“I’m sorry, Sarah…uh…Mrs. Lincoln. I just wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s okay.” Sarah turned away and stared at the television anchored to the wall in the corner of the room. There was a cooking show on with some chef making deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos. Sarah didn’t feel the least bit hungry and all the fried junk food flashing across the screen was making her nauseated. She knew Detective Torres hadn’t been trying to deliberately offend her but he had nonetheless. She tried her best not to stereotype him as a typical macho, chauvinistic Latino man but she had her prejudices no matter how
liberal and enlightened she considered herself to be and guys like Mike Torres brought them all to the fore.
The three of them sat there in a tense, uncomfortable silence. Sarah turned to Detective Malcovich.
“Harry? When we’re done here, can you take me to see Dorothy Madigan?”
The detective turned to look at Sarah.
“Why?”
“I just need to see her. I need to speak to her. I want her to know that I believe her.”
“You’re right. We should go. Okay, I’ll take you. You sure you want to go right now? We can wait until tomorrow.”
“I think I should see her now. I think…for my sanity too.”
“Okay. We’ll go.”
Josh walked out looking shell-shocked. Sarah rushed over to her husband and wrapped her arms around him. They called Harry in next.
“Oh great. I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this. I’m going to kill this fucker when I catch him.”
He walked to the examination room, grumbling the entire way. Detective Lassiter turned to walk in behind him and he stopped her.
“You must be crazy. Go sit down, Trina. I can hold my own hand. You too,” he said to the rape counselor. He walked into the room with the nurse, leaving Trina and the counselor out in the hallway.
Sarah looked up at her husband.
“Is everything okay?”
“They’ll have the lab tests back tomorrow but they didn’t find any evidence of rape. Not that that means anything. They didn’t find any tearing or abrasions on you either. But the detective said that she didn’t see
anything that looked like semen on the swabs, but you never know until the lab results come back.”
“I asked Harry to take me to see Dorothy Madigan, the woman who Dale raped before me, the one who set herself on fire.”
“Jesus. Why? I mean, are you sure?”
“I think I have to. I want to hear what he did to her. I want to tell her what he did to me. I want her to know that I believe her. And I want to make her a promise.”
“A promise?”
“I want to promise her that I won’t let Dale hurt anyone else like he hurt us. I want to promise her that I’m going to stop him.”
The Nevada Mental Health Institute was a drab gray building with dash stucco walls, large bronze tinted windows and an eight-foot sculpture out front that looked like a cross between a brain and a solar system made out of aluminum and stainless steel. The institute sat across from Sunset Hospital on Eastern Avenue, and Sarah must have driven past it more than a dozen times since she’d lived in Las Vegas without ever realizing it was there.
It was nearly the size of the hospital itself and was surrounded by a small private park for the residents with walking paths, a bocce ball court, and even a tennis court. The parking lot in front of the building was cracked and spalling, with weeds growing up through the fissures. There were only a handful of cars in the lot, including an ambulance parked in the red fire-zone directly in front of the building. If it wasn’t for the beautifully maintained lawn surrounding the back of the building it would have looked like yet another foreclosed property.
Sarah and her husband parked their Saturn directly in front of the building next to the detectives’ vehicles. She was surprised when Trina and Torres stepped out of their car and began walking toward the building with Harry.
“We’re all going in?”
“Yeah, I want to hear her story. Try to make some sense of what’s going on. I still can’t believe this,” Detective Lassiter said.
“I damn sure don’t believe it,” Detective Torres offered.
“Don’t tell Dorothy that. We’re here to let her know that she’s not crazy, not to put even more doubts in her head.”
They all walked into the building together. Sarah held Josh’s hand tightly. He was still shaken after his exam and Sarah felt like he needed her strength, whatever little strength she had left.
Harry flashed his badge at the receptionist and asked to see Dorothy Madigan. Trina and Detective Torres flashed their shields as well. The obese woman behind the receptionist desk asked them all to sign in and then gave them visitor’s passes.
“Room 511. I’ll let the nurses know to expect you.”
The building looked and smelled just like a hospital except everything that would have been white in a regular hospital was either pale gray or sky blue. Sarah supposed the colors were meant to have a calming effect. She just found them depressing.
When Sarah and her entourage arrived on the second floor the sky blue theme grew increasingly dominant, replacing the gray almost entirely. Even the nurses’ uniforms were blue or green. An orderly the size of an NFL linebacker walked by carrying a mop and a bucket and even he was wearing light blue. He looked like a Smurf on steroids.
Sarah had imagined that all the patients would be locked in their rooms, maybe strapped into straitjackets but most of the doors were open and patients lingered
here and there in the halls or wandered aimlessly. The few doors that were shut were not locked and Sarah jumped as a door flew open and one of the patients, an old man in his late sixties or early seventies, scurried past her mumbling to himself and scratching the flaking skin on his bald, crinkled scalp.
“Detectives?” Another overweight nurse, this one wearing light green hospital scrubs instead of the traditional nursing uniform, approached and began shaking hands even before she’d introduced herself. She was young and pretty, the kind of pretty that would have been gorgeous minus forty or fifty pounds. Sarah wondered how anyone in the health-care field could allow their own body to fall into such disrepair, but obesity seemed to be an occupational habit in this profession. She shook the woman’s hand and smiled, chiding herself for her cattiness.
“I’m Alice Douglass. I’m Dorothy’s nurse. She’s in the common area right now watching television with some of our other guests.”
“Guests” was apparently the PC term for patients.
The nurse shook Detective Torres’s hand and he practically drooled all over himself. His smile was wider and more genuine than any Sarah had ever seen on his face since making his acquaintance. He obviously liked big girls.
“Detective Mike Torres, ma’am.” He held on to her hand a moment longer than necessary and then winked at her when he released it. She smiled and blushed and when she turned around to lead them to Dorothy Madigan she put a little extra swish in her hips. Sarah looked over at Detective Lassiter and they both rolled their eyes.
Sarah, Josh, and the detectives all marched down the hall following the nurse who was still walking with a pronounced switch in her hips that sent ripples through her formidably sized buttocks. Detective Torres was smiling like he’d just hit the Megabucks jackpot.
They walked into the dayroom and the plump nurse escorted them to a woman with long dark hair sitting in the corner of the room watching a game of chess and a soap opera on the big-screen TV in the center of the room simultaneously. As they approached the woman, Sarah began to make out more of her features, or what was left of them. The pallid, mottled skin on her face and neck was wrinkled and shriveled like the skin of a raisin. Her lips had been completely burned off and despite the best attempts of a plastic surgeon to rebuild them, her mouth was still little more than a gash in her face. Her nose had nearly melted away, leaving two small holes in the center of her face where her nostrils had been, giving her an almost reptilian appearance. Both of her ears were all but gone, merely shriveled flaps of skin and cartilage above her ear canals, which were now just two holes in the side of her head. Her arms and hands had likewise shriveled under the same intense heat that had taken her facial features. Her hands were gnarled like crow’s feet and her left hand was missing all but two fingers. Sarah remembered the beautiful woman she had seen in the picture Harry kept in his pocket. That woman was completely gone now.
“Dorothy? These people are from the police department. They’re here to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”
Dorothy looked them over. She paused first at Harry, giving him a wan smile and a nod. Then she stared at Sarah, looking her over from head to toe. Even with so much of her face destroyed, Sarah could see the distress in Dorothy’s expression. The woman turned back to look at Harry with eyes filling rapidly with tears.
“He’s at it again isn’t he? He’s doing it to her? Now do you believe me?”
Her voice was surprisingly calm and level. Not the disjointed, semiarticulate rant she had been expecting. Her voice was low and raspy as if she’d been smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey for decades. It didn’t match the woman Sarah had seen in the photograph. It was a sultry, bluesy voice, incongruous with the tragically disfigured woman sitting in the dayroom of a mental hospital.
“I’m sorry, Dorothy. I wanted to believe you. You know that. I tried to keep the case open as long as I could.”
“I know, Harry. You were great even after this.”
She gestured toward the scars on her face and the countless more hidden beneath her clothing. Sarah knelt beside Dorothy’s chair and stuck out her hand.
“My name is Sarah Lincoln. Dale McCarthy lives across the street from me. He’s been breaking into my home every night since he moved in and raping and murdering me and my husband, Josh. We’re going to catch him and we’re going to kill him.”
Dorothy stared down at Sarah’s hand and reached out for it with her good hand.
She shook hands firmly, then looked up at the other two detectives.
“Who are they?”
“Detectives Trina Lassiter and Mike Torres.”
“Detectives? Why? How? How did you make them believe?”
“I have a video.”
The woman’s eyes widened.
“You-you have a video? I want to see it. Can I see it? What’s on it?”
“It shows Dale breaking into their house, clubbing Sarah and Josh in the head with a hammer, raping them both, and then stabbing them both to death. Then he apparently resuscitated them both or resurrected them.”
“Both of you?”
Dorothy looked at Josh, who looked away.
“How? I mean, how did he bring them back to life? How does he do it?”
“He breathed into their mouths like he was doing pulmonary resuscitation, mouth-to-mouth, and they both just healed up. Their wounds went away and they were alive again.”
“You have that on tape? All of it?”
“Yes. It’s all on tape.”
“But he got away. He’s still out there?”
“Yes.”
“So, why are you here then? He’s not here is he?”
Dorothy looked around. Her eyes widened in panic and she tried to lift herself from her chair. Harry put his hand on her shoulder and eased her back into her chair.
“No. He’s not here. I just wanted you to know that I was wrong and that I’m sorry and I’m going to make it right. I’m going to catch him. I’m going to finally put a stop to this.”
“Can I ask you a question, Dorothy?”
Dorothy looked down at Sarah, who was still crouched beside her chair.
“Yes?”
“What did he do to you?”
“I don’t remember. I can’t remember hardly any of it. I would wake up with these pictures in my head, these terrible images of being raped, being stabbed, being skinned alive. Then they would just go away and I wouldn’t be able to remember anything. I would walk around all day feeling violated and wounded but not knowing why. I was terrified, especially when I would see Dale at work. Then I started keeping a dream diary. I would write down everything I could remember as soon as I woke up. Some of the things were…they were just unimaginable. I would have never thought anyone capable…it was inhuman some of the things I dreamed. Then one night I put a tape recorder under my bed and I caught it all on tape. It was just the audio but I had written it down that morning too. I wrote that he had skinned me alive and that’s what I heard on the tape. I heard myself screaming, I heard the sound of flesh and skin tearing. And I heard him laughing.”
Sarah didn’t know what to say. She didn’t think anything could have been worse than what she’d seen on that tape but the tape had been silent. She couldn’t imagine what it must have sounded like. She couldn’t imagine hearing herself being skinned alive and remembering it.
“That’s terrible. My God.”
“It’s in the past now. Or at least it was until you five walked in here.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to make you relive all of that.”
“Like I said, it’s all in the past now.”
Sarah wondered if she should ask the next question. She tried to think of how to phrase it or if she should ask it all. She knew that it would worry her if she didn’t.
“Do you mind if I ask you one more question?”
Dorothy looked fearful. She was still recomposing herself from the last question. She took a long, deep breath and blew it out slowly.
“Okay, go ahead.”
Sarah picked her words carefully.
“You just…you sound so sane. I mean, you don’t sound…you don’t seem, you know, mentally disturbed. Why are you here? Why did you do this to yourself?”
Dorothy turned away. She looked down at her fingers, then drew her hands up into the sleeves of her robe and looked over at the TV, where a clip of Barack Obama was on talking about economic recovery.
“Was it because I didn’t believe you?” Harry asked. “Did you have some sort of nervous breakdown or something?”
Dorothy shook her head. Tears began to run down her face, traveling the maze of crinkled skin to the corner of her mouth.
“I didn’t want him to touch me again. I figured I would either die or look like this. Either way he’d never touch me again. I was right. I haven’t seen him since.”