Of Guilt and Innocence: Institute at the Criminally Insane (Virgil McLendon Thrillers Book 3)

by catt dahman

  “ ‘It was wrath born’ has to be Rathbone.”

  “Exactly. Naomi understood parts, and she filled in what she missed. I think Rathbone either was told a secret by the President, or he was insane and made up a secret. He didn’t tell anyone his secret, but Mr. Hoyt said, ‘He made a record.’ And coupled with the other information we have read, it seems he hid this record of his secret. He commissioned something very odd and expensive to be done in the United States. Why did it have to be the US? That’s a clue.”

  Donte rubbed his head and motioned Virgil to stop and wait for him. He almost ran from the room, went to the cafeteria, grabbed a pitcher of iced tea and plastic glasses, and ran back to Virgil’s room, pouring the tea quickly. “I’m getting a dry mouth just thinking about all this and where it’s going.”

  “I agree. Me, too. I think I know, and if I’m right, you are in for the shock of your life.”

  “ ‘Anyone would go insane. No one shall ever know about this.’ The first part is straight forward. He’s guessing that maybe Rathbone went insane during the assassination. The last part implies that maybe Mr. Hoyt wanted to keep the secret buried.”

  Virgil almost bounced out of his chair, nodding and saying, “I think so. Maybe Hoyt was going to act on that and was going to stop a secret from coming out. The killer had to stop him from acting and, therefore, killed him. He cut away the eyes because symbolically, it was a way to take away everything: the secret that Hoyt saw.”

  Donte asked about the final part of what Naomi heard. It was nonsense, and he didn’t know how they could figure it out.

  “That stumped me, but the more I said the word in my head, the more I really concentrated on the sounds. It isn’t exact, but there is one word that fits. ‘My love for gin.’ It must be Melungeon.”

  “What the heck is that? Latin?”

  Virgil grinned and said, “I had Naomi find me what I needed.”

  Abraham Lincoln’s maternal grandmother, Lucy, was charged in court with fornication because she produced a child while unmarried. That child was Nancy. Nancy married Tom Lincoln but already had Abe, who was a small child, about three years old.

  Nancy and her son were frequently beaten and lived in a shack with a dirt floor, and she took her child and ran back to where she came from: Abraham Enloe’s home. He was the man who took Nancy in when she was very young. He was a horse breeder, a successful farmer, and a respected blacksmith.

  The future president had a dark complexion, grey eyes, coarse black hair, and unusual features, like his mother had, and which were common for Melungeons.

  “Who were they?” Donte asked.

  “Melungeons are multicultural people. Their heritage probably is a mix of Jewish, African, Native American, and Caucasian. They are distinct in appearance once you understand their backgrounds, and some are quite attractive people, just like any race has some who are attractive and some who are not. Mr. Lincoln’s background isn’t complete, but it seems either his father or mother or both were Melungeon. Mr. Hoyt came to that conclusion anyway.”

  Donte sat still for a few minutes, and Virgil let him take it all in. It was a shock, and Virgil wasn’t sure how Donte might accept this theory. Almost reverently, Donte spoke, “So the President of the U. S. may have been partly black? I mean he may have had a little African blood?”

  “It’s possible. What do you think?”

  Donte lowered his face into his hands and then looked up with shining, damp eyes and said, “Virgil, that may be the most inspiring theory I’ve ever heard. If a man from a mixed-blood background, who grew up poor and abused, managed to get an education and aspired to be President of the United States, and did become a president, then that means anyone can make something of himself and reach high goals. I don’t know what to say or think.”

  “It’s a theory. Mr. Hoyt believed it. And I feel Rathbone believed it. Did it confuse him and make him worry about what the world would think if anyone knew? Possibly. Imagine at that time period if it were public knowledge that the assassinated President was of mixed heritage? Even after the war and all of the change, people didn’t look positively at anyone marrying or having children with other races. It was a taboo.”

  “It still is, Virgil,” Donte said and chuckled dryly.

  “If Rathbone either knew this or made it up as a delusion, can you imagine the weight of such a secret?”

  But Leland Hoyt had said that Rathbone made and kept a record. He couldn’t disclose what he believed or knew, but he also couldn’t let it be lost.

  Virgil asked Donte to follow him. They waved to patients as they walked.

  Stuart Rodriguez was in the hallway. Donte said he was diagnosed with dissociative disorder, which meant that he took on other personalities. He watched his mother beaten to death by a boyfriend, and because the trauma was too much for him to handle, he retreated within his mind and let another personality deal with the pain and agony instead.

  He protected himself by allowing another part of him take over and handle everything. Unfortunately, a third personality acted out when he was in his early teens, and he raped several girls; he blocked the memories and had amnesia. Stuart, as himself, didn’t know about the rapes or remember seeing his mother slaughtered, cut to pieces right before his eyes. He didn’t recall walking in her blood and crying for her to wake up.

  Virgil stopped, looked at a man walking toward him and asked, “Who is that? I haven’t met him.”

  Donte looked and replied, “Thom Harris. He’s unusual because he pays his own bills here and even admitted himself. Doctors Kenshaw and Becket don’t take cases like his; they prefer to take the ones they know committed a crime, but he presented an interesting study.”

  Thom Harris, when interviewed for admission, said he had taken LSD many times, enjoying creativity and enlightenment, but then he began to experience flashbacks that sent him into panic attacks. He said he had terrible memories of stabbing and choking women, and he thought he was going insane.

  It took a lot of pleading, but he was accepted because Dr. Becket had an interest in the long term effects of using LSD. The doctor was unsure if the memories were delusional or real, and that was what they were working on.

  Virgil nodded. They went to the site of the first murder.

  “This room was cleaned and redone because it was a crime scene and a mess. Now, please help me by closing your eyes.”

  Donte did.

  “Remember the room before anyone died here. Remember it as it was. Look at the floor. Now the furniture. Good. Now look at each wall. Thank you. Now, Donte, open your eyes, and do it again, and compare your memories.”

  Donte looked at the floor. A new rug on hard wood. The chairs were the same. There was a new table. Knick-knacks were absent. The walls were freshly painted. He looked at the art work. There was a calming scene of the ocean, the water deep turquoise, sand white, waves rolling in. On the next wall, were splashes of blues and green with what looked to be a giant turtle’s shell in the middle.

  He turned and looked at the picture of Abraham Lincoln, amused, because this was whom they had just been talking about. The President looked very loving. The white child in the picture looked back with adoration. The black child stood slightly to the side and was tentative but showed love.

  No, it wasn’t a black child. It was and wasn’t. The beautiful boy had wavy, coarse, black hair and a caramel complexion but a small nose and thin lips. His eyes….

  “Oh my, dear God.”

  The child’s eyes were grey. They were his father’s eyes. His father was Abraham Lincoln.

  “The frame. That is a different frame, Virgil. I’m positive. That frame was around another seascape.” He spun and said, “It was right there, and now it’s not.”

  Virgil took out the crime photos and held each out, “Do you see any frames? No. There is no seascape picture in this mess, and this picture of the president is not there either. Look at this view; neither are here. The killer removed both pieces of
artwork.”

  “The killer took them to his room and removed the picture of Mr. Lincoln in order to examine it in detail. He had to be sure it was real. To his chagrin, the frame was old, and it came apart. He tossed the glass and the screws from the wire into the closet as we know. Tommy must have followed him, seen the rubbish, and wondered about it. Our killer had to kill Tommy; the wire hanger was handy. The seascape, I bet, went down a chute to the furnace.”

  “What about the other murders?”

  “Anne Lunt,” Virgil said, “must have come into the room while the killer was busy. She would have told on him, so he was forced to kill her; he was very angry at being interrupted and hit her far more than what was needed to kill her.

  The killer finished his examination of the picture and replaced the frame with the one of the seascape. He needed to return it to the room before anyone noticed it missing; it would have taken mere seconds. He sneaked into the room without being seen but found a problem with his plan.

  Mary Wheeler was in the room reading, refusing to be scared away from the room she enjoyed. There was no choice: the killer bashed her face in, rehung the picture, and left, getting away with his crime.

  Virgil asked Donte to close the door and lock it with his key for a few minutes; they needed to be fast so the killer wouldn’t know they were on to him.

  Yanking his magnifying glass from his pocket, Virgil got close to the picture and examined it carefully. He moaned and said, “That’s bad luck. There are slight traces of blood, but with the ornate wood, we’d never get a useful fingerprint.”

  Virgil kept his magnifying glass roaming. Then, he smiled and said, “We have another clue that solidifies my theory. See here? The words: one of four and the artist’s name: John Quidor. This means there are three more paintings of this series because they were all part of the grand donation. They must be upstairs. We’ll have to go look, but we need to know who John Quidor was. Let’s go to the library.”

  Donte unlocked the door, and they walked out, keeping their faces neutral and smiling at patients, laughing with the nurses and trying to seem less excited than they were.

  “How’s it going?” Nurse Annabeth Curtis asked, “and what have you found?”

  “I have eliminated most of the nursing staff as suspects,” Virgil whispered back.

  She giggled, pulling an escaped hair back to her ponytail. “That’s good news.”

  Virgil saw Naomi and drew her aside, “Can you find us everything you have about an artist named John Quidor? He painted in the 1850s and 1860s.”

  “I’m on it. Did the other books help”

  “You are a hero, Naomi; they worked well.”

  She hurried to the library. In the hall, Virgil and Donte paused at a table full of pitchers of fruit juice, plates of pineapple, sliced oranges, whole apples, and pears, dishes of green grapes, and cups of strawberries and blueberries.

  “Come on, Let’s see who can eat more fruit than I can. I am an eating machine,” Donte said, filling a plate with fruit and picking up a glass of grape juice.

  In almost a horde, patients descended on the table and took up Donte’s challenge, gathering fruit from the other end of the table: shredded coconut, big fat blackberries, bananas, and purple grapes. It was a feeding frenzy, but the nurses and orderlies all grinned, pleased they were getting more Vitamin C and healthy snacks into their patients.

  Tamantha Bok, huddled in a blanket, made her way over and said, “I am going to have exactly one bite of each, beginning with a cantaloupe ball, then a slice of honey dew, and then a bit of watermelon. Next, I’ll have one berry and one grape.”

  “That’s great, Tamantha. I am so proud of you,” Virgil praised her.

  “Dead men don’t eat,” Andrew Wakefield said.

  Virgil whispered, “Don’t dare tell, but I do think the walking dead can eat only red fruit. I am pretty sure my information is reliable.”

  “You think?”

  “Positive. That means strawberries, watermelon, and apples. Back there, behind the melons, I saw a small bowl of cherries, too.”

  Wakefield thought, “Okay. I’m in. I’ll eat only the red, all right?”

  “Good man.”

  Nurse Curtis patted Virgil’s back and said, “We may need to hire you. Impressive.” She watched Mr. Wakefield fill his plate and munch as he went.

  “Hey,” said Vivian as she slid to Virgil’s side and whispered, “earlier, I saw men arguing, but they didn’t see me. It was a little over an hour ago, maybe two, and he told Edward Knight to stop running his mouth because their debates were not for outsiders. He said tattletales grew huge fibers, and Mr. Knight got worried but said he would speak to whomever he pleased and about whatever he pleased.”

  “Thanks. I need to act on that, but I need the rest of the puzzle. Stay away from him, not Knight, the other one because that’s our murderer.”

  Vivian’s eyes lit up, “Wow. Okay, gotcha. That was fast work, Honey.”

  She was about to say something else when a scream broke the peaceful gathering and echoed through the old building, the hysteria chilling all of them. They ran down the hall and then made a turn.

  Donte and Nurse Brighton ran to where the noise came from and skidded to a stop before a room. Nurse Curtis, right behind them, blinked and drew in a long breath as if she might scream, too, but they pulled Dr. Lynn Redding off the floor where she knelt right outside the room.

  With her between them, they helped her walk away from the patient’s room and into the other gathering area so she could sit down. Nurse Curtis ran to get some water and called for Doctors Kenshaw and Becket as she did so.

  Other nurses and orderlies promptly began to get patients away from the hallway and into the cafeteria so they could finish their fruit and hopefully stay calm. Spilled plates sent berries and grapes rolling.

  Lynn stopped screaming, but she was still crying, her makeup leaving black trails down her face. Nurse Curtis covered Lynn’s shoulders with a blanket and rubbed her hands briskly to help her avoid shock.

  Outside the other room, Donte accepted a napkin Virgil snagged and gave it to him to wipe blood off of his right hand. He had gone into the room to check for a pulse, despite the bloody, horrific scene. Mimicking Becket at the door to the library, Donte showed Virgil his shoe treads.

  Walking into the room and avoiding the blood pools, Virgil tried to step where Donte already had left footprints. It was Edward Knight’s room, and the victim, dead, was Edward Knight. They were just talking about him! Virgil wished he and Vivian had spoken a few minutes sooner and that he had moved faster. Regret settled deep into his stomach.

  Examining the body, Virgil called back, “He’s still warm.”

  “Yes.”

  “From the blood…an hour, I think. Probably far less than that.”

  Doctors Kenshaw and Becket ran by, peeked in, groaned, and said that they would deal with the patients who were alive later because right now, everyone was scattered, scared, and worried about Lynn Redding.

  First, Becket went to find Redding, and Kenshaw, after grabbing syringes and pills and wondering how he could keep everyone calm with this latest death, ran to the cafeteria to help.

  Edward Knight lay on his back on the floor next to his bed. His throat was cut wide open, and it looked as if he bled out rapidly with his carotid artery sliced. Next to his face lay a piece of bloody glass, a long, thick section like a knife. Virgil thought this was also glass from the broken picture frame that, like the wire, the killer had kept for times like this when a handy tool was necessary.

  What was worse when Knight was dying was that the killer pulled on the man’s tongue, and using the glass to saw and slice it off, he then yanked the tongue out of Knight’s mouth. This was his punishment for talking about the history debate. The killer thought Knight might talk more and give something away.

  “Dumbass. We already knew. There was no reason to kill him,” Virgil muttered, “why did you have to kill another? We
already knew who you were. You failed.”

  “Virg….”

  “I’m okay. I’m furious. The son of a bitch stays one step ahead of us.”

  Virgil spun and ran from the room, looking around. He went to the cafeteria and grabbed Becket and said, “I have a list of people whose lives are in a great deal of danger for the next few hours. Do not call the police yet; I’ll take responsibility because we can’t make mistakes.”

  “I have already called them.”

  “Okay. They may be of some help. Here is the list.” He called out the names. “Do not take your eyes off of these people, and have your orderlies watch them. Take care of all the rest as needed. Dr. Redding needs to be brought in here, and all of you must stay together at all times. Do not leave this area.”

  Leaving the cafeteria, he motioned for Vivian and Donte to join him. He told Donte what he needed. He warned Donte that it was safer to stay with the rest but that some help would be appreciated. Donte looked wary, but he did as asked, and in about a minute, he broke a table quickly with his great weight and muscles.

  He handed Virgil and Vivian each a table leg to use as a bludgeon. Virgil took the fourth leg to Dr. Becket, whispering whom to be worried about, “If he comes near this room, all of you have to defend yourself. Give it your strongest effort, and protect yourselves.”

  “Hit him?”

  “Hit. Kill. Disable. Whatever it takes, but rest assure, if you do not, he will murder more patients and then escape.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get Naomi back here safely and hear her information if she has any and then go upstairs to stop a murderer. I’m concerned that she didn’t run here from the library when she heard the screams.”

  “I don’t know that you can use that on a patient….” Kenshaw broke in.

  “He’s getting what he wants and leaving in some way. He’ll kill anyone in his way. He’s no longer a patient; he’s a killer at the moment. Come along, and let’s find Naomi.

  “Stay behind us, Viv.”