Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series)

by Douglas Clegg

  Two days earlier, in a ditch at the edge of an orange grove in Caldwell, California, a boy was found, dead, partially mutilated, with bird wings strung on a wire coat hanger, wrapped around his neck.

  Then, another child, a girl this time, again with the torn wings at her neck, this time in San Pascal County.

  "Another angel," one of the cops said, a young female investigator, who was on the scene within two hours' of the second body's discovery.

  The lead investigator, a broad-faced man of fifty said to her, "Let's get some geography on this, and the others."

  "He puts them to sleep," she said. "Then he kills them. Then, this. What do you make of these marks?"

  "Bites," the other detective said. "They're his teeth."

  4

  Suburban hillside, adobe ranch house, modest but lovely, lights on the front porch and in the narrow garden courtyard. Sunday night. The usual TV routine: flipping around forty or so cable channels to find a minute or two of some show or documentary. The TV screen alternated between a story about ancient Egypt on the History Channel, CNN, and the local news show. Settled on the local news, but now and then, Trey Campbell flicked back to CNN.

  Trey Campbell sat up after he and his wife had put the kids to sleep. She was doing the L.A. Times Crossword, wearing her reading glasses, with the bright lamp turned up. Every now and then, she'd ask him a word. "What's a seven letter name of someone who starred in old MGM Musicals?"

  "The whole name?"

  "Just the name."

  "Well, I mean Astaire. Or Garland."

  "Mr. Trivia."

  "It's my brain. It's like I have the most expensive computer chip in my head, and all it remembers are old pop songs and movies. Or what was the name of Henry the Eighth's fifth wife. Or which Wallace and Grommet episode involves sheep. Totally useless. If I could just apply it to solve the problems of the human condition...Hey, what about —" He was about to mention another name of two from the MGM musicals, but had flicked to local news. He kept the sound slightly low, out of respect for his wife's crossword puzzle obsession.

  "I don't think it's either of those. I think there has to be an 'r' as the second letter."

  He'd been hoping to catch the news before going to bed the same night that the third body was found. He'd heard from some buddies across town that there were some kids missing in over in San Pascal County, and when the news piece flashed onscreen he turned the volume back up.

  "— a man that the Inland Empire Daily has dubbed 'The Red Angel' —" And then the news story ended. Trey had missed most of it.

  "Red Angel?" his wife asked. "Weird name for a killer.”

  "Jesus," Trey said. "Somebody's killed kids in San Pascal. This must be the case Elise is being called in to consult on."

  "Dr. Conroy?" Carly had a slight edge to her voice. Conroy was a beautiful woman on top of being an excellent forensic psychiatrist. Carly was rarely jealous of other women, but Conroy, more often than not, looked like a movie star.

  Whenever Carly mentioned Elise's name, it was always with a hint of annoyance that Trey might have to work in close proximity with her. They even joked about it, but he knew not to push that button with his wife.

  "We talked Saturday night. She wouldn't tell me the specifics of the crime, just that some of the detectives had been bringing her in to try and work up a psychological profile of the killer. I just didn't think it was right here. This fast. I thought it was an old case."

  They watched the rest of the news broadcast in silence, but other than the name the local media had just given the kidnapper and killer, not a lot of information was being let out.

  When it was over, he said, "They don't have anything. They wouldn't put this on the news if they did. Not yet. They're trying to get someone to come forward, I'd guess. Awful. Awful. I guess this guy has a strange M.O. for them to call him the Red Angel."

  "Terrible," Carly said. "Makes me want to double check the burglar alarm."

  "What a nightmare for those parents. I can't even imagine," he said. He leaned over and kissed Carly on the forehead. "We're lucky."

  She put the magazine section down, and leaned into him.

  "Sure are."

  "I don't know what I'd do if something...well, not that it will."

  "I'm sure they'll catch the guy. Soon."

  "You never know. Back east with that sniper awhile back, it took longer than anyone thought it would."

  "This one," his wife said, "they'll catch."

  "I wish I knew what this guy was thinking. I wish there was a way the cops could stay a step ahead of him."

  "Don't start that stuff," she said. Sweetly, but firmly.

  It raised its ugly head between them. The conflict.

  How he could sometimes start to think like the psychopaths he worked around at Darden State.

  About getting inside their heads.

  It was a talent he hated, but he had it, and had tried to accept it.

  "I just don't know," he said. "When you're a kid, you think the world is one way. And then you get older, and you grow up, and you get kids of your own. And you know it's never always a good place to be. The world. For those kids. For their parents."

  "I know. It's like we're still living in the jungle, and there's always someone out there, reading to attack," she said. "It's the world. What was it you told me? The predatory nature of human beings."

  "Yeah, but not like that."

  "I don't know. Seems pretty much like that. That's a human monster. You work with them. You know."

  "I work with them where it's safe. Out of their cages..." He didn't finish the thought.

  The weather came up on TV, "Lows in the 20s in the mountains. Good skiing up in Big Bear through the upcoming weekend. White Christmas up in Arrowhead. For those in the Valley, it looks like mild 65 to a high of 70 on Monday, dropping slightly through the week. Chance of showers mid-morning tomorrow, changing to clear skies by evening."

  When he switched the TV off that night, Trey said a prayer for the dead kids, and then another one for his own two children. He went around and double-checked the locks on the door, his nightly ritual for the past several months. Also, triple-checked that the burglar alarm was on and working, it's small yellow light flashing in its white plastic case.

  He tried not to run through, in his head, the killers he'd worked with most of his adult life, as if sifting through them to understand the mind of this new murderer who went after children.

  The Red Angel, he thought. Why do they call you that?

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Moon Lake, California, along the San Bernardino Mountain range, 18 degrees, 3 a.m.

  1

  Outside, cold as hell. Chance of snow likely. Ice along the edges of the roads. Ice hanging from the trees beyond the stone walls of the sacred holy place.

  The chapel of rock.

  The Mad Place.

  Steam and warmth within.

  2

  In the Mad Place, it moves frantically about its business.

  The stench is unbearable. It is waking up what's inside it. The odor of fresh death in its nostrils makes it gasp with desire.

  It doesn't want it to happen, but it's too late.

  Bombs exploding in its head, and the roar of the Other One obliterating its will, it presses its face to the arm, and bites.

  Tongue dry. Breathing hard. Heart pounding too fast.

  Teeth press into skin.

  Bites.

  Savagely.

  Tearing.

  Repeatedly.

  Until there is nothing left on the body to bite.

  The angel whispers a prayer of hellfire and brimstone as the steam comes up against its face.

  Then, it cuts off the bird’s wings.

  3

  Afterward, inspired, it writes in the notebook that it has titled, Revelations.

  AND SO I SAW THE GREAT BEAST ARISE AND TAKE WITH IT THE INNOCENT LAMB, TEARING ITS FLESH, BUT THE ANGEL OF THE L
ORD HAS COME AND SAVED THE INNOCENT ONE FROM THE FIRES OF PERDITION.

  It tears out this page, and crumples it up and sets it in the small hand.

  It feels relief.

  It feels heaven shining on it.

  It knows it’s alive, because it is covered with sweat. It feels the warmth of a thousand suns upon its skin. It feels that all-encompassing love, that acceptance.

  Transcendence itself.

  It basks in the heat of the eternal as it senses its own breathing, stomping, maddening life with wonder.

  Ah.That's what it expresses. Ah.

  Then, second later, it feels the pounding in its head again.

  The chill returns.

  The lifeless, mutilated body of a child in its arms.

  Sacrifice.

  4

  It hasn’t slept in four days because the voice of the Other One doesn’t stop.

  It comes home at three a.m. It is weary. It is tired of resisting. Tired of what it must do.

  It has to go out again in a few minutes. It has to make its run, and find another one.

  But it’s hungry, and it needs to get in from the cold.

  It needs its mother.

  Its old dog, Jojo, looks up from beside the fireplace, a slight wag of the worn old tail, and then head down again on the little wool rug, back to doggy dreamland. The dog is better than people, it thinks. Dogs are better because they don’t keep anything in cages. Dogs are better because they bite when they want. Dogs are better because they love.

  Music from the 1940s is playing on the old turntable: Glenn Miller. The place is all muted reds and browns and greens and yellows, between the fabric on the couch and chairs to the ceramic figurines over the mantel, above the glowering fire. The smells of stew coming in from the kitchen mingled with the faint but undeniable stink of urine, and the heavy brown stench of old cigarette smoke that never leaves the cabin. Years of smoking in the little house leave its marks in stains on the green curtains. There are four rooms, all of them small. This is the only home it has ever known.

  It steps in and wanders first to the bathroom to relieve itself.

  After this kind of night, it has to relieve the pressure of its bladder, which has been building up.

  It looks at its face in the little square of mirror above the toilet, and sees the scratches and raised welts that cover it. Like wax melted over its skin.

  The sound of the television in the living room. Like shouting. It hates that kind of noise, but she likes the TV and music on when she’s alone. She doesn’t like to think she’s by herself, and it doesn’t like her to feel that way.

  No one should be alone, it thinks. Devil comes out when you’re alone.

  It just got in, snow in its hair. It tosses its coat over the back of the flower-print sofa, and is about to go to the fridge for a Coke or a beer, but its mother calls to it. It checks the windows for faces, but sees none. Piles of clothes in a corner.

  It wants its supper, but it doesn’t want her to feel bad, so it goes into her bedroom, where the piss smell is heavier, but cloaked with perfume that smells like orange blossoms. The bedroom has the dolls in the corner and her paperback books in piles near the window that has been covered over with plastic sheeting and duct tape to keep the wind out. The tubes are there, and the bed, and it has to check her levels so that she won’t have pain. Her pills are all lined up, and it gives puts them in a small Dixie Cup and passes them to her. It gets a glass of water, one of many on a nearby table, and watches as she drinks it down.

  It is weary from the previous night and keeping the Other One out of its head.

  It sits beside its mother, and strokes her hand because she likes it to do that. She is a smart woman. It has known that all its life, and she cared for it when it was just a little boy, and it is grateful for that because it doesn’t think it would have lived. But it had the thing inside it already, the Other One, and she couldn’t know about that. She couldn’t know what it had to deal with to keep the Other One, the Real One, in its cage. She had simply loved it for who it was, and it served her, and wanted her to sleep peacefully at night.

  It completely loves her, and loves everyone, because it is a loving being, and it only wants what’s best for those around it. It’s the Other One that is the monster, and it doesn’t even like thinking the name of the Other One for fear that the cage will start rattling again.

  “Where you been all night?” She asks.

  It doesn’t want to tell her, just like it never told her when it was a child that it lived in the darkness and watched what happened when the birds started flying and when its other half felt the scraping and cleaning and purifying.

  “I was callin’ and callin’. That girl been callin’ too, you need to go get her, she says, at four or she’s gonna just get a room down there, and I told her to get a room if she has to and never come back. I don’t know how you put up with her. Don’t give me that look. Yes I know her name is Monica. Monica Monica Monica. I hear that name and it makes me want to spit. And I got a pain in my back.” It tells her to turn over slightly, and it begins rubbing the middle of her back, because it’s where she hurts the most and when the pain gets to be the worst, it gives her a massage like this and she feels better.

  “Read to me,” she says, reaching near her waist, feeling for the book she’s left there. “Read me from this one.”

  It picks up the small paperback book with the yellowed pages. On the cover, a muscular young man with blazingly brilliant blond hair that luxuriously falls down his back as if he’s meant to be the princess rather than the prince, embraces a scantily clad woman whose breasts burst forth from her tunic. She is wrapping her arms around his bare waist, her head tossed back lightly. It is called Gladiator’s Conquest.

  It opens the book to the dog-eared page.

  It begins reading, its voice a ragged whisper.

  “Louder,” the old woman says. “I can’t hear a god-blessed word.”

  It doesn't notice what it's reading to her. It hears what it thinks is a child mewling outside, and it panics a little, because the child can’t run now.

  The woman interrupts, "I think you need to rest up, baby. I think you've got to get out there in a few hours. You don't need to stay up like this. How about a little sleep? You're so good to me. But maybe you need a little sleep." Her voice is feeble and raspy, so he goes to get her a glass of water.

  "Here you go," it says, bringing the water to her.

  "What is it?"

  "Water."

  "Just water?"

  "That's it," it says, and sits back down beside her, holding the glass for her while her twisted hands gather around its hands as it tips it up to her lips. After a sip or two, her throat clears and she sounds better. "I think you need some sleep," she says.

  It nods. "I got too much to get done right now. I can sleep later. You might want to sleep."

  "Read me some more. Please. Oh, please," she says, then takes another sip from the glass, a sound in her throat as if she is greedy for water.

  "Nurse's gonna be here in an a couple hours," it tells her. "Sleep till then."

  It feels the Other One, the one in the cage in its head, begin to snarl and snap like a mad dog, and it lets go of its mother’s hand, and checks the tubes to make sure they’re clear, and then it tells her that it needs to go finish some business. It reads the book as loud as it can, but even with it nearly shouting out the story of the woman in the book as she feels the man pressed into her “his throbbing pressed against her femaleness, she wanted the heat of him more than life itself,” it hears the child.

  A little bird chirping in the woods.

  Its mother says, "I bet it's gonna snow today. It'd be nice to have more snow. It makes the world all clean and ready for Jesus at Christmas time. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? Pure clean snow. Just like your daddy liked."

  "If it snows," it says, "then Betty can't get here. You don't want that, do you? We love Betty."

  "Well, you'll be her
e if she can't," its mother says. "You are such a good son. Such a good boy. I don't like that damn nurse that much anyway. Sticking me with her needles. Giving me those awful pills."

  "They help with your pain." It couldn't bring itself to say the C word. It could barely use the word "hospice" without starting to feel like it just wanted to go into the Mad Place and just let the Other One out for good.

  "You help with my pain," she says.

  Its mother smiles, feebly, and it can tell she is already drifting into sleep and peace, which is what she needs. It closes the paperback, and sets it back down on the bed.

  It stands, and feels the throbbing in its skull as the mad dog in its head rattles the cage and begins howling.

  It wonders if its mother can hear the howling, but it is working hard to keep its mask on, to keep the muzzle on, at least until it gets out the door, out into the snowy night.

  It must stop the child from making noise. Little bird chirping.

  The child keeps crying.

  It can't keep the Other One in the cage any longer.

  The Devil wants to come out and play.

  Chapter Two

  The Inland Empire Valley, 68 degrees, 5:30 a.m.

  1

  There's a vastness to the area of Southern California called the Inland Empire. It is a sea of land that stretches beneath snow-topped mountains, a valley that leads to the great desert beyond. Pockmarked and cratered by foothills and flatlands, endless tract houses near the freeway, beautiful homes and mansions up near the hills, it was once home to one of the biggest citrus-growing industries in the world. The old towns, like San Pascal and Redlands and Riverside, are beautiful and somehow untouched since rising out of the orange groves in the early 20th century.