A Woman With A Mystery Part 19

"What seems to be the problem here?" Nurse Lander was demanding.

Inez began telling her, but stopped abruptly at the sight of Holly and Slade.

"I'd like to see my sister-in-law alone, please," Holly said to Nurse Lander.

The head nurse looked so grateful that Inez Wellington had finally shut up, she just gave a curt nod and motioned for the other nurses to leave with her.

The moment the door closed, Inez said to Slade, "I thought I fired you."

Slade was moving around the bed to the side opposite Holly, who calmly demanded, "I want to know where my baby is."

Inez rolled her eyes. "Oh, you aren't going to start-"

Slade laid a hand on the older woman's shoulder. "She asked you where her baby was."

Inez's eyes glittered maliciously. "Dead. Just like my brother, the man you killed!"

"He died of a heart attack!" Holly said, trying to keep her voice down.

"There was nothing wrong with his heart. Nothing!" Inez spat. "Until he married you. you."

Holly shook her head. "He had to drug me to get me to marry him. What about that?" She waved away the question. "Evergreen. Tell me about his Genesis Project. Tell me about the babies. What did he do with the babies he stole from the mothers?"

Inez looked at her blankly.

"Dr. Delaney told us. I know what Allan was doing, using mind control to build what he considered a superior future generation." Inez started to protest, but Holly cut her off again. "Dr. Delaney is dead, but he left a confession."

Inez paled. The monitor beside her bed started to beep loudly. Slade reached over and unplugged it. "Whoever took over for your brother stole our baby. I don't think I have to tell you to what extremes we will go to get the truth."

Inez's eyes widened. She tried to ring for the nurse, but Holly grabbed the call b.u.t.ton and moved it out of her reach.

A nurse stuck her head in the doorway, obviously alerted by the monitor suddenly going off.

"Everything's fine in here," Slade said, keeping a restraining hand on Inez's shoulder.

"Help me, you stupid b.i.t.c.h," Inez yelled at the nurse.

"My sister-in-law is a little distraught," Holly said. "Just give us a few moments to calm her down."

Inez started to protest, but the nurse shot Inez a call-me-a-b.i.t.c.h look and left, closing the door firmly behind her.

"You're going to kill me," Inez whined. "I'm a sick old woman."

"Yes, you are," Holly agreed.

Inez narrowed her eyes, anger making her nostrils flare. "My brother saw what was happening in the world. Stupid, lazy, ill-equipped people having child after child, children who would do nothing but become burdens on society, dependents of dependents, multiplying at staggering rates, the useless conceiving more of the useless."

Holly stared at her. "Who did he think he was that he got to decide who had children and who didn't? No wonder Delaney compared him to Hitler."

Inez looked shocked. "Allan was a brilliant doctor who was trying to save this planet. How dare you compare him to Hitler? My brother wasn't a racist. He was a realist."

"What did he do with the children?" Slade asked, his voice deadly low.

Inez turned her head to look at him. "The desirable ones got good homes with desirable parents who would provide the right kind of environment. It was the Wellington legacy to the future world," she said proudly.

"And the undesirable babies?" Holly asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Inez slowly turned to look at Holly again. "They were disposed of."

Holly felt her heart crush under the weight of the words. "Slade's and my baby? Which was it?"

"Do you even have to ask?" Inez said, seeming to have trouble breathing. She reached again for the call b.u.t.ton to ring the nurse, looking small and weak in the large hospital bed.

Holly buzzed the nurse for her and dropped the call b.u.t.ton on the bed beside Inez as she turned and walked away, afraid of what she'd do if she stayed a moment longer.

"Tell me who took over after Allan died," Slade demanded. "Tell me who is responsible for our baby's...theft."

"Go...to...h.e.l.l," Inez wheezed.

"I will destroy the Wellington name, yours, your brother's and your father's," Holly heard Slade say to Inez. "The Wellington legacy will be a disgrace, dishonor and disgust."

"You won't live that long," Inez managed to utter. "And neither will Holly."

Then the hospital-room door closed, and Slade joined Holly in the hall. Holly could hear the clatter of a code-blue cart and the scurry of nurses. She didn't look back.

"We need to find the bas.e.m.e.nt," she said, no longer sure she wanted to see where their baby had been born, but realizing she had to. She prayed it would make her remember something that would help them find their baby. If nothing else, she had to prove what the monsters had done and stop every last one of them once and for all.

SLADE FOLLOWED Holly down the hall, too shaken to speak. He'd wanted to throttle the truth out of the old woman, but he knew Inez would take it to her grave.

Holly had told him about her memory of the birth room. "It had to be close to the hospital, right? A room that was virtually soundproof, accessible and yet close enough that if something went wrong, they could get the mothers to the hospital quickly." He'd agreed. "What about under the hospital? My father was a bricklayer. He helped build the new hospital. I remember him telling me that they built the new one over the old one. Just like Seattle built over the city below it. It wasn't all that unusual back in those days."

Now all they had to do was find a way to access the old part because he believed Holly was on to something.

"I'm sure there is an outside entrance somewhere," she said now. "But there also has to be a way to access it from inside the hospital. A way to make it easy to bring patients in and out."

They found the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It was locked. Of course. He pulled out his lock-pick kit. It only took a few moments while Holly stood guard. The door swung open and he pulled her onto the landing at the top of the concrete steps. Below them was nothing but darkness and cold.

Cold. Holly had been suffering from hypothermia, as if she had been outside.

"Carolyn Gray probably had a key," Holly said next to him.

"Yeah," he agreed as he fumbled around for a light switch. A long line of lights blinked on, illuminating a short set of stairs. With Holly right behind him, he descended the steps to find a long hallway running north. At the end of the hall was another door.

It too was locked-but only temporarily. As it swung open, Holly let out a gasp. "This is it. The hallway I remember from my dream." She started down it, pa.s.sing up several doors.

He hurried after her, pa.s.sing rooms stuffed with boxes and old furniture.

"This part of the hospital isn't directly under the other," he said more to himself than Holly.

"Soundproof," Holly said. "No one would be able to hear a woman scream."

Her words sent a chill through him. He ached at the thought that Holly had given birth down here.

"Rawlins?"

They were almost at the end of the hall. He heard only that one word and the sound of Holly's voice breaking and knew she'd found something.

She stood in one of the doorways, her body rigid, her face pale.

He moved to look past her into the room. It was bare except for the large hospital bed at its center-and a hospital ba.s.sinet. It was obvious that the room had recently been cleaned.

She stepped in, then stopped. "This isn't the room," she said, turning to look at him, then her gaze moved past him to the last room, the one across the hall.

He could see from her expression that she was thinking the same thing he was. This would have been the room the other woman gave birth in. Holly moved past him, out into the hall. Slowly, she opened the last door. He heard her let out a small cry.

The room looked exactly like the other one, and he realized it too had been cleaned. There would be no evidence that Holly had given birth here. Nor any proof that the other woman had either.

"Is this the room?"

She nodded, but he couldn't see how she could be sure. The rooms looked identical to him.

He stood just inside the door, almost afraid to move, his heart pounding wildly as he watched Holly walk to the ba.s.sinet as though in a trance. He tried not to imagine what she must be reliving. The room was so cold, so remote. As he stared at the ba.s.sinet, he fought hard not to think about what had happened here. Or would happen again if they didn't stop it.

"Oh d.a.m.n, Rawlins," he heard her say. He swung his gaze from the ba.s.sinet to her. She was standing beside the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Slowly, he followed her gaze. The paint had cracked at the corner of the ceiling just above the bed, leaving dark lines in the shape of something unimaginable. A monster.

Behind him, he heard the distinct scuff of footsteps on concrete. He spun around, realizing he had no weapon.

Holly turned at the sound as well. A figure stood in the door. "Rawlins, that's the woman! The one from the cemetery!" The woman wore a blue housekeeper's uniform, her face ashen, her hands clutched over her chest as if in prayer. "Where is my baby?" Holly cried, lunging toward her.

The woman's eyes widened, then rolled back into her head. Slade barely reached her before she hit the floor. He caught her in his arms and carried her over to the hospital bed.

"That's her," Holly said, staring down at her. "She's not...dead is she?"

"No, she just pa.s.sed out." The woman's name tag read Gwen Monroe. She appeared to be in her early thirties, but she could have been much younger. She was one of those women who had a lot of miles on her, and it showed in her face. Her hands were rough and red, the nails chewed to the quick. "Do you know her?"

Holly shook her head. "The first time I saw her was at the cemetery. That is, as far as I can remember."

Gwen Monroe. A housekeeper at the hospital. The hospital where both Holly and Gwen had given birth-only in an old deserted underground part of it.

The housekeeper's lashes flickered. She came fully awake and, with obvious fear, pushed herself up, backing across the bed away from them until she reached the wall. "Who are you?"

"Don't you know?" Holly said. "You gave me your baby."

The woman blanched, and, for a moment, Holly thought she would faint again.

"Where is my daughter?" Holly demanded.

Slade touched her arm. "Easy," he warned. "Ms. Monroe?" he coaxed. "We aren't going to hurt you," Slade continued in that same soothing voice. "We're looking for our baby, the one Holly gave birth to the same night you gave birth to your son down here."

What were they doing-good cop, bad cop?

"I don't know nothin'!" Gwen Monroe said.

"Would you rather talk to the police?" Holly asked.

Panic washed over Gwen's features. "You can't prove nothin'."

"You're wrong about that," Slade said calmly. "The doctors upstairs took blood from both Holly and your baby Halloween night. That blood will prove that the infant is yours."

"Blood's not conclusive evidence," Gwen said, obviously just repeating what someone had told her.

"But DNA is," Holly said.

The woman blinked.

Holly continued, "It would mean digging up the baby's grave, but we are prepared to do that if you don't-"

"No," Gwen Monroe cried. "I don't want him dug up."

"Who contacted you about giving up your baby?" Slade asked.

It had to have been nurse Carolyn Gray, but Holly knew Slade just wanted to confirm it.

"She said I better not say nothin'." The woman's face crumbled. "My baby, he quit movin'. She checked and said he was dead and would have to come out. That I'd have to bury him." Tears streamed down her face. "I don't have no money. I got two other kids, no husband. She said she would help me. Get him a decent burial. Let him be somebody and that I would get money to help my other kids." She looked up at them, her gaze pleading with them to understand.

"Who was she, this woman who helped you?" he asked.

"Lorraine. Lorraine Vogel," she said, her voice barely audible.

Holly stared in shock. The woman Dr. Parris had talked about. The mother of the young man who'd killed Slade's mother.

"How do you know Lorraine?" Slade asked with obvious shock.

"She works here as a nurse," Gwen said.

"What did they do with my my baby?" Holly asked. baby?" Holly asked.

Gwen shook her head. "I don't know. I was real sick."

"But you knew they'd switched your baby with mine," Holly persisted. "That's why you were at the grave."

Gwen looked scared. "Not till later. She told me not to think about it. Not to go there. But I had to. Just that one time, really."