Of Guilt and Innocence: Institute at the Criminally Insane (Virgil McLendon Thrillers Book 3)

by catt dahman

  It was unusual, but what better place than here, where it was safe and supportive to change to a desired gender. After a few seconds, Virgil decided he didn’t care in the least because Lynn Redding charmed him fully. Funny, sweet, intelligent, and self-confident, how could anyone not like her? He didn’t care how she dressed or about anything so small; he liked her because of the compassionate way she spoke, her quick wit, and her ability to be herself.

  He was learning about himself as he worked on each case.

  “Let’s begin with an easy one. I am to call you Dr. McLendon, correct? And you are an intern, learning, and then you will show you have a strong desire to see who murdered three of our patients. You are here specifically to help them deal with their grief and fear after the murders so they can speak openly to you. Is that correct?”

  “Perfect and you may have to smooth the way for me so that they accept me and I may ask them a few questions. Don’t tell me anything about their deep backgrounds unless I ask or if it is critical. You will have to explain their illnesses and get them to describe their crimes, or you’ll have to clarify for me since I have no idea what mental illnesses are like. They should be able to say why they are here.”

  “So you want to understand why they are here, their illnesses, and their crimes so you can see if they might fit the profile of the murderer that you will develop from clues? I love Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Virgil. I’ll help you,” Lynn Redding said and then winked and smiled, making Virgil feel much better since she understood.

  “Here we go. Just relax and be calm; they’ll like you. Trust me.” Redding knocked and opened a door. She knocked again and called out, “Tamantha Bok, dear, this is Dr. Virgil McLendon. How is my favorite patient today?”

  “Fat and bored,” Tamantha answered.

  Virgil felt his jaw drop. The girl, no more than sixteen but probably younger, was terribly thin with skin hardly draped over her bare legs and her stick-like arms. Her knees and elbows looked like knots on a tree compared to the rest of her limbs. Her face looked painted on her skull while her cheek bones jutted out in hard angles. Her lank, dull hair was thin, cut short, and was missing patches, causing her scalp to show through in places as raw, reddish blotches. All of her skin was flaky and dry; it was in need of an exfoliation and hydrating lotions. Small rashes covered parts of her arms and legs.

  She reached for a soft blanket and curled up in it, shivering.

  “Are you cold, Tamantha?”

  “Freezing.”

  “Tell Dr. McLendon why, can you? He is new and wants to get to know you, and we can save him the time of reading boring notes.”

  Tamantha licked her dry, split lips and said, “I have no body fat to keep me warm, so I’m cold all the time.”

  “Do you not eat?”

  Tamantha flinched at the word. “Eat? No. But I’m fat. I know what the doctors and nurses say, and I accept it, but I see how fat I am when I look into a mirror.”

  “Mirrors lie,” Dr. Redding remarked, “I promise.”

  “I’m trying. I really am.”

  “Have you ever eaten? When did you have a regular meal?” Virgil asked.

  “Regular? No. I came close.”

  “We tease her with good food, but she picks at it,” Dr. Redding said with a smile, “all the good food and she’s picky. We’ll find the right food yet.”

  “Will you tell me about that?”

  Dr. Redding nodded and reached for Tamantha’s hand as the girl looked worried.

  “Okay. I’ve told it so many times….”

  Her family had a beautiful home in Colorado built of stone, wood, and hundreds of panes of glass so that every room was full of light and one could see all the mountains around. Rain storms were dramatic, snow was beautiful, autumn was spectacular, and occasionally, they saw all kinds of wild animals close to the house.

  It was valued at millions of dollars, and to the family, it was worth every penny. Once built, it was decorated inside with the finest items, created as a piece of art as beautiful as the outside scenery.

  The dining table, made to seat thirty-two, had only twenty-eight fancy chairs so diners had room to move around and enjoy their meals. Each chair was covered in an embroidered design in shades of green on a tan velvet seat and back. The table was brought from a monastery in India and restored with oils and waxes, yet it had a faintly exotic scent beneath the smells of age and lemon wax.

  Place mats were colored in a rich deep brown to match the table yet went unnoticed. The chargers beneath the plates were made of stone-looking pottery, mottled, and shaped irregularly like rock and were topped with green-tinted clear plates and accented with pink water glasses and clear wine glasses. A long floral arrangement sat in the center and was striking in its simplicity: a long wooden bowl was filled with pinecones, smooth river rocks, clear crystals and dotted with silk ferns and coral azaleas.

  At either ends of the room were stone fireplaces. One wall was of glass that could be covered by the thick, soft green silk drapes. When the drapes were open, the interior seemed to melt into the outside world of rocks, tufts of green plants, and the ever-present azaleas and other pinkish-red flowers. Beneath the immense table was a long expensive rug woven with wool and dyed in shades ranging from almost white to deep brown to shades of green, along with bright flowers of reddish-coral adding color.

  Tamantha stressed the way the table and dining room looked. She said that when she went into the room, it was akin to entering a painting, becoming part of a scene, and it was very beautiful.

  “Did you like the room?” Virgil asked.

  Tamantha tilted her head, thinking and replied, “It was bigger than I was. It was bigger than anything because it had a life of its own. No, I didn’t like it very much because it was too consuming.”

  “I see.”

  “All this was worse when we had a few guests over, and I lost the battle to skip the meal. I remember it well because it was a dramatic evening. The first course was mussels, each with a tiny toothpick inserted and holding a bit of green onion, a curl of bacon, and a slice of hot pepper.”

  “How did they look and smell?” Redding asked.

  Virgil’s mouth watered.

  “Good. Kind of. Strong. Mother complained and berated me until I took one and ate it. I managed to swallow part and used my napkin to hide the rest in my lap. It was tangy, savory, salty, spicy, and creamy. I think everyone loved them because the guests raved about the fine way they were served. It was as if royalty were visiting,” Tamantha said as she managed a chuckle.

  “It tasted good?”

  “Yes, Dr. Redding, but I couldn’t swallow it. There was a lump in my throat. But it tasted very good.”

  “What was next?”

  “There was a pumpkin soup with creamy tomato swirls…a bisque. The bowls were brown with steam rising from this lovely, soft orange soup. Cook had taken cream of tomato and drizzled it onto the top of the soup in a sort of design. It was sprinkled with coarse black pepper. Everyone there ooohed and ahhhed over the presentation as if it were a big stage production. It really was pretty. I ate several spoons full because Mother was glaring at me. Our cutlery was real silver and heavy, and when I dipped my spoon into the soup, the design was ruined, and everything mixed together.”

  Lynn Redding nodded encouragingly, “You’ve never shared so much detail, Tamantha; thank you for sharing now.”

  Tamantha took a deep breath and continued, “Then, there was a chilled tomato and roasted eel salad, just a tiny salad with capers dressed in oil and herbs served in small clear green dishes, like what one would eat sherbet from. I liked those dishes.”

  “Did you eat that?” Virgil was almost famished from hearing of the dinner. He couldn’t imagine being served such a meal and would enjoy it although he was also happy with a simple burger and French fries. He felt slightly homesick.

  “It was Father’s favorite dish, and Mother glared, but I couldn’t manage a bit. I broke out in chills, and
a guest remarked I was quite pale. My brother switched bowls with me so that I had the nearly empty one, and he ate my serving. I felt the eel slide, just as the soup had slid down my throat and congealed in my belly. Doctor, all I could think about was that sludge of food trying to enter my cells and press out and make me bloat up and get fatter.”

  Virgil asked her, “Did you weight more then? Before you came here? Was that a concern?”

  Redding touched his shoulder. “She weighed less. Tamantha has made excellent progress and gained a few pounds. She is doing better now.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re really proud she’s been trying.”

  Tamantha stared at the ceiling and continued, “The main course was blackened fish with herbs and spices and asparagus on seasoned rice and a salsa made of grapefruit on top, all pink, creamy, chunky, and tempting. I nibbled a side of the fish and ate one spear of asparagus. That was too much. I felt my belly would explode as if I were bloated and huge. I got up before dessert and tried to get to the bathroom because I felt nauseated.”

  She said she had walked along the room, holding her stomach while her mother ordered her to sit and finish her meal, but Tamantha felt a terrible rumbling and flipping inside, and it was urgent that she get to a toilet quickly. Her mother grabbed her arm; the woman smelled of broiled eel, creamy fish, and mussels. It was a sensory overload as Tamantha’s frail body spun all the way around, and her stomach rebelled, ejecting all the food out in a dramatic wave. The fine rug, her mother, and part of the well-dressed table were covered in vomit.

  “It was a mess.”

  “I can imagine it was,” said Virgil as he wondered why this was necessary. “Do you fear getting fat from eating?”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I know how it is, and women and girls balloon, and then there is a terrible pain, and a baby comes out of them,” said Tamantha as her eyes grew huge with fear, and she visibly shook.

  “Not because of food….” Virgil felt as if he had missed part of the conversation as everything changed.

  Tamantha giggled for the first time although her eyes remained haunted. “Oh, Dr. McLendon, I know that. I know that a man’s seed causes a baby. His seed grows, and a baby comes out.”

  “Tell him your fear, Tamantha,” Redding urged.

  Her voice went softer as if it were a secret, and she said, “I don’t want an eel in my stomach. I refuse to raise one! Fish swimming around as they grow? And a pumpkin would burst me open if it grew in my belly.”

  “Because if you eat those things, they will grow there?”

  “Yes, because I am very, very fertile, and we must be terribly careful, or something awful will happen. I am so fertile that once a few years ago after I ate crab, my father had to take me to a doctor and have it removed! And it happened again after a steak dinner. Can you imagine a cow growing inside?”

  “Did the doctor remove the cow?” asked Virgil since he was confused. Questioning suspects was nothing like this; she had shifted from one topic to another that sounded like a fantasy.

  “Yes, my father took me.”

  “How did he remove the cow?” Virgil asked, not knowing what else to ask.

  “I put on a silly little gown and lay on a table, and the doctor said for me to get comfy, put my feet up, and relax after he gave me a shot. It didn’t hurt. I propped my feet up and then was embarrassed because I hadn’t worn my panties with the gown. Then, there was a funny rubber thing over my face and another shot maybe…or something in my arm, and I fell asleep, so I don’t know how they got the cow out, and I am rather glad I didn’t see the thing. I had a tummy ache a bit after, and that was all.”

  Virgil felt a wave of sympathy for the girl who was so far from reality and who believed these terrible things someone had told her.

  “I wonder how he took the cow out of me?” Tamantha asked.

  Virgil started at Redding.

  “Tamantha, you said your father did all of this, as far as taking you to the doctor. Did your mother help, or was she involved?”

  “No, Father said it wasn’t her concern and that she might not understand. We kept it a secret, you see, because imagine her horror if a cow was growing inside of me! I am very fertile.”

  Redding explained, “After those incidences, Tamantha was very frightened of eating as you can imagine. She refused to eat and began to lose vast amounts of weight until her parents were seriously worried. At that point, she was still having hunger pangs, and her father had a perfect solution. He knew a way to help her be less hungry and a way to prevent those things from growing inside her. She told us that.”

  Without emotions, Dr. Lynn Redding said, “Tamantha’s father, because she was indeed fertile, told her he would solve her hunger issues, and he solved his own needs in a devious way so that she wouldn’t have to see the doctor again to have anything removed. Three, four, five times a day, he went to her for oral sex instead of…the other.”

  Virgil gulped and took a deep breath. His eyes stung. He wished for five minutes alone with a baseball bat and the girl’s father. His face reddened. He understood now that the instance was an abortion and that her father had made up a terrible story about her having a cow in her stomach. No. Virgil would take a bare-knuckle approach. He wanted to feel Tamantha’s father’s lips shred under a well-placed punch.

  Seeing the reaction, Redding kept talking, “She was fifteen then and sheltered with a private tutor and had little outside interaction other than church, if you can imagine. There was no television or radio in the house, only an old record player for classical music. No magazines. And the books in the house were carefully censored, the mother told us later, to prevent evil influences on her children. Tamantha’s emotional age was about ten at that point.”

  “My God,” Virgil breathed. He couldn’t help it.

  “It’s okay, Dr. McLendon,” said Tamantha as she patted his hand kindly; he wondered at a child comforting him when she was the one who had been traumatized and abused.

  Virgil understood that she had become pregnant twice, and her father changed his mode of sexual abuse to work around Tamantha’s changing loss of reality. He used her destroyed mind and added to the trauma.

  “Something must have happened for you to be here?” he asked.

  Tamantha picked dead skin off her hand and shivered with the cold. “My brother William, oh, he was a sneaky, sly one. He brought in magazines that he hid in the closet under the third floor stairs, and I saw him hide them. When he wasn’t around, I took several out and took them to my room to read.”

  She was naïve and sheltered, but Tamantha was not stupid; with her parents’ approval, she had studied and excelled in math, Bible, piano, ancient and foreign history, and the sciences that her parents approved of: earth and physical, and had learned French and some Tagalog for fun. She was intelligent far beyond her actual age but emotionally stunted.

  Despite all that she knew, she didn’t know where babies came from, about sexuality, or about her own body. She was an innocent.

  “This sounds impossible,” Virgil said.

  Redding nodded, “It was a cruel situation for Tamantha. She’s brave to be here and able to talk about what she went through. Tell him about the magazines.”

  “One was about babies: pregnancy and how to get pregnant. It didn’t take me long to figure out the particulars of the last few years. I read the part advising women that when uncomfortably pregnant, it might be nice to please their male partner with oral sex. One magazine was full of naked women, their legs splayed and breasts showing…silly things, really, but the last magazine was better, a science magazine that had an article in it that showed how many of those horrid tadpoles…sperm, you call them…are in that stuff. They were magnified, and oh, Dr. Redding, I wish I could turn back time and never see those hateful things swimming and growing; it was a miracle that none grew inside of me. Evil tadpoles.” Her eyes were wide, like those of a child.

  “I am sure her brother knew she saw him hiding the maga
zines and surreptitiously tried to help in his own way.”

  “I see,” said Virgil as if in shock.

  Dr. Redding patted Tamantha’s thin hair and said, “I know, darling. This is difficult. Let’s finish telling Dr. McLendon, and then, we’ll have Annabeth draw you a warm bath and rub lotion into your skin. Nice? We’ll get you an extra little pill. Yes? Tamantha takes a lot of little pills, and they make her very relaxed and calm, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, and that sounds wonderful,” said Tamantha as she frowned and continued, “and now I know the truth because, Dr. McLendon, I have an IQ of 155, and I am not stupid.

  So, the next time Father came to my room for my feeding as the son of a bitch called it and thinking I was still uneducated about that subject, I let him undress, and then I got on my knees, and quick as a bunny, I pulled out the steak knife I took from the kitchen and hid under the bed skirt of my bed in my room. I sliced away the little sausage and the two oysters,” she said as her face changed and turned jubilant.

  Blood flew all over, he screamed hysterically, trying to get the flesh back, but Tamantha grabbed them up first, tossed them in her mouth, and chewed them: the first real calorie-packed food she had had in a long time; then, she gulped them down. As she told this part, she smiled patiently as Virgil restrained his gag reflex.

  Tamantha dreamily said, “I was feeling mischievous and energetic, and I waved the knife and said, “Now, I want eggs to go with my sausage and oysters. He was bleeding everywhere and blubbering, and I pointed the tip of the knife right up within a half inch of his eye and growled at him: ‘Give me my eggs.’”

  Redding hugged Tamantha gently and laughed, “That’s my favorite part of the story: when Tam growls and scares him so badly making him think she is about to carve out his eyes….”

  “But what did you really do?” Virgil asked. He was almost afraid to ask.

  Tamantha snorted as she giggled and said, “I cut his eyes out, popped them into my mouth, and had eggs!”