Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,45
in order to establish my sanity and motives. That’s all a part of legal and medical record now. I think this interview is terminated.”
The door opened as Norbrook arose. He turned, with cold dignity permitted the deputies to cuff his wrists.
Stringer stopped the psychiatrist as he followed the others into the hallway. The sheriff scowled after Norbrook as his deputies led him away to the car.
“Well, Doc—what do you think?”
“You heard it all, didn’t you?”
Stringer dug out a cigarette. “Craziest line of bullshit I ever listened to. Guess he figures he can plead insanity if he makes up a load of crap like that.”
Dr Hodgson shook his head. “Oh, Matthew Norbrook’s insane—no doubt about it. He’s a classic paranoid schizophrenic: well-ordered delusional system, grandiosity, feelings of superiority, sense of being persecuted, belief that his actions are done in the name of a higher purpose. On an insanity scale of one to three, I’d have to rate him as four-plus. He’ll easily be found innocent by reason of insanity.”
“Damn!” Stringer muttered, watching Norbrook enter the elevator.
“The good news, at least from the patient’s point of view,” Hodgson went on, “is that paranoid schizophrenia so easily responds to treatment. Why, with the right medication and some expert counseling, Matthew Norbrook will probably be out of the hospital and living a normal life in less than a year.”
Stringer’s hand shook as he drew on the cigarette. “It isn’t justice, Nate!”
“Perhaps not, Jimmy, but it’s the way the law works. And look at it this way—the dead don’t care whether their murderer is executed or cured. Norbrook may yet live to make a valuable contribution to society. Give me one of those, will you?”
Stringer hadn’t known the doctor smoked. “The dead don’t care,” he repeated.
“Thanks, Jimmy.” Hodgson shook out a Marlboro. “I know how you must feel. I saw a little of what was on that one videocassette—the one where he tortured that poor policewoman, Sherri Wilson. Hard to believe she could have remained conscious through it all. Guess it was the cocaine he used on her. Must have really been tough on you, since you talked her into posing as a hooker to try and trap him. It’s understandable that you’re feeling a lot of guilt about it. If you’d like to come around and talk about it sometime...”
Hodgson was handing back the cigarettes, but already Stringer had turned his back and walked off without another word.
Cora Steinman, the district attorney, stepped out from the doorway of the observation room. She watched the elevator doors close behind Stringer.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said finally.
Dr Hodgson crushed his unsmoked cigarette into the sand of a hallway ash can. “I know my man.”
From the parking lot, the report of the short-barreled .357 echoed like cannon fire against the clinic walls.
“Morton, you’ve taken care of the journals?” Hodgson asked.
The black defense attorney collected his briefcase. “I took care of everything. His collection of evidence is now a couple of books on Jack the Ripper, a bunch of S&M porno, and a couple of snuff films.”
“Then it’s just a matter of the tape from the interview.”
“I think there’s been a malfunction in the equipment,” Dr Gottlieb decided.
“It pays to be thorough,” Steinman observed.
A deputy flung open the stairway door. He was out of breath. “Norbrook tried to escape. Had a knife hidden on him. Jimmy had to shoot.”
“I’ll get the emergency tray!” Dr Hodgson said quickly.
“Hell, Doc.” The deputy paused for another breath. “Just get a hose. Most of the sucker’s head is spread across your parking lot.”
“I’ll get the tray anyway,” Hodgson told him.
He said to the others as the deputy left, “Must keep up appearances.”
“Why,” Steinman wondered, as they walked together toward the elevator, “why do you suppose he was so convinced that we only exist as females?”
Dr Hodgson shrugged. “Just a male chauvinist human.”
But You’ll Never Follow Me
It wasn’t the smell of death that he hated so much. He’d grown used to that in Nam. It was the smell of dying that tore at him. Slow dying.
He remembered his best buddy stuck to the paddy mud, legless and eviscerated, too deep in shock to cry out, just gulping air like a beached fish, eyes round with wonder and staring into his. Marsden had closed those eyes with his right hand and with his left he put a .45 slug through his friend’s skull.
After that, he’d made a promise to himself never to kill again, but that was as true a promise