Mary-Louise lit up another cigarette, took a swift puff off of it, and said, "Well, seeing her and then seeing Jean, it was like night and day. That's why I didn't mind Jean being here. When she kept up with the rent. But that boyfriend of hers – he was bad news like you never heard bad news before in your life."
“What was Patty’s last name?”
“Mullen. Patty Mullen. I used to think of her as Patty Sullen because she moped a lot. But she thought the world of that sister of hers.”
5
Three cops showed up, and Dahl stood there in a gray suit as if he'd been pulled from an early dinner date.
Jane met them out front, warned them about Mary-Louise, and said, "Kilpatrick's touched things in there, but I don't think it matters much. It's definitely Bloody Mary. Let's go over the place carefully, and maybe we can find out what her plans are."
"My guess is she's on the road," Dahl said.
"She loves her son too much," Jane said, shaking her head slightly. Then, she looked out across the hills and the valley. The heat from the Santa Ana winds was blasting up a notch, and she had a taste of bitterness in her mouth. "I think she's nearby. I want officers to patrol the area here. The trailer where Fenn lived is two miles up the road, and Darden is just over that ridge. She's watching out for him now. She knows where he is. I think if we work fast, we can find her sooner than later."
Then, she mentioned Patty Mullen, and asked for a follow-up on her, her family in Barstow, to see if there might not be another murder on Bloody Mary's hands. "Chilmark went by the name Jean Kearney. Claimed to be Patty Mullen's sister. She ran the massage business out of her house but probably mainly did out-calls. All her business was cash only. Let's find out if she had her business card in the local shops, or if anybody got to know her at all. We probably can't dig up her past clients on short notice, but maybe if we get the word out, they'll come forward."
Chapter Twenty
Jane Laymon walked to her car, and was about to get in, but decided she needed a walk instead. She went up the street to the end, by the cul-de-sac. The yards were unkempt, with splotchy yellow grass surrounded by dirt. Behind some of the chain-link fences, she saw a pit bull or a Rottweiler or two. A child's tricycle had been left out at the end of one driveway, and the house at the end of the cul-de-sac looked like it had been burned at one point, perhaps years before. Its windows were boarded up. It obviously had been abandoned, so she stepped into the yard, and went to the back gate. She opened it, and went out into a yard that looked like it was more desert than lawn. At the back of the house, local gang members and kids had spray painted their symbols all over the back of the house. The sliding-glass doors were broken, and trash of various kinds lay in piles under the shade of the roof. She went toward the back, where the chain-link fence had been cut, and pushed her way through it.
On the other side, a slight rise in a plateau barren of everything but tumbleweed and dried grasses. She went out into it, and when she came to the edge, not more than eight yards from the back of the house, she saw the valley beyond.
The hillside curved downward, and there, beneath where she stood: The Darden State Hospital.
You watched it. Why? You and your son were here for years. Just watching the hospital. Waiting for what? For now? For the inevitable? Did you know he'd end up here? Or was that luck? You left the hospital, you got away with a new husband. You had your baby. You were fine for a time. And then, things started to happen. What you'd kept away from your life began to come back. What happened? What was it that brought you back here six years ago to rent this house? Did you sit up on this hillside and look down at it like this? Were you here before you went to kill the Flocks? Before you killed Cooper Fenn? Were you here last night – thinking about your son – hoping he'd find his way back?
Jane stood there a long time, feeling the hot winds against her back, asking question after question in her mind. Having no answers.
And then different questions came to her. What were you doing up here all those years? Between your first murders in your twenties, to the Flocks in San Pascal, and Fenn? Did you not have the desire to kill? Did someone cross you at some point, and you didn't hurt them? What were you doing up here, in this neighborhood. Giving massages to strangers. Letting men touch you. What triggered you now that didn't trigger you three years or ago or even six months ago?
When she thought of possible answers, one struck her as utterly ridiculous.
But she couldn't ignore it.
You were killing then, too. Maybe not often. Now and then. When the madness got hold of you. When something awful happened. When you couldn't take it out on your little boy. When your husband had killed himself just to avoid you and the world he'd gotten involved in. You deranged world where you lashed out at people like a rattlesnake when you felt they'd somehow intruded on your territory.
But if you were killing, why weren't there bodies before? You left the Flocks in their house. You left Fenn in his trailer. Where are the others, if there are others?
And then something came to her lightning fast, and the hot wind seemed to make her feel as if she was going to jump out of her skin if she didn't go see if it was a possibility.
Without even realizing she was moving so fast, Jane began jogging back to the abandoned house, back down the street, back to the house that Mary Chilmark had been renting for several years.
Dahl was still there, and when she reached him, she said, "If there are bodies, they might be under the concrete in back. It's new. Kilpatrick said she didn't have to do any maintenance while Mary lived there. She told me that Mary even repaired the roof and hired workmen to redo the pavement in the driveway. I think she did the backyard, too. Men came here all the time for massages. Whatever triggered Mary to murder Diane Flock and her husband, that trigger may have been with her for years. Mary's husband killed himself exactly six years ago. If that event triggered this, then my guess is she's been killing people since she moved up here. She just didn't hide the Flocks. Maybe she intended to and got interrupted by something. Maybe she didn't care."
"Maybe she wanted her son to get caught," Dahl said.
Chapter Twenty-One
1
Mary Chilmark had spent the day sleeping in the arms of a very drunken Nick Spitzer, who wrapped his flabby arms all over her. But she felt safe with him, and she needed rest. Spitzer lived in a modest home near Belle-View Park, in the nicest part of Caldwell, and the country club – which was not quite as green as it should've been for that time of year – was just over the fence in his backyard. His wife had left him two years earlier, and had cleared out the kids and the dog and the bank account. He'd been running on the last of a small trust fund left to him, and had been hemorrhaging money through drink and sloth from nearly the moment his wife left until that day when he won at poker and found a pretty woman who used to give him excellent deep tissue massage.
Mary gradually woke up just as twilight came on, and the stink of the man disgusted her, but as she moved away from him, his arm grasped her more tightly. "Gimme kiss," he said. "Come on, baby. Just a little one."
She pressed her lips to his, and felt his hand going to her breasts. She let him continue, and soon he had unbuttoned her blouse, and was rubbing through her bra before she reached back to undo it for him. In her mind, she was younger, and feeling the heat of fire within her as it rose up. She knew she had power over men like this, and she wanted more from him than he'd be willing to give her if she resisted.
Soon, his sweaty fingers teased her nipples as he began to grind himself against her. His tongue was all over her neck as if he could lick up all the sweat on her body, and she felt his hardness down there.
"I knew you wanted me," he whispered, his breath like warmth and bitterness together. "I knew you wanted me. All those times I was lyin' on your table. Practically naked. Just that little white towel you had. You ever see how it rose up sometimes, when you worked on me? Ever notice? I bet you did. I told the guys that J
eannie wanted me like she wanted nobody else. You're that kind of girl, Jeannie. I knew it when I first saw you. You're so beautiful, baby. You are so beautiful. You may be almost my age, honey, but you look like a girl. That kind of girl. My kind of girl."
"I am," she murmured as his face moved from her breasts to her tight belly. "I am that kind of girl."
She no longer felt as if she were in her forties, but felt as if she truly were a girl again, and her stepfather was doing those things to hear that brought out the wild animal inside her.
The thing that turned her on, in a way that no other woman had ever been turned on.
He looked up at her, a sloppy grin on his face. "You like Daddy, don't you baby? You like what Daddy does to baby?"
"Oh," she gasped. "Yes. Yes." She pressed both hands against his scalp, pushing him further down. She closed her eyes, and felt the shame course through her blood. She didn't hate him the way she hated them sometimes. She wanted him to feel how bad she was feeling. She wanted the pleasure of his understanding.
Then, she let go of his scalp. She wrapped her legs around his face, and she leaned over just a bit, just enough to get her right hand on the small can opener she'd grabbed from the kitchen that morning, when they'd come in the house. When she told him she wanted another beer, and he'd grabbed a bottle for her, and she had popped it open and taken a sip. When had been fumbling all over her, trying to make love then, only he was too wasted to even get his own fly down. And she had taken the can opener and put it there. Thinking she might use it. Thinking of its little sharp point.
Thinking of what kind of girl she was, and what things girls like her liked to do.
How she wanted to make sure he knew what it felt like to have someone jabbing you between the legs.
2
Mary took a shower in the enormous tub he had in a bathroom that was nearly as big as her own house. It felt good to wash the blood off, to be free of that awful feeling. As she passed the bedroom again, she went in, passing the body that lay sprawled on the bed, and reached into Nick's pants pockets for the key to his Cadillac.
Once in the car itself, she started it up, and noticed that the gas gage was almost on empty, nearly at the same time the car's radio blared about the fires in the mountains, and that's when the idea came to her.
3
Two hours later, out on the ridge beyond the Belle-View Park where Nick Spitzer's house was, Mary Chilmark felt the dry gusts of wind at her back. The sweat on her body had evaporated, and she felt clean again
It was a burning hot afternoon, and she smelled the distant fires across the freeway that had already jumped the San Bernardino Wash and had begun to head toward the railroad tracks off Baseline. The sky to the north was blackened from the smoke.
She knew the fire would never come this far – Caldwell was protected by too many natural fire breaks – unlike the San Bernardino foothills that just connected community after community right down to the 10 Freeway.
She set the gas can down and then went to gather dried sticks and tumbleweed. At the edge of an arroyo, she glanced over and saw the high razor-wire fences that surrounded Darden State.
She closed her eyes, sending a prayer to her son. Knowing that this would help him. Hoping that by her actions, she could free him again. Free him and find the one who had broken all promises to her. The one that reminded her of every man she had ever been with.
The man who needed an even greater healing than her father had.
She blocked the bad memories of that place, and tried instead to remember where the entryways were, how the nurses looked when they walked into the building. Nobody would have a recent photo of her. The one in the newspapers made her look nearly blond, and although she had retained her youth in a way most women approaching fifty had not, and her figure now was better than at twenty two, with the first few months of pregnancy upon her. Nobody at Darden State would even know who she was if she managed to get past the gate.
Well, maybe you, she thought. Maybe you will know me. But if I see you, it'll be the last thing you see.
Only one person still worked there after all those years.
They would think she was just another nurse coming in, checking into her shift. She was a nurse, after all, and people could tell that about her when they saw her. She had that air of authority and compassion. She knew the words to speak that made people understand her position.
The Santa Ana winds had picked up. The sky from the north blackened.
And then, she found the perfect property. It was surrounded by two acres of dry scrub brush and high yellow grass and a few dead orange trees at the center of this field.
She could taste the heat on the wind.
She poured two gallons of gasoline over the dry underbrush.
Then, she set the fire.
By her calculation, it would spread, house to house, in Caldwell, and travel the fairly direct route right down the canyon. Might take the whole night to reach the flatlands, if the wind kept up. Might only take a few hours. It all depended on how the wind went and how dry the grasses were. She had seen on the news how the fires in the hill leapt acres, like a burning angel flying over rooftops. She had seen a car on the news where a couple had gotten trapped inside it while trying to drive away from it.
And that wind was hot and moving exactly where she wanted it to move.
The wind would carry it down the ridge, across the suburban community, and if luck was with her – as it always had been – it would bring the tongues of fire to Darden State.
She would find her child.
And his father.
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-Two
1
Patients who had not had recent violent outbursts were allowed to mingle during certain activities – even the sexual psychopaths, so long as there was adequate supervision. In this respect, Darden State most resembled a maximum security prison. During the day, there might be classes and group therapy and even time in the game room playing video games or board games. In the library, patients were allowed to talk quietly, although if there was even the hint of someone getting out of control, the library would be shut for days at a time. Although budget cuts had helped layoff many of the guards and Correctional Officers, the Canteen, during lunch and supper hours, always had at least six guards on hand in case of an outburst.
At 6 p.m., Doc Chilmark, still in leg restraints which kept him hobbling as he walked, was escorted by two guards to the Canteen in Ward D.
His supper consisted of spaghetti with meatballs, a small salad, and a Kaiser roll. There were no knives with dinner, but plastic spoons and forks sufficed for most of the patients.
Because he had remained docile, and because several Correctional Officers supervised the shifts of the Canteen in the evening, upper body restraints had been removed from Doc as he sat at one of the long tables. A few other patients sat nearby, but few looked up at him, and no one seemed to want to sit near him, perhaps because one of the C.O.'s sat next to Chilmark.
But Rob Fallon had noticed the new guy, and went over with his tray and sat down in front of him. "Rob," he said, nodding.
Doc Chilmark looked up at him, then back down to his plate. He dragged his fork through the spaghetti, rolling it up a bit before bringing it to his lips.
"I like welcoming new patients," Rob said. The C.O. next to Chilmark shot Rob a look, but said nothing. Rob ignored him.
"I don't like eating here after what I saw downstairs," Rob said.
Chilmark kept his eyes down. Reached for his small carton of milk, taking a sip from it.
Rob leaned forward. "You got scars all over you."
Doc Chilmark finally looked at Rob Fallon. Said nothing. Kept chewing his food.
"I saw a ghost downstairs," Rob said. "Right under where we are."
2
After he was finished with supper, Doc Chilmark rose, with some assistance, and carried his tray over to the garbage can near the window into the Canteen's ki
tchen. Rob Fallon walked with him. As he scraped the last of his food into the trash, Doc said, "I see ghosts all the time here. There are a lot of people who died here. They're like shadows here."
"I know," Rob said. "The one I saw downstairs was a girl."
"Where's downstairs?" Chilmark asked, his voice so quiet that Rob barely heard him.
"Underneath here. There's a door. It leads underground," Rob said. “I heard about it," Doc said, nodding. Rob had to lean over the table to hear him because his voice was so soft. "My mother told me. She was here once. She was down there when my soul came into her body. She told me the dead were everywhere there."
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 50