Page 78 of The Chain House

DUSK CAME WITHOUT warning.

And through the bars of the window across the room, the flame-scorched sunset brought with it a sense of impending doom.

Her own.

Because who was she kidding? She was never getting out of here. What had seemed to her already as days passing had only been a bit over twenty-four hours, and within a few more Sal Batise would die, on schedule. But the notion of her then being set free, Beth knew, was a nonsensical one. She’d seen too many faces now, all rough-looking characters. A man and a woman had been in the room with her, just long enough to remove the body of the man Minks had shot and killed. As if they’d been trained, they didn’t look at her, didn’t speak to her, but the fact that they’d shown their faces sealed her doom.

And although blood and brains still stained the floor, the door was closed, and they’d been gone now for an hour, at least. She’d tried to get a reaction from Joseph in the room below, but he was catatonically unresponsive. But at least he was still alive, unlike Billy next door, who’d been removed hours ago and, to her knowledge, had yet to be replaced. But she felt certain now that the chain going through the wall next to the door, and probably across a hallway into another room, had someone attached to it now, because the chain had been moving a lot more in the past few minutes, tugging painfully at her ankle, and she could hear someone whimpering through the walls. To keep her fearful mind preoccupied, she returned to the puzzle.

A thousand pieces.

A winter landscape; the Alps, according to the box. The box she’d at first analyzed to see if she could somehow turn the corners into a weapon but now found herself glancing at every few minutes to compare the puzzle-piece border she was creating to the picture on the box. It proved to be a diversion she appreciated, yet deep down didn’t fully trust, because after looking through the hole in the floor, Joseph had not been given a puzzle to help pass whatever time he had left.

The puzzle was specifically for her, which she’d known the instant when, right after they’d carted the dead body from the room, the woman had returned to slide the puzzle across the floor and telling her, A gift from Oliver Crown, before leaving.

As a child psychologist, Beth was big on puzzles, to the point that she considered it her thing. Often, when children refused to open up or were afraid to talk to her, she’d casually start placing pieces into whatever puzzle she had started on at the coffee table, and without fail, the child would inevitably become intrigued enough to start helping, and gentle conversation would typically start soon thereafter.

She’d asked Minks earlier what was wrong with his face, trying to get a rise out of him, not knowing if, in fact, he was wearing it for any reason other than disguising himself, but now as she looked up from the scattered puzzle pieces on the floor, having just snapped the final piece to complete the border, she knew he had some kind of facial disfigurement.

Because it suddenly dawned on her, like a lightning bolt of cold chills coursing over her skin, that she knew him.

She knew him from the attack inside the Hawthorne mansion twenty years ago, yes, but from many years before that.

Because he’d once been a patient, if only for a day. Because how could she ever forget that poor boy’s face?

Luther Wright had called himself by another name then, as he was doing now.

CHAPTER40

Before

BETH WATCHED THE young boy on the chair, the laces on his ragged sneakers untied.

It had broken her heart to see how dramatically he’d flinched when she’d scooted over to tie them for him. So, she’d left them alone.

Left him alone.

Laces untied.

Both knees scabbed, recently bruised, as was his right wrist, the bruise-ring around it so lurid it could have been mistaken for a bracelet from afar. He’d obviously been beaten, more than likely abused.

But his face. The poor child. The scar ran from his left eye, diagonally across the bridge of his nose, ending in a puckering starfish-shaped scar in the middle of his right cheek. Whatever had caused it, this horrible wound, the pain must have been brutal, the crude, unprofessional stitches seemingly having caused more harm than healing.

The boy, Luther Wright, was one of her first patients, thrust upon her by the state to analyze, and seeing him tugged at her heartstrings. But after ten minutes of trying to coax words from him, she’d stood from her chair, moved a few paces to her right, to the couch in front of the coffee table holding the scattered puzzle pieces that would eventually show a picture of the snowy Swiss Alps. After quietly working the puzzle for a few minutes, Luther stood, walked across to the opposite side of the coffee table, sat with his legs crossed, and within thirty seconds put a piece into place.

When he looked up at her and found her smiling, he showed the hint of one too and continued searching for the next piece.

“Well done,” Beth told him. “You must be an expert at puzzles, Luther.”

“I’m not Luther.”

“Oh,” she said, leaning forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped and hovering over the puzzle. “Who are you, then?”

“I’m Holden,” he said without looking up from the puzzle, his eyes homed in and darting from piece to piece. “Holden Caulfield.”

“From The Catcher in the Rye?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”