"Hannibal, assuming that Murdoch's old house is even still standing, how could we possibly get Masterson back there?" Face asked.
Hannibal took a drag off his cigar and said, sounding like he was seriously considering it, "Maybe Masterson believes in ghosts."
"Oh brother," B.A. groaned under his breath.
"What do you mean by that?" Face asked.
Hannibal took another slow drag off his cigar and turned to the lieutenant and said, with a sudden smirk on his face and that trademark 'Hannibal has a plan' gleam in his eye, "Suppose Alice Arden were to return from the grave, and come looking for him?"
"Uh oh," B.A. said, already not liking whatever this plan was.
"I don't get it, Hannibal."
"Well, it's unlikely that Miss Arden could've survived her attack…of course that isn't to say that somebody couldn't try planting that seed of thought into his head," Hannibal told Face, "And if he doesn't buy that she's alive, he might just buy that the dead are not resting in peace and are coming back for him, ultimately driving him back to the scene of the crime."
"But she wasn't murdered at the house," Face told him.
"No, but he'd either lead us to where he did kill her, or take us back to the house all the same since that was where the second crime was committed when he set M.D. up," Hannibal explained rationally, as only Hannibal Smith could.
Face looked past Hannibal to the sergeant and said to him, "B.A., how did we get stuck with a guy like this for our leader?"
B.A. just shrugged. Hannibal just laughed in response.
Mad Dog and Frankie were still on the floor in Murdock's room wrapped in each other's arms, Frankie resting her head against Mad Dog's collarbone, him rocking lightly back and forth as he held her. Neither had said anything for several minutes, the silence was both comforting and near maddening, but neither dared say anything lest it ruin what had just happened. Murdock had been right of course, they did love each other, but oddly enough it had really taken them to reaching this point to truly acknowledge it.
Frankie inhaled noisily and finally broke the silence, "What're we going to do, M.D.?"
"I don't know, Frankie," he answered as he readjusted his arm around her back, "But whatever we do, we have to make sure that it doesn't get these guys arrested. They've done more for us than anyone else would, we've got to find some way to repay them for it."
"Murdock trusts us," Frankie noted, "More than the others do."
M.D. managed a small smile and said, "I think he likes us."
"We need him to help us again," Frankie told him, "He can get us out of here."
M.D. pulled back from her and asked, "What do you mean, Frankie?"
"I need to get out of this house, M.D., I'm going stir crazy being cooped up in here like a chicken, but the only way we can get out of here is if Murdock comes with us, they won't let us out any other way."
"But how's he going to do that?" Mad Dog asked.
"Maybe he can think of something," Frankie got up and went out to the stairwell and called down, "Murdock?"
"You rang?" Murdock asked as he appeared out of another bedroom across the hall.
"Murdock," Frankie said to him, "Is there any way that we could get out of this house for a little while and go somewhere? I'm ready to climb the walls."
"Well don't do that, we ain't got around to dusting them yet," he told her, "Yeah I can get you guys out of here, but go where?"
"Oh anywhere, it doesn't matter, just get out in the sun for a while," Frankie said.
"Sure, I'll go clear it with Hannibal, I'll get us out of here in no time," he assured her.
"You want to what?" Face asked.
"Hannibal please, can I take them out for a while? I've talked to Frankie and Mad Dog, Freemont isn't like the V.A., they don't let those patients out onto the grounds or out on field trips, they're shut up in their rooms in the building every day."
"Funny, you'd think he'd be paler," Face noted.
"Hannibal just about everything we've done since we broke them out is keep them indoors, can I just take them out in the 'Vette for a little drive or something, huh?" Murdock asked.
"In my 'Vette?" Face asked, "You've got to be…oh never mind."
"Mm-hmm," B.A. grunted.
"I don't think it'll do any harm," Hannibal said, "If anything happens here we'll call you, and if you get wind of Decker, you can call us on the car's phone, it ought to do them some good to get out of the house for a while." In truth he was glad that this came up because he wanted them out of the house as well, but for a different reason; he wanted to go over his new plan with B.A. and Face but he wanted to make sure that there was no way Frankie or M.D. could overhear it. He could always fill Murdock in on the details later, he knew that the captain would understand it wasn't him they were leaving out of anything.
Murdock went back up the stairs and a couple minutes later came back down with a pair of sunglasses on bouncing a large ball and had Frankie and M.D. following behind him right out the door.
"I've got a bad feeling about this, Hannibal," Face said.
"Oh what's the worst that can happen?" Hannibal asked.
"With Murdock involved, are you nuts?" B.A. asked.
When they got in the car, Mad Dog and Frankie each donned a pair of shades and looked up at the sky and the bright, blinding sun and took in its rays and the warm breeze in the air as they zoomed along down the road at 50 miles an hour.
"Now this is nice," Frankie noted.
Mad Dog blinked a few times as he stared straight up at the burning sun through his tinted lenses and only let out a contented sigh as agreement.
And, Murdock had to admit, he was thoroughly enjoying himself as well. This was as close to a family outing as he was going to get, he only wished they had more time to do something. As it was, he figured since they were close to the beach that they could head on down to an unoccupied area and enjoy a little sand and sun, Face was right, it was currently the off season. A mixture of bad weather and suspected shark sightings had been keeping people away from the shore lately. He smiled to himself, it was amazing what you could do if you run up from the surf yelling 'shark! Shark!' everybody scattered like flies.
Frankie leaned forward in the backseat and pointed to a fork in the road up ahead and told Murdock, "Turn off here."
"How come?" he asked.
"Just do it, I want to see something," she said.
He didn't get it, but he did it. They turned off on an empty winding road, he watched the signs to see where they were going but about the only ones he saw were stop signs and speed limits. After a while the road led into a small suburban area, for this time of day it was very quiet and there didn't seem to be anyone around so all the houses stood quiet and presumably empty. It gave Murdock a creepy feeling.
Suddenly, Frankie all but climbed over into the front seat and told Murdock, "Stop here, stop the car!"
Both his feet hit the brake pedal and they screeched to a sudden halt. "What is it?" he asked.
Frankie pointed to a large house in the middle of the block. Two stories tall, a skylight in the ceiling, presumably up in the attic, large windows all over the house, the spacious lawn was professionally tended to and perfectly green without a weed in sight. Nothing appeared out of place here most of all. Murdock noticed the black letters on the house by the front door, 4170.
"That's Masterson's house," Frankie told him. Murdock turned in his seat and looked back at her with wide eyes and she said, "This is where Hannibal and the others came earlier."
Murdock looked back to the house and noted that there was no car parked at the curb or up in the driveway, and he couldn't see one by the garage either.
"Nobody's home," he observed.
"We've got to get in there," Frankie said.
Murdock reached for the door handle on his side of the corvette, "I agree, come on."
The three of them got out of the car and went up the driveway to the back of the house. Frankie had brought Murdock's ball with her and when they checked to make sure nobody was watching, she tossed it into the backyard and watched it roll into the bushes. "Oops, lost my ball, we gotta look around," she said dully.
Murdock checked the back door and found it was unlocked, so they slipped in and helped themselves to a look around.
"You ever been here, Frankie?" he asked.
"A couple of times when I was little," she answered, "My parents would bring me here when they'd have something to celebrate, but given my behavior whenever we came, that quickly came to an end."
"And I'm guessing you ain't ever been here before, right, Mad Dog?" Murdock asked.
M.D. shook his head and looked up at the ceiling as if he was expecting to find something. Murdock also looked up, and felt a chill run down his back.
"Frankie," he said, his voice choked suddenly, he cleared his throat and spoke up, "Frankie cous, come over here…you said when you were researching multiple personalities, and psychiatric disorders…you read about serial killers too?"
"Some of them, to see if there was any psychiatric connection," Frankie said.
He looked at her and asked, "And you checked those out of the public library?"
She shook her head and explained, "You do that and there's a record of it, I read them in the library so nobody could trace them back to me, so nobody could figure out what I was doing."
Murdock nodded but he was suddenly finding it harder to breathe, he felt like he was going to be sick and he moved to the back door and quickly stepped outside for some air.
Frankie and Mad Dog were right behind him and found him leaning over a piece of the shrubbery, heavily inhaling and exhaling, and Frankie came up to him and asked him, "Are you alright, Murdock?"
A few more deep breaths and he was able to calm down, he nodded slowly and composed himself. Now he knew that the others had been over this house with a fine tooth comb already, they had had nothing to report, nothing odd about the house in itself or of anything there. Only the pictures, those pictures of his cousin Frankie and countless other young girls, that was all. But Murdock couldn't shake the feeling that had built up in his stomach and was climbing steadily up his spine like the Tingler.
"Frankie cous," he said in a rugged breath, "Did you ever read about a man named Herman Mudgett?"
She shook her head, "No, why?"
Of course she wouldn't have. He should've asked instead if she had read about H.H. Holmes, that was the name the world knew him by much better.
At the V.A., they encouraged patients to read, but Murdock had quickly found they had a very limited selection for the patients, especially those in the psychiatric ward. They wouldn't want the patients to get their hands on anything that might give them ideas after all. But no matter, Murdock had been very well read long before he ever got committed. He wasn't the best student at his school, that was for sure, he had his share of hooky days and he always tried to outdo himself so nobody could ever find out where he went. So, one day he thought he'd come up with his best idea, truant officers would check the playground, the movie theater, any place that would naturally attract kids, so one rainy Monday he instead went to the free public library.
His grandfather loved reading true crime stories, his grandmother didn't have a lot of objections to that, though she did to H.M. reading them, and she always threatened if he had any nightmares because of it, he was going to sleep with his grandfather, and his grandfather would be sleeping on the couch. These threats never had any effect on his young mind though, perhaps because he never got very far in his grandfather's books before the old man would pick them up and put them somewhere H.M. either couldn't find, or couldn't reach. At the library however, nobody could tell him what he could and couldn't read, so he wandered up and down the aisles looking for something that would stick out to him. And he did, he'd found a book of true crime stories and found a section about a man named Dr. H.H. Holmes, known by some as "The Devil of the White City". It sounded good to him, so he found an unoccupied table and sat down to read. He didn't sleep for two nights after that, but he never told his grandparents either.
No, it made sense, Frankie never read about America's first and most notorious serial killer of the late 19th century, because those crimes were not committed in a mad frenzy, the motive behind them was greed. An estimated 200 women and men were killed, and their bodies, or their skeletons, sold to medical schools, their unused remains burnt up in a furnace, all for a profit, and others he took insurance policies out on as missing relatives and then 'found' the bodies to collect on. Oh but that hadn't been all there was to the story. The house these ghastly crimes had been committed in, was a hotel, or as some called it, a castle, designed and built by Holmes for the purpose of trapping and killing people, especially women. Murdock had seen the maps, the blueprints drawn that laid out the house of horrors, he could still remember: here the reception room, here the waiting room, here a dark room, here a trap door, here a maze, here an asphyxiation chamber where he could listen to his victims scream for help as he gassed them to death, here a secret room, here an elevator for moving the bodies from floor to floor, here a hanging chamber, here a room bricked up, here a dissection laboratory, here a trap door from the third floor, here a secret passage leading down to the basement. So elaborate, it seemed too weird to be true, and yet it was. And all over the house were traps and alarms, soundproofed walls so nobody could hear the victims crying out for help, metal plates in the wall so they couldn't escape, and torches to burn them to death if they tried. That had been his first exposure to what mankind truly was capable of doing, without it being a lesson taught by a history teacher or some other adult; that had been his own grim discovery, and it had scared the hell out of him.
And here, now, he had the same paralyzing feeling creeping up his spine, as he remembered having that dark stormy day over 25 years ago when he read the book of a ghastly murderer who by now was all but forgotten and buried in time. And if they didn't catch Masterson, the same would happen here, only it would happen without the public ever knowing what he did in the first place. He couldn't let that happen. He looked up at the second story of the house, he knew that there wasn't anything of that sort here, that they wouldn't find anything like that behind these walls and windows; but all the same he couldn't shake this feeling. He was convinced, something had happened in this house, there was a dark force here, almost like an evil presence watching over them, knowing that they were here and why they had come. Would it try to stop them? Or would it permit them to finish what they came here to do?
"What is it, Murdock?" Frankie asked.
Murdock came back to the here and now, he shook off what was going through his mind and answered with a reassuring expression on his face, "Nothing…" he came between them and placed his arms around their shoulders and told them, "Now come on me ghastlies, we've got a house to haunt and if we're going to do it right we need to know it as well as we know our enemy."
"How long do you think we'll have before Masterson comes back?" Mad Dog asked once they reentered the house.
"If he's still running on his old schedule," Frankie told them, "Then we should have a couple of hours, and if not…"
"Then we'll just have to improvise," Murdock said, "Now come along everybody, let's search the house, and look out for anything that could help us."
Mad Dog went to the front hall and made his way up the stairs to see what there was on the second floor of this house. Murdock followed closely behind him to make sure he didn't get into anything that he shouldn't. The idea was to get in, see everything they needed to see, and get out without anybody being able to tell that anyone had been in the house. Though he had to admit he was just as morbidly curious to see what all there was in this house.
As he went up the stairs he noticed the framed photographs of several women. Murdock doubted that Masterson actually knew any of these women, more likely they just came with the frames, like new wallets. Obviously, it seemed to Murdock, Mr. Masterson was indeed no longer married, otherwise it would have to be a very open one for the Missus to allow these to hang up where she could see them. He looked up to the top of the stairs as he climbed the steps one at a time, as if expecting someone to be up there waiting for them; to jump out when they least suspected and to attack. Of course Murdock knew he was just being silly, but he didn't feel silly, in fact he couldn't find anything to laugh at right now at all. He didn't like this house, he didn't like being in it and to be honest he couldn't wait to get out of here, it just gave him a bad feeling all the way through his body.
They reached the top of the stairs and looked in the open doorways. The one opposite the head of the stairs looked like a master bedroom. Murdock and Mad Dog crept in and looked around every corner to make sure there wasn't anyone watching for them.
"Did they say where the pictures were?" Mad Dog asked.
"No," Murdock answered, "Why?"
But he could guess. Mad Dog seemed determined now to make up for not doing a better job to protect Frankie in the beginning. His shaky-as-a-leaf behavior was slowly disappearing and replaced by something harder, more determined. And if it were to happen that any of these pictures Masterson had of Frankie turned out to be compromising, he would kill that man as soon as he set foot in the door. If nothing else, he would destroy the pictures so the sick freak couldn't derive anymore pleasure from gawking at them. But Murdock knew if that happened, Masterson would know someone had been there and it would be before they were ready for him.
Mad Dog didn't answer, instead he looked to Murdock and asked him, "What do you think he did with the other girls?"
Murdock bit his bottom lip and was considering the possibility when they heard Frankie screaming for them from the floor below. They ran down the stairs and found her in the kitchen, looking like she was ready to collapse. She was holding onto the countertop by the sink for support.
"What is it, what's the matter?" Murdock asked.
Frankie reached with her free hand and pulled a drawer open from under the countertop. Murdock went over to the sink and looked in the drawer and saw it was a silverware drawer. There was a fitted tray to hold the butter knives, forks, spoons, etc., but there was also a space next to the tray for larger utensils like spatulas, large spoons with holes, and…
Murdock took a Kleenex out of his pocket and reached in and pulled out the large knife with a thin straight blade and a decorative handle and he asked, "Is this…"
Frankie moved her head forward once in half a nod and said, "That's the cake server that disappeared from Mad Dog's house the night of the murder…the one we used for the birthday cake."
Murdock held it up to the light as if trying to see what had been cleaned away, and said, "If this is the murder weapon..."
"He cleaned it off and has been using it?" Mad Dog asked in disbelief, "Why?"
Frankie inhaled slowly and said, "Now I'm going to be sick."
Mad Dog grabbed her by the arm and rushed her out the door, Murdock stood there in the kitchen gazing at the cake cutter, trying to figure out what to do. Could a police forensics lab find any blood on the blade? Murdock sniffed it, as if he was trying to determine what it was cleaned with…maybe ammonia, purely a guess, there was no smell anymore. Even if they could find blood, they couldn't prove whose it was, only what type it was, and there were millions of people in L.A. alone with any kind of type blood that would be on it. If he took it, they could have the key to the crime, but if he took it, Masterson would know it was missing. Now, he had no way of knowing where Frankie or Murdoch were, by now all he could know was that neither of them were at either hospital anymore. But then, the only place he knew to look was at Frankie's house, and might go after her own parents. He was debating with himself as to if that would count as a plus or loss. He was glad to have another member of his family around and he was proud to be related to Frankie, but he was not proud to be related to her parents, and it made him wonder which one of them he was related to, and who was merely an in-law? He knew that by now it didn't matter.
Murdock was good at making it seem like he didn't always know what he was doing, but the truth was he knew a lot more than people gave him credit for. But this was one time when he didn't know what to do, and he decided he would call Hannibal and ask the colonel what he should do, Hannibal would know what to do. For now, he put the knife back in the drawer and shut it, and put the Kleenex back in his pocket, oh what a sight he'd be carrying that out for people to see. He pulled the back door shut behind him and saw Frankie and Mad Dog standing by the garage where they couldn't be seen from the street.
"You alright, Frankie?" Murdock asked.
"No," she shook her head, "Let's get out of here."
Murdock's heart went out to her, she'd spent over two years preparing herself for this moment, and now that it had come, she hadn't been able to handle it. He didn't even bother looking back to the house, that knife would still be there, it and the man who had taken it, wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.
"Come on," he said as he lightly grabbed her and walked her out towards the car.
"Hey wait a minute," Mad Dog went and pulled the ball out from the bushes and came back with it in tow, "Now nobody will know anybody was here."
"Good thinking," Murdock told him as they went back out to the curb where the 'Vette was parked.
"What're we going to do now, Murdock?" Frankie asked.
Realistically Murdock knew the next item on the list was to find a way to know when Masterson would be home, and alone. But that would have to wait, right now he had another priority right in his lap.
"We have to wait," he told them.
"Wait!?" the others repeated in disbelief.
"How can we just sit around waiting?" Frankie asked.
Murdock could tell she was getting very worked up very quickly, so he took this opportunity to remind her, "Breathe, Frankie, breathe, deeper, deeper, calm down, remember what I told you, if you want to convince people you are insane you must not respond."
"Murdock…"
"Now listen, cous, we go up against murderers quite frequently, and as tempting as it would be to just bust in and smash their heads in, that's not the way to do it, you have to be calm and patient and wait it out until the right moment comes. It's a tricky part of the business but that's why we're the professionals here, because we've got a lot of experience in that field," he told her.
"Okay," Frankie concurred, "So we wait, but what do we do in the meantime?"
"Well first of all," Murdock said, "We've got to get out of here before somebody sees us."
"And go where?" Mad Dog asked.
Well, Murdock had originally planned for them to go to the beach, and that's exactly what they did. Once he got the others calmed down and they got back in Face's 'Vette, Murdock turned the car around and went back to the way he'd originally come and went in the other direction out to the beach. As planned, it was empty so it was just the three of them. Apparently Face must've had the same location in mind on some of his more current dates because Murdock found a couple of blankets in the trunk that still had some sand on them. By now the sky was filled with clouds so nobody would be getting much sun, but at least they were out in the open and alone so they could plot among themselves. Murdock told Frankie and Mad Dog to take their shoes off and to take the blankets and put them down underneath them; if possible he really didn't want them dripping sand everywhere when he got them home and have to explain to Hannibal where they'd been.
Murdock looked around the beach and saw a payphone down by the dock, he found some change in his pocket and left Frankie and Murdoch for a minute to call the house and check in with Hannibal. Sure, he could've called from the phone in the car, but right now he also wanted to be out in the open, not in an enclosed space, even if the top did come down, it wasn't the same.
"You did what?" Hannibal asked, sounding like he was hoping he had heard wrong.
Murdock closed his eyes and breathed in, waiting for the reprimand from his colonel.
"And you found what?" Hannibal asked.
Murdock opened his eyes again and explained, "Frankie told me the night of the murder a cake server had disappeared from the dining room table, she thinks it was the real knife used to murder that woman. He's got it in his silverware drawer."
"Is it still there?" Hannibal asked.
"I wasn't sure whether to bring it with me or not," Murdock said, "Ultimately I left it behind because I had a more pressing issue to tend to."
"Probably the best thing you could do," Hannibal said, "We're going to get this guy but it's going to take time."
"Hannibal, something I wonder," Murdock told him, "By now Masterson has to know Frankie and Murdoch are gone, so what do you think he's going to do? He did all this to get his hands on Frankie, I don't see him walking away undefeated now."
"It's a good question but unfortunately I'm not sure right now," Hannibal replied, "Where are you guys?"
Murdock turned and looked back and saw Frankie and Mad Dog had settled down on their blankets in the middle of the sand and were rolling the ball he'd brought back and forth to each other like a couple of small kids, it made him smile. "Oh," he said as he turned back to the phone, "We just stopped off in a little out of the way place, it's nice and private out here, nobody around to bug us."
"How far are you from the house?" Hannibal asked.
"Oh, about three miles I think," he answered.
"That's fine, when do you anticipate being back here?" he asked.
"I think we'll stay out here for a little while, Colonel, if you don't mind," Murdock said, "I think it's doing them some good."
"Alright, we'll keep an ear open for anything and give you a ring if something comes up," Hannibal told him.
"Okey-dokey, Colonel," Murdock said as he hung up the phone.
Murdock looked up at the sky and saw that the clouds were getting a yellowish hue to them. Usually that didn't happen until closer to night and usually when there was going to be a storm. It in turn made everything down on the earth look a bit more yellow than it did before; Murdock didn't think there was going to be a storm and for the time being anyway, noticed how pretty it made everything look. That, mixed with the warm breeze and the otherwise good weather they were having really made him feel alive, the same way he always felt as soon as Face got him out past the V.A.'s front doors and off the property and they made a mad dash to the van. It felt great, it also gave him ideas.
He looked back to his cousin and her boyfriend and thought what a shame it was he couldn't find someone who would marry them right now as they were. Unfortunately that was one disadvantage of being certifiably insane, they took away your legal right to marry, and he knew it. And even though he knew that Mad Dog wasn't actually insane, he knew that right now that wouldn't matter where a justice of the peace was concerned. All the same…a devilish smirk found its way to his face and a thought occurred to him that all the same, on the way home he might stop off at the grocery store and pick up a box of rice. He had a feeling that they could easily have a wedding on their hands before too long at this rate, especially if he had any say in the matter.
Frankie talked about their lives being ruined; that was something that Murdock and the rest of the Team could understand very well. Being hunted fugitives had a tendency to cramp any plans for anything resembling a 'normal' life; B.A. could hardly get back to Chicago to visit his mother, even if Face was a person willing to make a commitment he knew the Army would kill that idea real quick, and Lynch, no, now Decker, would be hunting down everybody in the phone book named John Smith hoping to catch the right one. And as for himself, he was much in the same boat as Mad Dog was right now, oh he hadn't been accused of murder, but all the same his permanent residence was a mental hospital, and everybody knew what happened in those places. Would he necessarily say that their lives were ruined though? No, rearranged horribly, disastrously altered, but they weren't willing to give up yet. They'd already proven that regardless of the Army's plans for them, they could run circles around the MPs any day of the week, and in spite of always being on the run they all had it pretty well. If nothing else it sure as hell beat the alternative of being back in Fort Bragg or in prison, that much he knew.
Ah, but he knew he couldn't say the same thing for these two. True a mental hospital was not as bad as a capital murder conviction in a maximum security prison, but either way Mad Dog and Frankie had both lost the lives they knew and anything resembling the normalcy that they had once known in their day-to-day routines. Now, for their own part Murdock could confess that to some degree, they were guilty, they had taken the money from the bank in Hanoi and he had been the one to fly them for that mission. By some logics the reason why they had done it wouldn't even matter, the fact remained that they did, and he was just as guilty for aiding and abetting them during the course of the robbery. But theses kids? They'd had nothing to do with that poor woman's murder, so why had they had to suffer the consequences for it all these years? Thinking about it again, he couldn't fault Frankie for saying she wanted to kill Masterson, he only knew the man secondhand and he wanted to kill him too.
Murdock walked over to Frankie and Mad Dog and saw that they'd fallen asleep on the blanket wrapped in each other's arms. He smiled and knelt down beside them and brushed some loose grains of sand off of them, then brought one corner of the blanket up to cover them when the wind picked up again. He sat down on the other blanket and recollected his ball and watched the two younger people as they slept. He felt a big goofy grin on his face until he swore he looked like The Man who Laughs, but he didn't care, he liked these two, and he could foresee a happy ending for them somewhere down the line; it was just a matter now of finding that point and reaching it.