Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

Chapter 8

This is bullshit, MacWhorter, dragging me down here in the middle of the night!" I shouted as I marched into the police captain's office. "Don't you sleep?! You're wasting your time, and mine! The first thing I want to do is call my lawyer, and then you and I can sit and stare at each other until she gets here!"

The burly policeman looked up from the stack of papers on his desk. In the harsh light thrown from his desk lamp he looked as if he had indeed not slept in some time, or even bothered to change his uniform. There were sweat stains around his collar and under his arms, and he would certainly not have passed one of his infamously rigorous inspections. He was unshaven, his beard a dark shadow cupping his face, and the large rings under his eyes were the color of bruises. "You don't need a lawyer, Frederickson," he said in a hoarse voice, "because you're not under arrest."

I stopped in front of the desk. "I'm not?"

"You're just here for a friendly chat. Sorry if Lou dragged you away from something you were doing."

"Actually, I was in the middle of being tortured, but it's all right. I was getting tired of it anyway."

He studied my face, blinked slowly. "If that's a joke, I don't get it."

"Didn't Lou call in a report?"

"He said you'd been mugged by a couple of guys in front of your house, and he was giving you time to clean up."

"That sounds about right. Before you bother to ask, I didn't get a good look at them."

"Two guys beat you up, and you didn't get a good look at them?"

"They were wearing ski masks."

MacWhorter grunted, then leaned back in his chair and smiled thinly. "Actually, I'm surprised they survived the encounter, much less got away. You're a pretty tough little bugger."

"Yeah, but I'm getting old. I can't mix it up like I used to."

"Now that you mention it, you look like shit, Frederickson."

"You don't look so hot yourself, Captain."

"How long have you had that twitch?"

"Not long. Why don't we both go home and get some sleep?"

MacWhorter sat up straight, pulled his chair closer to his desk. Color had risen in his cheeks, but his tone was even, and he seemed to be making some effort to control his temper. "I'll tell you why I can't go home, Frederickson, and why you're not going home either until I get some straight answers from you. Because more than two dozen people are dead, their hearts or spinal cords punctured, and eleven of those deaths occurred in my precinct. Guaranteed, there'll be more by morning. It's hard to nab somebody who has no apparent motive and who seems to have nothing better to do than wander around the city jabbing people with an ice pick. The reason I can't sleep is because I know more people will be dying while I do. I want to catch that crazy son of a bitch, and I just happen to have living in my precinct a civilian who seems to know more about what's going on than the whole NYPD put together. It's nothing short of amazing to me how this kind of weird shit always seems to stick to you and your brother; if there's something really bizarre going down, one or both of you are odds-on favorites to be somewhere right in the middle of it."

"I've often thought the same thing myself, Captain," I replied carefully.

"You were right about the stiff we found in the Dumpster. I kicked some ass and got an emergency autopsy performed. All of his tissues, and especially his brain, were saturated with some kind of drug."

"Will you tell me what it is?"

"Actually, there appear to be a number of drugs involved. There were traces of psychoactive drugs they use for nut cases, and don't ask me to try to pronounce the names. The bulk of the stuff they found can't be identified, at least not by our people. Forensics has sent tissue samples to the FBI labs in Quantico, and we're waiting for the results. As for that upstate mental hospital-"

"Rivercliff."

"Yeah, Rivercliff. The whole place burned to the ground better than two weeks ago. The Smokies suspect arson, but they aren't sure. Nobody who was inside survived-not patients, not staff. More than sixty people dead. And all of the hospital records were destroyed. The Smokies and the Feds are looking into it, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to tell me anything. In the meantime, I've got Dr. Death, identified by you and two anonymous sources as Raymond Rogers and who you say came from Rivercliff, running around the city stabbing people to death. It's the kind of thing that makes it hard for me to sleep, Frederickson. You know what I mean?"

"Jesus Christ," I breathed, thinking of the sixty people who had been murdered to cover up somebody else's crime.

"That's all you've got to say to me?"

"I have to be very careful what I say to you, Captain. Every time I open my mouth, it only makes you angrier."

"That's because every time you open your mouth you say too much, or not enough, or you give me bullshit. You want something?"

"What?"

"You want some coffee?"

"I want a drink."

He rubbed a hand across his grizzled chin, sniffed. "It smells to me like you've already had a drink."

"What are you, president of your local temperance union? I want another one."

"I don't drink."

"It's not for you, Captain, it's for me."

"There's no liquor on the premises. It's against regulations."

"What about that bottle you keep in your desk for emergency situations like this one? I know it's there, because I've seen it in all the cop movies."

"They've never shot any movie in here. I don't have any bottle in my desk."

"In that case, I guess I'll have coffee."

"You know where it is. Go help yourself."

MacWhorter was in a decidedly strange mood, I thought as I shuffled out of his office, down a grimy corridor, and through a swinging door into the squad room, where I poured myself a cup of coffee from a pot sitting on a hot plate. I exchanged a little friendly banter with some of the cops going off duty or coming on, then went back to MacWhorter's office. He was sitting in almost the same exact position as when I had left him, but he had pushed the desk lamp off to the corner of his desk, so that now his face was half hidden in shadow. I doubted that his sudden change in mood, the shift to good cop from bad, was due to lack of sleep, so I wondered just what he thought being civil to me was going to accomplish. His first question surprised me.

"Where's Garth? I don't often see one of you without the other, even since he moved to Cairn. It's like the two of you are joined at the hip."

"He's off with his wife on a skiing vacation in Switzerland."

"Garth skis?"

"He's taking lessons. As far as I've heard, he hasn't broken anything yet."

"He ever talk about me?"

I sipped at my coffee, said, "Nope."

"I'm a good cop, Frederickson."

"I've never heard anybody claim otherwise."

Now he leaned forward in his chair, so that his whole face was caught in the bright cone of light cast by the desk lamp. Something in his green eyes had changed, but I couldn't tell what I was seeing there. He somehow seemed more vulnerable to me. "I wouldn't be a cop at all if it wasn't for your brother, Frederickson," he said in a voice that had grown hoarse. "I owe him big-time."

"I see. That explains why you always have such nice things to say about the two of us."

Anger flashed in his eyes, but it was almost instantly gone, supplanted by something that looked very close to shame. It occurred to me that it was costing Felix MacWhorter something to say whatever it was he was trying to say to me, so I decided to keep my smart-ass remarks to myself, at least for a time, and listen.

He stared at me for a few moments, then said, "Your brother and I were partners a whole lot of years ago. It was right after he came on the force. We were the same age, but he had more experience in law enforcement than I did."

I nodded. "He was a county sheriff in Nebraska, where we come from. He did a hitch as an MP in Vietnam, then heard how much fun I was having in New York and decided to join me."

MacWhorter shrugged, then glanced over my head at the wall behind me-or something else, perhaps his past. "We worked out of Fort Apache up in the Bronx. At the time the precinct was … a little dirty. There were a lot of cops on the pad. Most of it was small-time stuff-free meals, a couple of drinks, maybe a Christmas turkey. That kind of thing. But there was also some serious shakedown action going down, money changing hands, a little cash in envelopes that eventually became more cash in envelopes offered to cops for 'extra services,' maybe keeping a closer eye on some store that had been robbed a few times. Anyway, I was having money problems, so I started taking some of the envelopes that were offered to me. One day Garth caught me at it, and he told me to stop. I told him to fuck off and mind his own business, because I needed the extra money, and because I was really earning it by keeping an eye on the stores when I was off duty. He said that was a protection racket, not police work, and that he'd have to fight me if I didn't stop. Hell, I had fifty pounds on him, and I'd won the division boxing championship the year before; no country hick was going to tell me what to do. So I fought him."

"What happened?"

"He beat the shit out of me."

"Yeah, well, Garth was always pretty good with his fists. Fast hands."

"He dogged me after the fight, stuck to me like flypaper when we were on duty to make sure I didn't take any more money from shopkeepers. I knew that if I tried to, Garth would kick my ass again." "And?"

"And it turns out your brother was working for Internal Affairs- mind you, he'd volunteered to work for IA, to help clean up the precinct. Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"It doesn't surprise me. Besides being good with his fists, Garth has always had a strong sense of justice. He took being a cop very seriously."

"Better than a third of the cops in that precinct got canned or transferred because of your brother, Frederickson. A few lost their pensions. I'd tried to go on the pad, but I got off scot-free because your brother decided that since I was his partner I was a problem he'd solve personally. He saved my career."

"And so you show your thanks by spending the rest of your career bad-mouthing him. I don't understand you, MacWhorter, and I don't understand why you dragged me down here in the middle of the night to tell me this."

He flushed, shifted in his chair, and looked away. "I'm trying to explain something to you, Frederickson, and it isn't easy for me. So cut me some slack. Garth had saved my ass, and I hated him for it; he'd shown himself to be a better man than I was, and I hated him for that. I felt ashamed, and I couldn't stand it. All I could allow myself to think about was the fact that your brother had ratted on his fellow officers. Most cops hate Internal Affairs, and Garth had volunteered to do their dirty work for them. He'd hurt people who were friends of mine, cops who'd thought Garth was their friend. He was a rat and a traitor, and just because he'd saved me from myself didn't alter that fact. That's the way I had to look at it in order to live with myself. Hell, I knew he resigned because the department screwed him over, betrayed him, and almost got both of you killed. But I still had my head up my ass. I couldn't forgive him for being a better man and cop than I was, for dropping the dime on my friends and saving me, and so I chose to keep trying to convince myself that he'd left and teamed up with you because he wanted to cash in on your fame. Then I started moving up in the ranks, and I started to see things differently-especially when I was given command of this precinct. I damn well wished I had a Garth Frederickson working for me. But I didn't behave differently. I'm a proud man, Frederickson, stubborn, and maybe even a little bit stupid at times. For a man like me, old attitudes die hard. Somewhere along the line all the mixed feelings I had about this thing turned into confusion. I'm not a man who enjoys spending much time looking into my own head, Frederickson, and the confusion I felt only made me more resentful of your brother. Somewhere along that same line I guess I started to take it out on you."

I paused with my cup of coffee halfway to my mouth, and I wondered if the astonishment I felt showed on my face. "My God, this is an apology."

The heavyset man smiled thinly. "Let's not get too carried away. I still think the two of you mess way more than you should in police business, just like I damn well know you're doing now. Let's say I'm calling for a truce. You know more about this Raymond Rogers than you're telling me. I want to catch a mass murderer, and I'm asking you to help me, if you can. You get no more threats and disrespect from me, and I want no more bullshit from you. Tell me what's going on. Deal?"

"Deal," I said, pulling the wooden chair I was sitting in closer to his desk. "The people who were working me over a little while earlier when Lou so conveniently showed are a fun couple by the name of Henry and Janice Sparsburg, nationality unknown but I believe American. They're professional assassins who go by the noms de mort of Punch and Judy. You can probably get more on them from Interpol, which is where I got my information. Their most distinguishing characteristic is that they've both had about a half dozen face lifts too many-plastic surgery is part of their thing. From a distance they look twenty years younger than they are, but the illusion fades rapidly the closer you get. Up close, they look grotesque. Think Dorian Gray. You could send out a call to post extra plainclothes cops at all the shelters in the city, because that's where Punch and Judy have been hunting up to now, but it's probably a waste of time. Now that I've made them and know what they're up to, they'll probably change their strategy. They're the people who killed the man you found in the Dumpster. They're working for the people who ran Rivercliff, and I have a hunch-only a hunch-that's the CIA. The good doctors at Rivercliff were conducting illegal experiments on human beings for years, and Rogers, who has to be our ice-pick killer, is only one of a dozen patients who escaped from the place after he went ballistic and started slicing and dicing his keepers. Besides Rogers, there are still eleven patients and a Rivercliff shrink by the name of Sharon Stephens out on the streets-that's assuming Punch and Judy haven't whacked any others. Stephens is probably one of the women who called you to identify Rogers, and 'the night owl' is Greta Wurlitzer. The stuff you found in the corpse's tissues is some kind of very powerful psychotropic drug that was used in the experiments at Rivercliff. Punch and Judy's job is to clean up the mess, kill Stephens and all the patients so that the truth about Rivercliff will never come out."

MacWhorter did amazed very well; he blinked rapidly while his mouth opened and closed a few times. Finally he said, "And just when were you thinking about getting around to telling me all this?"

"I was getting around to it when I walked in here, but then you launched into your True Confessions, and I didn't want to interrupt your soliloquy. Besides, I wasn't too happy about being busted, which is what I thought was happening. Your being so pleasant to me helped to jog my memory and organize my thoughts."

MacWhorter grunted and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, then rose from behind his desk and walked out of the office. I watched through the glass as he talked to the desk sergeant and two detectives he'd summoned. The detectives hurried away, and MacWhorter came back into the office, closing the door behind him.

"You're probably right about these creeps who worked you over changing their MO, but at least now there'll be cops all over the city looking for them. If we come up with any likely suspects, you'll be available to identify them?"

"Day or night."

"Like I said, you look like shit, and you've got that tic, but at least you're still walking around. What'd they do to you?"

"They gave me a massage with a stun gun. If you think my face is twitching, you should feel my insides. It'll pass."

MacWhorter winced. "Jesus."

"My thought at the time, exactly."

"What'd they want?"

"I approached them on the street because I thought they looked like they might fit the description I'd been given by Interpol. This turned out not to be one of my cleverest ploys, because, as it turns out, they knew who I was. I followed them, but they gave me the slip, turned the tables, and ambushed me when I got home. I presume they looked up my address in the phone book. They wanted to know how I'd made them, and how I'd gotten involved in their business in the first place."

"How did you get involved in the first place?"

"I met one of the escaped patients-he just kind of fell into my lap by accident. It was also by accident that I found out about his situation, and that of the other patients. I'd like to think that what I've told you will help you catch Raymond Rogers, but I don't think it will; his behavior is too random. I don't know anything else that would be of help to you. I'm aware that catching Rogers, and Punch and Judy if you can, is the job of the police. I'm not interested in anything but trying to find a way to help the patients, and that's been my only concern from the beginning. I just suspected that the guy in the Dumpster might be one of the escaped patients, and you confirmed it when you told me the results of the autopsy."

"Slow down, Frederickson; you're going just a little too fast for me. You say these escaped patients are being hunted by this Punch and Judy team?"

"Correct."

"Are the patients aware of this?"

"Not about Punch and Judy specifically. They're aware they could be in danger."

"Why don't they just go to the police? They'd not only get protection, but a roof over their heads and some food in their bellies. And then you'd have some proof to corroborate what you're telling me."

"They're afraid to go to the police, or identify themselves to anybody else in authority. They had that option before, and they still have it. Every single one of them is choosing not to exercise it. Nobody but Rogers has broken any laws, so the rest of them really aren't your concern. They understand the risk they're taking, the possibility that people could be sent to kill them. What they don't know is that the killers are here now, or who they are. That's why I'm looking for them; I want to warn them about Punch and Judy, and bring them in to some safe place if I can."

"And just why haven't they exercised their option of seeking police protection?"

"I'm not going to tell you that, Captain."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because it can't help you catch Rogers, and the information might put you into a very difficult position you don't want to be in. Your job's tough enough as it is. Again; with the very large exception of Raymond Rogers, they haven't broken any laws."

I thought MacWhorter might turn ugly on me again, but he didn't. He stared at me for some time, then grunted and abruptly strode out of his office a second time. He was gone for a couple of minutes, and when he returned he was carrying a mug of coffee for himself and a second mug for me. He sat back down behind his desk, sipped at his coffee while he mulled things over some more, then set the mug down on his desk and smacked his lips.

"They're afraid of being sent back to a mental hospital."

I nodded reluctantly. "Something very close to that, Captain. You're getting warm."

"Maybe they should be back in a mental hospital."

"Maybe."

"From what you tell me, Rivercliff wasn't exactly Club Med."

"It was Club Med all right, but not in the way you mean it."

"Even if it was a hellhole, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be getting proper care in some other place. Christ knows, we've already got more than enough crazy people wandering around out there. Besides, who's to say one of them might not flip out like Rogers did and start randomly killing people? Can you guarantee that's not going to happen?"

"I'm not in a position to guarantee anything, but I can assure you, on the basis of my observation of the one patient I've met, that it's highly unlikely. They don't need to go back to an institution, and their medical needs are being met at the moment. Being sent anywhere isn't what they're most afraid of."

MacWhorter again sipped at his coffee, had himself another good think. Finally he said, "Their medical needs are being met?"

"That's what I said." And wished I hadn't.

"They're on some kind of shit they took with them, right? It must be the same stuff we found in the stiff s tissues, the stuff you're so anxious to have me identify for you. So I assume Rogers is on the same shit, and maybe it's that shit that caused him to go over the edge when he discovered he could get his rocks off by sticking ice picks in people. How am I doing now, Frederickson? Am I getting any warmer?"

"Is he getting his rocks off by sticking ice picks in people?"

"Yep. You were right about that too. Semen traces on all of the victims' clothing we've been able to reexamine properly, and even at a couple of sites on the pavement. You were also right about the low sperm count. The guy is a walking cum factory. What does he do, walk around with his dick out?"

"I don't know. It's possible, but I think it's more likely that his pants are soaked with semen, and some of it rubs off when he makes contact with his victims."

"I believe we were discussing the shit these people are taking, and whether it could be responsible for making Rogers the way he is. I asked you if I was getting warmer, and you haven't given me an answer."

"I think it's time we changed the subject. I told you there are things you don't want to know because I know you care about what happens to these people. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that you're absolutely right, that they' re on a medication that enables them to function normally, but it's also the same drug that turned Rogers totally dysfunctional and caused him to start killing people. I really don't know what's making him kill, but I'll bet you real money that the drug these people are taking, if they're taking any drug, was never submitted for FDA approval by the CIA or the company that manufactured it. It won't be listed anywhere. So what are you going to do if one of them shows up and you know he's carrying some of this strange dope? Are you going to let him keep it? How could you, considering the risk involved? But if you did take it away, then maybe this person would go nuts again-or worse. Maybe this person dies on you. I don't think you want that responsibility. You should worry about catching Rogers, who's a criminal."

"And you insist this drug is only hypothetical?"

"I'm asking you to listen very carefully to what I'm saying. In the hypothetical situation I've just outlined, for your own future peace of mind you would not want to have probable cause for search and seizure with any escaped patient who voluntarily came to you for protection."

"In this hypothetical situation, maybe there's some substitute medication they could take that's safe and approved."

"Maybe, maybe not. They obviously don't think so. Neither does the shrink who helped them escape, and she's in the best position to know. It could very well be that they know this hypothetical uncontrolled is the only thing that can keep them alive and truckin', and they don't want to ask the police for help for fear it will be confiscated. "

MacWhorter grunted, then narrowed his eyes as he studied my face. "I don't suppose you're trying to get more of this hypothetical uncontrolled for these people, are you? That would be pretty stupid."

"I told you what I'm trying to do; I want to find them before Punch and Judy put a bullet in their skulls. But I also need a place to bring them, someplace where their needs will be understood and they'll be guaranteed safety."

"You could be looking for some big trouble that wouldn't be at all hypothetical."

"Captain, every time I open my mouth to you, you want to close it by lopping my head off."

The burly policeman shook his head. "You're wrong, Frederick-son," he said evenly. "That's not what's happening here. I very much appreciate this little chat, and I'm inviting you to take me completely into your confidence. It isn't for you to decide whether or not laws are being broken, and telling me everything you know now could protect you in the future if things go sour. Man, if you're trying to obtain and distribute shit that has the potential of turning people into homicidal sex maniacs, you are sticking your neck out a long, long way. It doesn't matter what your motives are. Can't you see that? I'm not threatening you; I'm trying to give you a warning. You want to be looked on as an accomplice if one of these people you're trying to help turns into another Raymond Rogers? I can imagine hypothetical scenarios where you could wind up in prison for a very long time."

"Change the subject, Captain, or I walk. What else do you want to know? Is there anything that isn't clear to you?"

I waited, meeting his gaze while he considered the question. Appearances and occasional behavior notwithstanding, there wasn't any moss growing on Felix MacWhorter, and giving him free license to keep firing at me until his gun was empty was risky business. But I thought it was worth the risk. For the most part, what I was telling him was the truth, and a mollified, relatively informed Felix MacWhorter could prove to be a valuable ally to Margaret Dutton, Michael Stout, and the others when they did turn to the authorities for help, which they would eventually have to do.

He began to tap the fingers of his right hand on his desk, an indication to me that he'd reloaded. "How did Punch and Judy manage to keep you from beating the shit out of them?"

"They got the drop on me, and they had me trussed up like a pig."

"And they were torturing you until Lou came along." "Right."

"It wouldn't have taken them a second to slit your throat, or put a bullet in your brain."

"And then off Lou, for that matter."

"So why didn't they? You knew all about them, so why didn't they kill you?"

"An excellent question, one I've been asking myself. I don't have the answer."

"Maybe not, but I'll bet you have a theory."

"A couple of them, actually. First, they may have believed a bullshit story I told them, and-"

"They're buzzing you with a stun gun, and you told them a bullshit story?"

"What else was I going to do? They'd have killed me on the spot if I'd told them the truth. Knowing that you're going to die if you don't come up with just the right tall tale does wonders for focusing the mind."

"What was the story?"

"I told them that the cops, FBI, Daughters of the American Revolution, and every character on Sesame Street knew all about them and Rivercliff and the escaped patients, and that it was only a matter of time before they were caught if they didn't get out of the country. They weren't quite sure they believed me, but it set them to thinking. They were getting ready to buzz me again when Lou came calling."

"I still don't understand why they didn't kill you-and Lou."

"They probably would have if they'd been convinced it wasn't true, because then nobody could have pinned the murders on them. But if it was true that the whole operation was blown, then killing me could have serious consequences, and killing Lou would most definitely have serious consequences. The NYPD would have shut down the entire city until they were found, if you did know who they were. Kill me, and they might not have been safe even back on their home turf. They had a pretty good line on me, so they must know something about Garth and his reputation for tenacity. It's possible they were more worried about him than about the authorities, because he wouldn't be in the least concerned with jurisdiction or legal niceties. It's possible they didn't kill me because they didn't want him on their trail. My brother can get pretty furry."

"You mean like a squirrel?"

"I mean like a werewolf-although he can get pretty squirrelly before he tears your throat out. Lately, he's been doing John Wayne imitations when he's mad at somebody; if you hear the Duke talking to you, then it's time to get out of the vicinity. Garth can be very dangerous if you're a bad guy, and he takes no prisoners. They may not have wanted to take a chance on messing with him if my murder could be pinned on them. Like I said, I'm guessing. At the time, they didn't seem all that impressed by anything I was saying."

"You're probably right on one or both counts. Of course, by letting you live, they guaranteed they'd be blown."

"That's true-but now they know exactly where they stand, which has to be in the shadows. They'll try to use me as a stalking horse, a Judas goat. They know I'm looking for the patients, so they'll keep a close watch on me and hope I do their job for them. Most likely, they'll bring in a team of fresh faces to follow me around. Punch and Judy still have their assignment, which is to wipe out all the living evidence of what happened at Rivercliff, and money is no object to their employers. What their employers won't accept is failure. They'll plan to come around later, when they've done what they were paid to do, and kill me at their leisure, make it look like an accident."

"So you'd better watch your ass."

"I always do."

"You'd best start doing a better job of it than you did tonight."

"Your point is well taken."

"With luck, we'll find them before they kill anybody else. May I assume you'll be in touch right away if you come up with any more information that could help us catch Rogers?"

"You may definitely assume so."

"You want a ride home?"

"No, thanks," I said, rising and arching my back, which still hurt. "I need to stretch my muscles. See you."

He waited until I got to the door of the office, then said, "Frederickson."

I looked back over my shoulder. "What?"

"I'll fill you in-unofficially-if the FBI can identify the substance found in the Dumpster body. You've earned that much. What you do with the information is up to you. You know the risks involved in trying to obtain more of the stuff, and you've been warned."

"Thanks, Captain. I appreciate it."

"One other thing, Frederickson."

"What's that?"

His thick lips curled back into just the slightest trace of a smile. "I still think you're an arrogant, publicity-seeking, interfering dwarf prick."

I favored him with my own slightest trace of a smile. "The onset of a relationship like ours is always the sweetest part, Captain. I love you too."