By Reason of Insanity (21 page)

The kitchen light was on. His eyes took a second to adjust from the darkened hallway. He saw the refrigerator next to the door, the stove, the sink. He looked into the room. In the center was the kitchen table, two chairs. There was something on the table. He walked toward it…

The man in the apartment underneath heard a loud thud. He looked up at his ceiling. It didn’t sound right to him. He worked the second shift in Los Angeles County General Hospital and he had heard bodies fall to the floor many times. He cautiously climbed the stairs, then continued into the hallway toward the open door. Inside he saw the man on the floor. It was the landlord. He knelt down, checked the eyes, the pulse. Up again, he looked around. On the table was something his mind couldn’t quite comprehend, something seemed out of place. He went over to the table. His eyes froze. Adrenaline shot through him. His brain stopped. Started. He backed away, out the door, down the stairs. In his apartment he picked up the receiver, dropped it, tried again.

The first cop to arrive was twentythree and still lived with his parents. He hadn’t seen much action yet and if he lived to be a hundred he would never again see anything like this. Though young he had been trained to note things exactly as they were. A white Caucasian male, mid-fifties, was dead on the floor, apparently of a heart attack. A woman’s breasts were on the kitchen table, one next to an empty cup and the other by a water glass. On one breast was a large letter
V
in black ink, on the other a large
M
. The apartment door was open, the light on. A black-and-white cat was perched on a cabinet. Its water dish was empty, so was the food saucer. There was an unpleasant odor in the kitchen.

The bedroom door was closed. Turning the knob he kicked it back, slowly, softly, not knowing what he would find. The odor now was horrible, overpowering. It suddenly sickened him; he gagged, withdrew for a moment to the sink, then returned and went into the room. He saw what had been the girl…

The ambulance attendants first removed the body of the landlord. By the time they returned, top police officials had arrived. The attendants were sent away. For the moment everything, including the girl’s body, would remain as found. They were taking no chances. The medical examiner had been called, the forensic section was on its way. A call was eventually made to the sheriff’s office.

The murder and mutilation of the young woman quickly caused a tremor in official circles throughout the state. Not so much because of the destruction of the body, dreadful though it had been, but because it had been done by Vincent Mungo. Of that there was no doubt. He was an escaped homicidal maniac who mutilated his victims in frenzied rage. He had been at large for almost a month, probably forging a new identity and means of survival for himself. Now he apparently felt safe enough to strike again. And he would continue killing until he was caught. There was no doubt about that either.

Sheriff Oates flew in by midafternoon. He saw the body at the coroner’s office. The apartment had been sealed, the cat removed, a policeman stationed at the building’s entrance to ward off the curious. Fingerprints had been taken at the scene but the sheriff knew they would lead nowhere. It was Mungo’s work. Anybody could have printed the initials but this was his work, Oates told himself savagely.

The body sickened him and he turned away. He thought of calling John Spanner in Hillside but changed his mind. Spanner had been right about the two old ladies and the handyman but this was different. So much for the idea about Mungo wanting to remain anonymous and losing himself in the crowd! Not any more. He had hit the big time and he would be captured by big-time police methods. What was needed now was professional teamwork. Spanner could go fish in the lake.

The sheriff decided to remain in Los Angeles for the moment. Mungo was around here somewhere and he would be here too. He wondered what kind of disguise his quarry had effected. Plastic surgery would be impossible without money or connections. That left only dyed hair or a wig and a beard and mustache. Maybe glasses. It would do for a while but not forever, Oates promised himself. Not nearly forever.

He glanced over the raw data for the uncompleted post-mortem report: breasts severed laterally—walls of abdomen laid open from breast downward to navel—several deep abdominal cavity incisions—membrane cut—renal arteries cut—liver and kidneys—.

Oates stopped reading. His eyes blurred, his hands shook. For all his bluster he was basically a shy man and one not given to violation of any kind.

“The son of a bitch,” he mumbled loudly. “The stinking son of a bitch.”

Police photographs had been taken of the body. The killer had not touched the girl’s eyes. A forensic technician took pictures of the eyes, following the theory that in violent deaths the last images were recorded on the retina of the eye. He intended to blow the pictures up; maybe the killer’s image could be seen.

In the sleazy neighborhood adjoining the city’s skid row, residents pranced and preened for the television cameras and newsmen who descended in droves on the area. They quickly learned of the girl’s murder but killings were almost as common as empty bottles in such places and caused no undue alarm. They did not yet know the details of the butchery, or that Vincent Mungo had been among them.

Also unknown to local residents, there would not be such excitement again until the Slasher came along more than a year later and began cutting throats from ear to ear. Before he was finished nine men would fall victim to his knife. Most of them would be drunks and drifters from skid row.

Upstate the commotion over the new Mungo outrage was fierce. As Sheriff Oates flew to Los Angeles, metropolitan newsmen flew to Willows. They could interview Oates later, since he was always ready to talk at the drop of a pen to paper. Nor were they overly interested in Spanner of Hillside, he was small-town and had no name. Besides, Mungo was not local anymore. With the girl’s murder he had become statewide, maybe he was even going national.

The man they wanted was right at Willows. He could tell them all they needed to know about Mungo from the mental viewpoint. And why not? He was the top man there, he was a psychiatrist, he was a nice friendly guy if you didn’t interrupt him. And like any doctor, he was helpful when he had to be.

He was also waiting for them. Dr. Baylor understood what they wanted—a story for the next day’s paper, an item for the evening TV news. The big shots in Sacramento and San Francisco and Los Angeles had already cleared it. There was nothing he could do. He had to be helpful.

Baylor met the reporters in the small conference room in the administration building. He smiled warmly, greeted those he knew with a nod and introduced himself to the rest. After a moment of pleasantries he launched into a brief review of Vincent Mungo’s history at Willows.

Baylor then reminded his audience that up to the time of the incident—some hardened types blanched at the word, remembering the pictures of the murdered man with no face left—Vincent Mungo had behaved himself with circumspection and, though unfriendly, had given no cause for suspicion or increased surveillance. Afterward, of course, it was too late. Baylor held out his arms in a gesture of helplessness, which somehow looked unconvincing coming from him.

Someone wanted to know the specific nature of Mungo’s illness and was told that the patient had been diagnosed earlier as suffering from paranoia—

How much earlier, Baylor was asked, and he brusquely mumbled something about a number of years.

—suffering from paranoia, a psychosis characterized by strong suspiciousness and eccentricity woven into a highly organized system of persecutory delusions.

“Does this mean he thinks everyone is after him?”

They all laughed.

“If he doesn’t, he must really be nuts,” someone else suggested.

More laughter. Dr. Baylor held his smile. He had heard all the psychiatric one-liners many times over the years.

After a moment he continued. Mungo had also been characterized— years earlier, with a smile—as a manic-depressive personality marked by severe mood swings. In recent years, his records indicated, he had become more and more depressed.

“Would this make him a maniac?” someone wanted to know.

Baylor sighed. “One must be careful in the use of such a word,” he said at length. “A maniac is also a person with a mania for something, such as truth, for example.”

“Yeah, except we all know what his is.”

“But it primarily means a psychotic person with violent tendencies,” insisted the questioner.

Baylor allowed the truth of that but stressed that Mungo had exhibited no overt violence while at Willows until the night of his escape. He granted that the man was obviously psychotic, though he hesitated to place any specific label on the illness since he had not himself examined the patient. He also granted that the violent tendencies seemed to be entering a new stage, in which the destruction urge was being acted out. Possibly, he suggested, the patient was suffering an abaissement, which is a weakening of the ego’s ability to resist a powerful demand from the id. This happens occasionally to most people, the doctor pointed out, in such states as exhaustion and emotional upset. But it persists in severe schizophrenic depression.

“Does that mean he’ll kill again?”

Baylor was careful in his answer. “He might, if what I indicated is in fact occurring, and if it persists.”

Now the reporters were getting somewhere. What they wanted, needed, was some hot copy.

“Am I right in saying that Mungo kills because he has to?”

“Negative,” came the instant reply. Baylor had spent three years in the army as a captain in the Psychological Warfare section. “That is incorrect. Nobody
has
to kill.” He smiled briefly. “Along with most other psychiatrists, I don’t believe in the ‘irresistible impulse’ concept.”

“You say Mungo is a psychotic who is now acting out his homicidal tendencies. In our terms that makes him a maniac. Couldn’t your people spot this beforehand?”

“It’s not that simple,” explained Baylor. “The patient came to us as a severe disciplinary problem, but his overt violence had been merely fighting when confronted. It’s a long jump from that to killing.”

“But couldn’t they see it coming?”

“In a word, no. Most people at one time or another act violently. Kicking a door is violent behavior. So is throwing a glass or breaking a dish. But most people don’t go from that to killing someone.”

“Why does he want to kill women?”

“So far as we know, he has killed two people. One of them was a man.”

“Why does he mutilate the bodies?”

“Possibly because of some monstrous rage.”

“Rage at what?”

Baylor shook his head. “If we knew that we would probably know why he kills. That is, why his potentially destructive inclinations suddenly turned overt.”

Another ten minutes and it was over. The doctor felt he had handled the reporters well. He had told them little, and he had certainly not given them any sensational copy that could come back later to haunt him. He allowed some pictures to be taken of him and of the hospital buildings and grounds, but that was all. Just following orders, he assured them. They left, mostly discontented.

In truth, Baylor had not kept any pertinent information from them, nor had he misled them in his answers. He really didn’t know why Vincent Mungo had suddenly started killing and mutilating. There was no indication of such rage. Granted the hidden cleverness common among certain mental patients, the homicidal fury needed for such acts was not at all common. Nor was the sheer power of personality. Dr. Baylor secretly wondered if Vincent Mungo might not be having an episode of zoanthropy, believing himself, of course delusionally, to have assumed the behavior characteristic of an animal.

The late afternoon editions of August 3 carried the first news of the horrible murder in the skid row section. The headlines screamed Vincent Mungo’s name. Pictures were shown of the block, the house, the apartment, even the murder room but none of the body. Certain details of the grisly deed were glossed over. All the stories contained the standard picture and description of Mungo plus a capsule mental history. Several papers incorporated the interview with Dr. Baylor into the text. Others simply attributed information to expert medical opinion. Some of the stories were subheaded with the suggestion that the madman might kill again. One paper asked if Mungo was killing because he had to kill, compelled by an irresistible impulse. All of them labeled him a homicidal maniac, consumed with rage of as yet undetermined origin.

The murder made the television evening news. Throughout the state people again heard the name Vincent Mungo. They again saw his face—ugly, brooding, sinister. One newsman called it a face from hell, straight out of a Dostoievsky novel.

That evening Senator Stoner was ecstatic, though he properly tried to conceal the fact. Roger had been right, thank God; the big afternoon papers of August z had held over news of the press conference for the following day. He had thus made all the important morning and afternoon newspapers on August 3, the day of the gruesome discovery. The timing was perfect. From now on his words and actions would be news. From now on his campaign to restore the death penalty and execute Vincent Mungo would be publicized.

The senator hoped that Mungo would not be caught immediately, at least not until the campaign got up a good head of steam. That was all he needed, a little time. He didn’t even consider the possibility that time was running out for some others as well.

Stoner went to bed that night and dreamed of killing Caryl Chessman with his bare hands.

Six

THE THERMOMETER hit a hundred on Fremont Street and Bishop ducked into a small restaurant near one of the casinos. He sat at a table and ordered from the waitress. Somebody had scratched a big zero in the center of the tabletop. The circular gashes were deep and largely discolored from too many swipes of a damp cloth; tiny bits of food were lodged in the wound. He studied the ugly design for a moment, then quietly moved to another table.