“Yeah, actually, I have heard of him.”
“Well, we’re pretty sure now that he’s been beating people to death around here for years. We do know that he was placed in the Fulton State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but he recently escaped. That probably means he’s slinking somewhere around here as we speak.”
“Have you seen this Punk guy on any of your surveillance? Or his brother?”
“Not yet. I have a feeling that they know we’re watching. And somebody’s been sneaking up outside camera range and putting our equipment out of commission. Nothing we can prove, of course. Don’t have enough yet on either family for a warrant to go in and search. They are careful, and sometimes they are smarter than they look.”
Claire said, “We don’t have much, either, not yet. We were hoping you could help us out, living next door to them like this.”
“My advice? Go over to Fulton. Check out the doctors who treated that guy. Hear what they have to say about him. They might know something that’ll help you. He was in there quite a long time before he escaped, I think. They’ve got to know what makes him tick, or not tick, I might ought to say. Stories I’ve heard, his brain ought to be sitting in some lab, next to Hitler’s, maybe, on the most defective specimens’ shelf.”
“Sounds like a plan. We’ll look further into that guy. Any chance you can make us copies of those tapes if you catch anybody skulking around?”
“Sure. Could take me a day or so, though. I doubt if you’ll see anything you haven’t already seen. They are very careful and they post guards around here and there, guards with binoculars and high-powered rifles with nightscopes. Not sure that’s to keep intruders out, or the women in.”
Bud said, “Yeah, I hear you on that one. We saw those women for ourselves the other day.”
After they finished their cake and coffee and warmed up some, they got up and thanked Laurie Dale for her help, and then she walked them through her big comfortable farmhouse to the front door. It was beautifully decorated but in a cozy way that made a person want to settle in and stay a spell. As they were leaving, Laurie looked at Claire. “Hey, detective, how about joining our little gun club? We’ve got some nice women involved, and I’ve made some good friends. We have lots of fun when we meet up here or down at the lake. You can handle that Glock with the best of them, from what I observed when you got the drop on me and had me in your sights. That hasn’t happened all that often in my career so I’m sure glad you were friendly.”
Claire smiled. “Yeah, and same back at you. Maybe I will. I’ll think about it and let you know.”
Laurie pulled a white card out of the pocket of her red sweater. “Here you go. Now you know where to find me. Good luck with your investigation. Let me know if I can help you. Any time, night or day. Just ask. Truth? It’s pretty boring tromping around out there in the snow watching those backwoods creeps do their thing.”
After they said their good-byes, and very much encouraged, Claire and Bud climbed back into Bud’s Bronco and returned to town. But Claire had already decided a little trip to a state mental institution was definitely in order, and who better to arrange that little excursion than her own personal and famous shrink of all shrinks, the one and only Dr. Nicholas Black. He could probably open any doors over in Fulton as easy as one, two, three. Even the padlocked ones. And those just happened to be the very ones she wanted to go inside and take a look around.
Chapter Twenty-two
The State Hospital in Fulton, Missouri, had opened its doors in 1851 and was purported to be the oldest public mental health facility west of the Mississippi River. Tidbits obtained by Google, each and every one. And it looked to Claire like it certainly lived up to its ancient billing. The state highways and byways were nice and clear after a day or two of extremely cold sunshine and zero precipitation. Black elected to drive his big shiny Humvee that she found so super awesome, probably chosen over the helicopter, because it would take them longer to get there and back, and thereby keep Claire far away from the super-crazy people he knew she was investigating of late. He didn’t tell her that, of course, but she knew him well and could read between his motives even better.
Black also called ahead to the mental asylum so as to make an emergency appointment with his fellow headshrinker of the ultra, ultra, bark-at-the-moon crazies of Missouri society. His colleague there happened to have the unfortunate moniker of one Dr. Henry LeCorps, which Claire decided was one of the most terrible names any doctor could ever possess, right in line behind Dr. Will Killyou.
“How well do you know this LeCorps guy?” she asked Black, when they stopped in the wide, green-tiled corridor outside said doctor’s office in Biggs Forensic Center, which turned out to be the maximum security unit where the worst of the worst dangerous and psychotic maniac killers were kept in their nice soft padded cells, no doubt.
“Pretty well. Hank’s an old friend. So don’t make fun of his last name. He’s sensitive about its connotation.”
Claire laughed softly. “You think? Well, I’d say he should be. It’s a tad off-putting for new patients, I suspect.”
“Just don’t taunt him about it, Claire.”
“As if I’m that rude. Really, Black. You offend me.”
Black ignored her sarcasm, opened the door, and then stood back politely for her to enter first, quite the gent whenever he wanted to be, which was most of the time. Not that she usually wanted him to have to open every damn door for her, but it was sweet and rather retro on his part, and she liked it, as well as just about everything else about him, too. Inside the waiting room, she found a combination secretary/clinical nurse/warden manning a rather old white metal desk to match the rather old rest of the building. Black had told her that they were trying to get state money designated to overhaul the hospital, mainly because they were still using old kitchen appliances that had been taken off decommissioned Korean War battleships, or from some other equally ridiculous and embarrassing place. But, oh, well, it all did seem a little worse for the wear while trying valiantly to hold up, and that was the truth.
The nurse said hello and good morning and please wait and good to see you again, Dr. Black, and the doctor will be with you shortly and take any seat you wish. Blah, blah, blah, and more blah, just like all physicians’ receptionists everywhere, almost to the letter, at that, and all said while the phone was ringing and waiting for her to pick up the receiver and say all the same things again. They ought to just make a recording, and be done with it. Just press the button when they see somebody approaching, play their little spiel, and smile ingratiatingly.
So, they sat down in the seats of their choosing and waited for almost twenty long and endless minutes. Black took the time to be his usual calm and relaxed self while reading through a patient’s file that he’d brought along on his iPad because he probably knew how long shrinks like him make people like her wait, being a crack and often sought-after one himself, and who also probably made people wait too long. After about twelve and one-half minutes, Claire began twiddling her thumbs and started to get all antsy and annoyed and wanting to flash her badge and make threats.
So she got up, paced to the windows, and stared out over the rather lovely grounds and thought about Laurie Dale, FBI Lady/Cake Maker Extraordinaire, and how they’d almost had the shoot-out at the O. K. Corral in her backyard with her and her trigger-happy gun club. What a headline that would’ve made: C
ANTON
C
OUNTY
D
ETECTIVES
A
NNIHILATE
A
LL
-W
OMAN
G
UN
C
LUB
.
Or, even worse, A
LL-
W
OMAN
G
UN
C
LUB
A
NNIHILATES
H
APLESS
D
ETECTIVES
or the most horrific of all, E
IGHT
D
EAD IN
S
NOW FOR
N
O
A
PPARENT
R
EASON
.
Thank God, none of that had happened. Because, truth be told, Claire rather liked Laurie Dale. Now that was a lady who could handle a .357 Magnum with the best of them. Even Dirty Harry would be jealous if he weren’t fictional, and she did it all the while looking as cool as a cucumber, too. Maybe Claire would join up with that club and play some war games, especially if they agreed to name it something less cheesy and ridiculous. Perhaps The Gun Club, for instance.
The door beside her suddenly opened and out walked the specified handler of the really, really bloodthirsty head cases captured anywhere in the wilds of the great state of Missouri. Which had once included one Thomas Landers, a psychopath who had displayed a neat bullet hole in his forehead the last time Claire had seen his scary face bathed in some equally eerie blue blinking light. But that nightmare was over now, and a hearty thank-you to Black for that rather excellent sharpshooting and deader-than-dead-man ending. But she didn’t want to think about that right now, or any other time ever in her entire future life, either. Never would be too soon, in fact.
Black was up on his feet now, as athletic and agile as he was on the tennis court or golf course, no doubt, hand outstretched, that famous dimpled and killer smile on his face. He glad-handed his old colleague with lots of goodwill and happy feelings. “Hey, Hank. Good to see you. Thanks for seeing us so quickly.”
Henry LeCorps looked and dressed a lot like some nerdy professor who played bridge with a bunch of women on Tuesdays and taught some dumb university course like Greek Literature and Its Effect on Hedonistic Values of the Renaissance Female, or something even worse. Little tiny guy, with a narrow blond mustache and wavy blond hair, black-rimmed glasses, navy argyle sweater vest with a yellow-and-blue pastel plaid shirt underneath, soft hands, soft face, soft everything. He was now smiling up at Black, way up, since Black was six-four and LeCorps was five-four, if that. “My pleasure, of course. It’s good to see you, too. What’s it been now? A couple of years, at least.”
“Yeah, about that. Please allow me to introduce my fiancée, Claire Morgan. She’s the detective I was telling you about on the telephone.”
LeCorps turned to her and observed her in such a professionally interested way that it made Claire wonder exactly what Black had been telling the guy about her on the telephone. Probably just about anything LeCorps heard about her life would necessitate an emergency clinical evaluation and immediate enforced hospitalization, straitjacket buckled tight.
“So you are
the
Claire Morgan. Well, I can see now what all the stir is about.”
After that, Claire had an almost irrepressible desire to insult him soundly about his last name. If Bud had been there instead of Black, and if Dr. Corpse hadn’t been Black’s old bud, she might have dressed him down a tad. However, she was no doubt overreacting again to her infamy and controlled herself and was nothing if not polite.
“How do you do, doctor? I’m not sure what you mean by
stir
, but I guess you’re going to tell me, right?”
LeCorps smiled and studied her face very closely some more, just like every stupid shrink she had ever been forced to go see, except for Black, who usually just wanted to kiss her and smooch a little when he stared at her like that. Okay, he’d wanted to analyze her, too, a couple of times, but not lately.
“Oh, my dear, I fear that I have offended you. But please don’t take my words in the wrong way. It’s just that you were all that Thomas Landers would ever talk about in our sessions, and then after spending a lot of time in Landers’s company, Mr. Fitch did so as well. They were very good friends for a while when they were here together. Actually, they were inseparable during their free socialization time in the common room. But, please, come into my office so we can sit down and talk privately.”
Yeah, a Landers and Fitch duet was a match made in hell, all right. One was already there. One down and one to go, if all went according to plan.
But in they went and found the proverbial couch on which to have one’s head examined. Actually, it was a tufted red leather chaise longue with a matching doctor’s easy chair right beside it. Thank God, Black was forward thinking and avoided couches in his practice. She had reclined on more psychiatrists’ sofas than she liked to think about in her rather horror-filled past.
They all sat down around his desk, and LeCorps studied Claire some more, enough, in fact, to set her teeth on edge. “I take it that you haven’t located Mr. Fitch yet,” he finally said. “We were all so shocked when he managed to escape the way he did.”
“No, we haven’t. But I do have a court order right here that would allow us to look into his files as documenting his stay here at this hospital.”
“Of course. It’s highly irregular, of course, but as I’m sure you know, Mr. Fitch is extremely dangerous. Even more so than was Thomas Landers, in my professional opinion. In fact, I believe he’s the most dangerous psychopath that I have ever encountered in my practice of thirty-two years.”
Claire and Black exchanged a skeptical look at that one. “That is surprising,” Claire said to him. “Even worse than Thomas Landers, you say?” Who had been an insane, bloodthirsty, raving maniac, plus some.
“I understand why you would be surprised. Nick told me some of the background concerning your association with Mr. Landers, and of course, I already knew a lot of what had transpired from Thomas’s own words and actions during our sessions. I am so sorry that you had to go through so much at his hands, detective.”
Well, that makes two of us
, Claire thought. But she did not want to talk about that. “Why do you think Fitch is more dangerous than Landers and the others?”
“For one thing, Thomas Landers was really only interested in you. He would only harm people who he felt were keeping him away from you or that you cared about or who would help you get away from him or who he needed to kill in order to get to you. You see, it was all about you, every single facet of his life. Fitch, on the other hand, he kills at will because he likes it. He likes to kill just about anything breathing, but he especially loves killing people, and anyone will do. Man, woman, or child. Apparently, he’s been trained from childhood to hammer a person with his fists with no regard for their pain or horror or terror. He has zero empathy, absolutely none. He could care less if he hurts someone, or if he subjects them to inhuman amounts of pain and suffering. He came from a highly dysfunctional family, you understand.”
No kidding, Einstein,
thought Claire. “Yes, sir, I’ve met a few Fitches in person, which is a few too many.”
“His father was so brutal to him and his brothers that it’s a wonder any of them turned out to be normal functioning members of society.”
“Yes, I gathered that, too. And I don’t think any of them are normally functioning human beings, none that I’ve met, anyway.” Both shrinks nodded sagely, all of them in agreement on that account, despite her lack of shrink licensure. But back to business. She needed to pick this nerd’s brain, and time was a-wasting. “I have been told that he has a twin brother, one who is even more screwed up than he is. That they had a good old time together, sort of swimming through life, side by side, like a man-eating shark tag team, and did so enjoy their time beating up anybody who even looked at them sideways, especially true of the other twin. You know anything about any of that?”
LeCorps considered her for a moment. “Well, I’m afraid you didn’t get quite the correct information.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that after several years sitting here in this office and listening to detailed stories about his twin brother, of whom he appeared to be extremely fond but also frightened, we finally deduced that his twin was a mere figment of his fractured mind.”
Black said, “Are you saying that Fitch has DID?”
“What’s that mean?” Claire said, always annoyed by tossed-around psychiatry jargon. “Are you talking about a split personality?”
“Exactly, Detective Morgan. We finally diagnosed him with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Some call it Multiple Personality Disorder. He’s probably somewhere on the schizophrenic spectrum, as well. He truly believes that it was his brother performing the heinous acts that he himself perpetrated, but in truth it was him while he was entrenched in his other evil personality. He considered himself an innocent victim who could not control his twin brother’s terrible deeds. We believe that he was so brutalized when he was a small child that he psychologically hibernated, so to speak. His true personality went deep inside his psyche and let his stronger alter ego come out to handle whatever horrible things that were being done to him at the moment.”
Claire considered that diagnosis while LeCorps and Black commenced with a lot of shrink mumbo jumbo with big terms and nary the word
crazy
ever uttered. But crazy this guy was, and it appeared he just loved to use his fists when he killed people. And he was on the loose at the moment in her neck of the woods with nobody hot on his bloodstained trail, free as a bird to pummel to pulp whomever he chose in whatever manner he chose. And according to LeCorps, he always chose an ending that equated with dead, baby, dead.