By Reason of Insanity (27 page)

Lavery liked that, it was his first good thought of the day. He wanted to write it down. On the desk were two lamps, a pair of tennis shoes, plants—all dead—telephones, tape recorders, a purple elephant, a red garter, handcuffs, a tape measure and a million other items of necessity. But no pad or pen. He went back to scowling. This was not going to be his day at all. Hopefully it would soon be over, and the sooner the better. Only ten or twelve hours to go. He sat back, defeated.

“We got problems,” he said, turning to Ding.

AMOS FINCH had arisen on the previous morning at his usual time of six o’clock. With a wistful sigh of remembered pleasure he allowed the blond graduate student in his bed to continue her sleep. Standing over her he gazed at the tousled head, the shapely arched back as she slept in the fetal position, her legs jackknifed, her arms curved downward. She looked so tiny, a child’s body with a woman’s sexuality. He liked smaller women, found them to be the most passionate and open to sexual variety. Their small breasts and buttocks made him feel boyish again and wandering once more through the fertile fields of his Midwest youth. A half dozen times he had bedded down with midgets, enjoying each experience immensely. His secret ambition was to sleep with a dwarf.

Studying her nude form against the pink sheets, he was overcome with erotic desire and hurriedly returned to bed. He gently straightened her legs and turned her over onto her stomach. As he pressed hard against her from the rear she cooed softly, still half asleep. Her body was warm and moist and deliciously sweet-smelling to him. He slipped easily inside of her, driven on by her murmured oohs and umms. In his growing excitement he decided that his work could wait a few hours, perhaps even until delivery of the day’s mail. He was expecting a letter.

BIG JIM OATES had a dream. He was running for governor on a lawand-order platform. The race was close and came up a tie at the wire. Both sides waited as the last voter in California slowly walked toward them, thousands of silent people lining the approach. Oates watched intently as the figure gradually came into focus. It was a man of average size and dark features. His steps on the carpeted floor began to boom as he drew closer. There was something familiar about him, something Oates couldn’t quite catch. The man pressed forward, step by booming step, until the noise was shattering. Suddenly Oates saw him clearly. That face! He recognized it now, it was the face of the devil himself. Vincent Mungo! Oates quickly pulled his service revolver and shot Mungo six times at point-blank range. Mungo didn’t even notice. He continued his slow, steady gait until he was at the head of the crowd, which closed behind him. Standing silently in front of the political opponents, he waited a moment before turning to Oates. He drew closer, their faces now only inches apart. Oates saw the insanity in Mungo’s eyes. He saw something else too. He saw that he had lost. “You lose,” Mungo said softly. He turned to the other man, they shook hands. As they walked away together, arm in political arm, Oates fired six shots into them, then six more, and again and again and again …

He awoke in a sweat, his eyes blinking. A nightmare, it was only a goddam nightmare! He glanced at the electric clock by the bed: 4:10 A.M. Groaning, he looked over at his wife asleep in the other twin bed. Only her head was visible over the flowered sheet in the air-conditioned room. His eyes rested on the head, graying now but once the color of wheat, a dark gold in the summer sky. He had loved the color of her hair, just as he had come to love her, and when they married he promised her that he would make something of himself, someone of whom she could be proud. She told him she was already proud of him beyond anything else imaginable, and from that moment on he loved her with a tenderness he knew would last unto death. Whatever he had to do in his professional life, whatever good or evil was forced upon him, whatever women he would take for sex urges, she would always be his loved one, the woman in his private heart.

Through an uncle’s political connections he had become a deputy in the California Sheriff’s Office. His blustery manner and affable ways served him well in the police business. Especially valuable was his ability to deal on the political level, which had moved him up the ranks until he commanded his own sections in several locales before coming to Forest City. The latest move was exceptionally good for him; it was not that far from Sacramento and the real power. Inordinately ambitious, the years had whetted his appetite for public office.

He glanced again at the clock. Still only 4:11. The hour of the wolf. The hour when more people died and more babies were born than any other. He didn’t know why but he knew it was true. Every cop knew that. The hour of the wolf. Vincent Mungo was the wolf right now, and his hour would soon be over. Hopefully.

Oates quietly propped himself up on the pillow, folded his arms behind his head. If he couldn’t sleep he’d just lie there in the dark with his thoughts. He often did that; a fitful sleeper, he spent many moments awake. Over the years such times frequently were the most peaceful of his day. He was equally familiar with the hour of the devil and the gun. But he was a bit unnerved that his nightmare about Vincent Mungo would come during the hour of the wolf. To a realistic man superstitious in many ways, it was not a good sign.

He had returned from Los Angeles on August 8 sadly emptyhanded. Mungo had disappeared again, vanished without a trace after committing the fearful murder. Despite one of the most intensive manhunts ever conducted in the Los Angeles area, despite almost 100,000 law-enforcement officers throughout the state searching everywhere, despite the tentative entrance of the FBI into the case on the assumption that he had crossed state lines in unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Vincent Mungo was nowhere to be found.

He was a devil, Oates reluctantly conceded, a devil in disguise. Whatever his disguise was, it had to be one of the greatest ever seen. Or not seen. In almost thirty years of police work Oates had never known anyone with so little fool so many for so long. If he had his way, Mungo would get a gold medal just before they shot the son of a bitch. Or hanged him or gassed him. That he would be killed one way or another was a certainty. It was all just a matter of time. Of that Oates was dead sure. He was also sure that if he got there first Mungo was dead. One look at the girl’s savaged body had been enough. Mungo was a real-life monster and had to be destroyed.

The sheriff stared into the darkness of the bedroom, thinking thoughts of legal murder. Five days in Los Angeles had been more than enough for him. The people were different from those in the northern half of the state, more frenetic and insecure, given more to fads and surface feelings. Even though well treated, he was glad to get away. He didn’t believe he would enjoy working in the southern part of the state, though he had lived there for a few years as a youngster. Sacramento would do just fine. All the political power he could ever want was right there.

He remembered an article he had read about capital punishment, and he wondered how a good magazine like
Newstime
could print that garbage. They had really made a big mistake; about the only thing they got right was Chessman’s name and age.

He had been around at the time and he knew a little about the case, though he hadn’t been personally involved. He knew, for example, that Chessman wasn’t identified by just two women, as stated in the article, but by a half dozen people as their assailant and robber. He knew that Chessman was a punk car thief and gunsel as a teenager. From friends, guards at San Quentin and Folsom, he knew that Chessman remained a punk throughout his early prison years and even after the big rap sent him to death row. But most of all he knew Chessman had been guilty of the crimes that got him gas. He was captured in a stolen car with a flashing red light similar to those used by police. The car was identified by witnesses. He was identified by witnesses. And not in one or two instances but in a whole series of crimes. That was enough for Oates. Everything afterward was just legal games.

He knew one more thing not mentioned in the article. Chessman was married at age nineteen to a lovely girl with silky hair and a nice smile. Oates had once had a crush on her when he was himself a youngster and living in Glendale.

Again he eyed the clock. Ten more minutes and the hour would be over. No more wolf He wished his problems would be over as easily. Vincent Mungo. Bang. No more Mungo.

He primed the pillow and eased his head down. In six hours he had a meeting with the police and public-safety officials in Sacramento. Was that right? He checked himself. August 10, 11 A.M. Yep! Just six hours away. The clock was set for 7:30.

As he drifted into sleep he wondered if he would ever get to see Vincent Mungo after all.

WHILE THE sheriff’s plane was holding to a course due north at 22,000 feet on the bright clear morning of August 8, a sleek black Lincoln Continental pulled to a stop in front of a neon-and-chrome diner in Fresno. The chauffeur, after a few words with his passenger in the rear, slid from behind the wheel and headed for the diner. Inside he spoke to the cashier; he was polite but firm. A moment later Don Solis came forward. The chauffeur told him a man wanted to see him outside. Would he go along?

Solis looked the man over. He recognized the eyes, unyielding, disinterested, yet noting everything. He had been like that once, not quite that good. Nowhere near that good, as a matter of fact. The man was dangerous and not to be crossed. He followed him outside.

Business was light at that hour and few cars occupied the parking area. They headed for the limousine, where the chauffeur opened the rear door for him. Not knowing what to expect, Solis tensed himself As he bent to look in, his eyes widened and his mouth sprang open in amazement …

GEORGE D. LITTLE lived for his family and his business, in that order, A man of few passions, he doted on his sprightly wife and three lovely daughters and provided them with a big house in the best section of town, a ranch with fine horses to ride, cars, clothing, travel. To give them this kind of life he sold death. Specifically, funerals. He owned one of the biggest mortuaries in the state, taking over from his father before him. He knew the business well, knew all about dead bodies, and where the money was in caskets and flowers and private services. Over the years he made a good living at it, and better than good, and they got it all.

His wife often thought him a bit of a bore and much too logically sane but she loved him for his kindness and generosity, and she gave him what he needed, or at least deserved, in companionship and in the bedroom. Out of it came three daughters. He had wanted sons to carry on the business but he soon grew to love the sound of females in the house. They brightened his life considerably, and by the time they were young ladies he adored them. They could do no wrong.

Two of them did everything right, at least in their father’s eyes. They accepted their parents’ life style and position in local society, they enjoyed the abundance of money, and generally behaved themselves as well-to-do girls with nothing in their heads beyond the moment.

The oldest daughter was the problem. She did not quite fit, was not quite content. At thirteen she wanted to be a rodeo rider, at sixteen she was going to be the first woman astronaut. When she was turning eighteen her true goal in life became clear to her. She would be a movie star. She was pretty and she was clever and she would make it big in the movies. When her sisters laughed at her she just gritted her teeth still one more time and walked away. When her parents refused to listen she just grew silent. They would all be sorry someday, she kept telling herself They would see, but it would be too late.

Mary Wells Little hated where she lived and hated horses and especially hated her father’s business. Funerals! Ugh! What she wanted, needed, was some glamour—bright lights, good times. Show business, that was for her. She’d go to Hollywood and become a movie star. Then she would get on the Johnny Carson show and she’d sit down next to his desk and talk about all kinds of interesting things. Mostly about herself of course. Then afterward they’d go out to dinner and dancing. He’d hold her in his arms and they would whirl around the floor for hours and hours, and at daybreak he would take her home to his beach house by the ocean and they would make mad passionate love. She was barely eighteen and still a virgin and she wanted Johnny Carson to be her first lover. Please God, make it all happen for me! Please! Please!

The next year Mary Wells was nineteen and no longer a virgin, but she still wanted to be a movie star and be on the Johnny Carson show. She would lie on her bed at night watching him on television from faraway California. After a while her long pony legs would open and she would feel him inside of her, on top of her, all over her. He was the symbol for everything she needed, he was the end of the rainbow. She would get to him if only she could get away from home. She would somehow do it. She had to. “Johnny,” she would whisper as she watched him, felt him inside her, “help me, please help me. Please, Johnny! Please!”

The following summer she bade her parents goodbye. She had finished one year of college and that was enough. Almost twenty, she was going to Hollywood. They stormed and pleaded and cried, and still she left their home. They couldn’t stop her. At the door her father, overwrought, screamed names at her and told her never to come back. He didn’t mean it but she did. She silently vowed never to return to the house or the town.

A week later she found a small apartment in Los Angeles. She changed her name to Kit and began making the rounds. Youthful and full of energy, she was out to conquer the world.

Within a year her world had crumbled. She had done her very best but luck did not smile on her. Slowly she changed from wide-eyed innocence to hardened indifference. She began exchanging sex for job offers or even promises of offers. Eventually she exchanged sex for gifts. She worked many part-time jobs, mostly at night so her days were free to seek movie parts. After a while her searchings became more infrequent until finally, toward the end, there were none.