Chapter 10 - Behind Door B-12
Brandi refused to explain where the key-card sleeve came from. "If you talk to me again, make it look like you're mad," she said, then walked off loudly calling me a snitch.
I found the building map in a fire evacuation notice beside the clinic. B-12 was labeled DISUSED STORAGE. A small service corridor connected it to the freight elevator I'd almost ridden to the van.
Brooks saw me studying the map. "You can't go wandering down there," she said.
"Did my sister stay in that room?"
Brooks didn't answer immediately. "Last summer I heard somebody crying downstairs after my shift. I was told a contractor had brought a frightened patient for an interview. I asked why nobody had charted her. My supervisor told me to mind my own business."
"Could she be alive?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry."
That afternoon I filed a formal grievance asking for an inventory of medical movements tied to PO-24701 and an investigation of my transfer attempt. I described the van, the date, the license number I'd managed to memorize. I asked that no witness be moved without an independent review.
When the grievance officer read it, she went pale. "Do you have a lawyer?"
"Yes."
"Good," she said, handing me a receipt stamped with the time. "Keep that number."
An hour later an unfamiliar guard came to my cell carrying an envelope. Inside was a photograph of Leah, alive and standing beside a cinder-block wall. Her hair had been cut to her jaw. She held a sheet of paper with today's date written across it.
On the back, a message had been printed in black capitals: WITHDRAW YOUR COMPLAINT OR SHE STOPS BREATHING.
May you like
I held the picture under the light. Her right hand was partly hidden, but I could see her thumb pointed toward the lower corner of the paper.
There, near the photograph's edge, were three tiny letters: WIT.
