Page 89 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

But that was ridiculous. Detective Nolan knew she was innocent. And she’d made the choice to return with him instead of being picked up by Social Services. She needed to stop being paranoid. Still, she couldn’t help wondering it if was too late to ask Sergeant Clark to turn around.

As they sped along the snowy, one-lane road, getting closer and closer to Willowbrook’s front gate, the more she wished she’d stayed at the station. Maybe she could have snuck out before anyone arrived to pick her up. Maybe she could have called Heather and convinced the other cops she was her sister so they’d let her go. She cracked her window open to get some fresh air, certain she was suffocating. Sleet flew in through the narrow opening, hitting her eyes and forehead like tiny wet bullets. She rolled the window back up.

“You okay back there?” Nolan asked over his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

And she would be fine, as soon as they left Willowbrook again. As soon as they found Wayne and put him behind bars. Outside the windshield, the pillared gates to Willowbrook stood open, gaping, and hungry for their next victim, like the mouth of a hushed, breathing beast. Sergeant Clark slowed the car, stopped next to the guardhouse, and rolled down his window. The guard stepped out partway to wave them on, squinting against the snow.

Detective Nolan leaned across the seat to talk to him through the open window. “What’s the quickest way to the hospital?”

“After the administration building keep going straight,” the guard said. “It’s at the far end of the campus on the same road.”

“Thanks.” Nolan gave the man a quick wave.

Sergeant Clark rolled up the window and drove on. “They need to tighten security in this place,” he said.

“I agree,” Nolan said. “But like everything else funded by the state, it probably all comes down to money.”

Sage sat forward, growing more and more nervous. “Why are we going to the hospital?”

“That’s where Dr. Baldwin said to meet him,” Nolan said.

She sagged back in the seat, her anxiety building as they drove along another lonely length of road into a wooded area filled with snow-covered trees and low brush. When they came out on the other side and the first brick building came into view, she pressed her nails into her palms. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d be back on the Willowbrook campus, and certainly not so soon. Yet here she was.

Here and there in the low-slung houses, jittery, weak lights shone in the windows. Shadows moved behind the grimy glass—ashen silhouettes lurching back and forth, or side to side, up and down, slowly and methodically, fast and frenzied. The misery and pain of the people trapped behind those dark walls, weeping and misused and afraid, abused and desperate and dying, was palpable—a living, breathing thing. It put a boulder in her chest and a sour pit in her stomach.

Then the administration building appeared like a ship through the wind and snow, the massive structure dark, the windows black, the outside lights shining like a ghostly warning. It looked deserted.

When Detective Nolan spoke, she jumped. “From what I understand, this campus is over three hundred acres,” he said to Sergeant Clark. “So the hospital is probably quite a ways down this road.”

After the administration building, they passed more resident “houses” on both sides of the road—a thousand more dim windows and moving shadows, a thousand more miles of brick walls hiding squalor, abuse, neglect, misery, and death. She’d never been this deep inside the campus; seeing one resident house after another, along with side roads lined with even more houses, she was again reminded of a concentration camp, with row after row of identical barracks. Hearing the numbers was one thing, but seeing the houses firsthand was something else entirely. She had no idea there were so many.

When they reached the hospital—another imposing building with the same number of floors and wings as the administration building—Nolan told Sargent Clark to park in the back. “Baldwin wants us to come in through a delivery door,” he said.

“What the hell?” Clark said. “What’s with all the secrecy?”

“Beats me. Maybe with that news report he’s had enough publicity for the year.”

After driving around one wing of the hospital into an empty parking lot scoured clean by the wind, Clark stopped the Ford next to a white van. The only other vehicle in the lot was Dr. Baldwin’s New Yorker. Clark shut off the engine and looked at Nolan.

“Need me to come inside?” he said.

“No, I’ll get it from here. We shouldn’t be long.”

“I’ll be here if you need me,” Clark said, then cracked the window and lit a cigarette.

Sage wished more than anything that she could stay in the car. What if they were at the hospital so Dr. Baldwin could give her a lobotomy? What if he had phoned the police station because he knew she’d be there? What if he told Detective Nolan to lie about the reason for his call? She wiped at her eyes, determined not to cry, and told herself to be reasonable. She was at the police station because someone had murdered Alan. Dr. Baldwin and Detective Nolan had nothing to do with that. At least she didn’t think Dr. Baldwin did. Maybe she should refuse to go inside. She could wait for Detective Nolan to tell her about the evidence, if it was that important.

Detective Nolan got out of the car, opened the back door, and waited for her to get out, holding on to his hat so the wind wouldn’t blow it away.

She looked up at him. “Can’t you just let me know what you find out?” she said.

He shook his head. “I need to you to tell Baldwin about Eddie.”

She sighed miserably, then climbed out of the back seat, pulled up her hood, and trailed the detective across the parking lot on shaking legs. Sleet pelted her face, and she put her head down to follow his quickly disappearing tracks. Thankfully, when they reached the back of the hospital, the massive building blocked most of the wind.

Nolan tried the nearest delivery door. It was locked. He pounded on it with the side of his fist.

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