Denial (6 page)

"I know that.  Do you know how I know?"

He didn't respond.

"Because I'm the one he attacked.  And he could go off again if I don't get in there with his medication."  I held up a vial of Amytal.

"I can't let you visit anyone until Captain Hancock gets here.  No exceptions."  He glanced at his watch, then went back to reading the paper.  "She'll be in by seven-thirty."

"Well, then.  I'll just leave this with you," I said.  I slid the Amytal under the glass window.  "You tell your Auntie Em I came by to give the injection at six-thirty, just like we planned.  If Westmoreland loses it and busts his head against the wall, I'm not taking the heat.  I was here, trying to do the right thing."  I started to walk away.

"Uh, Doctor..."

I stopped and turned around.  "Clevenger.  Frank Clevenger."

"One hour really matters?"

I made a great display of calming myself.  "Well, Officer Lucey, it's hard to say.  Westmoreland might do just fine until seven o'clock.  He might be able to go until seven-thirty.  Possibly even eight.  Then again, he might chew off a finger or pluck out an eye in twenty minutes."

"I didn't know," he shrugged.

"That's the first step."

"Excuse me."

"The first step toward enlightenment.  You know that you don't know."

"Sure..."  He looked at me as if I might be crazy myself.  "Let's get his medicine into him."

Westmoreland hadn't gotten his Thorazine until after midnight and was curled up on the floor of his cell in a deep, fitful sleep, wearing only a T-shirt and soiled boxer shorts.  The rest of his clothes were laid out in the shape of a person on his cot.  The sun was coming up, and the bars on his window cast long shadows across him.  Of a sudden, one or another of his limbs would jump.

"He stinks like garbage," Lucey said.  He grabbed a ring of keys off his belt and jammed one into the lock on the cell door.

I caught his wrist and pressed my thumb into the softest place between the bones.  "Quietly," I said.

He winced and tried to pull away.

"Quietly," I repeated.  I let go and held a finger to my lips.

He glared at me, but then eased the door open.

I walked in alone and knelt at Westmoreland's side.  His eyes whipped back and forth under his lids.  His breathing was a series of gasps.  I drew the Amytal into a syringe and carefully tied a tourniquet around his arm.  A vein ballooned up.  I buried the tip of the needle.  Westmoreland grimaced but didn't wake up.  I slowly pushed the plunger down.

Amytal burns as it flows in, and just as I was finishing the injection, Westmoreland's eyes snapped open.  He stared for a few seconds at the little drop of blood gathering on his skin, then at the syringe in my hand.  His face twisted with terror.  Without a word, he punched himself in the face.

"Grab him!" I called out to Lucey.

Westmoreland started swinging wildly at himself.  I could only pin down one of his hands.  He landed a blow to his nose.

Lucey was standing over us, looking scared.

I reached up, grabbed his belt and pulled him toward the floor.

Together we wrestled control of Westmoreland's arms, but not before he had split his lip and opened a cut over one eye.  He was still struggling against us — or against himself — with everything he had.

"What the hell is happening to him?" Lucey demanded.  "What is that crap you gave him?"

"The crap is sap!" Westmoreland yelled.  "The tree is me!"

"It'll be over soon," I said evenly.

Westmoreland struggled free of Lucey's grip and landed a solid blow to his own ear.

"He's crazed," Lucey said.

"Shut up and hold him."

"Jesus Fucking Christ."  Lucey lunged for Westmoreland's arm, caught it and held it to the ground.

"Mother Mary came, came, came to me," Westmoreland spewed.  He arched his back in a last attempt to overcome us, then collapsed to the floor.

"If he's dead, it's your ass," Lucey said.

"He's not dead."

He looked at me doubtfully.  "I'm calling this in to Captain Hancock immediately."

"I could use you here."

"Don't do anything else to him," he warned.  He got up and walked to the door.

"What did you have in mind?"

The cell door clanged shut.  "Crazy sonofabitch," he muttered.

Even with blood trickling down his face Westmoreland seemed more at peace.  He was lying still with his eyes closed.  I stayed silent about a minute, then took his hand in mine.  His skin was dry and thick with calluses.  "Mr. Westmoreland," I said, "I'm a psychiatrist.  My name is Frank Clevenger.  Do you remember speaking with me yesterday?"

He didn't respond.

"The medicine I gave you will make it easier for you to talk with me," I suggested.  "It's like truth serum."

He moved his lips silently.

"It makes it OK to speak."

"OK," he whispered.

I wanted to start with simple facts.  "Do you know where we are?"

"Yes."

"Where is that?"

"Hell, Father.  The bowels of the universe.  I am the excrement of humanity."

"And what is your name?"

Westmoreland grimaced and stayed silent.

I didn't want to lose him by pushing for something he wouldn't yield.  "Why are you here, my son," I asked.

"God gave her to me," he said, beginning to weep.  "Purest of pure,"

"You received a gift from God?"

"Thus was the Virgin Mary delivered unto me in a wood."  He opened his eyes and looked through me.  "I destroyed her.  No son of God shall ever walk the earth again."

I remembered Westmoreland's delusion about the statue of the Madonna he had stolen from the Church of Angels.  "How did you destroy the virgin?" I asked him.

He was silent for a while.  "The serpent," he said finally.  "I put the serpent in her mother part."

"Did she struggle against you?"

"She has never been against me."

"Did she cry out?"

"She never awakened.  My angel slept in a cloud of leaves."

"In a cloud of leaves..."

Only her hand reached out to me.  But I was not content with a hand, Father.  No.  No.  Not even that holiest of holy hands.  I uncovered her legs and her mother part.  I am a sinner and worthy of His wrath.  I am the most vile demon to ever visit the earth.  I must be judged."

"How did you know the Madonna was dead?"

Westmoreland started to hyperventilate.  "I lifted her in my arms... God had left His terrible mark... Blood... sticky... wet... everywhere."

"What mark did God leave?"

"He took... He took back her milk."

I heard the cell door being opened.

"End of discussion, Frankenstein," a voice said.  "You've overstayed your welcome."

I looked up and saw Malloy standing there, feet apart, hands on hips.  Lucey was with him.

"You've really outdone yourself this time," Malloy sneered.  "Captain Hancock's gonna hand you your head on a fucking platter.  She said to wait for her in her office."

"Someone has to watch him," I said, nodding toward Westmoreland.  "The Amytal won't wear off for at least twenty minutes."

"You know what?  I've told you before:  I'm tired of your bullshit psychobabble.  Come on out of there."

"Who's going to watch him?"

He wrapped his chubby fingers around his baton.  "Maybe you'd like for me to come in and get you."

I stood up.  Come get me," I said, staring at him.  "Or is it true you only like to mix it up when the other guy's already cuffed?"

He stared back for a second or two, but then his eyes drifted.  "I said, ‘Get out of there.’"

I walked slowly out of the cell and right up to him.  "Now listen to me, Malloy.  You or Officer Lucey had better stay with Mr. Westmoreland.  If he starts feeling like somebody just stole his thoughts from him, we could have pure panic on our hands.  Understand?"

He turned to the cell.  "Hey, General," he called out, "you missing anything?"

Westmoreland didn't stir.

I could easily have put Malloy down with a knee to his soft belly, but Lucey was standing a few feet away, and there's no telling what a new cop will do with a gun.  I took a deep breath and shook my head.  "I don't know what happened to fuck you up so badly, but you'd better figure it out before I stop giving a shit."

"I'm so scared I'm shakin’ inside."

"There you go.  That's a start," I said, walking past him.  "Now you can take me to Emma."

He pushed past me to lead the way.

"A couple more sessions, and you might not need the shiny boots and badge," I said.

*            *            *

Three hours of sleep wasn't carrying me.  I wanted to dip into my second gram, but thought better of using at the station.  I paced Hancock's office, looking at the photos of her with local noteworthies that covered her walls.  There were pictures of her with Mayor Coughlin, City Councilor Caldwell, Commissioner Rollins.  Each photo seemed mostly Hancock, partly because she was so bulky and partly because she was the only woman in the shot.  I chuckled, but grimly.  Waiting for her reminded me a little of the times as a boy when I'd sat in my claustrophobic room on Shepherd Street, trying to distract myself with a Spider-Man comic book from the fact that my father was deep into a fifth of bourbon, pacing the living room and barking orders left over from the front lines of Korea, a place he never spoke of sober.  I'd hear him start up the steps, and my mind would run down a list of lousy options.  I could hide under my bed or in my closet, but the beating would be even worse once he found me.  I could make a break for my window and the fire escape, but I was convinced he could outrun me.  I could yell for my mother, but I knew she was probably hiding already herself.  So I'd wait in silence, listening for my father's deliberate footsteps on the hardwood staircase.  Closer and closer.  For moments I could almost convince myself that Spider-Man was clinging to the wall outside my window, ready to shoot me a web to swing to freedom on.  But like clockwork, when my father reached the fourteenth step, I could just make out the clink of a buckle coming loose, followed by the awful thwacking of leather being pulled through belt loops.  The worst part was the expression on my father's face when he came through my door.  He didn't look angry.  He looked tired and put upon, like he had to take out the garbage.  I didn't understand his detachment and was terrified by it.  Now I know he wasn't after me, didn't even know where his violence was coming from, which probably explains why it always went on so damn long.

I was just finishing a lap around Hancock's walls of respect when she walked in.  She was winded.  Her ruddy face had gone red.  "Morning, Frank," she said without looking at me.

"Sorry to complicate your day."

She went over to her desk and started to unpack her briefcase.  "I rushed over as fast as I could when Malloy called.  But I'm glad you had a little time to yourself in here."  She dropped a sheaf of papers on her blotter, then pulled out a stack of folders and started slipping them into her filing cabinet.  "It's not much of an office — nothing like a doctor's or a lawyer's — but I'm kind of proud of it, just the same.  She closed the file drawer, walked around to the front of her desk and sat on the edge.  She nodded at the photos on the walls.  "I like to think if you look around you get a sense that everybody working in a city, from a cop to a teacher, is connected to everybody else.  It's very important that no one think of himself as a free agent.  Because without teamwork this city — any city — would die."

I held up my hands.  "I get where you're headed."

"I thought you did," she said, shaking her head, "but I'm not sure anymore.  Unless I got the wrong report, you went behind my back and injected my prisoner with narcotics.  If that's your idea of
teamwork
..."

"If you let me, I'll explain."

"Please."  She worked her nails against one another.  A chip of red paint flew into the air.  "Explain."

"Look, I had to do something quick.  Guys like Westmoreland, the real paranoid schizophrenics, believe they're constantly under siege.  Everybody's trying to get inside them, listen to their thoughts, insert ideas into their minds.  We'd have to fill him full of Thorazine for weeks to have any hope of breaking through his paranoia.  And we need answers now."

"Maybe that's because you don't like the answers we've got.  But you're not running this department.  I am.  And I only asked you one question — whether I could take a confession from my prisoner.  Do you remember me asking you to start your own investigation?"

"Emma, I've got a lousy feeling about this case, and Amytal was the only way into Westmoreland's head.  I figured if he was the one who killed Sarah, he'd be able to tell us where to find the murder weapon and" — Hancock was tapping her foot — "and the breasts.  If he wasn't the killer, then maybe he'd seen him.  What he told me adds up to him stumbling across Sarah in a pile of leaves.  He had sex with her corpse."

"Disgusting.  Are you finished?"

"She was already dead."

"She was already dead.  Do you know how many killers have sworn to me that they
found
the body?  What about the blood all over him?"

"He didn’t see the wounds on Sarah at first.  Not until after he'd violated her and picked her up in his arms.  He thought she was the Madonna.  When he called down here from that pay phone he wasn't screaming about
a
virgin; he was screaming about
the
virgin.  The Virgin Mary.  A gift from God."

"A gift from God.  All I need is something like this hitting the
Item
.  Maybe they'll run a sidebar about extraterrestrials."  She shook her head.  "Have you noticed how many psychopaths cloak themselves in the Lord?  He is the devil's favorite disguise."

I would have liked to ask Hancock what her religion was helping
her
to hide.  "Westmoreland's no devil," I said.  "He's not even a common killer.  He's just a crazy bum who turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time."

"He turned himself in at the scene.  He's wanted to confess ever since.  Now the two of you cook up another storyline while he's high on Amytal.  I'm surprised at you.  I thought after Prescott killed that cheerleader, you got real careful.  This sounds like more of the same."