Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum (22 page)

“Okay, yes. Is this relevant information?”

Zach had forgotten that she hadn’t been
privy to the discovery that morning in room 217. “No, it’s not vital, but could
you keep this info between you and me just for today?”

“Sure.” Her transmitted voice wasn’t all
that convincing.

“Thanks, I really appreciate your help with
this. Keep up the good work.”

Across the cell transmission Patrizia seemed
to ignore the kudos. “Hey, Wendy wants you to call her in like ten minutes.
Apparently she has something
vital
to tell you.”

As soon as Zach popped into room 111, Ray
told Turk they were taking a fifteen minute break and asked him to make a
Muses
coffee run.

“Didn’t you just have coffee like an hour
ago?”

“That,” Ray said, “was a cappuccino. And I’m
thirsty. Go.”

Turk mumbled and complained, but eventually
disappeared out the door and down the hallway. Zach punched his friend in the
thick part of the arm.

“What’s up, pal-o-mine?”

Ray didn’t appear to be in a joking mood.
His brow remained furrowed and he was plucking at his lower lip with his thumb
and index finger. He turned back to the video monitor. “You need to see
something.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t like it.”

This wasn’t Ray’s normal video review
demeanor. When a baffling issue arose, he’d typically be lighthearted and
almost comical in his approach to solving the mystery. He pointed to the
monitor. “This is from Camera 8.”

That particular night-vision camera had been
placed about fifteen feet away and across the hallway from room 217, the now
infamous peach-smelling room. The angle had allowed the picture to show about
twenty-five feet of darkened hallway with the room’s doorway prominently
displayed. As with the video of the basement and all other recordings, a clock
kept the time in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Ray clicked the
remote and the video began.

It ran between a minute and ninety seconds
before Ray paused it. “You didn’t notice either. Good.”

“What did I miss?” Zach asked.

Ray raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t see it
the first time through either. Try it with the audio.”

He handed Zach headphones, rewound the tape
and replayed it. With the exception of a couple of faint clicking sounds that
could have been anything from the building settling to plaster falling from the
walls, he stared at a darkened hall and doorway with zero activity.

Ray paused it again.

“There’s nothing there.” Zach removed the
headphones and handed them to Ray who was grinning broadly. “Look buddy, I know
your sleep got interrupted a couple times last night, but still…you might be
losing it.”

Ray nodded and smirked. “You are correct,
sir. There’s nothing there.”

“What the—”

His friend smiled and held his index finger
up. “Keep watching.” He sped the video to twice the normal speed for almost a
minute peering at the clock. When it apparently was at the right spot, he
clicked the remote to resume normal play.

“See that?” Ray pointed to a small white orb
that moved on the left side of the screen.

Zach examined the object as it flickered a
bit in the green night-vision light. “Ray, that’s a fucking moth!”

“I know,” he said. “Well, it’s a moth. It’s
not a fucking moth because it would take two of them to mate, but it’s a
bee-u-tee-full moth!”

Best friend or not, Zach didn’t have time
for games. “Soldier, what is your major malfunction?”

Ray beamed as though he had anticipated
Zach’s doubt. “Watch,” he said confidently. “Watch the moth.”

Zach attuned to its movements the way he
would follow the moving light during an eye doctor’s glaucoma test. It flew up
toward the ceiling and then darted back down. It disappeared to the left of the
screen for just a second, and then whizzed onscreen and upward. Just as it was
about to disappear from the camera’s view, the moth froze in midair.

“Ray!” Zach glared at him and then realized
that his friend had
not
paused the video. “I don’t get it. The tape
froze? What—”

Ray pointed to the stopped onscreen clock as
he mumbled. “One thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five, one
thousand six and…action!”

The picture continued to display the green
tinged hallway. The moth had disappeared.

“The recordings paused. Could it have been a
system technical glitch?”

“That’s what I wondered at first,” Ray said.
“If other cameras stopped, they would have been the ones on the same floor
right? But no. I cross checked the time with cameras 9 and 10. They didn’t
freeze.”

The previous night’s warning from his uncle
came back to Zach.
Some evidence is tainted.

“Someone or something paused this particular
recording.”

“I’d guess ‘someone.’ ‘Something’ sounds a
bit too dramatic there psychology boy.” Ray rewound the video and handed Zach
the headphones again. “Now watch it again with the sound.”

As the moth disappeared from to the left of
view there were two distinct clicks, similar to the ones he’d heard while
listening to the earlier footage. They sounded mechanical.

“It’s a signal,” Zach said. He removed the
headphones.

“A signal to pause the tape just a few
seconds…”

“…while someone slips past the camera and
into the room.” Zach completed his friend’s thought.

“I’ll rewind and show you the first segment
you watched,” Ray said. “You’ll see that about one second after those clicks,
the tape pauses just like this for about six seconds!”

“That’s okay, buddy. I trust you.” Zach
smiled widely at him. “In fact, if you weren’t so ugly, I’d kiss you.”

“Yeah, and if you weren’t such a big wig TV
star, I’d break your nose just for thinking about it!”

They both laughed, but the gravity of the
discovery was hitting Zach hard.

“Have you watched the tape from Camera 6
yet?”

“Yeah. With all my spare time.”

“Seriously,” Zach said. “Forward to about
ten minutes earlier than the first pause of Camera 8. If someone snuck up
behind this camera, they must have come from the stairway outside the
infirmary.”

Ray nodded. “And they’ll either be on that
video or, more likely—”

“That tape will be paused in the same way.”

Ray scribbled something in his notebook.
Zach made a mental note of the time that the video was paused. He remembered
Angel, Pierre and Matthew huddled together. As he’d done thousands of times
playing poker, he envisioned their faces at that moment, froze them like the
video had done on the moth. Zach saw their faces clearly. Pierre—embarrassed.
Matthew—confident. Angel—afraid.

“So you’ve got two people involved working
as a team,” Ray mused aloud. “And one of them is certainly a tech guy.”

“But who?” Zach asked.

As though on cue, Pierre’s accented voice
echoed down the hall. His words were unintelligible. The smell of coffee
drifted in and there was rustling in the hallway.

“I heard that. ‘But who’ did what?” Turk
asked, rushing in with their drinks.

“You’re back in a hurry,” Ray said. “Why the
short break?”

“I already made pals with the kid at Muses,
so he gives me jiffy service.” Turk looked from Zach to Ray. “Besides, I didn’t
want to miss anything.”

Ray pulled a cup from the carrying tray and
handed it to Zach. They made and maintained direct eye contact. At that moment,
Zach knew he and his best friend were sharing the exact same thought.

Trust no one.

Chapter Twenty-Four

As Zach walked the long hallway toward the
Rosewood lobby, his phone buzzed notice of an incoming call. He did a double
take at the identification. He hadn’t yet changed “Mother & Father,” to
just “Dad.”

He flicked his cell open. “Hello.”

“Za-ach, it’s your da-ad.” Despite being a
simple tradesman, the way his father pronounced Zach’s name sounded like a
disappointed English actor performing Shakespeare.

“I know who it is, Dad. Have you ever heard
of caller ID?”

“Ah,” he said, “I don’t believe in that
stuff.”

“The 1970s called, they want your rotary
phone back.”

“Uh huh. Okay. So did I wake you up?”

“No, I’ve been up for a while. I’m working
on a case.”

“Oh.” Dad sounded confused. Zach knew his
father loved him, but he wasn’t sure his dad understood anything he’d shared
with him about his TV show. Dad wasn’t at all interested in the paranormal.
“So, did you talk to Ray about the deck?”

“Yes, Daddy Dearest. We’ll be out there this
weekend for sure.”

“Okay. Because you know these little buggers
are—”

“I know. I know,” Zach said, even though he
had no idea what his father was about to say.

“Okay. So do you have a few minutes to
talk?” Dad asked.

Zach’s dad relished long phone conversations
the way the pope approved of fornication. Not at all.

“I’m working a case, Dad. Is there something
you need to talk about?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” he said with a
sigh. “Well hey, I figured I should let you know before you got here
that...well, I had to take your mom’s rose trellises down.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, they were completely infested and the
termite guy said that the queen and the colony are probably out there in the
garden. Whatever that means.”

Gary Kalusky was neither a vengeful man, nor
one who believed in symbolic gestures. If he had removed his dead wife’s rose
trellises, it had been for practical reasons. Zach was glad though that his dad
had given him a chance to mentally prepare—to anticipate seeing the remnants of
his mother’s favorite pastime demolished.

“Okay, thanks for letting me know.” Zach had
arrived at the command center in the lobby and needed to speak with Angel.
“Hey, I’ve got to get something taken care of. I’ll call you tomorrow to
confirm everything.”

“Okay, all right. b-bye.”

“Love you, bye.”

“Your boyfriend?” Angel snickered.

“Funny.” Zach knew what he needed to do, but
the phone call had thrown him off kilter. “Angel, what was the Tech Schedule
for last night?”

Angel became serious. “Is there a problem,
boss?”

“Don’t give me that. I asked you a question.
I put you in charge and I need to know who was working here when.”

Angel saluted and then chuckled, but his
casual demeanor seemed false—forced. “Matthew worked the first shift. Pierre
was scheduled to take over after ‘Spirit Hour’ or whatever you guys called it
last night. I was to relieve him around 6 AM.”

“And that’s how things shook out?”

“Pretty much,
si
.” Angel was one of
the worst liars in the world. He not only couldn’t hide his nervousness, he
perspired rapidly when stretching the truth.

“Good,” Zach said. “That’s what I thought.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Nothing that I can’t handle.”

Zach exited Rosewood. The fresh air helped
clear his head. Rebecca’s comment the previous day about something evil roaming
the halls had stuck with him. Zach wasn’t sure about an evil presence, but
there was something about Rosewood. Something beyond the stale air and dusty
floors that didn’t quite sit right. Long periods of time spent inside the asylum
made him feel out of focus, not centered, watched. The feeling of being
observed, of constantly being evaluated was, perhaps the most uncomfortable,
and he couldn’t seem to shake it.

Not while he was inside Rosewood.

Zach flipped open his cell phone and called
Wendy.

“Just a sec,” she said. Her hushed tone
indicated she was in a library or somewhere she couldn’t talk.

Echoed sounds came through the earpiece,
indicating that Wendy had reached an outer hallway of some kind.

“Hey, before I forget,” Zach said, “Could
you research a name for me today?”

Even over the phone line, Wendy’s sigh
conveyed frustration that bordered on contempt. He usually used the proverbial
stick with Wendy, but occasionally the use of a carrot was in order.

“Please?” Zach made his voice as sweet as he
could. “This lead has the potential to blow the case wide open...”

“What is it?”

“Find out everything you can about a John
Paramour. Date of birth, April 14, 1865.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. And
yes
I know why that date is
significant.”