by A W Hartoin
“With what you’ve told me, I’d have to say yes.”
Dad sat bolt upright. “Are you serious?”
“I’m not saying it would be easy, but it could be done. Donatella would have to be willing to risk her own children’s lives to do it. You’d have to study the disease course and time everything perfectly, but you could do it, if you infected the children directly.”
“Shit.”
“You didn’t expect that?”
“Hell, no. Change in plans. When do you work again?”
“Tonight at eleven. I can’t do anything else. I have to sleep. I’m working to seven.”
“Sleep’s for wussies.” Dad wasn’t joking. He really thought that sleep was for the undisciplined. “I need you out at Hunt in an hour. Yeah…I can swing it in an hour.”
Hunt? What the heck is Hunt?
“I’ll have to pull a few strings, but I’ll get you in,” he said.
I sipped my tea and watched my father think. You could see everything on his face. Of course he could hide absolutely every emotion when necessary, but that day he didn’t bother. His eyes darted around. His mouth moved. He looked like a total nutter.
“That’s what we’ll do. First, Hunt. And then, the hospital. I’ll handle Morty. Agreed?” he asked.
“What’s Hunt?” I asked.
“Hunt Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Think, Mercy.”
“Holy crap! Why would I ever, in a million years, go there?”
“Because you’re going to interview Blankenship.”
“What’s he doing out there? Why isn’t he in the regular lockup?” I started looking for an escape route through the lunch crowd.
Dad snorted and shook the remaining ice in his cup. “He had a psychotic break in lockup. Duty officer now has eight facial fractures. They should’ve shot Blankenship.”
“Wasn’t he cuffed?” I asked. A visit to Hunt was sounding less appealing all the time.
“Did it with his head. The powers that be decided they couldn’t handle him and sent him out to Hunt for the experts to deal with. Best to get that bastard out of the city anyway. Best, if you think a lynch mob isn’t a good option.”
“Sidney must’ve interviewed him about Donatella. There’s no point in me going,” I said, sliding back my chair. It made a hideous screech on the linoleum and everyone looked at us again.
“Sidney is a fifty-year-old bald guy with gout and rosacea. You’re beautiful.”
I think my mouth dropped open. Beautiful? My dad had never said that to me before. I’d heard other dads say it about their daughters. ‘Look at my daughter. Isn’t she a beauty?’ ‘This is my beautiful daughter.’ They’d say it even if their daughter looked a whole lot like Ben Stiller, but not my dad. He avoided the B-word completely. I heard ‘pretty’ once when I modeled my prom dress and Mom made him say it.
“What?” Dad asked.
“You called me beautiful.”
“Like that’s news. Don’t get a big head.” He slapped a manila folder on the table. “Here.”
Since the complimenting was over, I opened the folder. It contained a slim amount of data on Kent Blankenship. “That’s it? He’s got no history.”
“That’s right. Blankenship is about the most boring murderer I’ve ever heard of. I take that back. He is the most boring. He was perfectly normal until three days ago.”
I flipped through the pages again. “Well, I wouldn’t say that.”
A flicker of a smile passed over Dad’s lips. “Oh, really.”
“Blankenship has an IQ of 143, but he barely graduated from high school. I wouldn’t call that normal. No romantic relationships. No life, as far as I can tell.”
“And that’s why you’re going to talk to him. He’s a smart loser. You ought to be his wet dream.”
“Dad, that’s gross.”
“I agree. But if he’s going to accuse Donatella to deflect blame for a plea deal, we need to know it.”
“I do not want to go to Hunt.” I closed the file.
Dad gathered up our trash and tossed it. The second I stood up, a couple of guys pounced on our table. I tucked my sandwich in my purse and waited while Dad paid. That’s how I knew that he was really serious about me going to Hunt. Dad never took me to lunch. He never paid, not once, since I became an adult.
Dad ushered me outside and down the street to my truck. I got in and said, “I really don’t want to go to Hunt. There has to be a hot female cop who can do it.”
Dad put Blankenship’s file in my lap. “You saw the IQ. He might just be smart enough to smell a cop. You can be his friend.”
My lip curled at the thought and I pictured Jodie Foster standing in front of Hannibal Lector’s cell.
Dad laughed. “It’s not The Silence of the Lambs out at Hunt.”
“And you know that for sure?” I asked.
“Pretty sure.” He slammed my door and walked down the street with his cellphone pressed against his ear.
Pretty sure? That was just great.
Chapter Three
HUNT HOSPITAL FOR the Criminally Insane had had a change of heart or at least a change of name. The sign said, “Hunt State Hospital for the Mentally Ill.” Maybe a PR firm told them that Criminally Insane wasn’t so comforting for the people who lived in the town of Hunt. I doubt that anyone was fooled. The razor wire and guard towers were a dead giveaway that the hospital wasn’t for the mildly unwell.
Hunt did surprise me, though. It was built in 1840 and looked a lot like a college campus from the front, if you were able to ignore that pesky razor wire. The entrance was another surprise. I turned in and stopped at a guard shack. I had to get out of my truck while they searched it. The guard ran a hand-held metal detector over me before I was allowed back in. Then I got to drive through the first gate, which closed after me and I was then sandwiched between two gates. I went through the whole thing a second time with the addition of a hand swab for explosive material. Then the second gate made a loud clank and rolled back, allowing me through. By the time I drove into a parking spot, my hands were clammy and the hair on the nape of my neck was sweaty despite the frigid wind blowing across the parking lot. I got out and a portly man rushed out of the visitors’ entrance, waving to me. He had a thick head of iron-grey hair and the jolliest expression this side of St. Nick.
“Glad to see you got here alright,” he said, extending a mittened hand. “Wilson Cleves, director of Hunt.”
I shook his hand. “Mercy Watts. I believe you’re expecting me.”
“We are indeed. I thought it would be your father visiting us today, but it’s wise that he sent you instead.”
“My father’s been here before?”
“Oh, yes. We see him almost on a regular basis,” said Mr. Cleves.
Unbelievable. Dad acted like he’d never seen the place. What a pain in my neck.
“Parole hearings?” I asked.
“On the rare occasion. Mostly visiting. Tommy’s uncommonly compassionate, especially for a cop, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“He is,” I said, because I was supposed to. My dad visited the criminally insane. The thought was uncomfortable for some reason. I couldn’t put my finger on why. I knew he visited other prisoners, those who had committed crimes under a particular set of circumstances. There was a severely-abused woman who’d created a detailed plot to kill her husband, carried it out to the letter, and was given a life sentence. Dad liked her. He brought her books. What do you bring to the insane?
Mr. Cleves swiped a keycard and punched in a code. “Come right in.”
I hesitated at the open door. “Who does he visit?”
“I can’t release that information. Visitor logs are private. You understand.”
I nodded, but I still wanted to know. I was as nosy as my mother.
We went in a large arched door and entered a waiting area with some grubby sofas and a glass-enclosed reception desk. There was an armed guard behind the desk and an older couple sat
on one of the sofas. They were squeezed together, holding hands. They didn’t look at me, but stared off at a spot on the opposite wall.
“Harve, can you give Shelley a buzz for me?” asked Mr. Cleves. “And have him brought into the fishbowl.”
“Sure thing, Wilson.” Harve picked up the phone and asked for Shelley to come up to the front, then punched in another number. “Julius, Wilson wants Blankenship in the fishbowl ASAP. Full rig.” He paused and glanced at Mr. Cleves, who nodded. “Yeah, fire it up.”
I must’ve been sporting a freak-out expression, because Mr. Cleves patted my shoulder. “It’s fine. You’ll have absolutely no trouble at all. This is what we do.”
That did not make me feel better in the least, but I nodded.
“You’ll wait here for Shelley. She’ll take care of you. You’ll be searched, full body scan, and then you’ll be all set.” He said like it I was about to win a prize.
“Great.” Why did I say that? I should’ve said, “Holy crap. I’m leaving.”
Mr. Cleves patted me again and Harve buzzed him through a thick metal door, the kind of door you never want to go through.
I turned to find a sofa to perch on and found the older couple standing and staring at me. I jumped and stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” said the woman in a quavering voice. “We didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just a bit jumpy.”
“You’re going in to see Kent Blankenship. He’s our son, but they won’t let us in.”
“Um…” I looked at Harve behind the glass.
He grimaced slightly, like this was the worst part of his job. “Inmates have the right to refuse visitors.”
The woman nodded. “But…but he isn’t refusing you. Who are you?”
“She’s not really a visitor, ma’am,” said Harve.
“I’m here about another matter,” I said.
Mrs. Blankenship began to shake and her husband pulled her tight to his side. “Is there something else? The police didn’t say that. Did he do something worse?”
I held up my hands. “No, no. I don’t know that he did anything…else.”
They let out tensely-held breaths. “Thank God.”
Mr. Blankenship dropped onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands. His wife stepped toward me and extended her hand. I didn’t take it. I didn’t know what to do.
“Will you tell him something for us?” she asked.
I looked at Harve and he shrugged.
“Okay. What do you want me to say?”
“Tell him that we still…” Her shoulders spasmed. “Just tell him we’re here.”
“Okay. Sure,” I said.
She collapsed next to her husband and sobbed into his shoulder. I stood there, watching. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I’d seen their names in Blankenship’s file. But here, in front of me, were the real people that raised him. Nothing in his file suggested that it was their fault, but something went wrong and they had a front row seat.
“Mercy Watts?”
I turned and saw a woman with thin brown hair and a corrections officer uniform standing in the doorway that Mr. Cleves had gone through. “Yes.”
“Come through.”
I walked away from the Blankenships and their howling grief. I felt stiff, like it had enveloped me, and I couldn’t move properly anymore.
“I’m Shelley. I’ll be with you the entire time you’re here.”
“Hi.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“How come nobody’s with them?” I asked.
“Who should be with them?”
“I don’t know. It just seems weird. I mean, they’re out there by themselves.”
Shelley frowned. “You get used to it.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
Shelley led me into a room with two stern male corrections officers. Shelley patted me down, ran me through the body scanner, and had me sign a stack of paperwork that basically said I wouldn’t sue anyone, if I got my face eaten off. Proceed at your own risk, baby.
We left the screening room and the tension left Shelley’s face. She walked me down a series of corridors with office doors that had locks, but weren’t too serious about it. It could’ve been any drab office building until we reached a barred door. Shelley identified herself and me to the camera. It made a loud clank and opened. We walked down a cinder block hall that definitely was not an office building.
“So,” she said with a smile, “you’re the new Clarice.”
“Huh?”
“Pretty girl sent in to talk to a maniac for information.”
“That’s me, I guess.”
“Who sent you?” she asked.
“My father,” I said, smiling for the first time.
She gave me a sideways glance with furrowed brows. “Who’s your father?”
“Tommy Watts.”
She brightened up considerably. “Oh, Tommy. He’s a great guy. He wouldn’t send you, if he didn’t think it was fine.”
Well…
Shelley gave me a run-down of the rules. They were pretty obvious. No touching, stuff like that.
“Here we are,” she said, stopping in front of yet another grey metal door. “This is the fishbowl. We call it that because you’ll be visible on all sides. We use it for lawyer visits. Visitors that need privacy.”
“Do I need privacy?”
“Someone thinks so.”
“Can I pass on the privacy?” I asked, feeling like a complete wuss. This woman worked here, daily.
“He’s already in there. Don’t worry. There will be four guards watching you at all times. He’s shackled, hands and feet, to a chair that’s bolted to the floor. As an added precaution, we’ve wired him up. If he steps out of line, I’ll give him a jolt that’ll stop him in his tracks. You okay?”
“How many problems have you had in the fishbowl?”
“None with visitors. If there’s a problem, it’s while we’re getting the inmate in or out. You’re not involved in that. Let me give you some advice.”
“Don’t get near the glass,” I said.
“There’s no glass.” She took a walkie-talkie off her belt and said into it, “She’s coming in.”
I heard the locks click as they were unlocked in the door, sending my blood pressure soaring. “So what’s your advice?
“I’ve worked here for eight years. I’ve seen it all. Stuff you wouldn’t believe. Blankenship isn’t special. His problem is that he thinks he is. When you go in there, his perception is your reality. Don’t let him suck you in too far.”
Too far?
The door opened and an unsmiling guard nodded and waved me in. I took a deep breath and walked in. There wasn’t any glass. It was a square room, white walls and a grey tile floor. On one side sat Blankenship, shackled and bolted to the floor as advertised, sitting in a metal chair behind a wide rectangular table. He wore a grey jumpsuit with no ID number on it, presumably everyone knew who he was. His head was bowed so that I couldn’t see his face, but there was a red mark on his neck that could’ve been a hand print.
Shelley led me to another metal chair across from Blankenship behind a second metal table. I looked at Shelley.
“People feel better with their own table.” She pointed up at a camera in the corner. “We have views of every inch of this room. If anything happens, we’ll be in in under three seconds.”
“You’ve timed it?” I asked.
“We have. You get ten minutes. Longer is out of the question. Things will start to occur.” Shelley nodded to me and I sat. She left the room through another of the four doors, but there wasn’t any sound of locking. Thank goodness for that.
Blankenship didn’t look up. I expected him to be curious, to want to know who this visitor was that was being forced on him, but there was nothing. I would have to initiate the conversation and I hadn’t a clue how to do it.
“Mr. Blankenship?” I asked.<
br />
Nothing. He wasn’t currently drugged. They’d had him on anti-psychotics when he was first brought in, but found it unnecessary. Shelley said he was docile, but she said it in a way that made it clear that she didn’t expect it to last.
“Mr. Blankenship, I need to ask you a few questions,” I said.
Blankenship’s head nodded and a chill went through me. I hadn’t expected him to move, I guess.
“Why?” he asked in a soft, rather high voice.
“Because I’ve been ordered to do so.”
He tilted his head up. His face was blank, not disinterested, not anything. I paused and took note of his injuries. One eye had multiple popped blood vessels, his lip was split in two places, and he had what looked like rug burn on his nose and right cheek. Monique had worked him over pretty good or maybe the cops helped out. I didn’t care which.
“Do you know Donatella Berry?”
“No.”
“Had you ever heard of Donatella Berry before the police mentioned her to you?”
“No.”
It was pretty straightforward. Dad thought, for some reason, I’d be able to tell if he was lying. I couldn’t. There was nothing to see.
“Did you know any of the people in Tulio the night you opened fire in the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“Who did you know?”
“Jackson, Curt, Sierra.” Blankenship went on to name every member of the staff working that night at Tulio, but he didn’t name a single customer. I’d memorized the list.
“Why did you open fire at Tulio?” I asked.
“I wanted to kill them.”
“The staff?”
“Everyone.”
“Including the customers?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to shift in my chair, but his brown eyes were on me and squirming equaled weakness. What would he think if he saw that? Was this what Shelley meant by his perception would be my reality?
“Are you uncomfortable?” he asked.
I hesitated, but decided to be honest. “Yes. Are you?”
