Color Blind (30 page)

“Did you treat him the entire time he was at Pilgrim State?”

“Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. Yes, as I said, for almost a year.”

“They’re one and the same, aren’t they?”

“I can see by the look on your face, Ms. McKinnon, that you know something of the facility’s history. I’ll admit it has had its share of controversy, but it is not the same place it was thirty or forty years ago.”

“Good to hear,” said Kate. “From your paper, Doctor, it was unclear whether or not Tony T responded to treatment.”

“I wish I could tell you he did.” She shook her head. “Unfortunately, he was quite resistant to most psychotropic medications.” Schiller ran her hands over the arms of her chair. “I’m not necessarily a proponent of ECT, but it was not entirely up to me—there were several other doctors seeing him, and they believed it would be beneficial.”

“ECT?”

“Electroshock therapy.”

Of course.
How could she forget? “I didn’t know it was used anymore.”

“Oh, yes. ECT is quite respectable these days. There are over one hundred thousand patients being treated with ECT as we speak. I realize the public has formed its views from movies like
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
but it’s not at all the barbaric method they used in the old days.”

Kate had not formed her opinion through movies, though she did not want to discuss it with Dr. Schiller, despite the fact that the woman was intelligent and compassionate.

“I can assure you that ECT has come a long way from Nurse Ratchett,” said Schiller. “Patients are no longer shackled to gurneys, and they receive anesthetics and muscle relaxers, their heart rates are carefully monitored. It’s really quite civilized.”

“A jolt of electricity to the brain?” Kate let go of a breath, and her bad memories along with it. “Sorry, but it still sounds barbaric to me.”

“Well, you’re not entirely alone in that belief.” Schiller sighed. “As I said, I’m not exactly a fan of ECT, though many consider it a clean and efficient way to help a severely depressed or suicidal patient when medication fails.”

“And Tony T, did he respond?”

“Well, it appeared to quiet the voices and subdue his rage, at least temporarily, but it didn’t last. I can’t say it was successful, no.”

“And he disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“He just walked out?”

“He was not put in Pilgrim Psychiatric Center as a criminal, Ms. McKinnon. Tony T had committed no crime. Not yet.” She took a small quick breath. “There were plans to move him to another, more secure facility, but he disappeared before that ever happened. Believe me, he would certainly not have been released on his own. For one thing, he was still a minor.” Dr. Schiller shifted her weight in her chair and demurely pulled her skirt over her knees. “After he vanished there was simply no way to trace him. We had no records. No birth certificate. No relatives that we knew, or that he ever spoke of.”

“You mentioned the police tried to find him.”

“Unsuccessfully. The only records we had were dental, but the police never found anyone who matched.”

“Why were the police involved?”

“They would have been involved simply to find him, but it was more complicated than that.” Schiller ran a hand through her jet hair, and Kate noticed it was trembling. “A nurse was found murdered the day before he disappeared, horribly mutilated. We had no proof that it was Tony T, but he was the only patient missing—and the killer was never found.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance remember the nurse’s name?”

Schiller tapped her coral fingertips against her chin. “I think it was Linda or, no…Belinda—I’m certain the psychiatric center would have her name on record. I’m sorry. I can’t remember. It’s been ten years.”

“Actually you seem to remember quite a bit.”

She looked into Kate’s eyes. “Some patients you never forget.”

“Dr. Schiller, I told you when I called about the case that has the homicide squad stymied—and why your article so interested me.”

“Yes.”

“I hope I can depend on your discretion.”

“It’s the foundation of my profession, Ms. McKinnon, and I uphold it.”

“I have an idea, a way to possibly flush out our suspect, and I’d like your professional opinion.”

“Of course. If I can help.”

“I was thinking that we might give him a show, an exhibition of his paintings. We have several that have been left at his crime scenes.”

The doctor ran her tongue over her matching coral-colored lipstick. “If you are asking me if the patient I knew, though I can’t say I ever
knew
him, would be susceptible to such a plan, I would think yes. It would be a temptation few—sane or disturbed—could resist.” She locked her eyes on Kate. “But the ones most susceptible, like Tony T, have such brutally damaged egos, they’re often equally paranoid. He would be suspicious. Not to mention, dangerous.”

“Yes.” Kate rapped her pen against her notepad. “Of course I have no way of knowing that the suspect we are after is the same teenager you were treating, but do you think he could still be alive?” Kate did the math. If he was twelve or thirteen when he entered Pilgrim State, he’d be thirteen or fourteen when he escaped, making him twenty-three or -four now.

“I have no idea, but…”Dr. Schiller glanced back out the window, and sighed. “I would say his survival skills were extremely keen. They would have to have been, considering the abuse he’d already sustained.” The therapist rubbed at her arms as if chilled.

Kate thought a moment. “You mentioned that he was always trying to guess at colors?”

“Yes. Though, as I said, he was usually wrong. And he’d use names like…” Dr. Schiller glanced up at the ceiling and shut her eyes. “Um, magic mint or mulberry, or…”

“Razzmatazz?” asked Kate.

“Yes,” said the therapist. “Exactly.”

D
r. Warren Weinberg picked a blob of tuna salad off his white lab jacket. “This is what happens when you eat and talk, right?” He offered Kate a bemused smile.

“Believe me,” said Kate. “I don’t have a single blouse without a food stain. I’m sorry to be taking up your time, Doctor.”

“I don’t have any time, so you couldn’t possibly be taking it up.” He laid the sandwich onto his desk, and sighed. “Twenty patients a day to make enough money from those damn HMOs just to keep my office doors open, plus my nights at Roosevelt—”

“That’s where you treated him, right, at Roosevelt Hospital?”

“Yes. I don’t have the records—anything over a year old goes onto microfilm—but I remember him. An unusual case. I had never come across a case of cerebral achromatopsia before—or since. Quite astonishing, really. Total loss of all color sensation.” He closed his eyes a moment. “I was manning the emergency room the night he came in. What a mess. Looked like he’d been in one hell of a brawl.” He picked at the stain left by the tuna. “We did the usual, cleaned him up, a few stitches, I can’t remember that part precisely.”

“What part do you remember—precisely?”

“That we might have sent him home, but he lashed out at a candy striper, a volunteer, sweet girl really, just trying to be nice, distract him while I finished up with his stitches. She said something to him about my blue shirt, that it was unusual for a doctor to be wearing a blue shirt and he went totally ballistic, said it was gray, and she, innocently said, ‘No, it’s blue,’ and he went ape-shit—forgive me—and started swinging at her like a crazy man. I mean, up until that moment we had no idea that his injuries had caused any sort of neural damage.”

“And your shirt, it was blue?”

“Bright blue,” said Weinberg. “We decided to keep him around for a few days, administer a few tests. That’s when we saw what had happened—something had crushed the pathway from the vision center of his brain, rendering him completely color blind. Though he denied it. He was in a severe depression. Even attempted suicide. Slit a wrist.” The doctor pursed his lips.

“Would he have a scar?”

“Oh, yes. A thick one. He used a pair of scissors. Not very neat.” He reached for the tuna sandwich, but stopped. “There were other scars, other than the one on his wrist, and not self-inflicted. We did a complete physical and I can tell you that kid had been beaten, and raped, many times, probably from a very young age.”

Kate winced. “Did you get a family history, any story about the abuse?”

“Not a word. He claimed he had no family, that he remembered nothing—nothing about the accident, not his name, nothing. Complete amnesia. It could have been caused by the blow to his head, but we were never sure. We shipped him off to Pilgrim State. What could we do? There was no adult to claim him, nowhere for him to go. He never told us his age, but he was just a kid, about thirteen, I’d guess, though it was hard to tell.” Dr. Weinberg leaned back in his chair, stared into space a moment. “He was both young for his age, and…old, you know what I mean? Childlike, but cunning, and something too old and too wise about him.” The doctor shook his head.

Just what Dr. Schiller had said.

“There was something off about him, and clearly it wasn’t just because of that blow to his head.”

“Could you describe him?”

“It’s been a long time, but…”Weinberg closed his eyes again. “Tall for his age, and thin. Light hair. Big blue eyes. He looked like one of those teen idols, you know, almost too good-looking, in a feminine sort of way.” The doctor sat forward and regarded Kate with an expression of concern. “You know, I’ve thought about him once or twice, and wondered if he survived.”

K
ate distributed Schiller’s article from the psychiatric journal and updated the squad on her meetings with Drs. Schiller, Weinberg, and Brillstein. She finished up with the murder of the nurse the day before Tony T disappeared from the psychiatric facility, then handed each of them another set of papers. “National Crime Information Center’s report on Belinda MacConnell, RN,” she said. “Murdered and eviscerated in a manner disturbingly similar to our unsub’s ritual.”

“So how do we find a man who has no record of ever existing?” said Tapell.

“FBI can do a search,” said Grange.

“I doubt you’ll find anything,” said Kate. “Not if it’s the same young man. Pilgrim State never got a history. Neither did the police.”

“How then?” asked Tapell.

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Kate regarded the chief of police, then the others. “Suppose we make him come to us.”

“How?” asked Grange.

Kate displayed a crime scene photo from Boyd Werther’s studio—the psycho’s paintings lined up in a neat row. “I think he’s telling us what he wants—his own one-man show. And we can provide it. We have his paintings.”

“I don’t know,” said Tapell. She was thinking about the mayor, how he kept asking her when she was going to catch this guy, as if she could simply say, “Okay, there’s the killer, hanging out on the corner of Lexington and Thirty-first; go get ’im boys”—like she was Wyatt Earp. Tapell sighed. She had better become Wyatt Earp or some other legendary lawman, and soon, or she’d be out of a job, or worse, back in Astoria.

“What then?” asked Kate. “We wait for the next body?”

“It’s a risk,” said Brown.

“Everything’s a risk,” said Kate.

“And what if he doesn’t fall for it?” said Grange.

“Then we haven’t lost anything, have we?”

“Except precious NYPD man-hours,” said Tapell. “And taxpayers’ dollars.”
Which I have to answer for,
she thought, but did not say.

“Look, Clare. Nothing comes with a guarantee. You know that.” Kate pushed her hair behind her ears and noticed that Grange’s eyes took in the move and then quickly focused on something beside her.

Freeman, who had been quietly listening, finally spoke. “It could flush him out, a show of his work.”

“That’s what Dr. Schiller seemed to think,” said Kate. “Let me play the two-minute tape I made for PBS.” She hit the lights and they all stared at her face on the screen, the short announcement of time, location, and dates accompanied by an image of the unsub’s paintings.

“You did this
without
authorization?” said Grange.

“All I have done, Agent Grange, is make a tape and a few phone calls. Whether this will be put into action is not up to me.”

“Where would we do this?” asked Brown.

“I’ve spoken to Herbert Bloom. He has a gallery in Chelsea. He’ll let us use it for two or three days. It’s not a big space, no back door; only egress is from the street.”

“It’s still a full-scale operation,” said Brown. “We can’t go into this without a dozen men inside the gallery, outside, as well.”

“Plus agents,” said Grange. “Though I’m not saying I agree. Not yet.”

“That’s at least two dozen cops over a two-or three-day period.” Tapell was trying to calculate the cost in her head. “And why several days?”

Kate popped the video out of the VCR. “Simply to give him enough time to catch the promo, time to decide he absolutely needs to see the show. If we’re lucky he’ll show up on day one.”

“Big
if,
” said Tapell, though she seemed to be considering it. “It’s completely unorthodox,” said Brown. “And if the press got a hold of it…”

“Well, we wouldn’t send out a press release,” said Kate.

“Since when do they need one?” said Brown.

Tapell was up, pacing. “I’m not saying I agree to this. But Floyd,
if
we were to do it, how long would you need to mobilize the troops?”

“Most of Homicide and half of General has been on standby for the past week. A couple of phone calls, a few meetings. That’s all.” He turned to Kate. “What about the gallery?”

“You’re talking a few hours to tack the paintings up on a wall.”

There was a sudden quickening beat to the air—Grange on his cell, Brown making notes, Tapell pacing back and forth—a collective heart racing that was almost palpable.

“I need to talk to the mayor,” said Tapell, heading quickly toward the door.

“It might just work,” said Brown.

Tapell turned back. “It had better.”