The Betrayed (22 page)

“How?” Sydney asked breathlessly.

“I was one of the first people sent here to carry out the reforms. I was young and idealistic, with a brand-new medical degree and a specialty in psychiatry. I don’t know if I would have chosen to come here under the best of circumstances, but it was still unusual for women to be doctors at the time, and jobs were hard to come by. I’d planned on getting some seasoning here by working with hard cases, and then moving into private practice.” She sighed heavily. “But after we saw what had happened here, I was never able to drag myself away.”

Golden leaned forward in her chair and addressed Sydney directly. “To give you some background, you must remember that the world was changing in 1968, and that meant the entire world was changing—including the medical establishment. In the real world, you had the idealists fighting for racial equality, sexual equality, nonviolence, and basic civil liberties. In the medical community, you had doctors fighting the same sorts of battles. The medical community in general, and the psychiatric community in particular, were still entrenched in a more traditionalist approach—treat the symptoms when possible, and isolate the patient or disease when not. Many of the younger doctors, however, were starting to approach medicine and psychiatry differently; taking a more patient-centric view, and working hard toward integrating those with problems into normal society, rather than isolating them.”

She drew herself up in her chair and continued. “You have to realize how all of this impacted this place. As you’ve probably already learned, back then, this place was known as the Virginia Juvenile Institute for the Mentally Defective.” Sydney nodded, and Golden shook her head in frustration at some unseen force. “I think people had some idea about the problems here for a long time,” she said angrily. “It was a place that was still mired in the treatment schemes and medical philosophies of the 1930s. The driving principle was that people were born into their station in life—born smart or stupid, tall or short, sane or crazy—and that the most that could be done with those deemed ‘defective’ was to control their evil tendencies, usually through inhuman discipline. The ultimate goal, of course, was to keep them from infecting the greater population, and keep them from perpetuating whatever defect they had by preventing them from reproducing in the normal course.

“In 1968, however, a more progressive and proactive doctor was appointed to oversee all of the state’s medical facilities— including this one. He fired everyone in this place, just about, and brought in a whole new team of young idealists to try to turn this place around. That was when I came.” She shook her head as the memories came flooding back.

“That was a hard time,” she continued. “The things that I saw when I arrived—I couldn’t have imagined them in my worst nightmares. We found rooms with shackles attached to brick walls smeared with feces. We found leather straps and chains and bludgeons, and other instruments of torture we couldn’t even identify. We found children who’d been beaten so badly that even radical surgery couldn’t correct the mutilations. We found older boys—men, really—who were in their twenties and hadn’t been released or transferred to another facility as required. Children as young as twelve had already undergone significant, and in some cases experimental, lobotomies; children had been sterilized; children had been used in experiments. And of course, as you’d expect in a place like that, sexual abuse was rampant. The inhumanities visited on the poor children who were unlucky enough to have found their way here were breathtaking.” She paused. “And we found graves,” she said in hushed tones. “We found so many graves, unmarked and uncared for, that we didn’t know what to do.” She looked at Sydney for a long moment. “There should never be that many graves in a facility for children.”

Sydney shivered. “It must have been awful.”

“It was more than awful.”

“How did the children die?”

“We don’t know,” Golden said. “When the first team of us arrived, we found the Institute deserted by the former medical staff. Most of them had seen the writing on the wall and had resigned weeks earlier. The guards abandoned the place a day or two before we were scheduled to arrive, probably realizing that they might be held responsible for some of what we found. Only some of the maintenance crew remained, and they didn’t even have keys to the parts of the facility where the patients—or inmates, as they were called then—were kept. When we got here, we found that most of the children hadn’t been fed for days, and had only been left with enough water to get them through to our arrival. We lost four of the younger ones to complications from dehydration in our first week.”

The room was silent for a moment, until Mayer interjected stiffly, “Of course, this was a long time ago, and the practices from back then have been entirely abandoned.”

“It’s true,” Golden agreed. “After the shock wore off, those of us who were brought in to change this place made a promise to each other to make sure that nothing like what we saw would ever happen in this place again. We worked tirelessly to turn this facility into a model of what good juvenile psychiatric care should be. I’m happy to say that I think we’ve succeeded in large part. Obviously, no facility is perfect, but I believe that for the past quarter century we’ve done an exemplary job not only of housing or ‘controlling’ our charges, but also of providing them with the best therapy and education we can, to give them a fighting chance to live full, satisfying lives in the real world when they leave here.” Her face grew dark. “But there are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because some painful shard of memory from those first few weeks has been kicked loose in a dream, and I find myself right back here in 1968, reliving the horror.”

Sydney looked for a long time at Golden. “And that’s what my sister wanted to talk to you about?”

“Well, that’s what we did, in fact, talk about. But your sister was also looking for much more specific information about what went on here before I arrived, about who was responsible, and who participated in what activities—information I wasn’t able to provide.” Sydney gave Golden a quizzical look, and the older woman continued. “You see, dear, we never really found out exactly what went on here. As I said, based on what we found, we can make some pretty educated guesses regarding the types of ‘treatment’ patients were subjected to, but we don’t have any specific information about any of the activities.”

“How is that possible?”

“When our predecessors abandoned the Institute, someone absconded with all of the records. Or destroyed them—we were never really able to find out. It took more than a month to determine who all our patients were, how long they’d been here, and what was really wrong with them.”

Sydney was shocked. “Wasn’t anyone ever prosecuted?”

“I’m afraid not, dear,” Golden said. “Our priority at the time was to help the children who had been left here to rot. We left the investigation into any wrongdoing to the law enforcement people in the state, and as far as we ever found out, nothing ever came of the inquiries.”

Sydney was indignant. “It’s hard for me to believe that nothing was ever done about what went on here.”

“I understand your feelings, but you really shouldn’t be that surprised. Remember, these were society’s unwanted children. No one cared to face our collective responsibility in leaving them here and turning a blind eye. In addition, without the records of what went on, it would have been difficult to prove anything, and none of the children here had any interest in facing their tormenters in court. You also need to remember that this was 1968. There were so many ‘greater’ injustices in the eyes of the country at large that were being fought over. The last thing anyone in the state wanted was to drag this issue out into the open.”

“So my sister left here without getting any of the information she was looking for,” Sydney concluded.

Golden looked hesitant for the first time of the afternoon. “I don’t know about that,” she said. She cast a glance at Mayer. “I decided that there was really only one person who might be able to give her some of the information she was looking for.”

“Who was that?”

Golden hesitated again. “Willie Murphy,” she said at last.

“Good heavens, Sandy!” Mayer exclaimed. “What on earth were you thinking?”

Golden squared her shoulders in her chair defiantly. “I was thinking that Willie might be able to help Ms. Creay,” she said. “And maybe even that Ms. Creay might be able to help Willie.”

“Who is Willie Murphy?” Sydney asked.

Mayer ignored the question. “You had no right,” he said. He sounded more disappointed than angry.

“Who is Willie Murphy?” Sydney repeated her question.

Golden addressed Mayer. “Aldus, I’ve been trying to reach him—really reach him—for more than three decades. I thought if he wasn’t able to talk to me, then maybe he’d be able to talk to her. He’ll never really be well until he lets some of what happened out.”

“You still should have talked to me first,” Mayer said.

“Please!” Sydney said forcefully, and all eyes turned toward her with a look of surprise that suggested that they’d momentarily forgotten she was in the room. They looked back and forth among one another, clearly hesitant to speak. The silence in the room was oppressive, and made Sydney feel uneasy. “Who is Willie Murphy?” she demanded again.

z

“He’s a class-A dickhead, isn’t he?” Cassian commented. They were riding back into the city, without any firm answers. Nonethe
less, Cassian had no doubt how he felt about Leighton Creay.

“Yeah,” Train agreed. “He’s not stupid, though. He’s not going to give us anything easy on him, and he knows he doesn’t have to talk to us unless we drag his ass in on a warrant. If we do that, you can be damn sure he’ll lawyer up so fast that we won’t find out what he’s had for breakfast.”

“He’d probably even enjoy the opportunity to rub it in our faces.”

“No doubt,” Train said. “On the other hand, no matter how big an asshole Creay is, it still doesn’t mean that he killed his ex.”

“No, it doesn’t. But I’d really like it if he did. I’d love to nail the smug little bastard.” Cassian was fuming quietly. “Sitting up there in his country club with his smart-ass remarks. He’s the kind of asshole who’d make a seriously satisfying bust.”

Train looked at his young partner. “You want him, then you gotta find a way to go after him.”

Cassian nodded. “I’ll start digging through his finances—find out how much money he’s got and where it’s coming from. That’ll give us a better idea of what he’s up to. I’ll also start asking some discreet questions about who he’s been hanging out with recently. He’s probably too smart to have done this himself, and I’m guessing his alibi will hold up, but it’s still possible that he hired someone for the job.”

“Sounds good.”

“It’s not going to be the easiest thing in the world to build this case, Sarge. You know that, right?”

“I know it,” Train said. “That’s why I’m so glad I’m working with such a fucking genius.”

T
HE MUSIC REACHED
her while they were still on the stairs, work
ing their way down through the intestines of the huge brick building that served as the Institute’s central structure. Sydney could hear the humming of the overstressed electrical system struggling to feed the requirements of the medical facility, and it reminded her of every other public building she’d ever been in, where the needs of today are satisfied by pushing the technology of yesterday to the limit. She could hear the notes, though, through the constant buzz and the dark depression of the basement, cutting the air in a precise yet carefree fashion, echoing off the cement and steel. Bluegrass. Sydney recognized the tune as a variation on one of Dr. John’s classics, and knew enough about music to appreciate the skill with which it was being played.

“He’s quite gifted in many ways,” Sandra Golden said with a sad smile. “It’s tragic to think of what he might have done with his life under better circumstances.”

“He was here when you arrived in 1968?”

Golden nodded. “He was. He was nineteen at the time, and as near as we could tell, he’d been kept alone in a dark cell for over a year. He was barely human when we found him— curled up in a ball, covered in his own excrement, babbling softly to himself. It took six months before we could get him to start speaking coherently, and even then, he seemed to have forgotten everything that happened to him before we got here. Either that or he’s simply chosen never to talk about it. In any case, I’ve been working with him for a long time to try to chase the demons from his mind, but he doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. When your sister got here, I thought maybe she’d be able to get him to remember more.”

“I don’t understand, if he was nineteen in 1968, then he must be in his fifties now.”

“Fifty-seven last month,” Golden confirmed.

“Then how can he be a patient here? I thought this was a juvenile facility.”

“Oh, he’s not a patient,” Golden explained. “He’s our maintenance man. You see, we treated him for over a year after we arrived, but after a while, because of his age, we had to transfer him to another facility where they tried to get him ready to enter the real world and have a productive life. When they ultimately released him, things didn’t go well.” She shook her head. “How do you prepare a person who’s been locked up in his own private hell for most of his life to deal with the ‘real world’? He drifted from job to job without any success, got taken advantage of, got used—got tired, I guess. Then he turned to drugs and disappeared for over a year. I remember feeling responsible—like there was something more I should have done.” Sydney could hear the stress in Golden’s voice.

“Then one day, about five years after he’d left our care, he showed up again. It was during the winter, and we were having one of those freak ice storms we sometimes get out here. It was cold and dark, and I was looking out my window, dreaming about better weather, when I saw him. He was standing in the field in front of the building, just looking up, still as a statue. He was in terrible shape; battered and drug addled. We rushed him inside, and took care to nurse him back to health. Then, while we were trying to figure out what to do with him, our generator broke. In a big-city hospital, that’s not that significant a problem, because you’ve got the power company, and you’ve got backup power supplies. Out here it’s just us, and no one could figure out what was wrong. He was just starting to move around a little better, and he asked if he could take a look at it. He said he’d worked briefly for an electrician, and thought he might be able to help. Sure enough, he had the place up and running in a matter of hours, and it occurred to us that this might be the best place for him. He’s a natural with machines. And this way, we were able to keep trying to help him.”