“True. I’ve been thinking,” Jake said. “Tynsdale must have been in on the experiments. I questioned him early on, but Sadie trusted him. So did Walt.” He paused. “But he’s been monitoring Amelia and Grace for years. He’s prescribed their medication, so he could have kept them drugged to prevent them from talking.”
“Do you have an address for him?” Nick asked.
Jake had his phone number but no address. “Hang on a minute.” He searched the desk in the corner and found a small address book, then gave the address to Nick. “You check his house. I’ll check the hospital.”
He hung up and headed for the door, but suddenly Amelia appeared. Jake figured she would run when she saw him, but instead she launched herself at him.
“Sadie, where’s Sadie?”
Jake caught her arms. “She’s gone.”
Amelia’s eyes widened in panic. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Someone took her,” Jake said. “There are signs of a struggle.”
“It was him,” Amelia said in a hoarse whisper. “He’s back.”
Jake’s throat closed. “Who’s back?”
“Your father,” Amelia said. “He killed Papaw, and now he’s going to kill Sadie.”
Twenty minutes later, Jake was still reeling in shock. Amelia had hitched a ride with a trucker who’d put her out on the main road, and she’d walked the rest of the way.
“Your father did it all,” Amelia said. “He’s a bad man.”
Jake’s jaw hardened. She’d seemed coherent, but that statement made him pause. “My father is dead, Amelia.”
“No, he’s alive. I saw him at the hospital,” Amelia said. “That’s why I escaped. He came there to kill me, just like he killed Papaw.”
It had to be her delusions talking. “Amelia, you and Sadie and your grandfather buried my father.”
“I know,” Amelia cried. “I don’t how he did it, but he survived. If he has Sadie, he’ll kill her.”
“Dr. Tynsdale knew what happened that night,” Jake said.
She nodded, trembling as she spoke. “Yes, but he promised to keep it secret, since I was his patient.”
Jake grimaced. Poor Amelia. She had been the victim of some twisted doctors, and her psychiatrist might have been working with them to keep her drugged all these years to keep her quiet.
“He might take her to the grave site,” Amelia said. “And bury her where we left him.”
A chill ran down his spine. She was talking about his father, but he was thinking about Tynsdale.
“Or”—Amelia folded her arms around herself and shuddered violently—“to the basement.”
“What basement?” Jake asked.
“In the hospital, it was dark—no one knew about the room with the chimes.”
“What chimes?”
“They played musical chimes to hypnotize us. I don’t know why, but they called us the chimes too.” She clutched his arm again. “Please save Sadie, Jake.”
Dammit, he needed to take Amelia in. But he didn’t have time. He phoned his deputy, but Mike didn’t answer, so he left a message for him to call him back, that he needed him to watch Amelia.
Desperate, he called Ms. Lettie and explained that Amelia was at the studio. “Will you come and stay with her until I find Sadie?”
“Of course—I was on my way there anyway. I’ll be there in a minute,” Ms. Lettie said.
Amelia curled up on the sofa, rocking back and forth, her eyes stricken. “Save Sadie, save Sadie, save Sadie...”
Jake knelt in front of her and spoke softly to calm her. “Amelia, tell me more about the basement,” he said. “What was down there?”
“There’s a secret door,” Amelia whispered. “Near the back of the hospital. And the walls are soundproofed so nobody can hear us cry.”
“How do you know that?” Jake asked.
“They told us,” she said in a haunted whisper. “It won’t do any good to scream, they said. No one can hear you.”
“What else happened?” Jake asked.
Amelia emitted a low moan. “They tied us down and shocked us. And they played the chimes so we would do whatever they said.”
“That sounds like brainwashing.”
Amelia nodded, then rambled on for several minutes about the noises and lights and the drugs that had made her see things.
“Who did this to you?” Jake asked.
“The doctors,” Amelia said. She covered her ears with her hands and began to moan. “Make the noises and the voices stop.”
Ms. Lettie’s car barreled into the drive, then she hobbled in as fast as she could. “Oh, Lord, Amelia, honey, I’ve been so worried about you!”