Loonies (28 page)

“Did you want to do anything else?”

Dudle paused, showing a slight smile and even a bit of a twinkle in his eye. “Of course. We all have dreams, don’t we?” He winked at Brian. “But sometimes our paths are laid out before us and there’s no opportunity to veer.”

He went into the kitchen and Brian followed.

“You said you had something to show me?” Brian said.

Dudle turned to face him. “I think you will find it interesting. But first, I need to wash up.” He held up his sooty palms before going over to the kitchen sink and scrubbing up.

“That’s how I figured it was you,” Brian said. “The soot. There were smudge marks on your notes. At first I thought they were ink smears. But then I saw the same marks on the flier you handed me at the festival. That’s when I knew.”

Dudle dried his hands on a dish towel hanging. “It’s hard in this profession to keep clean.” He approached Brian and held up his hands, backs toward him. “See my nails?”

Brian examined them. Black lines showed beneath each fingernail.

“I haven’t been able to keep my hands completely clean in years. I just accept it. Maybe it’s why I never got married. Who’d want to hold hands with these?” He winked again and smiled.

Brian laughed. He liked this guy. His cheery attitude reminded him of Noah Treece’s, but was more jovial.

“So what do you want to show me?”

“Right this way,” Dudle said, leading him to a door. He opened it, revealing stairs descending into the basement. Dudle flicked a light switch at the top and extended his hand. “After you.”

Brian looked at the smiling sweep, and a horrible thought came to him. He was alone with a man he didn’t know, a man who had sent anonymous notes with information few other people had. Brian had a sudden thought that maybe he had willingly walked into a trap. Did this smiling, kind man hold the darkest secret yet?

No one knew he was here. Sure, he had left Darcie a note, but who knew when she’d be home to see it. Now this man was directing him down into his basement. Brian had often wondered if the killer himself had been sending those notes. It wouldn’t be the first time a madman had toyed with a local newspaper. Jack the Ripper wrote to the press, taunting them. Countless other killers had done the same.

What were you thinking? Go down those stairs, and they may be the last steps you take. And who would suspect the smiling chimney sweep who lived alone and minded his own business, who had no girlfriends and sat alone at the bar? Damn you, Brian. You have a baby on the way.

“Don’t be afraid,” Dudle said, the smile diminishing, as if he understood what was going on in Brian’s brain. “I promise you it will be worth your while.”

What was in that basement? Maybe there was some clue that would piece this whole puzzle together. That was something the reporter in him couldn’t resist. “Sure,” he said. Just be on your guard. “After you.”

Dudle’s smile widened. “Of course. But I want to make it clear, that whatever I tell you and show you is—what is it you say in the business—‘off the record.’”

Brian hated that. What was the point of telling him anything if he couldn’t use it? But he was tempted by what this man wanted to show him, so he reluctantly agreed.

Dudle started down and Brian followed.

At the bottom, the sweep led him through a door on the right and flicked another light switch. Florescent bulbs illuminated the front half of the room. It helped ease whatever creepy vibes Brian felt. The other half of the room was still shadowed.

A large bookcase stood on his right. The top shelves were jammed with paperback novels, the bindings cracked and yellowed. From the titles, they were mostly murder and detective stories. The lower shelves were filled with piles of pulp fiction and detective magazines. They too were old. The covers depicted scantily clad women in immediate danger.

That was not a good sign.

“I’m a big fan of pulp stories.”

“The Silhouette?”

Now Dudle dipped his head and his face grew flushed. “Too corny?” He laughed. “Most of those I also inherited from my father,” he said, pointing at the bookcase. “I would devour all those detective novels and pulp-hero mags. I loved them. Maybe it was an escape.”

“From what?”

Dudle shrugged. “You asked me if I ever thought of another career. Well, there it is.” He pointed at the magazines. “I wanted to be a pulp hero. The Spider, The Phantom, Secret Agent X, The Black Bat. I loved them all. I wanted to be like one of them.”

Brian nodded. “So you became The Silhouette.”

Dudle nodded. “It seemed appropriate, considering the logo on my van. Not to mention that I’m usually covered in soot.” He paused. “Besides, people in town don’t generally see me anyway.”

Brian watched the smile disappear and sensed the man’s loneliness.

“So you’re trying to be a crime-solver.”

The smile was back. “Let me tell you one of the nuances of my curious occupation. Chimneys have a unique way of funneling sound, specifically voices. When I’m on someone’s roof, leaning over the chimney, it’s like being on the other end of a telephone. And not just chimneys…duct vents too. I can hear people’s conversations. Not always every word, but enough to understand what they are talking about.”

Brian was fascinated. “What did you hear?”

“Thirty years ago, I was cleaning the chimney on the church rectory, the one for Father Scrimsher’s front parlor. He had a visitor that day. The priest had asked the man to stop by to discuss something important.”

“Who was it?”

Dudle smiled. “Dr. Wymbs.” The chimney sweep paused for a reaction, his eyes and smile showing he was pleased by the results. “Father Scrimsher told the doctor that he had had a recent visitor in the confessional, someone who had been a patient at the Wymbs Institute. Apparently the man told him that he had been treated as a patient for some time, and that the doctor had eventually released him.”

Brian was hanging on every word. It didn’t even occur to him to take notes. He doubted he would have trouble remembering what the chimney sweep was telling him.

“Upon his release, this man felt the need to confess the acts he had committed before he had sought treatment at the Mustard House.” Dudle ran his tongue along his upper lip. “Father Scrimsher told Dr. Wymbs that the man confessed to being The Pillowcase.”

The revelation came like a blow. “The Pillowcase?”

Dudle nodded.

“Who was it?”

“They never mentioned the name.”

Brian’s excitement dimmed. “And Dr. Wymbs released him?”

“Over thirty years ago.”

“Why would Wymbs do that?”

“Why indeed?” Dudle said. “Maybe he figured he’d cured the man.”

Brian tried to assimilate this in his mind, but it was confusing. “How did Wymbs react to this?”

“He got very agitated,” Dudle said. “I could hear him pacing in the room, stuttering as he tried to explain his methods.”

“And?”

“I don’t think Father Scrimsher was concerned about that. The Pillowcase had confessed his sins, and the priest absolved him of his wicked deeds.”

“Then what did Scrimsher want, if not to turn the man in?”

“What’s said in the confessional is sacred. He couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Then what did he want from Dr. Wymbs.”

Dudle took a deep breath. “He assured Wymbs that he would keep the secret safe. But he wanted a favor in return.”

“A favor? What kind of favor?” Brian’s palms were sweaty and he had a sudden urge for a cigarette, but he figured a man who spent every day around soot and ashes would not appreciate him lighting one up.

Dudle frowned. “At that point, unfortunately, their voices got very low, and I wasn’t able to hear much more. But whatever it was, the doctor agreed.”

“What choice did he have?” Brian said. “Let it be known he let a serial killer free in the town?”

“Whatever Scrimsher wanted,” Dudle said, “it was mutually beneficial.”

“And what did you do?”

Corwin Dudle threw his head back and laughed. It was a giddy sound. “That was when I decided my amateur sleuthing career would begin.”

“So you became The Silhouette.”

“My first case was to try to discover the identity of The Pillowcase.”

“And what have you found out?” Brian asked.

“That’s what I brought you here to show you.” Dudle moved to the side wall near the darkened back half of the room and flicked another light switch. A row of ceiling lights came on, lighting up the back wall.

Brian stood in stunned silence, staring.

“Welcome to Loonyville.”

Brian opened his mouth but couldn’t find anything to say. His eyes were too busy taking in the wall. A crude map of Smokey Hollow had been drawn on the wall in black marker. Photographs and newspaper clippings were taped all over the map, and notes and comments, names and dates were scribbled on it.

“What the hell am I looking at, Corwin?” There was a small desk and chair before the wall, facing it. On the desk were stacks of notebooks.

“This is thirty years of investigating,” Dudle said. He pointed to the chair, and Brian took a seat. “Everything I’ve been able to uncover, decipher, overhear, and research.”

Brian scanned the wall, his eyes jumping from spot to spot. It almost made him dizzy. He wasn’t sure what to focus on. It was a big, jumbled jigsaw puzzle, and he couldn’t make out the picture.

Dudle stepped to the wall. “I started with this,” he said, pointing to a photo of the Mustard House. A picture of Dr. Wymbs was next to it, along with some newspaper clippings. One article was about the opening of the institute, the other was Brian’s article about its destruction by fire.

“Do you know why there were no patients at the Mustard House?” Dudle asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because they had all been released. Not at once, but over time Wymbs released the patients into society. I guess it would be more accurate to say he re-introduced them into society. Just like with The Pillowcase, he felt that he had treated their disorders sufficiently that they no longer needed to be institutionalized.” He stepped back and spread his hands, encompassing the map. “So they all became productive citizens of Smokey Hollow.”

“That’s what you meant by your note, about the secret of Smokey Hollow.”

“Yes,” Dudle said, nodding. “Sorry to be so melodramatic. Once I slipped into my role of The Silhouette, it was hard not to be. Too many years of reading bad purple-pulp prose.”

“How many?” Brian asked. “How many patients are there in town?”

Dudle scratched his chin. “Hard to say. That’s been one of my tasks all these years, documenting and tracking as many as possible. But figure this. The institute had a capacity of twenty-four patients. It was open for forty years. Of course, some patients spent many years there, but even if the average stay was around five years, that would amount to about two-hundred patients.”

“And if their stay was less than five years?”

“That number would be a lot higher.”

“Oh my god.”

“That doesn’t mean that all the patients stayed in Smokey Hollow, but many did.”

Brian remembered something. “When I met with Dr. Wymbs, he told me the patients were harmless.”

Dudle thought about this. “That’s what I meant when I said Dr. Wymbs lied. Obviously. He treated The Pillowcase, a mass murderer. He kept that secret. Who knows if his staff even knew about it. And he saw fit to release the man. How many other dangerous patients sought treatment there?”

“Have you found any others?”

“Dangerous? Some. But certainly there are others who weren’t ready to be reinserted into society, though the good doctor thought otherwise. Assistant Fire Chief Simon Runck, for example.”

“He’s an arsonist. That’s pretty dangerous.” A picture of Runck was tacked on the wall next to the spot on the map that marked the firehouse. Near it was the article Brian wrote about the firefighter’s visit to the elementary school with his ventriloquist dummy.

“And more than being a firebug, he was schizophrenic.”

Brian remembered the day he had interviewed Runck at the county jail. “He believed Marshall was alive.”

“Yes. And blames him for setting the fire at the Mustard House.”

“Who are the others?” Brian asked, looking back at the map and the  photos of people he recognized.

“Jonas Fitchen,” Dudle said, pointing to the picture of the man next to the location of the taxidermy shop. “You saw what’s wrong with him at the Dump Festival.”

Brian nodded.

“He has a condition known as objective sexuality, where people become obsessed with an inanimate object. I once researched a story of a woman who married a Ferris wheel.” Dudle pointed to the Wigland shop downtown. “Ivy Mockler.” There was a photo of the woman with blond, curly hair. “You’ve probably noticed she wears the wigs from her shop.”

“I’ve seen that.”

“That’s because she’s bald. Trichotillomania, it’s called, an irresistible urge to pull the hair out of your scalp. She suffered from it so long that her hair never grew back.” Dudle stepped over to another spot on the wall. “You’ve been here.”

There was a picture of the rooming house on Cheshire Road, with small photos of several men beside it. “Yes.”

“I call this place the ‘Loony Bin,’” Dudle said, and in fact those words were scrawled above the photo of the building. “There are quite a few former Mustard House patients who live there. Sherman Thurk, who’s a sleepwalker.”

“The Somnambulist.”

“Correct. And Nyle Potash.” He pointed to the man in glasses who worked at Wibbels’ Fruit Market and Real Estate.

“Fear of heights.”

“Very good.”

Sitting at the desk, Brian felt like a student in class, demonstrating to his teacher that he knew the answers. At least some of them. There were still many more questions.

“Linley Droth, you’ve seen him buzzing around town in his wheelchair. Can you figure out what his condition is?” Dudle waited to see if he knew the answer.

“I don’t know. But it seems like he must have been in some kind of accident or something.”