Seventeen

The notice scrawled on Maury Oakert’s office door announced he had closed for the day. But a pile of mail and newspapers on the stoop indicated he hadn’t been to work for at least a week. A sign that read Closed for Mourning had been taped to the door.

Arn called Ana Maria to find out the doctor’s home address, and drove across town to his home on the avenues. This part of Cheyenne had historically been home to bankers and lawyers, railroaders and business tycoons wanting to live close to Millionaire’s Row on Carey that was established after the Union Pacific adopted Cheyenne in the 1860s. The area was situated right where the Cheyenne-to-Deadwood stage travelled, back during Cheyenne’s rowdy and formative years. Arn was sure it was no more rowdy and dangerous than Cheyenne had been recently: two murders in two weeks. He was certain that would match the wild town back in the day.

Arn drove the tree-lined streets, and a red-fiery sky shone through the pine and blue spruce and cottonwoods, courtesy of recent forest fires in Colorado drifting north. Parking was at a premium on these narrow old streets, and Arn stopped down the block. He walked to the doctor’s home and took the three steps to the front door, then rang the bell. Repeatedly.

He got no answer, and if the curtain to one side of a bay window hadn’t moved, he would have left. Dr. Oakert was home, and Arn banged more aggressively. After five minutes of scraping his knuckles on the solid mahogany door, Dr. Oakert cracked it an inch. “I’ve said all I’m going to tell you people,” he said and slammed it shut.

Arn rapped again, this time harder and more persistent. The stained glass in the center of the door threatened to break until the chain rattled across the door. Dr. Oakert cracked it open again. “I said I told you cops—”

“I’m not the police.” Arn slipped a business card through the crack and Oakert closed the door. Within a moment, he opened the door again. He stuck his head out and hurriedly looked both ways along the street before stepping aside to let Arn in.

“You’re that private detective Ana Maria is working with on Jillie’s murder?”

“We’re both employed by the TV station, if that’s what you mean.”

“You and she aren’t … an item by any chance?”

Arn forced a smile. “At my age?”

As soon as Arn was inside, Dr. Oakert looked a last time outside before slamming the door. He threw a dead bolt and chain across the door. “Can’t be too careful with kids breaking into houses around the neighborhood.”

“I’m thinking you’re not afraid of some juvies breaking in to swipe a stereo or rifle through your underwear drawer.”

Dr. Oakert stood with his hands on his hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re scared to death of something, Dr. Oakert.”

When he started to object, Arn continued. “A dead bolt and chain in the middle of the day? And you keep it so dark that it’s hard to even walk in here. May we talk somewhere where there’s light, Doctor?”

Dr. Oakert led Arn into a study lined with medical books and publications dealing with the criminally insane. There were books on case studies of famous serial killers and those cheating the penal system through mental asylums. Arn took a book from the shelf dealing with Jeffrey Dahmer. “My guess is you’re afraid of someone just like him”—he handed the doctor the book—“to have closed your office.”

“It’s just temporary until Jillie’s funeral. I do have some respect for the dead, Mr. Anderson.”

Arn let the comment pass. “I think Jillie’s killer struck again Saturday night.”

The doctor flicked a desk lamp on, and Arn was taken aback. Ana Maria had described Maury Oakert as a self-styled playboy: impeccably dressed, impeccably groomed. Yet here behind the desk sat a man who had neither shaved nor put on fresh clothes recently. He was attired in baggy sweatpants and a USC jersey with food stains down the front.

Dr. Oakert opened a drawer and took out a pack of Winstons. With hands trembling, he shook one out, but four more tumbled onto the desktop. When he tried lighting the cigarette, his hands shook and the flame missed its target. Arn reached over and took the lighter-disguised-as-a-hand-grenade and held it to the doctor’s cigarette. “Do you have a gun handy, Dr. Oakert?”

The man blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Of course not. I’ve never had any use for them before, and I certainly don’t now. Why?”

“I’d consider getting one.”

Dr. Oakert took a bottle of Southern Comfort from a desk drawer and poured three fingers. He put it back without offering Arn a drink. “You said Jillie’s killer struck again?” he said after downing half the whisky.

“An Iraq war veteran,” Arn said. “Murdered in precisely the same way she was.”

“Strangulation?”

Arn nodded.

“That’s none of my business.”

“It is if Jillie knew her killer. And like you told Ana Maria, Jillie transcribed all your clinical notes. She knew the type of people who come to see you. More importantly, she knew all the dark, dirty secrets about your patients. Just like you did.”

Arn sat down on an overstuffed couch and set his Stetson on a coffee table that had deer legs for legs. He envisioned Freud using a divan just like this one to get into the heads of his patients. Perhaps Dr. Oakert had, too. “Here’s what I’m thinking—and stop me if I’m too far off base here. I think that one of the sets of clinical notes that Jillie transcribed genuinely frightened her. Little Jim said she came home the week of her death scared as hell. Maybe of someone who would pose a serious threat the next time he had a therapy session with you.”

Dr. Oakert sipped his whisky without objection and Arn continued. “Maybe Jillie found the patient that Saturday night at the bar and confronted him. Folks said she was reckless like that when she drank. Or perhaps the patient just got to stalking her, and picked that Saturday night as the ideal time to kill her.” Arn leaned over to look in the doctor’s rheumy eyes. “You got any patients capable of that?”

Dr. Oakert lit a fresh cigarette with the smoldering filter of his first one. He sat staring at the bookcase, and Arn wondered if he was considering answering him. When he’d first seen Dr. Oakert at the door, the man had been shaking worse than a dog passing a peach pit, he was so frightened. Now he’d regained his composure, and he looked at Arn defiantly. “You know I can’t reveal that information.”

Standing, Arn walked to the doctor’s I Love Me wall, plastered with diplomas and certificates and community awards he’d received since entering psychiatry. He tapped one certificate. “Governor’s certificate of appreciation. Impressive.”

“Governor Jerry Brown thought the work I’d done to get the bill passed was due an award.”

“What type of legislation?” Arn knew the more the doctor talked, the more likely it was he’d open up.

“Governor Brown signed into law a bill I pushed for, one that isolated the most dangerous psychiatric patients within California mental facilities.”

“Isolated as in Silence of the Lambs?”

“Not that severe.” Dr. Oakert waved the air with his cigarette. “Prior to that legislation, dangerous—and I’m talking about extremely dangerous, psychotic patients here—were free to mingle with lesser patients. And with the hospital staff.” He stood and walked to the window, staying to one side as he cracked the blinds to look out. “I worked the Napa State Hospital in scenic Napa, California. Home to the criminally insane. Home to a patient who strangled a psychiatric technician to death one day before that law was implemented.”

“Didn’t you have guards to prevent that?”

Dr. Oakert’s head snapped around and he glared at Arn. “Mr. Anderson, those people were patients. Not inmates. Sure, we had security available if we needed it. We even wore personal monitors around our necks in case we had problems. But security never quite responded quickly enough.” He snubbed out his cigarette and looked at the pack as if he needed another pick-me-up. “We had upward of two thousand assaults a year against other patients and hospital staff, mostly by the most violent patients. And still they were not isolated.”

“You mean confined?”

Dr. Oakert nodded. “I myself was cut with a homemade shank, and would have been ripped to death if another patient hadn’t come to my rescue.” He slid the pack of Winstons into his top drawer and shut it. “After that I made it my mission to get legislation passed that would prevent another incident like that. To ensure the violent patients were isolated from the nonviolent ones in wings where they wouldn’t harm others. And, being isolated, they were afforded the best treatment we could give them. It took me four years, but I got it done.”

Arn studied the framed certificate with the seal of California embossed in one corner. “You were a psychiatrist working for the state at the time?”

“I was a clinical analyst. I often evaluated prisoners to determine their state of mind at the time of their crime. If my finding showed NGRI—Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity—they were remanded to Napa State where I or one of my staff was assigned their case.” He looked at Arn and began trembling again. “But you said the second murder is similar to Jillie’s?”

Arn took out his pocket notebook and flipped pages. “Local man named Don Whales. Headed an amateur band that played bars and private gigs. Retired Army. Did mechanic work on the side, as well as helped with dog classes at the fairgrounds.”

“There’s hardly a connection to Jillie. She was neither in the military nor did she train dogs.” Dr. Oakert laughed nervously. “And I’d know if she had any musical abilities.”

“Don and his band played at the Boot Hill the night Jillie was murdered,” Arn continued. “And, like I said, he was strangled like she was.” He turned to where he’d had Slade sketch ligature marks from both victims and slid it across Dr. Oakert’s desk. The man’s eyes widened for a micro-second—just long enough to tell Arn that he had seen those marks before. Dr. Oakert handed Arn back the notebook, but Arn left it open, atop the desk, where the doctor could see it. “It takes a special person to kill like that. Bringing the victim to the point of death only to let up and do it again, moments later.”

Dr. Oakert looked away.

“If you were analyzing a patient who killed like that, what would you discern just from their method of killing?”

The doctor glanced at the sketch. He didn’t pick the notebook up, as if in doing so it would be an admission that he recognized the marks. “I’d say the person thoroughly enjoyed bringing his victim just to the point of death so that he—or she—could exert control over them all over again.”

“You’ve seen those exact markings before.”

“Nonsense.”

Arn stood from the couch and leaned across the desk. “Just now, when I showed you the sketch of the ligature marks, you knew who the killer was.”

“I had a patient some years ago …” Dr. Oakert began slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Name of Rodney Alcala. He murdered people in the ’70s in New York. And in California he committed numerous murders.”

“The Dating Game killer,” Arn said. “Seems like he even murdered a couple people after appearing on the game show. He was your patient?”

Dr. Oakert lit another Winston and leaned back in his chair as if he were once again analyzing the killer. “In a manner. He was sentenced to the electric chair in California when I was chief psychiatrist for the state. And I will never forget my initial interview of Rodney.” The doctor leaned across his desk and lowered his voice. “The man was pure evil. He would use a ligature—a sash cord, an electrical cord, a belt, whatever was handy—to strangle his victims to the point of death. Then let them live. And he’d do it again. And again, until he finally decided he wanted them dead.”

“Just like a case I had in Denver,” Arn said. “But I understand Alcala is still on death row.”

Dr. Oakert nodded.

“Then he couldn’t have murdered Jillie Reilly or Don Whales. But what you’re saying is someone equally evil—with the same propensity for death and suffering as Alcala has—killed Don and Jillie.”

Dr. Oakert looked away, and Arn pressed. “You know the killer. He’s a patient of yours now?”

The doctor’s head nodded faintly in the affirmative, but he denied it. “I do not know—”

“One of your patients is the killer, and he’s murdered long before Jillie Reilly.” Arn laid his hand on Dr. Oakert’s arm. “And she knew the man’s identity. Knew about him, didn’t she?”

Tears formed in the doctor’s eyes. “She did. She knew all his grisly crimes, which he came to me for help with.”

“You say he came to you seeking your help?”

Oakert nodded. “He’s a conflicted soul. Like many … patients I’ve seen through the years, this one wanted help. Wanted some reason to stay straight. And yet his dark side tugged at him so much harder. It frightened her like nothing else.”

“Who is it, Doctor? What is the patient’s name?”

He looked away.

“Who is it!” Arn slammed his hand on the desk top. “Who the hell is the patient? ’Cause he killed them both and may very well kill again.”

Dr. Oakert dropped his cigarette butt in his tumbler of whisky and it hissed angrily. “I cannot tell you,” he whispered.

“What do you mean you can’t tell me? You know the man’s identity—”

“I cannot even verify it’s a man, though I will continue referring to the patient as ‘he.’” Dr. Oakert stood and paced in front of his desk. “Don’t you think I want to tell you, and Sergeant Slade, and everyone else who will listen?” He slapped his whisky glass and it crashed against the wall of his study. “Damned patient-doctor confidentiality.”

“And you could live with him killing again knowing you could have stopped it?”

“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that my special patient is not your killer. Do you know the harm it would do to him if I alerted law enforcement, betrayed my oath, and it wasn’t him? All the progress we made would be nullified. He’d go off on law enforcement and would have a tremendous setback in his program.”

Arn backed away and sat on the couch. He was angry enough that he was fearful he’d beat the doctor senseless. He took in deep, calming breaths. “Okay, so there’s the confidentiality thing. But surely there are some things you can tell me that wouldn’t violate your oath.”

Dr. Oakert ran his fingers through his hair and nodded. “The special patient I’m seeing in my practice has killed before—”

“Has he been caught for his crimes?”

“I cannot divulge that,” Dr. Oakert said. “If he was insane at the time, there was no … crime involved.”

“Go on, then.”

“What I can say is that I think my patient is making progress. That he hasn’t killed in years, ever since he’s been involved in … intense therapy. But he may not be the person you’re looking for. If I outed him and it wasn’t him, I’d lose my license.”

“That’s better than some other father losing his daughter like Little Jim Reilly did,” Arn said. “But what if your patient is him?”

Dr. Oakert remained silent, nudging a piece of lint with the toe of his slipper.

“You want me to catch him,” Arn said. “Just to see if the killings stop.”

The doctor clutched Arn’s arm. “No, I need you to catch him.”

“Then help me.” Arn eased Dr. Oakert onto the couch. “Give me something before he kills again.”

“He’s a troller-hunter,” the doctor blurted out.

“A what?”

“A troller,” Dr. Oakert explained. “He trolls his domain looking for that perfect victim. And he’ll go far afield to find her.”

“You mean he drives around looking for his next victim?”

“Or scours the internet,” Dr. Oakert said. “Like most serial rapists and serial killers, he has certain parameters, certain requirements he desires in his victims. And he’ll go to great lengths to find the perfect victim who fits those parameters.” He started trembling again. Arn opened the desk drawer and grabbed the pack of smokes. He lit another cigarette and handed it to the doctor.

“Look for someone who drives,” Dr. Oakert said as he blew smoke toward the ceiling. “A lot. Which is why I don’t think my patient is the killer. Can you imagine killing two people in a small town like Cheyenne? You’d stick out like a sore thumb. My patient would go out of town to hunt.”

“Doctor,” Arn said, “three summers ago during Cheyenne Frontier Days someone walked into the Coin Shop here in town. It’s only blocks from where they hold their free pancake breakfast for folks attending the rodeos, and there were a thousand people there. Someone shot and killed the owner and his friend. Then just vanished. At nine thirty in the morning, for God’s sake. And you can’t believe your patient could get away with murder in his own town?”

“Jillie and this Don Whales didn’t fit his profile.”

“What are—were—the parameters of his victims?”

“I’ve said too much already,” Dr. Oakert replied. “But what I can say is that the killer—if he’s my special patient—does not want to be caught. None of this ‘please catch me before I kill again’ attitude. He’ll do what it takes to keep from getting caught. The last thing he wants is to be sent back to an asylum.”

“So, your patient has been institutionalized?”

“I just can’t say any more.” Dr. Oakert led Arn to the door.

“One other thing, Doctor,” Arn said. “What kind of patient was Eddie Glass?”

The doctor stopped mid-stride. “What do you know about Eddie?”

Arn shrugged. “Not much, except he was your court-ordered patient. Anger management issues, was it? Did he ever overcome his urges?”

The doctor ignored Arn, throwing back the dead bolt and peering outside before fully opening the door. “Just find my patient, Mr. Anderson. In case it is him.”