The Tin Box Read Online Free PDF Page A

and then flee as soon as possible?
    Did any of the patients who entered the building for the first time suspect that they’d never leave, that they’d end up planted in an unmarked grave in a nearly abandoned plot of land?
    Jeez. Those kinds of thoughts made him almost as uncomfortable as Colby did.
    William put away the things he’d bought and then fixed a sandwich. The heat hadn’t yet crept back into the building, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He took off his jacket and shirt and shoes. Maybe when he made his big shopping trip he’d look for a pair of shorts. He didn’t currently own any. He used to occasionally use the gym on campus, but even then he always wore sweatpants.
    For the next three hours he sat at the big desk, entering and double-checking long strings of data. Sometimes birds flew by the window, distracting him, but for the most part his surroundings were as quiet as he’d hoped. Without interruptions, without the shuffle of undergrads in a hallway or Lisa busying herself around the apartment, he was able to get quite a bit done.
    He stopped only when his bladder insisted on a break. He stood and stretched the kinks out of his back, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and padded to the bathroom.
    He intended to get back to work after his brief hiatus. But his muscles protested; he’d been sitting too long. After a few moments of indecision, he grabbed the big key ring and went for a wander through the building.
    The place wasn’t in as bad a condition as he’d expected, at least on the ground floor. Yes, everything was faded and scuffed and generally old-looking, but with a good scrubbing and a few coats of paint, the hallways would probably be pretty decent. There were a lot of doors, most of them marked only with numbers. He opened a few of them, but the rooms were generally empty or, at most, contained a few broken pieces of furniture or scattered papers. In one small room, a pair of grayish cotton pants and a matching top lay on the floor, along with a threadbare brownish-green blanket. They were the first really personal things he’d seen, and he couldn’t help wondering who had worn those clothes and slept under that blanket.
    It was only after he’d wandered for some time that he got a good sense of the building’s layout. It had been built on a sort of grid-like plan with several long parallel hallways running in each direction. In the center of each section was a small courtyard, completely surrounded by the institution’s three-story-high walls. The courtyards had cracked concrete, weedy-looking trees, overturned wooden benches, and rusted metal chairs. Maybe inmates had been allowed some outdoor time in those courtyards, brief glimpses of blue sky framed by blindingly white stucco walls and barred windows.
    He found a series of offices and the huge kitchen, which was in shambles. He discovered a large tile-lined room with showerheads, drains in the floor, and a pair of stained tubs. There were two rooms with moldering couches—former lounges, probably—and one with a bunch of ancient tables and something that looked like a makeshift stage against one wall. There were three large dormitories with rows of narrow, rusty bed frames. And he peeked into a few small windowless rooms that looked suspiciously like cells.
    By the time he found himself back near his own apartment, he felt tired, overwhelmed, and a little depressed. And he hadn’t even stepped foot yet on the second and third floors. Maybe he never would. After all, it was pretty unlikely that intruders had somehow secreted themselves up there. But he paused before entering his apartment and looked speculatively at the adjacent room. The records were kept in there, according to Jan. He didn’t know exactly what those records might be. It could be interesting to poke around a little. No, he told himself. Dissertation. He headed for his laptop instead.
     
     
    W ILLIAM hated dreaming. He was a psychologist and knew