I blink, dumbfounded. “Geocaching. Right.”
“You don’t have to explain. I always thought it sounded fun. It’s a passionate hobby for a lot of people even though it’s still kind of underground,” he says, validating me. “I just didn’t know you were the treasure-hunter type.”
I give a weak smile. “It’s… new.”
“Well, don’t worry. I won’t give any of your clues away. I’d hate for someone to beat you to the loot.” He rubs his hands together, so satisfied with the conclusion he has drawn, however wrong it may be.
“Speaking of,” I tell him, “I have another one to solve. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”
He cocks his head. “This is deep, this group you’re involved with. Anyone I’ve heard of?”
His words are so accurate they sting, even if he doesn’t understand how. “I doubt it,” I say, pulling out the note card. Handing it to him, I ask, “What do you make of this?”
He holds it out, studying it intently as if there is more written there than three numbers and two letters. “This all you got?”
I nod, then remember Brennan’s tip. “Well, that and the statement ‘Tell the dead I said hello.’”
He glances up at me, a trace of concern lingering in his eyes before he looks back down at the card.
After a minute, I add, “My friend thought it might be an address to a place on the Ave. But I went there this afternoon and didn’t find anything with that number.”
His eyes slide to mine. “This is dark, Judeth.”
My stomach rolls over its meal of beef and pork. “So, itisbiblical? I was afraid of that.”
“Biblical?” he echoes.
“The number—six six six. I thought it might be a reference to something satanic.” I chew my lip as I wait for him to respond.
“I don’t think so,” he tells me. “That’s likely just a coincidence.”
“But how?” I stammer. What kind of place or person would knowingly use the number of the beast? I might not have been an altar boy like Aaron, but most people have a little superstition in them.
Levi presses his lips together. “I think your friend is right. Or closer to right anyway. It’s an address of sorts, but not a street address.”
My heart kicks up a notch, beating faster for reasons it can’t yet determine. There’s something in Levi’s eyes that has me worried. “What do you mean? What other kind of address is there besides a web address?”
He pulls out his phone. “About an hour north of here is a ruin.”
“Like a castle?”
He shakes his head. “Not exactly. It’s an old psychiatric hospital. Went by the name of Northern State Hospital back when it was still in use, but it’s been shut down, abandoned for over fifty years.”
A sudden chill creeps into the store despite the door being locked fast. Outside, the night raps at the windows with windy knuckles, greedy and gruff. I curl my hands around my arms and squeeze. “Is this the address for the hospital?”
Levi’s eyes soften. “It was a terrible place. Psychiatric care has come a long way, and still we’re woefully short of where we need to be, so you can imagine what these patients suffered. Most of them never left after being admitted. Their bodies were disposed of on-site, buried or cremated and interred in old food cans, whatever the staff could find.”
A shudder courses through me. “That’s horrible.”
“Whatever patient records there were have been sealed off. It’s left a lot of holes in people’s genealogies and a lot of questions.”
I swallow and meet his gaze. “I don’t understand what this note card has to do with all that.”
“It’s a marker,” he says gravely. “For a headstone in the Northern State Hospital Cemetery.”
9ROMAN CANDLE
Don’t go out there alone.Levi’s words taunt me as I sit in my car, the headlights illuminating a stretch of metal fencing, glinting in the black.
