Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die (9 page)

The door opened. Danny turned and saw Chauncey standing there, jiggling excitedly on his bowed legs. “You
oughta see the late news, Danny. Jesus, right here in the
county—”

“What is it?”

“Somebody murdered a whole bunch of GIRLS!” Chauncey’s breath caught in a giggly hiccup. “They’re still diggin’ em out. It’s awful! C’mon. They might show it again …”

“I’ve called this special staff meeting,” said the administrator, tapping the top of his narrow bald head with the stem of his pipe, “to expedite the release, discharge or, uh … further commitment of Daniel Bollinger who was referred to us three weeks ago by the circuit court—is that correct, three weeks?” He looked down the long, polished oak table at Elizabeth, who nodded. “Three weeks ago to see if he was well enough to stand trial. Since then—” He turned the page of a folder and smoothed it down with his palm, “—there has been a development which has, let’s say, altered the situation outside these walls, but we should not consider this except where it has a direct bearing on the patient’s mental health. We are not here to determine guilt or innocence, but only to ascertain whether or not he is capable of conducting his own defense, and of understanding the nature and importance of the proceedings against him. These are the terms of the modified ‘McNaughton Rule’ with which I’m sure none of us fully agree, but let us keep our eyes fixed on our own …”

Elizabeth kept her eyes fixed on the pad in front of her. Like the ecclesiastical courts of the middle ages: We are here to decide only whether or not he is possessed by Satan. Those decisions must have been made in equally quiet rooms by refined and cultured people—and did they
ever associate themselves with the auto-da-fe, the shrieking of the idiot mob and the crack-pop-sizzle of burning flesh? Suddenly she saw it as it must have been: the selection of a sacrifice. Throw an occasional patsy to the mob so we can live in luxury on the labor of the peasants …

She shook off her feeling of malaise and listened to the recreational director. Hall Grimes, an athlete who never quite made it outside the home town, now bald and fat, had only one criterion for judging a patient: Was he a good team player? His conclusion did not surprise her; Dan was emphatically NOT a team player.

“But then neither was Galileo,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kossuth.

“True,” said the administrator. “You wanted to make a point about the patient?”

“No. Just about Galileo. I’ve never seen the patient.”

Jeff looked at her and smiled, Elizabeth smiled back without conviction. Jeff was the only one who looked fully relaxed, his chair pushed far back from the table on the right of the administrator—appropriate for the chief psychiatrist, who was nominally second in command. She saw his knee propped up against the table, clothed in patch madras slacks in a yellow-and-brown plaid pattern. His face was burnt a deep reddish-brown, almost the shade of ginger. Eyes blue, hair a walnut hue trimmed full below his ears and above his collar. She thought to herself, he’s a beautiful man. Unfortunately he is well aware of it. Sometimes he needed others, herself for example, but usually his own appreciation of himself was enough—Jeffrey at the tiller of his sloop, dressed in his breton fisherman’s shirt and white duck trousers, with the silk scarf drawn flat across his throat, tied with an infinitesimal knot. Jeffrey in his Mercedes, wheeling through a mountain setting of tall pines, his pipe tilted at a jaunty angle. Jeffrey at her breakfast table that morning, his elbows spread wide apart on either side of his plate, his chin resting on his laced fingers looking at her with a quizzical
amused smile as he asked:
What the hell did you scream about last night?

And she knew what he must be thinking now: Little Liza, bereft during my absence, calls out to her lover in the night. And Jeff, hearing, rises from his bachelor cot to run barefoot up the sidewalk, up the back stairs and into her bedroom, undresses quickly and slips between the silken sheets, gives her what every woman wants but is afraid to ask for. Well, face it, the same dream coming two nights in succession had disturbed her, and sex with Jeff was pleasant, and comfortingly familiar …

Now Ted Ditscher, the administrator, was explaining, in his pedantic manner, the background of the case “… For the benefit of our chief psychiatrist, Dr. Kossuth, who has been on vacation …” She saw Rita sitting in the little black secretarial chair, scratching in her shorthand pad, and realized Ted was talking for the record.

Jesus Christ, doesn’t anybody care about the patient?

Only you, Elizabeth.

Oh, really?

Jeff’s voice broke into her thoughts:

“Now here’s a contradiction. The State wants him to stand trial, and if he is found … let us say, sane, they are then put in the position of trying to prove that a sane man can murder six women and bury their bodies—”

“Five women. One was a male infant, apparently full term.”

Christina’s child
, thought Liza.
It looks very bad …

“Are they going to try to prove that he killed the infant?”

“I don’t think that’s included in the charge.” Ted cleared his throat. “But as I pointed out, we are not to concern ourselves with the nature of the charges—”

“Dammit, I resent being pinned to the wall like this.”

Ted gave a tired, whimsical smile. “I’m sympathetic, Jeff. I’ve fought the battle for many years. Still, I would like to correct one thing. Our findings that he can stand
trial do not mean that he is well or … sane, but only that he can understand the proceedings of the court. Later, if he should plead not guilty by reason of insanity,
then
the prosecutor would have to prove that he knew the difference between right and wrong.”

“I’m not even sure of that,” said Elizabeth. “What
is
the difference?”

The administrator sighed. “In legal terms, murder is wrong. Did the patient know that, was he able to make a free choice, to kill or not to kill? If we believe he heard voices telling him it was right to kill, or if he was under the illusion that he was slicing open a watermelon when he was actually stabbing somebody in the stomach, then we might have reason to support a not-guilty verdict. But that comes later. Right now we only concern ourselves with his condition at this moment, in the here and now.”

But instead of the here-and-now, there was more dredging in the past. Coffee was served in styrofoam cups, cigarettes and pipes were lit, a numbus of blue smoke floated above the table. The social worker gave the background of his home and family in a dull, dry monotone:

“Father originally from Pennsylvania, stationed nearby during the Korean war, met and married a local girl of good family who was killed in an auto accident when Danny and his twin sister were ten. Following this, the care of the twins fell to a succession of housekeepers. Danny brilliant in school, far outshining his sister. Danny drafted into service, cited for bravery. During his service in Vietnam his father killed himself. Shortly afterward the sister married a successful real-estate dealer. Danny dropped out after his discharge, reportedly lived on his pension in Mexico, was deported and came home to live on some land his brother-in-law owned. After three years was arrested by the sheriff on an anonymous tip. Found to be cultivating a large patch of marijuana, presumably for resale. Arrested, jailed, brought here under referral by the court …”

Such a dry, bloodless paper cutout of a person, she thought. Doesn’t sound like Dan at all …

Everybody was looking at her. She realized she’d missed something. “What was the question?”

Ted answered: “Dr. Kossuth wants to know how he reacted to the news that the bodies had been discovered.”

“I really couldn’t say.” She glanced at Jeff, saw his eyebrows lift by a fraction of an inch. “I asked him to recall the circumstances of his parting with the girls who came to see him. He told me. I suppose I could have said, You’re a liar, you killed them and buried them in the dam, because that’s where the sheriff found them. I wasn’t conducting a murder investigation, Jeff.”

“Yes but—” Jeff hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, “Don’t you think it’s just the least little bit pertinent whether or not he killed them?”

“Certainly. But how many people commit murder in their minds and feel just as guilty as those who actually do it? And how many of
those
are able to blank out the memory of the deed entirely? I’m not saying he did either of these things. I’m just saying it’s irrelevant for my purposes. Getting a signed confession is no doubt important for the sheriff. To me it would merely be one more piece of data, and I didn’t think it important enough to risk breaking a rapport with the patient.”

Jeff looked at her a minute, then nodded. “All right What was his reaction when you asked about the girls?”

“He was vague, indifferent. I think he’d actually forgotten them until I brought it up. You know the side effect of electroconvulsive therapy.” (Now I’
m
talking for the record.) “Beatrice has forgotten the birth of her last two children. She just stares at their pictures and shakes her head—”

Jeff interrupted. “Why was Bollinger given ECT in the first place?”

“It happened before he was assigned to me. I think Mr. Weiss recommended it.”

Weiss was a wizened, sharp-nosed little man who’d been in charge of the dairy in the days when mental
hospitals were expected to be self-sufficient. Now he was security chief. He cleared his throat with a dry, rasping sound and read from the loose-leaf notebook in front of him: “He caused, or was the center of, various disturbances in the receiving ward. He seems to have a powerful personality which he uses in destructive ways, such as organizing patients to engage in group defiance of the attendants. In the particular incident in question, he persuaded one of the male attendants to lend him the keys to the lumber storage room, which he then used on a succession of nights for amorous purposes.”

“For
this
you gave him shock treatment?”

Weiss flushed. “There was more than one woman involved. In fact, on the night I was called, there were several, including a female attendant who has since been terminated. And they had gotten some whiskey. The security men had trouble getting it under control, particularly since some of them were involved.”

Jeff leaned back, shaking his head. “How many times must I repeat, shock is not to be used as punishment. Sonofabitch!” He glared at Ted. “I thought we were getting away from that.”

“We are, Jeff.” Ted’s voice was placating. “It shouldn’t have been done, but it was. Now shall we continue?”

“All right, but it seems to me that throwing a party is a perfectly rational act. Tell me, Elizabeth—” Jeff turned to her. “In your opinion, could a rational man kill five women?”

She considered it, then nodded. “A person can kill and be rational when examined, yes.”

“Once and once only, I should think.”

“No. When faced with the same circumstance, it could trigger the same reaction. Whatever reason he had for killing the first girl—or thought he had—could have been reproduced for the second, the third, and so on.”

“So you think Bollinger killed them?”

“I did
not
say that! Jeff, you’re putting—”

“You’re both straying from the agenda,” said Ted.
“We’ll now hear from our occupational therapist, Mrs. Holman …”

Elizabeth paused on the landing to readjust her mind to the Outside. Leaning her hips against the iron railing, she looked across the rolling grounds toward the pink granite wall which separated the hospital from the rest of the world. A group of female chronics sat under a sweet-gum tree, some knitting, some plucking at the grass, others staring at the official vehicles drawn up along the curb outside the administration building. Behind the sheriff’s car stood a baby-blue panel truck with wire mesh on the back windows. God, how utterly tasteless and cruel, and he’s so damn sure we’ll be forced to give him up …

She went down the steps and walked along the path of tilted broken concrete slabs which wound among the ancient maples. So far it had been the most tedious staffing in her memory—proving that psychiatrists were no more immune to the pressure of public opinion than anybody else. Though we like to think we are. And should be. Oh yes, definitely, should be immune to all that, also the desires of the flesh.

Now the conference was in recess. At last they had exhausted their own nebulous opinions and decided to take a look at the patient.

The afternoon sun hammered down on her head as she emerged from under the trees. She reached into her shoulder bag, took out her silver-rimmed sunglasses, and hooked them over her ears. Two men in baggy khakis tossed a frisbee out behind the alcoholic unit; she couldn’t see their faces, but she knew what they would look like: sweated-out, watery-eyed men with drawn cheeks and haunted eyes. A few baseball players churned up dust on the diamond. A hot wind blew gusts between the men’s cottages, rattling the sparse yellow leaves of the lombardy poplars which lined the sidewalk.

The closed wards looked quaint and archaic from the outside, with English ivy growing up around the narrow windows. She used her passkey to open the door, and
stepped into a hallway musty with the shower-room odors of dirty socks, detergent and Aqua-Velva. She put her face to the grimy window and looked into the long dormitory room. A man sat staring out the window. Another played solitaire on his bunk. Two others watched tv, an old man rocked in his rocker.
Eternity’s waiting room
. She wiped the glass with the edge of her hand. It felt gritty slimy. She pulled a tissue out of her bag and wiped her hands, then opened the door of the staff room. It was dim, musty, sour. The attendant lurched up from his cot, propped himself on one elbow, and rubbed his eyes. Pale orange hair, like caterpillar fuzz, covered his pudgy-pink arms.

“Didn’t you know Bollinger was to be staffed today?”

‘Today ain’t Wednesday!”

“It was moved up. I’d like to see him in the quiet room first.”

He swung his feet to the floor and sat up, muttering: “Bol’nger, quiet room.”

She was standing at the window when he came in a few minutes later. He was clean shaven, his hair was combed. He wore a clean white shirt and jeans which hugged his lean hips. Still no belt. His face wore a ravaged, desperate look of hostility, suspicion, paranoia. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t really know, Dan.”

“You wanted to see if I’d slip. Why not admit it?”