Chapter 9 - The Woman in Room Twelve

Bridgewater Recovery Center stood two counties away behind a stand of bare maple trees. Its website described premium care and restorative privacy. Its gates were locked, its windows covered, and its sign had been removed.

"Place closed four years ago," Lena said. "Private ownership. Records transferred to a management company we can't identify."

"Meridian?" Nora guessed.

"Of course Meridian."

They visited a former nurse named Paula Griggs, who lived above a grocery store and still wore a hospital watch on her wrist. Paula remembered Evelyn Vale immediately.

"She was brought in sedated," Paula said. "No medical history, no family contact. They called her Patient Twelve."

Nora gripped the edge of the couch. "Did she die there?"

Paula took a long breath. "No. She woke up after two days and begged me to contact her daughter. I tried. A man came in and said I could lose my license if I interfered."

"Was the man Grant Whitmore?"

Paula hesitated, then nodded.

"What happened to her?"

"They transferred her. I wasn't allowed to know where." Paula opened a drawer and pulled out a small plastic bag. Inside was a folded paper crane made from ruled notebook paper. "She asked me to save this. Told me someday a young woman named Nora would know what it meant."

Nora unfolded it carefully. Her mother had taught her how to make paper cranes when she couldn't sleep. On the inside was a single line of numbers, then the phrase: THE CLOCK NEVER CHIMED THIRTEEN.

Adrian photographed the message. "A code?"

"Or a memory," Nora said. "At home we had an old clock. It chimed twelve at midnight. Mom used to joke it was too sensible to keep going."

Paula's phone suddenly lit up with a message. She looked at it and went white.

"You need to leave," she said.

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Outside the window, a black SUV had pulled to the curb. Nora saw a man step out holding a flower bouquet wrapped in white paper. He was the same man who had been waiting near the chapel gate when the shots started.

And he was walking straight toward Paula's door.