By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  After a long while he went into his room and pulled a chair over to the door, blocking it. Then he dreamed of fire, bright orange flames fiercely burning bodies. All the bodies had breasts. Slowly all the bodies blackened and charred, endless bodies bursting with boiling blood blazing down to flame-flushed bone. Whitened bones and skulls of white that looked like cue balls.

  In the morning after breakfast he walked into the desert as far as he could go and still keep the oasis in sight. He wanted to see if the uneasiness of the previous evening would return. Eventually he found a spot where he could sit and rest. A canteen of water had been given him and now he drank from it, drank greedily, all the while surveying the incredible expanse of land around him. He felt like a ship’s captain in the middle of a vast ocean, becalmed yet somehow beckoning the frail craft ever onward. The fearfulness returned but he fought it down.

  Suddenly possessed he walked farther, on and on, until the familiar buildings had long been lost. With the sun behind him, he traveled southwest in a straight line. Somewhere to his right was the road to Death Valley Junction; he was not worried. The name intrigued him. Death Valley. The Valley of Death. He knew he would not get there, ever. He was immortal. He had his work to do and his work would last forever.

  At his farthest stop he rested again. Somebody earlier had told him that if he walked far enough, several miles, he would be in California. Ever been there? He had smiled and said no. Maybe someday, who knows? Now he believed he had come far enough, he was back in his home state. A frown creased his forehead. He had no intention of returning to the people who had destroyed his parents and almost destroyed him. They were all evil, all the people in California, everybody.

  He was alone in the desert, and he was back home. He suddenly wished all the people in the whole state were dead. Then he would be king of California. He liked the sound. The King of California. That’s what he would call himself someday. After they all were dead.

  Dead and in Dead Valley. Right here. This is where they belong, he told himself. He jumped up. For ten minutes he shouted and screamed at the 20 million people of the state of California. In the middle of the desert, in the Valley of the Dead, in the land of his birth, he told them who he really was and all the unspeakable things they had done to him and his family. Then he told them all that he had done in return.

  When he finished he told them what he intended to do in the future.

  Following a light lunch back at Ash Meadows, Bishop went home to Las Vegas. Two days later he met his prey, though he didn’t know it at the moment. He had reached the corner of Fremont and S. Main on one of his restless walks around the casino center, hoping to find what he needed, knowing that his time was running short, when a police car pulled up at the intersection. In seconds they had stopped all traffic emptying into S. Main, allowing only those cars to pass that were turning right onto Fremont or continuing north across the intersection. Moments later a procession of limousines hove into view, heading south toward the Strip. From his vantage point a little beyond the corner Bishop watched as the funeral cortege passed the Union Pacific depot across the street and came abreast of him.

  In the lead were five open flower cars, all custom Cadillacs with gleaming chrome splashbeds framing huge wreaths of roses and chrysanthemums. Behind them rolled the long sleek hearse, its black-curtained windows shrouded in sorrow. As the silent procession wheeled by, Bishop counted the cars of mourners. There were ten, each a polished limousine of impeccable breeding. All appeared to be filled with relatives and friends of the deceased.

  He had never seen anything like it. Turning to his right he smiled at the woman next to him and asked if she knew who was dead. She eyed him briefly, then smiled back and spoke a name. The name meant nothing to him; he told her so. She laughed oddly. He wondered if the man had been somebody very important to get such a funeral. She laughed again and told him the man had owned a piece of Vegas, “an important piece” was the way she put it. And all those flowers and mourners? He had friends. What kind of friends? The kind that make funerals, he was told. He didn’t understand. For the next few moments the woman softly explained who the deceased had really been, and as she talked Bishop remembered a movie he had once seen on TV about Al Capone, who made many funerals and who always sent a lot of flowers.

  A minute later the woman was gone, after a final exchange of pleasantries. Bishop watched the departing figure, wondered if she had money. He shrugged mentally and continued on his desultory walk.

  Up the block now, past the bus station on the other side of the street to which she had just crossed, the woman asked herself why she had talked so freely to a stranger. She had been absently watching the long string of black cars, letting her mind wander, when the young man spoke to her. In seconds she was telling him things about Las Vegas better left unsaid. It was his smile that had got her, really quite charming, that and his whole innocent manner. Must be getting older, she told herself with a disgusted sigh.

  Margot Rule was thirty-eight years old and not attractive. Though she had soft brown hair and perfectly even teeth, she was overly tall and overly thin and had neither the face nor the figure to lure men to their doom. On this mid-August morning she hoped only to lure a man to an apartment that she wanted to rent. A real estate agent, she found her life filled with empty rooms and empty space. The work was hard, the hours long but the money was good, especially now that she had opened her own agency. She handled all the listings and rentings and a secretary took care of the phone and the details. She was always on the go, which meant she was doing all right. Best of all, the activity prevented her from sitting home alone thinking of bottles of liquor and all the things she had lost or somehow missed in her life.

  Five years earlier she had thought of nothing but her family. Married and the mother of two little girls, she filled her life with washing and cooking and taking care of a house in the valley section of town. She loved every minute of it. She had been married late, at age twenty-six, to a simple man who was good to her. In his early forties at the time of their marriage, her husband was ugly and not as bright or as passionate as she but he worked hard to provide for her and the children and she loved him for it. She quickly put aside any dreams of romance and excitement and settled down to a life of security, something she had never known in her own childhood. Whenever she reflected on her life she was amazed at the good luck that had finally come to her, after an adolescence and early adulthood devoid of any real relationships with men. They were simply not interested in her. On her marriage bed, disappointing as it had been for her, she vowed to remain faithful to her husband, faithful and true until death did them part.

  The call awakened her from a late afternoon nap. She struggled to understand the words but they had to be repeated. An accident, there had been an accident. Would she come to Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital? Yes. No, an accident. Just please come as quickly as she could.

  In a daze, fearful beyond any hysteria, she arrived at the hospital but it was already too late. Her six-year-old and her husband had both been killed instantly. Her four-year-old daughter had died on the operating table two minutes earlier. A gasoline tractor-trailer had crashed into their car at high speed, exploding into flaming wreckage. Her husband had taken the children on an outing and now they were dead. Her whole family was dead.

  For months Margot Rule’s world became an endless succession of nightmares. Awake or in fitful sleep she watched the truck crashing, the awful explosion, the fierce flames. She saw the final second of fright on the faces of her children, heard their agonizing screams. At times she sensed her sanity slipping away. She started to drink to dull the pain, something she had never done before. At first the alcohol helped her to forget, helped her to concentrate more on the moment, even to sleep better. As her tolerance grew she needed more and more liquor to achieve the same effect, the same state of nothingness in which there was no past remembered. The changes were subtle but progressive. Within six months she was a raving al
coholic.

  The poison had taken the place of pain. Though the ravenous beast now needed constant feeding, she didn’t care as long as the hurt did not return. She went through their meager savings, then her husband’s small insurance policy. And finally she sold the house, moving to a dismal apartment in a run-down neighborhood. Its many bars and general disregard for appearances suited her new life style.

  Then the men came. One after another after a drink or ten drinks or whole bottles. While she remained in the house, still attached to her former life, she had maintained a certain minimal propriety, though she had already begun to sleep with strangers. In her new existence nothing mattered so everything went. Liquor, parties, men, anything that would keep her mind occupied, her senses dulled. She began to gamble and her money went even faster. For three years she roamed about in an alcoholic haze, running through almost all she had including a $20,000 settlement from the accident.

  In 1971 she started going to Alcoholics Anonymous. At the outset she was brought to meetings by friends she had known years earlier but had never suspected of being alcoholics. They seemed contented and secure, while she was sickly and desperate. Time had healed some of the scars of her tragedy, but the alcoholism had ravaged her mind and body. At the meetings she was introduced simply as Margot. She listened attentively as an endless series of speakers told of the horrific waste and futility of their lives as alcoholics. Each speaker stressed the importance of giving up that first drink and then handling the problem one day at a time.

  Margot was impressed. She began to see that her initial grief had eventually given way to self-pity, perhaps the quickest of all roads to alcoholism. Disgusted with herself and her motives, now seen in a true light, she resolved to end the nightmare. For three weeks she stayed with friends who watched over her and supervised her drying out. When she returned to an AA meeting she had not had a drink in a month.

  Her friends had been gentle with her. As alcoholics they knew of the shock to the system when the drug was suddenly withheld. Yet, though much of the shock came from the physical reaction, much was also purely psychological, and they worked on her mental attitude every day in an attempt to build up her confidence and discipline. Her nerves were raw and her temperament volatile during this time but she managed to control her outbursts for the most part. By the end of her stay she believed the road back to some kind of normal life was possible for her.

  She needed satisfying work even more than money. Again through a sympathetic friend she secured a job in a large real estate agency, where she promptly set out to learn the business. At one AA gathering she met an older man, a member in his late fifties, and soon they were spending time together. It was not a passionate affair nor was it fulfilling for her, but she delighted in having a continuing relationship again.

  During that summer and fall they shared many a dinner and evening on the town, all without liquor of course. They hiked along trails and drove into the desert. They fished and enjoyed water sports on Lake Mead. They visited nearby national parks including the Grand Canyon. For Christmas they flew to Hawaii.

  Her gentleman friend was devoted. He was never angry or abusive. He praised her when needed and comforted her when necessary. He introduced her to some important people, whom she cultivated as business contacts. That he loved her was obvious to both of them, and one day in winter he talked of marriage. She felt much warmth for him, though it wasn’t love—indeed, she had not experienced real love since her high school days and then it had been entirely one-sided— but she thought she would probably marry him eventually, for kindness was very important to her.

  The marriage was not to be. In the spring of her thirty-sixth year her lover and friend died of a sudden heart attack. He was fifty-eight years old. He had exercised regularly and watched his diet. He neither smoked nor drank. Six weeks before his death he had received a yearly physical examination and had been pronounced healthy. When he died the doctor called the attack unexpected and massive.

  Margot, who had once again put away her dreams of love for the reality of being loved, was numb with grief. But she vowed not to repeat her earlier mistake. This time she would not succumb to self-pity, she would not fall apart or seek to destroy herself. Most of all, she would not return to the bottle. Instead she flung herself into her work with furious energy. No task was too arduous, no assignment too challenging. She worked day and night, weekends and holidays, meeting prospective clients and tenants, befriending possible business leads. As long as she kept active she was strong, though the desire for alcohol never entirely left her. She was quite good at what she did. In September she opened her own agency.

  Within six months her success was assured. The work was her passion since she had little else, and she brought to it all the energy and devotion of a mother for her children or a moonstruck young girl for her lover. She wished only that she had twice the amount of time, for she was convinced that she could do even twice as well. A suggestion that she hire other agents to work for her was rejected, at least for the moment. It was her symbolic children, her would-be lover for whom she was caring so tenderly, and she would not give up any part of it. Not yet.

  In April 1973 she was given a small apartment building for rental. In May she sold several unfurnished houses. In June two men came to see her. They gave no names. Would she be interested in handling the sale of a large estate? Certainly. Could she see the principal at his convenience? Of course.

  A week later she was driven to the estate. Built on two landscaped acres of prime land, the mansion was constructed in the manner of a Roman palazzo, with marble pillars around the long rectangular swimming pool and a huge terrace of Italianate tile. Inside everything was expensive and tasteful, and included all the latest electronic hardware for pleasure and security.

  She was introduced to the owner, whom she recognized immediately by his name. Her reaction was to be forthright and blithely naďve, a mixture that apparently worked. The owner soon smiled upon her and dismissed his aides. She was then told what he wanted for the place, and what he would take. She was told nothing else. All details would be handled by his lawyers. On the way out she listened to a quiet suggestion that if negotiations were successful, she might be in line for a large apartment complex then being built.

  On the return trip to her office, sitting in the back of a plush limousine, she wondered why she had been picked, finally deciding that it would have had to be word of mouth. Which meant she was doing well. She resolved to handle the estate sale since it was a one-time deal and assured her a large commission. But she would refuse the apartment complex if offered. Long-term involvement with those people was simply too dangerous.

  Six weeks later the estate had not yet been sold, due mainly to the truly staggering asking price. One millionaire prospective buyer hadn’t flinched at the cost but backed off when he learned from private sources the owner’s identity. Even a respectable real estate agent and high-powered lawyers could not entirely camouflage the owner or his associates.

  Now of course it was too late. The palatial home would eventually be sold, no doubt, but the funeral cortege had ended any future negotiations, at least for her. And for the owner as well. He had apparently waited around too long.

  Margot Rule looked at her watch. She would be just a few minutes late at the apartment she hoped to rent. It was on Gass Avenue and was the first of three appointments she had that day. With any kind of luck she would have at least one rented by nightfall.

  She thought of the long night ahead of her. There was little evening work in July and August as people left town or sought air-conditioned relaxation. Since she no longer drank or gambled the city’s neon life held no attraction for her, nor did the Strip’s lavish shows and restaurants beyond an occasional meal or a rare evening with clients. She would be forced to return to her well-furnished but lonely rooms. Perhaps she would sit on her green velveteen sofa and stare at her Picasso prints. Or she might turn on the TV and watch a movie or the Phil Silvers s
how. He was always good for laughs. Or maybe she would just lie on her bed and dream of the young man she loved in high school or all the other young men she thought she loved in her early twenties, always from a distance. Perhaps eventually she might try to give herself some physical relief, talking softly as though they were in the bedroom making love to her. “Come to me. Come to me,” she would whisper. “I am wet with your love, my love, come to me.” And they would always answer her. “Take me, take me. Love of my life.” Their bodies would press on her, strong arms encircling her smooth breasts as they pleaded their final command. “Now,” they breathed into silence, and she always cried out in joyful acceptance.

  A half mile away in his hotel room Bishop no longer remembered the funeral procession or the woman to whom he had spoken. His immediate concern was as yet unresolved and he was worried. He had only $700 left.

  On August 15 he attended a local meeting of AA. He had seen a television movie at Willows about three lonely young men who always sought women until they found true love at an AA gathering. Except that true love for each was the same woman, a blond divorcée, which led quickly to kidnapping, murder, bondage, suicide, sadistic sex, cannibalism, necrophilia and assorted forms of violence. But that was TV and this was real life and he was running out of options in a town where the men sold money and the women sold smiles. He was ready to try anything, and what he tried most was to remember other movies he had seen for still more ideas.

  The meeting was in a chapel hall right off Fremont. She recognized him immediately. He looked so much like someone she had once known from afar, the same easy smile, the same quiet manner. After the speakers she went over to him and introduced herself, laughingly reminding him of his wonderment at the passing funeral. He set his face and flashed his smile, he was all charm and friendly grace. At the meeting’s end he asked if he might be allowed to walk along with her. It was a lovely night and she kindly consented.