He began to walk, having no idea what he was looking for, yet kept his mind open to impressions, allowing them to play loose and free through his head where, with luck, they would offer some brilliant insight into what he saw. At least that was how it was supposed to work.

On either side of him were small bare rooms, each about fifteen feet square, twenty of them in all. Bleak and dismal under his white probings, the curls of peeling paint on the walls and clumps of dust on the floors cast shadows that made everything look ragged. Sleeping quarters? The idea of being shut up in one of them, even when it would have been clean and less decrepit, gave him the creeps.

At the far end of the hallway, he came across a pair of large, tiled chambers situated opposite each other, many of the white ceramic squares cracked or missing altogether. In one a row of round black holes across the floor indicated where the toilets had stood; in the other a half dozen open stalls stripped clean of all nozzles and taps, even the drains, were all that was left of the communal showers. Scratching noises came from deep within the uncovered plumbing, and he pictured legions of rats waiting down there, ready to crawl out as soon as night fell.

He found a stairway and headed for the upper floors.

Mark imagined the culture of shame and censure that had driven all those women to this bleak, isolated place. The practice at the time would have been to whisk them away from their homes, out of sight of friends and neighbors as soon as they started to “show” in the second trimester. Steeped in guilt, they’d then endure months of waiting in “homes” such as this. He could almost see them, heads cowed over swollen bellies as they shuffled to and from their rooms, made to feel they’d sinned by the sanctimonious silence of the staff. At least that’s how it had been described to him by some of the veteran nurses during his obstetrical training. They’d wanted to impress on the residents how far society had come regarding single moms.

The second floor was a carbon copy of the first. The third and fourth the same. Looking out a window he got a bird’s-eye view of the grounds. Through the falling snow and dying light, the stalks of grass now seemed black, resembling a wildly irregular bed of needles amidst an encroaching border of brush. He scanned the edge of the trees beyond, making sure that none of the shooters he’d heard earlier had taken a notion to come here and fire off a few more rounds to test their marksmanship.

Still alone, as far as he could tell.

Continuing to use his flashlight, he descended to the basement and strode through an area of sinks, counters, and wires dangling out of walls.

Must have been the kitchen.

Down another corridor he passed several big rooms, the functions of which he couldn’t fathom. Through a particularly large metal door he entered the biggest room he’d seen so far, the walls covered in green tiles, a central drain in the floor, an abundance of plug outlets along the baseboards, and a solitary, heavy-duty electrical cord sheathed in metal dangling out of the ceiling. For an OR lamp, he thought. This had been the delivery room.

He played his light at where the examining table would have been, and found himself thinking of the ordeal the women must have suffered through at that spot. Their eyes bulging from the iron grip of contractions, they would be spread-legged under the white glare – like specimens. From the stories he’d heard, the pain might have been compounded without anyone with them to hold their hands, stroke their heads, murmur comforting words, or even say their names. Instead, they’d feel only the cold probe of steel instruments, hear nothing but their own cries and clipped orders to push, see little else but a ring of censorious eyes above a circle of surgical masks. At the final expulsion, would they strain to catch a glimpse of the child as the cord was cut, before the tiny infant, wrapped in a blanket, was whipped out of the room, never to be seen again?

His fists tightened.

But those were the norms back then. What had any of this to do with Kelly, and why had his father kept newspaper clippings about a place of such misery? He’d come no closer to answers to those questions. He hurried back up the stairs, playing his beam of light from side to side, making sure no wandering rats were anywhere near. He made his way to the front room, slithered out the window, and stood on the stone steps, taking in deep, long breaths of the cold night air. The snow came down more heavily than before, and in the dim illumination of twilight he could see the beginnings of a lacy white pattern between the stalks of grass. Once more he peered along the forest’s edge, checking for hunters.

No one.

Walking quickly, he started toward the dark opening in the trees, where he would pick up the dirt road. He felt the cryptlike heaviness behind him, and despite himself kept taking quick glances over his shoulder. Only the black line of his own footprints disturbed the charcoal-shaded landscape.

Not paying proper attention to the ground in front of him, he’d gone less than a dozen steps when he stubbed the toe of his running shoe on a rock and tumbled forward. He sprawled onto what felt like a sheet of plywood that sagged under his weight. He quickly rolled off, got to his feet, and, using his light, looked more carefully at where he’d fallen. Sure enough, a four-by-eight rectangle, the standard size of a plywood sheet, lay outlined in a dusting of snow. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, remembering what would be under it.

The well.

They’d avoided it like the plague as kids. Avoided all wells. Every mother in Hampton Junction drummed the rule into her children from birth. Still, now and then a kid tumbled down an uncovered shaft, driving the point home with brutal clarity.

These wells had been dug deep, sometimes 150 feet to reach a stable water table, and the water was cold. A few children had actually survived the ordeal of falling in, hypothermia having kept them alive until they could be retrieved and resuscitated.

Mark lifted the board and saw a four-foot-diameter hole lined with mortared rock. These were the old kind, drilled and dug by hand a century ago and made to last. Cautiously leaning over, he probed the darkness with his flashlight. He saw water about forty feet down. It had been raining a lot, so the level was high. God knows how deep it was. He picked up the rock he’d tripped over and dropped it in. The splash echoed back up at him, and air bubbled to the surface for what seemed a long time.

Better tell Dan to have the Braden caretakers get it fixed before some child fell in. He wasn’t sure if that would still be Charles Braden’s responsibility.

The run through the forest seemed darker than before, and he used his light. The snow had started to penetrate even here, reaching the ground and creating a glistening carpet of white that sparkled in the beam. Overhead it accumulated along the tops of twigs and branches, making silver webs throughout the trees, as if giant spiders had been at work while he’d been inside.

He rounded the bend that had kept the grounds private from people peeping in at the gate. Feeling chilled, he pulled the hood of his jacket tighter and picked up his pace.

He still kept looking over his shoulder. The solitary line of his footprints ran back as far as he could see, and he thought of all the four-legged prey that would now leave distinct tracks as they fled the men with guns.

When he returned his attention to the path ahead, he saw two figures silhouetted against the gray opening at the end of the road.

He stopped.

They just stood there, absolutely still.

“Hey!” he cried out, shining his light in their direction. The beam barely reached them. He couldn’t see their features by it, but it illuminated the area enough to make out the shape of the rifles they were carrying, the barrels vaguely pointed at him. “I’m Dr. Mark Roper, the coroner. You shouldn’t still be out here after dark.”