Twisted Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY ANDREW E. KAUFMAN

  While the Savage Sleeps

  The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted

  Darkness & Shadows

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Andrew E. Kaufman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477829486

  ISBN-10: 1477829482

  Cover design by Scott Barrie / Cyanotype Book Architects

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957287

  To Jessica, for listening to Andrew

  CONTENTS

  START READING

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Much Madness is divinest sense

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  1

  Dead bolts.

  Steel bars.

  Metal slamming against metal.

  This is my unyielding world, where I mend ruptured minds and fuse cognitive wires. A world that—if emotions were physical—would be a tangled mess of hooks and thorns.

  But it’s not just the sights and sounds: it’s the smell, a musty hybrid of human waste and perspiration. Even the steel has a fug all its own, a mineral tang seasoned by rust and time.

  The stench of insanity.

  How long have I been here? Six years? Eight?

  Sometimes it’s hard to remember, and sometimes I forget who’s serving time.

  “Welcome to the jungle, gentlemen,” my boss says, brittle shades of cynicism coloring his words. Jeremy Firestone’s sentiment is not unwarranted, but it’s hardly necessary. Calling Loveland Psychiatric Hospital a jungle is at best an optimist’s euphemism, much like calling hell a tropical destination. And right now we are moving deeper into its cavernous underbelly, a subsurface passageway that dead-ends at a high-security plaster box called Alpha Twelve. Home to the worst of the worst.

  The killers.

  The rapists.

  The dark souls with an incurable addiction to evil.

  Dr. Adam Wiley and I exchange vigilant glances. Neither of us knows the purpose of this trip. I steal a glimpse at Jeremy, his steps determined, his gaze aimed ahead, his expression set. On a normal day, our boss is the consummate image of emotional economy, but on this day, reading his face is like studying the side of a concrete slab.

  We hit Security Checkpoint One, a gateway that leads to the long corridor, which will take us into Alpha Twelve. The guard spares us a prudent nod, punches a button, and the buzzer goes off. A yellow light flashes once, flashes twice, then turns to green. The gate slides open, and we enter; its bars slam behind us, letting out a thunderous crack that cuts the air and ping-pongs ahead through formless shadows.

  Something hard and icy pushes through me.

  This place is so cold.

  But I wonder if my perception is driven more by emotion than climate, whether this hole in the ground is cheating my senses and blowing a chill through my mind.

  I try to chase the thought away with a deep breath, but my only payoff is a double shot of noxious-nasty that fills my lungs. I force the air out and with my gaze set ahead, keep walking.

  It would be fair to say that Loveland is by no means a modern or up-to-date facility. Calling our setup archaic would be a compliment. Three years ago, Arizona officials agreed. They stepped in and slapped us with numerous building code citations. Once we were on their radar, allegations of human rights violations went flying. Feeling the heat, our board acted quickly, and plans were soon under way for a new building and a complete program overhaul. But it will be years before everything is up and running. In the meantime, we make do with what we’ve got, watch our Ps and Qs, and keep guardedly mindful that we’re under a microscope.

  “So, Chris, how’s that beautiful boy of yours doing?” Adam asks. An obvious attempt to cut through the tension, but I appreciate it.

  “Growing too damned fast,” I say.

  “And the more-than-beautiful wife?”

  “More beautiful than ev—”

  “Gentlemen.” Jeremy interrupts our small talk, his voice booming louder as we round the next corner. “There’s a new patient at Loveland.”

  Neither Adam nor I respond. Our boss didn’t bring us all this way just for that.

  “And I can’t stress enough how important this case is,” he continues. “It’s one of the biggest we’ve ever had. Needless to say, we have to get this right.”

  Adam raises a brow. “And the mystery patient would be . . .”

  Jeremy’s gaze drops to the floor, and for the first time, I see worry break through his stoic demeanor—worry that pulls us closer toward Alpha Twelve.

  “Donny Ray Smith. He’s been transferred from the Miller Institute in Northern Arizona.”

  “The reason?”

  “A court-ordered eval. His lawyers are going for the insanity defense.”

  “How come Miller sent him to us?”

  “Miller didn’t—the judge did. The institute had an internal shake-up just as their review of Smith was near completion. A neuropsychologist working the case is about to get her license yanked. When the DA found out, he put in a request for reevaluation.”

  “He got nervous,” I s
ay.

  “Very nervous. This story’s been all over the news up there. Another reason why we must proceed flawlessly. With everything that’s been happening around here—”

  “We don’t need more negative publicity.”

  “Exactly,” Jeremy agrees. “Incidentally, because of all the delays, the judge has us on a tight turnaround.”

  “How tight?” I ask.

  “Your evaluations are due in a week. Until then, I’ll be clearing your caseloads.”

  “Did the folks at Miller reach any decisions before trouble broke out?” Adam asks.

  “The psychologist’s findings were inconclusive, but the neurologist begged to differ. He concluded that Smith is memory malingering.”

  My gaze sharpens on the doors leading into Alpha Twelve. “What’s his crime?”

  “How many would you like?”

  “I’d like as many as you’ve got.”

  “Murder.” Jeremy nods once. “So many young girls, you can count them on two hands. Unfortunately, so far they’ve only been able to nail him on the last, a six-year-old.”

  The same age as Devon.

  Jeremy eighty-sixes my thought. “That crime will be your primary focus. As the case widens, more charges will likely come down the pike. For now, since Smith’s involvement in them is as yet unproven, the information on those cases is for background purposes only. The judge wanted to make this very clear. That said, because the last victim was under the age of fifteen—and multiple murder charges may eventually come into play—this could end up being a death penalty case. So it would be wise to keep in mind the impact of your diagnoses.”

  “Ten kids? And they couldn’t get him until now? How does that even happen?”

  He stops to look at me. “It happens when you can’t find the bodies.”

  “Including the last.”

  “Including the last, yes.”

  Adam shoves his hands in his pockets and observes Jeremy. “So how come he’s being held down in Alpha?”

  “It’s taken three years to get him into custody, and the DA’s not about to take any chances. He requested that Smith be placed within a maximum-security setup. Naturally, we agreed to accommodate.”

  “Suicide watch?”

  “You bet.”

  We reach Alpha Twelve. Jeremy swipes his card through a scanner slot. The door responds with a sharp, motorized click; when it opens, sounds roar out. The kind that can penetrate marrow, the kind that few people—if they’re lucky—ever have to hear. Ululating, wordless lamentations. Shrill cries of base terror. Cackling, eerie laughter from men who would not only rather murder you than look at you but also do it in the most heinous and barbaric ways their depraved minds can imagine.

  We step out onto the floor. A row of doors faces us on both sides, each punctuated by a steel-gridded window. I see fingers and faces, all eyes aimed directly at us. I see expressions that run the gamut from glazed to goofy, maniacal to menacing, and the rest Just Plain Mad.

  “Hurry up!” An urgent whisper sounds from behind me. I turn my head and find Stanley Winters staring at me with pleading distress.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” he asks. “Time is running out!”

  I look at him calmly.

  “This place is broken!” His voice ramps with frenetic urgency, his body jouncing up and down. “We have to get out of here!”

  Stanley tied his wife and three kids to their beds, then set them on fire and watched while they burned to death. He isn’t going anywhere. Ever.

  “Hey, pretty, pretty . . .”

  I swing the other way and lock onto a pair of hungry eyes, a predatory smile dangling just beneath them. On closer examination, I realize the eyes are growing wide as saucers and keenly focused on my forearm, the predatory smile evolving into a shit-eating grin.

  “Gorgeous and lovely,” the mouth says, nearly salivating. “Gorgeous and lovely.”

  Adam is now watching, too.

  “Gerald Markman,” I inform him under my breath.

  Adam, a neurologist, works on the medical side of things. He studies imaging tests, lab work, and other diagnostic data, so most of his encounters occur in examining rooms. He rarely makes it down here, but as a psychologist, I often visit Alpha Twelve to observe my patients in their surroundings.

  “You know about Gerald, no doubt,” Jeremy jumps in, apparently overhearing us.

  Adam nods. “Just never had the pleasure of meeting him face-to-face.”

  “The pleasure would be his.”

  No lie. I’ve treated Gerald, and he’s arguably the most dangerous patient to ever set foot inside Loveland. One of only three serial killers in history to have successfully used the insanity plea, he murdered seventeen people that authorities know of. The news media nicknamed him The Husker—a moniker he earned because killing his victims wasn’t enough. Gerald also degloved them, separating their skin from flesh with near-surgical precision. According to detectives, walking into his house was like pulling back the curtain on a grisly horror show. The place was chock-full of biological mementos that included a “mammary vest” fashioned from a woman’s torso, a belt adorned with nipples, and Mason jars with preserved human vulvas. When they asked what he’d done with the remains of one particular victim, Gerald Markman smiled broadly and pointed to his shoes.

  Everyone at Loveland knows that if you catch Gerald staring, it can mean only one thing: he wants to skin you and wear you.

  He’s still looking at my arm.

  “Back it up, Gerald,” Jeremy warns.

  Gerald returns a lazy, apathetic I-just-wanted-to-play shrug.

  I bet he did.

  I shift my attention away, but where it lands offers no deliverance. There’s a guy standing toward the back of his room. I know this because, through the window, I can see his head. Not the one on his shoulders—the other one.

  “Put it away. Right now,” Jeremy scolds.

  The patient walks to his window, and I realize it’s Nicholas Hartley, revealing his rawboned face and a trembling mouth not indicative of fear.

  All up and down the hall, more screams, more laughter, more indeterminate noise.

  “An interesting group of patients here,” Jeremy comments with a single, downward nod.

  “I’m mostly concerned about the one at the end of this trip,” I say.

  Jeremy holds silent.

  “Come on,” Adam says, “help us out here. What exactly are we walking into?”

  “I’d prefer to let you decide.”

  A response equivalent to nothing.

  We proceed to the end of Alpha Twelve’s barrel-vaulted hallway, where an antiquated fixture hangs by a dusty chain, throwing dingy light against the last door on the left. Evan McKinley, one of Loveland’s uniformed police officers, stands guard out front. Members of the security staff are normally charged with keeping watch over our more challenging patients, but seeing Evan here underscores the importance of this case: the hospital isn’t leaving anything to risk.

  A nerve-shattering scream goes off inside the room.

  McKinley and I lock gazes, and from his, I get the message: You’ve got a live one in there.

  Adam looks at the door. “But we haven’t even had a chance to see the patient’s files yet.”

  “You’ll get full access to them,” Jeremy says. “For now, I’ve provided most of what you’ll need.”

  “And the rest?”

  A guttural yowl, then the sound of rapid-fire chain rattling. Then a bed skidding and squealing along the floor, followed by more screams.

  “It’s all waiting for you in there,” Jeremy says.

  He turns and walks away.

  2

  Evan McKinley peers through the window and into the room, then flashes what might be a mild smirk . . . or maybe I’m just imagining it.
He takes a key ring from his uniform belt, unlocks the door, and motions for us to enter.

  The moment we step inside, my focus locks onto Donny Ray Smith, but I’m still not quite sure what I’m seeing. I was expecting a monster; instead, this guy looks like he was sent here by Central Casting rather than by another psychiatric hospital. It would appear he wandered onto the wrong set, though, because our new patient in no way fits the role of a serial killer. Striking is the word of the day, and he owns it. With his well-defined physique, jet-black hair, and sculpted jawline, Donny Ray Smith could have leaped from the page of an Abercrombie ad.

  A child killer? He’s nothing more than a kid himself.

  Barely into his twenties, is my guess.

  Lying in bed, Donny Ray blinks a few times, then looks down at himself to examine the Posey Net that covers his entire body. Arms, neck, and legs pulled through the openings. Ankles and wrists secured with loop straps. He’s sweating, trembling with fear.

  Refusing to look at us.

  Adam says nothing, but I instantly sense he isn’t buying into Donny Ray’s fright—not that I am, either. Experience has taught me that psychopaths are quick-change artists who can conform to any shape imaginable. I don’t yet know if that’s what we’re dealing with here, but I’m mindful of the possibility.

  Adam and I step forward, and Donny Ray lurches back against the bed, hands clenching the guardrails, biceps flexing, breaths speeding. His restraints clatter; perspiration slides from sodden bangs down the bridge of his nose.

  “Why am I being restrained?” he shouts through pallid lips, and I hear his thick southern drawl.

  “You’ve been deemed a danger to yourself and others,” I explain.

  Donny Ray releases an angry howl and tries to jerk himself free; the bed rattles, squeaks, and shimmies. Recognizing his efforts as futile, he lets out a tiny, helpless moan.

  “You’re the behavioral guy,” Adam mutters to me. “Have at it.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell Donny Ray Smith, keeping my body still and my voice level. “Nobody’s here to cause you any harm.”

  A low and inarticulate plea escapes through chattering teeth.

  I wait in silence and watch him, my passivity allowing an opportunity for trust. A few moments later, his breath slows and his jaw relaxes, but he still refuses to look at us.