By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  The woman viewing the body was the manager of the salon. A native Californian, she had known the deceased for seven years. She had reported her employer missing on August 2, already a week overdue. Twelve days later she was notified that a woman answering the description had been the victim of a hit-and-run between Sacramento and Yuba City. A close-cropped photo of the face, taken in the morgue, was shown to her. Would she be willing to go to Sacramento for formal identification?

  Afterward she talked to the sheriff’s deputies. The dead woman’s car was missing, along with her money and clothing. In light of the missing possessions the file on Velma Adams was changed from vehicular homicide to possible murder. A description of the car, a tan Buick hardtop with a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker, and the license plate immediately went out. Since almost six hundred cars were stolen each day in the state, the search might take some time. The manager understood. She would be informed of any developments.

  On the way home she thought of the dead woman. They had been good friends but she knew her good friend had not left a will. Which meant she would get nothing and would probably lose her job under new owners. However, she knew a man in Los Angeles who was very good at handwriting. Especially other people’s. She would call him as soon as she got back.

  THAT EVENING a man in San Francisco watching television was suddenly struck by an odd thought. Why hadn’t that fellow sent in his proper birth information so his credit file could be corrected? What was his name? Long—Daniel Long, that was it. It’s been about a month now. Well, business procedure is sixty days. We’ll wait another month, thought the credit clerk, who was really very conscientious about his job. He stuck it in his memory file and promptly forgot it as the movie came on.

  THE NEXT morning Don Solis again called Stoner’s office. The senator was expected back later in the day, if the caller cared to leave a message. Solis replied that he had valuable information concerning Caryl Chessman. No. He would talk only to Stoner. He was told that the senator planned on being in the office the next day even though it was Saturday. Solis promised to call back then.

  GEORGE LITTLE was concerned. It had been ten days since he gave a Los Angeles man $25,000 to kill Vincent Mungo. To kill him and cut the body into sections. Little intended to see the sections before handing over the other $25,000. To gloat over them and thereby dispel his grief. He especially wanted to look at the face, to make certain it was Mungo. And to stare into the eyes of the devil himself.

  Sitting in his Kansas home, his wife by his side, his other two daughters out on the town, he wondered if he should call the number given him in Los Angeles.

  AROUND MIDNIGHT Jonathan Stoner was relaxed enough to tell his mistress about his triumph in Kansas City. Much as he liked to brag to her, he left out one interesting detail. During his sojourn he had been introduced to some political favorites, women of beauty and quality who were apparently turned on only by men of enormous political power. They were a new breed to Stoner and they excited him. He already foresaw the day when his mistress would no longer be worthy of his attentions. He was moving up in every way.

  For her part, his mistress hoped only that he wouldn’t discover the tape-recording equipment she had installed months earlier. She was wise to the ways of men and the world and had no intention of being suddenly dumped by her lover-boy senator, at least not without remuneration. She was twentyfive years old and had to look out for herself.

  Her bed was wired to a tape recorder grinding away in a closet. The mechanism was voice-actuated, working only when sounds were made on the bed. It was simple and efficient and very expensive. The equipment and installation had cost over a thousand dollars. She expected to get it back someday with a great deal of interest. Until then she listened with wide-eyed fascination to anything her lover said.

  HENRY BAYLOR did not believe in premonitions of course. He was a doctor, a scientist of the mind. Precognition and inner voices were components of the occult, and the occult quite properly had no place in the discipline of science.

  Still, as Baylor puttered around his home on Saturday morning, he had a strong feeling that he was not yet out of the woods, so to speak, in the matter of Vincent Mungo’s escape from his institution.

  What particularly bothered him about his feeling was that he paid any attention to it at all.

  THE FOLLOWING day was Sunday and Senator Stoner had planned to spend it at home with his wife. But something had come up, something important. He knew she would understand, and he’d certainly be back by evening. His wife, a plain woman and long-suffering, understood even more than he knew.

  On the way to his office he thought of the phone call about Chessman. Could the man be legitimate? He would find out, and fast. But if it were true, if Chessman really had admitted his guilt, it would be helpful to the campaign to restore capital punishment. And to his own personal campaign as well. He just hoped the man was telling the story straight.

  Starting in Fresno that morning, Don Solis arrived in Sacramento just in time for his meeting with Stoner. He had called back the previous day and told the senator the bare outline. Now he would have to give him the whole chapter. He was ready. He just hoped the senator was in a receptive mood.

  ON TUESDAY morning Amos Finch called John Spanner in Hillside. It was now August 21, and he had thought about it since receiving the rejection note from Sacramento a week earlier. Spanner was the man to see; he had been on the Mungo case from the very beginning, as Finch remembered from the papers of early July. He probably knew more about Mungo than all those idiots in the state capital. At the least, he would be a good start.

  Finch still had that feeling about Mungo, that he could become a true mass murderer. But the major interest at the moment was with the elusive shadow behind Mungo, the other killer no one knew about. No one but Finch, He was sure his theory was right. That there should be two maniacal crank artists running loose at the same time stretched even his imagination. Yet, not having that instinctive police mistrust of all coincidences, he simply attributed it to bad luck. Or good.

  The only way he could visualize the other man was as the specter of death. The Grim Reaper, shrouded in mystery, scythe in hand, collecting its victims. Hiding behind one of its own creations lest anyone catch a glimpse of its reality. As long as Mungo remained free the other was safe, Perhaps Mungo was being hidden by the other or protected in some way. Perhaps they even shared the same body in the sense of a wonderfully devious schizoid personality.

  Finch was thrilled by the thought but was quickly forced to reject it. The idea of two distinct identities simultaneously being homicidal, both with ungovernable destructive urges toward the body, each with its own area of specification, was beyond even the imagination, let alone logic. There was nothing like it in all the literature of murder. Finch the expert could vouch for that. Such a find, were it ever discovered, would be the coup of the century. Beyond anything known. Beyond even Jekyll and Hyde, which was merely a personality battle between good and evil. But this! A battle for supremacy on the most elemental level in man’s makeup: murder. The thought was staggering, and Finch reluctantly dismissed it from consideration or even hope.

  As he waited for Spanner on the phone Amos Finch sought a name for his monster. He intended to include him in his next course at Berkeley and to write about him as well. But he had to learn much more about the Grim Reaper. The name came easily, in seconds. Where he was, what he did: the California Creeper.

  Finch wondered what John Spanner would say about his monster.

  ON AUGUST 22 a call was made from Kansas to Los Angeles. The man who answered said that Vincent Mungo had not yet been found. He indicated that the target might have left town.

  THAT SAME afternoon someone in Los Angeles called New York. Derek Lavery reported that the Mungo story was ready to go. New York was pleased. He told them the story came out strong for legal execution. They were delighted. It would help to offset the unfavorable image Senator Stoner was giving them with the
Chessman issue.

  Afterward he read the rough draft again. Ding had done well on finding killers who had escaped death through an insanity defense, some of whom had been eventually released only to kill again. Included was the horror tale of Jed Smith of Oregon who killed half his family in a murderous rage and vowed in court to kill the other half. After five years he was released from a state mental hospital. Three days later he killed the rest of his family.

  Ding ended his section with the calm observation that Charles Manson would be eligible for parole in five years. In 1978.

  For the main body of the story Adam Kenton had combed through Vincent Mungo’s brief record at Willows. There wasn’t much.

  Mungo had apparently become increasingly violent, more resentful, more afraid. No one seemed surprised that he had finally killed. A staff doctor believed that the mutilation of the face meant he hated his father. The man had deserted the boy of sixteen, committing suicide, which was the ultimate weakness. The boy had to become strong, had to have power over others, the ultimate power of life and death. In killing his only friend Thomas Bishop he was killing his father symbolically. Hence the facial destruction.

  What about the murdered woman in Los Angeles?

  He probably hated his mother too. She deserted him, died, when he was even younger.

  But the face was left untouched.

  Men who kill women in maniacal rage seldom harm the face. They destroy the body. It’s eminently sexual of course. An aberration.

  Thomas Bishop was Mungo’s only friend at Willows; he stuck to Bishop like glue. No doubt planned all along to kill him at the right time. The poor sap. Probably looked like Mungo’s father.

  Only two things in the article surprised Lavery. Vincent Mungo had told a doctor at Willows that he and the devil were blood brothers and would be together forever. This was just days before his escape and was, at the least, an odd choice of words. He then asked the doctor if he knew how to play chess.

  The other surprise was Mungo’s place of birth; it was not Stockton, where he had lived all his life, but Los Angeles. And his parents got married a year after he was born in October 1948.

  Lavery made a few deletions and indicated areas for clarification and sent the manuscript back to the fourth floor. He was satisfied. New York was waiting, eager to run the story in the next issue.

  SENATOR STONER was getting used to television. He had made a half dozen appearances in the past three weeks. Now he was on again, this time in San Francisco: a half-hour news special about capital punishment. He wore the prescribed blue shirt and light suit and slim tie. He stood still for the makeup and loop cord. Then he spoke forcefully and with genuine emotion about the problem of crime control and restoration of the death penalty. He denounced Caryl Chessman and Vincent Mungo as terrorists, no different from the self-styled revolutionaries who terrorize whole cities. They had to be stopped, he insisted, before society was thrown into chaos.

  “Crime is too important to be left to the police,” he declared passionately. Beyond a certain point it became a job for the politicians, who must revise laws in accordance with the will of the people. And it was their will that monsters like Mungo must die. Politicians ignored that will at their own peril. He did not intend to ignore it, and he hoped that the people would continue to support him. He would do his job no matter what. He was herewith serving notice on the criminals.

  “If survival comes down to them or us, by God,” he thundered, “it’s going to be us.”

  At the end of his portion of the program Stoner quietly announced that he had incontestable proof of Caryl Chessman’s guilt for those who still regarded him as a victim or hero. He didn’t mention Newstime, not wanting to give it any further publicity.

  After the show he told reporters of Chessman’s admission of guilt to Don Solis. He knew the story would make all the media. It would confuse the enemy camp and demoralize the Chessman old guard. Best of all, it would keep the issue alive and Stoner’s name in print.

  THE NEXT morning all the major newspapers carried items about the senator’s startling revelation concerning Caryl Chessman. Newsmen talked to Solis at a 10:30 conference in Stoner’s Sacramento office. Solis filled in the details. He seemed hesitant and unsure of himself in the glare of publicity but generally told his story as planned. As he spoke he began to visualize the talks he had with Chessman all those years ago. He remembered one time Chessman had said he was the Red Light Bandit and he talked about some of the women and how he was going to beat the rap and what he’d do when he got out. As Solis remembered these things he came to see them happening in his mind’s eye, and he himself began to believe as he heard Chessman once again tell him about the girl he got in the back seat of the car and how he forced her to lie down on the seat on her stomach …

  It was obvious to the senator and his press secretary that the story would be good for days, perhaps as much as a week with any luck. Now, if only Mungo could keep the ball rolling!

  CARL HANSUN was pleased. On August 29 he read in the Idaho papers about Stoner’s newest headline-grabber in his capital-punishment and personal publicity campaign. That evening he watched excerpts from the interview with Don Solis on the TV news. Between the two he made and received a number of phone calls.

  The idea had been a good one and was worth the added $10,000 Solis would cost. The senator was their kind of man, a businessman. So were the others. Anything spent to help them get reelected the following year would be returned with considerable interest.

  Hansun just hoped his friend didn’t get too cute with his story. If anything went wrong Solis would have to take all the blame himself. He’d know better than to trace it back to Idaho.

  ON THE last day of August a tan Buick hardtop with a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker was spotted in the sprawling parking lot at San Francisco International airport. The license plates matched those of the car belonging to Velma Adams of Los Angeles, slain six weeks earlier. In the trunk police found the woman’s pocketbook and clothing. Examination revealed no bloodstains in the car’s interior. A fingerprint check failed to turn up any suspects. The Buick was towed away and a report filed with the Los Angeles police.

  SEPTEMBER 1 was a Saturday, and Amos Finch drove north out of San Francisco toward Hillside and John Spanner. The weather was warm, the air clear. Traffic was heavy at times on this Labor Day weekend, and Finch finally arrived in Hillside at 1 P.M. He was an hour late, much to his annoyance.

  He found Spanner waiting for him at home. The lieutenant seemed unruffled and immensely affable. Finch liked him immediately, even more so after learning that he had read The Complete Mass Murderer’s Manual. The two men soon discovered they shared a passion for finely prepared fish as well as aberrant criminal behavior, and they spent a mutually delightful several hours discussing both.

  Spanner had never married, much to his regret at times. When confronted by male friends he would simply say he never found the right one. But it was more than that of course, He had a solitary quality about him that made women uneasy, at least those who might have had designs on him. He enjoyed being by himself and didn’t seem to need the constant companionship of others. His fishing and his work occupied most of his waking hours, and whenever he felt the need of a woman he afterward soon again felt a desire for solitude. It was a pattern that had held through most of his adult life. As he grew older he found the need for women lessening. But he was still sometimes dismayed that no one cared especially for him. At these times he believed himself too selfish, and the thought bothered him even more than the loneliness.

  Now, however, he had no such thoughts as he listened to Amos Finch describe his theory of a second homicidal maniac. He was impressed by Finch’s knowledge of the psychopathic mind, a knowledge certainly deeper than his, though sadly lacking in practical experience. For example, Finch seemed blissfully unaware of the statistical rarity of the coincidence he was suggesting. Two killers were just too much. Then, too, he accepted without proof th
e idea that both mutilations were committed with no reasonable motive.

  This Spanner refused to grant without further evidence. The mutilation of the face might have been done to prevent identification, the destruction of the girl’s body to suggest insanity instead of deliberate murder by someone known to her, perhaps a relative or lover. There were other possibilities. Maybe only one of the killings was an act of rage. Spanner still held a suspicion that something strange had occurred at Willows in the early morning hours of July 4, still had a feeling that Vincent Mungo might have been the victim of a diabolical plot. But he didn’t know what or how or even by whom. The body had been Bishop’s right down to the scar. He felt he had exhausted all possibilities of investigation.

  When Finch had said over the phone that Mungo did not kill the Los Angeles girl, Spanner’s ears had opened. They were still open but his eyes were seeing something different.

  He told Finch about Mungo’s sadism. As a youngster he had poured kerosene on cats and set them afire. In a house a few miles from Willows, Mungo had found fresh clothes on the night of his escape. He probably also had taken the kerosene with which he later burned his hospital uniform. In that house were four cats. With kerosene in hand he let them alone. Perhaps he was just in a hurry. But in Los Angeles the killer was in no hurry; he could easily have butchered the cat as well as the girl. Instead he apparently fed the cat.

  Another oddity was Thomas Bishop’s missing jacket. Assuming he took it with him that night because of the heavy rain, where was it? Why would he have given it to Mungo before he was killed? If it had been taken from him afterward, it would’ve been soaked with blood. The first blow must have been struck suddenly, without warning, so Mungo couldn’t have demanded it from Bishop under threat. They were friends until the axe fell.