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

by Douglas Clegg

  Her motto was, if you go, go big or just don't go at all.

  She'd been taught it by her mother, even after her father had tried to discourage her from getting into police work.

  She intended to go big and make her mark in homicide investigations. She had wanted to do this ever since reading her first true crime novel, ever since first studying forensics and criminal justice in college.

  She had passed all the physical agility requirements of the San Pascal County Sheriff's office, and had advanced to working homicide, assisting mainly with cases as a liaison between Homicide and the CDRT (the Child Death Review Team), which generally had meant assessing, along with the coroner, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome cases and not much else. She had stepped up to this job because it was the only one available when she got into the department, but soon discovered that it was halfway to social work and never quite as effective.

  But the past week had become more active.

  Someone was hunting.

  Jane knew about hunters. Her brother had been a hunter. Not the kind with a rifle, in the woods, in deer season.

  But the kind who hunted people.

  In this case, the hunter wanted children.

  Chapter Nine

  1

  Jane blotted out other thoughts while firing at the outline of a man's form on the paper sheets at the practice range. For a fleeting second, she imagined it was Fasteau.

  She was sick of the desk aspect to her work, and wanted to get involved more with homicide rather than the mountains of paperwork required of working on cases with the coroner and his assistants. As far as she was considered, she was a glorified administrative assistant who now and then got called in on investigations when nobody else was available to get coffee or call up potential witnesses.

  She had been thrilled that Tryon and Sykes had called her in to do work with their team on a new manhunt that was just forming.

  She would not be at the desk that day. She would not be checking fingerprints or brainstorming with detectives who liked using her for her brain but didn't want her stepping on their toes in the field.

  It had to do with the kidnapping and murders of the children.

  So far, two girls and a boy.

  She had been on the scene for the victim found in the orange grove in Mentone, called in because of her work with the Child Death Task Force. She was the bone that San Pascal threw to the other counties whenever something happened that involved kids.

  None of the other investigators liked the paperwork involved with those cases.

  Or the fact that they'd have to work a lot of databases with CASMIRC, the FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resources Center.

  Since she'd begun working on Child Death investigations, this had rarely been an issue. Usually, it was a case of accidental death, murder in a family or with a specific neighbor. Kidnapping generally had not been the issue. Once it was, the Bureau stepped in.

  But the county sheriffs of the tri-county area (including San Bernardino, Riverside, and San Pascal) liked their teams to catch these killers fast. It made things easier, and kept the communities both safe and quiet.

  Tryon, the Sheriff's Investigator from Riverside, had called her onto this one. Normally, a San Pascal County detective trainee wouldn't be called to cross county lines, but because of the body found in the San Pascal Canyon two days' earlier, this was a special case, and Jane headed the Task Force on child death. She could be called in on cases of this nature in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, if need be. Although she intended to move more into general homicide as her career advanced, she was currently the one called in most for child death cases.

  Jane Laymon came off the firing range, her Glock, holstered, her black t-shirt blotched with sweat, her arm sore from the constant firing.

  The call, relayed to her by another trainee, had come from Tryon in the Riverside office, and it had carried with it a note of "urgent." She jogged through the line-up of trainees waiting their turn at the range, and saw Fasteau leaning against his dusty old black and white Caprice Classic, a car that should've been retired several years before, out by the road. Fasteau saw himself as an old-fashioned gunslinger of a cop. She disliked him. She had to work with him. She couldn't wait for a change in partner.

  The sun was just coming up across the snow-capped mountains in the distance. That was the thing with southern California winters: snow on San Gorgonio while it was seventy degrees in the valley of the Inland Empire. The breath of the dry desert to the east came up with the sun.

  "Nice wheels," she said.

  "Best I could do," Fasteau said, a look on his face that was indecipherable. "How was practice?"

  "Enlightening." She passed him, going over to the passenger's side of the truck. She opened the door and slide into the wide front seat.

  "Hit the target this time?"

  "Let's go," was all she said in response.

  "Ready for this?"

  "Well, if I can't shoot maybe I can just look at dead bodies."

  He shot her a dark glance. "What the fuck." It was his favorite phrase, and she was fairly sure he used it whenever his small reptilian brain reached an impasse.

  "Fasteau. Let's just go."

  "No. I'm like what the fuck. Bam. Bam. Bam. We got kids falling out of the sky on us."

  I'm stuck with a damn idiot cowboy instead of a cop.

  When Fasteau pulled the car out the dusty drive, she asked, "Where did he kill?"

  "We don't know. The body was moved. Between Caldwell and Bannock.”

  “The Santa Ana River,” she said. "Right on the line."

  “Down in the wash. Our guy put him between counties. All the unincorporated areas. He’s bright. Ice cold water, to try and screw up evidence. Three counties. Riverside, San Bernardino, San Pascal. The one on the other side of Caldwell was in water, too. An irrigation ditch. We need to get this guy," she said. “Do we have to draw straws to see who works this one?”

  “It’s a political nightmare,” Fasteau said. “Kids getting killed. They've got some guys working on it, but it's stuck with Riverside and us. The boogeyman is loose. Once it hit the news, people start feeling like it’s an epidemic.”

  "Hate to tell you, it hit the news last night."

  "Can't Tryon keep them out of it. Ever?"

  "Maybe he wants a little media. Maybe it'll flush out a witness. The Bureau in on it yet?"

  "Sure as the rain will fall."

  "I know what Tryon wants. He wants to keep the Bureau out of this. He wants to get the guy fast. I wish we could get some of L.A.'s resources in on this."

  "We got state coming in after three today to confer. All out manhunt, that's what's on the agenda."

  "Jesus," she said, glancing off in the distance as they merged onto the 10 freeway, "This is number three."

  "One for each day," he said.

  "Let's hope there's no number four," she said. "We're not getting this guy fast enough."

  "I know. What the fuck. That's what I say."

  "Clean up the language a little," Jane said.

  "Can't help it. I was raised in a barn. Jesus, Jane, killing kids, dumping them, but taking the time to tie little wings on them. Hark the Herald angels sing. Like it's a Christmas pageant."

  "I know," she said. "Makes you wish you could change the world. Just get rid of the predators."

  "The way you shoot," he said. "It'll never happen."

  2

  Thirty-five minutes later, she stood over the crime scene: a rift in the white gravel of the wash, the gray reeds and sprays of yellow grass rising up along the river bank. In the middle of the river, a clump of gray trees. At the edge of the riverbank, an orange inflatable raft. They'd already removed the victim from the trees. She glanced at the others.

  Hard as hell to keep a crime scene clean in the middle of a river.

  Tryon's probably already pissed off.

  A couple of detectives stood together, talking, smoking their cigar
ettes. Mills and Walker, and they both were condescending assholes to her. They were from San Bernardino and Caldwell, out in Moreno Valley. Every county was pitching in on this one. The manhunt was gearing up fast.

  The killer was gearing up, too.

  Sykes and Tryon at the river's edge. Tryon glanced back, waved.

  She was the rookie. They were the experienced ones.

  They treated her the way she suspected they treated all young woman. Looked at her breasts, and then assumed her brain was smaller than theirs.

  She had to put up with it, to a point.

  But she did her job, regardless.

  It was what she had been born to do: investigate crimes. It had been her hobby, her interest, the way her brain was wired.

  This case was a shot. It wouldn't be handed to her.

  If she was going to crack it, it would be on her own.

  The sun, nearly up in the sky. The grumbly sounds of traffic out toward Corona.

  The day had begun.

  Jane Laymon went over to where the victim lay on the sandy ground, alongside the banks of the river.

  Chapter Ten

  1

  Leaning over the body.

  Caucasian, female, age 8, brown, brown.

  Gina Parsons.

  They already knew the name.

  When rich white kids got taken, things happened fast. It was the underbelly of criminal investigation. Nobody in the department talked about it much, but it was there. Black, Latino, Asian — it took longer to get those investigations going. She intended to change that. She intended to make things better. And it wasn't just because she was half-Native American or "Indio," as Fasteau often reminded her, annoyingly, when he nastily suggested once that she try a bow and arrow instead of a Glock.

  It was because kidnapping kids, rich, poor, white, brown, every single one of them deserved the same resources.

  But it was true: the richer the kid, the whiter the kid, the more news got out and the more pressure came to bear on the investigation. Kids went missing all over, but it was when a white kid from an upper middle class background went missing, and the media was all over it and resources were marshaled to get that kid and get the kidnapper.

  Gina Parson was not lucky.

  But the next kid might be if the manhunt kicked into gear as rapidly as it seemed to be going. The FBI would be on it; three counties would be on it; and the hardest part was going to be blocking the media so that law enforcement could get the job done with a minimum of interference.

  2

  She crouched down, careful not to touch anything. Not until they started bagging evidence.

  The victim had been laid out on the river bank by the first cop on the scene. Mistake number one, she thought, but let it go. There had been no way to really secure the place where the killer had put the body.

  She took a mental picture before too much got going: no blood on the corpse, but traces of red and pink around the white bird wings.

  Red angel, white wings with a touch of red.

  Some violence to the corpse.

  Features partially obliterated.

  If this one is anything like the others, she was dead before you hurt her.

  You put her to sleep first. So she wouldn't feel anything. So that she was already gone. Dead.

  Then, you made her this angel.

  She closed her eyes for a second, wishing the world was not such a terrible place.

  Trying not to imagine the last moments.

  She heard the sound of an approaching vehicle.

  Shouts already came from the cops out on the road.

  She glanced up to the edge of the highway.

  A white news van with Los Angeles-based call letters had arrived.

  "Damn it." She stood up, but watched as Tryon barked at the cops to keep them out of the crime scene.

  A camera-man got out of the back of the van, and some reporter came around from the other side of it.

  "What a job they got," she said, under her breath.

  Fasteau, coming up beside her, chuckled. "I like that one reporter. The blonde. She's hot."

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  IST, NGI, MDO, SVP.

  These are the main categories of patients at Darden State.

  Incompetent to Stand Trial. Not Guilty by reason of Insanity. Mentally Disordered Offender. Sexually Violent Predator.

  IST, NGI, MDO, SVP.

  The Darden State Hospital is officially called The Darden State Hospital for Criminal Justice.

  The unofficial title: The Darden State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

  Those who are incarcerated there are termed, by the state, "forensics patients."

  2

  Darden State is surrounded by razor-wire double-fencing, and then a third electric sensor and electric shock fence in between those two. It further ensures its own security with redundant electronic detection systems, as well as an outside patrol from the Department of Corrections, 24/7. There has been at least one catastrophic escape from Darden in the past 12 months, and the hospital cannot afford another such error.

  Within the fences, its twenty-three acres are neatly manicured. A fruit and vegetable cooperative has been running successfully on six acres of land since 1972 when it was begun in order to provide a productive outlet for inmates. The mild southern California winters allow the crops of apples, lettuce, oranges, tomatoes, and melon to flourish year 'round. This is both a form of therapy for the patients and a source of pride. But as patients’ rights became stronger, other activities and pastimes were added. The in-house newspaper was begun, written and published by inmates.

  Following this, briefly, a television production room was used for the inmates to broadcast their concerns within the gates of Darden. This was discontinued after three months when a riot occurred as a result of a broadcast. During the riot, in the spring of 1997, six men were killed, and three left in critical condition. No staff was involved, as the rule on the Wards is that once a riot breaks, the staff immediately leave the Ward and the doors are locked down. When killing between inmates takes place on the state hospital grounds, such as happened with the deaths during this particular riot, the investigation is minimal and charges are generally not filed. Darden State is, after all, a hospital that incarcerates sociopathic murderers, serial killers, and those few sane inmates unfortunate enough to have copped the insanity plea upon the heels of their very sane and well-thought out murders.

  Darden is nearly a city unto itself. It holds upwards of eight hundred inmates, as well as five hundred staff, on three daily shifts. Staff includes psychiatrists, nurses, aides, orderlies, cafeteria and laundry workers, recreational counselors, social workers, and a distinct breed of workers called psychiatric technicians or psych techs. These are generally well-educated staff, specifically trained to work with the category of patient at Darden. The psych tech comes to understand the unpredictable nature of Darden State’s criminally insane population in a way that the psychiatrist, who only sees the patient one hour a week, will never know.

  There is occasionally a labile patient who requires more than one staff member at a time for supervision. A labile patient is one that is slow moving, apparently slow thinking also; then, all at once, he or she turns into a tornado and because the greatest threat to the individual standing nearest. A labile patient is rare; oddly enough, most patients seem fine. They seem normal. In fact, they seem extremely ordinary in this world of walls and fences and locked doors.

  There is no one incarcerated at Darden State who has not murdered or at the very least, been accused of murdering someone, but there are varying degrees of murders and murderers. The average term of incarceration is forty years, although several patients are released by their fifteenth year based on the court-decreed criterion of whether or not they are threats to the outside world. Occasionally, a psychiatrist will deem a young recent arrival to be not a threat to the outside world, in spite of a murder. Occasionally, such a patient sp
ends less than two years in Darden State. That is, if a panel of psychiatrists, mental health officials and a presiding judge clears him or her.

  The size of an inmate’s room is determined by both state and federal standards. There must be a locker, a bed, and a chair. The room is ten feet long by eight wide. There must be a two inch fire door, with a small porthole window for outside observers. There are also three, four, and six -man bedrooms. Clothes are all khaki for the men, and dark brown pants and khaki shirts for the women. A note: Especially dangerous patients have wrist to waist restraints and one-to-one staff observation. Orange shirts and large ID tags are worn whenever the patients are working outside, in the grounds, in a specially funded program called Living and Learning.

  There is one new designation: a special dormitory with six rooms in it.

  These are for the most violent of the human predators that enter Darden State.

  These are the six forensics patients who have been labeled with a designation previously unused in the state of California. They have been transferred from each of the facilities in the state, specifically to Darden, which has received special funds for their care.