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.