The Insane Train (6 page)

At that moment Seth and Roy looked up to see the company truck plunging toward the river in a cloud of dust.

Hook fell in beside Andrea as they walked across the compound. She guided him onto the sidewalk. She smelled of Juicy Fruit.

“Here we are,” she said. “As you can see, they've put the women in the tent.”

The inmates' faces were pale from lack of sun, and they wore plain cotton dresses with no belts or accessories. Rocking chairs, on which some of the women rocked, lined the perimeter of the tent.

From the building across the way, Frankie Laine's music
The Mule Train
rose in the morning quiet.

“That's Frankie Yager, the orderly,” she said. “He's been playing that record player for days.

“As you can see,” she said, “these inmates are mostly nonviolent, though they forget that from time to time. Many of them suffer from depressive disorders. We also have a number of dementia patients and anxiety disorders as well.

“The one rocking there with the doll is Lucy. She has Habit Disorder. Once she begins a movement, she can't stop. We have to keep a close watch that she doesn't harm herself.”

“What's the doll about?” he asked.

“Her baby was taken by the state when she was admitted here. As you can see, it's a pain that she has never gotten over. Mental sickness does not necessarily diminish the need to be human or to be cared about by others.

“Take Ruth over there. She is our local exhibitionist. She has managed to entertain the entire institution since the fire, but, aside from that quirk, she can be a loyal and loving friend.”

Sitting on the bunk near the entrance was a young girl. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she held her head down.

“What about her?” he asked. “She's so young.”

“That's Elizabeth,” she said. “She was to be married, you know. And then one day she didn't come home from work. They found her three days later. She had gotten lost on the way and had nearly died from hypothermia. Shortly after that, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and brought here to Baldwin. I'm afraid her chances are slim.”

“But shouldn't she be with her family?” he asked.

“Actually, no one ever came to see her again, not family, not even her fiancé. She did receive a card and a fruitcake for Christmas. But it was too late by then.”

“They abandoned her?”

“Mental confusion can be both a frightening and shameful thing for a family,” she said.

“You have a difficult job here,” he said. “It would be like keeping up with a room full of children.”

“Nothing is ever quite finished. You just move from one problem to the next.” She put her hand on her waist. “They depend on me, and I'm attached to them as well.

“Now, do you have any questions?”

“The obvious, I guess. How do you keep the men and the women apart?”

Andrea smiled. “No one has managed that since Adam and Eve, have they?

“Okay,” she said. “Though greatly diminished since the fire, the boys' ward has taken up residence in what used to be our facility. Let's go see.”

 

Frankie sat behind the desk with his feet up. He was reading a magazine and had his music turned up to a painful volume. A crumpled potato-chip sack lay next to the trash bin.

Some of the boys were gathered about into groups. Others sat alone in the corners of the room or on their bunks. A few were behind locked doors, looking out from a single small window. Many of the boys were tattooed or bore scars on their arms.

Andrea motioned for Frankie to turn the record player down, which he did.

“Frankie, this is Mr. Hook Runyon, a special agent with the Santa Fe. He will be in charge of security during the transfer.”

Frankie laid a limp hand in Hook's. His eyes were close set, turning slightly to the center, and he smelled of tobacco.

“Will you be going along?” Hook asked.

Frankie shrugged. “There ain't many can handle these boys but me,” he said.

Andrea said, “A lot of these inmates exhibit antisocial behavior. Many of them have been abused or have been abusive themselves in one way or another: suicide attempts, self-inflicted wounds, uncontrolled anger.”

“It's rules they understand,” Frankie said, “and consequences.”

Andrea glanced over at Hook. “Others have borderline intellectual functioning,” she said. “Schizoid disorders are prevalent as well. Add all this into the normal developmental upheavals of male adolescence, and you can see the problem.”

Hook said, “I see you're a Frankie Laine fan?”

“I was named after him,” he said. “I got Dizzy, too, and Artie Shaw.”

“You were pretty lucky your records didn't burn up in the fire. You seem to be very attached to them.”

Frankie pursed his lips and rolled his shoulders. “Left my player downstairs. I move it around for the boys. When they do good, they get to listen.”

“Nice meeting you,” Hook said.

Once outside, Hook tapped his pocket. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she said. “It's not permitted on the wards, especially nowadays. Sometimes Frankie lets his boys smoke in the back.”

Hook lit a cigarette and rubbed at the tension that had gathered in his neck. “So, now what?” he asked.

Andrea checked her watch. “That leaves the security ward,” she said. “We should go before Doctor Helms starts her appointments.”

 

The security ward building, located at the back side of the compound, had been built of brick, and bars had been installed over the windows. A guard awaited them at the front entrance.

“This is Agent Runyon,” Andrea said to the guard. “He's a railroad detective for the Santa Fe. We are to meet with Doctor Helms.”

“Do you carry a weapon?” the guard asked.

“Yes,” Hook said.

“Check it here, please. Weapons aren't permitted beyond this point.”

Hook slipped his P.38 out of the shoulder holster and handed it to the guard.

Unlocking the door, the guard said, “I believe you'll find Doctor Helms in the therapy room, Andrea.”

Doctor Helms, dressed in a gray suit, gathered up her keys to the ward and motioned for them to follow. Hook suspected that beneath that suit somewhere lurked a sensual and willowy body.

“These inmates are wards of the court,” Helms said, unlocking the door. “In large part they have committed crimes for which others would have received the death penalty. Because they were deemed insane at the time of their crimes, they were sent here to be treated.”

Sounds issued from the ward, not the sounds of criminals behind locked doors, not the cursing and vulgar language Hook had known in prisons, but the random and hopeless sounds of madness.

Helms adjusted her skirt and folded her arms over her breasts.

“Doctor Baldwin has asked that I escort you through,” she said. “There's a red panic button at the end of the ward. If something untoward should happen, hit it and help will be sent in due time.”

“Without weapons, how do you control these men?” Hook asked.

Doctor Helms pointed to a locked cabinet. A number of bottles sat on a table next to it.

“We rely heavily on medications,” she said, “though restraints are sometimes necessary.”

“And what are those sitting out unlocked?” he asked.

“Placebos,” she said, picking up one of the green bottles. “They come in different sizes and colors, but they are simple sugar pills.”

“Sugar pills? And what would those be for?” Hook asked.

“They serve as controls in our research programs. In addition, we have many hypochondriacs under our care. Placebos can be effective in treating imaginary ailments without doing harm to the inmate.

“And then, of course, there is malingering, those who pretend mental illness to escape justice. Such inmates will often respond positively to placebo treatment, thinking they are fooling us into believing that the medication is effective. Distinguishing criminal intent from mental illness can be difficult. Some believe that no differences exist.”

“And are any of these men ever released from the institution?” he asked.

Helms lifted her chin. “Rarely,” she said. “But it's been known to happen.”

Though the floors had just been scrubbed, the area still smelled of urine and sweat. The rooms were stripped of all accoutrements except bunks and bedding. Cotton pads hung from the walls, and bars replaced the door windows.

Doctor Helms stopped at the first room. A man with a pocked face and lifeless eyes peered over her shoulder at Hook.

“Robert Smith,” she said. “Robert is a sexual sadist who tied up his neighbor's daughter and butchered her with his penknife. They searched for her for weeks before the stench behind his garage wall alerted them to her location. No one knows how many more might be out there somewhere.”

As they moved away, Hook said, “He's so docile.”

Andrea nodded her head. “He's on medication.”

“And the jury found him innocent?” he asked.

Doctor Helms paused. “The jury found him insane. According to the court, his acts were evil, but Mr. Smith is not.

“This man
here
is narcissistic,” she said.

Hook looked in at the man sitting on his bunk, his legs crossed. Black molten eyes looked back for a moment and then turned away.

“He cares for nothing in this world but himself, not his mother, not his wife, not his own children. He is incapable of feeling your pain or anyone else's. All of the men here in some way suffer from narcissism. It's the basis of most crime.”

As they moved from cell to cell, Doctor Helms described each, men so delusional that they barely slept, men who picked sores on their arms, who paced the rooms like wild animals, who cried and laughed for no apparent reason.

She paused at the last room. “In here we have Bertrand Van Diefendorf, a pyromaniac,” she said.

“Fire?” Hook asked.

“Exactly,” Doctor Helms said. “Mr. Van Diefendorf got up one night, went downstairs, and set the curtains on fire in his living room. By the time the fire department arrived, his entire family had perished. They found Mr. Van Diefendorf in the bushes masturbating.

“True pyromania is quite rare in the world of mental illness, though fire setting is not. The motivations for setting a fire can be quite varied.”

Hook looked in at the man sitting on the bunk, fairly young, perhaps in his early forties, with wheat-blond hair and red rabbit eyes. Blue veins corded beneath skin as translucent as skimmed milk. He stared into another world, and his hands trembled ever so slightly in his lap.

“What are the motives in fire setting?” Hook asked. “Most people set fires to cover a theft or insurance fraud or to destroy evidence, that sort of thing. If they set fires for no apparent reason, they are diagnosed as pyromaniacs.”

Andrea looked into the room. “What is the underlying cause?”

Doctor Helms drew her arms over her chest. “The obvious answer is the lack of impulse control. But there's a high correlation with ungratified sexual desire. We believe the fire itself causes sexual arousal. Perhaps it's the manifestation of some primal urge. After all, men have been sitting around fires for some time now. In other words, Van Diefendorf here
enjoys
watching people burn.

“Well, then,” she said. “Are there any questions, Mr. Runyon?”

“Just one,” he said. “How am I supposed to get these men all the way to Oklahoma on a train?”

Helms turned up her hands. “You've asked the one question I can't answer, Mr. Runyon. That's why you're here.”

Hook picked up his weapon on the way out of the security ward, relishing its weight there in the shoulder harness once again.

Andrea looked up at the sun. “Anything else you'd care to see?” she asked.

“I'd like a chance to visit with you about some things,” he said. “Could it be arranged?”

“You've missed your lunch,” she said. “Perhaps you'd care to share mine?”

“I couldn't take your lunch.”

“I bring extra anyway,” she said. “The ladies are always begging for this and that. Doctor Baldwin has my post covered, and there are tables under the trees. It's up to you, of course.”

“Alright,” he said.

On the way back to the women's tent, Andrea said, “The security ward can be a bit of a shock.”

Hook paused long enough to light a cigarette. “You're right about that, and I've run into some pretty tough characters.”

“Doctor Baldwin and Doctor Helms spend a great deal of time with their therapy. I don't know how they maintain their optimism.”

“Having them together in one herd like that,” he said, “it's like making a large monster out of smaller ones.”

Andrea stopped and studied him for a moment. The sunlight danced in the gray of her eyes and lit the singed tips of her hair.

“I hadn't thought about it that way,” she said. “Any single act they've committed is horrifying. Put them together, and it's incomprehensible.

“Here we are,” she said. “I'll be back in a second.”

Andrea returned with her sack lunch and a couple of drinks. “Up there,” she said, pointing to a concrete picnic table that sat beneath the trees.

Hook watched her as she set out the lunch, placing the napkins just so.

“I hope you like cheese sandwiches because that's as good as it gets.

“So,” she said, sitting down. “What is it you want to talk about?”

“I've got to be certain about some things before I take this on. Moving a trainload of folks across country is always a problem. Moving a load of folks like you have here could be downright dangerous. You can see that?”

“I can,” she said. “But sometimes you don't have much choice, I guess.”

He took a bite of his sandwich and looked back at the freshly dug grave.

“I've been wondering about that fire,” he said.

“Awful,” she said, shuddering. “I'll never forget those horrifying screams.”

“Did you see anything that day?”

Andrea slid over the dill pickle she'd cut into quarters.

“What do you mean?”

“Anything out of the usual? Anybody about that shouldn't have been there?”

Andrea shook her head. “Frankie Yager, Doctor Baldwin, and Doctor Helms were there. I had Esther ringing the bell. Before long, people were running everywhere.”

“Where were you when you first saw the fire?”

“In the women's building. I just happened to look out the window. First, I saw this flicker, and the next thing I know smoke is pouring out of the windows of the boys' ward.”

“It came on pretty fast?” he asked.

“These old buildings are like kindling,” she said.

“What did you do then?”

She dropped her chin in her hand as she thought. “I ran to help,” she said. “No more than that. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, the fire raged out of control. I wasn't much help in the end, I'm afraid.”

“And what about Frankie?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I guess he was downstairs. When I opened the door to the boys' ward, a blast of hot air and flames shot out.” Andrea looked away for a moment and then said, “I could see those boys. I could see them moving in the flames.”

“I'm sorry to put you through this again, Andrea, but I've got to know if someone started that fire or not. Would any of the boys have done it themselves?”

Andrea opened her drink and thought about the question. “It's possible, I suppose. But the others would have intervened, wouldn't they?”

“Did you consider going for help?”

“The fire…I didn't think I had enough time. I put Esther to ringing the bell in hopes that others would come. I've wondered if I did the right thing, of course. I mean, all those lives.”

“You decided to help the boys instead? That was your judgment?”

“Yes,” she said. “That was my judgment.”

“But Frankie decided to go find someone, to go for help instead?”

Andrea wrapped the last of her sandwich.

“Frankie's decisions are sometimes questionable. In spite of his physical presence, he's very childlike. In a way I'm not surprised that he sought out other adults. I've wondered if he could have saved those boys had he done otherwise. It's easy to second-guess, though.”

Hook folded his napkin. “Doctor Helms said that the buildings were insured. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” she said.

“Do you know if the asylum had any money problems?” he asked.

“I know what you're thinking, but we had to turn patients away. The Baldwin Asylum enjoys, enjoyed, a good reputation.”

“Well,” he said. “My ride should be here by now. Thank you for lunch. I hope you get some weekend.”

“Doctor Baldwin has found some relief for me, thank goodness. I plan to sleep for a week.”

 

Hook was still waiting in the parking lot for Seth when Andrea left for home.

As she approached, she said, “Is everything alright?”

“My ride didn't show,” he said.

“Where do you need to go?”

“I'm staying in the crew rooms at Casa del Desierto. It's not far. I'll just walk.”

“It's on my way.”

“I've already taken up half your day and eaten your lunch. I need the exercise anyway.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “My car is just here.”

Andrea pulled into the depot and waited for Hook to get out. He stuck his head back in.

“Listen,” he said. “I'm a book collector and thought I might get in some browsing while I'm here. Any recommendations?”

She looked over the tops of her glasses. “A book collector? Really?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But it's my thing.”

“There's a couple places that have books,” she said. “I doubt there would be anything a collector would want.”

Hook turned when someone called his name. “Oh, that's my driver,” he said. “Anyway, thanks for the lift.”

Seth, who had been sitting on the bench just outside the depot, stood when Hook came toward him.

“Where the hell were you?” Hook asked. “I said three o'clock.”

Seth looked at his feet. “I had a little trouble, Hook.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

Seth shoved his hands into his pockets. “With the truck,” he said.

“It wouldn't start?” Hook asked. “Damn thing hasn't been tuned up since it came off the factory line.”

“Not that,” Seth said. “It's in the river.”

Hook rubbed at his face and looked down the line of track.

“Say again.”

“It's in the river, Hook.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

“Hell, Hook, I had time to kill, so I decided to go fishing up river by the stockyards. Food's a little hard to come by for poor vets like myself. So I backed the truck in, see, pulled the hand brake, and went on down to snag a catfish. First thing I know that truck came racing down the bank and right into the river.”

“Jesus Christ, Seth, the company truck went into the river?”

“Not the engine, Hook. The engine's dry as dry.”

“Jesus,” Hook said. “Do you know what Division's going to do to me? It's just what that prick Eddie's been waiting for.”

“I'm sorry, Hook. I didn't know that hand brake didn't work.”

“Why didn't you get it out of the river?”

“They want ten bucks for a tow, Hook.”

“That would be
your
ten bucks, wouldn't it, Seth?”

“Hell, Hook, I'm sleeping under a goddang bridge.”

“I ought to take it out of your hide.”

“I'm just a poor vet, Hook, waking up with night sweats from the war. It would be un-American.”

 

By the time Hook got back, the last of the sun had sunk below the horizon. He pulled in at the bridge to let Seth out, who hadn't said a word all the way. The fire flickered from the jungle beneath the bridge.

“I'm real sorry, Hook,” Seth said. “Soon as I get ten bucks, I'll pay you back.”

“I won't be holding my breath on that one,” Hook said.

“Me and the boys been talking,” he said. “We got a proposition. You think you could come over tomorrow?”

“What you going to do, Seth, hit me over the head and throw me in the river along with my truck?”

“Naw,” he said. “Roy's cooking his ham and beans. There's no better this side of Mexico.”

“Well,” Hook said, “it's against my better judgment, but I reckon I couldn't be in more trouble than I am.”

Seth grinned. “Thanks, Hook. See you tomorrow, and I'm real sorry about the truck.”

 

Hook waited until the supply clerk went down to the loading dock before ducking in to leave the truck keys on his desk.

Back at the depot sleeping rooms, he took off his clothes, which smelled like river mud, and threw them onto the floor of the shower to soak. After showering, he shaved and splashed on a heavy dose of aftershave.

He went to bed but couldn't sleep. After seeing the security ward, he was more convinced than ever that moving them as a group was a misguided strategy. Add in the missing links of a fatal fire, and it all came down to a dangerous assignment indeed.