By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  “It might get us to him first. If I can only find out who he really is.”

  He spent the next few minutes reporting his progress to John Perrone. Then a half hour with George Homer, his other researcher, who gave him a quick report on Jonathan Stoner. Much of it he knew from his own investigation of Stoner but a few things were of interest, especially the senator’s mistress. He hadn’t known about her, since that kind of thing didn’t come into his earlier look. He told Homer to keep digging.

  At noontime he took $2,000 out of the safe and put it in a separate envelope. After a fast sandwich down the block he walked to the public library at 42nd Street. In the massive reference room he sat at one end of a long table in the very last row on the left. A man sat across from him, intent on a book he held in both hands. In front of him, toward the middle of the table, was a manila folder. Kenton took out his envelope and placed it next to the folder, then opened the reference book he had selected on his way to the seat. A moment later the man softly closed his book, picked up the envelope and left the room. When Kenton had finished reading several pages of his book he opened the folder and studied the contents.

  By 1 P.M. he was back in his office, the folder in the safe. It was 10 A.M. in California and time for work. For the rest of the afternoon he was on the phone talking with staff doctors who had attended Vincent Mungo in the various institutions, their names taken from the list prepared by Doris earlier. Several were out or unavailable but called him back later in the day. He wrote down the names of those patients who were closest to Mungo in each place, according to the records and the best recollections of the doctors. Two in Atascadero, two in Lakeland, and one in Willows, as he remembered from his research for the earlier story on Mungo. These were the only ones he seemed to have had anything to do with in the last five years. He had not been in Valley River or Tremont since adolescence, and though Kenton called both he did not bother with names.

  He most carefully questioned the doctor at Lakeland but could not get him to say that Mungo had been friendly with Louis Terranova. Yes, he remembered Terranova, who had been there for a number of years. He believed the two men never knew each other and certainly were not friends. But he was close to two other patients, didn’t you say? As close as that sort could get to anybody. Which isn’t very much, you know. Was either of these two patients guilty of matricide? Perhaps as an adolescent? The doctor wouldn’t answer that. Such information could come only through official channels, and never over the telephone. No, absolutely not. Well, what were they in for? Not that either.

  At Atascadero it was much the same story. The names of two friends were given and no more. Neither doctor was surprised, however, by Mungo’s insane violence. Not at all. When that brooding type blows, there’s no limit to the madness.

  At Willows he talked again to a Dr. Poole, who had attended Mungo for the months he was there. Poole reminded Kenton that Mungo’s only friend in the institution had been a patient named Thomas Bishop, whom Mungo killed on the night of his escape.

  Kenton wrote down the name without interest.

  Could Mungo have had another friend, perhaps one he saw only at certain times? Definitely not. No homosexual relationships? Not the type. Never said anything about somebody at another hospital whom he knew or admired? Never talked about anyone.

  At the Stockton and San Francisco psychiatric divisions Kenton talked to two staff doctors who had seen Mungo. No, no friends. Their facilities were short-term. People were in and out all the time, and there was little chance for close relationships among the patients. Vincent Mungo was not particularly memorable to either one of them. He had been a patient several times in earlier years, according to the records. His homicidal proclivities were not apparent then, though he obviously had a violent nature and sadistic tendencies. Too bad.

  Kenton thought a moment about what he now had. Five men close to Mungo when he was inside, where it counted. He looked at the names. James Tumbull. Peter Lambert. Carl Pandel. Jason Decker. Thomas Bishop. He crossed out the last name. No use chasing a dead man.

  He sent the names up to Mel Brown to match against those who had escaped or had been released in the past five years. He already saw they didn’t match those of the mother killers, including Louis Terranova.

  Another good idea down the drain.

  Mel Brown eventually called back to say that the only name on the list was Carl Pandel, released from Lakeland in May 1972. The other four were either still inside or dead and thus out of the running. At least their names were not on the list of those released or escaped. Kenton reminded him that the final man, Thomas Bishop, had been killed by Mungo while escaping from Willows. Which was why he had crossed out the name. Brown thought it familiar, now remembered reading it at the time.

  What about Pandel?

  Would he check on the man first thing Monday? Maybe he killed his mother as a boy and the record was sealed. Maybe he lived in a small country town that had no newspaper. Maybe he’s young and white and Christian and crazy and in New York killing women.

  It was almost eight o’clock before Kenton left the office for the weekend. The last thing he did was to put $6,000 from the safe into an envelope and stick it in his pocket. He also took home the folder from Long Island and all the unread material from his desk.

  At nine o’clock a man delivered a small package to his rooms at the St. Moritz. He gave the envelope of money to the man, who counted it in front of him. Afterward he had dinner at the Italian Pavilion, dining alone in the garden. A half hour with a prostitute in a Lexington Avenue hotel relieved him of the week’s tension, and he returned home to sleep soundly.

  On Saturday and Sunday he stayed close to his quarters reading the complete financial reports on the dozen men who headed the Newstime empire. It was well worth the considerable expense, especially since it was their money. From the reports he learned many useful things, some of which could be most helpful should they try to thwart his efforts or reduce his authority or steal his glory. And he now knew something else about one of them, at least one of them, that surprised and shocked him, and he was not a man easily shocked.

  When he drifted into sleep Sunday night Adam Kenton felt good about the week coming up. He had all the balls bouncing in air, all under control and in perfect rhythm. He was at his investigative best. No matter how many things he worked on, he would handle them. It was all a question of timing and balance, and genius.

  As his eyelids fluttered heavily, he didn’t notice one of the balls slip beneath the corners of his mind.

  Fifteen

  JOHN SPANNER was crushed, deflated. Finally defeated. He had been so sure, not in the sense of hard fact or even evidential circumstance but in a primary gut feeling. An instinct that had gradually developed over twentyfive years of police work and had never totally let him down. Until now. For more than three months, since the very morning of the Willows murder, he had in turn fought the feeling and indulged it. No matter how he tried he could not shake loose the suspicion that something had gone amiss in the investigation of that murder, something planned and executed by an insanely devious mind, something that had resulted in the ultimate appearance of the fiendish killer known as Vincent Mungo. The suspicion gnawed at him and grew in his mind until he began to see the outlines of a diabolical plot. And the shadowy figure of the devil lurking behind it. Thomas Bishop.

  Now he saw that the devil was within himself and the plot was a creation of his own restless imagination. Even more, of his willful desire. He had wanted to beat Sheriff James Oates, to show the man how brilliant he was. And to demonstrate once again to his own department the absolute necessity of finely imaginative police work. Most of all, he had needed to prove to himself that he was still valuable, his skills and knowledge still important in a rapidly changing world.

  Pride, that monstrous measure of self-worth, had goaded him on and now had vanquished him. Nor was he the first to fall under its weight; a thought that did not comfort him in the slightest.<
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  And it was all for nothing.

  He held the report in his hand on this grim Friday morning, but he did not have to read it again. Thomas William Owens, a.k.a. Thomas William Bishop, had been routinely circumcised at the hospital in which he was born on April 30, 1948. The mother was listed as Sara Bishop Owens, age twenty-one; the father as Harold Owens, age twentythree. Their religion was Protestant. The baby weighed seven pounds, nine ounces at birth. There were no complications and the child was duly taken home by his parents. End of report.

  Within minutes of receiving the information from the downstate police he had called Los Angeles and talked with a hospital administrator. Was there any chance of a mistake, the slightest possibility? Usually none, he was told, at least insofar as the records were concerned. Human fallibility was something else of course. The administrator doublechecked while he waited. The wait would be longer than expected since the file was twentyfive years old and therefore in an annex storage area. His call would be returned as soon as the information was available.

  Spanner sat quietly in his office for twenty minutes, dejected, knowing what the answer would be. When it came he was prepared. The report was accurate: Thomas Owens had indeed been circumcised by Dr. Timothy Engles, whose signature attested to the fact. Would the lieutenant wish to talk with Dr. Engles? The administrator would try to get the number for him if the doctor was still practicing or living in the area.

  It wasn’t necessary and Spanner thanked him. There was nothing else to do as the invincibility of sheer fact impressed itself anew upon his orderly mind. He had been wrong from the beginning on this one and fact, which could instantly destroy the most beautifully wrought police theory, had finally caught up to him.

  That was Thomas Bishop’s circumcised body they had found at Willows on the holiday morning of July 4. And it was Vincent Mungo who had escaped and was presumably killing women.

  The pictures missing from Bishop’s file had just been misplaced. Perhaps prints had been made for newspapers when he was killed and the originals stuck in another folder, perhaps simply never returned.

  Spanner gave his disappointment a long last sigh and reached for the phone.

  IN AN ornate home in Kansas a man sat at his desk and gazed around his study for the hundredth time that Friday morning. The room was dark, the curtains closed; only one small lamp burned in the far corner. On the desk lay heaps of correspondence of every shape and size, all scattered and disordered as though a north wind had blown over them. The bookshelves lining the walls were in disarray, the sofa by the louvered windows groaned under the weight of newspapers from all over the country. More newspapers flooded the carpeted floor, while still others overflowed the three caned chairs in the middle of the room, the most recent being those from New York.

  The man closed his eyes in weariness and brought his right hand up to press against them. He had been awake for much of the night and up since five. Lately he hadn’t been sleeping well at all, or eating or working well either. The strain of his daughter’s death, the unbearable grief he was feeling, were beginning to affect his health and had already impaired his work habits and social life.

  Beyond even the sense of loss was the feeling of terrible injustice done him. His baby was dead, butchered by a lunatic whom he had paid to have destroyed. Yet Vincent Mungo was still living. After three months he was still hopelessly alive and killing women, with no end in sight. No one seemed able to stop him, even to get near him. The police couldn’t find him, the underworld couldn’t find him.

  How was that possible? The underworld was supposed to be able to find anybody. Especially those hiding from the police or society in general. That’s what he had been told, what he had been led to believe all his life. Everyone knew that. The underworld was always “they.” If “they” were after you, you were as good as dead.

  Then why wasn’t Vincent Mungo dead?

  Were they in league with him? Was it some kind of plot to get money from decent citizens? Were the police in on it too? All those millions and billions spent for police protection and in reality no one was protected but the police themselves. They were never mugged because they carried guns; thieves never burgled their homes because they would be shot, and if a policeman ever was killed a whole city would be turned upside down. But the police had never done anything for his daughter. They hadn’t protected her and they couldn’t find her killer. So what good were they to anybody? He would never again see them as other than scavengers who prey on people, parasites who take all they can and give nothing in return.

  At least the underworld didn’t pretend to protect families.

  Maybe the money he offered them wasn’t enough. Fifty thousand for Mungo. Maybe they expected more. But how much more? How much could one life be worth? Or one death?

  For some weeks now he had been thinking about the money, that perhaps he should offer them even more. He had some savings, some land he could sell. What he needed was peace of mind, that above all else. It would be worth any price.

  At 9:30 A.M. Kansas time he dialed Los Angeles, getting the number from a scrap of paper he kept in a locked drawer of the desk.

  “Any news about Vincent Mungo?” he asked the gruff voice that answered.

  “Who wants to know?”

  He gave his name for what seemed the hundredth time in the past few months.

  “Nothing yet,” said the voice with disinterest.

  “Why can’t they find him?” shouted the man in Kansas in a sudden fit of anger and despair. His voice cracked at the end.

  “I just take messages,” came the bored reply.

  “All right,” said the Kansan, regaining composure. “I have a message. Tell them George Little will pay double for quick delivery. Do you understand that? Double!”

  “Got it,” said the voice. “Double for delivery.”

  “Double for quick delivery.”

  “Sure, sure, double for quick delivery. Got it.”

  George Little hung up and buried his face in his hands. In a moment his shoulders shook with grief as his iron reserve crumbled. He could no longer control his sorrow and it eventually ran its course. Afterward he stared into the darkened room for a long time.

  IN SACRAMENTO, Jonathan Stoner arose at 10:30 relaxed and refreshed after a late-night political party. He showered and shaved, perfumed and dressed himself in a leisurely manner. There was no need to hurry on this Friday, no need at all. In fact he had the entire weekend free. And even more if needed, since he wouldn’t be leaving for the East until the following Wednesday. That was five days away, five whole days he had to himself. Well, almost. He would have to spend Sunday with his wife; she had seen very little of him in recent months because of his travels and campaigning but not once did she complain. He loved her for her patience and understanding and would never dream of hurting her in any way. Then on Monday he would have to be in the Senate at least for the morning on an important roll-call vote concerning capital punishment. And of course the usual last-minute preparations for the tour would take up part of Tuesday no doubt. But in comparison to most other weeks, especially of late, he was as free as a bird.

  Except, that was, for the matter of his mistress.

  The state senator frowned in thought. There had been some good times with her, some very good moments they had shared and things they had done together. He had used her not only for relief in bed, at which she was extremely capable, but oftentimes as a sounding board for ideas or just somebody to whom he could pour out his frustrations. He had confided much to her during the three years of their relationship, much information as well as his hopes and ambitions and fears and hatreds.

  Her bed was a most comfortable place to give verbal vent to his feelings, and it soon became for him a sort of psychiatric couch, with his unwitting bed partner in the role of silent psychiatrist. He sometimes wondered at her easy compliance and submission but each time concluded it was love for him that fueled both her passion and her patience. He suspected a
great many women secretly loved him, or could love him, or would love him, and he regarded all this as perfectly natural.

  Now she would have to go, and he would miss her heavy breathing and labored sighs. He would miss too her soft, quiet eyes that gazed at him lovingly as he talked after their bouts of passion. But he would be firm. His mind was made up, his decision final.

  “We are through.” That’s what he would say and that’s all he would say.

  Stoner flirted with the idea of sending her a telegram instead but rejected it as possibly being incriminating. Perhaps a telephone call would do. He dreaded any excess of emotion and women were always getting emotional, especially when men were leaving them. Which was exactly what he intended to do.

  For the past several months his star had risen in the East and had not yet set. Indeed, across America his name was beginning to be heard as a protector of fundamental Republican virtues and an ardent foe of what he termed centralism. The capital-punishment issue was itself only part of a still larger split in American political thought between everincreasing centralization of government, with its attendant self-inflating bureaucracies, and a return to the more traditional, local approach to governing bodies. The senator believed he saw what was happening and therefore what was coming, and he regarded himself as the spokesman for all those who were beginning to demand more control over their own lives. He expected to ride his star to the summit, and there was no room for a local mistress.

  Still, the idea was to be covered in all things at all times. The mistress would have to go, another take her place. That was only natural. One from the power-struck breed of woman he was now meeting. But what did he do in the meanwhile? He would have no female body for relief, nothing steady anyway. No one to confide in, or talk to, or gloat over. His wife of course. She was an angel, very ethereal and much too pure for him. He could do little with her.

  Perhaps he should wait a bit before telling his mistress they were through. How long? Another day? Week? Until he found her replacement?