By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  “It’s well written for that kind of thing.”

  Stoner smiled heavily, as though he were dealing with a mental retard. “I’m not interested in the writing style,” he said, annoyed. “Don’t you have any opinions, for chrissake?”

  “Sure I do,” said Roger defensively. Then he brightened. “But I don’t necessarily agree with them.”

  The senator looked at the young man for a long moment. His sigh, when it came, was loud and agonized. “You’ll go far in politics, Roger,” he said finally. “Very far indeed.”

  Roger smiled. The senator would go further too, he told himself, if he had a sense of humor.

  “What I mean,” Stoner said patiently after a pause, “is the idea of the article. It’s totally anti-capital punishment.”

  “I see that,” said the young man, serious now. “But they’re beating a dead horse. Chessman’s long dead and gone.”

  “Then they’re reviving him.” Stoner got up and walked to the window. “They are saying capital punishment is the real killer and Chessman just got caught in the machinery. They’re making a hero out of him, how he was an innocent victim who fought a losing battle against legal murder.”

  “Everybody loves a loser.”

  The senator paid no attention. “It’s the most vicious attack on the death penalty I’ve seen in years. They practically come right out and say we are all murderers.”

  “Next week they’ll be on the other side,” Roger assured him. “All magazines work the same way. They don’t care about sides as long as the subject is hot.”

  “Is Chessman hot?”

  “No, but capital punishment is.”

  “Exactly.” The senator smiled widely, walked back to his chair, sat down. “It’s life-and-death, it’s real, and I think it’s time I get involved. In other words”—he looked at his press secretary intently—”it can be a good vote-getter if handled right.”

  “The public already knows your stand on the issue.”

  “I mean get involved personally. Make it my cause. Get all the exposure I can with it. This thing,” Stoner said quietly, “is going to be around a long time, and so am I. There’s no right or wrong in it beyond what the law says is right and wrong. Everything else is emotion, and that’s where a good politician comes in.”

  “Cynical but true,” sighed the young man.

  “Plus the fact that I’m on the right side.”

  Roger laughed. “Let’s just say the easy side.”

  “Now with this Chessman thing,” the senator pressed on, “we have a ready-made handle. A convicted criminal who died for his crimes. His death made society safer, probably saved lives. But some people are making him out to be a victim.” He glanced over at his aide. “It’s a natural.”

  The press secretary considered the idea, humming softly again, as though trying to remember a forgotten tune.

  “It’s a hell of a way to get some national exposure,” he conceded. “A lot of states are angry.”

  The senator nodded. “I could become a spokesman for them.”

  “But it won’t work,” continued the young man in a voice properly disappointed. “Not like that.”

  The senator’s eyes narrowed. “Would you care to say why not? You agree it’s a good emotional issue. My views are already known. All we need is a specific target to hang it on. And here we have it.” He indicated the magazine. “So what is wrong with the idea?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with the idea,” said the other slowly. “It’s your handle that’s no good. Chessman is dead, been dead for years. There’s no drama in a dead man. People can’t get worked up over what’s irrevocable. You have to give them a life hanging in the balance right now. A bunch of lives would be even better. You have to give them—” He stopped, paused a moment, grimaced. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “That’s it,” he exclaimed. “You have to give them lives right now.”

  The senator was perplexed, and his face showed it.

  “You have to give them lives, Senator,” the young man repeated dramatically. “Something they can identify with. Innocent victim or maniac killer, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s alive. Nobody identifies with the dead.”

  “And where do we get a live one?”

  “We have one right now, right here,” answered the young man, his eyes blazing. “Vincent Mungo.”

  He was excited now, thinking furiously. “Mungo killed once, he’ll probably kill again. He shouldn’t be allowed to live. If he escapes a second time he’ll kill more. There’s your drama, and it’s real. People are either killers or victims, so everyone can identify. You keep hammering away that he should die when he’s caught.”

  “If he’s caught,” suggested Stoner.

  “He’s a maniac, isn’t he?” asked Roger rhetorically. “He’ll be caught. Let’s just hope he kills a few more first to make it even stronger.” He laughed. “Only kidding, Senator.”

  The senator frowned. It was a damn good idea even though he didn’t much care for it. The dead were always more comfortable to work with, easier too.

  “I still think we need Chessman,” he said finally. “His name is widely known, it’s been a rallying cry for the bleeding hearts for years. Whoever heard of Mungo outside the state?”

  “Then marry the two.”

  “How?”

  “Easy,” said the bright young man. “Picture Mungo as a reincarnation of Chessman. Symbolic, you know. A modern maniac stalking the state, ready to ravage and kill. A monster full of blood lust. Tell women he’s probably after them, maniacs usually kill women anyway. Chessman died so they could live. Now this reincarnation, this diabolic offshoot of Chessman must die too. The people must be protected, and you’re going to make sure they are protected.” The press secretary was on his feet now. “That way you get the best of both of them,” he said excitedly, “and if Mungo does slaughter any women, they’ll flock to you like fish to water.” He paused a moment. “Naturally I hope no women get killed.”

  Over the next half hour the two men decided on a press conference two days hence, on August 2. Senator Stoner would announce a campaign to return capital punishment to California. He would also begin his campaign against maniacs and rapists and killers. A lecture tour of the state would soon follow.

  At the end of the meeting, as Stoner turned to other work, he couldn’t help thinking of something that idiot bureau chief said earlier. It kept interrupting his thoughts. Son of animal, he had said.

  Son of animal. Caryl Chessman and Vincent Mungo …

  “Son of a bitch,” Stoner said savagely.

  On that very same night, the last of July, the son of a bitch was walking toward South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. It was after midnight and he had come many blocks seeking his prey. The area he now walked was on the razor’s edge of skid row, filled with decaying buildings and sleazy industries. Drunks sprawled in doorways or argued over half-empty pints of wine. Drug addicts wandered aimlessly, sometimes jostling one another in incomprehensible stupor. Cars of youths cruised past noisily. Over everything hovered the stench of too many years of neglect. And behind it all, in darkened alleys and lonely rooms and desperate beds, came the smell of death.

  Bishop gazed at the painted women, their eyes calling to him as he passed. They were old and incredibly wasted, and to him they looked like vultures waiting to devour human flesh. He shuddered and hurried along the broken street.

  Several blocks farther on he saw her come out of a dingy four-story building. She sucked in the night air for a moment and then turned right, her long hair trailing over the back of her sleeveless blouse. In those few seconds he had seen that she was young and blond and had the thin legs of a pony. He crossed the street and walked faster. At the corner he caught up with her as she waited for the cars to pass by. She wore no makeup beyond a little eye shadow and her mouth was small and formed in a perpetual pout.

  Bishop smiled his best smile. His eyes showed innocence, his face beamed with friendliness. His whole ma
nner was one of charm and grace as he stood there in his expensive new suit, seeming for all the world like a handsome young man of money and power. “I believe this fifty-dollar bill could be yours,” he said to her. His smile remained unbroken, his eyes no less innocent, his manner no less charming as he waited next to her holding the bill in his hand.

  The girl understood his meaning. She wasn’t a prostitute and she certainly wasn’t a streetwalker but she understood exactly what he meant. She didn’t take immediate offense to his suggestion because he looked like an interesting person. One quick glance told her that. He was sort of handsome and well dressed and charming and smooth and cool. Not like most of the men who hit on her, old lechers and hot young punks and cheap salesmen with fat hands. And he was obviously rich if he could throw fifty dollars around.

  Fifty dollars was a lot of money to her. It would help pay the rent. Christ, she thought suddenly, the rent! What’s today? August first, due today. Christ! She didn’t have it. Again.

  She turned and smiled at him. Why not? she asked herself. Any other time I’d be pleased if someone like this took me out. We’d go dancing and have a few drinks and then we’d go to bed and in the morning I’d have nothing. At least this way I’ll have fifty dollars. She studied him carefully. Who knows? Maybe he’s one of those rich nuts who likes to take care of girls. Maybe he’s even in the movies and can help me get a break.

  Her name was Kit, that was the name she gave herself since coming to Los Angeles. Not Kitty or Kitten, just Kit. She had been in town almost two years, leaving her parents’ home to become a movie star. She wasn’t beautiful but she was pretty enough in an offbeat way, and she had a good body though it was a bit fleshy in the thighs. She had tried to break into pictures using her body but each try led nowhere. She had lain on occasion with respectable men for money; she considered those few occasions just an exchange of gifts. Twice recently she had exchanged gifts with her landlord. She was twenty-one years old.

  They walked along side by side, silent most of the way except for comments on the weather and the condition of the neighborhood. He kept his smile on and she kept her smile on and they passed nobody and nobody saw them. Six blocks later she was home and he was with her.

  She made instant coffee and had a cup. He smiled and had a glass of water. He told her he was from San Francisco, she said she liked San Francisco. She fed her cat, he smiled and watched her. After a while he put the fifty-dollar bill on the table. She let it lie there, not touching it. When she finished her second cup of coffee she went into the tiny bedroom and undressed. She called to him. He sat on the bed and looked at her fine young body; it was very different from the other body, the one that had taught him how to drive. But he was mostly interested in her mouth.

  He smiled and told her what he wanted of her. She shook her head. She was old-fashioned that way, she didn’t do that. No. She would open her legs for him but not that. She had tried it once and hated it. She would never do it again.

  The shade was down, the room dark. She told him to get undressed and come to bed. She promised to make him feel good. He turned away for a moment and took the knife out of his inside jacket pocket. With his left hand he found her belly button. With his right hand he stuck the pointed tip of his long knife into her belly and then, still smiling, with both hands on the handle he drove the knife all the way through her body and into the mattress underneath. He continued to force the blade downward until the handle touched her skin.

  In his mind’s eye he saw the woman towering over the frightened boy, whipping him endlessly, the lashes biting into the boy’s soft bare skin.

  As a scream started to escape from the dying girl’s throat he shoved the sheet into her mouth. The body was impaled and could not move but it shook horribly, uncontrollably, for what seemed like hours to the young man. Finally the last energy within its lungs was expended and it caved in and lay still.

  He raised the shade for more light. The cat came in and he scratched its whiskers and put it back in the kitchen. He closed the bedroom door and removed all his clothes. Kneeling on the bed he pulled the sheet out of the dead girl’s mouth and put his penis inside. The mouth was warm and very wet from escaping fluids and saliva. With his hands holding her blond head between them like a basketball, he worked the head up and down, the lips sliding back and forth over his penis until he came.

  When he finally got up he carefully pulled the knife out of the body. The thin blade was eight inches long, the handle four inches. The man in the hunting supply store had called it a doctor’s post-mortem knife but told him it was really used for silent killing in guerrilla warfare. He had bought it that afternoon when he mailed the letter to the magazine. On returning to his room he had cut a small hole in the left inside pocket of his jacket so that the long knife could be carried concealed. It had been there all the while he was with the girl.

  Looking again at the body, the young man set about his work. He cut off both breasts and carried them, one at a time, into the kitchen where he placed them gently on the table, the empty coffee cup next to one and his water glass by the other. In the bedroom again, he slit open the abdomen. Intent now, he removed and fondled the girl’s organs again and again, caressing them, needing to touch them, to possess them. Nothing less would do, and he kept his eyes shut until all the dreadful visions were gone and the woman with the whip no longer hovered over the naked boy.

  Satiated at last, he gazed around. The room was soaked in blood. He cleaned his knife in the kitchen sink, then scrubbed himself thoroughly and dressed. He returned the knife to the jacket and picked up the fifty-dollar bill from the table.

  In the refrigerator he found some baloney and a half loaf of bread. He made himself a baloney sandwich and sat at the table eating slowly. He was in no hurry.

  Sometime during his stay he took out a soft felt-tip pen he had also bought that afternoon, and carefully printed his initials in big block letters, one on each breast on the kitchen table.

  Before he finally left he filled the cat’s water dish to the brim and sprinkled enough dried cat food in a saucer to last for days.

  The next morning, August 1, 1973, Thomas Bishop, alias Daniel Long, left his hotel of one night and caught the bus to Las Vegas. He looked good and felt even better; a young man of money and identity. He rode the big red bus out of the terminal and onto the freeway toward Nevada, following the route his mother and father had taken, unbeknown to him, almost twenty-six years earlier. From his seat midway in the comfortable coach he stared ahead, smiling all the while, and never once looked back.

  Five

  ON THE afternoon of August 2, State Senator Jonathan Stoner was winding up a press conference in Sacramento. His press secretary was at his side. In the strongest possible terms Senator Stoner had outlined his position on the capital-punishment issue for the dozen or so reporters gathered in the Senate conference room. He had told them of his intention to push for the restoration of the death penalty in California. He would spearhead such a campaign in every part of the state, he would lecture for the necessary funds and accept all the voluntary help he could get. He would talk to his political colleagues on and off the Senate floor.

  Beyond that he intended to take his campaign to the rest of the nation, to every state if he had to, speaking to the people of the dangers they faced if capital punishment were not restored. He was confident that the majority of the American people felt as he did, and he would see to it that their collective voice was heard. He predicted that the United States Supreme Court would reverse its wholly unrealistic and unpopular decision of the previous year. It was time, he told the reporters, that the nation’s highest court stopped flaunting its will in the face of the people. They must be protected and he would make sure, by God, that they were protected.

  He then spoke of Caryl Chessman, referring to him as an animal who preyed on women. Chessman robbed them, he kidnapped them, he abused them sexually. He was a vicious pervert who had been a hardened criminal all his
life. By the time he was nineteen he was already in prison. The state made a big mistake in giving parole to such an animal. He was soon back behind bars where he belonged. He was charged with eighteen—Stoner emphasized the number, repeated it—eighteen felony counts. Several were kidnapping with bodily harm, a capital crime. When he was arrested he admitted to some of the crimes but later, coward that he was, insisted he had been tortured. But he fooled nobody. Decent hardworking people found him guilty on all the charges. They could have recommended mercy but they didn’t, and they didn’t because they wanted this crazed animal destroyed for the good of society.

  Then the state made another mistake. It kept the rapist fiend alive for twelve long years when he should have been killed immediately. Each imprisoned criminal costs the taxpayers $10,000 a year for his maintenance. In Chessman’s case that came to $120,000. More than the senator’s father had made in his whole life! And what was it used for? Was all that money used to help people, to irrigate land, to educate children, to build hospitals? It was not! It was all wasted, absolutely wasted on a deranged pervert—the senator stopped, told reporters he did not mean deranged in the sense of mentally unbalanced; most certainly not! Chessman was crazed but not crazy, in fact he was so damn smart in prison he kept the state from killing him all those years—so all that money that could have been used for good was wasted on Chessman instead.

  In the end he was finally executed, which was just and proper. The various courts could have shown leniency, the high-court Justices could have recommended mercy, the governor could have granted clemency. But none of them did, none did because they knew their first job was to protect the people. At least they all knew it back in 1960. But if Chessman were alive now he’d be costing the taxpayers more than many of them made each year. And then one day he’d be paroled and back on the streets looking for new victims. In fact, thundered the senator, the veins in his neck popping out from anger, in fact, if the death penalty had been abolished in 1960 Chessman would have been paroled by now and out on that street, right here, today, maybe stalking your wife or your daughter at this very minute, God forbid.