Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series)

by Douglas Clegg

  Outside the room, locking the door behind him, Jim Anderson turned to Trey.

  “So, I didn’t know that about you and your family,” Jim said, patting Trey on the back. “You had a brother who died?”

  Trey said, “None of it was true. He wasn’t talking about me.”

  6

  Trey continued, “The physical stuff about my height and weight were pretty accurate. My family was pretty middle class, and my dad was a nutjob but other than that, it was an okay childhood. Not quite what he was saying. Most of the stuff he could learn from nurses or heck, even you. But the other stuff—I wasn’t raised in a foster family, I never was beaten, and I never had a brother get killed. But he has.”

  “What?”

  “He was telling me his life story. That’s how he does it. He makes himself ‘you’ and he tells his whole history," Trey said. His throat was dry. “I wouldn't mind that Wrigley's now."

  "Spearmint pleasure coming right up," Anderson said, bringing out the pack of gum.

  "Sometimes I just want to round up all these families and put them out of their misery. Or save them. But I don't know if they can be saved. I just don't know.”

  “Everybody can be saved."

  "You think that?"

  "I don't know. Maybe it's nuts," Jim said, "but I still have faith that things can work out. Even after everything I've seen here. No matter what." Then, he brightened. “Man, he had me going. I was beginning to feel sorry for you.”

  “Well, he’s good at it,” Trey said, unwrapping the stick of gum and popping it into his mouth. “So, he’s mine now.”

  “Him and three others.”

  "What's with the book? I thought this was major psych isolation."

  "Part of the program. They get some media, newspapers, books, a little radio, TV now and then. We even have Movie Fridays and Sunday Night Old Time Radio shows."

  “Meds?”

  “Heavy.”

  “Sedation?”

  Jim shrugged. “Pretty constant. It’s Brainard. He’s the zombie doc. Conroy’s more anti-med and pro-one on one session. I think she wants to cut back on his meds so he can be more...lucid. Maybe.”

  “He seemed pretty lucid. Sometimes I wish we had fewer meds and more techs.” As he walked ahead of Jim, glancing at the charts outside the shut doors, noticing Dr. Brainard’s marks in red felt tip across all the graphs, he added, “And fewer zombie docs. What the hell does Brainard get out of all this?”

  “I heard he’s writing a book.”

  “Jesus, you and I should write a book. We'd have the real shit," Trey said.

  "Yeah, mainly about how insane the psychologists are."

  "Brainard is...a piece of work.” Trey tapped his fist against the wall lightly. “Somebody ought to load him up with his own meds. Why is it some of the craziest people we know are psychiatrists?”

  Jim laughed, catching up to him. “We’ve got Paulsen on the desk till four on D, and then Somers takes over.”

  As they walked toward Trey’s office, Trey asked, “What was that thing about catching making little angels?”

  “One of his fantasies,” Jim said. “He keeps telling me how the Devil started sending him little angels two nights ago to tell him about the end of the world.”

  7

  A half hour later, in his own office, Trey picked up the phone. “Campbell, D Ward.”

  "It's me," Elise Conroy said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Trey went back down to the end of Ward D, past the security doors, to her office.

  "Elise?" Trey said when he stepped through the doorway.

  She sat behind her desk. Her hair disheveled. Her eyes were bloodshot. She looked like hell, sharp contract to her norm of looking beautiful and pulled together.

  “All right. I’m really all right.”

  “I don’t understand...” Trey said. "What's going on? Elise?"

  “I couldn't say it on the phone. I couldn't. Trey. Just a few hours ago, just...” Nervously, she reached into a pack of cigarettes, then stopped herself and set the pack down. Before she spoke again, her eyes filled with tears, and she pressed the palms of her hands against her face as if she could blot them out.

  Her voice sounded like a little girl’s, not the sharp tone of Ward D’s primary psychiatrist. “My baby. Got taken. My Lucas.”

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  1

  Trey went around Elise Conroy's desk, wrapping his arms around her.

  She leaned against him, her face pressed into his neck, and whatever she'd held tight within herself, she let go of it.

  He held her for as long as she would let him, and felt as if she needed whatever warmth he could offer.

  2

  Then, Trey said, "Do you want to talk? Do you need me to drive you home?"

  She dried her tears, reaching for tissue after tissue. Her face, normally so lovely, had crumpled in on itself, a mass of lines and a kind of sorrow he'd only rarely witnessed. A private sorrow that most people never showed the world.

  "No. What's the use of going home? What's the use? Trey, I was working with the police to help catch him. And he has my baby. My Lucas. He's so helpless, Trey. He's so little. I can't let anything happen to him. I just can't."

  The rain outside battered at the office window.

  God, Trey closed his eyes. God, please let this turn out good. Please let him be found. Safe. Alive.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  1

  The San Pascal County Coroner's Office employs two pathologists, four part-time supervisors at the morgue, as well as several part-time and fulltime employees, from cleanup to bagging to cutting.

  San Pascal County Morgue is in the basement of the old Baseline building off Vineyard and Pepper Streets. Originally a small teaching hospital in the 1930s until the 1970s, it has since become primarily a research and development facility for the county, and for the tri-county alliance interests, and the main housing for the Coroner's office. It is the subject of controversy, the Baseline building, because it is old, has ventilation problems, and is due for a major renovation. But the county has not yet allocated funds for its improvements.

  It is part of a complex of buildings, including the Sheriff's department and other local law enforcement agencies, at the edge of the Annex, an industrial park beyond the suburban sprawl off the freeway. Once, the entire area was vineyards and orange groves.

  Jane Laymon grew up, wishing she could go into the morgue with the County Coroner, hoping to do forensics research (thus, her Bachelor's Degree in both criminal justice and forensics). But after spending two years, primarily on child deaths in the county, she was weary of the trip to the morgue, and the unnatural camaraderie of those who worked there.

  Seeing dead children, whether from natural or unnatural causes, always made her hate the world a little more each time.

  2

  Once inside the facility, you take the stairs rather than the service elevator, unless you're bringing a body in. An increased case load in the area, plus spillover from the Riverside County morgues, has made Baseline (as the place is known by those working in it) overcrowded. The elevators are for the dead. The stairs, the living. Even the refrigeration units, where the corpses are stored during examination and autopsy, is inadequate, and the corridor at the bottom of the stairs is often used as cold storage. Central air conditioning, as well as swamp coolers, chill the halls below the building. Decomposition is the norm for those bodies that the Coroner and his deputies can't get to immediately. The remains are covered, or sealed in body bags on gurneys. The detectives and trainees joke about the place as Valhalla, the halls of the fallen.

  Jane Laymon thinks it's the entrance to a slightly chilled version of Hell.

  Whenever she goes into Valhalla, Jane takes a palm-sized face mask, slipping it over her nose and mouth. Additionally, she breathes primarily through her mouth when she pushes through the thick door from the stairs into the corridor. She gene
rally slips on a pair of latex gloves, as extra precaution, annoyed by the talcum powder that ends up on her hands and wrists.

  The stench is definitely something she has not gotten used to, despite visiting the morgue often.

  There are four large rooms, the sizes of school cafeterias, subdivided into smaller spaces by drywall, freestanding dividers, or the refrigerators in the basement morgue. Two of the four are used for embalming and other services of the county related to the dead. The county embalms some of the bodies, subcontracting out to local mortuaries for the work, depending on its need for revenue. The two remaining rooms are the refrigeration units and the small rooms within them, known simply as the cutting rooms. The coroner's and the two deputy coroner's offices are off these rooms. The offices are glassed-in, There is inadequate floor drainage, so that Jane has, more than once, needed to wipe her shoes before leaving the cutting room. There are emergency decontamination showers — three units, two in the women's room at the end of the hall, and one in the men's. Jane showered only once here — the first time she had to view an autopsy performed on the body of a six-year-old boy.

  She had felt, during that autopsy and what it revealed, a revulsion for the human race, and looking at him, it had reminded her of her little brother when they'd been kids, and she had to turn the hot water up on the shower, nearly scalding her skin, to just wash away the memory.

  3

  Jane Laymon walked in as if she owned the place, and, turning to the Chief Deputy Coroner, a middle-aged man who seemed more of a shopkeeper to her than a medical expert, said, "I need to see all three of them."

  She had gotten used to the mutilation done to the corpses. She barely took a breath when she saw all three laid out. Something in her turned off, like a switch she could manually toggle, so that she didn’t think about the method of the killer.

  Three bodies lay on three metal tables. They were so small that they made the tables seem large. The usual equipment — saws, bone cutters, scissors — lay on the table in their individual holders.

  The children seemed haunting. She had already seen two of them. It was not easy to look at the face of a dead child.

  Particularly not after what the killer had done to two of them — their faces, their arms.

  The bites.

  Jane had some small comfort in knowing that the killer did not mutilate them until after he had taken their lives.

  But it didn't matter.

  You violated them, even if you think you didn't. You could not leave them alone. You have to come after them, even in death.

  You hurt them only after they're dead. Why? What does that do for you?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  1

  At the morgue, Jane Laymon looked over the victims on the metal tables. It was a double-check she did, in case her first impressions had been off. She'd spent an hour going over the details of evidence, mainly standing in the background while Sykes, Tryon, and Fasteau asked the questions of the pathologist. She was a keen listener, and used a rather unorthodox approach that she felt might help add a fresh perspective that her colleagues might've missed.

  2

  She felt as if she were alone with each victim as she looked over the body. She tried to clear her mind. Empty her thoughts, hoping she'd approach the dead now as a blank slate.

  Tryon had taught her this technique. It slowed down the process, he'd said. It opens your mind to possibilities other than the ones first presented.

  Sometimes it was worse for her.

  Sometimes, she felt as if she were going inside the mind of the killer when she looked at his handiwork.

  3

  The light was bright in the room. It was chilly — the refrigeration units were behind her. She worked to keep her mind clear. Hoping. Waiting. Wanting something to come to her. She felt a strange desperation there. She wanted to make her mark with this case. It would have the profile. It would be important.

  But she was fairly sure that despite Tryon's backing of her in the investigation, it would go to a team comprised mainly of veterans. If they didn't come up with something solid within a day, after two days of nothing, the FBI would be on it and their manhunt would be so profoundly superior that the local cops would look bad.

  The pathologist, the coroner, and Tryon and Fasteau were at the third corpse, talking quietly over the body. Tryon had a handheld voice recorder and repeated what the pathologist said into it.

  4

  The first child, a girl, had no name, yet. The missing child hadn't been reported, and they had not yet found an identifier for her. She was simply Victim 1.

  Jane wanted to give her a name. It felt inhuman to stand over her corpse and not think of her as Sally or Judy or Amy. It seemed wrong.

  The second victim, a boy named Steven Latimer. He had been reported missing too late. The body had turned up in the orange groves at the same time that his mother and father had discovered that he'd never made it to his cub scout overnight camp out. He had never even made it to the rented van that would take him there.

  And finally, the third victim.

  They had a name for her: Gina Parsons.

  From San Pascal, like the Latimer boy.

  Found in the Santa Ana River, near the town of Bannock.

  Hanging from a group of trees in the middle of the river.

  The coat hanger around her neck, with the wings, like a noose.

  5

  Preliminary matters were discussed, but none of them seemed interesting to her, until the coroner mentioned the soap.

  "Camay." Tryon said.

  "Little bits of pink soap. Under her fingernails," he said, indicating the dead girl. "Because the river hadn't washed it away completely, it may be that she was only in the water for an hour. At the most."

  We just missed you, Jane thought. You sack of shit. But someone could've seen you. It would've been daylight. You washed her hands. You wanted her clean. But not for us. For you. You wanted her pure. You killed her, and you wanted her scrubbed clean. "What else?"

  "The bites.”

  She looked more closely at the victim’s arm. “But after death.” She said this as much to confirm as to alleviate the tickle of dread she'd felt since viewing the body.

  “Correct. It would appear that all mutilation occurs after the child is dead. He kills them. A little morphine to help them to sleep. Then, he drowns them. That's the first two. It's probably the same with this one.”

  "Morphine?" Jane hadn't heard this before.

  "We found traces in Victim 1's bloodstream. And 2."

  "Jesus. He has access to a hospital?"

  "Nurse, doctor, orderly. Maybe," Tryon said. Tryon had been hanging back, letting her look at the bodies. "We're running checks all over the place. He's going to trip up somewhere here."

  "Or she," Jane said.

  But, instinctively, she knew this was wrong. The killer was male. The murders had all the signs of a man, killing. Only the morphine seemed feminine. Putting them to sleep. A gentle death. The thought of it disturbed her more. If the murderer had just been a vicious killer it was one thing. But he gave them morphine to sleep. He didn't want them conscious for the pain of death. He wanted them to go to sleep like..."Maybe he works for the pound. Maybe..."

  "Sure," Tryon nodded his approval.

  She noticed an imperceptible smirk on Fasteau's face.

  She shot him an acid glance. "He's putting them down like kittens. He doesn't want them to know what's going to happen. Or hurt."

  This is a test, Jane thought. He wants to see how far I can go with this. "If he only kills after they're asleep...well, he doesn't enjoy their pain," she said, thinking aloud. "Our guy doesn’t torture. But something happens after that.”

  Fasteau shot her a glance. “Sure. He mutilates them.” Then, more to Tryon than to her, "We'll get him from the bite marks. This guy has priors. I know it."

  “No,” Jane said. “He’s stopping himself. He's resisting. Something is forcing him to attack t
hem. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe he...well, it's probably whatever is inside him. Forensics get a good look at this?”

  Fasteau nodded. "The odontologist took the impression. The bruises blurred it. This guy chews 'em up and spits 'em out."

  Gallows humor, particularly around the child murder cases, pissed her off. She ignored him, as she often did. As hard as it was, she kept her focus on the dead child who lay before her. "No semen, right?"

  "None. Everything intact below the waist."

  "He doesn't want them sexually. That's one for the books. I was sure this was a sexual predator." Then, it occurred to her. You care for them. You want them clean. You use Camay. They don't arouse you. You don't kidnap them because you have to. You kidnap them because...But the thoughts led her nowhere. She hated where her mind wandered at times like this. She needed to focus on evidence, and what it told. Not go off on her own mental gymnastics. It was one of her problems in life: in breaking down a problem, she sometimes found that she overcomplicated things. As Tryon had told her more times than not: Let the evidence tell its story. "Maybe the bite marks will lead to someone with a prior. But I doubt it." She brought the twisting lamp down near the face of the little girl found that morning.

  It looked as if a scavenger had mauled the face.

  She turned her back on the metal table, the small body, and the men.