The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  “So, you don’t agree with the assessment of these men?”

  “No. And the police subsequently found evidence in the area of his bed. And the bloodstains on his nightshirt positively matched those of the murdered nurse.”

  “I’m aware of those details,” she said coldly. Lucy Jones turned back to Francis. “Could you return to the missing tips of the fingers, please, Francis?” she asked, significantly more gently. “Would you describe precisely what you saw, please?”

  “Four joints probably sliced off. Her hand was in a pool of blood.”

  Francis lifted his own hand and held it up in front of his face, as if he could see what it would be like to have the tips of his fingers severed.

  “If Lanky, your friend, had performed this—”

  Peter interrupted. “He might have done some things. But not that. And certainly not the sexual assault, either.”

  “You don’t know that!” Doctor Gulptilil said angrily. “That’s pure supposition. And I have seen the same types of mutilations, and I can assure you that they could have been caused by any number of methods. Accident, even. The notion that Lanky was somehow incapable of cutting her hand, or that it happened through some other suspicious means is pure conjecture! I can see where you are heading with this, Miss Jones, and I think the implication is both erroneous and potentially disruptive for the entire hospital!”

  “Really?” Lucy said, turning once again toward the psychiatrist. The single word didn’t demand an expansion. She paused, then looked over at the two patients. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but Peter interrupted her before the next word came out.

  “You know, C-Bird,” he said, speaking to Francis, but staring at Lucy Jones, “right now I’m guessing that this young woman prosecutor has seen other bodies very much like Short Blond’s. And that each one of those other bodies was missing one or more joints from the hand, much like Short Blond was. That would be my guess for the moment.”

  Lucy Jones smiled, but it wasn’t a smile that contained even the slightest hint of humor. It was, Francis thought, one of those smiles one used to cover up all sorts of feelings. “That is a good guess, Peter,” she said.

  Peter’s eyes narrowed further and he sat back, as if thinking hard, before he continued speaking slowly. He directed his words at Francis, but they were truly intended for the woman who sat across from him. “C-Bird, I’m also thinking that our visitor here is charged, somehow, with finding the man who removed those finger joints from those other women. And that is why she hurried out here and is so eager to speak with us. And you know what else, C-Bird?”

  “What, Peter?” Francis asked, although he could sense the answer already.

  “I’ll wager that at night, deep after midnight, in the complete dark of her room back there in Boston, lying alone in her bed, the sheets all tangled and sweaty, Miss Jones has nightmares about each one of those mutilations and what they might mean.”

  Francis said nothing, but looked over at Lucy Jones, who slowly nodded her head.

  chapter 9

  I stepped away from the wall, dropping my pencil to the floor.

  My stomach churned with the stress of memory. My throat was dry and I could feel my heart racing. I turned away from the words floating on the dingy white paint in front of me and walked into the small apartment bathroom. I turned on the hot water tap, and then the shower as well, filling the room with a sticky, humid warmth. The heat slid over me, and the world around me began to turn to fog. It was how I remembered those moments in Gulp-a-pill’s office, when the real nature of our situation began to take form. The room steamed up, and I could feel an asthmatic shortness of breath, just as I did that day. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. The heat made everything foggy, as if indistinct, lacking edges. It was getting harder to tell whether I was as I was now, getting old, hair thinning, wrinkles forming, or how I was then, when I had my youth and my problems, all wrapped together, my skin and muscles as tight as my imagination. Behind that mirror image of myself were the shelves where all my medications were arrayed. I could feel a palsy in my hands, but worse, a rumbling, earthmoving shaking within me, as if some great seismic shift was taking place on the terrain of my heart. I knew I should take some drugs. Calm myself down. Regain control over my emotions. Quiet all the forces that lurked underneath my skin. I could feel madness trying to grasp my thinking. Like fingernails clawing for purchase on a slope, a little like a climber, who suddenly feels his equilibrium slip, and who teeters for a moment, knowing that a slide will turn into a fall, and if he cannot grab hold of something, a plummet into oblivion.

  I breathed out superheated air. My mind was scorched.

  I could hear Lucy Jones’s voice, as she had bent toward Peter and me.

  “… A nightmare is something you awaken from, Peter,” she had said. “But thoughts and ideas that remain after its terrors have disappeared are something considerably worse.”

  Peter nodded in agreement. “I am completely familiar with those sorts of waking moments,” he said very quietly, with a stiff formality that curiously seemed to bridge something between them.

  It was Doctor Gulptilil who broke into the thoughts that were gathering in that room. “Look, see here,” he said, with a brisk officiousness, “I am not at all pleased with the direction that this conversation is heading, Miss Jones. You are suggesting something that is quite difficult to contemplate.”

  Lucy Jones turned to the doctor. “What is it that you believe I’m suggesting?” she asked.

  Francis thought to himself: That’s the prosecutor within her. Instead of denying or objecting or some other slithering response, she turned the question back on the doctor. Gulp-a-pill, who was no fool even though he often sounded like one, must have recognized the same, the technique not an unfamiliar one for psychiatrists; he squirmed uncomfortably before replying. He was cautious, a good deal of the high-pitched tension had been removed from his voice, so that the unctuous, slightly Anglicized tones of the hospital psychiatric director had returned in force. “What I believe, Miss Jones, is that you are unwilling to see circumstances that suggest something opposite to what you are wishing. An unfortunate death has taken place. Proper authorities were immediately summoned. The crime scene was professionally inspected. Witnesses interviewed in depth. Evidence was obtained. An arrest made. All this was done according to procedure and according to form. It would seem that it is time, now, to let the judicial process take over and see what is to be determined.”

  Lucy nodded, considering her response.

  “Doctor, are you familiar with the names of Frederick Abberline and Sir Robert Anderson?”

  Gulp-a-pill hesitated, as he mentally examined the two names. Francis could see him flipping through the index of his memory, only to draw a blank. This was the sort of failure that Doctor Gulptilil seemed to hate. He was a man who refused to display any disadvantage, no matter how slight or insignificant. He scowled briefly, pursed his lips, shifted about in his seat, cleared his throat once or twice, then replied by shaking his head. “No, I am sorry. These two names mean nothing to me. What, pray, is their relevance to this discussion?”

  Lucy didn’t directly answer this, instead she said, “Perhaps, Doctor, you would be more familiar with their contemporary. A gentleman known in history as Jack the Ripper?”

  Gulptilil’s eyes narrowed. “Of course. He occupies some footnotes in a number of medical and psychiatric texts, primarily due to the undeniable savagery and notoriety of his crimes. The other two names …”

  “Abberline was the detective assigned to investigate the Whitechapel murders in 1888. Anderson was his supervisor. Are you at all familiar with the events of that time?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Even schoolchildren are familiar in a fashion with the Ripper. There are rhymes and songs, which have given way, I believe to novels and films.”

  Lucy continued. “The crimes dominated the news. Filled the populace with fear. Became something of the standar
d against which many similar crimes are vetted even today, although, in reality, they were confined to a well-defined area and a highly specific class of victims. The fear they caused was truly out of proportion to their actual impact, as was their impact on history. In London today, you know, you can take a guided bus tour of the murder sites. And there are discussion groups that continue to investigate the crimes. Ripperologists, they are called. Nearly a hundred years later, and people remain morbidly fascinated. Still want to know who Jack truly was….”

  “This history lesson is designed to do what, Miss Jones? You are making a point, but I believe we are all uncertain what it is.”

  Lucy didn’t seem concerned by the negative response.

  “You know what has always intrigued criminologists about the Ripper crimes, Doctor?”

  “No.”

  “As suddenly as they started, they stopped.”

  “Yes?”

  “Like a spigot of terror turned on, then shut off. Click! Just like that.”

  “Interesting, but …”

  “Tell me, Doctor, in your experience, do people who are dominated by sexual compulsion—especially to commit crimes, horrific, ever-increasingly savage crimes of dramatic proportions—do they find ample satisfaction in their acts, and then spontaneously stop?”

  “I am not a forensic psychiatrist, Miss Jones,” he said briskly.

  “Doctor, in your experience …”

  Gulptilil shook his head. “I suspect, Miss Jones,” he said with an arch tone in his voice, “that you, as well as I, know the answer to that question to be no. They are crimes without ends. A homicidal psychopath doesn’t reach an eventual conclusion. At least not internally, although in the literature of such persons there are some who are driven by excessive guilt to take their own lives. These, unfortunately, seem to be in the minority. No, generally speaking, repetitive killers are stopped by some external means.”

  “Yes. True enough. Anderson, and we suspect, by proxy, Abberline, privately theorized that there were three possibilities for the cessation of the Ripper crimes in London. Perhaps the killer had emigrated to America—unlikely, but possible—although there are no subsequent records of Ripper-type murders in the States. A second theory: he had died, either at his own hand, or that of another’s—which was also not terribly likely. Even in the Victorian era, suicide was not particularly common, and we would have to speculate that the Ripper was tortured by his own fiendishness, and there is no evidence of that. Third, a far more realistic possibility.”

  “Which was?”

  “That the man known as the Ripper had in fact been incarcerated in a mental hospital. And, unable to talk his way out of bedlam, he was swallowed up and lost forever inside thick walls.”

  Lucy paused, then asked, “How thick are the walls here, Doctor?”

  Gulp-a-pill reacted swiftly, pushing himself to his feet. His face was contorted in anger. “What you are suggesting, Miss Jones, is horrific! Impossible! That some latter-day Ripper is here now, in this hospital!”

  “Where better to hide?” she asked quietly.

  Gulp-a-pill struggled for composure. “The notion that a murderer, even a clever one, would be able to conceal his true feelings from the entire staff of professionals here is ludicrous! Perhaps one could in the 1800s, when psychology was in its infancy. But not today! It would take a near constant force of will, and a sophistication and knowledge of human nature far more profound than any patient here is capable of. Your suggestion is simply impossible.” He said these last words with a forcefulness that masked his own fears.

  Lucy started to reply, then stopped. Instead, she reached down and grasped her leather briefcase. She rummaged around inside for a moment, then turned to Francis. “What was it you called the nurse-trainee who was murdered?” she asked quietly.

  “Short Blond,” Francis said. Lucy Jones nodded.

  “Yes. That would seem right. Her hair was cropped short …”

  As she spoke, almost musing to herself, she withdrew a manila envelope from her satchel. From this, she removed a series of what Francis instantly saw to be large, eight-by-ten color photographs. She glanced at these, flipping through them on her lap, then she picked one out and tossed it on the desk in front of Gulp-a-pill.

  “Eighteen months ago,” she said, as the picture skidded on the wood surface.

  Another photograph emerged from the pile. “Fourteen months ago.”

  Then a third fluttered down. “Ten months ago.”

  Francis craned forward, and he saw that each picture was of a young woman. He could see glossy red streaks of blood gathered around the throat of each. He could see clothes stripped and rearranged. He could see eyes open to nothing except horror. They were all Short Blond, and Short Blond was each of them. They were different, yet the same. Francis looked closer, as three more photographs skidded across the desktop. These were close-up pictures of each victim’s right hand. And then he saw: One finger joint missing on the hand of the first; two on the second; three on the third.

  He tore his eyes away and glanced over at Lucy Jones. Her own eyes had narrowed and her face had set. For a second, Francis thought, she glowed with an intensity that was both red-hot and ice-cold all at once.

  She breathed in slowly, and spoke in a quiet, hard voice: “I will find this man, Doctor.”

  Gulp-a-pill was staring down helplessly at the photographs. Francis could see that he was assessing the depth of the situation. After a moment, he reached out and took all the pictures and placed them together, like a card sharp gathering a deck together after it has been shuffled, but knowing full well where the ace of spades was located. He fit them into a single pile and tapped it on the desk to even each edge. Then he handed the photographs back to Lucy. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I believe you will. Or, at the very least, make a rigorous attempt.”

  Francis did not think that Gulp-a-pill meant one word of what he said. And then he reconsidered; perhaps there were some words that Gulptilil spoke that he did mean, and others that he did not. Determining which was which was a very tricky process.

  The doctor returned to his seat and to his composure. For a moment or two he drummed his fingers against the desktop. He looked over at the young prosecutor and raised his bushy black eyebrows, as if anticipating another question.

  “I will need your assistance,” Lucy finally said.

  Doctor Gulptilil shrugged. “Of course. That is most obvious. My help, and the help of others, surely. But I think, despite the dramatic similarities between the death we have had here, and the ones you have so theatrically displayed, that you are, in truth, mistaken. I believe our nurse-trainee was unfortunately assaulted by the patient currently in custody and charged with the crime. However, in the interest of justice, of course, I will assist you in whatever method at my disposal, if only to put your mind at rest, Miss Jones.”

  Again, Francis thought each word spoken said one thing, but meant another.

  “I’m going to stay here until I have some answers,” Lucy said.

  Doctor Gulptilil nodded slowly. He smiled humorlessly. “Answers are perhaps not something we are particularly good at providing here,” he said slowly. “Questions, we have in abundance. But resolutions are much harder to come by. And certainly not with the sort of legal precision that I think you will be seeking, Miss Jones. Nevertheless,” he continued, “we shall make ourselves available, to the best of our ability.”

  “To conduct a proper investigation,” Lucy said briskly, “as you accurately pointed out, I’ll need some assistance. And I need access.”

  “Let me remind you once again: This is a mental hospital, Miss Jones,” the doctor said quickly. “Our tasks here are quite distinct from your own. And I imagine, might seem in conflict. Or at least, that potential exists, surely, as you can see. Your presence cannot disrupt the orderly process of the facility. Nor can you be so intrusive as to upset the fragile states of many of the people we treat.”

  The doctor paused,
then continued with a singsong certainty. “We will make records available to you, as you wish. But as for the wards and questioning potential witnesses or suspects—well, we are not equipped to help you in that fashion. After all, we are in the daily business of assisting folks stricken with serious and often crippling disease. Our approach is therapeutic, not investigative. We have no one here with the sorts of expertise that I believe you will require …”

  “That’s not true,” Peter the Fireman said under his breath. His words stopped everyone in the room, filling the space around with a dangerous and unsettled quiet. Then he added in a steady, firm voice: “I do.”

  Part Two

  A WORLD OF STORIES

  chapter 10

  My hand was cramped and sore, as was my existence. I gripped the stub of pencil tightly, as if it were some sort of lifeline tethering me to sanity. Or, perhaps, insanity. It was getting harder for me to tell the one from the other. The words I’d written on the walls surrounding me wavered, like heat plumes above a black strip of highway at noon on a cloudless summer day. Sometimes I thought of the hospital as a special universe, all unto itself, where we were all little planets held in place by great gravitational forces none of us could quite see, orbiting through space on our own paths, yet interdependent, each of us connected, yet separate. It seemed to me that if you gather souls together for almost any reason, in a prison, in an Army or at a professional basketball game, or a Lions’ Club meeting, or a Hollywood opening or a union meeting or a school board session, there is a commonality of purpose, a shared link. But that was far less true for all of us, because the only real bond we held in common was a singular desire to be different from what we were, and for many of us, that was a dream that seemed forever unreachable. And, I suppose, for the ones that had been swallowed up by the hospital for years, it was no longer even a preference. There were many of us scared of the outside world and the mysteries that it held, so much so, that we were willing to risk whatever danger breathed inside the walls. We were all islands, with our own stories, thrown together in a location that was quickly becoming less and less safe.