By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  Upstate the commotion over the new Mungo outrage was fierce. As Sheriff Oates flew to Los Angeles, metropolitan newsmen flew to Willows. They could interview Oates later, since he was always ready to talk at the drop of a pen to paper. Nor were they overly interested in Spanner of Hillside, he was small-town and had no name. Besides, Mungo was not local anymore. With the girl’s murder he had become statewide, maybe he was even going national.

  The man they wanted was right at Willows. He could tell them all they needed to know about Mungo from the mental viewpoint. And why not? He was the top man there, he was a psychiatrist, he was a nice friendly guy if you didn’t interrupt him. And like any doctor, he was helpful when he had to be.

  He was also waiting for them. Dr. Baylor understood what they wanted—a story for the next day’s paper, an item for the evening TV news. The big shots in Sacramento and San Francisco and Los Angeles had already cleared it. There was nothing he could do. He had to be helpful.

  Baylor met the reporters in the small conference room in the administration building. He smiled warmly, greeted those he knew with a nod and introduced himself to the rest. After a moment of pleasantries he launched into a brief review of Vincent Mungo’s history at Willows.

  Baylor then reminded his audience that up to the time of the incident—some hardened types blanched at the word, remembering the pictures of the murdered man with no face left—Vincent Mungo had behaved himself with circumspection and, though unfriendly, had given no cause for suspicion or increased surveillance. Afterward, of course, it was too late. Baylor held out his arms in a gesture of helplessness, which somehow looked unconvincing coming from him.

  Someone wanted to know the specific nature of Mungo’s illness and was told that the patient had been diagnosed earlier as suffering from paranoia—

  How much earlier, Baylor was asked, and he brusquely mumbled something about a number of years.

  —suffering from paranoia, a psychosis characterized by strong suspiciousness and eccentricity woven into a highly organized system of persecutory delusions.

  “Does this mean he thinks everyone is after him?”

  They all laughed.

  “If he doesn’t, he must really be nuts,” someone else suggested.

  More laughter. Dr. Baylor held his smile. He had heard all the psychiatric one-liners many times over the years.

  After a moment he continued. Mungo had also been characterized— years earlier, with a smile—as a manic-depressive personality marked by severe mood swings. In recent years, his records indicated, he had become more and more depressed.

  “Would this make him a maniac?” someone wanted to know.

  Baylor sighed. “One must be careful in the use of such a word,” he said at length. “A maniac is also a person with a mania for something, such as truth, for example.”

  “Yeah, except we all know what his is.”

  “But it primarily means a psychotic person with violent tendencies,” insisted the questioner.

  Baylor allowed the truth of that but stressed that Mungo had exhibited no overt violence while at Willows until the night of his escape. He granted that the man was obviously psychotic, though he hesitated to place any specific label on the illness since he had not himself examined the patient. He also granted that the violent tendencies seemed to be entering a new stage, in which the destruction urge was being acted out. Possibly, he suggested, the patient was suffering an abaissement, which is a weakening of the ego’s ability to resist a powerful demand from the id. This happens occasionally to most people, the doctor pointed out, in such states as exhaustion and emotional upset. But it persists in severe schizophrenic depression.

  “Does that mean he’ll kill again?”

  Baylor was careful in his answer. “He might, if what I indicated is in fact occurring, and if it persists.”

  Now the reporters were getting somewhere. What they wanted, needed, was some hot copy.

  “Am I right in saying that Mungo kills because he has to?”

  “Negative,” came the instant reply. Baylor had spent three years in the army as a captain in the Psychological Warfare section. “That is incorrect. Nobody has to kill.” He smiled briefly. “Along with most other psychiatrists, I don’t believe in the ‘irresistible impulse’ concept.”

  “You say Mungo is a psychotic who is now acting out his homicidal tendencies. In our terms that makes him a maniac. Couldn’t your people spot this beforehand?”

  “It’s not that simple,” explained Baylor. “The patient came to us as a severe disciplinary problem, but his overt violence had been merely fighting when confronted. It’s a long jump from that to killing.”

  “But couldn’t they see it coming?”

  “In a word, no. Most people at one time or another act violently. Kicking a door is violent behavior. So is throwing a glass or breaking a dish. But most people don’t go from that to killing someone.”

  “Why does he want to kill women?”

  “So far as we know, he has killed two people. One of them was a man.”

  “Why does he mutilate the bodies?”

  “Possibly because of some monstrous rage.”

  “Rage at what?”

  Baylor shook his head. “If we knew that we would probably know why he kills. That is, why his potentially destructive inclinations suddenly turned overt.”

  Another ten minutes and it was over. The doctor felt he had handled the reporters well. He had told them little, and he had certainly not given them any sensational copy that could come back later to haunt him. He allowed some pictures to be taken of him and of the hospital buildings and grounds, but that was all. Just following orders, he assured them. They left, mostly discontented.

  In truth, Baylor had not kept any pertinent information from them, nor had he misled them in his answers. He really didn’t know why Vincent Mungo had suddenly started killing and mutilating. There was no indication of such rage. Granted the hidden cleverness common among certain mental patients, the homicidal fury needed for such acts was not at all common. Nor was the sheer power of personality. Dr. Baylor secretly wondered if Vincent Mungo might not be having an episode of zoanthropy, believing himself, of course delusionally, to have assumed the behavior characteristic of an animal.

  The late afternoon editions of August 3 carried the first news of the horrible murder in the skid row section. The headlines screamed Vincent Mungo’s name. Pictures were shown of the block, the house, the apartment, even the murder room but none of the body. Certain details of the grisly deed were glossed over. All the stories contained the standard picture and description of Mungo plus a capsule mental history. Several papers incorporated the interview with Dr. Baylor into the text. Others simply attributed information to expert medical opinion. Some of the stories were subheaded with the suggestion that the madman might kill again. One paper asked if Mungo was killing because he had to kill, compelled by an irresistible impulse. All of them labeled him a homicidal maniac, consumed with rage of as yet undetermined origin.

  The murder made the television evening news. Throughout the state people again heard the name Vincent Mungo. They again saw his face—ugly, brooding, sinister. One newsman called it a face from hell, straight out of a Dostoievsky novel.

  That evening Senator Stoner was ecstatic, though he properly tried to conceal the fact. Roger had been right, thank God; the big afternoon papers of August z had held over news of the press conference for the following day. He had thus made all the important morning and afternoon newspapers on August 3, the day of the gruesome discovery. The timing was perfect. From now on his words and actions would be news. From now on his campaign to restore the death penalty and execute Vincent Mungo would be publicized.

  The senator hoped that Mungo would not be caught immediately, at least not until the campaign got up a good head of steam. That was all he needed, a little time. He didn’t even consider the possibility that time was running out for some others as well.

  Stoner went
to bed that night and dreamed of killing Caryl Chessman with his bare hands.

  Six

  THE THERMOMETER hit a hundred on Fremont Street and Bishop ducked into a small restaurant near one of the casinos. He sat at a table and ordered from the waitress. Somebody had scratched a big zero in the center of the tabletop. The circular gashes were deep and largely discolored from too many swipes of a damp cloth; tiny bits of food were lodged in the wound. He studied the ugly design for a moment, then quietly moved to another table.

  A woman in the far corner was playing two slot machines at the same time. She would put a quarter in one and pull the handle, then do the same on the next machine while the windows were still whirling on the first. A determined look gripped her face. She had her system, something to do with electrically-charged energy coming from her constant motion, and she would win on both slot machines if it took every quarter she had. And every penny too!

  Bishop watched the woman with undisguised interest. An obvious tourist, she was big and heavy and had rolls of loose flesh dangling from her upper arms and legs. A straw sun hat covered her head. The vast amount of exposed skin seemed to the young man to be stark white and he wondered what it would feel like to cut into all that soft flesh.

  The waitress brought his order, coffee and a ham sandwich. “No baloney,” she said hurriedly. “Like I told you.” Then she was gone. He watched her disappearing figure. She was young and buxom and at least twenty pounds overweight. He saw her under his knife too, and his coffee got cold as he sat there thinking about it.

  He had been in Las Vegas four days now, arriving in the modernized bus depot on S. Main Street in the late afternoon of August 1 after a pleasant six-hour ride from Los Angeles. An hour’s stroll gave him the feel of the downtown area and brought him to a neon-encrusted but inexpensive hotel on N. 25th Street, just off the end of a shopping plaza. His intention was to stay for a few weeks and then move on to the next place, wherever that might be.

  Not that he was in any great hurry to leave Las Vegas. He was fascinated by the crowds of people who nightly descended on the gaming parlors along Fremont, many of them seemingly intent on gambling away their lives. In their faces at those moments he detected a madness he had seen many times at Willows, the maniacal eye, the pressed lips, the twitching cheek of someone deep in isolation, and of course the inevitable final vacant stare of total desperation.

  The vast amounts of money also intrigued him. He had never seen so much money, never dreamed so much existed in the whole world. And these people were just throwing it away, intent only on the next throw of the dice or turn of a card or spin of the wheel. To any polite inquiry they would gruffly nod in assurance that they were fine and kindly mind your own damn business.

  “Get your bets down,” the croupiers would plead in feigned urgency. “There’s a winner coming out every time.” But Bishop saw very few winners.

  His daytime was spent mostly in sightseeing. Soon after arrival he rented a car, using his driver’s license and new credit card in the name of Daniel Long. The car, a Ford Pinto with unlimited mileage, was quickly his. At the hotel he had registered earlier under another name, something easy to remember, since no identification was necessary. It was a technique he had learned from a television cops-androbbers show, and it became a pattern he was to follow in subsequent months across the country.

  He spent the first morning driving around the various areas of the city, including the fabulous Strip with its two dozen opulent hotels and gambling casinos. No stops were made; this activity he reserved for the evening hours when crowds were huge and his anonymity assured. During the afternoon he visited nearby Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. The incredible view from the dam inspired him with awe; he had never seen anything like it on TV. He couldn’t believe it was real. It also filled him with a certain dread feeling that he was going to fall from the great height. Upon his return to the ground he vowed never to place himself again in such danger.

  The next day he drove along the Virgin River to St. George and Hurricane, arriving at Zion National Park at 2 P.M. He lunched at the Lodge, then took an afternoon tour of the park and saw famed Angel’s Landing, the Temple of Sinawava and the Great White Throne. On the return trip he dined on prime ribs of beef and a bottle of Chablis, to which he had been introduced the previous evening, at a roadside restaurant. Arriving back at his hotel after ten o’clock, he slept for two hours before changing his shirt and resuming his exploration of the city’s night life.

  Each evening he would roam the downtown gaming section and along the Strip, fascinated by the thousands of neon lights, the great waves of people, the mounting excitement that always comes with money. He had seen documentaries of Las Vegas on television but they paled before the real thing, and as he wandered through the casinos he sometimes felt that he was back at Willows, surrounded by madmen of every stripe regardless of their clothing or uniforms. Only here he was not known and would not be sought or even missed when he was gone.

  Of still greater significance was the presence of women. They were everywhere, thousands of them, maybe millions. The most beautiful women he had ever seen, especially in the big hotels on the Strip. Wherever he turned, women were looking at him, sizing him up, staring him down. And he stared right back. He began to feel that they were his for the asking but he didn’t intend to ask. Instead he would take.

  Had anyone observed him closely during those nightly prowls, he would surely have seemed to be yet another tourist enjoying one of the gambling capital’s best views, its women. Certainly no one would have suspected that the well-dressed and oddly handsome young man with the curious eyes was carefully choosing another victim for his murderous rage, this time one who would be able to bring him money for which she would soon have no further use.

  That Bishop needed money was painfully evident to him. He had less than $900 left. Yet he knew nothing of work, neither how to apply for it nor how to seek it out. And of course there was nothing for which he was qualified since he had never worked a day in his life. With no background and no references, he was doomed to the most menial laborers’ jobs. This he would not tolerate. He intended to see different places and to get as far away from California as he could, always under the cloak of complete anonymity. No one must know of him, no one must even be made aware of his existence if he was to carry out his life’s real work. No! He would get the necessary money another way.

  He was dimly aware that there were many illegal means of making money but he didn’t know any of them. Nor did the idea appeal to him. He was interested only in survival. Beyond that a dollar bill held no value for him; it seemed like so many coupons that were traded for whatever was needed. And his needs were few. In truth, he even resented the thought that his pursuit and destruction of demons and monsters had to be tied to money, and he vowed that as soon as he had enough to survive he would no longer think in such terms, Then he would really be free to strike the demons down wherever he found them.

  That there were so many of them bothered him. He began to look at their mouths, to picture their ripe red mouths on him. He saw their breasts, large masses of soft flesh that fit in the palms of his hands. And their flat bellies, smooth skin stretched over those things inside that he needed to see and to touch and to hold. Almost every woman he passed on the street, indoors, anywhere, stirred his imagination and prompted the flow of images. Faceless mouths, disembodied breasts, ripped bellies, endless organs, livers, kidneys, hearts, strings of intestines, sexual parts, mounds of muscle, bones and blood everywhere, gouged slabs of flesh, whole skins hanging in profusion bleached white in summer sun, severed arms and legs, hands and feet, all revolving in limbo in his tortured mind, all taunting his fevered soul.

  He kept thinking of the millions of women in the world, millions he would never own even for a few moments. He would never get to kill them, to open them, to possess them. By sheer number they were beyond his reach. Even at the impossible rate of one a day for fifty years, not a dent would be made i
n the sheer impregnability of their numbers. The thought sickened him each time it entered his consciousness; he brooded over its implications. The demons had conspired against him, just as he was conspired against by all at Willows. But he would somehow defeat them too. One by one he would gain possession of them. Perhaps by so doing he would live forever, perhaps that was the secret of eternal youth. He didn’t find it strange or even uncomfortable that such might be his destiny.

  On his second night he struck up a conversation with a girl in one of the restaurants in the Dunes Hotel. Or perhaps she with him. They smiled at each other, her smile even more electric than his. They talked local gossip over their food, then of themselves. He said he was from Pittsburgh, in for a good time. She was a showgirl from Chicago, so she said, trying to break into the ranks in Vegas. It was difficult, she had no juice and things were really tight for her.

  “What’s juice?” he asked innocently.

  She looked at him, batting her false eyelashes with equal innocence. “Juice? It’s, you know, like a connection,” she announced finally. “You need connections to work here.”

  “You call that juice?”

  “Everybody calls it juice. If you don’t have it, you don’t work.”

  “How do you get this juice?”

  “All depends who you are.”

  “Well, who do you have to be?”

  “It helps if your boyfriend owns the hotel.”

  “Don’t you know anyone like that?”

  “Would I be here if I did?” She thought a moment. “I knew someone like that a while back. Really big, you know?”

  “What happened?”

  “He was only in town for a week.”

  “Can’t you just go to them and say you danced in Chicago?”

  “Don’t mean a thing here. This is the center of the world, everywhere else is the sticks. Except maybe Broadway.”

  “So tell them you danced in Broadway.”

  “On Broadway.”