The Monolith Murders (25 page)

“Oh, you’re the psychologist from the county that Lieutenant Harris called in.”

“Yes, and I can’t believe you have such an emergency that you needed to get me out here this late. I had just gone to bed.”

“Sorry, lady, I don’t make the rules. I’ll escort you to the top floor; that’s where the Dr. Anderson is. Lieutenant Harris wanted to be part of the meeting; I believe he’s on his way. I just called him to report that Dr. Anderson just woke up.”

Lieutenant Harris arrived in a few minutes, and greeted the woman at the entrance to Anderson’s cell. “Thanks so much for responding to my request so quickly.”
 

Anderson was in the back corner of the cell in an unmoving fetal position. His eyes were wide open, but he didn’t seem to be able to relate to what was going on around him.
 

“How long has he been like this?” she asked.

“He was a kidnap victim; he escaped a short time ago from his captors. At the time he was kidnapped, his wife was shot and killed. He is highly fearful that his captors will find him here, so what you are witnessing is his response to all the cumulative negative things that have impacted him in a relatively short time.”

“I see, and you want me to bring him out of his severe emotional state?”

“Yes, we need desperately to interrogate him.”
 

“Well, I’ll do what I can.”

Fred said, “Please take your time; we’ll leave the cell door open for you.”

Harris went over to the guard’s desk located in the middle of the cell block. After about ten minutes, the woman called Fred to the cell. Anderson was now sleeping comfortably in the cell’s cot.

“Great,” Fred said. “He seems much calmer, I’ll wake him and talk to him.”

“No, you can’t,” replied the woman. “I’ve given him a strong sedative; he’ll be out for at least eight hours.”

“Goddamn it, I told you I had to talk to him.”

“And so you shall, but it won’t be until tomorrow morning. This man needs a lot of rest—and so do I. Now let me go home and get back to bed.”
 

Fred posted a guard just outside Anderson’s cell. With Donna’s recently enhanced powers, Fred wasn’t certain that the additional security would provide more than a token defense against her. But for the moment that was the extent of what he could do.
 

Anderson had a restless night; his twilight sleep was sheathed by dreams of Donna entering his cell and pushing him through the tiny slit in the jail wall that substituted for a window. At one point he came just barely awake. He groggily looked outside of his cell bars, and was shocked at what he saw. “She’s here!” he screamed, She’s here!”

The guard went into Anderson’s cell and tried to confront him as a parent would a child who just emerged from a violent nightmare. But Anderson was no child, and he wouldn’t calm down. After about an hour of ranting he moved back to the corner where he had been previously and returned to his protective fetal position.

* * *

The next morning Fred arose early and went to the jail. He was stunned when he saw Anderson. Apparently, he hadn’t rested much; his condition had eroded during the night. He was swaying back and forth, and kept repeating, “Please, Donna, don’t do it. Donna, please don’t do it to me.”

Fred asked the guard, “What the hell happened to him during the night?”

“I have no idea, he just woke up from his sleep and he was immediately frozen with terror.”
 

Fred thought he knew the answer, but asked it anyway, “Did he have any visitors during the night?”

“No, the only people that were in the area were the police.”

Fred entered the cell, “Dr. Anderson, can you hear me?”

Anderson continued to repeat the words, “Donna, don’t do it.”

“Lieutenant, do you want me to send him to the state psychiatric hospital?”

“No, his life is in danger; he needs protection and we can’t effectively protect him while he’s in the hospital.

“Instead,” Fred said, “let’s get the damn psychologist—Dr. Kies—who treated him here last night over here again.”

“Okay, but he seems out of it to me.”

Dr. Kies arrived in less than an hour. Fred was at the elevator waiting when the door opened.
 

“Please hurry,” he said, “he’s in the same cell that you saw him in last night.”

As the psychologist looked through the cell bars, seeing him tightly holding himself in a fetal position, she became livid. “What did you do to him, beat him?”

“Hey, nobody touched him; besides he’s not a prisoner, he’s in protective custody. And for your information, we don’t beat prisoners, either.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can but we have to move him to the hospital; he seems much worse than he was when I saw him last night.”

“Miss,” Fred said, “you have to understand that we would love to move him to a hospital for more intensive care, but the truth is we can’t do it. You must have read about Donna Lang, the mass murderer who recently escaped from prison? Well, we believe she’s after him, and she has resources we don’t begin to have. If we sent him to a hospital, we would be sending him to a death sentence.

“Now, what you have to do is give him something that would at least temporarily let him recover to the degree he can talk to us. If he talks to us, we may be able to get information that will help us get Lang.”

“I must object, he should go to a hospital. But I’ll give him a tranquilizer that should calm him down in the short run. But I will not be responsible for what will happen if he doesn’t go straight to a hospital.”

In a few minutes after getting the shot, Anderson loosened his grip around his body. His head slowly stopped its irregular movement. Fred and the psychologist helped him to his cell cot.
 

Fred asked, “Dr. Anderson, can you talk to us?”

Anderson said, “You must take me out of here to a place where it’s safe.”

Fred said, biting his lip, “You’re as safe here as you will be anywhere.”

“No! No! I want to go to AU. Big Don will protect me there.”

Fred said, “Big Don can’t protect you any more than we can.”

Anderson grabbed his knees, bringing them up to his chest, and kept repeating, “Don can protect me; Donna was here last night.”

Fred turned to the psychologist, “What’s the hell’s going on with him?”
 

“He’s experiencing extreme mental trauma; he has regressed to a childlike state.”
 

“Do you think if we complied with his request he would become more responsive?”

“Who knows, it’s entirely possible. It seems that whoever big Don is, he has confidence in him; and whatever AU is, he considers that a safe haven.”

“But it’s no safer than here; in fact it’s less safe.”

“Maybe in reality, but in his mind that’s not true. You keep forgetting that you’re not dealing with a lucid professional person anymore.”

“Okay, Doctor Anderson,” said Fred. “We will take you to AU and we’ll call Don to make sure he’s there. Do you think you’ll be able to talk to us then?”

At that moment Fred’s cell phone rang.

It was one of the policemen who was assigned to locate the owner of the trailer park where Anderson had been kept captive.

“Yes, what is it?” Fred asked.

“I located the owner of the park, he lives in Venice. Do you want to talk with him?”

“Sure do, give me his address and I’ll go there right away.”

Fred had hopes that the owner might be able to shed some light on Donna’s activities in the period since she escaped from prison. At least the owner would be coherent; there was no telling when Anderson would be able to fully communicate.

Fred turned to Anderson, “Why do you think you will be safer in the AU building than here?”

“Donna was here, but Donna’s not in AU; big Don will protect me from Donna.”

Anderson’s comment didn’t make a lot of sense to Fred, but apparently Anderson had gained some respect for Don as a person during the time they were both employed by AU. It was obvious that he also respected his massive size. Fred reasoned that Anderson’s clarity of thought had been temporarily clouded; but in his present child-like state it appeared that he had plucked out select details from his past that gave him a sense of security, as unrealistic as they might be.

Fred contacted a patrolman at the station to pick up Anderson from the jail cell and take him directly to AU. Fred’s next call was to AU. Fortunately, Don was on duty. Fred advised Don that in a few minutes Dr. Anderson would be arriving. Fred briefed him on Anderson’s mental state and said, “Go easy with him; just let him talk; and realize he is not the professional Dr. Anderson that you knew when he was working there.”

Fred wanted to be at AU when Anderson was dropped off, but he decided that he would go there right after the interview with the trailer park’s owner. He felt that Anderson might need a short time to adjust to the surroundings that he was familiar with and felt secure in.

Chapter 41

Venice was a short twenty minute drive from Sarasota. The daytime air was cool, almost cold. Fred decided to take his top down, but also turn on his heater to remove the chill from the moving air. People who don’t drive convertibles would never understand this, he thought. But there was no reason not to mix a little pleasure with a lot of business, even if it involved mixing a little cold with a modicum of warmth. Route 41 was busy this time of the tourist season as Fred headed south. By continuously maneuvering his little sports car around the traffic, he arrived on the small island of Venice in record time.
 

The patrolman who had called Fred was parked outside of the house waiting.
 

Buzz Stickney was the park’s owner. It was obvious that he had feared that he violated some city ordinance , and believed that was why the cops wanted to see him. No one had told him why they wanted to interview him and that made him even more nervous.
 

“You have to understand,” he began, “my trailer park has been on the market for over six months, and I rarely get up there to check it out. So if anyone has created any problem, you can’t hold me responsible for it.”
 

Fred said, “That’s not why we’re here. You rented trailer 5 to a woman and man, who are both fugitives from the law. Do you recall when you rented the trailer, and any conversation that you had with them at the time?”
 

“Officer, I never would have rented to them had I known they were criminals. I’m a law abiding citizen, yes I am, and you can ask Sara my wife about that.” The woman standing behind Stickney’s chair was nodding her head.

“Look I’m not accusing you of anything. We just want to know about the details of the rental, if you had noticed anything strange—any information at all that might be helpful to us.”

The man took a deep breath, obviously relieved. “Their trailer was the last one I rented. Because I’m selling the park, I didn’t want to complicate any future sale of the park by having tenants in the park with an active contract that extended beyond my projected settlement date. But she told me that they would be out of there in a month. I knew there was no way I could sell the park and settle in that short a period of time, so I agreed. It would also provide me with a little transitional money since I’m no longer active in the rental business.”

Fred asked, “Can you remember anything about the people who rented it?”
 

“Sure, except it wasn’t people, it was one woman. She was in her mid- 30s, perhaps a little older. She wore a cap and had on black shorts, and oh, yes, she was very small.” He gestured to Fred showing him that she only came up to the bottom of his neck. “She said there would be another woman and a man joining her. One was her sister, I believe she told me, and the other her husband. The woman signed a rental contract; I have it in my office.”
 

“We’ll need to take that with us; we’ll return it.”

“Yes sir, no problem.”

“Anything else, anything at all that you can remember?”

“No, as I told you in the beginning, I was rarely in the park. We had one other renter who was scheduled to vacate a few days ago. Other than that, the park has been deserted.”

“Did you ever see the other woman and the man?”

“Nope, never did. The woman paid the rent for the month in cash when she signed the contract. I also took a month’s security deposit. Even though she was just staying a month, she didn’t object to paying a security deposit. She didn’t argue over anything—a real nice lady.”
 

“I think you’re safe in keeping that security deposit. They won’t return, and I’m sure you won’t be sued for its return. What kind of car was she driving?”

“I really didn’t get a good look at it, red I believe, but I have no idea of the year or the make. To me, all the cars since the 80’s look alike.”

“OK, thanks; and if you can think of anything else, give me a call anytime, night or day. Give me the rental contract and we’ll be on our way.”

As they left, the patrolman asked Fred if he had gotten anything out of the conversation.