunger and cold and fear—then of the man he’d become. He saw bodies and blood on his hands, the ghost of a life bereft as Elena ran in disgust from the truth of what he was. He felt the way she saw him now, and knew things could never go back to the simple way they’d been. She would never look at him the same.

He’d given up two lives, and done it all to keep Julian safe.

“I won’t let him go down for this,” Michael said. “I can’t.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

His eyes searched hers, and he recognized the connection, the shared commitment to doing what must be done. But her cell phone rang before she could answer. She studied the screen, said, “It’s Jessup.” The phone rang a second time, and she answered it. “Hello, Jessup.”

Michael heard a squawk of voice, and watched Abigail move the phone back a few inches. “No,” she said, “I’m not ignoring you.” She went silent, her face pinking with emotion. “No. It’s none of your business where I go, or with whom.” She looked at Michael, lowered her shoulders. “No. We’re in the mountains. Reception is sporadic. Yes, the mountains. Michael and me. Yes, he’s with me. Where are we?” Her eyes tracked up the weed-choked drive, settled on the highest turret. “Iron Mountain.”

Falls’s voice rose even further, and Abigail lifted a finger to Michael. “Damn it, Jessup…”

Michael looked again at Iron House. He found the third-floor corner where he and Julian had shared a room. Two windows looked out on the yard; one of them was broken.

“What?” Her voice was loud and tinged with panic. “How did this happen?” She listened. “When? And where were you? And the senator’s man—what’s his name? What about him?” She ran a hand through her hair, left it mussed. “Well, somebody screwed up.” She found Michael with her eyes, then she turned away, back straight, one arm locked at her side. She spoke for another few minutes, and even when she hung up the phone she kept her back turned, her spine as hard and straight as any of the iron bars that hung between the ancient brick columns.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

She turned. “He’s sending the helicopter. It’s fast.” She nodded to herself. “I can fix this.”