Inside the Asylum

by Mary SanGiovanni

  Of course, other people’s killing probably wasn’t as satisfying to Toby as doing it himself. Kathy remembered his mentioning that his therapist had been trying to find him healthy outlets for his feelings. He’d said none of her suggestions helped much. They didn’t scratch the itch, he’d told her—no more than porn really worked as a substitute for real sex. She thought he’d come to accept that something was better than nothing, but a string of deaths at the hospital, at least one or two of which could only be murders, might have gotten under his skin and started that itch going again, undoing whatever flimsy progress he might have made over the last few decades.

  Maybe he’d killed someone inside, a fellow inmate or worse, maybe a staff member. Kathy tried to tell herself this was also unlikely. She had been told his urges would probably dwindle with age as his sex drive decreased, and so she’d been content to believe he was getting his fix nowadays from threatening and intimidating people. He was medicated, after all, and although he’d once or twice been drugged to a state of lethargy for a violent outburst, the last time had been at least fifteen years before. He’d hated that. She couldn’t see her brother putting himself through it again out of the blue, not after all that time.

  Maybe he’d killed someone and then escaped just as they were about to release him. Maybe he was on his way to her house right now. Maybe she’d find him sitting on her couch when she got home, or worse, he’d surprise Reece coming home from work and—

  Stop it, she told herself. Just stop. Toby isn’t going anywhere.

  She was finding it much harder this time to talk away the worst-case scenarios. Her frustration showed in the way she cut off the tan minivan to make a right turn. In fact, with each mile closer to the hospital, she found it harder to think of a case that wasn’t disastrous.

  She felt sick to her stomach as she climbed the stairs and rang Margaret to buzz her in. In fact, she could feel her whole body tightening up, from her muscles outward to her skin, as she crossed the tiled floor of the main lobby.

  Margaret looked uncharacteristically sympathetic, almost apologetic. “The doctors want to see you about Toby,” she said.

  Kathy glanced at the doors and the hallway beyond. “What’s it about?”

  “They’d prefer to tell you themselves, Katherine. I’m sorry. Let me get you signed in right away so you can see Dr. Wensler. He’s in his office upstairs.”

  Kathy signed the log in a daze, that tightness spreading to her lungs. There was a handwritten sign on the elevator indicating it was temporarily out of order, so she went to the stairwell door and pushed through. She climbed the three flights of stairs, barely registering the smudge of black on the far wall of the stairwell, and emerged onto the fourth floor proper, where the administration offices were.

  For the second time that week, she knocked on Dr. Wensler’s door. The doctor himself opened it, greeted her with a veneer of practiced warmth, and gestured for her to come in.

  She sat in the chair across from his desk and crossed her legs, waiting for him to speak.

  “Ms. Ryan, we wanted to let you know there was an incident and your brother was hurt.”

  Kathy blinked. “I’m sorry…hurt?”

  “He’s all right, conscious now. He’s resting in the infirmary at the moment, but he got beaten up pretty badly. The medical doctor can fill you in on the particulars. I want to assure you that we’re investigating the matter and he’s receiving complete medical care. He is, however, being…obstinate. He won’t tell the doctors everything that happened and he won’t tell us who did it. I thought perhaps you might talk to him. What with everything that has been going on lately, with the recent tragedies and all, I thought perhaps he’d tell you what he won’t tell us.”

  The man steepled his fingers just beneath his chin, awaiting her response. His steel eyes seemed to be gauging whether she would challenge or accuse him, and if so, what approach to take. He was a gaunt man whose thin white hair was tamed only by sheer force of his patience and iron will. His suit was expensive, a granite gray complemented by a sharp silver tie. He was, in fact, all sharp lines and hard edges, which made any attempt at empathy or sensitivity, things he no doubt found frivolous but necessary job evils, appear dry and crumbly.

  When she didn’t answer, he added, “If I may be plain with you, Ms. Ryan, Connecticut-Newlyn is an institution noble of purpose and of great reputation. We offer brilliant therapeutic strategies developed by the brightest leading talent in the field of psychiatry and psychology today. We offer no less than excellence in care for our residents and seek every available opportunity to rehabilitate and safely reintegrate progressed residents into the community as fully functioning and contributing members. I believe you recognize that such a top facility requires funding. That funding is more likely forthcoming if those with their hands on the purse strings believe in the success and viability of the facility. Unexplained deaths look bad, Ms. Ryan, and unexplained assaults and murders even more so. This puts the safety and security of our residents and of the community at risk, and I won’t have that. Therefore, any information that would help clear matters up quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction before things get needlessly messy—needlessly public—would benefit all the residents here at the hospital, including your brother. I trust you see my position here.”

  Kathy did. He wanted her to talk her brother into helping them clear away these deaths and the potential nastiness associated with them. He was worried about his reputation, about statistics and funding. The patients were killers anyway, and a handful fewer didn’t send an uneasy head to its pillow—the numbers did. The residents were not people, not human lives to Dr. Wensler, but tools in the give-and-take trade of hospital politics. In a way, she couldn’t blame him; nearly all jobs came down to numbers one way or another. She didn’t like Wensler at all, but she could respect that the transparent concern for patients and the very real considerations of running a state-funded facility were part of the job.

  “When can I see him?” she asked.

  Dr. Wensler brightened a little. “Why, right now, if you like.”

  “Lead the way,” she said.

  The director led her down the hall to the hospital infirmary, where Toby was apparently sleeping on one of the beds, a pale blue sheet pulled up to his waist. His left hand and wrist were in a cast almost up to the elbow and cradled in a sling. His right eye and cheek were a thundercloud-purple swelling with tiny veins of red lightning. His lip was busted, and it looked like the corner of a bandage was sticking out from under the loose neckline of his hospital gown.

  “I’ll leave you alone to visit,” Wensler said, then disappeared into the hallway.

  Kathy meandered over to the foot of his bed. His hospital chart hung from a wooden pocket there, and she casually lifted it out to peruse it. In addition to the injuries she could see, he had a sprained left wrist and broken ulna, a broken right ankle, a puncture wound to his left shoulder, a broken rib, and some rectal and internal bleeding. Kathy frowned, dropping the chart back into its slot. She looked up at him. He looked so peaceful lying there, his usual cynical glare erased in a painkiller-induced sleep. He reminded her of how he’d looked when they were kids, when their mom was still alive and things were still okay. He used to sleep peacefully like that back then, dreaming good things…or maybe not dreaming at all. Now he looked small. The man who had cut her looked harmless, almost pathetic. He’d been hurt badly, and she found as she crossed around to the side of his bed that she actually felt the faintest stirrings of pity for him.

  She knew Toby. He’d have fought like a wolf if some inmate had attacked him. There’d have been at least two sleeping bodies in infirmary beds. Whoever did those things to her brother had to be strong, very strong, and very determined. The residents in Connecticut-Newlyn might have been aberrant enough, but who would have been physically able?

  “He calls them tulpas.” Pam Ulster’s
words came back to Kathy, and they were as good an answer as any. It hadn’t been who, so much as what. Henry’s friends had done that to Toby. And if they were dangerous to someone like him, then they were an even bigger threat to others beyond him.

  Toby coughed in his sleep then, and before she realized what she was doing, she had placed a calming hand on his arm. He flinched, waking suddenly, and looked up at her with groggy, half-closed eyes.

  “Kitty-Kat?”

  Toby hadn’t called her that since they were little kids.

  “It’s me.”

  “Wha…why are you here?”

  “The hospital called me. Told me you were hurt.”

  He moaned as he tried to sit up. “It’s nothing. Coupla scratches.”

  “Oh yeah? Who scratched you up?”

  He gave her a sidelong glance and tried with only moderate success to raise himself up with his good arm. “Right to the point, eh? No talk about the weather, the season the Red Sox are having? How that Irish guy is working out for you?”

  Kathy pulled her hand away. She’d never told Toby about Reece.

  He tried to chuckle but it came out as a painfully dry billow of air. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Just like to know what sweet baby sis is up to. No one’s gonna hurt’m.”

  “What happened to you, Toby?”

  “Got inna fight.”

  “With who?”

  She could tell from his expression he didn’t want to answer. He didn’t like direct questions, for one thing. He took them as a challenge to his autonomy. There was more to his reticence than that, though. Toby looked troubled. Beneath that, he seemed…he actually seemed scared.

  Softer, she asked, “Who did this?”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  She was about to argue that the hospital needed to know, but nothing would have clammed him up faster. She tried a different tactic.

  “Does it hurt much? Want me to get a nurse?”

  “Nah, I’m fine,” he replied. “Or I’m not, if you’re offering to kiss where it hurts.”

  She also stifled the urge to respond that she could make him hurt more, if he didn’t knock it off.

  “I’d hate to see what the other guy looked like,” she said, hoping her voice sounded light.

  Toby eyed her suspiciously. “Why are you here?” he asked again.

  “I told you, the hospital called. Told me there had been an incident involving you. I came to see if you were okay.”

  “Came to see if I fucked someone up in here, more like. Maybe slipped out past old Margie down in the lobby so I could come visit?”

  Kathy hoped her expression did not betray the worries she’d brought in with her. She’d never been able to lie with her eyes, not like Toby could. “Are you going to tell me who hurt you or not?”

  Toby sighed. He suddenly reminded Kathy of a guy she’d met on a case a while back, out on the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border. She’d tried hard then not to make a connection between him and her brother, but staring at the form in the hospital bed now, it was difficult not to see. That other man—his name had been Toby, as well—had been a pedophile, a bad man by all societal accounts. The thing was, when he’d sighed or looked at her the way her brother was looking at her now, there’d been something so human, so vulnerable and almost…forgivable. The good in him—and there was good there—had wanted redemption. She very seldom ever thought her brother wanted or needed something so intangible, except when he looked at her like that.

  She knew people like Toby carried a weight on the shoulders that was inconceivable to those who had the tools to manage and minimize their compulsions…or perversions. It made people sleep better at night to relegate men like him to the category of monsters, to boogeymen with superhuman appetites and abilities. And there was no doubt that what they did was monstrous. What troubled Kathy, and what disturbed the sleep of people who knew better, was that those boogeymen had parents, siblings, spouses, and children who loved them. They had vulnerabilities and weaknesses, not the least of which were those appetites and abilities they didn’t want and couldn’t always control. What was worse was that sometimes, true and often harder to understand monstrosity was in the evil easily and knowingly committed by people others wanted to believe were good, people held up as the best of humanity, with the resources to do and be better.

  Finally, he said, “You could say it was a friend of a friend.”

  “You have no friends,” Kathy interjected.

  This seemed to trigger some private amusement behind Toby’s eyes. “You cut me, sweet sister.” He looked at her scar and added, “So to speak.”

  Her face flushed red, which seemed to please him more, and the last bit of pity she had for him dried up. “Henry Banks’s friends…did they do that to you?”

  Toby’s look of surprised suspicion was all the confirmation she needed. “How’d you—oh, right. That’s your job, I guess.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Ask Henry about them.”

  “I’m asking you, Toby…”

  “I’m tired,” he said. He pushed the pain medication button on his IV and turned away onto his side.

  “You will help me on this,” she said through clenched teeth.

  The back of his hospital gown was open above the sheet, and she watched the shallow rise and fall of the tattoos on his back. Finally she turned and was almost to the door when he said, “Yeah, it was them. Well, one of ’em. Maisie, I think her name is. They’re real. And they’re like me.”

  “Like you?” Kathy asked without turning around.

  “Killers. They’re killers.” Then Toby was mostly asleep and Kathy fought tears and the roaring in her head and she fled back around to the main corridor and down to the elevator.

  * * * *

  George Evers didn’t show up at the Silver Deer Tavern that night. It was the third night in a row that he’d missed his usual meet-up with Ernie Jenkinson to drink off the remains of the day. Ernie wasn’t so sure George had been to work either the last couple of days, and he hadn’t been answering his cell phone or land line. The old fool probably couldn’t figure out what damned button to push on the cell—Ernie didn’t know why he even bothered—but he should have at least answered the cordless in the kitchen. George hadn’t been sick more than a handful of times in fifty-five years; it took a lot to keep him down, and even when he was under the weather, he wasn’t ever too sick to answer the phone. Ernie thought of going over there just to make sure George hadn’t had a heart attack or stroke or some damned thing, but he hadn’t had the time, what with all the goings-on at work. He figured if old George didn’t show up that night at the Tavern, he’d make the drive over.

  At a booth toward the back of the place sat the trio of staff members who’d found the body of Ben Hadley. Ernie caught their attention, they waved, and he nodded back, tipping his beer to them. They’d had a tough couple of shifts, too, since they’d found the chewed-up white boy, what with answering the police’s questions, making apologies and excuses to Wensler, and fielding even more from the rattled patients themselves. There was always an uptick of the usual fluids when the residents got rattled—more blood, more urine, a sight more drool—and Ernie was only the physical cleanup crew. Those boys had to deal with cleaning up their fear, their anger, their disconnecting from the world. Ernie thought of buying them a round of beers, remembered his wallet was a little light that month, and decided against it. Beer wouldn’t fix up their night anyway. He’d had a few himself already, and still, he couldn’t get those damned footprints outside Hadley’s room out of his mind.

  The door to the Tavern opened and Ernie craned his neck over the heads of the other patrons to check for George. It wasn’t him; it was a pretty blond lady with a long scar through her left eyebrow and cheek. She wore it well, he thought, and he smiled at her when she caugh
t him looking. She nodded back, taking a seat three or four stools down from him. She ordered two shots of vodka to start. Ernie chuckled to himself. That there woman, he thought, was what his brother used to call a firecat—a hard-drinking, wild-living hot piece of pussy. If he were a good thirty years younger, he might have bought her a drink, maybe slid a few bar stools down, but even then, he probably would have had to hold on for dear life.

  He turned back to his own beer and his own business. Images of those footprints kept playing in his mind. They hadn’t been a joke. No one had seen them and no one had known what he was talking about. By the time he could get near Ben Hadley’s room again, they were gone—not cleaned-up gone, but never-there gone. He didn’t like that. Old codgers imagining things was never a good sign.

  Ernie had just finished his beer and was thinking about hitting the head when a familiar thatch of gray hair appeared in the crowd. The man was turned away but Ernie recognized the slouch of the shoulders and the gray overalls as George Evers.

  He cupped a hand around his mouth and called, “George! Hey, over here!” George turned and Ernie waved him over, holding up his beer bottle to indicate the plans for the night. George stared at him blankly, as if he didn’t recognize the beer bottle or the man holding it.

  Ernie’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, but he got the distinct impression something was wrong with George. The man didn’t look quite right—a little peaked around the edges, like he was getting over a flu or something. Based on that blank look he was giving Ernie, maybe a stroke was a distinct possibility.

  “George! Hey, you old fool!” His voice was snatched away by the drunken laughing and chatting as the night warmed up. The bar had got noisier at that hour, as the young folk started dropping in for the night. That was usually his cue to hit the road.