“Me, too.” He shook his head, “She was having a fling with a patient. I saw it coming. I spoke with her about it. Next week, I was going to take her out of that building and put her in another one. I probably should’ve fired her for getting involved, but I wasn’t completely positive that anything was going on. I should’ve acted sooner. I didn’t think she’d really fall for his act. She must’ve trusted him.”
Carly’s eyes widened, “You’re kidding. Why would someone do something that stupid?”
“If you’re at all vulnerable, and inexperienced, it happens. The guy’s a sociopath. He found her weakness, and he went for it. She probably had never been in love before, and here’s this young good-looking guy who seems perfectly normal, and she’s with him all night long, talking, laughing. Only she doesn’t know that he’s planning something for her. He’s not like she is, he does things for effect, he does things only to get something for himself, because to him, she’s not even real. To him, she’s just an object, like a lamp or a doll.”
“Sometimes,” Carly began, “when I hear about those things at your work, it makes me not so sure that we live in a decent world.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I sure hope nothing else happens this week.”
“He’ll beep me if anything does,” Trey said, holding the beeper up, about to put it back in his shirt pocket.
Carly made a grab for it, got the beeper, dropped her postcards, and said, “oh, no he won’t. No more beeps.” She laughed, and he wasn’t sure what she was going to do. She took it, and ran down to the boat, and by the time she threw the beeper in the water, he was running for her.
“No, Carly!” he said, but as soon as the infernal thing fell beneath the slight waves, he was somehow relieved. He had never been far from that beeper for the past ten years. Then, to his own surprise, he started laughing. He knew it was awful to be laughing after a co-worker had been murdered, probably sadistically. Nothing surprised or shocked him anymore, not after what he’d seen at Darden, the eyes smeared on the walls, the man who tore his own penis and testicles off with his bare hands, the woman who took a light bulb, broke it, and in front of him and Jim, sliced her nipples off. It wasn’t just a hospital for the criminally insane, and it was more than just the archaic notion of a madhouse, it was humanity laid bare, with both its brilliance and its brutality.
Trey stood at the edge of the dock on Catalina Island and laughed, shocked that he could do so after the morning’s tragedy. He could not stop for ten minutes.
He had trained Donna Howe in procedure.
He had tried to reach out to Rob Fallon, to try to make him understand how he had hurt people and how that was bad.
He had failed on all counts.
He could not stop them from doing what they were compelled to do.
Donna Howe needed love, and Rob Fallon needed scalps.
It almost occurred to him then.
11
They ate lunch at one of the restaurants along the boardwalk. Trey ordered yellowtail and a salad, but didn’t eat very much of it. Carly carefully avoided seafood, and opted for a hamburger. Neither spoke much during lunch. Trey’s mind was on Darden State again, and he was fighting to put it out of his head.
At one point, she asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
He nodded.
“If you want to talk about this, we can,” she said, and sipped her coffee.
After lunch, they strolled back up to the small cottage they were renting, set up against the hills just beyond the Zane Grey Hotel. As far as Trey was concerned, the place was costing them a small fortune, but it was beautiful, had a washer, dryer, a swimming pool, and a deck with a barbecue. In the mornings, he and Carly sat up in bed and watched deer cross the yard, heading for the stand of trees up against the hills. He joked that it seemed nicer than their house in Redlands. Once he saw the cottage, nestled as it was up in the hills above the sea, he knew it would be worth any expense. The sitter, too, was fairly expensive, but not much more so than Mrs. Quinlan, who watched the kids after school back home.
“And this is our summer vacation,” Carly had reminded him. “What little there is of it.”
Catalina’s living area was small. The town of Avalon was no more than several streets that ended almost abruptly beyond these first hills. It reminded him of postcards he’d seen of the Mediterranean—blue and white and yellow buildings on a hillside over a blue expanse of sea. The town was packed in tight with shops and summer houses, as if these were exiled from the rest of the island. There were campgrounds and nature preserves beyond Avalon, but most of the tourists stayed in town and rode the golf carts around the hills for entertainment, or took horses up the trails, or the glass-bottom boat out into the harbor. He and Carly had come to the island years ago and stayed a few weekends, and then had forgotten its existence as a quick southern California get-away until they planned this trip. The choice had been either spend the cash and drive up the coast to do a little touring, or drop a bundle on a little sea-side place. Carly had won, as usual, because she wanted something relaxing, away from cars and especially work.
Now, with the beeper buried at sea, she got everything she wanted.
The screen door to the cottage was closed, but the inner door was wide open. Trey didn’t like this. Although Catalina seemed a safe enough place, he wasn’t sure that it was so far from the criminals and gangsters of the mainland. He opened the screen door, and went in ahead of his wife. Something about that morning’s call to Jimmy Anderson made him nervous. Okay, so the Hatcher woman was still in her cuffs, still in bed...but the genitals in Fallon’s hand just didn’t add up for Fallon. Fallon would kill you as look at you, but he wasn’t a sadist, and his problems didn’t seem to center around sexuality.
Carly said, “What is it? Something wrong?”
“Just my instinct,” Trey said, turning around to look at the silhouette of his wife against the sun’s reflection on the Pacific. “You want a beer?”
“I want you, big boy,” she said, stepping into the house, letting the door slam behind her. “Actually, what I really want is to get back to my big fat murder mystery. I wonder when Jenny’ll be back with the kids.”
Then, they both heard a loud splash out back in the pool, and Trey went to get a beer from the fridge. “I guess Jenny’s back. And I guess Mark’s still trying to swim.”
“Get me an iced tea and meet me out poolside, stud,” Carly said. “And bring the camera—I don’t want to miss Marky’s first swim.”
Jenny Reed, the local girl they’d hired for the week, was trying to teach Mark how to do the Australian crawl, but the eight-year-old would have none of it. Teresa, eleven, was an expert swimmer, and had never been afraid of the water. She sat on the edge of the small kidney-shaped pool and sneered at her brother’s chicken-heartedness. They both seemed to have wisdom beyond their years, to Trey, who often felt that his children were smarter than their old man.
Carly had a book in one hand, and was pointing at Mark with the other. “Just pretend you’re like Free Willy, Mark, you know, diving over the rocks.” Then, she set the book on her lap and started reading, only looking up now and then to give Trey camera instructions.
Ever since they’d bought the video camera, when Mark had been a newborn, Trey had hated lugging it all over the place, but he had to admit that the memories it preserved were worth it. He got a nice shot of Carly shooing him away so she could read. and then, Teresa, making a neat dive off the edge of the pool. Mark just sat, his feet in the water, and refused to get in. When he turned the camera to Jenny, she blushed. She was sixteen, and blond, and had a kind of sparkling personality. She didn’t talk a lot, but she seemed smart, and the kids loved her.
Trey turned the video camera back to Mark, who looked at the water, now less afraid for some reason.
Mark told the camera, “I can see me in the pool.”
Trey laughed. “You can? Why don’t you tell us what me looks like.”
&n
bsp; “Me doesn’t look scared, I know that.”
Teresa asked, “Oh, so you’re not a fraidy-cat anymore?”
In the camera, with the sunlight filtering through the bougainvillea-shrouded trelliswork, Trey’s daughter looked as if she was only half-there—the other half in shade, vanishing. She looked so much like her mother it was amazing. She would be just as beautiful, and she was smarter than her old man.
Back to Mark, who said, “I guess me isn’t a fraidy-cat. Look,” he said, touching his reflection. “Me is gone.”
And then he stood on the edge of the pool, looked at his father and the camera and said, “Is it okay, Daddy, to get in?”
“Of course, Marky. Just jump. The water’s not deep. Terry’ll help if you have trouble.”
“I don’t want her to,” his son said, “Will you help, Daddy, if something bad happens? Like if I can’t get out? Like if something’s down at the bottom?”
“Nothing to be afraid of.”
His son shook his head. “Lots of things down at the bottom.”
“It’s just like the mirror at home, son. That’s all.”
Mark looked at the pool, at his father, into the video camera’s eye. Just as he was about to jump in, Trey had an urge to stop him, grab him, and keep him from getting in, to keep him from anything that might hurt him.
Keep him safe.
But a second later, Mark was splashing around the pool, doing a modified dog paddle.
Carly looked up from her book, took her sunglasses off and cheered.
Trey kept shooting the video, because he knew it would be archival. One day when Mark was twenty-five and a father himself, Trey could show this to him, show him how scary it could be to watch your son take a step towards the unknown.
It wasn’t until one thirty in the afternoon that his brain had pieced together what had happened back at Darden State that morning.
And what it might mean to him, if his hunch were correct.
Jenny took the kids down to go to the movies. Carly was taking a nap. He heard sea gulls overhead, crying out.
Trey made some coffee and picked the phone up. He dialed work. What he had thought of earlier in the day had grown into a theory.
Donna Howe needed love, and Rob Fallon needed scalps.
The phone rang six or seven times. He knew that when there was an attack or disappearance on the ward, that there was so much confusion that the phones were not always attended to. He had once been there during a riot, and he and his staff were so busy that they hadn’t even bothered to buzz in the riot control police who would’ve ended the problem swiftly.
Run for the phone, Jim. Come on.
He felt certain of the outcome of the call before the line was even picked up on the other end.
12
Trey said, “Jim? I want you to go check Agnes Hatcher’s bed.”
“I told you already, we checked it. Look, Fallon’s in the bouncing room, and we’ve had the cops come through looking for the body—”
Trey cut him off. “I don’t give a damn, Jimmy, now just do what I tell you. Anybody feed her yet? Hatcher have lunch?”
An almost petulant silence ensued. Then, “I don’t know.”
Trey sighed, exasperated. He took a couple of deep breaths, because his first instinct was to chew Jim Anderson out. But Anderson was good. He generally knew what he was doing. He just didn’t know Agnes Hatcher all that well. “I’m willing to bet no one has fed her. I’m willing to bet she’s lying in that bed, with her restraints loose, waiting for someone to come feed her.”
“Here, Billy, I’ve got the log.” Trey could hear the papers being riffled through. He could almost hear the desperation in Jim’s voice, as if Jim were beginning to fear that Trey’s hunch might be correct. “It says—all right, it says she hasn’t eaten yet. Says she was still knocked out at breakfast. Asleep. Her meds were heavy last night. She didn’t fall asleep until four thirty a.m. Paulsen did the lunch log—she told me that she went into Hatcher’s room today at one with the bedpan, only she was still asleep.” Jim paused. He whispered into the phone, “Billy, they heard her snoring for god’s sakes.” Another pause.
Trey was sure that Jim was getting worried. It was like they all had a panic button related to some of the inmates. A panic button that was so easy to push, and when pushed: a bomb went off somewhere.
In a more normal tone, Jim continued, “You know what a live wire Hatcher can be. Paulsen decided not to wake her. I know it’s negligent, but you know nobody likes dealing with Hatcher. They’ll try feeding her in about twenty minutes.”
Trey cursed under his breath. “No, Jim, here’s what you’re going to do. Get a couple of the big guys—maybe Howie and Dave—and get down to Hatcher’s room right now, and if a cop’s around, get him, too. My take is that Hatcher is lying there in that bed with blood on her face, and her hands are loose. She’s tried this before. This is what she did on the outside.”
Jim gasped. It occurred to Trey that Jim was not aware of the method of Hatcher’s crimes.
“Look, Jim. Before D ward nicknamed her the Gorgon, she was called The Surgeon. She operated on people while they were still alive. She removed parts of their bodies based on what she felt was wrong with them. If Rob Fallon was having sex with Donna Howe, Agnes Hatcher would see her sex organs as what was wrong with Donna. What was causing her to be bad. I’m telling you, it’s Hatcher’s M.O.” Trey waited for a response, but all he heard was Jim’s breathing. “I’m telling you, she’s lying in that bed waiting for someone to pull the covers back. She’s waiting to attack again. When you go in, be ready for a fight. Get some more restraints. Take a metal rod with you, something you can pry between her teeth if she tries to bite and lock her jaws on you.” It took so long for Jim to respond again, Trey felt like slamming the phone down.
“She’s drugged up,” Jim said. “You’d think she was a pit bull. She’s just a patient. She’s got so much junk in her, I doubt she can lift a finger.”
Trey chuckled at the younger man’s naiveté. Graveyard humor was a staple of Ward D. “You’ve only seen her for the past four years, Jimmy. I knew her when. I know what she can do.”
“Okay, boss, I’ll do what you want. And if you’re wrong, you owe me a hundred come Tuesday, deal?”
“Deal. Look, my beeper’s not working. Just call me back,” Trey said. He gave Jim the number to the cottage, and then hung up.
13
In his office at Darden, Jim Anderson scratched his head. The entire morning had been like a migraine about to descend upon him, and he had swallowed enough aspirin to kill a horse. Still, his head was pounding. The flickering overhead lights, all fluorescent bulbs needing replacement, compounded the headache.
It made him angry that he had to follow Campbell’s orders again, given all the crap coming down that morning,. He’d been hoping to prove himself to his superior. It seemed now that he was proving just how incompetent he could be at handling problems. He glanced at Rita Paulsen, who was pushing a rolling tray of meds and juice cups. Two psych techs were walking with the pretty recreational therapist down the hall towards the Game Room. A patient was screaming in South Wing, but that was for Lewis to handle.
Who would’ve thought that somewhere on this hall, a woman was murdered, her body hidden, her genitals cut off?
The police were still there, an invisible presence, for they were down in Ward A getting coffee. Jim didn’t feel they were that necessary, except for incarcerating Rob Fallon yet again, this time in a less psychiatric-friendly prison—but that would come later, after Rob had underwent yet another trial for murder and another psychiatric evaluation. Cops just got in the way, Jim thought. They tended to be brutish and nasty about the inmates; Jim felt a kind of paternal concern for the psychos on his shift. Thank god they’re out of my hair for now.
But they’d be back soon, sniffing around for Donna’s body. Jim had no doubt that she was stuffed into some locker or cupboard somewhere on the hall. It wasn’t
the first time a staff member had bitten it, but it was the first time, to Jim’s knowledge, that it had been a woman murdered. And one as seemingly competent as Donna Howe. Only Rob Fallon would know where her body lay, and he wasn’t going to start talking ‘til his shrink showed up.
“Rita,” Jim said. “You want to hear something funny?”
Rita Paulsen looked up from the tray. She was not very bright, nor was she particularly competent, but she was tough on the job. She had a face like an angel, but she could hold down a patient in the middle of a psychotic rage if the situation arose. She was definitely an asset to the ward. “What’s up?” she asked.
“That was Campbell on the phone. He thinks that Hatcher killed Donna. Says she’s in her bed waiting for us.” He laughed thinking of how absurd the idea was. He had a laugh like a bull elephant. It echoed down the ward. “Ever since he shot that guy in his backyard, he’s been completely paranoid.”
Rita shook her head, “Can’t blame him, given this place. But, let’s face it, if Hatcher had wanted to get us, she would’ve done it earlier. I was in there. She was snoring like a baby, you know, same old same old.” Rita looked at her watch. “Well, we can test out his theory. You want to come with me to go feed the Gorgon?”
Gorgon was Hatcher’s nickname among some of the staff. They were all afraid of her eyes, because she seemed smarter and more watchful than the other patients. Although that was not the reason for the cloth over her face. The cloth was there because if the staff needed to feed her or be anywhere near her face, she had a mean overbite. Still, the face-cloth added to the myth of the Gorgon.
“Okay,” Jim said. “Sure. Let’s go feed the Gorgon. But I don’t want to look at her. Last time I did, it was like she was studying me for something.”
“For her next meal,” Rita Paulsen grinned. “Ready?”
14
Agnes Hatcher’s room had been an enormous walk-in refrigerator twenty years before. Then it was converted into a room for a patient named Emily Freund who had murdered her children and spent most of her life trying to tear the flesh off her own bones. The refrigerator walls were knocked out, and the room expanded, but it was again reinforced with steel doors. Most patients were able to come and go at certain times of the day, but Agnes, owing to her constant violent and aggressive tendencies, was restrained almost ‘round the clock. In the afternoon, she was allowed to stand for four hours, restrained with her arms up in straps and her feet secured near the floor. She had one hour of exercise a day, in another room, almost a cell, by herself. A television monitor played an exercise tape, if she so chose to do calisthenics. But the majority of the rest of her life would be spent in that bed, strapped in, face covered. To outsiders, this often seemed horrifying.
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 4