Spend some time researching insurance and stuff so we can sound sort of like we know what we're talking about and can talk our way into Gibson to talk to Alan. Research the Gibson outfit and some more of Alan's background.
Didier and Hazel drive out to the grounds to scope it out. The place is really pretty isolated, down a track through woods. Gibson Mental Hospital is run by the State. They found it to be a single-storey building with few windows, a fence around it, and only one car outside the building. It was an old VW, which turned out to be registered to a "Mr. Jarvis Nash," according to Vehicle Registry.
Didier found in Kathy's papers a note (e-mail) in response to Kathy's anonymous posting about Wicks's finding about the comet-Wicks believed that this comet, Porter's comet, was accelerating and was heading toward Earth, but he couldn't get anyone to take him seriously, or else he was afraid to publicize this information, I can't remember. The e-mail response said that the comet had been discovered about a year ago and it was NOT accelerating, that there was a miscalculation.
Adam made some phone calls. He called Gibson to arrange a meeting (for 4:00 Wednesday), talked to a "Dr. Nash," who identified himself as the assistant director. According to Nash, the hospital had 26 patients and 10 staff members. He said something about a "staffing crisis" and how this was cutting down on patients' "outside time." His associate was a Dr. Carmen Hall, the director of the hospital. He said she was currently out of town at a conference in New York. Didier also found out some info by pretending to be a local journalist doing a story on the hospital.
We did some background checking. Nash seemed legitimate, we found a record of him receiving his doctorate at Yale, although we wondered why the vehicle registry had him down as "Mr" rather than "Dr."-Hazel said PhDs were pretty particular about that kind of thing. We couldn't find any information on Dr. Hall. There was no record of her at the conference, we couldn't find her university or medical school. She seems to have been there since the 1960s, when the hospital was taken over by the State. Nash had been there for 20 years.
Adam also telephoned Ekloff's mother, Clarice, in Georgia. Through her, we learned that Karen had a son, Samuel, 6 years old. Roland had not apparently known about this. Samuel had been in his grandmother's care since his mother disappeared. The father of the boy was named Sam Jordan, but Mrs. Ekloff said he had never taken any interest in the boy and there had been no contact between Karen and her son's father. Mrs. Ekloff also shared that her son Timothy worked for the government and traveled a lot, and she didn't know his current whereabouts.
Basically spend about 2.5 days in Cranston, NH, researching and planning.
On Wednesday (May 4), Adam and Ray drove out to Gibson. It was pouring rain. Dr. Nash's car was visible in the parking lot but he did not respond immediately when we buzzed. We had deliberately arrived a little early. Ray took a quick peek round the facility, noting the lack of windows in the building, the high fence, the weed-filled "recreation" yard at the back of the building.
We met with Dr. Nash in his office and showed him our documents and asked what we hoped sounded like professional questions. He agreed to let us go downstairs and meet with Mr. Ekloff. Most of the hospital was, in fact, below ground. He gave us directions down the elevator and down the hall to a room number, said he'd be watching on the surveillance camera and would buzz us into Ekloff's room when we got there. Shouldn't we have thought it was strange that he didn't escort us down there? That he sent us down by ourselves?
We got down to the designated room and Nash buzzed it open. We went in, and saw no sign of Ekloff. Before I could react, the heavy door had slammed shut behind Adam. It locked. Dammit!! Bad, bad feeling. Trying to stay in character with the insurance agent role, Adam addressed the intercom and indicated that Ekloff was not here and that this must be a mistake. Nash responded that we would have to wait until his associate Dr. Hall returned. And we were stuck.
See, the thing with rooms in a mental hospital, particularly one of this sort, is that they are designed very well not to be escaped from. There really was nothing in the room we could think of using in a MacGyver-like fashion to get out. We tossed a sheet from the bed over the surveillance camera and Adam tried fiddling with the electronic lock (luckily he had his Leatherman).
Let us say Ray and Adam passed a couple of hours stuck in this box, Ray fuming and Adam tinkering with wires and occasionally getting zapped.
Meanwhile, Hazel and Didier had figured out that Ray and Adam were taking too long, and couldn't get hold of wither of them on their cell phones, so they drove out toward Gibson. They parked out along the drive some ways, so their car would not be visible from the building, and hiked in. They saw Ray and Adam's rental car, and Nash's car. It was still pouring rain. They got inside, the door locked behind them-and the power went out.
| Downstairs | Upstairs |
| Downstairs, Adam was fiddling with the electric lock when the door finally clicked open. Unfortunately, all the lights went out too. They proceeded cautiously out into the corridor, navigating by Ray's pocket flashlight and some dim ambient emergency-generator lights. We became uncomfortably aware that we were trapped in the basement of a mental hospital with no electricity, and all of the inmates' doors had just been unlocked. This was our chance to grab Ekloff, we thought, if we could find him. Then, from somewhere upstairs, we heard a gunshot. | Upstairs, Didier was navigating down a dark hallway with Hazel close behind. He had given his gun to Hazel so his hands would be free to get through locked doors. Then he thought he heard something, a rustle or shifting off to the side, a low growl....Next thing he knew, something large and hairy had leaped on him, knocking him to the floor and tearing a gash through his shoulder. Hazel jerked the pistol up and fired blindly. |
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