by J. A. Kerley
“I’ve met them all,” I interrupted. “I tracked and arrested Crump, who attacked elderly women. Bolz was a hospital poisoner. Vasquez killed winos or railroad bums. Have you studied Bobby Lee Crayline, Doctor? His capacity for violence is on another level.”
Slezak had a butter-smooth smile on his face. “If Mr Crayline is resistant to hypnosis, we’re gone. All I’m requesting is the opportunity.”
“What do you want to know?”
“That’s private, except to say that Mr Crayline might know things he may not know he knows.”
“That’s suitably vague,” I said, “You going to ask Bobby Lee about the three bodies found in his old hometown?”
“Purely circumstantial,” Slezak pooh-poohed. “Never tied to Mr Crayline.”
“So far,” I said.
“I’ve decided this is too dangerous,” Wainwright announced, finding her courage. “I’m sorry for your trouble, Mr Slezak, but I refuse to allow the hypnosis.”
Slezak plucked out a sheaf of paper from the briefcase at his feet. He slid reading glasses over the lengthy nose and tapped the pages. “Did you know, Dr Wainwright, that the land beneath the Institute is leased from the state for a dollar a year? And there’s a clause stating if the Institute poses a threat to the well-being of the local citizenry, the deal can be revoked?”
“We’ve never posed a threat to anyone,” Wainwright said.
Slezak feigned confusion. “Did not a patient escape from this very institution just two years ago? A man who murdered his father and five women? Wasn’t he a prime suspect in the death of Evangeline Prowse, the former director of this institution?”
“Jeremy Ridgecliff,” Wainwright said, leaning forward, her voice tight. “The man was never loose in this area. And no one really knows what happened after his escape. Surely you heard the rumors regarding Ridgecliff’s supposed role in the hotel explosion during the—”
Slezak cut her off mid-sentence. He snapped his fingers and turned to me.
“I know why the name Ryder sounds familiar. You were the cop sent to New York to stop Ridgecliff. Don’t tell me you think the man is anything but a vicious killer.” Slezak raised a white eyebrow, as if Ridgecliff’s guilt was written in the sands of Time and anyone thinking otherwise was moronic.
“I do question Ridgecliff’s guilt. Revisiting the women’s murders could have different findings this time around.”
“But isn’t Ridgecliff still in hiding?” Slezak countered. “No effort to proclaim innocence? Never contacted anyone?”
My face grew hot and I looked away. I’d spoken to Jeremy Ridgecliff a week ago, the seventeenth conversation I’d had with him since his escape. I actually spoke to him on a fairly regular basis, though I never knew where he was calling from.
It’s said everyone has one big secret. Here’s mine: Jeremy Ridgecliff is my biological brother, our kinship concealed by my long-ago name change and other obfuscations. Those who knew could be counted on one hand with digits to spare. I’d spent years hiding my ties to Jeremy and our childhood, only to be slammed into him in New York and made part of his escape mechanism. I had no idea where he was, only that he was brilliant enough to develop exacting mechanisms to avoid capture.
“Detective Ryder?” Slezak prodded. “You’re not answering my question. Is Ridgecliff on the run from the law?”
“Yes,” I said. It was all I could say.
Slezak gave me a lizard smile and turned to Wainwright. “A mad killer set loose, Doctor? Imagine if that fact was presented to the citizens who allow prime taxpayer land to be leased for a paltry sum. A funding backlash might ensue.”
“We do important work here,” Wainwright said. “You can’t jeopardize that in order to—”
Faces turned my way as I stood and crooked a come-hither digit at Nancy Wainwright.
“Doc? How about a brief meeting in the hall?”
She followed me outside and I closed the door. “It’s a goddamn bluff,” she said. “The slimy bastard won’t do it.”
“He might, just to show he can,” I cautioned, having met too many Slezaks.
“Having to defend the Institute would wear me out,” Wainwright sighed, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “Upset the staff. Jeopardize serious research. The scum bucket has me by my weakest point.”
“Slezak’s crafted his whole life around exploiting weaknesses, Doc.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s obvious they’re gonna do the hypnosis somewhere. Here, at least you’re in charge, right?”
She reached out to one of the EMERGENCY buttons recessed into the white walls, ran her finger lightly over its blood-red surface.
“For whatever that’s worth,” she said.
3
We adjourned to the observation room adjacent to where Crayline would be hypnotized, a one-way mirror allowing viewing. The room was small and dark. Speakers piped in conversations from the meeting room, the on/off switch beside the mirror. The set-up made me think of a recording studio without the electronics.
Slezak, Wainwright and I took chairs. We peered through the glass into the adjoining room and saw Dr Neddles and Bridges. The room was painted in soft and neutral tones, calming, perhaps to distract from several steel rings recessed into the concrete floor. Two chairs sat within, as well as a small round table. A sofa was to the rear.
“I want a guard in there,” Wainwright said.
“Mr Bridges is an ex-Marine,” Slezak said. “Very capable should extra restraint be needed. He’ll stay.”
Bridges puffed out his chest and jutted his jaw, looking tough. Wainwright looked to me for a verdict. I knew Bridges was a contract employee for a firm like Dunham Krull, inhabiting a hard-edged world of bail bondsmen and bodyguards, repo men and bounty hunters. He’d be mean and hard and proud of the fact, since it was his sole selling point.
“We can live with that,” I said.
Wainwright plucked a phone from the table beside her chair. “I’ll have Bobby Lee brought in.”
Crayline shuffled through the door a minute later, grinning as if he’d called the meeting. He was six-two or -three, two hundred ten pounds, wide shouldered but wasp-waisted. His head was shaved, the bright flesh webbed with scars. Some of the healed wounds looked decades old and I wondered how they’d been inflicted. He was wearing an institutional sweatshirt and pants, muscle-crowded arms and chest filling his shirt; his thighs pulsing against the fabric like beating hearts. Crayline radiated so much force that a blind person would have sat up straighter when he entered a room.
Crayline surveyed his surroundings with electric green eyes, as if determining whether accommodations and participants met his standards. He’d obviously been told of the lawyer’s visit – his right – and the wrangling on the subject of hypnosis. He had just as obviously agreed to the procedure, probably to break the monotony of his day.
“Have a seat, Crayline,” Bridges said.
Crayline turned to Bridges as if suddenly noticing him. “You’re a big fella, aincha?”
“Big enough,” Bridges said, putting challenge in his eyes and tapping the chair. “Sit.”
Crayline turned his head away and whispered softly.
“What was that?” Bridges asked, leaning closer. “What did you say?”
Crayline whipped his head back around and snapped his teeth like a pit bull biting a chunk off a roast. Bridges startled backwards into the table, sending it skidding across the carpet. Crayline grinned. Bridges, red-faced with embarrassment, shoved the table back in place.
“Sit,” Bridges repeated, voice taut with anger.
Crayline sauntered to the table and stood beside the chair, flexing his knees. Bridges slid the chair beneath Crayline’s buttocks and he sat. Bridges had, without thinking, moved the chair to accommodate Crayline.
Control.
The guard affixed Crayline’s leg chain to a D-ring beneath the table and retreated to the rear. Dr Neddles placed his open briefcase on the table and took the chair opposing Cr
ayline. The prisoner had a sinus affliction, trails of syrupy yellow mucus draining from his nostrils to his upper lip. Neddles popped a few tissues from his briefcase.
“Would you like for me to wipe your face, Mr Crayline?”
Bobby Crayline drew his lower lip up and over the effluvium, scooping it into his mouth. He swished it between his cheeks as if sampling wine.
“Tastes like fresh oysters,” he grinned, winking and swallowing. “I’m my own seafood restaurant.”
Beside me, Slezak grimaced and whispered Jesus.
Crayline looked at the mirror as though seeing it for the first time. It seemed he was staring directly at me. Then he did something – I don’t know what it was – like he’d directed energy into his eyes.
For a split second Crayline’s eyes were those of a rabid wolf.
I blinked, looked again. His eyes were normal. My heart was beating faster. Bridges backed to the corner as Neddles produced a small musical triangle and its striker. “The sound starts a musical voyage, Mr Crayline. Each ring of the bell helps you float away.”
“What if I ain’t a floatin’ sort, Doc?”
“You promised to let us try, Bobby,” Neddles crooned. “Close your eyes and clear your mind until there’s nothing in it but one clear and pure note …”
Crayline closed his eyes. The psychologist struck the triangle twice.
ting, ting
“Relax, Bobby Lee. Breathe like a series of waves. Warm and gentle waves …” ting “… Foaming and flowing around your legs …”
ting … ting
Triangle tinging rhythmically, Neddles continued his hypno-patter, trying for that peculiar mental seduction called the suggestive state. After several minutes, Crayline’s head lolled to the side, his face softened, his eyes closed.
“My lord,” Doc Wainwright said. “I think it’s working.”
Neddles set the triangle aside and reached in his pocket, snapping open a folded page of questions. Crayline looked as close to benign as someone like that could get. We heard his breathing through the sound system, relaxed and regular. I was beginning to look forward to the show when Slezak stood and strode to the switch beside the mirror. He snapped the speakers off and the room went silent.
Wainwright scowled. “I have to monitor the procedure, Mr Slezak.”
“It’s privileged information,” Slezak said. “I demand privacy with my client.”
“How about I leave the room, Slezak?” I offered. “It’ll be you and the doctor. That work?”
“No. Both of you please leave us until we’re finished.”
Wainwright looked into the adjoining room, saw all was calm. She frowned at Slezak. “We’ll be right outside the door.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” he said.
Wainwright and I stepped outside. “You think he’s really under?” I said. “I can’t figure Crayline being hypnotized.”
“Sometimes people who seem the worst potential subjects go under in a fingersnap. You can’t tell who’s a good candidate until you swing the watch.”
“I assume Slezak never told you who he’s really representing?” I asked.
“He suggested it was Bobby Lee.”
“Bobby Lee wouldn’t know Slezak from Muzak,” I said. “Someone else is paying for all this.”
I sat and read a three-day-old newspaper fetched from the employee lounge. Doc Wainwright busied herself reading case histories. I heard a sound from the room with Crayline, lifted my head and, hearing nothing, resumed reading.
After twenty-five minutes, I set the paper aside. Another sound, like a squeal, issued from the room. Then something louder, a moan. I looked at Wainwright.
“Privacy be damned,” she said, turning toward the observation room. “Something’s going on.”
She entered with me at her heels. Slezak stood, his eyes sizzling with anger. “I want you both out, now!”
We strode past him like he was furniture and went the mirror. Bobby Lee Crayline was rolling his head like it was on gimbals. His mouth opened in a howl but nothing transmitted through the glass.
“Doctor Neddles touched something painful,” Wainwright said.
“You’re risking a lawsuit,” the lawyer barked. “I’ll have your …”
Slezak’s voice tapered off as Crayline howled loud enough to hear. His body began to spasm. His fists were clenching and releasing. “Crayline’s too deep,” Wainwright said. “God knows what he’s re-living.”
Another cold and quivering howl pierced the glass. I slipped my hand to the switch on the wall, snapped the speakers on.
“I KILLED THEM WRONG!” Bobby Lee howled. “THEY’RE STUCK THERE FOREVER!”
Neddles looked confused; the words made no sense. Bobby Lee began leaping as if to touch the ceiling with his head. Great pumping leaps in time with his howls, like the floor was on fire. He’d compact himself, leap, repeat. Bridges was beside Crayline, trying to get an arm around the man’s neck.
One of Crayline’s arms flew wide, chain whipping through the air. My heart froze. Crayline had summoned a demonic reserve of strength and torn the ring from the floor.
“He’s loose,” I yelled.
I watched in horror as the madman head-butted Neddles, who collapsed like deflated skin. Bridges aimed a kick at Crayline’s groin. He took it on his thigh, ducked, and shoulder-rammed Bridges into the wall, dropping him. Bobby Lee turned and stared into the mirror, his eyes radiating the rabid-wolf look I’d seen before.
He lowered like a bull preparing to charge.
“Oh Jesus,” Wainwright whispered. I pulled her aside as Crayline exploded through the glass like a missile launched from hell. I dove for his shoulders, tried to snake an arm around his phone-pole neck. Doc Wainwright was screaming for the guards. Crayline bucked like a rodeo bull, sending me spinning across the room. When I spun back to the tumult, Crayline had Slezak’s head under his arm, trying to snap the man’s neck. I grabbed Crayline’s arms, his biceps like living cannonballs.
Emergency horns blared. Guards exploded through the door. Stun guns sizzled. A final howl from the subject, his voice a high tremolo, like a child sucked down a drain.
The hypnosis of Bobby Lee Crayline was over.
4
Wainwright and I stood in the bright Alabama sun and waited for a heavily restrained Crayline to return to the prison van. He was belted to a gurney, not allowed to stand. I’d fixed Mix-up’s leash to his collar and kept him to my side.
Bridges stood a dozen feet away, humiliated by the man he’d been charged with controlling. Dr Neddles probably had a mild concussion, but was coherent and expected to do fine. The medics were putting a restraint collar on Slezak’s neck. His face was ashen, like he’d looked into a grave and realized it was his.
“Coming through,” the younger of the guards yelled, rolling Bobby Lee Crayline to the van. Crayline was grinning again, as if the gurney was a sedan chair and he was being borne aloft through adoring throngs. Mix-up lunged toward Crayline, like the man smelled of raw meat. I pulled my dog tighter against my leg and saw Bridges’s knuckles turn white as Crayline rolled nearer. Bridges strode to the restrained Crayline and stared down at him. Uh-oh, I thought, tensing.
Bridges cleared his throat deep and spat thickly in Crayline’s face. Said, “Try my oysters, faggot.”
“Get back from him, now,” the guard growled, shouldering Bridges aside as the gurney clattered to the van.
“How much inbreeding did it take to make you, Crayline?” Bridges yelled at the retreating prisoner. “How many generations of retards fucking their retarded sisters?”
Wainwright strode to Bridges, grabbed his arm. “Bridges! That’s enough!”
But Bridges wasn’t finished. “How was your childhood, Crayline?” he railed. “Bet you got used like a girl by all the men in your family. Bet you put on lipstick and begged for more.”
The grin on Crayline’s face was replaced by a blank screen. His head twisted back as he was hustled across the
asphalt, his voice no longer giggly but rasping, the sound of a henchman’s axe on the grindstone.
“You best move to another planet, girly,” he hissed. “Bobby Lee’s gonna fry your guts for his supper.”
“Fuck you, you genetic moron,” Bridges snarled. He strode to his Corvette and roared away. Neddles and Slezak limped to the Benz and followed. A minute later, the van with Crayline pulled away.
Wainwright and I watched the vehicle pass the checkpoints, then swerve on to the road a half-mile distant to become a brown speck against green fields. Wainwright fumbled in her purse and produced a rumpled pack of cigarettes, lit one.
“Didn’t figure you for a smoker, Doc,” I said.
“I have two cigarettes a week, Detective. I’m having them both now.”
“I fully understand,” I said.
“I owe you for coming up here,” Wainwright said, exhaling a blue plume of smoke. “I know there’s nothing I can do for you, but if ever there is …”
I waved her promise away and we stood quietly for a couple minutes to watch a jet pull a slender contrail from the west to the east. Wainwright lit her second cigarette from the first, squinted over my shoulder. Frowned at something. My eyes followed to a black rope of smoke rising into the sky perhaps five miles away. I knew there was nothing in that direction but cotton fields and pasture.
“What do you think it is?” Doc Wainwright said.
“Nothing good.” I told her to call the local cops, then sprinted to my truck with my dog at my side.
From a quarter-mile away, the scene sent ice cubes clattering through my belly. The Holman van lay on its side in a ditch, orange flames licking from the windows and turning to smoke the color of raw petroleum. I saw a green tractor in the middle of the road and wondered if the vehicles had collided.
I pulled to the side of the road, jumped out, hearing the distant whine of approaching sirens. Mix-up followed, keeping a wary eye on the fire. The tractor was a John Deere with a trailer behind, piled high with hay bales. A farmer in blue overalls and work shirt knelt above the young guard, severely burned, his clothing smoldering. His face was pocked with shotgun pellets.
