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

by Douglas Clegg

  "So, what else? What do you figure?"

  "Haven't gone over everything. I got the nudge from Morrison at the morgue and couldn't hang out long enough to ask the questions I really wanted answered. But I'm not sure they could even answer them yet. But our guy is not cunning. He's got dumb luck. He's got some way of accessing the houses near the country club in San Pascal — that's where the girl's family lived. Right behind the links. Maybe he's a golfer. But I doubt it. He's blue collar. He aspires, maybe. Maybe not."

  "Age?”

  "Maybe 25, 27, 28. I'm guessing, but I don't think CASMIRC's going to come up with priors. I think it's his first week on the job of murder. He's learning as he goes. The first victim had two broken fingers. No marks on his body at all. Suffocated. Second, she had two broken fingers. He bit her cheek and her lip. By the third, the bites were all over the victim's body. Whatever is inside this guy is coming out now. Maybe he had episodes as a kid. But I'm guessing he's spent ten years trying to keep this down. Trying to live right. But he can't help himself. It's a compulsion."

  "Why right now?"

  "Something in his life is messing up, big time. He's under some pressure, but I don't know what type. Maybe he has just lost his job. Or is about to. Or his wife left him. Or let's see, maybe he's had some emotional trauma re-enacted. The death of his own kid? I'm guessing. But something set him off, and he's going off fast."

  "Tell me about the one today."

  "Happened a couple hours ago. Scrub Jay Drive, nice hilltop community. Pool in the backyard. Volvo in the driveway. Professional mom, off to work for a couple of hours, planned on taking the kid off for his birthday. She had a sitter in the house, but the sitter was out back, by the pool, reading, and the kid was in the front yard."

  "No witnesses?"

  "None that we've found. Nobody was looking out their front window during the minute or two it took to get the boy out of there."

  "Checked neighbors?"

  "Ongoing, but this is our guy. I know it. Something goes on where he's invisible in the neighborhoods."

  "Delivery guy?"

  "That's my guess. Or the gas guy. Or mailman. A gardener. Someone ordinarily in these neighborhoods. Someone nobody notices. Someone who goes into their lives every day. Maybe even into their houses. They let him in for all I know. Even the kid knew him. He must've just done whatever our guy said. No signs of struggle. Nothing but toy soldiers in the front yard, and a plastic pail. The kid was playing, waiting for mom. Just like the others did. He gets them in the early morning, or right after school, but he gets them within 100 feet of their front door."

  "The Invisible Man," Tryon says. "Christ."

  "We're checking everybody who drives those streets on a daily basis," she says. Glances at her watch. "I better hit the road. I want to go take a statement from the mother before all hell breaks loose." She glances out the window behind Tryon's bald head. "I wish this rain would let up. I wish I were up there," she points to the snow-capped San Bernardino mountain range. "Maybe Big Bear. I could be skiing. That's a nice thought for a day like this. We get the crappy rain, they get beautiful snow."

  "You'd freeze your ass off. I like a little rain," Tryon says. "So, what's the bug up your ass?"

  She laughed. He was normally so dignified in his speech. "What do you think?"

  "Johnny Fasteau."

  "He's the flea on my dog."

  "He's all I got for you."

  "I could work with Sykes more. Or you."

  "I want that to happen. I really do. But right now, this is too big a thing for me to break up the current team. And you know what? Part of me feels like he teaches you something."

  "I already finished school."

  "What's the worst thing about working with him?"

  "He stares at my boobs. Too much.

  "File a complaint. We have a department for that."

  "You know I can't do that. You know if I do that, the rest of the old boys’ll shun me. A little silent treatment."

  "You might be surprised. You believe in taking his guff? That's all it is, just guff. Look, Jane, he's not my favorite, either. But you two will work out whatever you need to, and then you'll move ahead and you'll see that guys like Fasteau pretty much stay where they are."

  "If I believed in that fairy tale, I'd already be married to Prince Charming."

  When Tryon's phone rings, she keeps her back to him to afford him some small measure of privacy.

  Tryon turns to her, still on the phone, "They found another one. In Little Orange. Look, Jane, we've got to get the Bureau in here fast. This guy's crapping all over the place. I have a goddamn press conference to give with the sheriff in two hours. I don't know why we have to play with the damn media like this."

  "You always look great on camera," she tells him.

  2

  They didn't call it the Bull Pen, as she thought they would when she first began learning the inner workings of the homicide investigative unit. They called it, more simply, The Map Room, because of a large map on an erasable board that covered one entire wall of the conference room. The table was littered with coffee cups and memo pads that had been left behind from the earlier meeting.

  Jane went to the board, took up a marker.

  San Pascal County. San Bernardino. Riverside.

  Where the counties met, she circled in red marker.

  They had sticky notes up where each of the victims had been found, and a blue check mark where each of the children had been taken.

  Knowing that she'd have to erase it when she was done, Jane began connecting the lines together — from Caldwell to Bannock to Little Orange to San Pascal.

  This is your territory.

  This is your hunting ground.

  You're coming from somewhere here.

  She circled a spot where the foothills met the valley.

  You're like a mountain lion, coming in.

  Then, she said it aloud. "The mountains."

  She glanced up at the towns in the mountains, from the majestic Lake Arrowhead, to Big Bear, Blue Jay, Moon Lake, Windsock, and Slipping Springs.

  "You think?" A voice behind her said.

  She turned around. Fasteau. "My doppelganger," she said.

  He stood in the doorway, bottle of water in his hand. Slurped some of it down. "You planning on snowboarding?"

  "Maybe," she said. It annoyed the hell out of her that she was saddled with Fasteau, but she had to make the best of it. One day, you'll be free of him. "Just an idea. The victims are from the foothills." She pointed to the places on the map where they'd been taken. "The country club area, the hilltop houses, and over here, a little lower, but still near the foothills. Then, look, this is where they end up."

  "Sure," Fasteau said. "Sykes already got on that. They end up in the valley."

  "Flatlands," she corrected him. "The rivers and streams that feed into where they were found, all follow a pattern from the foothills. See? These are the washes that flood this time of year and feed into the river." She tapped out areas on the map. "Where he dumps them is his furthest point away from where he's willing to go after he takes them. He must time it. He keeps the kids for about a day or less. Kills them. Then, I'm guessing he only wants to go an hour to two hours from home. His home is..." Here she took the marker and made a dotted line radius that went up to the mountain range, and down past the 10 freeway, into Rubidoux and Moreno Valley, getting into the tip of the desert out at Banning but not quite to Palm Springs."

  "So?"

  "He's linear."

  Fasteau gestured with the bottle. "Sure."

  She could tell he didn't quite get what she was saying. He had that cowboy look in his eyes again, like everything was all about riding horses and roping dogies and riding off into the sunset on the way to a strip joint.

  "Well, look, if this is point Z," she tapped Bannock, where they'd found Gina Parsons that morning. "And this is point, let's say, F." She tapped the foothills. "Then point A, his origin, is somewhere
here." She made five points along the map in four different regions of the three counties.

  The valley. The flatlands. The mountains. The desert.

  "He's not down here in the flatlands," she said. "And since he has to kill these ducks, he has to find them someplace. Now, he might raise them. But that sort of eliminates the desert, since it would be hard to raise or catch ducks out there. And that leaves the valley, the foothills, and the mountains. There are four man-made lakes in the valley, mostly at city and town parks, none that I know of in the foothills, except the reservoir, unless he's raising the ducks in his backyard pond. And then, up here," she tapped the mountains. "Big Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead, Moon Lake, Green Valley Lake. It's the damn land of lakes. Ducks aplenty."

  "Hey," Fasteau said. "Wouldn't they fly away now? The ducks?"

  "Maybe he has a way of keeping them."

  "Maybe," he said.

  She could tell by his tone that he was not interested.

  "Those are interesting concepts," he added.

  She could hear the condescension in his tone. What was most annoying about it is that she wasn't even sure if he understood what the word "concepts" meant.

  "This guy has a route. A daily route. He grabs a kid, stashes the kid, murders the kid, and has his route set up. The kids are ones he knows. Somehow he knows them. Each victim's an only child. He knew that. A large family would've scared him. He couldn't deal with more than one child. I'm guessing each of these kids were loners of sorts. Didn't play with a lot of kids in the neighborhood. As only children, they might've been good at talking to adults. I think he knew them in some way, even if the parents didn't know them. Each of the victims lived within fifteen miles of each other. Want to take a drive?"

  "Up the mountain? It's probably snowing up there. We'd need an SUV. It's snowing up there today."

  "No," she said. "Just here," she tapped the map at the designation for the foothills of San Pascal County. "To visit some of the families."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Lucas awoke, he was surrounded by gray darkness that was only interrupted by twinkling white lights. He looked up to the ceiling. Not a ceiling at all, but rugged hanging rock. Christmas lights were strung along them. It freaked him out.

  Bad dream.

  At first, he thought he had been dreaming, and was back in bed.

  The fact that he’d peed in his pants made him remember where he was. He shivered from cold. His hands were duct-taped together, but he was able to reach down into his pocket. In one, Stuart, his hamster. Lucas was more worried about his pet than about himself for the moment, but as he smoothed the animal’s fur, he felt the stirrings of a very sleepy hamster. Cushioned with a bit of napkin wrapped around it, Stuart had managed to survive the trip that Lucas wasn’t quite sure along the way that he would. At one point, in the darkness, he’d been afraid Stuart had been smushed to death. But he was fine.

  In the other pocket, two quarters and his favorite giant rubber spider, Charlotte. Lucas squeezed it, feeling its familiar contours. He said the Lord’s Prayer three times, at first fast, but by the third time so slowly, trying to imagine God hearing him.

  Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw shadows all around him.

  He was in some kind of cellar, but maybe it was a cave. It was a strange place. Rock walls like a caved, and they had really scary drawings all over them, but they were only drawings. He knew not to be that afraid of them. The big statues nearby made him think of church, and that made him feel a little better. He liked church and always felt safe in church. But it reminded him a little of the kind of place that monsters lived. Ogres. Nightmares.

  He kept hearing noises, like water trickling and like something moving, but not all the areas of the place had the Christmas lights hanging over them.

  The flickering lights bothered him.

  The room he seemed like a giant box. Dark shapes in parts where he couldn't quite see. Piles of something. He couldn’t tell. His head hurt so much, he thought it would split open. Where was his Mommy? Where was Daddy? Why weren’t they there to protect him? His confusion increased with each second. Maybe this was some game. Some strange game. Maybe he had done something really bad. Something he shouldn’t have. He thought back to the morning, and the weekend. All he could remember doing that might be considered bad was stealing the picture from his father’s drawer. The photograph that had his mother, father, and him as a baby in it. All of them smiling. He had stuck the picture in his pocket. When he’d gotten home from the weekend with his dad and his dad’s new wife, he’d hidden the picture behind some books on the bookshelf. Maybe that’s why he was being punished.

  Maybe Duane was the punisher.

  Why would Duane do this? Duane was his buddy.

  He was Duane's helper whenever Duane came by, just like he helped the gardener, Mike, in back when he came over to check on the roses. Just like he helped Mrs. Portrero with carrying books to her from the public library. He didn't know Duane that well, he figured, but Duane had always been nice. Nice and friendly, and one time gave him a dollar for helping him.

  But maybe it wasn't Duane. Maybe it just was something wearing a Duane mask. Duane was always nice to him. Duane laughed at his jokes. His mommy even let Duane in whenever she was home. So did Nina. Why would Duane do this?

  Duane even called him his "little helper" when he'd stand and watch Duane work.

  But that thought again: maybe it wasn't Duane. Maybe it was just someone who looked like Duane.

  Like nightmares where things came for you looking like your mommy or daddy, but they turned into something different.

  Or maybe he was Boogieman. Lucas had heard terrible stories from other kids in his first grade class about the Boogieman. One of his classmates, Sandy Shapiro, told about how the Boogieman lived in the dark of closets and under the bed. She told him how at night he came out and grabbed little kids and put them into the dark.

  Just like this place, he thought.

  Then, he remembered one of his own nightmares, when the Boogieman came up behind him and grabbed him, and then slithered under the bed with him. In the dark under the bed, Lucas had screamed for his mommy, but she had never come.

  He should’ve known.

  He should’ve know that this was the day the Boogieman would come out of the shadows and grab him.

  He wanted to wake up from this nightmare. He didn’t want to be here. It hurt to think all this. And his shoulder hurt.

  He closed his eyes as hard as he could and wished himself back in his bed, asleep. Wished himself to wake up. At the count of ten.

  Ten nine eight seven six five four three two one.

  Lucas opened his eyes.

  Water dripped in one corner of the room.

  He heard a shooshing sound, like the sound the shower made when he took his bath.

  When he had to pee, he struggled, but he was bound up too tight. He peed in his pants, and felt ashamed. It hurt down around his thighs where he’d already peed.

  His head felt like it was full of stones smashing against each other.

  He felt Stuart crawl from his pocket up his arm, and along the floor beside him. He wanted to tell Stuart not to run away, that he wouldn’t ever be able to find him again. He watched his hamster skitter along the floor.

  Come back, Stuart. Please.

  He wished his mom would come and get him soon.

  Then, he heard a muffled noise — a human noise — from somewhere in the dark near him.

  He saw a dark shape of movement, as if an inky blackness had just begun pouring from the shadows.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  1

  It spent a little time with its mother, inside, sitting with her, talking to Nancy, the visiting nurse who was filling in, who checked the morphine levels and triple-checked the pills. "You sure this is all the Roxicet?"

  It nodded.

  "There should be more."

  She leaned over its mother's bed.

  Its mother
seemed to it like a jellyfish for a second. Tubes running in and out of her. Her skin crackly and pale. Her hair thin and wait.

  It felt nothing for her, but didn't like to think of her like this.

  "She seems to be in more pain that usual," Nancy said. "But she seems to be dosing herself well." She leaned closer to its mother. "You need to be careful, Mrs. Cobble. This is just for when you feel pain." She pointed to the intravenous tube and the button on its edge where the patient could self-dose.

  "Maybe she needs more," it said. Hoping. It could use more.

  "She seems fine as she is," Nancy said in a low voice as if she didn't want its mother to hear her.

  Nancy wore all white, like a nurse should. She was good to its mother, and although it didn't like her that much, it appreciated when she came around. The other nurse, Betsy, was better, it thought, but Betsy was on vacation until after the holidays. It only saw the nurse once a week. It felt a nervous about the nurse being there now, but the little bird below was silent and since the Other One had control of all this, it was fairly sure that Nancy would not wonder too much about the morphine level being down, about the missing Roxicet or the valiums that were gone. Its mother had last seen a doctor six days earlier, at the office over in Big Bear, when it drove her there. That's when its mother talked about dying. About not being around.

  That's when the home care had begun, and the morphine had seemed to it to be a Godsend.

  Morphine helped people not feel pain.

  It didn't like pain at all.

  "Did you get a flu shot this year?" Nancy asked, interrupting its thoughts. She had her little dark bag full of all the wonders: needles and pills and plastic bags filled with liquid sleep. She reached into it and withdrew a syringe. "I could give you the shot right now. Mr. Cobble?"

  "Flu shot?"

  "It's one of the services our visiting nurses association offers to family members of our patients. There's a nasty strain of flu going around. This'll help prevent it. It won't hurt much — I'll use a butterfly needle." She leaned back over the bed, her face so close to its mother's that she must've gotten a good whiff of its mother's awful breath. "How about you, Genie? I'm going to give you a very little shot. A teensy one. It'll keep you from getting sick this winter."