Burning Man (23 page)

“Dr. Fish wanted you to sign this,” she said.

Her index fingernail, about as long as a letter opener, tapped imperiously on the signature line. I glanced at the paper and saw the acronym AMA in several places.

“American Medical Association?” I asked.

With curt emphasis she said, “Against medical advice.”

I signed where she told me, but not in my usual scrawl. With very neat handwriting, I penned in the name Mary Baker Eddy.

“You’ll also need to sign this,” the clerk said.

The last time I’d had that much fine print thrust under my nose was when Jenny and I bought our house. “Am I promising my firstborn?”

Bored, she said, “You’re agreeing to be liable for payment if for any reason your health insurance doesn’t cover treatment received during your stay.”

“It’s been my experience that only two professions wear masks: bank robbers and doctors.”

She was not amused. I doubt whether an MRI could have found her smile. It had to be an oversight, but for some reason I wasn’t offered a wheelchair ride to the curb.

I sprang Sirius ten minutes later. The clerk at the animal clinic was considerably friendlier than her counterpart at the hospital. Most kids grow up wanting to work with animals. There’s a good reason for that. The alternative is to work with humans. When I signed Sirius’s paperwork, there were no notations of AMA.

When Sirius was brought out for me, I took a knee, and then I went nose to nose with my friend, giving him a hug and getting in return a tongue on my face and a whipping from his tail. His eyes were shining; mine were a little wet. They’d had to shave a few patches and sew him up where he’d sustained cuts, but he didn’t look too bad.

We weren’t more than a dozen steps out the door when Sirius paused at a fence post and lifted his leg for a long pit stop. “Save some,” I told him. “I was thinking we could do a drive-by at the hospital where I was staying.”

It was an unnecessary request, of course. I have never seen my partner run out of ammunition.

I drove in the freeway’s slow lane. My only goal was to get home in one piece. Earlier I’d taken some codeine with Tylenol, but the meds felt as if they’d worn off already. Any movement of my neck
hurt and my ribs ached like hell. It didn’t help knowing my injuries would stiffen up and get worse overnight, but I wasn’t about to cancel my next day’s appointments, especially after what had happened.

The shaman-mobile was in Seth’s driveway. There was also another car, but that wasn’t unusual. Seth is the exact opposite of a hard-body LA surfer, but that doesn’t stop him from being incredibly popular with the opposite sex. I have accused him of getting into the shaman trade for the purpose of learning how to concoct aphrodisiacs. He has never denied it.

Before getting out of the car, I sent Sirius out on reconnaissance. In my old age and after almost being killed, I was getting careful. Sirius wasn’t gone long and came back wagging his tail. According to him, no bad guys were anywhere near our house.

The two of us went to Seth’s door. I tapped lightly and hoped I wasn’t intruding at a particularly bad moment. Before opening the door, Seth turned on the front light. I had hoped he wouldn’t do that.

“I’d almost given up on you,” Seth said, and then he stopped talking when he got a good look at my face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring Sirius earlier, but we ran into a little trouble.”

He motioned for us to come inside, but I shook my head. “Early flight,” I said, “remember?”

“I remember telling you I didn’t think much of the idea of you going north, and judging by how you look, I especially don’t think it’s a good idea now.”

Instead of commenting on what happened I said, “I appreciate your taking Sirius. As you can see, he picked up a few bumps and bruises but the vet says he’s okay. I hope to pick him up in the early afternoon.”

“We’ll manage. Will you?”

“I’ll try to keep my soul as intact as possible through tomorrow.”

I don’t think Seth knew whether I was joking or not. I don’t think I knew either.

CHAPTER 14:
NOT SO SAINT QUENTIN AS EXPLAINED BY THE DEVIL

The whisper of his voice played off the cold, concrete walls and sought me out even before we were in sight of one another. “But the wilderness found him out early and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”

There was a momentary pause, followed by his insinuating words: “I worry about you being a hollow man, Detective Gideon.”

I answered the voice before yet being able to see the face. “That’s nice,” I said. “Have you been rehearsing just for me?”

“You hear those whispers, don’t you, Detective? Those are Conrad’s words from
Heart of Darkness
.”

“Thanks for the Cliffs Notes.”

Ellis Haines’s cell in San Quentin was in the Adjustment Center, known as the AC, the death row that housed the worst of the worst. He had been placed in one of the six so-called quiet
cells, a segregated area that had the most stringent security in the Q. Others in the Adjustment Center included Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, and Richard Allen Davis, the murderer of twelve-year-old Polly Klaas. Charlie Manson had once spent time in one of the quiet cells in AC.

We were about to meet in our usual spot, a holding cell called the Lawyer’s Room. The space was bigger than the eight-by-six-foot cells at San Quentin, but not much bigger. When Haines was in the room, it always felt too small.

San Quentin sits on over four hundred acres of land, much of it bordering San Francisco Bay. The land alone is said to be worth over a billion dollars. Because it’s the oldest prison in California and because the land is worth so much, lots of people would like to see San Quentin razed, with the proceeds going to the state. I doubt whether the inmates would object. Despite being the most valuable prison in the world, San Quentin is still a shit hole.

The Q’s exterior belies the interior. From a distance, the town of San Quentin looks charming. The homes occupied by staff are inviting and well maintained, and the grounds inside the gate are attractive, with nicely tended lawns and rose gardens.

From certain angles, San Quentin looks like a castle, with high granite walls and ancient battlements. You can even imagine the bay as its huge moat. Put lipstick on a pig, though, and it’s still a pig. The gardens and the ocean can’t disguise the fact that the Q is a prison with gun towers and razor wire. If you watch any old black-and-white films that have a prison setting, you’ll get a feel for what San Quentin is like.

Although I’d been making trips to San Quentin once a month for the past year, I was no more comfortable now than the first time I visited. On my calendar I always marked impending visits with a black
X
, and as the date drew closer the black
X
always seemed to get bigger and darker, mirroring my own personal gravity and mood. I always pretended the visits weren’t any big deal;
Seth Mann knew that wasn’t the case. I suspected Ellis Haines did as well.

His singsong voice reached out to me again, traveling along the concrete made cold from the damp grip of the bay: “This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.”

I didn’t answer his, and Conrad’s, madness.

Ellis Haines wouldn’t talk with the FBI. He didn’t deign to open up to his court-ordered psychiatrist and wouldn’t participate in therapy. Haines refused any interviews that weren’t of his own invention. Many death row inmates solicit correspondence; Haines received ten thousand letters a year and answered very few of them. The warden had told me that in the past year more than five hundred women had expressed interest in marrying Haines.

He was the “it” serial murderer. There were websites selling Ellis Haines action figures, calendars, and playing cards. To too many, the ramblings of Haines were considered gospel, and there were many people trying to make him out as a twisted prophet. The darkness that was Haines had caught on worldwide. Other killers had tapped into humanity’s collective shadow side, but no one had ever been as popular a sideshow as Haines. His public pronouncements were among the most viewed on YouTube. The world wanted more and more of him; I think one of the reasons he liked seeing me was because I wanted less.

When I turned the corner, I could see Haines’s face from inside the Lawyer’s Room. He smiled for me; I didn’t return the smile. Haines had been an exceptionally handsome man, but the fire had scarred him. Our burns were on the opposite sides of our faces; his scarring was on the left side of his face, mine on the right. Haines’s scarring gave him a leering look that he didn’t seem to mind. It was ironic that both of us had a matching set of hypertrophic scarring on our faces; in truth it creeped me out.

“Detective Gideon,” he said, “always a pleasure to see you.”

I nodded.

“And I believe you know my posse?”

There were correctional officers inside and outside the cell. The solitary CO that had accompanied me saw me to the door but not beyond. As usual, I’d be left alone with Haines. Because his hands were shackled, Haines assumed the position for their removal, turning his back to the door and sliding his hands through an opening in the now-locked door. His body language suggested he was the one doing the correctional officers a favor by being in their company. After his handcuffs were removed, Haines momentarily rubbed his wrists before being herded to a seat.

Haines never went anywhere without at least three correctional officers accompanying him. Inmates were not allowed to approach him; nor were they supposed to speak or talk to him. The prison officials didn’t want Haines dying in captivity, like Dahmer or DeSalvo. They knew that other inmates were jealous of his notoriety, and that his death would be a feather in the cap for anyone taking him out.

As I sat down at the table, I found Haines’s eyes fixed on me. “Hello,” he said; he wasn’t addressing me so much as he was my bruising.

The correctional officers filed out. When we were alone I produced a piece of paper with typewritten questions on it.

“The last time we talked,” I said, “we began to discuss your family.”

His eyes continued studying my neck. He was like a wino fixated on someone else’s full bottle.

“Your bruising is recent,” Haines said. “It’s not yet in full bloom. I would guess it happened last night.”

“According to you,” I said, “you had a perfectly normal childhood, with no physical or sexual abuse.”

“I don’t believe your bruises are consistent with manual strangulation; I see no telltale marks from prying fingers.”

“Did you love your parents?”

“And what you have isn’t the kind of bruising that occurs from a figure-four hold or a carotid restraint, or even a lateral vascular neck restraint. Neither is the bruising pattern consistent with the ligature marks from a tightened stocking, but it was some kind of garrote, wasn’t it?”

“I’m into autoerotic asphyxiation. Is that something you practiced as well?”

I was rather proud of my transition into another question. The Feds had actually wanted me to ask him about autoerotic asphyxiation.

“If I answer that question,” Haines said, “will you answer mine?”

When I finally nodded he said, “I never practiced, or was personally interested in, autoerotic asphyxiation. What caused those marks around your neck?”

“An animal-control pole.”

My answer delighted Haines. “I never considered such an application. What a perfect use. As you know, I prefer the up-close-and-personal techniques, but there were those occasions when having a little distance would have made things much easier. And while I would never perform the coup de grace with such a tool, it could certainly prove useful as a prelude to a kill. Now who was it that wanted you hurt and why?”

“It was my girlfriend. She was dressed up as Little Bo Peep and I was the sheep. I’m afraid she got a little rough.”

“I hope you don’t think you’re pulling the wool over my eyes with that story.”

He wanted a smile, so I frowned. Haines’s initial greeting had summed up only too well where we were: in the heart of darkness. Whenever I visit San Quentin, I have to sign a form at reception that states the prison authorities aren’t responsible for me if I am taken captive and won’t be bargaining for my release. The form also states they aren’t liable for any injuries I sustain and that if I die it’s my own tough luck.

San Quentin is the only place in the state of California where you can legally kill another human being. The prison has the dubious distinction of having the largest death row contingent in the nation. At last count, almost six hundred fifty prisoners were waiting to die. They once hung inmates at San Quentin, and then they built a gas chamber and gassed them with hydrogen cyanide, but nowadays lethal injections are used on the condemned. The gas chamber—painted in awful lime green—has not yet been retired, though. It is still the death room. The condemned inmates are strapped down on a gurney inside of the gas chamber and lethally injected.

Most of the condemned inmates live in the East Block, a five-story cage of the damned that is loud and leaky. Scott Peterson, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife Laci, is one of those there. The privileged killers are in North Segregation. No one would mistake North Seg for a country club, but it’s relatively quiet and on a good day wouldn’t be mistaken for a leper colony.

I was a visitor, but it still felt as if I was the one on death row.

“Actually,” I said, “one of the reasons I came here was to question you about my attackers.”

“And why would you question me?”

“Because my assailants sounded as if they were acting on your behalf. They definitely were true believers, referring to the Prophet. Isn’t that what you’re calling yourself these days?”