by Chaz McGee
I decided to make absolute sure that Otis Parker was still confined to his unit. I found him fast asleep in his bed, his face as serene as a child’s in innocent slumber. No nightmares tortured Otis Redman Parker. Quite the opposite. Otis Parker was the nightmare.
But I did not think it was a coincidence that the red-haired orderly lay dead a day after hassling Parker. No way in hell. But if Otis Parker had not killed him, then who was roaming the lawns and halls of Holloway, where my son now stayed? Who had killed the orderly?
By the time I got back to the courtyard, Holloway was in chaos. Patients had left their breakfasts sitting on the table as hysteria swept the hospital, drawing patients and staff alike to the fountain. Sirens in the distance only whipped the crowd into more of a frenzy. Harold was marching circles around the crowd, all the while shouting, ‘Harold Babbitt saw a dead body.’ No one tried to stop him. The staff had recognized the victim as one of their own, which meant they had bigger problems than trying to control Harold Babbitt
At the fountain, patients pushed and shoved each other, unable to control the physical impulses fueled by the excitement of a sudden break from their routine. The staff regained their composure and tried valiantly to control the patients, shooing the worst of them back to their wards. I saw with dismay that Michael was among the crowd of bright-eyed adolescents watching the scene with that peculiar detachment of the younger generation, children raised on YouTube videos of the most extreme nature. They had seen it all before from the safe perspective of a computer screen and, as a result, processed everything unpleasant as potentially faked or, at the very least, slightly unreal.
It was not until the police arrived that the crowd began to scatter. Most of the patients let themselves be herded back into the buildings of Holloway, but they were soon supplanted by the shouts of a dozen patients on the criminally insane unit who had been let out into the exercise yard and had noticed the fray. They rushed to the inner fence and wound their fingers around the wire so that they could shake it back and forth like monkeys at the zoo. Hooting and hollering, they shouted insults at the cops who arrived first at the scene.
Otis Parker was not among the crowd at the fence. I did not know if he remained sleeping soundly in his room or if he had been denied his exercise time because of the fight with the red-haired orderly the day before. Regardless, the inmates allowed outside were soon hustled back inside by a line of muscular aides, who were in no mood to indulge out-of-control behavior. They cleared the yard in less than five minutes, casting anxious glances back over their shoulders at the growing crowd of uniformed officers handling the crime scene. They had seen the green of the victim’s clothing and they knew it had to be a staff member.
Maggie and Calvano arrived and reached the dead orderly just as I returned to the fountain. Maggie ducked under the yellow tape that had been draped around the scene and stared down at the body, calculating the posture, potential source of the wounds and the message the tableau was trying to send. It was a ghoulish and disconcerting sight – and it was most certainly staged.
Maggie pressed her fingers against the dead man’s flesh and calculated how long he had likely been dead.
‘When?’ Calvano whispered. He was kneeling beside her, inches from the body. Male victims he could handle.
‘A few hours before dawn at the latest.’ She rose and stared down at the body again. I could feel her piqued interest from where I stood behind a tree. I moved closer to the body and tried to gauge what she was feeling.
‘This is a little freaky,’ Calvano mumbled. ‘Look at his legs.’
Maggie nodded.
‘It’s different from Darcy Swan,’ Calvano pointed out.
‘In some ways,’ Maggie admitted. ‘But there’s still that need to stage the body, to create a pose. Maybe he does one thing for women and another for men?’
Calvano looked skeptical, but not for long. Maggie put him to work interviewing the first officers to respond to the scene, taking down their description of what they had encountered. Maggie started interviewing staff while she waited for the lab techs to arrive. She’d gone through four staff members by the time Calvano had finished with the pair of responding officers. He was dragging his feet, I knew, since the next step would be to get the names of patients who might possibly have interfered with the body or, less likely, committed the murder or seen something that could be useful. Calvano didn’t like dealing with crazies, unless you counted the women crazy enough to go out with him. He was reluctant to dive into the dirty work that lay ahead and was looking for an excuse to put it off.
In a way, I understood. Facing the sorry army of lost beings who occupied Holloway would be like coming face-to-face with your own worst-case scenario. There was little more than a teaspoon of chemicals separating Calvano from the patients of Holloway and he knew it. No one liked that reminder.
For the first time, I noticed Olivia sitting alone on one of the park benches dotting the lawn, weeping quietly to herself. I do not think that death held any titillation for her.
‘Can you see me?’ I asked quietly as I took a seat beside her.
‘Yes,’ she said simply, staring across the grass at the fountain.
‘Don’t let anyone else know you can see me,’ I warned her.
She did not ask me why, but she nodded. ‘I saw him,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘Who?’
‘Vinny.’
‘The man lying over there?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I saw him this morning. Just after dawn. He was standing in the hallway outside my door, waiting for me.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I said. ‘He’d been dead for hours. Trust me, I can tell.’
‘I saw him,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I was surprised to see him because he had been transferred into the other unit weeks ago. But there he was, waiting in the hallway for me, standing there outside my door. Not saying anything. Just standing there and looking at me.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked, wondering what bond between them had made it possible for the dead orderly to linger behind long enough to tell her goodbye before he moved on.
‘I smiled at him,’ she said. ‘He smiled back. But it was a sad smile. That wasn’t like him. He was always trying to cheer me up.’ She paused. ‘Just as I was going to say something, he said to me, “I just wanted to know that you were going to be OK.”’
Olivia stopped and stared at the ground.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I was going to thank him for caring about me when he was in my ward, for being my friend and helping me get through it, but a nurse came by and said I needed to take my medication. I was distracted by her and when I turned back around, he was gone. He was just gone.’ She looked at me. ‘I don’t know where he went.’
‘He went to a better place,’ I said. ‘That much I know.’
‘But now I’ll never get a chance to tell him how much it mattered to me that he was my friend.’
‘He knows,’ I promised her. ‘He knows.’
FOURTEEN
By mid-morning the orderly’s body was on its way to the morgue, but it would take Holloway days to recover. The patients were restless and agitated. Staff had imposed sign-in and sign-out procedures for even the most competent of patients. And the maximum security unit, in particular, was in chaos. Maggie had heard about Otis Parker’s altercation with the orderly from several staff members. Over a dozen uniformed officers were searching every inch of the building for evidence of how Otis Parker could have escaped undetected. It took them into the evening and, in the end, they came up empty. There was no indication that Otis Parker could have had anything to do with it.
Parker spent the hours while they searched lying on his bed, hands folded under his head, exuding a sense of satisfaction that remained undented by either the angry threats from other patients, who were pissed off at being confined, or the gruff treatment by the officers searching his room. If Parker had a way out of the unit, he was absolutely
confident the cops would never find it.
Word soon leaked about the orderly’s murder. Families hurried to Holloway to accuse the administration of failing to keep their loved ones safe. I noticed that very few offered to take them home, however.
Connie was among the anxious who came to Holloway when they heard the news. I am ashamed to say that I felt a stab of satisfaction when her fiancé Cal rushed past her as she hurried toward Michael’s building. He looked flustered and worried, and managed only a feeble wave before he dashed toward a grim-looking older man and woman with their lawyer in tow. Connie looked after him, perplexed, before heading upstairs to see our son.
Michael had joined his ward-mates in the common room. They were watching a twenty-four-hour news station, waiting for information on Darcy Swan’s murder and more about the murder they had stumbled on by the fountain. The news anchors were hyperventilating over both deaths. A few of the teenagers on the ward had known Darcy and, from what I could tell, although poor, she had been a good kid. Michael listened to their comments without saying a word, though I knew he had known the dead girl. I could tell he felt scorn for the kids who were trying to elevate their status by bragging about how well they had known Darcy. But I feared he held back about his own relationship with her for a darker reason. I could feel his anger rising at some of his ward-mates for not understanding that Darcy’s death was not entertainment, but real.
When Connie arrived, Michael was embarrassed to see her, despite the fact that she was far from the only anxious parent there. He pulled her away from the crowd, muttering under his breath, ‘I told you not to come. I’m fine. You’re smothering me.’
No mere accusation of smothering was going to stop Connie. ‘I’m not so sure it’s a good idea for you to stay here,’ Connie said. ‘I think it’s better you come home with me.’
‘I’m going to be fine,’ Michael told her, patting her arm in the same way, I suspect, he had once reassured her that I was going to be OK. I had asked a lot of my son and I felt ashamed at seeing how it had shaped his relationship with his mother.
‘You mean you want to stay here?’ Connie asked, surprised.
Michael tried to look casual, but I could tell he didn’t just want to stay at Holloway; part of him felt he needed to stay. ‘I may as well finish what I started. Isn’t that what you always say to me? Besides, I just have a lot going on in my head. I have people I can talk to here.’
Connie stared at him without saying a word and I knew she had taken his words, in part, as a rebuff – why could he not talk to her about his problems? She was willing to listen.
‘I’m just starting to figure things out,’ Michael tried to explain, with a maturity that I had not known he had. ‘I like my therapist. She’s really nice. And I don’t feel stressed out or confused in here. I don’t have a lot of stuff hanging over my head or some mental list of all the things I didn’t do.’
That last comment was like an arrow through my heart. That was the way I had felt my entire life, as if I had a long list of obligations I had failed to fulfill hanging over my head each morning, pressing me down further and further into the earth before I’d taken my first step of the day. I was proud of my son for rejecting the same kind of life. I was proud of him for wanting to take better care of himself.
‘But I’m worried about you,’ Connie said. ‘That dead girl went to your school. Did you know her?’
‘I knew who she was,’ he said. ‘But a lot of kids did. I’m sure whatever happened to her had nothing to do with school or with me. You don’t have to worry about that.’
He was lying. Once again, he was leaving something out – something that had to do with Darcy Swan.
‘I don’t know, Michael,’ Connie said, shaking her head. She could be stubborn when it came to family matters. Six generations of supreme confidence about what is good for the family will do that to you. She had Sicily running through her veins. ‘That orderly was murdered not even fifty yards from where we’re standing. What the hell am I supposed to think about that?’
‘I’ll be fine in here,’ Michael argued. ‘That guy was probably selling drugs or something and got in with the wrong people. I’m barely going outside. It’s just for another week. I want to finish what I started.’
Michael seldom took a stand about anything, he was the kind of kid who, until now, had just sort of drifted along with whatever his family or friends were doing. That he was taking a stand now meant it was truly important to him that he stay. Connie looked resigned. ‘At least let me come back later today and bring you some noodles and sauce,’ she negotiated. Now that was pure Connie: food cured everything. ‘I’m making Grandma Nester’s recipe. It’s been cooking on the stove all day.’
Michael was growing up, but he was still a fourteen-year-old boy. His face lit up. ‘Bring enough for Adam, too,’ he told his mother. ‘He’s going to stop by before his shift.’
‘Adam is too young to be working,’ Connie said. ‘How can he keep his grades up?’
‘Adam can do anything,’ Michael assured her. ‘You’d be surprised.’
Anything? The thought did not reassure me in the least.
FIFTEEN
News coverage about the two murders told me that it would not be long before our police commander, Gonzales, stuck his nose into the investigation. Sure enough, I found Maggie back at the station, making a case to Gonzales that the two murders were likely related. She knew how to appeal to him – figure out why your theory would give him the best possible media exposure and then sell the idea to him. Gonzales was obsessed with the press and so skilled at politics that he was destined to be mayor, if not governor, one day. But for now, he used his shrewd, if self-centered, instincts to decide which cases received the spotlight and which cases were concealed from public view, either because they reflected badly on the department or because they would cause panic if word got out.
The murders of Darcy Swan and the red-haired orderly had the potential for both.
‘You have a good theory, Gunn, but I am not convinced that the cases are related,’ Gonzales was telling her. He always called Maggie by her last name – an indication not only of his respect for her, but also to put distance between them since, in private, he had been her unofficial uncle since she was a child.
Calvano was with them, sitting in one of the narrow leather chairs Gonzales reserved for people he doesn’t like. I’d been in those chairs too often to remember. The leather stuck to your body and triggered a humiliating farting sound when you stood up. Gonzales so loathed Calvano that not only had he ordered Calvano to sit in the worst of them, he was now refusing to look at him at all. Calvano had no choice but to sit there looking like a well-dressed office plant, clearly aware that he was redundant. I almost felt sorry for the guy.
‘I can’t find a direct connection yet,’ Maggie said to the commander. ‘But there is one and I intend to find it. The girl was killed in the exact same way as Otis Parker’s prior victims, even down to a lot of details we did not release to the press at the time the original murders were committed.’ She gave Gonzales ‘the look’ – the look that meant, ‘You know? The details about the mutilation you refused to release to the public because you knew it would cause the entire town to rise up against the police force if we didn’t find the perpetrator immediately?’
Gonzales needed no interpreter. He went right to the heart of the matter, at least so far as he was concerned. ‘Gunn,’ he warned her, ‘I better not hear a single word about those details in the media now. Do you understand me?’
Maggie looked utterly innocent in that infuriating way she had of being able to control her emotions far better than her opponents. I admired this ability of hers greatly. It was like telling them to go stick it where the sun didn’t shine without ever actually saying a word.
‘Do I at least get to keep trying to convince you?’ she asked cheekily. She got away with it because her father Colin had been a mentor to Gonzales during his meteoric rise up throu
gh the ranks. On top of that, what Gonzales loved more than anything else was competence and Maggie had that in spades.
Gonzales sighed. Maggie’s greatest strength – and her greatest fault – was unsurpassed stubbornness. ‘Go ahead, convince me.’
‘Every one of Parker’s prior victims was desecrated in the same way,’ she began. ‘And they were all strangled, then left in an outdoor location, always in an area where their upper bodies were higher than their lower so that they appeared to be crawling for help.’
‘If I recall correctly, we missed that signature ten years ago,’ Gonzales said. He did not add, ‘which is not surprising, given that Fahey and Bonaventure could barely find a toilet by then, much less a clue.’
‘Darcy Swan was arranged in exactly the same way, and she had a crude brand burned into her torso that matched the one Parker left on his prior victims.’
‘I concede the similarities,’ Gonzales said. ‘But it only makes me wonder if we got the right guy to begin with. Are you absolutely convinced that Otis Parker is guilty of the earlier murders?’
I wanted to groan. The Otis Redman Parker conviction remained pretty much the only bright spot in an otherwise wretched career and it was my one hope for being thought even marginally competent when I was alive. Now even that was being taken from me.
Once again, Maggie came to my rescue. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Without a doubt in my mind, without a shred of hesitation, I would swear on my mother’s grave that Otis Parker is guilty of those earlier murders.’
Wow – swear on her mother’s grave? Maggie had adored her mother and still mourned her passing, though it had happened four years ago. I was not worthy of such an oath.
Gonzales conceded the point with a nod and Maggie continued. ‘In my mind, given that the arrangement of the body and the brand were withheld from the media, those two details alone establish that Parker had something to do with the killing of Darcy Swan. I don’t know how he’s doing it, or who is doing it for him, but there is a connection.’