by Chaz McGee
‘Yes,’ the new orderly said and tightened the straps. He was a man of few words.
‘You are built like a brick shithouse, mamma,’ Parker said to Maggie. ‘Come back alone and I’ll show you what a real man can do to you.’
The new orderly moved quickly. He slapped his palm hard against Parker’s ear. It made a sound like a gunshot. Parker flinched in pain. It had been a well-aimed blow. The other orderly looked startled, but said nothing. They both suspected Otis Parker had orchestrated Vincent D’Amato’s murder and they were going to get their revenge any way they could. Parker had killed one of their own.
Maggie took it all in her stride. She was used to scumbags and while she preferred to take care of such situations herself, she knew she might need both of the orderlies in the hour ahead. She was happy to let them take the initiative.
‘She was a sweet soft thing unsullied by others,’ Parker said suddenly. He smiled at Maggie, awaiting her reaction. ‘Those high school girls always are, at least if you get them young enough.’
‘So you’re admitting that you knew Darcy Swan?’ Maggie asked mildly.
Parker back-pedalled immediately. ‘Naw, man. I’ve just known a million girls like her,’ Parker boasted. ‘They’re always looking for a firm hand and I provide one.’ He sat back and smiled just as the white orderly bounced another hard blow off his ear.
‘There’s your firm hand,’ the orderly said, then lapsed back into a watchful silence as if nothing had happened.
Parker had slumped to one side. I could feel the anger rising in him like boiling water but he sat up straight again if it were no big deal. He did not want to give the other man his due.
Honestly, I appreciated the orderly’s violent chivalry. Maggie deserved more than the filth that spewed from Parker’s mouth. I was pretty sure that the orderly felt the same way and planned to slap the crap out of Parker each time anything approaching an obscenity escaped his lips.
‘Thank you,’ Maggie murmured faintly and it was hard to tell if she was talking to Parker or the orderly. ‘You know who I meant when I asked you about Darcy Swan. How is it that you knew I was talking about her?’
‘Hey, I’m not an idiot. I watch the news. I saw her photos and I know her kind. Darcy Swan was just another piece of white trash and she deserved to be taken out with the rest of the garbage.’ Parker smiled. ‘Whoever did that to her deserves a medal for helping to clean up the streets.’
His attempts to shock Maggie would do little good. She had dealt with worse than Parker. ‘She sounds just like your type,’ Maggie said mildly. The orderlies snickered – and Parker did not like that one bit.
‘My type? You know, I’ve never been able to decide what I like best,’ Parker shot back. ‘Brunettes, blondes or redheads? It’s tough to decide. Especially when they all seem to like me.’ He stared at Maggie’s brown hair like a connoisseur trying to decide what brand and year of wine to buy. ‘It’s a shame you keep yours cut so short. Though I suppose I could make an exception.’ His gaze lingered on Maggie’s legs, but that did not fluster her either and that seemed to anger Parker. ‘Of course, I don’t like them to be cold bitches, either. At least not at first,’ he added. His peculiar high giggle followed and just like that it was on the wall behind him – the flicker of something dark and terrible, of wings unfolding.
Just as quickly, it was gone.
‘But I’ve been inside for a while, so I think I’ll go for a blonde instead,’ Parker said with a smile. ‘First chance I get, of course.’
‘That’ll be in about six hundred years,’ Maggie assured him.
The air around Parker vibrated with something dark and angry.
Maggie saw that Parker was rattled and tried to throw him off further by changing the subject. ‘I understand that you and Vincent D’Amato were close.’
Her sarcasm was wasted on Parker. ‘Not close enough for me to have killed him,’ Parker answered. ‘Though I’d like to thank whoever did the job for me.’
This time, the white orderly bounced a punch off of Parker’s midsection, causing him to double over in pain. The orderly stood back up and calmly folded his hands in front of him, like he was in a choir waiting to sing. No one said anything. The silence was broken only by Parker’s wheezing as he attempted to regain his breath. When he finally straightened back up, I could see his dark shadow on the wall behind, twisting and craning, its long neck stretching outward as if it were trying to get at the orderly.
With supreme effort, Parker regained control. The shadow disappeared.
‘Vincent D’Amato was a punk,’ Parker said defiantly – but he could not keep his eyes from shifting to look at the new orderly. He wanted to see it coming this time. ‘He was one of those punks who gets a little authority and then has to lord it over you because he knows he’s a loser and a worm. I hated the guy, but you can’t pin his murder on me. I was locked up in here.’
‘Did you ask someone else to murder him for you?’ Maggie asked.
‘How would I do that?’ Parker answered. ‘I haven’t had a visitor in over a year and I can count the phone calls I’ve made on both hands, all of them to my lawyer. You can check the records if you like.’
Now, that was interesting – Parker spoke of this record of isolation as if he had deliberately built it, as if he had known he would need to bring it up one day.
‘Yes, I see that you have had no visitors for nearly a year and no requests for visitors, either.’ Maggie looked down at a sheet of paper in front of her. ‘Not a lot of fans in your corner?’
‘I have plenty of people who would come see me,’ Parker said, smirking. ‘I have women all over America sending me money and begging me to let them come here so they can suck my—’ The white orderly cocked his right arm and Parker shut his mouth abruptly. ‘I tell them not to come. I tell them I’ll be out of here soon enough.’ He grinned. ‘They can’t wait for me to be on the outside.’
They were the only ones, I thought to myself, and they’d change their minds soon enough if it ever actually happened.
‘You have no family?’ Maggie asked.
‘My family’s dead,’ Parker asked. ‘Good riddance to them.’
More likely, he was dead to them. My guess was that there were probably plenty of members of his family alive trying to escape into the anonymous sea of Parkers who did not have serial killers hanging from their family tree.
‘Are you particularly close to another inmate?’ Maggie asked. I knew she was trying to figure out if Parker was sending orders to someone through another patient, but Parker, predictably, took her meaning to be sexual.
‘I’m not a fag, if that’s what you mean,’ Parker said, a smile growing over his face. ‘Want me to prove it?’
The white orderly moved toward Parker, but a look from Maggie stilled him. ‘I can easily find out from other people,’ Maggie explained. ‘I’m just giving you a chance to cooperate.’
‘Cooperate in what?’ Parker asked back. ‘What exactly is it you’re here about? No, wait – scratch that. What I really meant to say was that I want my lawyer because it sounds an awful lot to me like you’re investigating a murder.’
‘Two murders, actually.’ Maggie’s voice was calm, almost sweet. ‘And it sounds an awful lot to me like you miss the attention from being the center of a murder investigation. Locked away in here with all the other crazies, just another patient like they are, just as forgotten as they are . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I’m guessing that must be pretty hard for you. You seem to really need attention and validation from other people.’
This time, the shadow bloomed across the wall behind him with an almost radiant intensity: dark jagged wings spread wide and instantly disappeared as, with monumental effort, Parker fought his true nature.
I stared at the wall behind him until, with fear, I realized that Parker was staring straight at me. He could see me. He looked momentarily startled, opened his mouth as if to ask who I was, then abruptly shut it again.
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I thought I knew what had happened. Whatever power fed him, it had recognized me as its enemy. It had recognized that it had enemies beyond those who walked the earth in human form. And though it was not rational, though I feared few things in my afterworld, a feeling of overwhelming dread overcame me. I was, quite simply, terrified to be in its presence.
The room had grown quiet. The orderlies were looking at one another, having never known Parker to pass on the opportunity to run his mouth. They did not trust his silence. Parker seemed to have forgotten what it was Maggie had asked. He just stared beyond Maggie and Calvano to where I sat, unsure of what to do.
‘Well then,’ Maggie said, rising. ‘We’ll be in touch soon.’
Parker regained his composure. ‘Next time you want to see me, go through my lawyer. He has a few surprises for you.’
Maggie stared Parker straight in the eye. ‘Don’t even try it,’ she said. ‘You are not getting out of here. Not in your lifetime and not in my lifetime. Believe me when I say, I will never let it rest.’
The white orderly was smiling at Maggie with admiration. I had a sudden vision of him throwing Maggie over his shoulder and taking her far away to a pirate ship where she would dress like a wench, and bring him jugs of rum as they sailed the high seas together. What was it about the orderly that made my mind want to wander into such fanciful territory? There was something odd, yet almost jolly, about him, as if he thought it a great, good joke to be here among us.
Maggie was ready to call it a day. She had known she would get nothing useful out of Parker. That had not been the purpose of her visit. She simply wanted to get a feel for the man, and how crazy, or how dangerous, he might be.
‘Is he always shackled like that?’ Maggie asked the orderlies as she chanced a glance with Calvano and gathered her things to go. ‘Even when he’s with the general population?’
‘Not yet,’ the white orderly answered. ‘But we’re working on it.’
EIGHTEEN
Maggie and Calvano left Holloway, intending to get a few hours of sleep. But there was something about Otis Parker that always made me want to check on my son, just to make sure he was safe.
The moment I entered Michael’s ward, I could smell Connie’s sauce. She made it the old school way, with beef and veal and pork, bathed in red wine and cooked all day in a rich tomato sauce. She had set out plates on the table in the common room, and had brought enough to give out samples to anyone who asked. She was the mother of two teenage boys: she knew what joy the simple act of being cooked for could bring to a young person – and that some of the kids on the ward had never experienced that joy.
A vivid memory came to me of one of Michael’s birthdays when he was young. I remembered Connie bending over the birthday cake, cutting slice after slice for the boys running and shrieking around her, being careful to give each child an icing flower so that everyone got the same portion. Now, she was ladling out noodles and sauce with the same precision, taking pride in the way the teenagers before her transformed from suspicious and angry to younger, more buoyant versions of themselves.
Michael did not touch his at first and I suspected it was because he was waiting for his friend Adam to join them. A few minutes into this rare communal meal, Adam appeared in the doorway and Michael instantly relaxed. His friend meant a lot to him.
Connie made Michael and Adam sit at a table and served them like a waitress in a family restaurant. Once they were all set, she announced that she needed to get home to see to Michael’s brother. She probably didn’t. Sean was a pretty independent little cuss, but Connie was smart enough to know that the last thing Michael wanted was his mother fussing over him while the other kids watched.
The evening sky had grown dark and I followed her out to the front lawn, acutely aware that the safety of Holloway had been shattered by Vincent D’Amato’s death. Despite the orderly’s murder, my friend Olivia sat at her customary spot in front of the fountain staring at the tumbling waters. The crime scene tape had already been removed, a testament to the soothing power that the fountain had over many of the patients. It had been important to reopen the spot.
Connie noticed Olivia sitting on the bench and went over to her, taking a tentative seat at the other end. ‘You must really need to be alone if you’re sitting out here in the dark,’ Connie said. ‘I’m sure you must know what happened here earlier today. Is it safe for you to be out here alone like this?’ Her voice was kind and without rebuke.
Olivia glanced at Connie, but did not recognize her from their earlier encounter by the fountain. I was not surprised. Olivia lived in her own private world. ‘I don’t think they know I’m gone,’ Olivia admitted. ‘I just slipped out. I had to.’
I hid behind the fountain to watch. I realized that I was looking upon two of the most important women in my strange world, yet neither one of them knew it.
Olivia glanced at Connie again, comforted by her silence. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to get out of here,’ she told Connie. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever have the strength to do it.’
‘I know,’ Connie agreed. ‘There are mornings when I wonder how I’m going to get out of bed, when I think of all the things that are expected of me, and how many people need me, and how much must be done to take care of them. And then I think of all the things I once thought I would do and now know I’m never going to do. Sometimes I wish I could go away to someplace quiet and let it all pass, until I have a clean slate and can start over.’
‘You have a family?’ Olivia asked.
‘Two boys,’ Connie said. ‘And last month I told a man I would marry him.’ She said no more, but Olivia could read between the lines.
‘And now you’re not so sure?’ she asked.
Connie nodded. ‘My husband has been dead a little over a year.’ She hesitated. ‘I won’t lie – it was a hard marriage. I was usually the only person in it. He did a lot of things to destroy himself. He did a lot of things that destroyed us, although I like to think he did not mean to do them, rather that he did not understand what he was doing to me.’
I thought my heart would break.
Olivia was nodding. ‘It’s hard to see someone you love destroy themselves,’ she agreed. ‘I had a husband like that too, you know. He was brilliant, everyone said he was, but he always walked away right before he was about to finish something. It didn’t matter whether it was painting a room, building a bird house, planting a garden or, worst of all, committing to a career. All he had to do was turn in his doctoral thesis, but he never could finish revising it. It was never good enough for him, never defensible enough, and the more I tried to persuade him to get it done so we could move on with our lives, the more he felt it needed changing.’
‘What happened?’ Connie asked.
‘We had a child together.’ Olivia’s voice faded. ‘But it all sort of fell apart.’ She was silent and seemed to draw into herself. Connie did not press her for details.
‘Why are you sitting here?’ she asked Olivia. ‘So close to where that man was killed?’
‘I just wanted to remember him for a few moments,’ Olivia said. ‘He was my friend. His name was Vinny. He played the bass guitar and had a rabbit named Stu and an old motorcycle he was restoring.’
Connie’s face told Olivia what she suspected and Olivia hurried to reassure her. ‘Not that kind of a friend,’ she said. ‘Vinny would never have hit on me. He just liked to look after me. He was a very kind person, even when he wasn’t feeling well and that was often. He was sick, but he never complained about it. He was always too busy asking how you were. All the patients loved him and I think the supervisor was jealous of that. She said she was going to report him for being too close to the patients, but he would never have done what she was implying. He got transferred to another unit, but he used to see me sitting here on his way to and from his building and he’d always stop to talk. About a week ago, he told me he didn’t think it was safe for me to be alone so much.’
&n
bsp; ‘What did he mean by that?’ Connie asked, knowing he could have meant it in any number of ways.
Olivia stared at the spot where Vincent D’Amato had died. ‘He said there were too many unpredictable people here at Holloway, and I was too beautiful to be safe, and that there were bad men in the world who could never be kept behind enough fences. He even used to sit under those trees over there when he got off work, reading, and he wouldn’t leave until I went inside and he knew that I was safe.’ She hesitated, unsure of whether to say what she was about to say. ‘I’m afraid maybe he got killed because of me. That he was coming over here to check on me and make sure I was safe when someone killed him.’
She looked up at Connie, unsure of whether she could trust her but badly needing to tell someone. ‘I was here last night,’ Olivia said. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I needed to sit by the water for a while. That’s all. I thought the sound of it might calm me. I was only outside for fifteen minutes and then I went back in. What if he got killed keeping someone away from me?’
Connie was silent. They stared at one another and I knew that Connie was trying, without success, to gauge how much of what Olivia had said was true and how much was imagined guilt from a troubled mind. ‘I’m so sorry about your friend,’ she finally said.
‘People around me always die,’ Olivia whispered. ‘It’s me. I’m not safe.’
‘Will you do me a favor?’ Connie asked her in a voice as kind as any I had ever heard. My wife was like that. She had the gift of being able to understand a person’s sorrows and she often took the sadness on willingly in order to give the other person a break. It was one of the things I had loved most about her when we first met.
Olivia was looking at her suspiciously. ‘What kind of favor?’ she asked.
‘My son is in that building,’ Connie pointed to the short-term unit. ‘He’s in the adolescent ward. I just brought him a home-cooked meal.’ She smiled. ‘He’s embarrassed to be babied by his mother, so I had to leave. But I’m worried about him. I’m worried about him being here, and I’m worried about the reasons why he had to come here in the first place.’ To my astonishment, Connie started to cry. Olivia waited while Connie struggled to regain her composure. If there was anything Olivia understood, it was tears.
