“Before someone gets hurt,” I say, folding the article back up, stuffing it into my jeans pocket.
“Before someone gets hurt,” he says. “Or worse.”
***
An hour and a half later, we pull up to a four-story facility that’s constructed of dull, red/brown brick and surrounded by aluminum fencing topped with razor wire. Its monolithic appearance puts me immediately on edge, as though the facility isn’t a place where the sick receive treatment but are instead incarcerated, caged, and tortured.
We turn in at the entryway marked by a sign that reads Mid-Hudson Forensics Psychiatric Center. The words below that read, NYS Work-Force Champions, whatever that means. There’s no entry guardhouse out front to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic, which is a good thing for us since we can, at the very least, park the truck and make our way to the front office. If we can get that far, I can plead my case to whoever is in charge about needing to see Dr. Friedlander right away.
We park, get out, cross the parking lot to what appears to be the entry. It’s a small brick and glass booth manned by a uniformed New York State corrections officer.
“Can I help you?” the short, stocky, young man asks.
I plant my best top-of-the-morning smile on my face, even if it is going on noon. I tell him mine and Sam’s names. Then, “We’re here to see Dr. Friedlander.”
He stares down at the counter built into the interior brick wall.
“Appointment?” he says.
“Not exactly.”
“Can I at least tell him what it concerns?”
“One of his former patients.”
He purses his lips.
“One second,” he says. “I’ll call up.”
I turn back to Sam. He’s got this look on his face like he’s silently fighting back one wave of nausea after another. Coming from behind him, inside the gated perimeter, I can make out the sounds of the facility. Metal doors slamming, electronic buzzers buzzing, a pressure valve releasing steam, the occasional sound of a man shouting out an order. Psychiatric incarceration on an industrial scale. A hell on earth, judging from where Sam and I are standing, anyway.
“This place gives me the creeps,” he says. “No wonder Skinner escaped.”
“Wouldn’t you?” I say.
“Let’s hope I never have to.” He grins.
The guard presses his palm over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Excuse me, Ms. Underhill, but the doctor is very busy at the moment. He suggests you call ahead and arrange an appointment.”
I nod. “Tell him it’s a matter of great importance. Grave importance.”
He removes his hand from the mouthpiece, relays our message. He looks into my eyes through the glass while shaking his head.
He says, “Doc still says, not today.”
Urgency swims in my veins. I need to see him today, right now. And then I need to go to the police.
“Tell him it’s regarding his patient, Lawrence Fredrick Hanover. Aka The Skinner.” The guard’s eyes go wide. “Tell him I have reason to believe he could be living in my backyard.”
The guard sends the message. After a beat, he puts the phone down.
“Dr. Friedlander will see you right away,” he says.
We’re issued plastic laminate badges that say GUEST in big black letters. Then the officer triggers the bolt on the electronic gate, and it opens. We make our way through the opening, and the gate is quickly slammed shut behind us.
“No going back now,” Sam says. “Unless I scream and cry like a little girl.”
My blood runs cold. I’m sure Sam is experiencing the same unsettling sensation. Better not to dwell on fear. Better to see the doctor and get the hell out of this place as fast as possible.
A tall, well-built man with black, slicked-back hair greets us. He’s dressed in a uniform of white trousers and a white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“I’m Jim,” he says.
“Are you a Corrections Officer?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Technically, I’m an SHTA staff member or a Secure Hospital Treatment Assistant. Which pretty much means I get to do the same things a corrections officer does when it comes to keeping a whole bunch of psycho killers in line, only without the baton, the pepper spray, the ballistic gear, and if need be, the semi-automatic rifle.”
“What kind of, ummmm, psycho killers you got in here?” Sam asks.
Jim smirks. “You know, the worst of the worst, like John Wayne Gacy.”
“Dangerous job,” Sam says.
“You don’t know the half of it, sir.” Then, “I’ll take you up to see the doctor.”
“Thank you,” I respond.
“One thing, though,” he says. “Before we go up, I need to warn you about something.”
I look into eyes that are, at best, deadened and, at worst, indifferent.
“You’ve got our attention,” Sam says.
“Because you’ve arrived unannounced and without an appointment, you’re going to have to head on through the general population area. The gallery. You’re going to see things.”
“What things?”
“People.”
“People or things?” Sam says. “Which is it?”
It’s then I notice that Jim hasn’t blinked since he first arrived more than a minute ago now.
“People,” he says. “But they are not the kind of people you are used to seeing every day. Every one of the men housed in this facility has committed some sort of atrocity against their fellow man. Murder, mutilations, rape, cannibalism, fetish killings, ritual killings, pedophilia, you name it. They’ve done it all.”
“I understand,” I say, swallowing something bitter and dry.
“No, you don’t,” Jim insists. “These people don’t commit murder out of anger or revenge or emotion. They do it because a voice inside their head told them to do it. Or because God told them to do it, or Elvis, or Hitler, or the Devil. Or maybe they were just bored.”
“They’re insane,” Sam says.
“That’s too broad a term,” Jim says.
“Then how would you describe the men who live in this place?”
For the first time, he blinks.
“They’re evil,” he says. “They are pure evil. They were born that way. And the worst of it is, it’s not really their fault.”
Jim moves on to a solid metal door located just a few feet beyond the guard shack. He presses a code into the wall-mounted keypad. The door unlocks. He takes hold of the brushed steel latch, opens the door.
“After you,” he says.
I step inside, heart beating in my throat.
Sam walks in right behind me.
“I have to admit,” he whispers into my ear, “this is one of the more interesting dates I’ve ever been on.”
We’re led down a long and spotless concrete corridor that’s brightly lit with ceiling-mounted light fixtures. The floor is painted battleship gray with a wide, bright yellow line-stripe running down the very center. I pass by rooms that are accessed by gray solid metal doors. As far as I can see, the rooms are unidentified.
When we come to the end of the hall, Jim presses yet another code into another wall-mounted keypad. He turns to us.
“Stay close behind me,” he says. “No one will bother you if you stay close behind.”
“I’ll wear you like a coat,” I say, my knees shaking, my mouth dry.
He opens the door, and we enter the bowels of a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane.
The gallery, as Jim calls it, is massive. Almost like an airplane hangar. Only, instead of it being shaped like a square, it’s shaped like a hexagon. The walls are four-stories high, and there are cells or rooms behind each wall. The cells are accessed by safety glass doors that contain no window treatments for personal privacy. In the center of the big space is a guard tower with men dressed in white, just like our guide. They occupy a round, glass-encased booth that must contain all the electronic and digital e
quipment they need for incarcerating all of these things, as Jim so eloquently put it.
Surrounding the central interior tower are tables and benches that are bolted to the concrete floor. Maybe a half-dozen flat-screen televisions hang from the ceiling. All varieties of men sit at the tables, staring up at the screens, seemingly oblivious to what’s being broadcast for them. In this case, a National Geographic special about Vikings in pre-historic North America.
The men, or should I say, patients, are dressed in white pajamas with elastic waists and baby blue slippers for footwear. Some of the men wear cotton robes over the pajamas, but the robes are missing their belts. I guess belts would make a formidable weapon or tool for suicide inside a place like this.
We walk into the big room, keeping close to the left-hand wall. The smell is sickening. A combination of body odor, urine, and industrial disinfectant. But what’s more sickening is the patients themselves. The way they lock eyes on us. Like we’re the odd ones, the freaks, the dangerous people.
I spot one man who rises slowly from the table, begins approaching us. He’s small, thin, and white with blond hair greased back on his head. His face takes on a hungry expression. Like Sam and I aren’t two visitors quickly making our way through the facility on our way to a doctor’s office, but, instead, two pieces of meat tossed into the lion’s den.
“Back off, Davey,” Jim says. “You back off and go sit back down like a good kid and watch your television.”
Davey doesn’t speak. But he does make a noise. He growls. Like a dog. It’s unnerving.
We pick up our pace, leaving Davey — the angry dog — behind us. Moving on, I spot an enormous black man seated on one of the floor-mounted benches. He’s got his elbows planted on his knees, his face stuffed in his hands. He’s crying his eyes out, sobbing like he just lost a child or his best friend.
Behind him, a Chinese man is laughing so hard I think he might split a gut. Beside him, a man wearing the Islamic kufi, his beard long and tinged with orange. His eyes are dark, almost black. Like Davey a few feet behind us, he also stares us down. It’s one thing to feel someone’s love. It’s a vibe that’s always welcome, like a warm blanket on a cold day. But we live in a world of opposites, right? And to feel someone’s utter hatred is entirely upsetting. It’s palpable. As real and repulsive as if he were spitting on us.
Up ahead, a man has pulled his pants down, and he is defecating on the floor.
You sure know how to spend a nice quiet afternoon, Bec, Michael says in my head.
“I’d kill for a nice peaceful afternoon, Michael,” I respond silently.
“We get off here,” Jim says, approaching a door on our left. Punching in the code, he opens the door. I pass through with Sam behind me, happy as hell to get a reprieve from the evil people.
We make our way along another corridor, this one with doors clearly identified with the names of the professionals who occupy them. Jim stops when he gets to a door with the name Dr. Martin Friedlander printed on it in white stenciled lettering. He knocks. There comes a tentative “Yes” through the metal door.
“It’s Jim Baines, Doctor,” Jim says through the door. “I have the woman who needs to see you.”
I make out some noise coming through the door while the doctor makes his way to it, unlocks a deadbolt, opens it. But not all the way. He pokes his head out, captures a quick view of all three of us. He nods.
“Very well,” he exhales. “Come in.”
He opens the door wide enough to allow Sam and me inside, while Jim remains outside the door. Closing the door back up, he re-engages the deadbolt. I get the sense the doctor is not only cautious but genuinely afraid of his workplace environment.
He extends his hand towards the two wood chairs set before his desk. The kind of chairs you might have found inside a high school principal’s office back when I was growing up. Before the politically correct crowd took over and a juvenile delinquent had fewer rights than the men and women assigned to babysit them. Rebecca the cynical.
“Please take a seat,” he says, holding out his hand. Then, “My apologies for making you walk through this facility’s version of general population. Had this been a pre-scheduled meeting, I would have met you up front in one of the interview rooms. But I’m on duty for the patients, and here I must remain until my shift is over.”
He’s a man of medium height. Thin, if not nervously thin. His face is smooth but puffy around the edges. Bloated, not like a down and out drinker, but an everyday drinker whose alcohol of choice is beginning to take its toll. He’s wearing a blue blazer and a gray button-down, cotton blend khaki pants, black loafers with dark socks. His hair is thick and dyed black, parted on the left side of his scalp. His brown eyes are droopy, and the expression on his face is a combination of lonely, anxious, blank, limp, and unfocused. Like the one thousand yard stare my dad described all too often he’d seen on the faces of the men he fought side by side in Korea. Men who bore witness to constant death and terror.
He goes around his plain wood desk, takes a seat in an old swivel chair. Behind him on the white concrete block wall is a calendar that says OMH. Each day that’s already passed in October has been X’d out in red sharpie. Thus far, today’s date has yet to receive its X.
He attempts to plant a smile on his face. But the effort is as futile as it is pathetic. To my right is a window reinforced with chicken-wire glass. Beyond it, I can make out the sun that glistens against the fifteen-foot high razor-wire topped fence. Beyond it, are the pristine tree-covered hills that extend all the way out to the Catskill Mountains.
“Not a bad view,” I comment.
“Excuse me?” Doctor Friedlander says.
Now it’s my turn to smile.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “I was just admiring the view.”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s my solace inside a facility that is crammed with every kind of danger imaginable. As you, no doubt, got a taste of on your way in.”
“Thank you for letting us see you,” Sam says. “I understand you are a very busy man.”
“I spend part of my day seeing patients,” the doctor says. “I spend the rest of it, evaluating them. Making sense of their minds and deeds.” He sits back hard in the swivel chair. “Tell me something, Ms.—”
“Please, call me Rebecca.”
“And I’m Sam,” Sam says. “Sam Goodman.”
“Rebecca,” he nods. “Sam.”
The room goes quiet for a minute. But filling that silence are the muted screams of a man who appears to be in distress.
“You hear that?” Friedlander goes on. “That’s not a patient . . . an inmate . . . That scream is coming from one of our SHTA’s.”
“How do you know that?” Sam asks with a shake of his head.
“You work here long enough, you learn to recognize the sound of it. The fear. The staff has everything to fear because they’re outnumbered by the most lethal element of humankind there is. The patients have nothing to fear other than themselves and their own evil psychosis. Life is cheap to them, so what’s to be afraid of?”
“I’m here to talk about a man called Skinner.”
Friedlander’s face turns visibly white as the blood drains from his skin. He plants his elbows on the chair rails, clasps his hands together tightly at the knuckles.
“You understand that he has escaped the facility,” the doctor says.
“I understand that he is a fugitive, that his whereabouts are unknown.”
“We have our theories.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I state.
He blinks like he’s not quite following me. “You told the guard outside you have reason to believe he could be living in your backyard?” His eyes are squinted, his brow furrowed. “Did I hear him correctly?”
“Not exactly in the backyard,” I say. “But in the vicinity.”
Sam turns to me. “Tell him about the children.”
“Yes, tell me about the children,” the doctor insists.
It takes more than a few moments, but when I’m done, Friedlander nods contemplatively.
“I recall your harrowing ordeal with Whalen,” he says. “And, as you know, Whalen and Hanover were cellmates in Green Haven. Before Whalen was released, and Hanover — Skinner, as you call him — killed the corrections officers with his own two hands, a flaying knife, and his mouth.”
Just hearing him describe the murder twists my stomach into knots.
“Rebecca has been trying to get passed the memory of Whalen,” Sam says. “She’s concentrating on raising her son without his father’s presence.”
“I understand. Living in fear can be a terrible thing. Believe me.”
More quiet. Quiet filled with screaming.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Doctor Friedlander,” I say, “how did Skinner really escape this place?”
“Hanover was being transported to another facility upstate for a while, for independent evaluation purposes. The two men in charge of his transport stopped for coffee. Mistake number one. They opened the back of the van where Hanover was secured and probably asked him if he wanted anything to eat or drink or if he had to use the men’s room. Mistake number two.”
“What happened then?” Sam asks.
“Hanover had somehow managed to steal a key to the lock on his shackles. He lured the two men inside, and that’s when he attacked them.”
“Did he kill them?” I ask, knowing I probably should not have.
Friedlander nods.
“He skinned their faces off. One of the faces he took with him, and the other he set neatly onto the floor. When the bodies were uncovered, chunks of their flesh were missing . . . bite-sized chunks. We have reason to believe the guards weren’t dead yet after their faces were cut away and he bit into them.”
Sam crosses his legs, re-crosses them. He’s nervous. Or uncomfortable with what the doctor is revealing. How can he not be? I’m fighting back the urge to vomit. My stomach doing flips.
The Ashes (The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy Book 2) Page 12