Face wondered as he looked out the front windows if mood had any effect on the weather, or vice versa. Originally the forecast for the day was supposed to be warm and sunny, but the clouds had come back and looked like they were once again full of rain and going to open up at any time. And somehow it just seemed to tie in nicely with how he was feeling that day.
"Boy, I still can't believe Hannibal left us here and took B.A. with him, what's he gonna do?" he said more to himself than to the other people in the house.
He wasn't sure what Murdock had planned or exactly what the pilot was doing; he knew that Murdock had stressed he not be interrupted while he worked, but even for him this seemed screwy. He seemed to have slipped into a facsimile persona trying to mirror either Freud, or his own psychiatrist Dr. Richter. First he'd tried talking to both Frankie and Murdoch at the same time, but that hadn't gotten him anywhere, so he'd sent Frankie out of the room, then he quickly ordered her back and told her to lie down and go to sleep until it was her turn again, and he and M.D. left the room instead. And now…Face just didn't know what to make of it, now the two men were sitting on the floor in the sitting room playing checkers while Murdock rambled on in his pseudo-psychiatric mumbo jumbo.
The phone ringing was like an answered prayer where the lieutenant was concerned. Only one person would be calling the house, that much he knew. Hopefully talking to Hannibal would be a breath of fresh air amidst all the craziness that he was inhaling.
"Cracker factory, what flavor are you?" he asked before he realized he'd even said it.
"Hey Face, how's it going?" Hannibal asked.
Face groaned, "Don't ask."
He could just hear the grin on Hannibal's face as the colonel pointed out the obvious, "Too late, I already did."
"You're just as bad as these three Stooges," Face told him.
"So what's going on there?" Hannibal asked.
"You got me, Murdock's playing Dr. Caligari or something, I doubt he's getting anywhere with either of them though," Face answered, "Where are you guys?"
"That's the thing," Hannibal said, "We're ditching the van so I called to let you know don't try reaching us on the mobile phone, we won't be anywhere nearby to hear it."
"Okay, I'll bite, then what the hell are you doing?" Face asked.
"B.A. and I are going to go look up the coroner who did the autopsy on Miss Arden two years ago," Hannibal answered.
"Are you sure you'll be able to find him?"
"Sure, he's still working, some old man named Scheiner."
"So what's the gag?" Face asked.
Hannibal told him and by the time he was done explaining, Face was about to hit the floor laughing.
"Hannibal, it'll never work," he said.
"You of little faith," Hannibal replied, "When was the last time I had a plan that didn't work?"
"I don't know, what day is this?" Face asked.
"Very funny," Hannibal dryly remarked.
"Well, good luck Hannibal, I have a feeling you're going to need it," Face said.
Hannibal hung up the phone and called around to the back, "You ready, B.A.?"
"Hannibal, I ain't gonna do this," B.A. told him.
"B.A. will you stop being such a baby about this?" Hannibal asked.
"Trust me, Hannibal, you ain't seeing what I'm seeing."
"How bad can it look? I know I got the right size," Hannibal said.
"It ain't that," B.A. came around and told him, "You know I hate cops, and I ain't dressing up like one either."
"B.A., I already explained this, it's the only way the plan's going to work, besides, think about it, who's going to make trouble for a cop who is built like you?" Hannibal asked as he adjusted the badge on his police shirt.
"I don't like this, Hannibal," B.A. told him.
"Good, nobody said you had to," he replied, "Now get in uniform and let's go, I already got a squad car from the movie lot without anybody seeing, it's not perfect but it'll be good enough to fool those idiots where we're going."
"I hope so," B.A. said, "First we gotta leave my van, and we going in without any backup, anything happens we' cooked."
"You too, why is it everyone I work with has so little faith in my plans?" Hannibal wanted to know.
B.A. snorted and replied, "You got an hour?"
"Alright, M.D., I think I've got all the answers I need from you for right now," Murdock said as they got up from the floor, "I'll compare my notes with what Frankie tells me and then we'll reconvene later today."
"Alright," Mad Dog said as he left the room, still as confused as he had been going into this.
Murdock glanced over the notes in the small spiral notebook pad he'd scribbled down during their session. In reality all they were were a few stick figures and tic-tac-toe games; he didn't need to take notes, he never needed to take notes, he had a brain that could remember practically everything, not exactly photographic, but his mind was one big tape recorder that never ran out of room, or battery power. M.D. had recalled everything the best he could in response to Murdock's questions, but there were still a lot of gaps that needed to be filled if at all possible. So now he was going to see what Frankie had to offer. He picked up the checkerboard and folded it over so the pieces didn't fall off, and went back to the living room where Frankie was laying on the couch.
"Alright, Frankie, your hour starts now," he said as he entered the room.
He saw that Frankie was awake but she wasn't moving; she had her arms folded tightly against her like she was in a straitjacket and she remained unresponsive though she was perfectly conscious and alert.
"I'm sure you've seen a lot of psychiatrists already," he said, "If I might guess…you went to them first to try and get the green light on a committal, and they didn't think you were crazy enough, right?"
Frankie bit the inside of her cheeks and refused to say anything.
"Might I also guess that that was not the first time you went to a headshrinker?" Murdock asked, "Can I ask you a question? You ever go to one that actually seemed to fit that profile? You know headshrinker, people came up with that term because they didn't understand what psychiatry was, thought it was a bunch of mumbo jumbo like voodoo and the witch doctors on foreign islands." Murdock started doing a gibberish tribal chant and marched over to her singing, "I told the witch doctor I was in love with you, I told the witch doctor you didn't love me too, and then the witch doctor he told me what to do, he…oh come on, Frankie!" he pouted, "This game ain't any fun unless there's two people playing it."
Frankie rolled her eyes up to stare at him, the look said plenty.
"It's alright, Frankie, I know that you' mad at everybody about what's going on, ya certainly got a right to be, my goodness," he said as he sat down by her feet, "If anybody would've treated me as a kid like what you got, I think my grand-pappy would've chased him off with his shotgun. Grandma too, or if not that, she's chase him helter skelter with her kitchen cleaver," Murdock said, and raised his arms above his head to demonstrate, and added humorously, " 'And I suppose when I'm 200 years old, I'll get a velocipede'."
Frankie sat up and asked him, "What would you've done if nobody would believe you?"
"Well now we're getting somewhere," Murdock said, "Come on sit on the floor, I'll get the checkerboard set up."
"Sure I remember the Arden girl," the coroner, an old hunched over man named Robert Scheiner said as he tried to assist the two 'officers' who had paid him a visit, "I gave the police my full report when it happened two years ago."
"Yeah I know, but wouldn't you know, had about 20 boxes of records destroyed by water damage during the last bad storm," Hannibal said, "In any case, we weren't even transferred to the force here yet when it happened. Now the D.A.'s breathing down our necks about opening the case back up, says he may have some new evidence to use, a new suspect to look at, but he wants us to get all the records on the case first so he can make sure nothing's amiss."
"Oh good," Scheiner said, "Maybe now he'll be able to catch the real killer."
"What's that mean?" B.A. asked.
The old man shook his head and said, "I never bought that that Murdoch boy did it…of course the cops weren't interested in my opinion of who killed her, only why and how killed her."
"Well what makes you think he didn't?" Hannibal asked.
"Just didn't make any sense," the coroner explained, "Granted, I didn't know him too well…I knew the Arden woman a bit better, she lived a couple blocks behind me…nice girl, though she made a few mistakes, but then again who hasn't?"
"What mistakes?"
"Well it was going round the rumor mill in town that she'd had a couple of affairs…married men, ain't that always the case? Same old same old, they say they're gonna leave their wives, she believed it, they never did, she eventually had to walk away…now if somebody was going to kill her I'd personally look at one of them, either the men or their wives, but this kid who barely knew her?"
Hannibal cleared his throat and asked, "What about the weapon?"
"Common kitchen knife," Scheiner answered, "Dime a dozen in any kitchen supply section of a grocery store," he shook his head, "Sad what happened to her."
"So you think she was just dumped at the house?" Hannibal asked.
"Who said anything about dumped?"
"Weren't you there on the scene?" Hannibal asked.
"No," he answered, "There's more than one person working here, they were just bringing her in when I went to work the next morning."
"So you never saw the crime scene?"
"The cops didn't seem to see much point in it, and neither did my superiors," Scheiner told them, "We knew going into it that she was murdered, they only needed the grisly details of how she was murdered."
"How many times was she stabbed?" Hannibal asked.
"Nine, excessive," Scheiner said.
"Personal," Hannibal recalled.
"Maybe, I really don't have much to compare it to, most of the people I work on are just normal heart attacks and natural causes and a few brain aneurisms, really don't see too many homicides."
"And when you do?" Hannibal asked.
"Usually gunshot wounds, one, two, never anything like what was done to that poor woman," Scheiner shook his head.
"Those men that she had affairs with," Hannibal said, "Do you happen to remember their names?"
"Sorry," the old man shook his head again.
"Could you tell if the knife found at the scene had any skin tissue on it?" Hannibal asked.
"Sorry, the police crime lab did that test themselves," Scheiner told him, "Don't tell me they lost that too. Good Lord they ought to change the name from Lost and Found to Lost and Staying Lost."
"Something's not adding up here," Hannibal said as he peeled off his cop uniform as he and B.A. got back into the van.
"You just starting to figure that out?" B.A. asked.
"Why would the prosecutor on the case be so eager to make a plea deal with the defense?" Hannibal asked himself.
"Evidence don't look too good to me, Hannibal, he probably knew he couldn't win," B.A. said.
"But the defense thought they were going to lose," Hannibal reminded him, "So it goes back to the side on whom the burden of proof falls…why make a deal and send somebody who would stab a woman nine times in cold blood off to the madhouse, instead of making him out to be sane and his actions premeditated, and then fry him?"
"Hannibal," B.A. already had that 'don't tell me' tone in his voice, "You don't think that this sucker Masterson got the lawyer in his pocket too, do you?"
"I hope not, B.A., but it looks like he'd got everybody else in there, I wonder where he finds room for his keys," Hannibal said.
"So now what're we gonna do, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.
"Now we're going to go pay the police a visit and inquire what they found, under the basis that the D.A. is looking to reopen the case."
"That's a bad idea, Hannibal," B.A. told him, "They gonna catch on and call him to find out."
"I didn't say which D.A.," Hannibal pointed out, "We're going to go in there and say that the District Attorney of…oh, some state far out east, is looking to reopen the case because of a similar homicide that has occurred within their jurisdiction, the possibility that there is a serial killer on the loose and they put the wrong man away two years ago. Now a story like that is going to be a big sensation, it's going to make headlines, and it's going to make everybody in that department look more incompetent than they really are, so I'm sure they'll be only too glad to cooperate with us."
B.A. grunted and said, "You think they're that stupid, Hannibal?"
"They arrested a man based on an anonymous tip with no motive and a crime scene that doesn't match the crime committed, they don't strike me as being particularly bright in the first place," Hannibal reminded him, "And we're forgetting something else, something very important."
"What's that?" B.A. asked.
"Frankie told us already, they had a witness, she was in the house."
"She told us that, so what?"
"She was there, she was in the house when the cops raided it, and she was there when they hauled M.D. out, she said they didn't listen to her or take her with them, and just assaulted her and left her behind. Does that sound like an up and up cop to you?"
"She said they were in his pocket," B.A. recalled, "And if that's true…"
"Then he's going to make the logical conclusion that we're coming to see him, but it'll be too late for him to put the word out to any of his associates to cover what they know," Hannibal said, "They're going to have to play it by ear, it should be interesting to see how it works out, after all even with a story memorized, two years passing is going to make it hard to keep their stories straight."
"Hannibal, why'd you ask about the knife?" B.A. asked.
"Just trying to establish something…now Frankie said Mad Dog had blood on him when she woke up…she knows the difference in a splatter and a smear, she said when the prosecutor was shot she had his splatter all over her, but she saw Murdoch was covered in blood…covered could mean, as in smeared on."
"So what?" B.A. asked.
"Just thinking, maybe our killer is one of those psychotic types who likes to keep souvenirs of his kills…if so, maybe he took the real knife with him and just smeared some blood on the one left behind and pressed it into Murdoch's hands."
B.A. groaned and shook his head and said, "Don't like it, Hannibal, anyway you look at it if what they said is true, this sucker's a real psycho."
"Yep," Hannibal said, "And as Murdock will tell you, they're the hardest to find because they fake normalcy so well. Which would explain how the same person in question could harass a girl from the time she's 13 on because he knows nobody is going to believe her, nobody's going to take her word over his, not even her own father."
Hannibal stopped at a payphone and called back to see how things were going since he'd last checked in on everybody a few hours ago. He had a few words with Face and then asked him to put Murdock on the line so he could see what progress the pilot had made with the others.
"Hello?"
"Murdock, what's going on over there?" Hannibal asked in his borderline disapproving tone, "I asked you to talk to those kids and find out what they know, and Face tells me you've just been playing games with them all morning."
"Not quite, Hannibal, it's a therapy method that I learned about at the V.A.," Murdock told him.
"Alright, enlighten me," Hannibal said, this was a new one on him.
"Sometimes, some patients go through a regression of sort when the present becomes too much to deal with, I'm not saying that they think they're kids again, but they do tend to behave more like them."
"I follow so far," Hannibal told him.
"Well…it's been to my understanding that one of the easiest times to get kids to open up is during something relaxing, something quiet that requires conversation to keep the silence from becoming maddening…think about it, colonel, when was the last time you saw two people play a game of checkers in complete silence?"
"Point taken, did it work?" Hannibal asked.
"Well, unfortunately I wasn't able to get very far with Mad Dog, I think Frankie's right, I think he had to be drugged the night of the murder because he remembers them falling asleep, and then he remembers being down in the living room standing over the body, but nothing between those two points. I asked him about what he knew about this guy Masterson, he says he'd seen the guy a few times but never really been properly introduced to him, just as well because the guy's a major creep-o."
"His words or yours?"
"Unanimous," Murdock answered.
"Any better luck with Frankie?" Hannibal asked.
"Not at first, she was a tougher nut to crack, just totally shut down on us…took a while but I got her to start talking again."
"What about?"
"Everything…Colonel, can I talk to you about something?"
"You have the floor, Captain, what is it?" Hannibal asked.
"I've been thinking about what she said the other night, about how she tried to pass herself off as a multiple personality to get committed."
"What about it?" Hannibal curiously asked.
"Well Colonel, it's coming to be common knowledge that in almost all such cases of multiple personalities, that the subjects in question were abused as children, that's where the extra personalities come from, somebody else to take the abuse, somebody else to get blamed, or somebody to protect them when nobody else would. Now if she had been able to get institutionalized for that behavior, the doctors would've been looking into that matter and investigated."
"Do you think there's any merit to it?" Hannibal asked.
"I didn't get that vibe talking to her," Murdock answered, "If anything it just seems to me that her parents' worst behavior was in being too…negligent, absent. I asked her if she thought they hated her."
"And she said yes," Hannibal guessed.
"She said they didn't notice her enough to hate her," Murdock corrected him, "Granted, I don't think they did it on purpose, I'm sure that whatever they did, whatever their decisions, that they meant well…"
Hannibal closed his eyes and grimaced at those words, and he said into the phone, "Parents always do."
"Yeah well…" Murdock said dismissively, "It's one thing to mean well, it's another to do it."
"Alright, Murdock, I want to ask you a question and get your professional psychological opinion on something," Hannibal said, "Knowing what you do about Frankie and what you do about Masterson, do the pieces fit? Does she sound like the type of person his kind would go after?"
"Well sure, she may have tried to tell people what was going on but he knew nobody would believe her, that's second best only to the kids that men like him know won't do anything to make trouble by speaking up. You know the other night, she told me that she didn't have a lot of friends growing up, that, mixed with her parents' constant absence, all conspires together to make her a perfect victim."
"Except she was too smart to let him in the house," Hannibal noted, "That's the one thing he hadn't counted on."
"You know, Hannibal, I thought of something earlier, I was tempted to say the other thing he didn't count on was M.D. getting thrown in the booby hatch, but think about it, somebody had to order him transferred to the V.A., and somebody had to put in the order for him to have a lobotomy, to shut him up, it just has to be Masterson, doesn't it?"
"Seems so, which means he undoubtedly knows by now that Mad Dog has escaped," Hannibal told him, "And if he's been following Frankie, then he knows she's not in Freemont either." A thought occurred to him and he said, "Murdock, would the staff at a mental hospital have any reason to beat up a patient who wasn't being unruly in the first place?"
"How come?" Murdock asked.
"I'm remembering something else, Mad Dog's got old bruises on his body, they had to have come from someone at the hospital, but Frankie said he'd never hurt anyone, meaning the attacks on him were unprovoked."
"Well Colonel I'd be lying if I said they never did it, though I don't think it's as bad in mental hospitals as in nursing homes, those orderlies beat the old people all the time and just say they fell down 5-6 times a day. But uh, to answer your question, no, I don't think M.D. did anything to anybody there, certainly nothing to warrant a beating in return."
"Just checking," Hannibal said, "We'll be home sometime this afternoon."
"Okay, bye," Murdock hung up on him.
"So now what, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.
Hannibal hung up and turned to the sergeant and said, "We're going to go over to Cranston and pay Richard Masterson a visit, but first we're going to pay the local police department a visit and ask them about what went on at M.D.'s house that night. We're going to get to them first before Masterson knows to call and warn them that we're coming."
