The Path of Silence (18 page)

“Do you think this is something?” Ken asked, as we headed to visit Kane in Curtis Bay. It was not far from Brooklyn Park.

“It’s hard to say. At least we have a reason to get out of the madhouse that used to be our office,” I sighed.

I’d phoned Daniel Kane and asked whether we could send a squad car to get him. What he told me was not reassuring in terms of credibility. He never left his house. He never opened his window shades either. The whole world was spying on him. He no longer dared to venture outside. He’d spent nine months in Mongrove where they frequently opened their shades. I got the impression that he was still upset about it.

Kane suffered from acute schizophrenia. But there was something about the way he gave me information—freely and not excusing his condition—that made me decide to see him.

Kane lived in a nice two story house. It was light gray with blue painted trim and matching striped awnings. His front lawn was well kept. The white picket fence was freshly painted. If he never ventured outside, he had to have hired help looking after the upkeep. That meant he was not destitute.

We stood on the porch for five minutes, after we’d slid our IDs and business cards through the brass-trimmed mail slot as requested. There were four peepholes in the iron-bar reinforced front door.

I tried not to show what I felt, standing there waiting, while Kane checked us out. Suddenly, my cell phone chimed.

It was Kane. He was checking out our phone numbers. Ken got a call too.

Finally, my compassion ran out.

“Mr. Kane,” I said, moving closer to one of the viewing spots. “I’m sure you must recognize my voice. I’m Detective Stanton. We spoke on the phone. You invited us to visit you. This is my partner, Detective Leahman. Please let us in. We really are Baltimore police officers.”

He let us wait another minute. Then the door cracked open.

“Detective Stanton, enter first please.”

I glanced at Ken, stifled a sigh and obeyed. Ten seconds later, he was allowed to squeeze through the crack then the door hurriedly slammed shut.

It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the smoky darkness.

“This way, please.” A hand waved in the air, like a shadow.

I entered a library. The only source of light was a large computer monitor. The shadow went to sit in the corner. He told us to sit in two chairs strategically positioned so that the light from the monitor shone directly at us.

“Mr. Kane, it’s difficult to speak to someone I can’t see,” I said as I sat down.

“Now you know what I have to live with,” he shot back quickly.

“I understand and I sympathize but if you won’t allow us to see you, then we’ll have to stay here twice as long to get your physical description, before we get to the issue.” I was frustrated. He must have heard it in my voice. He laughed.

“I have to admit I haven’t heard that threat before. Very well. I see your point.”

I heard a scraping sound. He pulled the chair in line with the desk where the peripheral light from the monitor was enough to see him and sat down.

He was thin but not frail, in his fifties. Sitting down, I judged him to be a little taller than I was, maybe five foot ten. He had a circle of pale hair. The rest of his head was a bald crown. I couldn’t tell the color of his eyes but they were dark. He didn’t seem nervous, just reserved.

“I’m a schizophrenic,” he said. “But the condition is not stamped on my face. It’s apparent from the way I live. I wasn’t always like this. My condition worsened as I aged. For at least twenty years, I was able to lead a normal life. I was a professor of history at Darwin College in Selecton. I was married, no children. My wife passed away ten years ago. I believe that’s what increased my symptoms. But that’s not why you’re here.”

“I see you keep in touch with the world.” I motioned at the monitor and the impressive computer hardware I saw stacked underneath the large, L-shaped desk.

He smiled. “It’s my only means these days. I no longer go outside. I have a housekeeper who does my shopping and errands. I just cannot bring myself to leave the house anymore.”

“Who had you committed to the Mongrove facility?” I asked.

“I did. My physician at the time reluctantly concurred, though he’s no longer sure whether it was a good idea. It certainly didn’t help me to control my condition. Nothing can. I’ve accepted that.”

“How long did you stay at Mongrove?”

“Nine months. I signed myself in just about two years ago.”

“Mr. Kane, you obviously have financial means. Why would you choose to go to a state-funded facility like Mongrove? Why not a private institution?”

“It’s close by. I couldn’t go too far away from my house. Since I voluntarily committed myself, I could sign myself out anytime. Knowing that I could hire transport with tinted windows to take me home in a matter of ten minutes was the main reason why I chose it.”

“Where would you have hired that kind of transportation?” Ken asked.

“There was an armored limo service, located in a plaza just across the street from Mongrove. I don’t believe it’s still there. My housekeeper told me that the plaza closed down. Two years ago, however, it was still there.”

“Would you know when the plaza closed down?” Ken asked

“According to my housekeeper, two months ago.”

“Was the limo service there right until the end?”

Kane passed a hand in front of his face. “I always thought it was a strange location for an armored limo service but I suppose things like that are driven by the economy. The name was Creeslow. It’s what made me take closer notice of a fellow patient at Mongrove.”

“Patti,” I said.

Kane raised a hand. He leaned forward, into the circle of light given off by the monitor. “At Mongrove names are usually fashioned into a control tool. Spoken three or more times in quick succession turns a patient’s name into a phrase used to direct, stop—or threaten. My physician had tried to stop me from going there. He would not tell me outright why but at the end of nine months, when I’d learned enough, I signed myself out. Her name was Patricia Vanier. She was a distraught young woman, prone to melancholy—a marginal manic-depressive but she was not afflicted to a degree that would require her incarceration in a hard-line facility like Mongrove, under constant medication. This, of course, is only my own educated opinion. I spent twenty years studying the nature of my condition, even as I functioned normally, teaching at the college. I knew that it would progressively worsen as I got older. This house, the shadowy atmosphere, is a result of those years of learning.”

“Go on, sir,” I said softly. “We’ll ask questions when you finish.”

Kane was a schizophrenic but he was highly cognizant of what his affliction meant in terms of living and functioning in society. He’d spent years preparing himself for the inevitable. He was not just a credible witness but also a highly intelligent man. He knew more about his condition than his doctors. His knowledge, coupled with his experience in a psychiatric institution, made him an expert.

He’d befriended Patricia, as much as anyone could with a patient who was over-medicated to the degree Kane claimed she was. When he listened to her ramblings, he’d filtered out the prejudicial nonsense. He’d picked out things that struck him as facts. Once he began to suspect that her condition was not severe and would rapidly improve if drugs were withheld, he did it on quite a few occasions. He was clever. No one noticed anything.

When the medication was stopped for two days, she’d told him that her fiancé Jonathan, had worked part-time for Creeslow. She had reported him missing two years earlier. However, she’d told Kane that since then, she had seen Johnny at Mongrove, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. But she hadn’t been allowed to talk to him.

“It was unethical to withhold her medication,” Kane said. He lowered his head and clasped his hands. “But I felt this young woman should not have been committed to such a hard-line facility, or any facility for that matter.”

“What do you mean by hard-line, Mr. Kane?” I asked.

He motioned feebly at the shuttered windows. “If you removed those window coverings, I would be covered in sweat in a matter of seconds. I would become incoherent and disoriented. In a few more minutes, I would start to babble. I would collapse on the floor, curl into a tight ball and moan. Spittle might form in the corners of my mouth. Perhaps frothing may appear. It would be very much like an epileptic seizure. It would take forty-eight hours for the attack to pass. If you were a doctor in a psychiatric institution and knew these symptoms, would you use the means of therapy that I have just outlined on a schizophrenic patient?”

“Is that what they did to you?” I was shocked to hear him chuckle.

“That was just basic therapy. There were others, far more brutal. Once I recovered, these pioneering cures were explained to me with help of statistics claiming great success—to convince me that it was done for my own good.”

“Why did you stay there nine months?” Ken asked.

Once again he chuckled. “I had to stay there long enough to make a statistically valid conclusion that their methods did not work. In my opinion, Patricia’s affliction was merely deep melancholy. It was not an ailment that required heavy medication. She needed to talk out her feelings. That’s precisely what she did not get in Mongrove. Talking was forbidden. That’s what the control phrases were for—to stop the patient, redirect him. Patricia was young. The major effects of the drugs cleared out of her system in forty-eight hours. She was still not what you would term clear-headed but she was lucid. Unfortunately, once she experienced greater awareness of her surroundings, she started to roam. She was clever and observant. She found a way to get out of the patient area—and was caught. I stopped withholding her medication. I didn’t want to cause any more problems for her.”

“She’s still in there,” I told him.

A painful smile creased his sparse features. “I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t believe she had any relatives who would have followed up on her release. It’s probably what she saw during the last time she escaped from the patient area that’s keeping her incarcerated. After that episode, her medication was increased. She could no longer form a sentence. She spoke in fragments. But by then I was in the facility for eight months and very familiar with her. It was easy to pick out new words I’d never heard before.”

“Like what?” I sat in the chair as Kane talked but I felt as tired as if I had run a marathon. Listening to his story was emotionally draining and worrisome.

“She had escaped at night and roamed the corridors. That’s how she saw Johnny, in a chauffeur’s uniform again, pushing a gurney—with a dead body. I’m not sure whether it was Johnny but I’m sure about the dead body. She had lifted the sheet. The chest looked as if it had exploded. The word ‘exploded’ came from her. I don’t know whether she’d heard it or made it up. I didn’t see her for two days after that. Then I asked about her—and she returned—blank stare, very responsive to her control phrase—Patti, Patti, Patti. When I approached her, she spoke rapidly, hatefully, with focus, “The clerks. The foreigners. Black men. Bishops. Blank monsters. They push. They pull. They stick needles.

“Two weeks later, I signed myself out of the facility.” He leaned back into his chair. Then he lifted his head and stared at us.

We sat there for a long time, silent and reflective. We’d heard a lot but could we act on it? Was it safe for Patricia, for us, for Kane?

“Mr. Kane,” I motioned at the monitor, “if necessary, would you be able to write this down and send a file to the FBI?”

Once again I saw the flat planes of his face crease in a smile. “Certainly, Detective. But would it be safe?”

Chapter 23

T
he three o’clock meeting was cancelled. The FBI had not returned from their visit to the IMF.

Ken phoned the lab to get an update on his Malibu. The lab told him that in another day or two, his brown vehicle would be released.

“I’m sure Marci was just teasing you,” I told him when I drove him home. “You know our lab doesn’t conduct destructive tests on cars—or any other material they have to analyze.”

“It won’t be silver metallic gray anymore,” he murmured. He was so distraught that I had to remind him that I was already parked in front of his house.

When I walked into the kitchen I could smell the excitement. My daughter was roaring through her homework.

“It’ll be a nice change, for both of you,” the housekeeper was saying. She left without explaining her mysterious comment.

“Hi, Jazz.”

“I’m almost done. You can check it. No mistakes,” she rattled off.

“That’s fine. I’m happy to see you working so hard—and so fast—but what’s going on?”

“We’re going out to dinner at Portofino’s.”

“Really?” That was not my plan tonight. It wasn’t in my budget. Portofino’s was an upscale steak house where pirates served dinner while jugglers and minstrels entertained. Underneath a dozen lucky plates, the patrons would find a genuine reproduction of a golden Spanish doubloon. An average bill for two, without drinks, could come to two hundred dollars. They didn’t have a children’s menu.

Jazz finished scribbling in her notebook and lifted her head. “Field called. He’s taking us out.”

“Really?” I managed to choke out.

“Yep. I’ve got to go get dressed.” Before I had time to blink, she vanished.

“No way are we going…” I was saying to her disappearing backside when the doorbell rang.

“I phoned and left a message on your cell phone,” he said when I opened the door.

“I didn’t have time to check and you didn’t bother waiting for my reply.”

“Jazz replied.”

“Field!”

“I’ll brief you on the day’s developments. We didn’t get back until half an hour ago.”

My expression must have given me away.

“Don’t look so trapped,” he said. “It’s only dinner. I’ll make it into a work session.”

“Is that supposed to make me happy?”

“Judging from your look, another murder would be about the only thing that would make you happy right now.”

“Yours.”