Shades of Eva, page 46
Ben interjected. “Sometimes there’s no good answer, Mitchell. Sometimes people do evil things to just erase a problem. He thought the problem was his daughter’s curiosity. I’m very sorry for what my brother did to your family. If I could have prevented it, I would have.”
Ben’s words took a lot of the sting out of the anger that I was holding onto. It helped ease me into mourning, which was what Abigail had been trying to do.
Suddenly, Anna got more to the point. “Mitchell, I want Abigail to come in and talk to me.”
I shook my head. “She’ll have to decide on her own.”
“This has to end tonight,” Anna argued. She was pleading, in a way. “I know what Abby wants. I know what she’s done. She has no choice at this point. She can have her aunt’s artwork, but I’m not giving it to you, and I’m not giving it to Ben or to Brad. If she wants it, she has to talk to me.”
“I don’t see how you can protect her, especially in here,” I countered, pleading Abby’s case. “She killed a gang member. They’ll go after her, and she’s not just going to lay down for anyone.”
Anna leaned closer to me. “I’m not asking Abby to give up. I’m offering her sanctuary, as an alias, Mitchell—not as Abigail Angstrom.”
I was surprised by that. I wasn’t quite sure what Anna meant. “An alias?” I asked.
“We are concerned with Abby’s spirit, and her safety, not her name,” Anna replied. “If getting her treatment means changing her name to protect her, then we’ll see to it that’s what happens.”
I was almost speechless.
All I knew my entire life was natural consequences. All I’d been taught was to live up to personal responsibility. All I’d heard recently was how important it was to call things by their right and true name—right words like rape, and surnames names like Rennix. And now these people, the very ones who seemed the most insistent on calling things by the right name, were offering Abby a false identity to protect her in lieu of turning herself in. It wasn’t adding up.
“You’re going to help maintain an alias for Abigail, who you know shot and killed a man in cold blood, in order to protect her?”
Anna was quick to respond. “Again, if that’s what it takes!” Anna grew very determined. “Listen to me, Mitchell. This place has dealt its fair share of punishment. Good people have gotten hurt in the name of science, and bad people have been sent to the streets who should have been straightjacketed and locked up in here. We’ve made plenty of mistakes, but this place is concerned with justice above all else—not with punishment. People who’ve done terrible things can be held accountable without being held to some strict moral code that demands additional punishment for morally ambiguous actions.”
“Morally ambiguous?”
Anna continued. “We put people to death in this country every day. We send our children—children like Abigail—off to fight a war of questionable merit, sanctioning them to kill in the name of patriotism or freedom without the best protections. 600,000 US veterans went away to Iraq and Kuwait without the protection they needed. They were exposed to depleted uranium, toxic smoke, chemical and biological agents, and now they are returning sick, and the government is denying almost all of it—and why? To protect their own pockets and their future recruitment?
“Our veterans return wounded and sick, and they often times wind up in places like this because the government has no use for them once they’re out of the service. These are ambiguous issues, Mitchell. If this place has taught me anything, it’s that things aren’t painted in black and white. They’re painted in stark, vivid color. I believe Abigail took a life because she’s broken, and she’s been disappointed beyond belief, and I believe Jackson Greer deserved what he got! That said, the violence has to end. Killing Ully isn’t going to solve anything. It can end here without punishing either of you any further. Do you understand what I’m offering you?”
“I’m trying.”
Anna stood up and walked toward me. “Ben and I know what you’ve done, and so does your father. You’ve committed fraud, infiltrated a mental hospital and violated HIPAA regulations by pilfering confidential records; you’ve impersonated an officer of the law; aided and abetted a fugitive in the person of Abigail Angstrom; conspired to extort your uncle out of $1.2 million and tampered with human remains—and we don’t care.
“We don’t care because you haven’t hurt anyone and you’ve brought justice to your mother and to your brother. Abigail’s brought justice to her family, and to yours.”
There was a moment of silence in the room. This time, Ben spoke. “Mitchell, in life we have to make choices. This is one of those times. I’m afraid that what things have come down to for you is the choice between your freedom and honoring your brother by turning yourself in.”
I looked to Ben with anxious eyes. “Mitchell, if you know anything about who might have shot Sophia Bermicelli, or where Elmer’s remains are, you can bring justice to Elmer by turning him over to us. You can bring Sophia justice if you know what happened to her. Ully deserves to be prosecuted, not executed.”
“Abby can have the rest of her things,” Anna said, “but she has to come in to get them. And she has to bring me the toolbox and Elmer’s remains. That’s all. Maybe she knows what happened to Sophia. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe you can have your freedom and prosecute Ully, as well. This place does not take freedom any more. It gives freedom. But Abby needs to stop what it is she’s about to do.”
My hand was fingering the telephone in my pocket like a talisman, wondering what I should do or say as if tapping that phone was somehow prompting Abby to take over.
Anna walked to the doorway and opened the door, gesturing that I was free to leave. Ben stepped aside. I was free to go, but I never felt as trapped as I did that night. The telephone was never as quiet, either. I knew Abby had heard the conversation. I knew Anna and Ben and my father knew Abby was listening. The phone was on and it was transmitting just as it should, but why wasn’t Abby calling?
I took the phone from my pocket and stared at it.
We all stood there for a moment looking at that phone, looking at me, waiting for me to dial, waiting for the ring that never came. I flipped the phone on and instantly a distant ring began echoing through the building. It wasn’t a telephone ringing, though—it was an alarm sounding. And it was sounding very loud.
I looked up to the wall adjacent to the door where a red box was blasting an alarm and a light above it was strobing violently. An officer entered the room, and said, “There’s a fire somewhere. We have to get everyone out of here.”
Ben followed Anna out, and Brad followed them.
I stepped into the doorway. Anna was standing behind the officer, and Ben and Brad behind her. She gave me one last smile, and we all walked away.
I knew the reason why my phone hadn’t rung. I think everyone else in that room knew it, too. It was the same reason why the alarm had just sounded, though none of us were brave enough to vocalize it. The Coastal State Asylum for the Insane was about to go up in flames.
As we were being led out of the halfway house, I heard a voice over the guard’s two-way radio. He said that a bomb threat had been made, and that we had five minutes to evacuate everyone.
My father and I exchanged a look on our ways outside onto the lawn that early morning. It was a look I’ll never forget. We were each remembering Mom, and specifically that old poem of hers about two sons. I remember the exchange; it was the sort of exchange that spoke of disbelief.
When everyone was out, there was one prisoner conspicuously missing. I knew in an instant who he was, and so did Ben, Anna, and my father. It was then that I heard the first of several explosions. The first bang came from the pump house at the top of the water tower, and the second, from somewhere to the east in Ward C. It was the prison. And then a larger blast came from the base of the water tower.
Hundreds of people were running now a full sprint. Others were pushing wheelchairs across the lawn in a panic; some were carrying people. Smoke was beginning to billow out from some of the windows that hadn’t been closed in the lower levels of Ward C where Ully was being held, and also from its roofline indicating the entire prison Ward was now ablaze.
***
Chapter 49
Mitchell
An officer was hollering for everyone around us to stand aside. He was ushering me through a sea of firefighters and smoke, wondering aloud, how in the hell Abigail had gotten into the pump house at the top of the water tower, the central control for the water works, including the sprinkler system. How the hell was I supposed to know? I told him, all the while remembering that all of those accesses were in the blueprints to the place: the manhole cover access leading into the hydraulics basement; the tunnel access connecting it to the crawl space beneath the water tower; the shaft system with its ladders climbing the height of the structure. Abby knew how to shut the place down, and she knew how to blow it up.
Nothing worked as far as water was concerned. You couldn’t even bleed a drop from a drinking fountain, and the prison division was heating up like a metal pan in a hot stove.
I had been given a ventilator to wear by firefighters. Ully had been asking for me, specifically. He was screaming for me, in fact. It was hard to hear what the firefighters were telling me over all of the other noise, but I knew what they wanted me to do. I just wasn’t prepared for what I was about to see.
Staff had evacuated everyone minus two people: Abigail and my uncle Ully. There was a SWAT team standing by in full gear, heavy armor, and ventilated just inside the entryway to Ward C. Two officers flanked my sides. One told me that the place was clear according to all counts, but there was a hostage situation that needed tending to.
We moved to a bank of video monitors in a guard station adjacent to the main hallway corridor leading into the prison’s main floor where Abigail and Ully were. Abigail had taken Ully hostage and had barricaded them in. A camera operator had panned to cell 17 about midway down the corridor. This was Ully’s cell. Ully was standing about as far deep into it as you could get, and he looked more panicked than I was feeling. He wasn’t moving. His doors appeared locked tight, and they were.
The operator then focused on an area in the hallway just outside that cell where I could see Abigail standing. She had my uncle locked in his cell, and had him at gunpoint. The rest of the corridor was empty, but slowly filling with smoke. The sight made me shiver.
There were two means of egress from the floor: the entryway nearest us, a double entryway that had been sealed shut somehow from the inside, and an exit door at the far end—also a double egress—also jammed shut with what appeared to be Abby’s knife in the door’s lock.
I was informed that we had six minutes to talk Abigail out, or SWAT was going to implode the entry closest to Ully’s cell and take Abigail out.
Talking Abby out meant speaking to her by way of a PA system. The microphone was perched in front of me, erect like the neck of a crane. I wasn’t trained for this. I also wasn’t sure what in the hell Abigail was thinking. This was not just a possible homicide we were dealing with—this was a suicide attempt if I ever saw one.
“I don’t know who you are, pal,” one of the SWAT officers sitting behind the microphone said to me in a gruff tone, “but our victim wants you in here, so take a seat.” With that, he stood up and stepped aside.
Our victim!
In order to work the microphone, you had to have your hands free to operate a switch. This toggled the system on and off. I took a seat in the control chair and looked to the monitor. “Do we have sound? I need sound,” I said to anyone who’d listen. Someone came in and hit a button that allowed me to hear what was going on in the corridor.
What I heard were the pleas of my uncle—pleas that were falling on deaf ears. This was a man who, just hours ago, told me he’d lived a full life. He didn’t care if he got his head blown off, he’d said. But now, with a gun on him, caged up like a helpless bear, he appeared fearful. As I’ve said, the idea of a thing is different than the reality of the thing. But was he scared, or was he playing to the police?
Abby looked angry, impatient. I knew at once, just looking at her eyes, swollen with smoke irritation, yet dancing with that old wicked determination so natural to her, that if there was going to be a peaceful ending to this fiasco then Ully was going to have to be a little more respectful of her, and a little more forthcoming than I’m sure he had been in the last half hour.
I immediately clicked the talk switch. Some feedback sounded both in the booth and in the corridor. It made Abigail look our way. “Can she see me in here?” I asked the officer standing behind me. He told me no, that the glass overlooking the corridor was one-way glass, and bulletproof.
Again, I tapped the switch and feedback blasted the floor. But this time I spoke, and as I did, the screeching faded. My first word into that mic was Abby. The word echoed through the corridor. It was a word that made Ully shut up, at least for a moment. Maybe it was my voice that stilled him.
A pissy-faced pride seemed to flutter about Ully’s face as he heard me speak, as if he thought I was there for him, not Abigail; as if hearing her name in public had somehow exposed Abby for who she truly was. I wanted to slap the self-satisfied smirk off of his face.
Abby just continued to look in at Ully as if to tell him it didn’t matter to her if I saw what was going to happen or not. She wasn’t budging.
Ully called out. “Mitchell, you see what she is! Look at her for what she really is! She’s a coward! Who shoots fish in a fucking barrel?” He turned to Abby and seemed to smile that insidious, malevolent smile of his. Any fear he was pretending had obviously vanished.
“Abby, it’s me!” I said. “I’m in here for you, not him. You don’t have to do this! Anna’s made you and me a fair offer, and they know what Ully’s done!”
To that, Abby shook her head and took a closer step toward Ully’s cell. On screen I could see him throw his arms up, reflexively, and he quieted again. But he wasn’t scared. I looked to the officer beside me. He just nodded. The detective behind me hollered, “Five minutes!”
And then Abby spoke. “This isn’t about you or me anymore, Mitchell! This is about the truth. Ully’s not leaving this place without admitting what he did to Sophia and to Elmer. If someone comes in here, I’m shooting him!”
Now I understood exactly what was happening. This was about confession—and a public one—to Eva’s rape, to Elmer’s murder, to knowing about Fred Elms’ true identity, and yes, to Sophia’s assassination. But I got a sinking, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach all at once. For Ully, this was about embarrassing Abby, and punishing me. Ully wasn’t going to confess—to anything! He was ready to take what knowledge he had to the grave with him—all of it. I thought back to our conversation. He said he’d get what he deserved, and I’d get what I deserved, too. Did I deserve to see this unfold like I knew it was going to unfold? To see Ully die a helpless death just like Jackson Greer had, right in front of me? To see Abby being taken out by SWAT? Or imprisoned, at best, for the rest of her life?
With every passing instant, the corridor was becoming more and more clouded with the ashen remnants of a fire that seemed to be raging around us, and was. Its heat was beginning to bleed through the thick walls around us and into the booth.
I could hear the belabored hollering of firefighters from other parts of the wing, some yelling inside for us to hurry, others hollering for us to come out right then. It was a level of hell I hadn’t bargained for, and at once I felt angry at Abby for having taken me there. But if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have known what I knew then—for better or for worse—none of us would have known.
Then again, if we hadn’t been here, then Sophia might be alive.
I thought to have firefighters throw them masks, but there was no way in, and I knew Abby wasn’t going to put one on anyway. Someone was going to die in there, if not the both of them. The thought came to me: what if this is a suicide attempt? Was she going to kill Ully and end her own life right in front of me? Was that what she was doing? Ending things on her own terms? Then I heard a faint echo whispering father and brother they will slay, and burn this place….
It made me frantic with fear, and angry. It made me sad, all of those elements of self-obsession and grief returning to me like wayward kids. Abby had fought so hard to survive. She’d survived imprisonment in Iraq, and the horrors of that imprisonment, and she’d survived the loss of her family—all of them. She’d told me she had big dreams. Dreams of building a business someday, to have a staff, eighty acres, and Dobermans to guard it—a compound, she’d thought of it. My mother had wishes, but Abby had wishes, too.
“Ully’s not worth it,” I said, calling to Abby. “You had dreams. Remember?”
She seemed not to want to respond, and she didn’t. The wicked determination on her face seemed tinged with something like hopelessness. She appeared sad, not just angry. “I need to know what you’re thinking, Abby. Please talk to me.”
Again she didn’t respond.
“This isn’t the way anymore. You said so. My mother didn’t want this.”
“Yes she did!” Abby replied promptly.
“She didn’t,” I argued. “She wanted to me to be happy. You said so yourself!”
Abby looked sullen, almost confused. Still, she didn’t move.
“Anna has your aunt’s art,” I tried. “Anna’s giving it to you, but you can’t do this.”
Abby was still. She seemed to have nodded, but I wasn’t sure. She just continued staring in at Ully.
“Three minutes,” one of the officers hollered.
Again I tapped the switch and spoke. “What do you want him to do? We have three minutes.”
