When awakened I had the energy to head to the Palace, grabbing a shower and change of clothes. At eight I had called Belafonte and given her a quick overview of what was happening, telling her to continue her research on Johnson. I next left a message for Dr Nancy Wainwright to call as soon as she arrived at work.
Dr Wainwright had been the director of the Institute for Aberrational Behavior for six years. I had last been there five years ago on the Bobby Lee Crayline case, Wainwright calling me out of the blue when the sociopath’s legal team had wanted to hypnotically regress Crayline to his childhood, part of a defense strategy. Both she and the former director of the Institute, Dr Prowse, were terrified that the regression would blow the hinges off whatever final door kept Crayline in limited restraint.
The procedure went ahead anyway, and to disastrous effect, but I had answered Dr Wainwright’s summons and driven to the Institute to try and forestall the hypnosis. In my book she owed me one and it was time to collect on the chit.
Her call came at 9.45, and I was on it in a single ring. “Detective Ryder,” Dr Wainwright said, her voice pleasant and familiar. “It’s been a while. You’re still in Mobile I expect?”
“In Florida, Doc,” I said, picturing Wainwright, a slender woman now in her mid-fifties with penetrating and intelligent brown eyes behind round-framed glasses. She’d proven to be an excellent steward of the Institute founded by Dr Prowse, so much so that the former Alabama Institute for Aberrational Studies was now the National Institute for Aberrational Studies. “I’m an agent with the Florida Center for Law Enforcement.”
“Still specializing in the disturbed cases?”
“We all have a calling,” I said. “Listen, Dr Wainwright, we’ve got a problem here.”
“Miami? The Menendez woman? Have they found anything yet?”
“No, but I’m calling about another case. A former patient of the Institute has been killing women here. He stones them to death, wraps them in cloth, douses them with olive oil and accelerant and sets them on fire. Two of the three were still alive when he set them alight. Last night he killed a cop by bashing in his head with a hammer.”
“My God,” she said. “Who?”
“Frisco Jay Dredd.”
Seconds ticked by, followed by a soft exhalation of breath. “Not unexpected, Detective.”
“I need to know more about Dredd,” I said. “Anything you can tell me … and more.”
“You know I can’t go into—”
“Bobby Lee Crayline, Doctor Wainwright. You needed me, I came running. I need you now.”
“It’s different. That wasn’t—”
“Did I mention that Dredd has another woman? She’s probably alive … for a bit.”
Another long pause. “I’m, uh, not in a good place. Let me call you back. Fifteen minutes.”
It took seventeen, me staring at my phone, waiting.
“I drove off the Institute grounds,” she said. “I’m parked a half-mile down the road. I don’t know why … it makes me feel better about, uh, talking.”
“I understand. What can you tell me about Dredd?”
“Frisco Dredd is reality-challenged, Detective. Sometimes he seems normal, gentle. Other times he’s delusional, and can be completely under the sway of his delusions.”
“Religious delusions, unless I miss my guess.”
“Frisco Dredd believes himself a battleground between Good and Evil. One night an attendant heard moaning in a shower stall. He found that Mr Dredd had somehow managed to strip a length of hollow plastic conduit from a wall, a tube. He jammed one end into a faucet, inserted the other end deep into his bowels and turned the hot water on full.”
“A high-powered enema,” I conjectured. “Trying to wash the evil away.”
“He nearly died from a perforated intestine and later explained Satan had crawled up his anus while he was sleeping and needed to be flushed out. There were psychological aspects at play, Detective. Dredd is bisexual, and it wasn’t Satan that had violated his anus.”
“It was other men,” I said, not in my brother’s league but still no stranger to the symbolisms of a tortured mind.
“In Dredd’s upbringing, homosexuality and its practice was a mortal sin against God and Nature. Dredd also manifests Hypersexual Disorder. You’re acquainted?”
“Sex often starts as impulsive in earlier life, ramps up to compulsive, all-encompassing. An addiction as desperate as a heavy heroin jones.”
“The victim is driven by libido,” Wainwright affirmed. “Masturbation a dozen times a day or more, sexual fantasizing beyond the normal range, countless anonymous sexual partners. The victims are often terrified by the intensity of their drives, but it would affect Frisco Dredd even more.”
“The harsh religious upbringing,” I said, recalling my brother’s analysis.
“Dredd didn’t want to talk about his early life, but I told him if he wanted to trade prison for the Institute, he’d have to answer our questions truthfully, we were a research facility. He gave me little, and perhaps was lying, but it seems he was part of a larger family who had a transient lifestyle. Poor. Often made fun of by other children. Their religion was fundamentalist in nature, extreme, involving harsh punishments for minor infractions like talking back … beatings, made to kneel and pray on concrete for hours on end. Being told he would burn in hell for his sins. You know what this sort of thing can do to a young mind?”
“All too well.”
“Two months after the hose incident a guard noticed Dredd walking oddly, gingerly. A search found that he’d jammed the entirety of his genitals into a can fished from the trash. He said it was the only way he could keep his animal locked up.”
“Animal?” I said, shaking my head.
“In Dredd’s mind, his sex drives are the spawn of the Devil, sinful and disgusting, and yet the feelings suffuse every aspect of his being.”
“Was there an issue with his mother?” I said, cribbing from my brother’s analysis.
“Damn, Detective Ryder. If you ever quit the FCLE, we could use a mind like yours at the Institute.”
You’ve already had one, I thought, saying, “Tell me about Mama.”
“Dredd refused to speak of her, becoming agitated when she was mentioned, singing or praying loudly when I’d try to go there. He’d subconsciously squeeze his genitalia whenever the subject came up, pinching. I can’t help but wonder if she was hypersexualized as well, trying to beat the same feelings from her son, the sin. Making him ashamed of his drives, his genitalia. It would explain a lot.”
“What about job history? Education? What work has he done?”
“Home-schooled, but all that meant was daily Bible lessons. He spoke of odd jobs, driving construction equipment, working on ranches, painting ships, farming chores, roustabout at carnivals. He’d work a while, then fall into drink and drugs, get fired. His whole life was itinerant, the only constant being a bleak and joyless vision of the Bible.”
“Itinerant,” I sighed. “He knows how to live off the grid.”
“He’s lived his life as a member of the underclass, and knows how to move in that stratum. I hate to say this, Detective, but Dredd’s resourceful. Not bright in an IQ sense, but canny, cunning. He knows how to manipulate us – us being the regular folk – and since sees us as Godless heathens consigned to Hell, he doesn’t care.”
“You had to let Dredd loose on to the streets?”
“He’d served his time. Plus we observe, Detective, remember? We don’t offer therapies, save for helping patients try to understand their drives and control them. But to Frisco Dredd, the world is Good and Evil and that’s all he knows.” Wainwright paused, as if wondering on what note to end our conversation. “I have to go back to the facility,” she said, her voice suddenly tired and saddened by the news I’d brought. “I hope you catch him, Detective. I pray you do it fast, because from what you tell me, Frisco Jay Dredd is now totally controlled by his demons.”