Page 78 of No Quarter

Two lefts down the empty, silent hallway, and there it was: A large metal door with the words “D TUNNEL” emblazoned on it.

Valerie felt the cold of the metal and pushed against it, stepping inside. A large elevator stood before her. She pressed a red button and the elevator ascended from the bowels of the building. She got inside, closed the elevator door, and headed back into the depths.

She didn’t want to, but something was tearing at her nerves. It was doubt.

The elevator stopped with a shudder. Valerie opened the metal doors and found herself staring at a long tunnel with emergency lighting along it, glowing green.

The existence of that tunnel made her uneasy. At first, she thought it was an echo from a previous case, when a killer used tunnels around the city of Boston to claim his victims.

But no, it was more than that. The tunnel concealed something much worse. And Valerie had to find out if her suspicions were true.

Valerie walked slowly, methodically, the alcohol still buzzing around her head. As she reached the other end of the tunnel, she placed her hand on her gun.

Stay focused, she thought. But the champagne had dulled her wits momentarily back at the residential building. She knew she wasn’t currently at her best.

For a moment, she thought about going back and getting help. But she decided that her suspicions were probably merely a paranoid mind overthinking things. Sometimes at the end of a case, an investigator will latch onto other things to fill the void. Valerie knew this. She had encountered this before in herself.

But why then did this thought not dispel her unease?

She suspected Charlie and Will were worried about her state of mind as it was, the last thing she wanted was to make herself worse by taking them on a wild goose chase.

As Valerie stepped into the basement of the Elmwood Psychiatric Retreat, a cold shiver ran down her spine. She didn’t know what she would find, but she knew that something was very wrong here. And there was only one way to find out the truth.

With determination in her heart and fire in her eyes, Valerie pushed forward and began to search the basement for whatever it was that lurked within these halls.

Here again,she thought.Everything brings me back down here to this basement.

Almost in a daze, Valerie knew where her next destination had to be. She had to go upstairs and check the Elmwood records; only then would she know if her fears were true.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Valerie should have felt glad to be back upstairs in the patient building at Elmwood, but she felt no glee, only dread.

She walked through the corridors quickly and with purpose, moving through until she reached a storage room at the back of the building.

Reaching her hand out, she grabbed the cold metal of the door handle and sighed with relief when it turned, and she went inside, only to see the same room filled with files and notes that had been there since she and the others had been searching through Elmwood’s records.

“Where is it?” she said out loud to herself.

Moving to the back of the room, she pulled some boxes of patient files out of the way. Then another box filled with nurse personnel files.

But what she was looking for was behind that. It was a green cardboard box with a medical sign on the front. Valerie thought she heard something and turned to look at the door behind her.

She walked over to it, opened the door, and then looked out into the hallway. But the corridor was quiet. Indeed, that section of the building was quiet as it was used for storage and away from the other patient rooms.

With a sigh, Valerie shut the door behind her and went back to her search. Her heart was pounding with anxiety as she pulled out the box from the back of the shelf, sat down at her desk, and opened it up.

Inside were several tightly bound personnel files. She had only given them a cursory glance during their original search. But now, they required more of her attention.

With a trembling hand, she took out the first file and began to read.

As her eyes scanned the contents, a wave of horror washed over her. The file showed that significant portions of the personnel file were covered over with blank ink. Everything of any importance was redacted. A note was attached to the file which read:Contact the Board for further details.

The truth was now filtering through her mind. The implications.

Taking out her phone, Valerie speed dialed Charlie and then put the phone between her neck and shoulder. She gathered up the files she needed, putting them under her arm as the phone rang.

And rang.

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