3 Angel of Darkness

by Chaz McGee

  With most of the other patients either in early-morning therapy or painting flowerpots or wandering quietly through the grounds, I decided to head over to the unit where Otis Parker lived to see if I could find out anything new. I came upon him having an argument with the red-haired orderly who had taunted Parker the day before during his interview with Calvano. This time, Parker was unrestrained. He was standing in the center of the common room where he and his fellow inmates spent time in a futile attempt to socialize them and keep them from ripping each other’s limbs off. Clearly, Parker had little to fear from the others – many of whom were so doped up that their greatest achievement of the day was probably not drooling on their own trousers. Most of them, however – even the most medicated among them – were alert enough to be watching the fight between Parker and the orderly like it was an Ali-Frazier rematch. As the two men squared off and shouted insults at each other, it became clear that Parker was too smart to resort to physical violence, given the other staff members heading their way. But he was comfortable threatening the orderly with everything this side of dismemberment.

  The gist of the argument seemed to be that Parker was refusing to take his medication and the red-haired orderly was threatening him with an injection if he did not comply.

  I wondered why Parker had let the fight get this far. He could have hidden the pills in his cheek and spit them out later. Patients did it so often that the mice at Holloway wandered around in a happy daze from scavenging the booty. The orderly, who was easily half of Parker’s size, should have known that – but then he should have known better than to take on Parker in the first place. Both of them had clearly been waiting for an excuse to go at each other. While Parker stood rooted to his spot on the worn linoleum floor, the aide circled him like a prizefighter looking for a spot to jab.

  ‘I’ll pull your privileges, too,’ he threatened Parker. ‘Don’t think I won’t do it. I don’t give a crap how much your lawyer earns an hour or how many times he threatens to sue. I’m sick of your bullshit, I’m sick of your bullying, and I’m sick of this act you pull every day. You’re no crazier than I am. I’ve watched you when no one else is looking and I know you’re a fake. Your ass belongs on death row with the rest of the losers waiting to die.’

  It was one thing to taunt Parker with his authority. It was another to let Parker know outright that he didn’t believe he belonged at Holloway. If I knew Otis Parker, the orderly had just made his workplace a very unsafe place to be.

  ‘I’m on to you,’ the red-haired orderly repeated, poking a finger in Parker’s chest.

  Parker let loose one of those crazy, high-pitched laughs of his, but the orderly continued to taunt him. ‘I’ve seen you at the back fence,’ he told Parker. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on.’

  At this, Parker lunged for the orderly but four other staff members had arrived by then and they pulled Parker off. They led him away, casting glances at the red-haired orderly that made plain they had little patience for either his methods or his judgment.

  I followed Parker, curious as to where they might take him to calm him down. But it turned out that he was scheduled for a session with his psychiatrist. He was taken to a spacious room where a short, tubby man awaited him, notebook in hand, his legs crossed precisely as he perched on the edge of a leather chair. He gestured for Parker to sit on the couch across from him.

  Two of the orderlies forced Parker to sit and started to handcuff him to the legs of the leather couch.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ the psychiatrist asked, casting a thin smile at Otis Parker as if to say, ‘I’m on your side. Isn’t it awful how backward these brutish men are?’

  The psychiatrist had all the degrees in the world, but he was a fool.

  ‘Yes, it’s necessary,’ one of the orderlies said. As if to make his point, he pulled on one of the chains that attached a couch leg to Parker’s wrist, forcing Parker to wince.

  The shrink glared at the orderly, but said nothing. Parker looked mildly interested in the disagreement between the two men. I knew he was filing the information away, just in case he could use it to his advantage later.

  The two orderlies left the room and stationed themselves outside the door, in case something went awry. I wondered what this session was all about. Was it an attempt to rehabilitate Parker or a court-mandated session to assess whether or not Parker was any better than he had been when admitted?

  I was not keen on getting closer to Parker’s mind. I knew what I would find there. But I was interested in how much he had fooled the psychiatrist sitting across from him, and if he would be able to resist revealing his connection to Darcy Swan’s murder.

  I found out the answer to my first question when the psychiatrist put his notebook aside and leaned forward, clasping his hands together as he stared at Parker with what he thought was professional detachment but I decided was perilously close to admiration. The shrink was not a big man. In fact, he was barely five and a half feet tall and he was plump in that way people are when they’ve spent a lifetime unable to resist overeating. He could not take his eyes off Parker. I had seen that look before. People hated following the unwritten rules of their world each day and often secretly admired those who ignored them. Especially those who did it without apology. The psychiatrist had fallen for Otis Parker’s charisma, mistaking an excess of testosterone for evidence that Parker was somehow a superior kind of human being worth saving.

  He’d learn soon enough.

  ‘What’s this I hear about an altercation?’ the shrink asked. ‘Was it with the same orderly as before?’

  Parker managed to look downright perplexed. His trademark shit-eating grin faded and he looked quite sad, as if he could not understand the injustices visited upon him. ‘I do everything he asks,’ Parker explained. ‘But it’s never good enough. The guy has some kind of complex about me. He thinks I’m faking it. Sometimes I don’t even feel like going through with my therapy because of him. What’s the use?’

  Oh, he knew what buttons to push. The psychiatrist nearly hopped in his agitation. He could not, I noticed, stop staring at Parker’s immense biceps nor refrain from glancing at Parker’s narrow torso and powerful thighs. I wasn’t sure it mattered at all what Parker said; the shrink was under the spell of Parker’s sheer physical power. He was in no position to evaluate him objectively.

  ‘You can’t think that way,’ the shrink told him. ‘We’ve worked too hard to throw it all away. If you keep accepting your illness, and doing what I ask you to do, you’ll have a chance at starting a new life one day.’

  ‘But will that day ever come?’ Parker asked. He flexed his arms and rubbed the tops of his thighs, shifting his weight from leg to leg. He knew exactly what he was doing. If he’d had a spotlight he couldn’t have shined the psychiatrist on any more. ‘First I get arrested for something I didn’t even do, and then they say I’m crazy, and then they send me here with no release date in sight. I would’ve been better off going to prison. At least then I would have had a shot at getting out.’

  He managed to pour such hopelessness into this series of preposterous statements that even I felt sorry for him, until I remembered that there had been overwhelming evidence that Parker was indeed the killer. So much evidence, in fact, that even I had been able to connect the dots at a time when I was rarely sober for more than an hour at a stretch and could hardly find my files, much less solve the cases in them.

  ‘If I knew when I had a chance to get out of here,’ Parker added slyly, ‘it might give me a reason to work even harder getting over what’s wrong with me.’

  The shrink was staring at him thoughtfully. Even he, so enamored of Parker, had his doubts. ‘I’m not likely to begin a conversation about your release from here for several years,’ he explained to Parker. ‘The things that are wrong with you are serious psychiatric disorders. We may never be able to change their power over your behavior. The best we can do may be simply to find the right mix of medications to
help you control them. Whether or not I can let you out into the world under those circumstances is still uncertain. I want to be upfront with you. I want you to know that I will always tell you the truth.’

  ‘But I’m in here for something I didn’t do,’ Parker insisted. ‘I’m presumed to be violent because of something that someone else did. And now I’ve got the proof. The other patients are saying a girl was killed yesterday,’ Parker said. He looked sorrowful with this loss of life. ‘That she was killed in the same way as the girls I was accused of murdering.’ He looked up at the psychiatrist, his eyes wide with hope. ‘Doesn’t that prove I wasn’t the one who killed those other girls? It’s the first ray of hope I’ve had in years.’

  The psychiatrist looked confused. ‘I hadn’t heard about another murder,’ he said cautiously. ‘I’ll have to look into it and see what I can find out.’

  Parker nodded eagerly. ‘Can you talk to my lawyer about it?’ Parker asked. ‘I don’t think he is smart enough to understand without your help.’

  ‘I can consult with your lawyer about your condition,’ the psychiatrist said uneasily. ‘Beyond that, I cannot get involved. After all, I may be called to testify at your next competency hearing.’

  Parker leaned forward again, staring at the psychiatrist intently. He was really working it. ‘I can pay for your time, if that’s what you’re worried about. I have a lot of people who believe in me, who know I’m not guilty. Your support would mean so much to them.’

  Of course he had people convinced of his innocence. Even Charles Manson had his fan club. There were probably dozens of misguided women across the nation sending Otis Parker checks and transferring cash into his legal defense fund. If they had seen the same crime scene photos I had seen, they would have held on to their hard-earned dollars. And probably never gone outside their own front doors again, either.

  The psychiatrist had seen the same photos, and whether or not he believed that Parker was innocent, he looked old enough to have been around the block a few times. Surely, he still had doubts, even if Parker had been spending months, maybe even years, trying to convince him otherwise?

  ‘Let’s talk about those groupies,’ the psychiatrist said, reaching for his notebook again. ‘How do they make you feel?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Parker asked, leaning back and stretching his legs out so that his pants stretched tight against his groin.

  Of the two of them, only one was good at reading people – and it sure as hell wasn’t the shrink.

  ‘How does the thought of being close to another person make you feel?’ the psychiatrist asked primly. ‘How do you feel when you think about being close to them, emotionally or physically?’

  ‘How do I feel?’ Parker repeated, his trademark grin returning. ‘I feel like slowly unbuttoning their blouses and ripping off their bras and running my hands up and down that firm sweet flesh above their ribs until I reach their breasts and then . . .’ He began to recite a pornographic list of things he would happily do to the women who wrote to him if he ever had the chance.

  His lust sounded real, but I was more inclined to believe the guard who had said Otis Parker didn’t care about the women who sent him money, or what they could do for him physically. He just took their money and asked for more.

  The psychiatrist listened carefully and made frequent notations, as if Parker’s monologue was fascinating. But I thought it sounded like a late-night Cinemax re-run and I could see no value in this line of questioning other than to titillate them both.

  The truth was that the shrink was no safer in Parker’s presence than any of his prior victims had been. He was a fool to believe a word out of Parker’s mouth.

  ELEVEN

  How Holloway feels often depends on the time of day. It can be a frightening place at night when the air is heavy with restless dreams and private realizations that life’s opportunities have been squandered. In the mornings, there is a palpable air of release that the darkness is gone, tinged with the skepticism that the day ahead will bring anything but the same. By mid-morning, the mood has often changed again. Especially in the spring time, when many of the residents cannot help but notice that the sun is high in the sky and the air is fresh and the birds bounce along the brick walkways and perch on the statues that decorate the courtyard with resolute devotion. This benign mood can often last until dinner time, when the encroaching evening casts a pall over everyone’s optimism. That’s when this sort of jittery, wait-and-see attitude comes over everyone, patients and staff alike.

  I prefer the daylight hours, when it is still possible to believe that not everyone who enters Holloway is doomed to remain inside its walls.

  Especially when it comes to Olivia. I found her that afternoon in her usual spot, watching the fountain. She seemed unable to take her eyes away from the water and did not notice me. The little girl, Lily, had discovered an anthill on the great lawn. Under the watchful eye of a nurse’s aide, who knew all too well that Lily’s smaller stature in no way rendered her harmless, she was busy poking a stick down into the anthill and watching the tiny creatures scurry away in panic. Harold had more ambitious plans for the day. He was once again wearing his newsboy cap and had trundled over to the double fence marking the maximum security and was sending a steady stream of babbling nonsense toward the inmates playing basketball on the courts inside. His words gushed out in staccato bursts, making sense only to him. It seemed to be a mix between childhood memories and the plot of an insipid sitcom I had seen him watching a few nights before. As often happens with Harold’s monologues, it started out interesting but soon descended into the mundane: ‘Harold Babbitt sees the court of the Mountain King. It is filled with jesters who dance and sing. I see a killer, a baker, a candlestick maker, a jump-start faker and an innocence-taker.’

  It was OK to accuse them of murder, but the inmates on the other side of the fence lacked any appreciation for Harold once he started attacking their athletic talents. One of them picked up the basketball and rocketed it toward the fence with ferocious strength. The ball slammed into the fence right in front of Harold’s face with a terrifying clank, causing Harold to scream and jump surprisingly high for such a round little guy. He landed unsteadily and fell backwards over a bush before sprawling on the lawn like someone trying to make snow angels without the snow. The basketball players roared with laughter – but I noticed that only one was not paying attention, as his gaze was distracted by someone walking by. Otis Parker had found someone far more interesting than Harold to occupy his attention.

  I followed his gaze. He was watching Olivia. A rage filled me with such intensity I was taken aback by how very human it made me feel. How dare Parker look at her that way? I felt an overwhelming need to protect her. It was a new sensation. I had always been the weak one in life. I had never been able to protect her. But now that I felt the impulse, there was little I could do. I was helpless to stop him as he made loud smacking sounds and called out ‘Hey, mama!’ He grabbed his crotch but Olivia ignored him, lost in her own world.

  My wife Connie had seen the exchange. She wasn’t used to people like Otis Parker, but with one look at his face, she got the message. She hurried away, determined to put as much distance between her and the maximum security unit as possible. I followed her to the juvenile wing where she asked after Michael and was told that he was in therapy and she would have to wait if she wanted to see him. The nurse added that he had a visitor waiting already and gestured toward the boy I had seen with Michael the day before. This time, he was slumped in an orange plastic chair in the common room where the teenagers gathered for television and group therapy. He looked just like the other patients there for treatment: ill at ease and unhappy. Connie joined the boy and seemed to know him well. He smiled when she approached and it transformed his face. He was not a bad-looking kid. He just held a lot inside and it showed on the outside. I knew how that felt.

  ‘How’s it going, Adam?’ Connie asked him. She took a seat beside him and plac
ed her pocketbook on her lap. Her legs were pressed tightly together and she was balancing on the tips of her toes, telling me that she had not come to grips with the fact that her son was living in such a place, however temporarily.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he mumbled. ‘Mr Phillips let me leave a few minutes early so I could stop by and see Michael before I study. I have a big test tomorrow.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll wait while you see him. I have the afternoon off, so it’s no big deal.’

  Adam looked startled at this show of concern for his needs, and I wondered if the kid had anyone in his life who ever gave a damn about him. More likely, his life had always been about putting fresh diapers on his grandmother while avoiding the drunk in his underwear who liked to bellow instead of conversing with his son. I’d been there myself and knew what it was like. The kid had a lot to get past each morning, just to get out of bed. Worse, he knew it. To have a friend in the mental hospital was just another step forward into the life of disappointment he was destined for.

  They waited in silence after that, and I wondered if there was something even bigger weighing on the kid. He seemed distracted and lost in thought. Or maybe waiting to see a friend in a mental hospital was just too much to ask of a kid his age.

  Connie noticed his mood, too. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked him.

  Adam did not respond for a moment and I knew he was hiding something from her. ‘Sure, Mrs F. I’m just worried about some school stuff.’