39 #2
“I didn’t think that at the time. All I knew was that William wasn’t coming home.
I got so depressed, I stopped being able to eat or get out of bed.
Crispin said he felt responsible for my breakdown, because William had died on his boat, and he insisted on getting me in here—Maynard-King, one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the East. And he made sure I was assigned to a woman he said was the ‘best therapist’ on staff. ”
“Was she?” Kate asked.
“She has a PhD in psychology. She is very respected in the field. She’s written papers, been interviewed about her research, is quite well known. But she’s evil, Kate,” Caroline said. “Just like Crispin.”
“In what way?”
“She works at another institution, and she has a private practice,” Caroline said.
“She convinces the women she treats to come here. She is a big believer in recovered memories. One of her tricks is to manipulate her patients into thinking they were sexually abused—that that is the root of their trauma. Of course, it sometimes is. And that is tragic. But other times, she found ways to warp people’s minds into remembering horrible things that never really happened. ”
“Why?” Kate asked.
“To isolate them. Have them turn against their families for not protecting them. Have them hate their fathers or brothers or whomever. To get them to talk about sex. One of the worst parts is that it diminishes the women who really were abused in that way. But she doesn’t care.
All she wants is to beat us all down so far that we’ll forget who we really are. ”
“You haven’t forgotten who you really are,” Kate said. “I can tell.”
“Thank you,” Caroline said. “I think she knows that too. It’s one reason she gave me back my name—letting me be Caroline again, instead of Girl #3. She said I was ready to start training the others.”
“Training them?” Kate asked.
“Look,” Caroline said, gesturing. “Those sayings on the board? We have to memorize them. She makes us write them down, with pen and ink, and our handwriting has to be beautiful and perfect.”
Kate stared at the subservient phrases on the board in the front of the room. More grooming, Kate thought. It was the way abusers indoctrinated their victims, the lead-up to what’s to come. Teach them to please, to go along, to keep it all secret.
“Who are the sayings for? Who are you supposed to please?” Kate asked.
“Men,” Caroline said. “The members.”
“The members of 1740?” Kate asked.
“Yes. One at a time, we become Belle. And the men—whichever man whose turn it is—is the Beast. The owner of the castle.”
“And the psychologist is the teacher?”
“She is the main teacher,” Caroline said.
“But sometimes she chooses one of us, once we’ve been here for a while, to start passing on our knowledge.
We’re like training teachers, junior professors.
I’ve just been moved up, into that position.
” Her voice dropped. “But there is no way. I’d rather go through .
. . what they do to me . . . than have to pass this on to other girls. I will never do that to them.”
“What will happen to you if you don’t?” Kate asked.
Caroline didn’t speak for a moment. She turned her head and looked Kate straight in the eye. “I have a plan,” she said. “I can’t tell you right now. I don’t want to lose my nerve. But if they keep you here for a while, you’ll see.”
“Okay,” Kate said.
“I just can’t figure out why you’re here. You’re too wise, you’ve learned too much about life for them. They have a big thing about age, about girls when they’re inexperienced. I’m already at the outer edge of what’s acceptable. So why did they take you?”
“It began the night before my wedding day . . .” Kate said.
“You’re married?”
“I was supposed to be. But someone ruined it—the original Belle.”
“The ‘original Belle’? Do you mean Belinda Tyler?”
“Yes.”
“She was Dr. Tyler’s widow . . . they used to worship her here almost as much as him. What did she do?”
“She showed me a baby picture and said that my fiancé was the father.” Kate paused. “You said ‘used to’ worship her. So you know she’s dead?”
Caroline nodded. “Yes, they told us. She was very important to them—one of the biggest recruiters. She was the best at psychological manipulation—she’d learned directly from Dr. Tyler.
I didn’t know her well at all, but she could twist things around, make me believe that what I was feeling wasn’t real, that I was misinterpreting what she’d said, that I wasn’t seeing things that were right in front of my eyes. ”
“Making you doubt yourself,” Kate asked.
“Yes,” Caroline said.
“That’s unforgivable,” Kate said.
“It’s what they do here,” Caroline said. “People think Maynard-King is a place to be treated and regain mental health, but it’s the opposite. Once you come here, if you’re a young woman, it’s a place to be driven crazy. Sometimes I feel I’m insane.”
“It sounds like that’s what they wanted,” Kate said. “But you’re not insane.”
“I know,” Caroline said. “I’m holding on. I keep thinking of William, how I have to get out of here for him.”
“That’s good, Caroline,” Kate said, and she thought of Conor, how she needed to get back to him. “Do it for yourself, not just William. Fight with everything you have.”
They heard a commotion in the hallway. Kate was dying to ask Caroline more questions, to see if she knew who the father of Belinda’s daughter was. But the footsteps in the hall got closer, so she stopped talking. She sat straight up, turning to face the door to see who would enter.
Someone Kate had never seen before stepped in. The woman was looking at a notebook she held in her hand.
“Is that her?” Kate whispered. “The woman who trains you?”
But before Caroline could answer, the woman smiled and spoke.
“Hello, ladies. Good to see you, Caroline. And you must be Kate,” she said. “I’m Darla Vandeveer. I’m so pleased to meet you.”
Tuesday, July 6; 4:30 p.m.
Conor thought they should drive to Maynard-King, but Tom argued that since their focus was on the two vessels currently tied to the hospital’s dock, Zémire and Rosebud, being aboard a boat made more sense, in case a water chase became necessary.
Conor had to admit that made sense. Also, if they drove, they would alert the security guard right away.
The three Reid men boarded Tom’s boat, Meteor.
It was a thirty-two-foot custom Paul James lobster boat.
People seeing it out on the water expected it to be puttering through coves, the engine idling while Tom took his time pulling pots; but instead, it was a sleeper, tricked out with an 800-horsepower 550 Chevy engine.
And now, Conor was very glad for his brother’s fast boat.
It wasn’t a high-performance powerboat like a Donzi, but it could really move.
It surprised boaters, seeing what they assumed was a sleepy work boat go flying through Block Island Sound.
Tom was at the wheel in the cockpit, with the throttle open.
Conor stood, bracing himself against the console, and Mike was seated.
“Boys, I hope this is a fool’s errand,” Mike said. “Confronting Leo Kennedy and Randall Flook about sex trafficking!”
“We’ll find out if they’re involved,” Conor said.
“Good lord,” Mike said. “They’re my friends.”
“Uncle Mike, I understand that. Maybe you shouldn’t have come,” Conor said. “This is going to put you in an awkward position.”
“Well, that’s for sure,” Mike said. “But if they do have anything to do with Kate being missing, you’ll need me with you.”
“Yeah?” Tom asked.
“Yeah. Because I’ll book them and arraign them and remand them all at the same time,” Mike said. “I’m the only one on this boat with the power to do that, right?”
“Uncle Mike, I’m not sure that even you have that power,” Conor said, “but I one hundred percent appreciate the spirit.”
There was heavy boat traffic in lower Narragansett Bay.
Many people took vacations the week of July 4, and Rhode Island was a favorite spot for people who loved being on the water.
There were superyachts, small craft, tour boats, and the Iver Prosperity—a red-hulled oil tanker on its way up the bay to offload its cargo in Providence.
Approaching Maynard-King, Tom drove closer to shore and entered a no-wake zone.
He slowed down. Other boaters ignored the rule, continuing to go so fast that their white wakes rocked kayaks and small sailboats, sent waves splashing into docks and beaches.
Conor could feel Tom itching to pull them over and cite them for excessive speed but was grateful that his brother ignored them for now, focused on Kate.
Conor lifted the Steiner XP 7x50 binoculars to his eyes and gazed at the boats at the Maynard-King dock.
Although he had been told to expect to see Rosebud, it still shocked him to spot it tied up just ahead of Zémire.
It proved, if nothing else, that Leo had lied about going fishing off Block Island.
There was no way that Leo could have gone out to Block and gotten back here in the time since they had spoken earlier that day.
Now Conor scanned the whole Maynard-King landscape.
The large white hospital crested the rocky shoreline.
Clusters of tall trees dotted the property, and Conor could see other buildings in clearings between the groves.
He spotted the guardhouse, the cemetery, the gazebo, and the small house where Leprince de Beaumont Associates had their offices, where he had knocked on the door in search of Darla Vandeveer.
The storm that had threatened earlier had passed mainly to the north, with no more than a few showers.
But a new front was coming through, with the sky darkening in the west. Conor heard some distant rumbles of thunder.
The bay had been calm, but whitecaps were kicking up.
He swept the glasses over the Maynard-King grounds and saw that people were still strolling around, sitting on benches near the tennis court.