Mind in Chains Read online

  Mind in Chains

  The Mind Sleuth Series Book 3

  Bruce M. Perrin

  Text Copyright © 2019 Bruce M. Perrin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition.

  Cover Art by Courtney M. Perrin

  Visit the Author at

  BruceMPerrin.blogspot.com

  Mind Sleuth Publications

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7320835-2-3 (paperback)

  TITLES BY BRUCE M. PERRIN

  THE MIND SLEUTH SERIES

  Of Half a Mind

  Mind in the Clouds

  Mind in Chains

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  In the Space of an Atom

  Killer in the Retroscape: A Near Future Mystery

  For all the latest on new releases, promotions, and book reviews, subscribe to my blog: BruceMPerrin.blogspot.com

  For my family and

  their boundless love and support

  Table of Contents

  Mind in Chains

  Seven Years Earlier

  Friday, May 3

  Sunday, May 5

  Monday, May 6

  Tuesday, May 7

  Wednesday, May 8

  Thursday, May 9

  Friday, May 10

  Sunday, May 12

  Monday, May 13

  Tuesday, May 14

  Wednesday, May 15

  Friday, May 31

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Medicine is a science of uncertainty

  and an art of probability.

  William Osler

  Seven Years Earlier

  Martha Wilson pushed the silent alarm button, not sure exactly what it did. As far as she knew—and she knew a lot since she had worked at the hospital since it opened five years ago—it had never been used. But all her training said this was the time to find out.

  At first, nothing happened. But after a few minutes, Jorge Caballa peered around a corner. “Nurse Wilson. What can I do for you?”

  Martha blinked, surprised. Nothing against Jorge, but she had expected a more urgent response, something more official. Sure, Jorge had been in the military, many years ago, followed by a career in the police department of one of the many small towns that surrounded the city of St. Louis, Missouri. After that, he had moved some 70 miles to this more rural setting, taking what he called his “retirement job” when the hospital opened. Martha just wasn’t certain, however, if that term meant work he did in retirement or a position that was part of it. She had seldom seen him do more than read a magazine or stroll the halls.

  “One of the newborns is missing,” she said.

  Jorge stopped midstride, his brow wrinkling. “Where did you see it last?”

  Martha blinked again, wondering if Jorge was going to ask all the questions one might when searching for a set of lost car keys or a misplaced TV remote. “In the nursery, twenty minutes ago. But Mil and I have checked everywhere. She’s not in the hospital.”

  Perhaps those were the magic words because Jorge pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Al, we need an Amber alert now. Hold for description.” He looked at Martha.

  “Female, black, not yet named,” she replied. She pulled a card from her pocket. “Length ….”

  Jorge stopped her with a raised hand and spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Black, Baby Jane Doe. Last seen,” he raised his wrist to look at his watch, “at 1:47 PM.”

  “OK, hold a moment,” came the voice from the speaker.

  “Stats on that card?” Jorge asked. Martha nodded and handed it to him. His head started shaking almost the moment he took it.

  “Description?” came the question over the speaker.

  “Dark hair. Brown eyes. Length, 20.2 inches. Weight, 7.9 pounds. No distinguishing features. I’ll round up the newborn pictures, get them to you.”

  “OK. I’ll get this out,” said Al on the radio.

  “If she’s gone ….” Martha stopped, the thought behind her words stealing her breath. For the last 20 minutes, all of her attention, her total reason for existence had been the search for the missing baby. But now, with the alarm passed to the authorities, she felt lost, helpless. She swallowed hard and then dropped into one of the chairs lining the hallway. “Those details aren’t going to help much in finding her, will they?” she asked so softly Jorge had to bend over to hear.

  “No,” Jorge admitted. “Probably not. By the time we could take her weight, we’d be in a position to use something better. Like DNA linking her to the mother. But anything might help.”

  Martha nodded, watching as Jorge paced, a hand rubbing what was left of his gray hair while the other still clutched the walkie-talkie. The radio crackled to life. “Amber alert’s out. Expect the locals in about 15 minutes, state and maybe the feds to follow. Bring everyone down to Security.”

  “Will do,” replied Jorge. Turning to Martha, he asked, “Who else has been involved?”

  “Mildred Saks helped search. Alicia Riggs, my super knows. And a bunch of others I ran into in the halls,” she said, standing from her chair. “And Towanda Jenkins, the hospital administrator—she knows, too. I called. She’s coming back from lunch. Should be in your office in ten minutes or so.”

  “OK, let’s get Ms. Saks and Ms. Riggs. Where are the parents?”

  “In their room, 357.” Martha frowned, as they turned toward the nurses’ station where she hoped to find her coworkers. “The parents don’t know yet.”

  “That’s fine. Better they hear it from Ms. Jenkins in the privacy of her office.” Jorge pulled the walkie-talkie to his face. “Al, send someone to 357 for the parents and take them to Riggs’s office, but remind them what’s up.”

  As they turned into the wing with the nursery, Martha slowed and turned to Jorge. “They’ll find her, won’t they?” Jorge said nothing for a moment, so she added, “The truth.”

  Jorge sighed. “I can’t really say. Is there an angry ex-spouse somewhere? A childless neighbor? All I know is that the police will run down every lead before they give up.”

  “But if it’s not friends or family?” Martha asked although she thought she knew the answer.

  “Then you’ve done everything you could. Getting this on the air in 20 minutes is a good start; the first few hours are the most important. After that, the chances start going down fast. And after a few days ….” He shook his head but didn’t finish.

  Martha shuddered and squeezed her eyes closed. These were facts she had heard before, but they had been only meaningless statistics at the time. Now, they tore at her heart, the pain worsening with each tick of her mental clock.

  Two hours later, after meeting with the local police who had no news about Baby Jane Doe, Martha couldn’t control her emotions any longer. She started sobbing.

  Six hours later, the interviews were complete, and Martha took a taxi home, afraid to trust her driving. She went to bed, hardly speaking to her husband. The next day, she called in sick. And the day after. And the day after that.

  To Martha, the news was always the same. There were no ex-spouses. The neighbors either had children or were retired with their children now raising their own. Video cameras had caught the comings and goings from the maternity wing at the hospital, but everyone belonged. Simply put, there were no suspects, an
d the trail, if there ever had been one, was ice cold.

  After ten days passed and there was no news about Baby Jane Doe, Martha went to work only to resign. She couldn’t face another expectant mother, knowing she had lost a human life left in her care.

  Friday, May 3

  11:17 AM – A House in Independence, Missouri

  Iwas starting to sweat. Overnight, light rain showers had moved through, and now the morning sun was pushing the mercury upward. The level of humidity was following the same trajectory, but the weather wasn’t totally to blame for my perspiration. I had never done what I was about to do, and the anticipation had my heart drumming in my ears, my hands balled into sweaty fists. I closed my eyes and took a deep, reassuring breath. It was time.

  I checked the street and driveways from the shade of a maple tree, finding them as deserted as I had expected for a weekday in this residential neighborhood, only a few miles from the boyhood home of President Harry S. Truman. But even so, there might be some retiree—an old lady with a house full of cats, an aged man with a collection of guns—peering through their shades, wondering what I was doing. Having the police show up now would never do. I screwed up my courage and walked up to the house I had been watching.

  Relax. You have nothing to worry about.

  But my thoughts had no sway over my emotions. I reached out and quietly tested the doorknob. It moved freely, just as I had expected. The people who lived around here were so trusting. I dropped my hand, stepped back, and took another breath, knowing this was my only option. I turned the knob again and quietly opened the door, revealing a living room to the left, a hall to the right, and part of a kitchen counter and dishwasher through an arched doorway straight ahead. I stepped forward and peered around the edge of the door. A woman was there, drying silverware. The quiet of the scene was broken by the clatter of knives as she dropped them into a drawer.

  “Hi, Maggie,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the noise.

  “Sam,” she said, spinning around. A smile came to her face as she laid the spoons and forks on the counter, then stepped over and gave me a hug. “I didn’t hear the door.”

  Although it was quiet enough in the bedroom community where Margarite and Thomas Veles lived—Maggie and Tom to their friends—I still wondered about their practice of leaving the front door unlocked. But I had been scolded enough for knocking, so I wandered in whenever I found it open.

  Just like family.

  The thought produced a mix of elation and disbelief because that was what I was about to become. In fact, Nicole—Tom and Maggie’s daughter—and I had made this trip from St. Louis so that we could tell our parents. We’d already made the stop at the farm where I had been born and raised, telling my folks. They were excited about the news, of course, but it would be different here. Her family wore their hearts on their sleeves, which was quite different from my upbringing. So, while I wasn’t worried—well, not too much anyway—I wasn’t sure what to expect.

  I believed her father liked me in the same gruff, cynical way he felt about almost everyone. But if he had reservations, they would be more than offset by Maggie. In her, I had a staunch ally.

  It hadn’t always been that way, or at least, that was what Nicole had told me. According to her, after my first visit nearly a year and a half ago, Maggie had started crying. In truth, I really couldn’t blame her. At the time, my right arm had been in a sling and the parts of my face not covered in cuts and scrapes showed bruises that were just starting to turn greenish-yellow. To make myself a little more presentable, I’d attempted to shave left-handed, resulting in a fresh set of nicks. And to top it off, the last of the painkillers I’d taken for my injuries were just leaving my system, so I don’t remember exactly what I said to her. At that moment, I’m sure Maggie was wondering what she had done wrong for Nicole to even take a second look at me.

  But that was history. And after another 17 months of visits to my soon-to-be in-laws with not so much as a paper cut, they had come to accept me. In fact, the tables had turned so far that according to Nicole, her mother’s favorite admonition had become, “you should be nicer to Sam.” And while it was true that Nicole was a direct, tell-it-like-it-is woman and that could sometimes produce raw feelings, over the long haul I appreciated her approach to our relationship. I never had to wonder if she meant what she said or look for hidden meaning in some cryptic phrase. Add that to the fact that I found her consistently fascinating and cute as hell, and I was completely captivated by her.

  “I still don’t know why you two came in during the week?”

  “Something about that art store that’s not open on the weekend,” I replied to Maggie’s question. Fortunately, I had overheard Nicole’s end of the phone conversation, all the little white lies, when she told her mom to expect us. But that begged the question, why was she asking me when Nicole had already told her?

  “So, where’s my daughter?” Maggie asked, stepping back to look at the door, then me.

  “At Jenn’s. Something about work.”

  What am I thinking? My on-the-fly rationale was about as lame as could be. Nicole was a biomedical engineer, enthralled by the technology and helping people; Jenn did something in marketing or public relations. I wasn’t certain, but I doubted they ever talked about work longer than ten seconds. Even their pastimes had little in common. Nicole favored reading and art, while Jenn’s distractions involved friends – shopping, gambling, movies.

  If Maggie wasn’t suspicious before, she was now. She stepped back, her eyes narrowing. “They’re doing what?”

  “Something about a party Nicole is supposed to help host at work,” I said, surprising myself with the plausibility of my impromptu fib. But I also felt bad about it. I liked Maggie, and the ruse was already troubling my conscience. But if I broke the news of our engagement without her, Nicole probably wouldn’t speak to me for a year. So, I changed the topic. “We’ve been doing some interesting stuff at work.”

  “Oh?” Maggie said, one eyebrow rising.

  I suspected the change in topic was already working, quieting the alarm in her head … or maybe just burying it under a layer of perplexity. Although in a completely different realm, my career in cognitive science applied to training was nearly as technical as Nicole’s. Perhaps more so, if you considered I was trying to work with the biggest black box in existence—the human brain. But regardless of which of us faced the bigger challenge, Nicole’s and my work would never be a topic of conversation around the Veles’s dinner table. Tom and Maggie were proud of their daughter, but they didn’t share her or my fascination with science and technology.

  Unfortunately, my inner calm lasted only a moment as Maggie asked, “So, Jenn is off work today, too?” She was undoubtedly wondering why two of her four daughters had taken the same day off and why they were talking at Jenn’s house after Nicole and I had driven four hours across the state of Missouri to see her and Tom. Good questions all, for which I had no answers.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets, walked over to the kitchen table, and sat. I wasn’t tired; I was stalling, hoping something would come to mind. Unfortunately, nothing did except another change in topic. “Yeah, I guess so. Tom around?”

  “At his brother’s. He’ll be back soon.”

  “Good.”

  Maggie’s eyes narrowed as she studied me again. I pulled my phone from a pocket, thinking that would reduce the chance she would read something in my face. But before I even had it turned on, I put it back. As many times as Nicole and I had joked about trading texts for talk, social media posts for conversation, she’d know something was wrong if I started fiddling with my phone now. “Plant a garden this year?” I asked, rubbing a hand over my forehead.

  Maggie had returned to the silverware but laid it back down with my question. She turned fully toward me. “Sam Price, just what ….”

  Like her daughter, Maggie only used my full name when I was in trouble. Fortunately, the sound of the front door interrupted her
as I released a silent sigh of relief. In a moment, Tom came in, saying, “Look who I found in the driveway. Daughters number 1 and 2.” It was a running joke as if he couldn’t remember all four names. Nicole and Jenn followed him through the kitchen door. “How was the drive in, Doc?” he asked, using the nickname that everyone used. Everyone, that is, except Nicole, Maggie, and my mom.

  “Uneventful. The best kind, Tom,” I replied, standing to shake his hand.

  Tom believed in tradition, and I didn’t expect these types of formalities to end when Nicole announced our news. But still, it would end that feeling I was walking on eggshells around Maggie. Unfortunately, Nicole didn’t feel the same sense of urgency. She wandered to the refrigerator to get a drink.

  I reseated myself at the table, Tom sitting across from me and taking up a newspaper that was lying there. “Let’s see what’s going on in the world.”

  Jenn came in and sat beside me. Despite the year-and-a-half difference in their ages, she and Nicole could have been twins. They had the same light brown hair, matching fair complexions, and identical deep-brown, doe eyes. In fact, the first time I met Jenn, I did a double take. She had just opened her parents’ front door to my knock, and I wasn’t certain that Nicole hadn’t altered her hairstyle a bit, maybe lost a little of her tan. Fortunately, a small voice said something wasn’t quite right. That along with Jenn’s puzzled look saved me from embarrassment. Of course, since I wasn’t even to the point of giving Nicole a casual peck on the cheek at the time, my discomfort would have been limited to using the wrong name.

  My eyes returned to Nicole, but she was still in no hurry to break the news. She took a sip of her drink, then walked over and looked at the paper her dad was reading. “Hmm, upper-seventies today. Sounds nice. Sam, maybe we should go for a hike?”

  “OK,” I said slowly. Tom was still looking at his paper, but Maggie’s gaze was tracking back and forth between us. I’d had a couple of close calls in my life—complete flukes in my line of mostly desk-bound work—but this was as nerve-racking as either of them. If this went on much longer, I’d have to excuse myself to use the bathroom.