Cherry Hill

by James A. Moore

  First Digital Edition

  Cherry Hill © 2010, 2012 by James A. Moore

  Artwork & Illustration © 2010, 2012 by Alan M. Clark

  Published by Morning Star

  An imprint of DarkFuse

  Morning Star

  P.O. Box 338

  North Webster, IN 46555

  www.darkfuse.com/morning-star

  Copyediting by Leigh Haig

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author.

  This one is dedicated to the memory of Bonnie Anne Moore, my beloved wife. I miss you.

  Thanks to Larry Roberts, Leigh Haig and Kelly Perry-Tomblin for all of their help and support. Thanks also to all of the readers who’ve graciously sent me comments and letters. They are always appreciated.

  Prologue: 1971

  Gary Harper barely even noticed when the man stumbled into view, staggering at the edge of the road not a hundred yards from the squad car. It was the motion of the stranger’s uneven gait that caught his eye. The object of his attention was easily into his sixties, with lean features partially hidden by a new growth of salt and pepper facial hair and a buzz cut of the same colors growing on the top of his head.

  He looked drunk, but it was hard to say for sure. All he knew for certain was that the man had probably had better days. He wore a pinstriped button-up shirt that had become a mess of wrinkles, with a few small tears along the sleeves. Ken was sitting next to Gary in the cruiser and had been messily chowing down on a sandwich from over at Carlino’s Diner. He stopped chewing and stared through the windshield.

  “You seeing what I’m seeing?” Ken asked through the pastrami still trapped in his mouth.

  Gary nodded and turned on the flashers. He might have been willing to let the man go about his business, but the lack of pants or shoes made him change his mind. The only thing stopping the man from being fully indecent was the length of the dress shirt. It fell below his middle thigh. The poor, old bastard was obviously a few bricks short of a full load. He looked again and shook his head at the synthetic gleam that ran across the man’s left leg below the knee. He’d heard of artificial limbs, of course, but never actually seen one. The strange gait was caused by the stranger having to throw his fake leg forward and settle on it just the right way in order to avoid falling on his face.

  The old man walked with his head down and muttered to himself; he was too far away for Gary to hear the words. If he even noticed the police car with the flashing lights, he managed to hide the fact.

  Gary shook his head and got out of the squad car. He didn’t want to deal with a half-naked man while eating his lunch, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter, not in the long run.

  The man stumbled and fell, catching himself on the palms of his hands. He got back up even as Gary started in his direction and kept going, not even noticing the blood running across the palms of his hands.

  “Mister? You all right?” He felt stupid asking when it was so obvious that the old man was not, in fact, anywhere near all right, but he asked anyway. He heard Ken climbing out of the Crown Victoria and felt a little better for it. Not that he was scared of an old man; he just didn’t want to be the only one dealing with restraining the guy.

  The man kept walking, and Gary hesitated. He had a chance to look at the crazy nudist’s face and was taken aback by the fury he saw in the geezer’s expression. Still, he was damned if he’d let an old man intimidate him. Gary squared his shoulders and moved a little faster, ready to haul the man in for public nudity and any other charges he felt necessary.

  He put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Mister, I don’t know what’s wrong or where you think you’re going, but you have to come with me.”

  For the first time the stranger looked at him and his already feral face grew wilder, more enraged as he shrugged Gary’s hand away.

  “Don’t touch me.” The words were hissed.

  Gary froze for a second, taken aback by the pure viciousness of the man’s demeanor.

  Ken wasn’t as slow to respond. He sank his fingers into the old man’s shoulder, the same spot that Gary had gripped a moment before, and opened his mouth to issue a sterner warning.

  He never got the chance. The bony elbow that slammed into his mouth and busted both of his lips wide open stopped him from talking. Ken staggered backward, both of his hands covering his bloodied mouth, and cursed through the red spittle.

  “I said don’t touch me, you shit head.” There was nothing frail or deranged in the tone of voice, merely angry.

  Gary drew his nightstick and decided it was time to end this mess before it could get worse. The old man was still looking at Ken, eyeing him warily, and standing with his arms at his sides and his legs—real and false alike—slightly bent.

  Gary swung the club in a hard arc toward the back of the lunatic’s head and let out a small squeak when the old bastard moved fast and blocked the blow, his aging forearms slamming into Gary’s wrists and knocking his aim off.

  Before he could do more than let out a protest, the old man was on him, striking him in the temple with the edge of his hand and knocking his vision into a star field. Surprisingly strong fingers wrenched the nightstick from his hand and tossed it aside.

  “You get away from me, boy, before I have to get nasty.” The old man was staring at him now, and Gary made sure not to let his eyes show any sign that Ken was getting ready to tackle the geezer.

  The half-naked man shook his head and, without bothering to look back, did a spinning kick that was nearly flawless. The only problem was that he’d apparently forgotten he had a fake left leg, and that was the one he tried to balance on. The look on his face was comically surprised as his foot slid out from under him and dropped him on his side across the cracked pavement. His heel almost connected with Ken’s jaw, but as the old saying goes, almost only counts in horseshoes.

  The old man started to get up, and Ken drew back his own leg and kicked him in his stomach, lifting him off the ground. Ken wasn’t one to accept being manhandled.

  The mad stripper grunted and coughed as he rolled over. Ken moved closer, maybe just a little too confident that the fight had been knocked out of the man on the ground. With unexpected speed and strength, the man bucked his body back a bit and put all of his weight on his bloodied palms. Then he arced his body up and off the pavement and brought his right foot around in a vicious kick that connected with Ken’s jaw. Even from a few feet away, Gary heard the bones in his partner’s face break. Ken hit the ground like a dropped side of beef and stayed down.

  “Sonuvabitch!” Gary took three steps back and drew his .38. Old man or not, he wasn’t about to take any more chances with the sort of opponent that could drop his partner in a fight. Ken was one of the biggest men on the force, and he had spent several years when he was a wee bit younger as an amateur boxer.

  The old man managed to land on his good leg and roll into a standing position. His eyes bored into Gary’s and he smiled what had to be the most savage smile the police officer had ever seen. “Told you not to touch me. That went for your partner, too. Now, why don’t you head on your way and we can both forget this whole, messy business before I have to get nasty with you.”

  Gary looked from the man to his revolver and shook his head. “You’re kidding, right? Put your damn hands on the top of your head.”

  “Not happening, junior. I have things to take care of.” That smile stayed firmly in place, and the eyes looking at him kept boring inside Gary’s head like they were trying to see if there was a brain hidden somewhere deep in there.

  “It wasn’t a request. You just took down a cop. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Guess again, su
nshine.”

  “You make one move, old man, and I’ll take you down.”

  The old man took one step forward and raised his hands above his head, hooking his fingers into wiggling claws. “BOO!”

  Gary flinched. Unfortunately for both of them, the finger squeezing the trigger of his revolver flinched too.

  The bullet pounded into the man’s stomach and blew out through his back, sending him staggering back with a shocked look on his face.

  “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” Gary moved forward, all caution set aside, and dropped down next to the half-gutted man. His hand jumped up to his radio and he called in for two ambulances after making clear that there was an officer down.

  The old man’s skin had gone an unhealthy shade of gray and he was wheezing, his lips moving softly.

  Gary leaned in closer to hear whatever it was the man might say.

  The man’s teeth were bared in an expression of raw pain as he leaned up just a bit to be heard well. “You moron,” he hissed with hatred straining his words. “You could have at least gone for the heart.”

  That was the last thing he said before the ambulance arrived.

  Chapter One

  The Cherry Hill Sanitarium was not, on the best of days, a cheerful facility. Established in 1843, the place had seen more than its fair share of tragedies in the one hundred and twenty-seven years it had been functional. What had started as a nice, exclusive facility where the wealthy could hide away their less savory family members had degraded over the years to become a privately owned asylum for the criminally insane.

  The building was situated five miles from the closest township, on land that had been selected long ago for its inhospitable nature. Despite a small oasis of solid ground, the entire place was surrounded by swampland and littered here and there with the occasional pit of quicksand. There was no one who wanted the land, and that had been true even back when the original facility had been founded.

  There were reasons for that, as we’ll examine when the time is right. For now it’s enough to know that the structures built on the land were not happy places. How could they be? The very nature of the Cherry Hill Sanitarium leant to unhappiness. The minds they worked to treat were not merely injured, but usually shattered somewhere along the way. The asylum did not merely hold the delusional and the depressed, but the criminally insane. No inmate who came into the facility was there for anything less than extreme acts of violence against another human being. There might have been a few exceptions, true, but due process in a court of law said otherwise.

  The campus was shaped like a wagon wheel, with a central hub and seven spokes running outward toward the actual rim of the wheel, said rim made of fortified stonewalls and barbed wire in this case. The exterior of the buildings was a façade of brickwork that lay hidden behind thick runners of vine, the better to hide the bars in the windows on the lower levels. The vines, while decorative enough, were kept trimmed down to avoid any possible use as a natural hand or foothold should anyone get through the two inch thick bars and wire reinforced glass of the actual windows. No chances were taken when it came to escape.

  The interior of the wings was concrete and cinderblocks, painted an institutional shade of green that allegedly helped soothe the patients locked inside. Most of the people locked inside the building would have pointed out that the color was obnoxious, but no one would have listened to them in any case.

  The central hub of the facility was slightly better, being the original building and a hold over from less industrial times. Though the rest of the compound was built with an eye toward security, the oblong central structure had been designed to be aesthetically pleasing. Large, spacious rooms held the visiting stations and the main offices for the doctors and nurses assigned to treating the wretches who came to dwell within the asylum.

  In the largest of the offices, Doctor Roger Finney kept his desk, his files, and his world. At fifty-two years of age, he was considered one of the leading experts on criminal psychosis and was still thought of as something of a maverick when it came to treatments. If it was new and improved, he was one of the first to give it a go, and had, on a few occasions, come up with new methods of gaining insight into his patients’ minds.

  None of which mattered the least bit to him. The good doctor was, to be kind, obsessed with his work. To remind himself of this simple fact—as if he needed any reminding—he kept one of his favorite sayings posted on the wall, just below his calendar of M.C. Escher pictures. The saying was one of his own comments from his doctoral thesis: “The human mind is an oubliette, carefully hidden away within a labyrinth. There is no easy way to explore it or to discover its many hidden depths.” His reason for having the saying on his wall had less to do with arrogance—though he could be very cocky when it suited him—and far more to do with reminding himself to be patient.

  He always wanted results faster than was humanly possible. It was a weakness that he acknowledged and did his best to work around.

  At the moment he was looking at one of the doctors under him, Phillip Harrington, who was not working out as well as Finney had hoped he would. Harrington was dressed in a gray suit with a crisp, white shirt and a red tie. He was doing his best to look in control of his own destiny, but he was failing. Maybe it was the sweat gleaming on the growing bald spot where his hair had receded, or the way he kept nervously chewing at his mustache. Despite his best efforts, he looked wretched. So far they’d sat in absolute silence for almost ten minutes, while Finney composed himself and Harrington did his best not to fidget too much.

  That made Finney very happy, though he did his best not to show it.

  “So…” Harrington spoke softly, almost as if he were afraid of being heard.

  “Phil, I’ve been looking over your list of patients. I have to say, I’m not sure about a few of the decisions you made.” He gestured to the stack of files on his desk and frowned. “I think we need to talk about your methods.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.” His voice was calm, but the look in his eyes gave away that the man was nervous. “I’ve been following accepted protocol from day one.”

  “No, you’ve been going through the motions, Phil. I haven’t seen a single case where you did more than you absolutely had to for any of your patients.” He paused to let his words sink in, knowing full well that his comments were falling on deaf ears. “I’ve seen little more than doses of Thorazine for any of the people under your care, and that worries me.”

  Harrington stared at him blankly, but it was a ruse to buy time. Finney was a near master at reading human expression and he knew Phil well enough to understand when the man was trying to work out a proper answer in his head.

  The phone rang on his desk and both men jumped a little. Roger grabbed it up before it could ring a second time. “This is Finney.”

  “Doctor Finney? This is Bob Wilkes.” He nodded his head and held up one hand for Phil to wait a moment.

  “Hello, Bob. What can I do for you?” He already knew the answer, of course. Wilkes was the head of security at the asylum and that meant he took care of seeing to every new arrival. The first order that Roger had put in place when he took over the asylum was that every person who came into the institute was to be met by him as soon as they were signed for.

  “Well sir, the new patient arrived just now and you said you wanted to see him.”

  He said his thanks and then turned back to Harrington. “Let’s finish this a little later, Phil, okay?”

  The man looked at him and nodded. Roger pushed away from his desk and moved past the other doctor, barely even acknowledging him any longer.

  The well-polished linoleum floors almost blurred as he walked. Roger did not believe in walking slowly to his destinations. Travel time reduced his ability to be properly effective. He moved down toward the receiving area and to the single room he kept there for the purpose of interviewing all new patients.

  The interview process was important to keeping h
is hospital running smoothly. He had to assess each person for himself if he was going to understand who was best qualified to handle the new patients. Besides, his methods make it easier to keep up with the frequent reports he demanded of his staff.

  The room where he met the newcomers was Spartan, having only two chairs and a small table. The chairs were bolted down and so was the table. The closest thing to a decoration was the metal ring that was also bolted into the concrete, a small concession to the need for security. Once a new patient was brought in, the cuffs they were wearing were chained to the bolt to stop them from getting overly enthusiastic. The first time he’d actually interviewed a new patient the man had tried to attack him. Even with chains in place, he’d managed to kick Roger in the face. Twelve stitches had taught him that the people he treated were in a maximum-security asylum for a reason.

  He did not believe in letting the guards overhear the sessions between doctors and patients. Some of the topics discussed were exactly the sort of things that could cause the average person to want the patients lynched. So despite his desire to make the new arrivals as comfortable as possible, he still used the anchor and the chains for his own protection. A man had to know his limits.

  The new patient was already in the room when he got there. The guards were positioned outside of the door and nodded to him as he approached. “How’s our new client, gentlemen?”

  “He’s a quiet one, doc.” Bob Wilkes was a man of few words, another thing that Roger liked about him. The man was slim and in shape, an ex-military policeman who had earned Roger’s trust and respect.

  “Well, let’s see if I can get him chatty enough to tell me his name, shall we?”

  Wilkes opened the door and Roger walked in, taking his seat across from the stranger.

  He was older than Roger expected, with short gray hair and a lean, hard form. His face was long and his nose was slightly hawkish. Roger had trouble reading his eyes, mostly because the man was staring hard at the floor.