Chapter 6 - THE DOCTOR’S CLINIC
Police found Dr. Price’s abandoned vehicle behind a closed shopping center.
Blood stained the driver’s seat.
It did not belong to Mark.
It belonged to the officer transporting him.
The officer survived with a skull fracture.
Mark and Price disappeared.
Diane remained in custody but refused to speak.
Her lawyer, Malcolm Reeves, arrived before midnight.
He claimed police had misunderstood a therapeutic space beneath the garage.
He called the restraints safety devices.
The sedatives emergency medication.
The carved names vandalism by unstable tenants.
Owen responded by obtaining warrants for Price Behavioral Institute and Blue Thread Holdings.
The clinic operated from a renovated farmhouse outside town.
Its sign promised discreet psychiatric recovery.
No state license existed.
No registered nurses worked there.
Most patients had been brought in by spouses or relatives.
Several had surrendered property shortly before their treatment.
Inside, police found rooms with locks on the outside.
Hidden cameras recorded patients changing clothes, crying, sleeping, and begging to leave.
The videos were used to discredit them later.
One archive folder was labeled NATALIE ELLIS.
It contained six years of footage from my own home.
Bedroom.
Bathroom.
Kitchen.
Car.
Mark had watched me every day.
He knew when I cried.
He knew when I called attorneys.
He knew exactly where I hid documents.
A second folder contained edited videos portraying me as violent.
In one, Diane’s voice had been removed before I shoved her away.
In another, footage began after Mark locked me in a closet and showed only me kicking the door.
They were building a history.
Preparing witnesses.
Preparing a judge.
Preparing everyone to believe them instead of me.
Owen found a locked records room beneath the clinic.
Inside were files for Laura Kent and Rebecca Lane.
Both women had been declared mentally incompetent through emergency court orders.
Dr. Price signed the evaluations.
Malcolm Reeves filed the petitions.
Diane became temporary financial custodian.
Mark served as a witness.
The same pattern had been used twice.
I was third.
But one discovery changed everything.
Rebecca Lane was not dead.
A medication log showed she had been transferred eighteen months earlier to a private care facility under another name.
Rachel Moore.
Owen located the facility.
It was owned by Blue Thread Holdings.
Police entered at dawn.
They found twelve heavily medicated women.
Rebecca was among them.
She was thin, confused, and terrified of anyone wearing beige because Diane always wore beige when she visited.
When shown my photograph, Rebecca began crying.
“She said Natalie would be next.”
Owen asked who helped Diane.
Rebecca pointed to Mark’s photograph.
“He brought the food.”
“What food?”
“The dinner before the needle.”
That phrase chilled me.
Rebecca described Diane’s ritual.
First, she accused the woman of failing at a domestic task.
Dinner late.
Laundry wrong.
Room dirty.
Then she created a violent confrontation.
Mark filmed only the victim’s reaction.
Price sedated her.
Reeves obtained legal control.
Diane took the property.
Owen returned to my hospital room carrying Rebecca’s statement.
“We can connect all four of them.”
“Where is Mark?”
“We don’t know.”
My phone rang.
Mark’s name appeared on the screen.
Owen activated the recorder.
I answered.
My husband whispered, “Natalie, my mother lied to both of us.”
Then I heard Dr. Price scream in the background.
May you like
A gunshot followed.
And Mark said, “Come alone, or I’ll tell the police you pulled the trigger.”
