Absolute Fear. Lisa Jackson

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      And he knew a shortcut to the cabin.

      CHAPTER 5

      Streetlights glowed an eerie blue as Eve pulled up to the house she’d inherited from her grandmother. Her shoulders ached and her head throbbed, but at last she had arrived at the one place she could call home.

      She parked in the drive in front of the old single-car garage. Nana’s old house stood alone, a covered porch leading from a door on its side to the main house, a three-story Victorian complete with the high turret her grandmother had used as an artist’s studio for as long as she could mount the spiral staircase. Even as a kid Eve had claimed the room as her own, and whenever she spent weekends or summers with Nana, she slept in the turret with its three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view and easy access to the roof. In the summers, Eve had often sat outside on the old shingles, staring across other roofs and trees, imagining she could see across St. Charles Avenue, Magazine Street, and the area known as the Irish Channel, to view the Mississippi River—which, of course, was impossible.

      Now she eyed the old house and smiled with relief. “We made it,” she said to Samson as she turned off the engine. First things first: let the damned cat out! Well, if not out, at least free of the cage and in the house. She would keep him inside for a few days, just to make certain he was reacquainted with the house, and only then would he have some freedom outside.

      Glancing down at the clippings still littering the passenger seat and floor, she decided to leave them where they were for the time being. She wasn’t as panicked about them now. Later, she said to herself, hauling her purse and the cat carrier up the back steps to the porch and back door.

      As much as she’d always loved this house, with its high ceilings, narrow halls, and smells of pecan pies, rich coffee, and dried flower sachets, she’d been as shocked as anyone that Nana had left the house to her, bypassing her own son and Eve’s half brothers as well.

      Eve unlocked the back door and walked through a small mudroom before entering the kitchen. She switched on a few lights and wrinkled her nose at the smells of dust and mold that had settled into the old timbers in the time she’d been gone. There was also the pervasive smell of rot, and she had only to look under the kitchen sink to find garbage that had needed to be taken out months ago.

      “Great,” she muttered, unlocking the cat carrier and watching Samson streak through the cage door. She spent the next fifteen minutes hauling out the trash, refilling the litter box, and setting out food and water for Samson then carrying in her things. After she’d hauled in her luggage and stacked it near the foot of the stairs, she returned to the car one last time and picked up the envelope and all the scattered clippings from the floor of the passenger seat. Just touching them made her feel dirty. Whoever had gone to all the trouble to cut these out, stuff them in an envelope, and wait for the right moment to plant them in her car had done so with a purpose.

      He’d intended to scare her.

      Why else break into the car and leave the envelope anonymously? Had it been at the gas station, where she’d perhaps forgotten to lock the car? That’s where she’d seen the man staring at her from behind dark glasses.

      No doubt about it: she’d been followed.

      He could be here right now. Watching.

      Her head snapped up quickly, and she studied the empty street, the shadowy bushes skirting her house, the alley behind the garage. Her eyes and ears strained, but she saw no one, heard no scrape of shoes against pavement, felt no whisper of air movement, smelled nothing but the rainwater dripping from the broad leaves of the mountain laurel tree planted near the drive.

      She shivered as she gathered all the papers and pressed the lock button on her remote. The car chirped, and its parking lights flashed as the Camry locked down. No more breakins. She glanced over her shoulder and felt the hairs on the back of her neck lift. Who had done this? Had they followed her?

      Everything looked safe. The houses flanking hers had warm lights glowing through their shaded windows. The night was quiet, few cars passing, just the soft sough of the wind whispering through the pecan, pine, and live oak trees in the yard. Still, looks could be deceiving. She was wary, nerves strung taut as she hurried inside and slid the dead bolt behind her with a satisfying thunk.

      She placed the envelope and all of the pieces of paper onto the kitchen table, examining them from a distance, almost afraid to touch them. There were nearly thirty articles, all neatly trimmed with pinking shears, all pertaining to Faith Chastain’s tragic death.

      Who had sent them to her?

      Why?

      What did a woman who’d been dead over twenty years have to do with her?

      Struggling to make sense of it, Eve considered what she knew. Faith Chastain died at Our Lady of Virtues. The mental hospital where Eve’s father practiced. That massive brick building where she had played as a child, hiding from the nuns, spying on the patients.

      Now Eve rubbed her hands together, tamping down a niggling anxiety. She asked herself: Don’t you intend to go back there, to wander through the hallways and rooms where you witnessed so much cruel abuse once called “treatment”? Haven’t you been fascinated with the old asylum? Isn’t it integral to your research? Don’t you plan to compare the use of physical restraints, so common at Our Lady of Virtues, to some of the antipsychotic drugs used today? The question is, Who else knows? Why does he care? What is he trying to tell you?

      Swallowing hard, Eve felt a little dizzy as she stared at the articles. If her theory was correct and someone wanted to either scare her from her research or…what? Warn her? Then why focus on Faith Chastain? A woman she didn’t remember.

      Or did she?

      Had Faith Chastain been one of the patients Eve had spied on as a child? Eve’s heart pounded a little faster and shame washed over her as she remembered lying to her father, telling him she was going to play outside on the swings, or take a walk through the woods, or go to the stables where a few horses were kept, when she’d really been intent on slipping through the hospital itself like a ghost, creeping through rooms and hallways that were supposed to be off-limits, ignoring all the rules.

      It had been horrifying but fascinating to her as she witnessed patients in straitjackets or other restraints. She knew it wasn’t right, but at times the patients had frightened her. Some of them, perhaps, who had been given lobotomies years before; others who were the victims of electroshock treatment.

      Her childish fears still had the power to embarrass her, and now her cheeks flushed. The patients she’d found so captivating, those she’d avoided, or those who had frightened her, had been ill, battling unseen demons. Of course she hadn’t understood their maladies or psychoses.

      She’d been so uninformed. If not uncaring, then at least more concerned about herself than anyone else. The truth was, some of the more serious patients just plain creeped her out. They had been intriguing, but in a frightening way. Her interest in psychiatry was more than a career choice; it was a means to atone. With her injury and Roy’s death, she’d missed the spring semester but hoped to return to the university in the fall.

      Shaking the thoughts aside, she turned her attention to the clippings. Someone obviously knew about her connection to the old hospital. But why would they care?

      With a determined sigh, she walked to the table again, picking up the clippings one by one, scanning them and trying to put them in some СКАЧАТЬ