My Lost Daughter (44 page)

Both Lindstrom and his partner were listening intently now. The average mental patient wouldn't consider things such as timelines. “I had a strange dream,” she said, clasping the railing with both hands. “I wouldn't mention this if I didn't feel it might be related to the crime. I was certain I'd stopped breathing. I saw someone standing in front of what I perceived as my father's car. Maybe that person was really there, and my mind just filled in the blanks.”

“Are you trying to suggest that you saw the killer? Were you sleeping in Norman Richardson's room last night?”

“No, no,” Shana said, shaking her head. “But the killer could have come into my room by mistake. That's how I ended up in Norman's room when the lights went out. Maybe the killer was shopping for a victim.” She gave more thought to her next statement.
“What I was originally going to say is that the killer may have held a pillow over my face. You know, that may have been why I felt like I was suffocating. For all I know, I was the intended victim.”

“Nice try,” Lindstrom said. “Since the assailant was successful, reason says you'd be dead if you were the intended victim. Did you actually see or hear anyone in your room last night?”

“Nothing more than what I've told you.” Shana winced in pain, touching a swollen knot on the side of her head. It was useless to complain about Betsy. She could see how a person might jump to conclusions. “Something else happened that might be important. Morrow changed my medication for no reason. I asked Peggy, one of the nurses here, what the medication was and she told me the bottle wasn't labeled. Not long after I took it, I began to have a reaction. I feel foolish saying this, but I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe Morrow is your killer. To say he's strange is an understatement.”

“How's that?” Lindstrom asked.

“He's more interested in astrology than psychiatry. He wanted to know what time I was born so he could do my chart.”

“Are you sure this was a prescription drug reaction?” Prescott wanted to know. “You didn't sneak in some weed or Ecstasy now, did you?”

“Shut up, Prescott,” the detective said. “This is a murder investigation, not a traffic stop.”

“The killer got a knife in here. How do you know they don't smuggle in illegal drugs? They find drugs all the time at the jail.”

“The victim was stabbed with a kitchen knife,” Lindstrom told the younger officer. “We're almost certain it came from the dining room. This isn't a jail, Prescott. They let the patients use knives and forks as long as they don't take them back to the main portion of the hospital.”

“But that's what the killer did, right?”

“They had to assign me a rookie,” Lindstrom said, linking eyes with Shana.

Shana relaxed somewhat, believing she'd finally broken ground
with the gruff detective. “It was a prescription drug reaction, all right. There's not a lot to laugh about in this place. I was borderline hysterical. Talk to the people at my table. I was laughing so hard I couldn't eat.”

“Is that why you left the cafeteria early?”

“Yes,” Shana said. “I left with Karen. I don't know her last name. This isn't the kind of place for last names. The patient I'm referring to is a redhead with Tourette's syndrome. When we walked into the great room—”

“What's the great room?”

“The recreation room where the TV is located,” Shana said, trying to remember as many details as possible. She tried not to think of Norman, but it was difficult. She wondered if he had killed himself. The police must have considered suicide, so she didn't want to waste their time with her own speculations. She kept returning to the conversation she'd had with him about the night he set himself on fire and how agitated he had become. Had she caused him to take his own life by forcing him to revisit that awful night? She hoped that wasn't the case.

“Okay,” she continued. “Peggy was at the nursing station. Karen told her I was having a drug reaction. By then, whatever it was had passed, thank God.”

“And this was before the blackout?”

“Yes,” she answered. “The rest of the patients got caught in the rain. Most of them went straight to their rooms to change out of their wet clothes. Then the power went out. You know the rest.”

“Where were you when the electricity went off?”

“On the way to my room,” Shana said, clearing her throat. “There was some light coming in from the windows, but as I got closer to the patients' rooms, there was no light at all. Norman's room is two doors down from my own. I thought I was headed in the right direction, but obviously I wasn't.”

“What happened when you entered the room?”

Shana took another drink of water. She still had a cottony taste in her mouth from the drugs. “I tripped and fell against the bed.
There was a person there. I assumed it was my roommate, Michaela. The smell was terrible. She always stinks, but it's usually from body odor. I knew something was wrong. That's when I slipped in what I thought was a pool of water. I kept calling out to Michaela to see if she was okay. When no one answered, I checked to see if she was breathing. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance, and then I began CPR.”

“Why didn't you wait for help?”

Shana crushed the paper cup in her fist. “I can't believe you would ask such a stupid question, detective. I'm certified in CPR. It would have been irresponsible of me to stand around and do nothing. I didn't know Norman was already dead. The patients were freaking out. Some of them are like little children and they panicked when the lights went out.” She paused and adjusted her position in the bed. “Anyway, look what happened when the so-called help arrived. Betsy is supposed to be a nurse, although I have no idea what kind of credentials she holds. What kind of nurse would tackle someone while they were administering CPR?”

Lindstrom picked up the only chair in the room, turned it around, and then straddled it. “Betsy claims she saw you with the knife in your hand. Is that true?”

“No,” Shana said, a degree of fear setting in. “The first time I saw the knife was when Betsy came in with the flashlight. To be fair, I can understand how she might have thought she saw me with the knife in my hand. I was working near Norman's face and sternum.”

“Outside of you and this Karen person, did any other patients return from lunch at the same time?”

“I can't say for certain. I didn't pay that much attention.” Shana remembered waiting for Alex, and was shocked the hospital had no record of him being a patient. He must have another name, but she wondered why he hadn't told her. They had been talking about running off together and starting a life. Now poor Norman was dead and Alex had disappeared. Her head began pounding. Why would Alex kill Norman? It didn't make sense.

“Did you touch the knife, try to pull it out?”

“You mean are my fingerprints on it?” God, Shana thought, was she a suspect? What else could happen to her? She expected a plane to crash through the window at any moment. “I didn't try to pull the knife out, detective. I could have easily touched it, though, either while I was giving Norman CPR or when I was feeling around in the dark trying to see what was wrong with him.”

Things were starting to add up in Shana's head and the prognosis was grim. An eyewitness had seen her standing over the body. Her fingerprints were most likely on the murder weapon. Betsy had probably told the police that Shana hit her, establishing that she had a propensity for violence. The one thing they didn't have was a motive. In that respect, a mentally ill person might not need a motive. “What about suicide? Norman set himself on fire. That's how he became so horribly disfigured. Maybe he didn't want to go through life like that anymore, so he decided to kill himself again and this time he succeeded.”

Lindstrom stood, glancing over at Prescott. “I might tend to agree with you under the circumstances, but we have to rule out homicide first. We have an eyewitness who claims she saw you stabbing the victim in the neck.”

“I know you aren't going to believe me,” Shana said, rubbing her eye with her finger, “but this hospital is blatantly kidnapping people for money. I'm not crazy or suicidal, nor do I have a drinking or drug problem. I agreed to speak to you without an attorney present on the condition that you'd report what's going on here and help me get out. They've restricted me from making any outside phone calls. If nothing else, please let me call my mother.”

“We'll put in a call to the attorney general's office,” Lindstrom told her. “The hospital isn't your problem right now, Ms. Forrester. You may need to hire a good defense lawyer.”

“Dear God, you're going to file criminal charges against me?” Shana's stomach was rolling over like a beach ball. After everything she'd been through, they were going to arrest her for murder! The situation was mind-boggling.

“Not at the moment,” the detective said, walking around in a
circle. “We're going to write a report and submit it to the district attorney. If you were on the street, we'd probably have to arrest and arraign you. But since you're in a somewhat secure environment, there doesn't appear to be any reason to take you into custody.”

“Listen to me,” Shana said, adrenaline flooding her veins. “Talk to the shrinks, find out if any of the patients has a history of violent behavior. Let me go to my room and find the phone card with Alex's last name on it. He's not a figment of my imagination, if that's what you're thinking. I have no idea why he isn't on the patient roster. The hospital staff knows him. Everyone knows him. Alex is a good source of information. He can help you sort through this thing.”

“I can't let you go to your room, Ms. Forrester. The only way I can justify not booking you is under the hospital's guarantee that you'll be detained.”

“Please,” she pleaded, digging her fingernails into the mattress, “don't make them put me back in the padded cell. I'd rather be in jail.”

“Calm down,” Lindstrom said. “I'm not going to insist the hospital keep you in a padded cell. Until the DA makes their decision as to how they want to proceed, Dr. Morrow has agreed to hold you in this room. That's not so bad now, is it?”

“Without the restraints?”

“I'm sorry. The hospital believes you're dangerous. They say you struck one of the attendants and had to be restrained on a previous occasion.” He paused and then added, “Could one of the other patients have set you up?”

A cloak of silence fell over the room. Shana could hear the TV and people talking in the great room, but all she could think about was Alex and the night they had spent together. Strings of questions danced in her mind. He had said once that he was at Whitehall on a voluntary commitment and could leave anytime he wanted, but surely he would have told her good-bye. Why wasn't he on the patient roster? Could he have killed Norman? What possible reason would Alex have to kill Norman? Everyone loved Norman. And
Alex's feelings for her had seemed so sincere. How could he swear undying love for her one day and abandon her the next? She hadn't pegged him as a player. He had made love to her so tenderly, so unselfishly. It had been one of the best sexual experiences of her life. What did she do to push men away? Tears welled up in her eyes. She needed her mother. Why wouldn't the cops at least let her call her mother? They had said she needed an attorney, so they had to give her access to a phone.

“Ah, Ms. Forrester,” Lindstrom said. “I asked you . . .”

Shana blinked back the tears and then a moment later exploded in anger. “I remember what you asked me. You wanted to know if someone had set me up. How could anyone do that? Don't you know how moronic it is for you to even ask me something like that? Maybe one of the patients has the power to bring on a rainstorm. And the power failure, isn't it possible it was caused by the lightning strikes? If the lights hadn't gone out, I wouldn't have gone into Norman's room instead of my own. Now can I please make a phone call?”

“We can't go against the rules of the hospital,” Lindstrom said, as disinterested as he was before, as if he was merely going through the motions. “Your chart says you were admitted because of an addiction to methamphetamine. Drug abusers tend to call either their dealers or other users. The hospital wants to break those connections so you won't return to drugs when you're released.”

“Bullshit.” The restraints were worse than the Quiet Room. How much could a person take before they became a raving lunatic? “I've never used meth in my life,” Shana said. “For God's sake, look at my arms. My chart probably says I had track marks. Everything in that chart is a bold-faced lie, except for the massive amount of psychotropic drugs they administered to keep me under control. They're holding me here for no reason except to collect on my insurance.”

Lindstrom picked up the tape recorder and slipped it back into his pocket. “The only advice I can give you is to ride it out. We're not in the business of arresting innocent people. Once the crime lab works up all the evidence, you may be ruled out as a suspect.”

“I won't get to go home on Saturday, will I?”

“I'm afraid not.”

Shana erupted again. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? Stay strapped to this bed until you get off your ass and decide if you're going to arrest me or not? I demand that you arrest me right now. Otherwise, you have no authority to hold me.”

Lindstrom abruptly walked out of the room. Prescott shrugged, and then turned and followed him. Shana had opened up her mouth at the wrong time. She was forcing their hand. They would probably be back tomorrow with an arrest warrant. At least if they took her to the jail, she might be able to make a phone call.

Shana fought against the restraints, even though she knew she could never break through them. Why was God so pissed off at her? Anyone who ended up in a nightmare like this had to be on God's shit list. She hadn't gone to mass in years. Catholics were supposed to go to Mass and partake of the blessed sacraments on a regular basis. She hadn't confessed her sins, although she didn't know very many Catholics today who did. But it didn't matter what everyone else did. Each person was responsible for their own soul. Right now, her soul was stained by sin. She needed to ask for forgiveness for taking money from her mother to pay for Brett's tuition. She had lied to and cheated her own mother. She was a worthless excuse for a daughter. And it wasn't the first time she'd taken advantage of Lily. She would have to remember that if she ever got a chance to go to confession.