House of Skin

DOCTOR OF DEMENTIA

The thing that bothered Lisa the worst was that she’d let Eddy Zero slip through her hands. It hadn’t been her decision, of course; she’d been a junior member of staff at Coalinga State Hospital. The others—doctors Quillan, Reeves, Staidmyer—had the final decision. And after some five years, they’d decided to let Eddy go. Whether they actually believed his lies of being cured or it had more to do with overcrowding or budget cuts, she was never sure. Probably all three.

“We have to release him,” Dr. Staidmyer told her one evening.

“With all due respect, sir, you can’t be serious.”

His face reddened. He didn’t like being challenged. “And why not, Dr. Lochmere?”

“Eddy Zero is dangerous. You know that as well as I. He’s a textbook sexual psychopath.”

Staidmyer had smiled curtly, as if she, barely out of internship and a woman to boot, couldn’t possibly know what she was talking about. “I disagree completely. He’s compulsive, yes, but hardly a maniac.”

“He has a history of psychosexual deviation. He raped two women.”

“And has been rehabilitated.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Before he came here, he was repressed and hateful, but he’s come around nicely. I can’t possibly keep him here any longer.”

Lisa just stood there, feeling helpless and awkward in the male-dominated hierarchy of Coalinga. Rehabilitated? He isn’t goddamn rehabilitated. He’s still a dangerous felon! If you think he’s come around nicely, give him a few hours alone with your wife. Of course, she didn’t say any of that because it wouldn’t have been professional and they liked their shrinks professional at Coalinga, a.k.a. Hotel California.

Regardless, that was that. Eddy Zero slipped through her hands. Oh, she could’ve told Staidmyer things only she knew. Like how Eddy admitted to her that Staidmyer and the rest were doddering old fools, how he’d lied to them, worked them like putty in his fingers. Made them believe they’d affected a cure on him. But she remained silent. She could’ve told them how he tried to rape her with an orderly just outside the door. But they’d made their decision.

And Eddy slipped away. But she never forgot.

She never would.

The possibility that he was out there, even now, stalking innocents, is what really bothered her. Because of three naïve men who called themselves psychiatrists, a monster had been unleashed on the world. Maybe at the time of his release he’d been little more than a twisted sexual predator with aspirations of psychotic mania, but she knew that would change. A man who fed on suffering like he did could only grow more evil with time.

According to the law, Eddy wasn’t insane. Insane individuals do not plot, do not plan like she knew Eddy did. But the law was wrong. He’d told her many things he hadn’t dared whisper to the senior members of the Coalinga staff… and only when not being recorded. He was no fool. He planned to find his father one day, he’d said. The infamous Dr. Blood-and-Bones. And the only way he could do that, Eddy was certain, was to follow in dear old dad’s footsteps.

A few months after Eddy had gone, Lisa resigned from Coalinga and found a job as a prison psychiatrist. The pay was poor, but she made her own decisions as to the sanity of certain individuals and her advice was usually followed. And that in itself made it all worth while.

But she was never happy. She quit the prison a year later.

There was no explanation for what followed. At least, none she wanted to think about. Suffice to say, she’d pulled herself up from the darkness and tried to forget.

There was little else she could do. Her own ambition had caused her to do things that completely went against the codes of her profession.

And she never stopped thinking about Eddy and what he was doing.

Pure psychopaths are a rare thing. Most psychiatrists would cut off a limb for a chance to work with one and she was no different. There was a book in Eddy. The son of a serial killer suffering from advanced multiple personality disorder who wanted to recreate dad’s crimes. My God, it was positively unique. It could’ve been a big book, but it would be nothing unless she could find Eddy.

And she had every intention of doing just that.

She hired a private investigator. It took him several months to locate Eddy. He moved around a great deal. He found him in Chicago first, then in Detroit, and finally in San Francisco. And there the trail went cold.

But that wouldn’t be the end of it.

He’d last been seen in San Fran and this is where she began her hunt.

For Eddy and perhaps for his father as well. If there was an answer to the madness that ate away at her life these many years, it lay with those two men.