Changed into jeans and a t-shirt, keys and purse dangling from one hand, she kissed him again in passing on her way out.
“Love ya,” he called after her.
“You too.” She paused at the front door and gave him a warm, genuine smile. She’d been doing that more since they’d been together. Smiles had never really felt comfortable on her face, but she was finding that she liked trying them on from time to time. “Don’t wait up.”
He returned the smile, waving her off, and she slipped out into the hallway.
* * * *
Kathy got the call about Ben Hadley’s murder just as she pulled into the parking lot of the Connecticut-Newlyn Hospital for the second time that week. Margaret called her personally to tell her.
“You’re kidding me,” Kathy responded.
“I don’t joke,” Margaret said flatly, and she didn’t. “The crime scene truck just left maybe half an hour or so ago, and it’s been barely controlled chaos all day. The patients are very agitated. Ben Hadley’s room is taped off and his body, of course, is gone, and they all want to know what happened. It’s a mess.”
“I’m in the parking lot,” Kathy said. “Can you buzz me in?”
“Now? Tonight? Katherine, visiting hours are over in”—there was a pause on the phone—“fifty-three minutes and—”
“I know,” Kathy broke in, trying to sound genuinely sympathetic. “I know it’s an inconvenience, but I need to see Henry Banks. It’s important.”
“And Dr. Wensler won’t allow it. He’s put a restriction on visitation for the next few days, until the police clear the staff and patients.”
“We don’t have to bother him. I’ll be in and out.”
“You can’t see a patient without that patient’s doctor’s approval, Katherine. You know that.”
Kathy did. She also knew Margaret would be a stickler about the rules and paperwork, too. She tried another tactic.
“Margaret, I may be of some help to the police. I could offer consultation. I spoke to the victim earlier that day, and I believe, based on the conversation I had with him, that I have information relevant to the police investigation. Information involving a connection with Henry Banks.”
There was another, longer pause on the other end of the line. “This isn’t about his so-called ‘friends,’ is it?” she asked, but she was weakening.
“What they believe is often a reflection, however distorted, on what they see and what they know. And what they do.”
Margaret sighed over the phone. “I can buy you thirty minutes,” she said. “Let me know when you’re at the front door and I’ll buzz you in.”
“Thank you, Margaret. I owe you one.”
“Nah, don’t thank me. Just find out who killed Ben Hadley.”
“I will,” Kathy promised.
When she got to the front door, Margaret let her in and she jogged to the glass window and quickly scribbled her signature across the paperwork Margaret put in front of her. A uniformed officer stood nearby, giving her the eye. She felt his gaze travel the length of her scar and the parts of her that had been relaxed enough to be soft just a half an hour before at her apartment grew cold and hard.
She approached him and brusquely showed her ID, explaining she was a police consultant who had talked to Ben Hadley the day before and had information to share with the detective. When the uniformed officer, whose uniform identified him as Patterson, tried to take her statement, she reiterated that the information she had was for the detective in charge. She locked eyes with the man, and whether he read something in the tone of her voice or whether he found himself increasingly unnerved by her scar, he finally gave her a nod and let her pass, instructing her that the detective and the doctors were discussing the situation in Dr. Wensler’s office.
Kathy got on the elevator and pushed the button for the fourth floor. Kathy had always found the difference in human presence between the third and fourth floors a little disconcerting. The floor below housed custodial offices, examination rooms, group therapy lounges, and even a chapel on the same floor, though Kathy’s understanding was that it was seldom used. Some killers found God once they went to jail, looking for salvation, but most of the inmates at Connecticut-Newlyn thought they were gods themselves and beyond the belief in or help of any higher power. And if there was no God in Connecticut-Newlyn, there was no Heaven above. Beyond the administration offices on the fourth floor, there were labs and storage rooms—clinical, harshly lit rooms scrubbed clean of human deficit and insanity. The fourth floor was a locked drawer where the sharp things were kept, the dangerous chemicals, the weapons, the unsafe and unsoothing documentation.
What that said about the majority of people whose offices were nestled in among those things, Kathy wasn’t sure.
She was thinking about gods and staring down the hall in the direction of the chapel when she heard a jarring sound she couldn’t place. It was reminiscent of but not quite exactly the sound of a loon. It reminded her of laughter, but the kind of laughter the inmates of Connecticut-Newlyn might utter when strung out and withdrawing from their meds. It was the kind of sound that rattled the spine and set hairs on end, but it was more where it was than what it was that got to Kathy.
There were no patient rooms on this floor. There was no reason for an inmate to be down that hall at that time of night. She stood listening for several minutes, but the hallway was virtually silent—so quiet, in fact, that she could hear the hum of the lights overhead.
Kathy crept down the hall toward the chapel and, reaching the open door, peered in. It was dimly lit—a few candles and an overhead chandelier encased in colored glass—and absolutely empty. She followed the burgundy strip of carpet that ran from the door to the nondenominational altar twenty feet away, peering in between the pews as she did so. She found nothing out of the ordinary; it was a pleasant little chapel, faintly incense-scented, but otherwise empty. The only sound came from the shoosh of her feet along the carpet.
She retraced her steps to the chapel door. If she didn’t get back to the offices soon, she’d lose the opportunity to talk to anyone. Besides, if that noise she’d heard had anything to do with those imaginary friends, she had a better chance of getting to its source through Ben Hadley or Henry Banks. She followed the hall back to the series of offices and put the noise behind her.
As Kathy approached the closed door to Dr. Wensler’s office, she braced herself for resistance. If she could have avoided dealing with Wensler and the cops altogether, she would have. They were interested in solving a murder, but what Kathy had to say would likely be little more than a side scribble in their notepads. In a way, she couldn’t blame them. If she were in their position, she’d probably find it ludicrous, too, that Ben Hadley was murdered by another patient’s imaginary friends. That he was murdered because of them might raise an eyebrow—it was a lead on a suspect, particularly one whose motive might very well have been to protect his delusions. But the idea that the delusions might have done harm themselves wasn’t going to sell.
It wasn’t her job, at any rate, to convince them that was the case. Kathy’s immediate concern was with Henry Banks and determining if said imaginary friends had some semblance of real-world tangibility. Still, in Kathy’s experience, the perspectives of doctors and police officers, even when skeptical, were often insightful. Even more so, what they chose not to say with voices but was present in their eyes and facial expressions anyway was illuminating.
Kathy took a deep breath, let it go slowly, and knocked on the door.
The man that answered was in his thirties and not altogether unattractive. His dark hair was starting to grow out of the military buzz cut, at least on the top. His eyes, a cloudy blue-gray, seemed surprised to see her. The way he stood, as well as the way he was looking at her as if trying to piece her together like a puzzle, told her that he was a cop, most likely a homicide detective. His rump
led suit and the faint hint of coffee on his breath suggested he had been there a long time and was fighting work fatigue.
“Yes?” His voice sounded much older, much more tired than his face. Kathy knew the feeling.
“I’m Kathy Ryan,” she said. “I’m a police consultant.”
The man arched an eyebrow and turned to the assembled group behind him. There was a forty-something woman with an ash-blond updo, black heels, and a business suit. Kathy recognized her as Pam Ulster, a therapist for several of the residents at the hospital. She often had to sign paperwork allowing Kathy to talk to patients under her care. She was seated on the sofa perpendicular to a large oak desk—Dr. Wensler’s desk. He sat behind it, a captain at the helm, with his gold name plaque pronouncing him Director of the Long-Term Care and Secure Units. Kathy had had far less interaction with this man from the ivory tower, though she knew that both residents and staff alike thought he was, at best, difficult to like. His fingers were tented in a pretentious show of consideration of the discussion evidently being held with an older, gray-haired man with the scruffy beginnings of a beard standing across from the desk. That older man, presumably a detective as well, wore a suit as wrinkled, if not more so, as the skin around his eyes and forehead. He was, Kathy thought, what the young man in front of her would be in another twenty-five or thirty years.
“We didn’t call in a consultant, did we, Holt?” the younger man asked over his shoulder.
“No, we didn’t,” the older man replied. “Consultant for what?”
Kathy tilted her head to look around the younger man and met the cool gaze of Detective Holt. “I specialize in working with cult members, among other things. I interviewed your victim, Mr. Hadley, yesterday morning. He said some things I thought you might be interested in.”
Holt turned to Dr. Wensler. “You authorize this?”
Dr. Wensler flicked a chilly glance in Kathy’s direction before responding. “No. I don’t see the relevance of her presence here.”
“That’s Kathy,” Dr. Ulster said, recrossing her legs. She wore heels that made Kathy’s feet hurt just looking at them. “She’s been immensely insightful in dealing with our patients in the past. I would offer that whatever she has to say is worth a listen.”
She bore the brunt of Dr. Wensler’s glare with grace and poise, no doubt used to it by now, and focused instead on the hesitant expression of Detective Holt.
Finally, the older detective wavered her in. “Let’s hear it, then.”
Kathy shouldered past the young detective and took a seat on the couch next to Pam Ulster.
“As I said,” she began, “my name is Kathy Ryan. Your victim, Ben Hadley, was a former member of the cult known as the Shining Light of Imnamoun. I was interviewing him about his associations and experiences as a member.”
“So you think a cult nutjob killed him?” the younger detective said.
“I don’t believe so, no, Detective…?”
“Farnham,” the man replied. “John Farnham.”
“Detective Farnham. No, I was simply stating the nature of my visit. I frequently consult for police and for other government and privately funded organizations with interests in monitoring cult and occult activity. I was gathering information, some of which might be of relevance to you.”
“We get it,” Detective Holt said with a touch of impatience. “You’re a ghost cop. Good for you. What did Hadley tell you?”
Kathy ignored his cynicism. “He believed his life was in danger. He said another patient, Henry Banks, had friends who had hurt other people before to protect the secrecy of their presence in the hospital and their ability to move about it free from the restrictions placed on other inm—I mean, patients here.” Before the doctors or police could cut in, she held up a hand. “And yes, I’m aware that the general consensus is that these friends of Mr. Banks are allegedly hallucinations. However, it’s been my experience that what patients believe in, or sometimes who they believe in, may seem to have no basis in commonly held perspectives of reality—in what you might consider, somewhat inaccurately, as ‘objective reality’—but are still indications of very real facts, however distorted the patients have made them.”
“I don’t understand anything you just said,” Farnham said with the kind of helpless frustration only exhaustion can bring.
“What I mean,” Kathy said, “is that those friends of Henry Banks may not seem real to you or me, but they do to Henry, and they certainly did to Ben. They may have been distorted to represent someone or something that is an actual threat. Ben believed he was genuinely in danger, and he might well have been—from Henry, who was looking to protect those friends, or from someone else taking up the mantle of a new identity. You can do with that information what you wish, but I would simply caution you not to overlook mention of these friends of Henry Banks. They have evidently caused a stir among the residents here in the past. Whatever details the patients give you about them may have some basis in truth, beneath the delusion.”
The detectives turned to the doctors, both of whom shifted uncomfortably in their seats and exchanged glances.
“Further, I would be remiss in my responsibilities if I didn’t mention the possibility that the truth I am speaking about may well be something paranormal or supernatural. There is some evidence that points to an unnatural freedom of movement not easily attributable to another patient, given Dr. Wensler here and his no doubt airtight security measures.”
Wensler shot her a nasty look. Farnham unsuccessfully hid his smirk behind his hand, and Holt eyed her like he would another inmate at the hospital.
It was Pam Ulster who spoke, though, and it was clear she was choosing her words carefully.
“Patient confidentiality prohibits me from discussing Henry Banks’s condition in detail…but he waived the right to confidentiality in regard to what he told me, and subsequently, the court during his trial. If there is anything of truth or sanity in it, I’m happy to share the information with you.”
“This is in regard to his imaginary friends?” Farnham reached for the vape pen in his pocket, caught Dr. Wensler’s glance, and let it be.
“Please tell us what you know,” Kathy said.
“There was eventual talk of Henry’s…uh, friends. He claimed they were the ones who killed those teenagers, I believe in order to protect him. As a child, he created a place called Ayteilu, a safe haven in his mind to escape to during the abuse, and he claims these friends are from that place. There appear to be four main entities, among a host of minor ones. I say entities, because he doesn’t describe them quite as people, but they are people-like. I believe them to be manifestations of extreme displaced and disproportionate emotions as a result of extensive abuse as a child. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re dissociative identities; I have never seen Henry manifest any of them as alters, and he seems perfectly aware of them, which virtually never happens in cases of DID. Further, he knows they are, or were once, products of his imagination but believes they became separate, autonomous entities around the time of the murders.”
Dr. Ulster added something then that no one quite caught, but it was the way she said it that struck Kathy. Her voice was soft, as if she was afraid of giving sound and thus credence to an idea that had until then been ephemeral.
“Excuse me? I didn’t catch that,” Holt said.
“He calls them tulpas,” she repeated, a little louder, but that tinge of unease was still there.
“Da hell is a tulpa?” Farnham muttered.
“I can answer that,” Kathy said. “It’s an entity you create with your mind. Theoretically, you give it autonomy—it can think, feel, act of its own free will, establish goals and retain memories.”
“That’s crazy,” Detective Holt snapped.
“That’s why Henry is here, Detective,” Dr. Wensler replied coldly.
“So your boy Henry thinks h
is brain gave birth to, what, like, ghost-people who decided to rebel against papa and begin killing random folks?” This time, Farnham ignored Dr. Wensler’s disapproving stare and popped the vape pen in his mouth.
“Something like that,” Dr. Ulster replied uncomfortably. “I’m sure Kathy would agree that that much is delusion.”
They turned to her, but she just shrugged and slowly said, “I’ve seen stranger things turn out to be true.”
“Does this woman need to be here?” Dr. Wensler said suddenly. “This nonsense is just muddying the waters.”
Kathy, who’d had enough of this meeting of the minds as well, turned to Dr. Ulster. “Do you think I could sit with Henry? I’d like to talk to him about these friends of his. The ones he said killed the teenagers and that Ben believed had killed other patients.”
This started a flurry of protests from both Dr. Wensler and the detectives, claiming violations to protocol and libel about the hospital regarding patient accidents, as well as interference with a murder investigation. Kathy filtered most of it out, keeping her gaze locked on Dr. Ulster. Kathy could help her patient. They both knew that, though it was highly unlikely anyone else in that room would believe what they were both sure of in their guts.
Tulpas. That was the notion that had been nagging at Kathy’s subconscious. She had met people before that she believed had the ability to create such beings. Combining that ability with a history of violent abuse, intense escapism, and mental aberration entertained a pretty powerful and dangerous possibility.
“I need to know,” Kathy told the doctor as if no one else was in the room. “You do, too. I can see it on your face.”
Dr. Ulster hesitated, the veneer of her professional calm beginning to crack under the barrage from her boss and the police.
“Get out,” Farnham said to Kathy. “Come on. Out. Now.” He took her arm, and she shot him a look that made him hesitate a moment. She pulled her arm free but rose to leave. At the door to the office, she turned back to Dr. Ulster. “Let me find out for both of us,” she said, and then a security guard appeared in front of her and escorted her down to the lobby. She and Margaret exchanged shrugs before she was turned out into the darkness.
Inside the Asylum Page 6
