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

by Douglas Clegg

  But when its foster brother left, and Ruthie went to Hell, it was alone with its daddy.

  And then, one day, daddy died.

  It was the man of the house.

  It worked hard to hold the Beast in its cage so that it could take care of its mother, so that its girl, Monica, who had been a homeless whore down on its delivery route, could get cleaned up. But Monica's whoredom had tempted its flesh.

  It had all fallen apart.

  And then Jojo, its only friend for the past 15 years, was dying.

  And its mother was dying.

  And it heard the voice of the Other One within it.

  Louder.

  Stronger.

  Coming out.

  It knew it was falling apart, and that the Devil was coming through more and more every day.

  Christmas approaching.

  God's birthday.

  It had to send messages to Abraxas, the God of All.

  Through the angels going to Heaven.

  Through the signs and portents along its Moon Lake Pure Spring Water delivery route in the foothills and flatlands from San Pascal to San Bernardino, from Moreno Valley to Riverside.

  It knew where God lived.

  God spoke to it in omens.

  It spoke to God with angels.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jane called Tryon, as Fasteau ran through the rain into a McDonald's with too long a line at the drive-thru window.

  "I've spoken with three of the families. They all three get Moon Lake Pure Spring Water. I think it's the delivery guy. The Latimers told me that the Moon Lake guy talked to their son all the time. Funny thing is, none of them remember one specific guy. I think he grabbed the kids on his route. I think that's what he's been doing. These kids happen to be the ones who give him the opportunity."

  "You following through?"

  "Sure. We dropped by the distribution plant and got the names of three of the guys who work the area. They alternate routes. All part-timers."

  "Good going, Laymon," he said. "Names?"

  "James Pratt, San Pascal. Lou Barron, Mentone, and Duane Cobble, Moon Lake."

  "What are the odds he lives in Moon Lake?"

  "That's by the distribution center, but the guy at the plant told me that Pratt lives on Sierra Ridge. That's within a stone's throw of Dr. Conroy's and within two miles of the Latimer's." She read the addresses and telephone numbers for each one.

  "Okay," Tryon said. "We'll get officers to each residence. Might as well cover our asses."

  "You heard from Conroy yet?"

  "Yes and no." Tryon failed to explain further. A pause on the line. "You and Fasteau are where?"

  "Not far from the Latimer's."

  "Okay, you two get up to Moon Lake. Check out Cobble. This may be one of many goose chases, but we need to nail the Red Angel, pronto. If one of these three pans out, you done damn good."

  He hung up.

  "You done damn good, he tells me." Jane closed her cell phone.

  High praise for Tryon.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  1

  Trey Campbell spent forty-five minutes waiting for Dr. Brainard at his office, and then another twenty trying to convince him of something that Trey was sure he would sign off on. He and Elise needed both Olsen, the Executive Director of Darden State, and two psychiatrists to sign off on this kind of day transfer for a patient from Program 28.

  When Campbell left Brainard's office, Jim Anderson, waiting in the hall, said, "So, what's the verdict?"

  Trey shook his head. "Maybe if Elise had luck with Olsen, we can do an end-run around Brainard."

  But Elise's office was locked.

  "Maybe she's talking to Olsen?"

  "She'd phone it in," Trey said.

  He reached into his pocket and brought out his cell phone. Punched in the numbers of the Executive Director's office. "Shelly? Trey. Hi. Listen, is Dr. Conroy over there?"

  2

  He felt a peculiar sense of panic as he walked swiftly down the corridor toward Program 28. ID badge flashed to the COs. Unlocked the double-doors.

  Down the metallic corridor, past the first several pods.

  Scoleri's was empty.

  Anderson, following behind him, said, "What the hell?"

  Trey cussed a blue streak.

  "Chill, boy," Anderson said.

  "Jimmy, she got him out. She couldn't wait. She did it. I don't know how, but she did it."

  3

  He didn't want to expose her. She might not be in any trouble. She might be fine. She might have gotten him to her car. That would be it. Trey was sure. She would be out in the staff parking lot. He told Jim Anderson he'd call him within ten minutes and explain what all this was about.

  Out in the staff parking lot, Elise Conroy's space was empty.

  He checked the log at the front desk of the main entrance.

  Elise Conroy had left with "Guest."

  Trey stood at the front entrance to Darden, and weighed his options.

  Lucas Conroy will be dead by sundown.

  There is no option.

  4

  In his Mustang, out on the 10 freeway, he punched in Elise's cell phone number. Windshield wipers slicing against the heaving rain, increasing as the sun headed over into the western sky. Temperature, 64 in the flatlands, and dropping.

  She picked up.

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm sorry, Trey."

  "No need. You got him out. Right?"

  "Olsen said no. I'm sorry."

  "He's with you?"

  "Yes."

  "Cuffed?"

  "Very."

  "How did you do it?"

  "It was easier than you'd think. For the guards, I faked an ID. They don't know Scoleri from Adam in on Wards B and C. They thought it was a Program 9 med transfer."

  "But you kept him cuffed?"

  "Yes."

  "Shackled?"

  "No. But he has leg cuffs on now."

  "That's not enough."

  She hung up the phone.

  He turned off the freeway exit, and up into the foothills of San Pascal.

  In the rain, traffic slowed. No one in southern California seemed to know how to drive in the rain. It was as if anything that smacked of weather scrambled brains as well.

  Palm trees lined the fat sidewalks. Small bungalows blurred along as he drove up toward Baseline, then west on Date Palm Drive, zigzag back up to Baseline.

  He pressed redial. Hated being on the cell while driving. Hated people who did it.

  She picked up on her phone on the first ring.

  "Don't hang up on me."

  "Don't condescend to me."

  "Where are you?"

  "We're driving."

  "What is he telling you?"

  "He knows the killer, Trey. We should've done more of a background check. They were in the home together for a year. His God year. The Red Angel's family took him in. They're got close."

  "He may be lying."

  "Enough, Trey."

  "Don't hang up. Let me meet up with you. You need someone with you."

  She paused.

  He turned up a side street, north. Stucco beige suburban tract homes littered the slight incline heading toward the hills. "Are you near your house?"

  "No."

  Shit. He had just turned up into Sun Ridge, just on the other side of San Pascal, and Elise's neighborhood.

  He wanted to ask her more questions but knew it would be pointless. Scoleri was right there next to her. He had no doubt that Scoleri intended to use her to get away. You could have a medical degree from the best school in the country, you could work with serial killers for more than eight years, diagnosing, treating, studying, observing. And still, when your kid gets taken, you're just somebody desperate enough to risk your own life with someone who happily would rape, mutilate, torture and then kill you.

  "Where are you headed?" he asked.

  "Up the 16. Into the mountains."

  Sh
e was taking the side road, the old highway, up toward Big Bear. He had hoped that if she took any roads, they'd be main ones. Big ones. One where highway patrol might possibly be.

  He had an instinct to call the police in the mountains.

  You're over-reacting. We can bring this one in. Whether Scoleri has information or not, we can control this. Get Scoleri back to Darden, talk to Olsen. Clean it up. Anybody would understand Elise's actions in the face of what she was going through. Given her record, this could be smoothed over. He knew there was a way to do it.

  But he also feared something else. More than just what Scoleri might do.

  He had a fear that in working so intimately with Scoleri, Elise had begun to identify too closely with him. She was a professional. But then, he'd known other professionals, people who should've known better, who got too close to that insane fire and burned themselves.

  "Have you reached the first rest stop?" he asked, carefully maneuvering a twist in the road. "You know, the one near the falls?"

  Pause.

  "No."

  "Pull over there. I'll meet you. It'll take me twenty minutes."

  "You won't call the cops?"

  He thought for just a second that he might lie to her. But decided that this could be controlled. He could help take Scoleri back to Darden State. There'd be a way to make it all work. He was sure.

  "I won't. But Elise, do not let him get inside your head. Not on this. He knows your weak spot. He knows that you'll do anything to get your son. He may not know this killer. He may..."

  She hung up the cell phone.

  He pressed redial.

  No answer.

  She'd turned off her phone.

  5

  As he drove, crossing into higher elevations, it was no longer rain coming down, but snow. He went up the 18, all the way to a small clutch of houses just where the mountains really began beyond the foothills. A dip in the slender highway indicated the turn-off to the old Route 9. He knew it well, from his make-out days as a teen, going up with girlfriends, going hiking with his buddies. It had mountain streams flowing down along the old road, and it had two rest areas off of it, usually used for picnicking or just parking.

  It took him nearly half an hour of the windy road that was impossibly narrow to get to that first rest stop. The snow fluttered down, making the whole area seem magical and beautiful. It was piling up — he figured must be at about 3,000 feet above sea level.

  Elise's Volvo was parked just inside the curve of it, near the picnic tables.

  As he approached it, something seemed wrong. His mind began reeling, thinking of the possibilities, imagining from what he'd read of Scoleri as to what the man was capable of doing. The mutilations, the torture, the souvenir-gathering, the murders.

  The dreadful images came up to him, things he'd seen in forensics casebooks, pictures he'd seen when there'd been a trial of one of the patients and he had gone to the courtroom with the psychiatrists and COs: dead woman, women like Elise Conroy, beautiful, torn, their faces staring at nothing.

  His heart began pounding too hard, hammering in his chest.

  Don't let anything have happened to her.

  Don't let her be hurt.

  Chapter Forty

  1

  Trey parked his car, and went over to Elise's.

  Thank god.

  She glanced over to him, but had an unreadable expression on her face.

  Flakes of snow fluttering down, wet.

  2

  He leaned into her rolled-down window.

  Scoleri sat in the backseat, lying down, his head against the inside door handle. His arms were behind his back, cuffed. His legs, shackled.

  Elise looked up at Trey.

  "He knows where Lucas is," she said.

  Her eyes, bloodshot. Her hair, a mess.

  He noticed the revolver on the passenger seat beside her.

  "All right," Trey said. "Let's take this slow."

  3

  "Let's talk about this," he said. "Outside." As an afterthought, he added, "Bring the gun."

  4

  He kept watch on the car in case Scoleri made any move to get out of it.

  He and Elise stood on the edge of the pavement and curb, close enough to run back to the car at a moment's notice and subdue Scoleri.

  Far enough away that Scoleri wouldn't hear them.

  "We have to turn around right now. Take Scoleri back. We can smooth it over. Right now. Every minutes we delay it will be that much harder to fix this."

  "No," she said. Her voice far too calm. "He knows where my son is. I'm going to go get him. And kill whoever did this."

  "That's nuts, Elise. You're out of your league. You may be a smart person with degrees up the wazoo, but this is beyond what you, or I, can handle. You're going vigilante on somebody's ass? With your gun?"

  "Yes."

  "Elise, do I need to wrestle you to the ground and put restraints on you, too?"

  "If it were your son, Trey. If it were Mark. If you knew the man who had him intended to kill him within a few hours. If you knew how the police worked. When your family was attacked on Catalina. Hatcher. Did the police save you? Did they? Would they have gotten to your kids on time? Trey? Tell me truthfully. You tell me that I should take him back. My only hope. I've gone over and over this in my mind."

  After a few seconds, he said, "Ok. One hour. We give him one hour to help."

  5

  He went around and got in the car. She passed him the revolver. He put it carefully into the glove compartment. Shut it.

  Then he got out, and opened the back door.

  Looking up at him, Scoleri said, "I love rides in the country."

  6

  Trey sat in the backseat, with Scoleri sitting to his left. Scoleri kept his eyes out the window.

  Elise watched them both in the rearview mirror.

  "All right. You have your fresh air, Scoleri."

  "Call me Abraxas."

  "Abraxas, then."

  "You want me to just deliver everything on a silver platter," Scoleri said.

  "Why not?"

  "Doesn't work that way. You live in this realm of consciousness that's milky and clouded. You think that what you can see in your little bubble is all that there is. But there's more to existence than that," Scoleri said. He looked out at the snow falling. "I love snow. I created snow because it makes everything seem more beautiful than it is. The world is an ugly, grimy place. Filthy. Wallowing in it, people. People who are not really people, just pulsating amoebas, crashing into one another. The earth is a woman and the parasites infest her scalp and her pussy. The earth is a whore and she fucks the Devil. It gives her these lice and vermin called mankind. But I created snow to dress her. To blanket her. To freeze the lice. Isn't it beautiful?"

  "Look," Trey said. "Tell us about the Red Angel."

  "He once was a real angel, you know. Once, when the world was innocent and new. He was pure but the Devil got inside him. The Devil came through into him, like the Holy Spirit comes into others when I inspire them. The Devil came into him and tore at his innards. He was strong, but not strong enough. I helped him build a prison for the Devil, in his head. We spoke through the divine radio, and I struggled in the whorls of his brainshit to build a strong enough cage for the Devil. But the Devil gets out now and then. The Devil knows his weaknesses. And something's happening to him now. The Devil is stronger. "

  "How do you know him?"

  Scoleri turned to face Trey. Smiling. "Aren't we going for a drive? I want to see the mountains."

  "I would think Abraxas would make the mountains come to him."

  "Ha ha ha." Scoleri said, slowly and deliberately.

  Trey's heart pounded. Felt heat in his face. We are fucked if this doesn't go right. "It's snowing. The roads might be bad."

  "I think we should go for a ride," Scoleri said. "Up, up, up."

  Chapter Forty-One

  1

  Moon Lake.

  Weathe
r forecast for the San Bernardino Mountains: cloudy, chance of snow, 28 degrees dropping to 20 by nightfall.

  That was the forecast. At the higher elevations, it was already 18 degrees by six p.m.

  Snow covered the town of Big Bear and Moon Lake.

  It was a peaceful snow. Winds, but no blasts. Made the whole world look like a snow globe. Santa's village. Christmasworld.

  Moon Lake is surrounded by 20 miles of shorefront property, but has not become commercialized in the least. It is out of the way, a community that rises from a recess in the mountainside, going flat along the lake, surrounded by trees, mainly incense cedars, sugar pine, white pine, and other conifers. The sheriff's station is a beige trailer down in the town area of Moon Lake. Town is simply a bar, a coffee shop, and a sundries store. Six houses nearby, all occupied by those who work in, either the sheriff's station, bar, coffee shop, or sundries store.

  In the forest beyond the lake, there are 125 cabins along the outcroppings and rises that can be reached via unpaved roads. These are used primarily in the summer, although some come up in the winter for skiing up at the city of Big Bear, twelve miles northeast. Few arrive after December 1st without four-wheel-drives, although some of the flatlanders risk the windy road up to Moon Lake just to make fun of the locals, who are a bit country compared to those who live below the mountains, or to take in the quaintness of the small, tight-knit community. Most of the cabins are empty until ski season kicks into high gear, in January, so even just before Christmas, the handful of winterized cabins are mostly empty.

  The Moon Lake Distribution plant is ten miles from the lake itself, but the town prides itself on being known for its spring water. "I go down and take a piss in that pure spring water every morning," is a favorite phrase that locals tell visitors over a few beers.