The sense of disbelief was palpable. Even the usually unflappable Mancini looked shocked, his olive complexion visibly draining of blood. Sir Piers Henley’s brother was shaking his head, tapping at his hearing aid in wonder. Miles Baring’s old girlfriends both burst loudly into tears, and more than one voice from the gallery shouted, “No!”
For his part, Danny McGuire couldn’t share the outrage. Truth be told, he felt only a deep sense of peace.
Sofia Basta would remain safely behind bars. No one else would have to die at Azrael’s hands, sacrificed to Frankie Mancini’s twisted lust for vengeance. But the lovely Angela Jakes, as she had once been, would be spared the executioner’s needle.
Not justice perhaps. But closure.
Danny McGuire was free at last.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
FOUR YEARS LATER…
I’M SORRY, SIR. WITHOUT A PASS there is no way I can admit you.”
Perhaps surprisingly, the guard at Altacito State Hospital did look sorry. It was a tough, lonely job guarding the inmates of California’s only women’s psychiatric prison, and not many of ASH’s underpaid staff were known for their compassion. In his midsixties, the guard looked even older, his leathery skin as cracked and parched as a dry riverbed thanks to long years spent in the punishing desert sun. But there was a kindness in his eyes when he looked at the skinny, hopeful blond man, leaning on a cane at the hospital gates as he tried to plead his case.
It wasn’t the first time the guard had seen the man. Or the second. Or even the third. Every month, come visiting day, the man would show up, politely asking to be allowed to see Altacito State Hospital’s most celebrated inmate. But every month the lady declined to receive visitors.
Controversially spared the death penalty at her trial, the Angel of Death, as she was still known in the tabloid press, enjoyed a relatively easy life at ASH, albeit a life conducted behind bars and under a heavy shroud of secrecy. She had her own room, with a window and views out across the manicured gardens of the facility to the Mojave Desert beyond. Her days were structured but not arduous, with hours divided between work, exercise, recreation and psychiatric treatments, which could be anything from hypnosis to group therapy sessions.
Unfortunately, Matt Daley knew none of this. He worried constantly about Lisa—to him, she would always be Lisa—being singled out for brutality and victimization by other inmates because of her notoriety. Matt had written scores of e-mails to ASH’s chief psychiatrist, begging for news on her condition. Was she eating? Was she depressed? Could they at least confirm that she had been given the letters Matt wrote her religiously every Sunday, updating her on his life and the worldwide success of his acclaimed but controversial documentary, Azrael: Secrets and Lies…letters to which Matt had yet to receive a single reply. Did she even know that he was trying to reach her? That one friend at least had not abandoned her in her most desperate hour?
The e-mail replies were always the same. Polite. Brief. Straightforward: Matt Daley was not family. He was not entitled to any patient information unless the patient had specifically authorized its release. Sofia Basta had not.
“I know if she saw me, she’d change her mind.” Matt told the guard for the hundredth time. “If you’d let me through to the visitors’ lounge, just for a few seconds…I’ve come a long way.”
“I appreciate that, sir. I do. But I’m afraid you need to go back home.”
SOFIA READ THE LETTER AGAIN, RUNNING her hands lovingly across the paper, thinking of Matt’s hands touching it, the way they had once touched her. It began like all the others.
“Dearest Lisa…”
Reading the name was her favorite part. The name felt good. It felt right. Whenever she read Matt Daley’s letters, whenever she thought of him at all, she was Lisa. And Lisa was the best part of herself. She’d thought about changing her name legally after the trial. Lisa. Lisa Daley. It had a wonderful ring to it. But as the days and weeks passed, and the reality of her sentence sank in—they could dress it up all they liked, call her prison a “hospital” and her punishment “treatment,” but it was still life without parole—she changed her mind. What use was a new name to her now, in here? There were no second chances, no fresh starts. This was the end.
But not for Matt. For Matt, there was a chance. A future. Who was she to destroy it by giving him hope? By making him think, even for a moment, that there could be any going back…? For Matt Daley to live, Lisa had to die. It was as simple as that.
It was so hard to hold on to the truth. To separate what was real from what was fantasy. She’d lived with lies for so long. But she had tried not to lie to Matt. When she’d told him she loved him, she meant it. Had she met him earlier, much earlier, before Frankie and the book, before Sofia Basta, before she lost the thread of who she was, things might have been so different. As it was, she would spend the rest of her days caged like an animal, surrounded by electrified fences and desert wilderness. Matt’s letters meant everything to her. But she owed it to him not to reply…To let him go.
She read on.
“I don’t know if you are even receiving these letters, my darling. At this point I guess I write them as much for myself as for you. But I can’t stop. I won’t stop, Lisa, not until you know that I love you, that I forgive you, that I will never give up on you, no matter how many times the guards turn me away.”
It touched her that he still said “the guards” rather than “you.” Darling Matt. He still wanted to absolve her of everything.
“I can’t bear to think of you in that awful place. Please, my darling, if you’re being mistreated, you’ve got to let somebody know. If not me, then your lawyers or even the governor. Even Danny McGuire might be able to help.”
Danny McGuire. It was funny, every time she thought of Matt, she felt like Lisa, but every time she thought of Danny, she was Angela Jakes. Poor Angela. So beautiful, so young. She was the first one to be violated, the first one to suffer. By the time she became Tracey, and Irina, and even Lisa, she was stronger, hardened by the litany of horrors, numb to the pain. But Danny McGuire had known her at the beginning, when she was still vulnerable, still raw. He had known Angela, and in his own way, Sofia suspected, he had loved her. Reading his name in Matt’s distinctive, cursive handwriting, she almost felt nostalgic.
Perhaps she should send Matt some sort of message, anonymously, just to let him know she was okay. Apart from the obvious hardship of losing her freedom, the routine at ASH suited Sofia well. Half her life had been spent in institutions, and the other half on the run, not just from the police but from her own demons. At ASH, her days were pleasantly predictable. She found the hospital routine a comfort.
As for being picked on by the other patients…if anything, the opposite was true. In the outside world, women tended to be too envious of great beauties to appreciate them aesthetically. But here at ASH, with no men to compete for other than the smattering of male guards, and little enough beauty in any form, Sofia’s beauty was a passport to popularity. Other women wanted to be around her, despite the fact that she was far from social, choosing to eat alone at mealtimes and declining all group activities from movie night to organized athletic events. But she never left her room without admiring glances. Occasionally the tone of the glances shifted from admiration to outright lust, but unlike the state prison, there weren’t many bull dykes at ASH and Sofia had never felt threatened.
Nor was her beauty her only advantage. Through no effort or desire of her own, Sofia had become something of a celebrity within the hospital. Many of the other women admired her, viewing the Azrael victims as rich, dirty old men, men who had callously abandoned their children and who’d therefore gotten what was coming to them. Sofia herself was careful never to endorse this view. Flashbacks to the murders still gave her terrible nightmares, and talking about them could bring on acute anxiety attacks. The only part of the past she held on to was Matt Daley.
“He came again today.”
The male nurse’s voice wrenched Sofia back to the present. Reluctantly she looked up from Matt’s letter.