Avoiding the verandah, Walter stole around the back, found the kitchen and the night staff clustered around its table, about to have hot drinks and food. He had timed his arrival perfectly, and entirely by accident. The article in the Post had been fair and correct, he soon discovered; the inmates each had a private room and bathroom, and judging by the number seated around the kitchen table, the nursing staff was indeed ample.
It seemed to Walter that he physically entered inside a dream of such formlessness that it had no name, no finite being; it enfolded him in one pair of eyes after another, a twinned pathway of vital sparks fading away into nothing, and he was the cause of it, his the hands that administered it, his the brain that drank it in like a starving dog a puddle of blood.
From room to room to room Walter went.
The screams began to erupt from the nursing home ten minutes after Walter kicked the bike into life and tore away, heading now for Millstone Beach. It had taken him fifteen minutes to strangle three bed-bound patients, the youngest seventy-one, the oldest two days short of ninety.
Delia woke confused and fighting, but not to die. The I-Walter was temporarily sated, and the Jess-Walter had plans for her. A piece of duct tape was already across her mouth, her hands were being bound behind her back ruthlessly tight, and before she had a chance to focus her eyes, they too were covered by duct tape. Her nightgown was decent but feminine, made of artificial silk with lace around the arms and neck, but whoever it was—the Mystery Man, she was sure—bundled her across his shoulders with no additional clothing to protect her from the cold. Yes, a motorcycle! He mounted it and draped her across the front of his legs, then drove off at a pace well below the speed limit, for Delia, in next-to-nothing, a freezing ride.
By now the shock had worn off and she was wide awake, her mind trying desperately to make sense out of this senseless kidnapping—why her, why a sergeant of police? How far was she being taken? Whereabouts? No shoes—she couldn’t flee. Did he care for her welfare? She wasn’t a child, she wasn’t wealthy, she wasn’t political. Despite her calling, she hadn’t done anything to anyone. A cold and uncomfortable ride, but not a long one, she assessed; ten minutes saw the bike stopped, and her on her feet. Under them she felt a forest floor.
She could feel him touching her right arm where it was pressed against her back and on top of her left arm near the wrist; a cord bit into it above the elbow, and she knew he was raising a vein. Something pricked and hurt a little; her head swam, her knees buckled, and the lights went out.
Disorientated and groggy, she woke in an almost intense darkness to the sound of soft sobbing. Remembering herself bound, gagged and blindfolded, she found herself now freed, though her face and mouth hurt from the gag and duct tape. Wherever she was stank of decay, but faintly. And the soft sobbing went annoyingly on ….
“Who—is it?” she croaked, suddenly aware she was thirsty.
The sobbing stopped. The voice that answered belonged to a man—not the weeper, someone else. “We’re Ari and Rose Melos.”
“Delia Carstairs.”
“The cop with the hideous dresses?” squawked a female voice.
“Where are we? Who took us?”
“I have no idea,” said Aristede Melos. “We were at home, fast asleep. The next thing we knew, we were bound and gagged. Such a shock! He took Rose here first—I was demented! Then he took me, it was a little better. But it’s so mortifying!”
Delia discarded them to assess the situation. One ankle wore a fetter, to which a chain about three feet long was attached; if she moved in a circle at one point she could touch a wall of some kind, and in the opposite direction she could see a black outline of the Meloses, Rose still sobbing softly.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, woman, cease your grizzling!” Delia shouted, at the end of her weepy-woman tether.
“How dare you!” Melos snarled. “My wife is in a state of shock!”
“Codswallop!” snapped Delia. “Your wife is doing the petrified little wife act! She’d do better to shut her bloody mouth and let me think how to get us out of the situation.”
She was chained to a stone embedded in the floor, not to the wall, and presumed that the same was true of the Meloses; there must be a reason why, perhaps lying in the risk of being heard?
Rose was at it again, an eternal spring that gushed on and on.
“Shut up!” Delia growled.
Silence. How blessed quiet could be! She could think. And, thinking, realized she had to examine the fetter. Pulling her nightie under her rump, she sank down and discovered that a band of steel went around her ankle. Where its ends met were two flanges that kissed each other and were punctured by a hole; through the hole was a steel rod bent like a U—a padlock! Whoever had made the fetters was limited in his tools or facilities, so all he could manage was to curve his steel to fit the ankle and then give it a sharp, right-angled bend. That meant a hole and a padlock. But why, her mind went on, have we been abducted? A member of the police I can understand, but two psychiatrists? It has something to do with HI, that glares like a searchlight, but what? Her thoughts leaped to Walter Jenkins, who didn’t make sense either; he was, besides, a prisoner, unable to get out. No, leave him be for the moment. More important was how to escape.
Behind the Meloses was a stone wall that didn’t belong to her: an opposing one, perhaps? She could see them distinctly. “We’re getting plenty of air—don’t you dare start grizzling again, woman!” she yelled at Rose, whose preparatory sniffles stopped at once. “Rose, you’re a senior member of your profession, and you’re as tough as old army boots! This weak and trembling female business is an act to impress your new husband, nothing else, and if he doesn’t see through it, I do! Put what passes for your brain to how to get out of here. What are you wearing?”
“Nothing,” Ari Melos whispered. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Hair curlers,” said Rose on an audible swallow.
“Can you see me at all?” Delia asked.
“Yes,” Rose answered, apparently having decided to abandon the weak woman persona. “You’re a black blob against the opposite wall.”
“So there is an opposite wall? Do you know where we are?”
“We’re inside the Asylum walls,” said Ari.
“Ah! Is there any way out?”
“Until this, I wasn’t aware there was a way in,” Ari said.
“Hmm. That makes it harder,” said Delia. She thought for a moment. “Rose, can you throw me a curler?”
There was a scrabbling sound, a pause, then a plop as a curler hit Delia’s foot. A minute later, it was in her hand, a plastic cage of cylindrical shape, with a clip-fastened plastic bar down one side to hold the hair in place. Delia sighed. “I don’t suppose you have anything like a bobby pin?” she asked.
In reply, she found herself showered with around a dozen hefty bobby pins, three of which actually landed in the slight sag her nightgown made across her thighs. Seizing one eagerly, Delia bit in nibbles at the plastic-cushioned tips. Once they were bare metal, she used them to key the padlock. It was a long and tormenting struggle, but eventually the thing lurched open. With a squeak of triumph, Delia forced the U clear of the hole, then managed in a savage burst of strength to bend the thin cuff apart enough to free her leg. She was at liberty!
Gasping, she stood at full height. “I’m free, chaps!”
“Now free us,” Ari Melos commanded.
“Bugger that! You’d slow me down, and that frightful woman would sniffle and screech. I’ll come back for you.”
“You fucking bitch!” Rose blubbered.
“Ditto, brother smut.”
Feeling steadier by the moment, Delia debated.
From her left emanated that stench of an old decay; no, it wasn’t the way out, it led to further horrors. She spoke aloud: “He’s like a spider, storing his prey for later,” she said to the Meloses, struck dumb by her refusal to free them. “Truly, you’d slow me down too much, all three of us would be recap
tured. He won’t return in a hurry, but I will. There must be a way out! He wants you for some purpose connected to the Asylum, otherwise you’d be dead already. If he does return, use your wits.”
Rose was sobbing again, but Ari Melos had listened.
“I still believe we’re inside the Asylum walls,” he said, “so you may have a long walk.”
The darkness had lessened, so her eyes were still adjusting. Delia could see the outline of the Meloses quite distinctly now, and judged that they were being held inside a roundel. The dim light came from her right, and within several yards the space had narrowed to a passage about two yards wide. Using one hand on the wall as a prop, she inched along, the noise of Rose’s sobbing diminishing—thank God for that!
“Shut up, you silly cow!” she yelled. “The more racket you make, the quicker he’ll come back to cut your throat.”
Silence again. With any luck, Ari Melos had strangled Rose.
Delia traveled with painful slowness, the light insufficient to tell her what lay on the floor; that, she had to find out by using her feet as exploratory instruments, sometimes encountering what at first seemed deep ditches and other perils that turned out one pace farther to be illusory. The main constituent was gravel, but there were knotted roots, dead leaves, insect carapaces and rat skeletons. In one place the floor was strewn with slivers and splinters of glass; aware that her feet were now cut and bleeding, she kept on going regardless, and lost the glass two paces on.
Her face was on fire, her heart pounding; all the chill had quit Delia’s body during this inexorable and frantic effort. What drove her on was the nameless horror of running into her captor coming the other way to check on his store of prizes.
And then she emerged into a rounded cavern that was lit from above, where several stones had been removed and a sunny day poured in. A Harley-Davidson motorcycle rested on its stand, a collection of objects were stacked on shelves, and, beyond the round cave, a door sat in either wall.
Which door led out, and which in? Eyes hurting from the light, Delia looked at the wall with the stones removed, and decided that was the outside wall. Its door led to freedom.
When she turned its handle she discovered it wasn’t locked; Delia stepped out into a thick clump of mountain laurel, with a sun-soaked patch of grass away to her right. Heedless of her feet, she ran as fast as she could away from that terrible imprisonment.
A squad car found her on one of the ceaseless patrols that Commissioner Silvestri had ordered ever since the tragedy at the Hazelmere nursing home had been reported.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1969
Within minutes of the squad car’s reporting Delia’s escape, cops were swarming through the forest around the “out” door in the Holloman Institute’s wall, under orders to keep the noise down.
Carmine, Abe, Liam and Tony, together with Fernando and six hand-picked uniforms would be the only ones to enter the wall, but first it was imperative to get the Meloses out alive. Carmine took Abe and Tony, Abe carrying a powerful light instead of a drawn pistol, and traversed in five minutes what it had taken Delia an hour to walk. The passage was about two yards across, and widened into a roundel where a watchtower had been built; at those places it was about seven yards in diameter. The roundel containing the two doors was on the plans as a watchtower, though none had been built there, the why unrecorded.
Dr. Aristede Melos and his wife were very much as Delia had left them, except that Rose was spitting in fury at Delia’s gall in leaving them behind. Blanket-shrouded, they were taken to the hospital for observation. Once that was out of the way, the pace slackened to a rate dictated by the forensics team, enthused at the prospect of dissecting such a pristine multiple killer’s den.
Carmine himself returned to headquarters, where, sure enough, he found Delia waiting. Blinking, he assimilated the full glory of a Delia unharmed—nay, healed. Pink bunny slippers to cover the bandages on cut feet. Sheer yellow tights over pallid pink legs to give an impression of overripe bananas. A miniskirted dress of orange and green stripes to which were attached large, electric-blue satin bows. Oh, thank you, dear Lord Jesus!
“You ought to be resting at home,” he said, feeling he must.
“Rubbish! I’m a box of birds, and full up to pussy’s bow with tender, loving care! You can see that for yourself. Are the Meloses all right?”
“They’ll recover. The most serious injury they sustained was to their self-esteem—being found stark naked. Rose Melos couldn’t seem to stop crying.”
“Tell me about it!” Delia giggled. “I called her a silly cow. Have you any idea who our abductor is?”
“Beyond his being an inmate of the Holloman Institute, none that will hold water. Apart from a fuss out on 133 shortly before dawn, nothing’s happened to alarm anyone inside, and I don’t intend to tell Dr. Wainfleet a thing for the time being. Or the security guys and Warden Hanrahan on the straight prison side.”
“You have your suspicions,” Delia said shrewdly.
“Don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Walter Jenkins. But you’ve never met him, Carmine—how on earth did you light on him?”
“From reading Wainfleet’s papers. He’s contained, now that we’ve found his way in and out, but I don’t want to tip our hand until after I’ve seen Dr. Wainfleet under what will look to Walter like routine circumstances. I know he’s armed and it’s a risk, but less a risk than barging in with guns drawn and a cacophony of noise. Walter’s not your usual criminal.”
Delia adjusted the bow over her bosom. “What happened last night to put so many patrols out? My good luck, but—!”
“Your abductor strangled three harmless old folks in the Hazelmere nursing home. We had no idea he’d also kidnapped you and the Meloses,” Carmine said, tight-lipped. “Finding you and learning about the doors in the HI wall was a revelation that led straight to Walter, in my mind anyway. I wish I knew why he took you and the Meloses, but it’s as big a mystery as he is.”
“I believe I can answer a bit of it, dear,” said Delia. “He has decided that we—I in one way and the Meloses in another—threaten his relationship with Jess Wainfleet. She’s the fulcrum, the basis. Assuming her as the cause, I worked backward to the inexpressibly creepy Walter.” She shivered. “Jess actually thinks him cured, whereas I thought his actions and reactions were robotic. How that upset her! But you got it from reading her papers? I confess they’re up with the astronauts as far as I’m concerned, but they’re simply scientific dissertations.”
“Oh, they’re a little more than that, Deels. In a way they read like eulogies. I inferred from them that some kind of miracle had taken place. When the physician doing the treating starts waxing lyrical the way she did about Walter, any cop worth his salt gets suspicious.” Carmine shot her a keen glance. “You know Jess Wainfleet well. Can she honestly be living in ignorance of Walter’s guilt?”
“Oh, yes. Of that, I’m positive. He’s her child.”
Delia really was, Carmine reflected, a superb detective in the true sense of that word: she could take a bunch of unrelated facts and deduce from them. It was for that reason he had given her the Shadow List, and if the last piece of evidence had come from him, that was only because of their contrasting educations; he had seen the neurosurgeon in Jess, whereas she had seen the psychiatrist. But the case wasn’t closed yet, it had simply hit another brick wall that one or the other of them would find a way around. That both of them were necessary was yet one more argument in favor of his kind of detective force—men and women with varied skills and educations. Chance and luck played roles too. If he hadn’t been lonely and domestically rudderless, he wouldn’t have had the time to read all those scientific books and magazines that had alerted him to stereotaxic neurosurgery and research. Though his reading wouldn’t have taken the slant it did had Delia not sought enlightenment from a police artist about similar skulls. One hand washes the other ….
Walter had emerged from his migraine shortly before dawn on
Sunday, to find Jess wakeful and pacing her office.
“What’s up?” he asked, bringing her freshly brewed coffee.
Her face lit up, the profundity of her relief written on it, and showing too in trembling fingers as she took the mug.
“Oh, I am so glad to see you! Something about your headache frightened me, Walter. When you went to bed last night, you seemed—oh, I don’t know—changed.”
“It was a very bad headache. Left-sided. Like you said, I lost my speech for a while. Couldn’t calculate either.”
Sagging into her chair, she waved at the other one. “Sit down, please. I want to talk to you.”
He sat, the obedient soldier, chin up, eyes fixed on hers.
“Do you know what I did when I performed all those operations on you, Walter?” she asked.
“Yes. You mended me.”
“Well, okay, I did do that, but it’s not what I mean. You’ve progressed so much since the day thirty-two months ago when I did the last operation! Now I can explain on a more complex level than I have to date. Do you know what a short-circuit is?”
“Yes, it’s basic. The electrical current that should flow along a preordained pathway of wires finds a way to jump from ‘in’ to ‘out’ that bypasses the path, cuts it short. So all the current is lost, the circuit is burned up in a fiery flash of energy, and the work is ruined.”
“I like your choice of words. Preordained—wonderful!” Jess drank her coffee deeply, still recovering from the worry of wondering if Walter’s headache had been a warning of—? “So imagine that vast numbers of these pathways have suddenly short-circuited at the same moment, and that together they are your whole brain. Because of the massive short-circuit, the flash of energy has utterly destroyed all of your brain’s pathways. What becomes of your brain, can you tell me?”
“It becomes a no-brain.”
“That’s correct. I took you, Walter no-brain, and I put many hundreds of tiny terminals throughout the shell of your no-brain. Each terminal was inside a cluster of cells I’ll call a battery. And each battery was wired through pathways to many other points all over your no-brain. Remember, nothing worked anymore!”
Sins of the Flesh Page 26