Читать книгу Shock! - Donald Ph.D. Ladew - Страница 8

Let the punishment fit the crime.

Alice in Wonderland

—Lewis Carroll

The sounds of traffic from the 101 Freeway barely rose above the three A.M. white noise of suburbia. Woodland Hills was just another bedroom in the tattered mansion of Los Angeles.

To the west and south are the Santa Monica Mountains and beyond the mountains the Pacific Ocean: For most of the year, the Valley, as it's called, is a sink for whatever weather the seasons bring. In the spring, the fog settles in the western end of the San Fernando Valley.

Occasionally the fog is so dense the freeway is turned into a battlefield of broken automobiles. The road warriors of the night enter the lists filled with Seagram's Seven and faith, faith that no one will decide to take a nap in the fast lane. That hope is often misplaced and the destruction of Fords, Chevys, Toyotas and semi-trailers can be heard for hours.

Highway Patrolmen, weary medical interns, ambulance drivers, firemen with the night watch, do not love this time of year. For others, however, it's a good time. Perhaps they secretly yearn for this seasonal madness.

West of the freeway, in a group of low hills, isolated from the surrounding homes by tall hedges and a chain link fence, the battered inhabitants of the Cabrillo Springs Psychiatric Clinic slept the quasi-death of the massively over-drugged.

The single story buildings, five of them, interconnected by enclosed walkways, had been constructed in the Spanish style thirty years before as a rest home for a forgotten order of nuns, called The Sisters of Mercy.

The sisters had been gone for many years. Living in the middle of hundreds of post-war housing tracts wasn't restful, and mercy left the day the psychiatric exorcists arrived with their low-tech engines of torture.

Except for a night duty staff, the prisoner/patients had been drugged deep into dull narcotic dreams. The staff, each in his or her way, fought the boredom.

Four of them slept; one picked listlessly at the LA Times Crossword; another was reading a Regency Romance novel, her lips forming the words; and yet another read a magazine whose prurient and violent content, featuring leather and chains, would have made a chapter in Kraft-Ebbing—typical of psychiatry's curious obsession with the genitalia of the world.

The last worked in a large paneled office more appropriate to his exalted station.

Outside of the buildings the cotton-wool atmosphere filled the Valley like the head of a giant, drugged madman. It was still, but at the edge of the long sloping lawn was a point of interest, a focus of intention and purpose: a shadow on the shores of hell.

The shadow moved. Wearing a dark blue windbreaker, soft slacks of the same color and an old navy watch cap, a slender figure moved across the lawn swiftly and silently toward the center of the low buildings.

Visibility in the fog was less than twenty feet, but the figure had no trouble finding the way.

On the corner of the middle building about four feet up the wall was a metal box, a foot square. The man removed a ring of keys from his pocket and selected one. All but the tang had been coated in soft acrylic plastic.

He inserted it into the lock near the bottom of the box. The box opened to reveal a small keyboard, like a calculator, and six colored indicators, three red, three green.

Where the cable entered the box, he quickly peeled back the acrylic coating that covered the wires with a small penknife. It didn't take long to connect the 'interrupter' into the line. Now, no matter what happened on the building side of the box, all would look normal to the security service that monitored the location.

The intruder entered a code using the keyboard and all three of the green lights lit. Should anyone trip an alarm, no bells would clamor, no electronic messages would be sent, either to the security service or the local police services. He closed the door to the alarm box and locked it.

When the current owners took over, they cut a doorway into the passageway between the middle two buildings. Another key, covered with a fine film of machine oil, entered the lock noiselessly. The intruder opened the door in one move and stepped into the passageway, closing the door behind. He stood motionless, absorbing the environment.

To the right, the building contained administrative offices; he turned that way. His movements were precise, certain. The door to the building was not locked. He went through, walked down the empty, night-lit hall toward an office on the left. A faint light shone beneath the door.

All the other offices were dark. The intruder paused outside the door, took a deep breath and tried the knob. It wasn't locked. When it reached the limit of travel, he pushed lightly and eased it inward.

It was an unusually large office. Opposite the door, behind a heavy desk of dark colored wood, an older man with gray hair and a Van Dyke beard bent over some papers on the desk. Now, a hundred years later, psychiatrists were still trying to emulate Freud: Strange heroes.

The intruder stepped inside the office silently. In one hand he held an odd bulky-looking pistol. Still the man behind the desk didn't notice him.

The intruder stepped forward a pace at a time until the older man looked up. The man behind the desk started to open his mouth and the intruder brought up the bulky-looking device and pulled the trigger. The gun made a low 'chuff', like a muffled cough, and a dart appeared in the bearded man's throat just above the collarbone. He stared; eyes wide like a frightened rabbit. His mouth hung open, but no sound came out.

The intruder watched the slow-motion tableau until the man's eyes rolled up and he slumped forward onto the desk.

The intruder hooked the pistol to a web belt at his waist, moved around the desk quickly, and removed the dart from his neck. He grasped the man under the armpits, lifted him upright then dipped down to the man's waist and threw him over his shoulders effortlessly.

Before he left the office, the intruder settled the unconscious man on his shoulder, holding him with one arm. When he moved back into the hallway, he did so without once banging the one hundred and fifty pound dead weight on his shoulder against the door jam.

The hall was empty. He closed the door, glanced down at the luminous dial of his watch, took the pistol in his left hand, and moved along the hallway toward the rear of the complex.

Considering the weight, he moved rapidly. He headed for the fourth building. He reached it without seeing anyone until he got to the entrance.

The door had a double glass panel with steel mesh woven between the panes. Beyond it a large man in the uniform of an attendant, sat in a comfortable chair about twenty feet down the hallway.

Even sitting, the man was massive. The intruder stepped back away from the door and quietly put his burden down. He relaxed his body. There might be action. He went back to the door.

He transferred the pistol to his right hand. The door didn't have a knob, just a brass handle and a metal kick plate at the bottom. He pulled on it with a steady pressure. It stuck, so he jerked it open and stepped swiftly into the hallway. He moved directly toward the seated figure.

The man looked up, his expression not alarmed, more curious. He hadn't seen the pistol held by the intruder's side.

His lips were just forming the word, "who..." when the second dart caught him in the neck just below the ear.

He started to pull it out when his whole body went limp and he slid out of the chair to the floor.

The intruder waited, then stepped forward to the unmoving body and dragged it into a small cubicle, inside of which were a chair and a small desk. Above the desk was a board with a ring of keys, several notices and a clipboard.

He lifted the heavy man awkwardly into the chair and arranged the body so that the man's head rested on his arms as though asleep. He took the ring of keys.

The intruder went back for the body of the older man and brought it inside the building. Further down the hallway a gurney had been left to one side, and he carefully put the limp body on it, and then set off toward the end of the hall. Near the end he turned left through a pair of swinging doors marked 'Treatment', and passed through another room which contained a dozen unoccupied beds.

Beyond this area was a small room equipped like an operating theater. The smells made the intruder nauseous. He ignored them; he knew the source.

He lifted the man off the gurney onto the operating table, then quickly stripped him to his shorts, strapped him to the table and inserted a rubber bit between his teeth. He taped it in place. He didn't want it to come out during the treatment.

The eyes of the man on the table began to flicker. The amount of drug in the dart had been carefully measured. His head swung from side to side and finally his eyes opened all the way. For a moment he remained absolutely still; then he surged up against the restraints with all his might. It did no good: Stronger men and women than he had tried to escape their inquisitors without success.

The intruder laid his hand on the man's shoulder and spoke to him calmly, softly. His voice was surprisingly free of emotion.

"Do not struggle, Doctor Malinowski. You, more than anyone, should know how futile it is. Just relax; this won't take long at all. I'm going to ask you a few questions. Just nod your head yes or no."

The doctor's eyes were wild, filled with terror. Still he struggled desperately.

The intruder slapped the doctor Malinowski face once, briskly. "Be quiet, Doctor. What do you fear? Have you done something for which you should be punished? Surely not? You're a health care professional, devoted to the gentle counsel of those whose minds have been hurt. You have given your life to the study of mental illness. What possible crime could you be guilty of? I have a few simple questions for you, and then this little play will be over."

The doctor's struggles subsided, not from any lessening of fear; he had run out of strength.

"That's better; I'm on a bit of a time schedule. First question, did you treat a patient, Mrs. Harriett Johannsen Piers?"

The doctor renewed his struggles and made no sign for yes or no.

"Okay, have it your way."

The intruder moved silently to one side of the room and rolled a piece of electrical apparatus toward the side of the table. It was an older machine, black with a crackle finish.

He moved it beside the operating table, next to the doctor's head, and flicked the 'on' switch. The machine came on with a low hum. The doctor strained so hard his scrawny muscles stood out like strands of rope, and his face turned purple with effort.

The intruder slapped him again, hard enough that the crack rang through the small room.

"Settle down, Doctor. Must I use drugs? I would rather not, without your permission. You know how that works."

The doctor stopped struggling, but terror never left his eyes.

"Are you ready to answer my questions?"

The Doctor nodded his head, affirmatively.

"Do you remember the last question? No? Again, did you treat a patient, Mrs. Harriett Johannsen Piers?"

The man on the table nodded, yes.

"Good, good. Now we're getting somewhere. I'm going to name some of the staff. If any were present or assisted in Mrs. Piers' treatment, just nod your head, please."

The intruder listed eight staff members by name and the doctor nodded his head after three of the names: One woman, a staff nurse, a nurse intern and an attendant.

"Thank you, Doctor, you've been helpful. I have read the records carefully and I'm curious. Why, I wondered, was it considered the best procedure to deliver ECT to a woman with a heart condition, particularly unmodified? How could anyone think it necessary to give ECT to an old woman, who at the worst was mildly eccentric? In fact, how could anyone try to electrocute a person and call it therapy? But that is a question that can never be answered here.”

There was a long pause as the intruder reached toward the black machine with crackle finish. He did so with all the willingness of a man approaching a rattlesnake.

"I have asked myself that question for weeks, twenty four hours a day. Yes, even in my sleep I ask that question. I have spent a lot of time reading about your profession, trying to understand."

The intruder looked around the room in stark disbelief. "When people first heard of the Nazi death camps they could not comprehend such monstrous inhumanity.

"This was a woman at the top of her profession, respected by men of all political persuasions as the best financial analyst of government organizations in the United States. Idiosyncratic? A little perhaps. Violent, never: Mad...no, never that.

"So, as you can see, I ask myself why, and still no answer. If I thought you could provide me with an answer I would have taken you elsewhere, someplace where I could hear your answers, but as you have already deduced, I am not really interested in your explanations. All I want to know is were you the one who tortured and murdered Mrs. Piers."

The doctor's eyes opened and closed rapidly. His face was the pale, translucent color of the dead. In his fear he lost control the muscles of his bladder and urinated uncontrollably.

The intruder stood by the table for several minutes, unmoving.

"Doctor Malinowski, it is obvious to me that you don't believe in the spirit that is man. One might not think so, but I do." He spoke with quiet conviction.

"Because I do believe, I hold you responsible, body and spirit. I hope in lives to come you will remember what you have done, and find a way to atone.

"I have looked into the possibility of the law punishing you, and I find they are completely ignorant of your crimes. So, it has fallen to me to punish you. I don't relish it, but in your case, I won't regret it."

The stench of feces filled the still air of the treatment room. The last barrier to bodily dignity had burst.

The intruder reached over and fastened a plastic band with electrodes in firm contact with the man's temples. He reached down to the electro-shock machine and set the voltage to maximum, pressed the activate switch and held it. He did not look away from the effects of his decision.

Normally it is held for a few seconds. In this case, the intruder held it for three minutes until the body on the table ceased to shake.

He reached out and put his gloved fingers on the man's throat, feeling for a pulse. There was none. He stood beside the table for another five minutes and then checked the doctor's pulse again. There was still none.

He left the clinic as he had come, silently. Outside the building he slipped into the fog and disappeared. It was three forty-five A.M.