Teak looked rattled, like he was still trying to process, fit it into his Hakata world. He let the phone receiver fall away, then pressed it to his head. “It is not known to me,” he said.
“Okay, Teak. Another question. And I appreciate you taking the time.”
He nodded, tried to put the benevolent smile back on, but came up way short.
“Everyone I talk to says you’re a good guy. You help out whenever you’re needed. Hang drywall. Fix the steps. Do a little plumbing, electrical work. Protect the weaker people at the shelter if somebody’s picking on them.”
“It’s what I do,” Teak said. “It’s what Hakata would do.”
He held up his forearm, showed me the tattoo. W-W-H-D?
“Exactly,” I said. “Here’s my question, then. Why would a good guy like you, or Hakata, kill a nice lady like Lindy Hines?”
“I told you. She wasn’t—”
“Yeah, I know. Some devil had taken her form. But she didn’t know that. I met her, and she was just nice Lindy Hines, trying to make the world a better place, you know? She didn’t have to help out with the shelter. She could have just stayed home and watched TV, hung out with her dog. She didn’t know anything about any of this. She was just out getting Christmas decorations, and wham. You whack her with your hatchet and kill her dead. Do you see anything wrong with that?”
Teak folded one arm across his chest.
“It’s like, what kind of god would do that to the poor lady? Does that bother you?”
Teak took a quick breath, looked away from me for the first time. His eyes darted from side to side and then he closed them, started massaging his temples.
“It had to be done,” he said, not in his Hakata voice, and not to me, more to himself. “She was gonna hurt a lot of people.”
We were slipping out of ye olde English.
“How, Teak?” I said. “How was she going to hurt anyone? This nice lady?”
He leaned closer. His eyes were wilder, darting, frantic.
“She wasn’t nice,” he shouted. “She was evil. Perkele had possessed her. He was going to use her.”
He dropped the phone to the counter and came out of his seat and started pacing around and around the cubicle. He had his hands on top of his head and he was muttering, the words muffled by the glass.
And then he stopped in front of the window, leaned toward me, and shouted, “You don’t understand! You are blind. You don’t have the power.”
That I could hear. Then he leaned in, shook his fist at me, and shouted, “Oh, yes. Now I see you. You are blind! Perkele, be gone.”
The door rattled open on his side and two deputies hustled in. Teak turned, and as they came for him he swung, caught one on the side of the head. The guy staggered and recovered and then plunged back in. They piled on and took him by both arms, started dragging him out. He fought back, thrashing with his elbows so one deputy lost his grip. Teak spun and hit the other with his free fist, and the second guy jumped on his back, tried to get his wrist.
Teak was bellowing, “Unhand me, unhand me,” when the first deputy wrenched loose and they both rode Teak to the floor, jammed his arm up his back. He was writhing and shouting when the door on my side opened and the thick-necked deputy came in, took me by the upper arm, and pulled me out of the chair. He was between me and the window and he pushed me out the door where Captain Townsend was just arriving.
“We’re going to have to ask you to leave,” she said, and they each got on a side of me and started hustling me down the hall. Through one door, then another, and then I was back out in the foyer. The thick-necked deputy hurried back inside.
Holding the door open, Townsend said, “Asked around about you. They say you’re nothing but trouble, and they’re right.”
“Is he getting his meds?” I said, and she turned and stepped through the door, slammed it behind her.
I stuck my phone and notebook in my pocket, stepped outside into the glare. Took a deep breath, kept seeing Teak on the floor, guards on top of him. Hakata had forsaken him.
I sat in the truck, went through my notes. Underlining quotes. Putting stars next to the strongest. Then I did a search on my phone: Finnish mythology. And there they all were, on a homemade website put up by a college professor at the University of Helsinki. Ukko, Perkele, Tuonela. Teak had taken their land of the dead and brought it home.
So what had I learned, face-to-face with Teak Barney?
That Teak was, indeed, batshit crazy?
He was that, stuck in a fantasy world that he’d transferred from his comic book to become his reality. Teak Barney was no ordinary mortal. Ukko and Hakata had tapped him for a higher purpose.
But I had broken through at the end and he’d snapped. Even Teak was having trouble reconciling Lindy Hines inhabited by an evil alien with the mortal one, a nice lady going about her business. And reconciling Teak, the helpful, good-hearted guy, with the Teak who cut a woman’s head open with an ax. At the end of the conversation, they’d collided.
But there was one thing Teak hadn’t done. When I’d told him that Lindy Hines worked for the shelter, even indirectly, he hadn’t seemed particularly taken aback or even surprised. Had he really picked her out at random? Had he seen her somewhere and fixated on her for some reason? Had their meeting at the store really been a coincidence, or had he been stalking her? The cab had picked him up just up the street from her building.
Very good of her to help Harriet, he’d said, very calmly, and the conversation had gone on. And then, in minutes, he’d wigged out. What exactly was wrong with him? And what was the magic elixir?
It went dark in the parking lot along the jail wall, clouds racing overhead and shadows tracking them. Then it started to sleet, hard bits that ticked off the hood.
I started the truck and let it warm up for a minute, then put it in gear. I was about to pull out when a red minivan turned onto the narrow street. It looked familiar and I waited, saw the driver as it passed.
Miss H., coming to visit Teak.
Good luck with that.
34
k
Harriet parked a few spaces down. I got out and walked over, tapped the passenger-side window. She looked at me, startled, then smiled and motioned for me to get in. I did, tossing a roll of paper towels and a bundle of diapers into the back.
The van smelled like her house—laundry detergent, disinfectant. There was a picture of her niece and nephew stuck to the dashboard. They looked like they were at some sort of dance, Nikki in a short dress and Shane in a white shirt and jeans.
Harriet was gussied up, too, right there, not in a picture. Black leggings, a red faux leather jacket, and flat-heeled black boots. Dressed up for a jail visit.
She turned to me and said, “Are you here to see him?”
“Already did.”
Her face seemed to fall. Did she want to be the first, the bestest friend?
“How’s he doing?”
“Okay at first, then he got pretty agitated.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Harriet said, and she seemed to mean it, like he was more than just a client. Was she in love with him? Some weird homeless-shelter crush? Had she slept with him, now knew that she probably never would again?
“I was hoping, you know, that with his meds and all, he’d be better.”
“I don’t know that becoming unpsychotic is going to help him,” I said. “Maybe he’s better off staying in his made-up world.”
Harriet frowned. “Then what? Just let him stay crazy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The guy I just talked to wouldn’t be found competent to stand trial, I don’t think. He calls the guards his ‘keepers.’ He thinks he can leave the place when somebody named Ukko says it’s time.”
“Oh, Teak,” Harriet said.
“But one thing started to come out,” I
said.
“Oh?”
“I think he’s got doubts creeping in about whether he did the right thing.”
“Hurting Lindy Hines.”
Hurting. The ax had delivered one big hurt.
“Yeah. I was telling him about Lindy helping you out, what a nice person she was. He said she was evil, the devil—he used a different name—but it was like he was having a little trouble believing it—like he was trying to keep the whole thing from falling apart.”
“Huh. In some ways, that’s worse,” Harriet said. “For him, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Do you leave him in fantasyland? Or do you make him better so he has to face the reality of what he’s done? He’ll go for a head defense and—”
“What’s that?”
“NGRI—not guilty by reason of insanity. That works, and he goes to the hospital and they treat his illness. Maybe someday he gets out.”
She looked away, maybe pondering the notion of someday. Then back to me.
“I can’t see him?”
“It’s not friends and family time. And I seriously doubt he’ll be up for a visitor. They had to subdue him. It got kind of ugly.”
“Oh, no,” Harriet said.
“I’m going to give him a day or so before I go back,” I said.
She looked at me. “You’re going to see him again?”
“Sure,” I said. “I have to know him for the story. Also, I think he wanted to tell me something.”
We sat for a minute, not talking. It was still sleeting, with gusts of cold, wet wind. Inside the van it was warm as a clothes dryer, and Nikki and Shane stared at me from the dash, smiling like TV stars.
“He said he took an elixir to get ready to take on Lindy, who was really Perkele, the devil from Finland or wherever. And I’ve got it from a reliable source that toxicology showed meth in his system. I wonder what that elixir was. Did he take drugs?”
“Teak? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, he was already—”
“Sick. I know,” I said. “But what about Mutt and those guys? Or his little brother and his ex, Down East? They were total meth heads. Did they come down to Riverport?”
“I don’t know. You have to remember, I’d see him maybe four hours a week. I didn’t know where he was the rest of the time, who he was with. He knew Mutt and the rest of them, but did they hang out? I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
I looked out the window as sleet spattered the roof, melted as it hit the warm windows. Harriet reached for the door latch, said, “I guess I’ll go and give it a try.”
“He’s probably in isolation now, if he isn’t in restraints.”
“Then I’ll leave him a note,” Harriet said.
She got out of the van and I did, too. She came around to the street, stopped, and said, “He needs to know he still has friends.”
“You may be the only one at this point.”
She seemed to brighten at the thought, a martyr who thrived on being needed.
“I don’t give up on people. Most folks, if you have faith in them, they come through in the end.”
“I don’t know, Harriet. I wonder what Lindy Hines had faith in,” I said. “The innate goodness in people? See where that got her. And her son, too.”
Harriet looked distressed.
“Yeah, well, it was just one of those freak things. You can’t give up on somebody just because—”
“One freak thing, maybe, Harriet,” I said. “Not two.”
It was 10:10; already seemed like a long day.
I pulled out, gave the jail a last look as I drove away. The shadowy windows. The razor wire keeping inmates in the yard. The single basketball hoop. Would Teak be out shooting baskets with the boys, hustling for rebounds just like he did back in the day? Or would he see the game as a strange practice of us mere mortals? Strange and sad, how things sometimes turned out.
I pulled over and picked up my phone. Searched for NGRI, Maine, murders. Pulled up stories on defendants in this part of Maine who had gone for it. A guy who killed his landlords and said in court they were shooting microwaves into his brain through the walls. He was found guilty, got forty-five years. Another guy, in his twenties, chopped his father into small pieces and scattered them around Ashville, way up north. He was found not guilty.
The state forensic psychologist was named Penelope Bainer, who, in the testimony I’d read, was smart and direct. Her office was at Great Woods Hospital in Riverport, on the waterfront.
I pulled out, started wending my way through the city, and in fifteen minutes was standing in front of another window, this one with two-way glass.
There was a guy on the other side, big for a receptionist, but I assumed that came in handy in a hospital full of Teaks. I told him my name, who I wanted to see. He asked if I had an appointment and I said no. He asked the nature of my business and I said, “New York Times. Writing about Teak Barney.”
He looked at me harder, slid the window shut.
I went and sat, notebook on my lap. Glanced at the magazines on the table: Good Housekeeping, National Geo. I waited as ten minutes went by. That meant she was there and she’d see me. The brush-off would have come sooner, and besides, I had her pegged as bright and curious, somebody who would want to know what I was writing about one of her soon-to-be cases.
A door clicked open to my left. Dr. Bainer came out, strode confidently over. I got up. She was in her early sixties, attractive, with a thick mane of highlighted reddish hair, wearing dangly green earrings that matched her oversized cardigan.
“Mr. McMorrow,” she said, as we shook hands. “You know I can’t talk about pending cases.”
“Right.”
“Including the one that’s going on right now.”
“I know. What about mental illness and culpability. In general terms.”
She considered it for a moment, said, “We can try.”
Her office was filled with books and journals and case files, filling the shelves, stacked on the desk. The window looked out on the half-frozen river. There were three chairs, and we sat. I opened my notebook.
“Schizoaffective disorder,” I said.
“Yes.”
“The symptoms are—”
“Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking. Jumping from subject to subject in a way that doesn’t make sense. There are different types. If the person has the manic type, they’ll have euphoria, risky behaviors, mania.”
“Like believing you’re living in a comic book?”
“No comment.”
“A person with this manic version could be physically strong?”
“Could be.”
“Flights of grandeur?”
“Sometimes.”
“Inflated notion of their importance?”
“In their world, sure.”
“Treatable with medication?”
“Sure. Zyprexa. Risperidone.”
“Is that effective?”
“It varies. But most of the time, yes. People can break through the meds, but it’s the exception.”
“And off the meds?”
“It’s hard to say. Not much could happen. Or the symptoms could be full blown, at that time of the cycle. Think of it as extreme hyper versions of our moods. Sometimes you’re up. Sometimes you’re very down.”
“And the delusions—they might be up or down, based on triggers that aren’t real.”
“They’re real to them,” Bainer said.
I paused, looked up from my notebook.
“What would make someone with this illness suddenly take their delusions to a new level?”
“And kill someone?” She shook her head. “Can’t go there.”
“Okay. Do the symptoms of the illness typically worsen over time?”
“
They can. Delusions can intensify. Same for manic or depressive behavior. Our brains aren’t like static organs; they’re changing all the time as we age. People with mental illness, they’re no different.”
She stopped. Waited.
“What’s the ramp-up to something like that? If someone is okay one day, can they totally wig out the next?”
Bainer hesitated, dabbed at the corner of her mouth. Her finger came away with lipstick. A pale pink.
“Typically, that person would begin to show symptoms that would grow more pronounced over time. Two or three days. Maybe more. Everyone’s different.”
“Can you see it coming?”
“If you know someone well, yes, sometimes you can.”
She looked at me, said, “Off the record?”
“Yes, you can. ”
“Are you trying to establish that the Hines murder could have been prevented?”
“I’m trying to figure out how people can say, ‘He was fine. I just talked to him yesterday,’ and now he goes and does this. My question is, was there a switch in Teak Barney’s mind that got thrown? Like, click—from helpful handyman to ax murderer.”
“Again, off the record? Can I trust you?”
“Yes, you can.”
She looked at me more closely, an expert sort of inspection. I passed.
“The brain usually doesn’t work that way. It’s affected by chemicals, and those take time to take hold. It’s not like they’re normal and they go into their crazy room and come out a minute later in full-blown psychosis.”
I considered it, my pen still.
“Crystal meth,” I said.
She froze.
“I have it from a reliable source that Teak had meth in his system.”
Bainer shook her head. “No comment.”
“Okay, hypothetically, what would a drug like that do to a patient with schizoaffective disorder?”
She hesitated, said, “Hypothetically.”
“Yes. We’re speaking of all patients with this disease.”
She hesitated again.
“All of that person’s symptoms would be elevated. Delusions. Paranoia. Manic energy.”
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