Tales From The Psych Ward 7: Again a Witness

(story continues from Tales From The Psych Ward 6: We Are Not Alone)

Part 7: Again a Witness

Detective Antonio Mendes sat at his desk reorganizing his notes on the difficult, high-publicity case, that the papers called "The Roadside Rapist." He was trying to word things properly before he put his report into the computerized records system. When the new system first went into place he had learned the hard way that what you wrote in a notebook in your pocket and what you wrote in a report form on-line were not the same thing. None of the higher-ups ever read your personal notebook.

The buzz of the intercom interrupted his thoughts. He hated that damned, antiquated system, but the Twelfth Precinct was not intended to be a show place. It was a "downtown precinct" that dealt mainly with hookers, low-lifes, and thugs who didn't complain about the squalor that was not much different from the tenements in which they lived.

The voice of the desk clerk was barely understandable through the distortion of the ancient speaker, but Mendes had learned to decipher the garbled speech. The desk clerk spoke in her tired, monotone voice, "Two men here to see you. They asked specifically for you. They say that have information on the Roadside Rapist."

Mendes pushed the talk button. "Give them to McCarthy. I'm not the only one on the task force and I'm buried up to my ass in paperwork right now."

A muffled conversation was slightly audible through the intercom speaker and then the desk clerk replied, "I'm supposed to tell you that it's Nutbag and Wayne and if you don't want to listen to them, he has a very interesting story about steel pipes that he is sure the papers would love to hear."

Mendes considered several emphatic and vulgar responses in three different languages, but instead finally just sighed and pressed the talk button. "Send the son of a bitch up here... And make sure he has a proper escort!"

A few moments later Wayne and I were standing in front of Detective Mendes' desk. A very bored looking officer stood next to me. When the officer spoke, his voice clearly reflected the fact that he resented having to escort us up to homicide. We should have just been given a visitor's ID. It was obvious that I wasn't, after all, a dangerous criminal. Wayne, on the other hand did look somewhat dangerous, but he is not a criminal. The officer spit out his words, "Escort completed, SIR. They're all yours, SIR." With that he turned an walked - or more accurately - stomped away.

Mendes motioned me toward the chair in front of his desk. Wayne had already taken a seat in the corner. The detective's anger and distaste as he looked at me was obvious. He folded his hands with the fingers intertwined and leaned slightly across his desk, "OK, Nutbag. Do you actually have special information about this case? Or are you just here to give me more of your insane delusional drivel?"

"My insane delusional drivel gave you the Baseball Rapists, didn't it?"

Mendes didn't answer me, but stared intently at the stack of folders on his desk for several, very long, minutes. Finally he spoke, "OK. I know that there is a lot of shit here that I don't understand..., and somehow you knew things last time. Maybe you know something this time -- maybe you don't. But even if I believe you, I have to convince others that you have some inside track. So.... tell me something I don't know about this case that you couldn't have heard on the news and then maybe I'll listen."

I tried to hold back my excitement and speak slowly and normally. "First off, what you are calling the first victim is actually the fifth victim."

"No way to prove that."

"All of the victims had pulled over to fix a flat tire."

"That was in the paper."

"The flat tire was always the passenger side rear tire."

"You could have figured that out from pictures or other information in the news."

"All of the tires were punctured by being shot with a .22 caliber, long-rifle bullet."

Mendes froze, his mouth open, his eyes bulging. He looked at me and then down at his notebook and then back up at me and then back down to his notebook. Finally he sputtered out, "I haven't even put that in the computer yet. We were waiting for ballistics to give us some specific answers on the gun. The way we figure it, the perps must pull up alongside the victim's car and one of them leans out the window with a rifle. It has to be a shot from very close range because there are powder burns on the edge of the tires."

"Not perps... perp," I said. Mendes' eyes opened wider. "And she doesn't use a rifle. She has some kind of device that she puts in the wheel well. Then she causes it to drop off after she fires it remotely. You will find it about a mile or so back from where the car pulls over - if you can get there in time tonight. She is going to strike again tonight!"

Mendes pointed his finger at me, "That's one where you are wrong. We know that the interval between rapes is twelve days. That means we have six more days before the next rape."

"Doesn't anyone listen to me? I told you what you are calling the first victim was the fifth. The first woman didn't report it. Six days later the male victim also didn't report it. Six days later there was another woman who did not report the attack. Six days later another man, only this time she tied him to the hood of his car. A passing motorist saw him and stopped. He said that he had been robbed. He told the other driver not to call the police because not much was taken and he didn't want the embarrassment of the story in the papers. Six days after that, the fifth victim, this time a female, was also tied to the hood of the car but her panties were stuffed in her mouth and taped in place. The person who found her called the police to report a rape as soon as they saw her. She was the fifth, not the first victim. Tonight will be the tenth victim."

Mendes was making notes in his notebook. He looked up at me. "Six days, you say. Then we are missing additional victims."

"No, you are ignoring the male victims. Every other victim is a male. You have three female victims twelve days apart and two male victims which were handled as robberies rather than rapes. The victim tonight will be male, and it will be a rape, not a robbery."

Mendes folded his hands over the case folder. "How do you know this? And what do you want from me?"

"You know how I know this. It is just like with Kelly... or with her sister, only this time I am inside the rapist." Mendes nodded and moved his jaw as though chewing. I knew that meant he was weighing what to say next, but before he could speak, I continued. "What I want from you is simple. I want you to lock me up tonight with 24 hour watch and video surveillance. I need to be someplace that I can't leave, and it can be proven where I am."

Mendes laughed, "What... are you afraid that I will think that YOU are this rapist?"

There was a long silence. Then I answered slowly and quietly, "No. I am afraid that I might be this rapist. I am there. I see everything. I know everything. I can't be sure that it isn't actually me. I don't think that I would ever do something like this, but I do spend most of my time living in mental wards, you know. I can't rule out anything"

"OK," replied Mendes, exhaling heavily, "You may not be as crazy as you look. Tell me everything that you know about this."

I paused, trying to put my thoughts into a logical order. "First off, if it's not me, it's a woman. The sensations are similar to what I have felt when I have been in Kelly's body, but different. When I am in Kelly, it is pain and pleasure. With whoever this is, it is more of an intense longing. Do you understand what I mean by that?"

I expected Mendes to make some sarcastic remark, but instead he answered curtly, "You are picking up on the hunter's hunger for his prey. Got that. What else?"

"Her prey," I corrected him. "And the reason that you can't find any DNA or finger prints or any other forensic evidence is that I am wearing a full-body, black, cat suit with an external dildo attachment... and an internal connection to that dildo."

I felt my face reflect my surprise at my own sudden realization. I blurted out, "That's what I am feeling as she rapes them. It's the internal dildo inside my cunt. It is definitely a woman."

Mendes was chewing his words again, but I continued without waiting for him to speak. "My memory of the attacks always begins just outside The Club.' That's a BDSM club downtown where I have been with - or as - Kelly. I am always watching someone get into their car. I think all of the victims are members of the club on their way home. I recognized at least three of the victims as Masters or Mistresses from the club."

"The first one was a Mistress I have seen at the club. She got into her Lexus and headed out toward her mansion. Shortly after she left the main roads and started down the back lanes that lead to her house, I pushed a button on a little box on the seat next to me. I was close enough behind her to hear a loud sound and see a flash of light near the tire area of her car. As soon as I saw the light, I pressed a second button on the box."

"Almost immediately she started to slow down. After a little while, she pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car. I slowed way down and waited until she was out of her car, and then drove up to where she was and stopped. I rolled down my passenger window and called out, Is everything all right.'"

"She came up to the car and leaned over slightly to say through the window, Just a flat tire. Must have hit something on the road. I have someone on the way.'"

"She started to say something else, but was cut off by the impact of the Tazer hitting her on the upper chest. She dropped to the road twitching. I quickly got out of the car and ran over to where she was lying and plunged a hypodermic needle into her shoulder, emptying the full dose of sedative into her before she could recover from the effects of the Tazer."

"Then it was a simple task to strip her totally naked, blindfold her, and bend her over the hood of her car. I ran a rope through the front windows of the car and tied it to her hands to hold her in place. I carefully picked up all evidence of the Tazer and all of her clothing and put them in a red bag with weird markings on it. I've seen the bags before, but I am not sure where. I think in a hospital, but that doesn't narrow it down a whole lot for me."

"After I had everything totally cleaned up, I stood behind her and waited for her to start to come around. I knew it would only be a few moments. As soon as I could sense that she was conscious, I drove myself hard into her cunt and began pumping. The dildo was lubricated, so it slid in easily. She started screaming and thrashing around, but I was already inside her. I kept going until I came from the pressure of the internal dildo. By then, I think that she was starting to respond to the dildo, herself, but I didn't care. She didn't care what I wanted, I didn't care what she wanted."

"I pulled out of her and walked back over to my car. I had a towel on the seat of my car, so I just got in and drove away. I knew that once she stopped struggling, she would figure out that her wrists were held with simple knots and she would be able to free herself. Evidently she did, because there was no report of anyone finding her on the road."

"And that was victim one, you say?" Asked Mendes.

"Yes," I answered. "That was two months ago, and six days later, she struck again, only this time it was a man."

"Are you sure?"

I tried not to laugh. "Yes, I am sure it was a man. I am intimately familiar with male equipment."

Mendes frowned at my attempt at humor. "Everything was exactly the same as the first time, except that I had to lube up his ass before he came around. He came to pretty fast when he felt that dildo pumping into him. Again, he must have gotten himself free after I left, because there was no report of anyone finding him, and this was a much more well traveled road."

"Third victim... woman... everything the same, except that I wrote Slut' across her ass with her own lipstick. I pulled the rope much tighter and tied the knots more securely. I wanted her to be found. Somehow, however, she was still able to get free."

Mendes grunted and continued to take notes.

"That wasn't going to happen the fourth time. Not only did I tie the knots securely, I wrapped black duct tape around the rope and knots."

Mendes nearly fell off his chair. "That was the detail we were holding back to prove we had the right person if someone confessed," he hissed. "You had better not be playing me, or I will gut you myself!"

I waited for his anger to subside slightly, then continued, "I - she - thought that leaving a man tied to the hood of his car with Slut' written across his ass would end up being reported to the police, but he managed to convince the person that found him not to call it in."

"Six days later, Mistress Matilda came out of the club and I trailed her as she headed out of town. She is a very strong woman, and I was worried that I might not be able to take her down, but she dropped like all the rest when the Tazer prongs dug into her tits. I was barely able to drag her back over to her car and put her in place. But with a little effort I was able to pull her up over the hood of the car and tie her hands. Again, I wrapped the knots with duct tape, and again I wrote Slut' on her ass in lipstick. This time, however, to be sure that she didn't talk her rescuer out of calling the police, I shoved her panties in her mouth and taped them in place with the black tape. That is who you call victim number one, but she was actually victim number five."

Mendes nodded as he wrote in his notebook. I continued, "You think you have had two more victims since then, but you have had four. The man who was victim number six told the officers he was robbed by a couple of female hitchhikers he had picked up. He said that nothing of real value was taken and he would appreciate it if none of the details of what happened got into the papers. The officer obliged and left the fact that a prominent local doctor was tied naked to the hood of his car out of his daily report."

"How do you know that?" barked Mendes.

"I read the paper. I looked for a report of the rape. Instead I found one line in the daily police blotter report about a hitchhiker robbery. It is pretty obvious what happened."

Mendes exhaled loudly. "What about victim number eight? How did he keep it out of the reports. By then every cop in the area had the M.O. and would have reported anything vaguely similar to the task force."

"Did you know that Judge Atkinson was a member of the club? He likes pony girls and brings his teams to the club to perform on a regular basis, but he always leaves alone and has the girls delivered to his country estate."

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" was Mendes only comment. He sat there chewing his words for several minutes. I had nothing else to say, so I just waited.

"All of the victims are members of the club? Right?"

"As far as I can tell, yes."

"And every other victim is a male? Right?"

"Yes."

"So tonight, one of the male members of the club is going to be targeted as they leave. We could use a decoy and catch him... her in the act."

"It would have to be a member of the club," I added. "I think she knows who is and is not a Master or Mistress at the club."

"That screws that plan," muttered Mendes.

"Maybe not," I replied.

Mendes looked up at me.

I shrugged, "You might want to talk to Sargent Conrad about this."

"Conrad? Part of the vice squad Conrad?"

"Everything that happens at the club is legal... especially on the nights that Sargent Conrad is there."

Mendes picked up his phone and punched a few numbers. After a pause he shouted into the phone, "Conrad, you get your ass up here to my office on the double. As of this moment, you have been transferred to the Roadside Rapist task force!"

A few moments later, a rather apprehensive looking Sargent entered the room. He paled slightly when he saw me sitting in front of Mendes' desk. When he saw Wayne sitting in the corner he almost turned and left the room.

Mendes spoke rather curtly, "I have a rather special under-cover decoy assignment, and it has just come to my attention that you have some rather special skills and attributes that make you the perfect one - the only one - who can pull it off. Nothing goes into the report about why you were chosen for this. As a matter of fact, your name need not show up at all unless it gets pulled in during trial."

Conrad stood silently in front of the desk.

Mendes barked out, "Your choice of answers are I volunteer' or I will submit my resignation in the morning.'"

Conrad paused, looked over at me and then Wayne and answered firmly, "What do you need?"

"Nutbag here has given me reliable information that the Roadside Rapist is targeting members of a rather exclusive BDSM club downtown. I need someone to pose as a Master leaving the club tonight. It is a pure bait-decoy assignment. We will try to keep close surveillance. You will most likely be in physical, but not mortal danger."

Conrad nodded and Mendes went on, "I also need you to find someone on the inside who can talk officially to the Masters and Mistresses at the club and tell them what is going on. Everyone but you needs to delay leaving the club so that you are the only target of opportunity. The perp knows who is or is not a Master at the club, so you will have to arrange to be seen there disguised as one of the Masters of the club. You might even want to do something on stage - something legal - so that the perp thinks you are a legitimate member of the club. Think you can do all that?"

"I think I can manage, sir." The look of relief was very evident on Sargent Conrad's face.

After Sargent Conrad had left the room, Deceptive Mendes turned to me and said, "OK. We will arrange for you to be kept here overnight in a special cell. I will have an officer come up and escort you down there right now. Will that work?"

"Not exactly, I replied. You see, I'm not really here. I am in a catatonic state in the day room at the psych ward. That's why Wayne is here. I was able to go to him and tell him what was going on. Since it involved the club, he was willing to help me come here. As long as I am with him, I can be here, but once I am away from him, I will be back at the ward."

"Is he telling the truth?!" Mendes roared at Wayne.

Wayne answered calmly, "That seems to be the way it works. When I leave. He leaves."

Mendes picked up his phone and punched in a number. "This is Detective Mendes. Is Nutbag still at the ward? ... You know damn well who I mean and confidentiality doesn't apply since I am his supervising court officer!"

There was a much longer pause. "He is huh? How long ago? Well he is going to wake up in a few minutes and a few minutes after that an officer is going to be there to pick him up. Have him ready for an overnight stay."

He looked up and spoke to Wayne. "You can both go. I don't know how this works. I don't want to know how this works. I don't care how this works, but Nutbag better be awake and ready when that officer gets there."

Four hours later, I was sitting in a lock-down cell in the basement of the station house. Two officers had been assigned to "suicide watch" and were told that I was an important "material witness" in the Roadside Rapist case and that they had better have at least one set of eyes on me every minute of their shift. They were also to radio Mendes immediately if I suddenly went catatonic.

A little after 1:30 in the morning I was no longer in the cell. One instant I was staring at the clock through the observation window, the next I was standing in front of the club holding something and shouting to passing cars and pedestrians. I could tell by the feel that I was wearing the full-body cat suit, including face mask. Why no one seemed to notice me seemed strange.

I was very anxious about something until Sargent Conrad came out of the club. Then I felt a wash of relief. He was alone. I walked toward him as he handed a parking stub to the valet. I heard a woman's voice - my voice - speaking. "Do you want some after hours action at a really hot club?"

Conrad ignored me, and in a few moments his car came gliding up to the curb. Before the valet could get out of the car, I leaned my sign against the back portion of the car and set my satchel next to the sign. As I bent over, I could see that I was wearing a bright pink, leather, mini-skirt over the cat suit. I could also see that the sign read, "Kit Kat Klub" in bright pink letters and had a red arrow on it. No wonder no one looked at me twice. I was just a living billboard for the Kit Kat Klub - and who really pays any attention to billboards - even one that is dressed in a full- body cat suit.

I pulled some leaflets out of the bag and rapidly stuck one under the windshield wiper of the car. "I told you about that," yelled the valet. "As long as you stay on the sidewalk and twirl your damn sign, I can't do nothing, but once you touch a client's car, I have the right to ask you to leave."

"But if I don't put flyers under the windshield wipers, I don't get paid," I whined. "I only do it once, just before I leave, so you can complain about me again to my boss. We both win. You get rid of me, and I get paid."

As we were talking, Sargent Conrad paid the valet and walked around to the driver's side of the car. As he started to get in, I yelled to him, "Give me a second to get my sign and stuff picked up... Please!?"

He paused, and in the brief moment that he was waiting, I slipped a black box out of my bag and stuck it under the wheel well above the tire. It made a slight thud as the magnet clung to the car body, but since I was moving the sign at the same time, the valet didn't notice. The valet also did not notice that there was now a small black tube sticking slightly out of the wheel well and it was pointed toward the edge of the tire. "Thank you," I called as I picked up my sign and bag.

As Conrad drove off, I hurried to my car and followed after him. As I followed him, I looked down at the box on the seat next to me. There were two buttons. One was labeled "Trigger." The other was labeled "Release."

Conrad took the route that had been set up for him out of town toward a little used county road. I - we - followed a little ways behind. Shortly after he started down a rather dark portion of the road, my hand reached out and pressed the "Trigger" button. There was a flash and a pop and the Sargent's car swerved a little and began to slow down. After he was stopped and was starting to get out of the car, I pulled up and cheerfully asked, "Is there a problem?"

Conrad had been instructed to "act dumb," so he approached the car and leaned over to say through window, "Just a flat. I've got a spare so I'll be OK in a few min..." His words were cut off by the twang of the Tazer hitting him in the chest. Before he could recover, I was around the car and jabbing him with the hypo.

I could hear her thoughts. "You don't have a sub, but you don't care about those of us who don't have a master, do you? Well, I'm going to show you what it is like to be a sub." The hunger I had been feeling wasn't the hunger of a hunter for the prey. It was the hunger of a sub for a master.

I pulled him over in front of the car and cut his clothes from him. As I put them in the red bag, I could see that it said "Bio Hazard" in bold, black letters and had the international biohazard symbol on it. It was a hospital waste bag, and everything in it would be incinerated at 2000 degrees once I dropped it off at the disposal area in the hospital. There would be no physical evidence left by morning.

I threw the rope through the car and used it to pull Sargent Conrad up onto the hood. I ran back to my car and returned with a tube of anal lube. "I don't know if you are going to enjoy this, but I am. Wayne, you don't care what I want, so I don't care what you want. And the same goes for your girlfriend, Kelly."

I was trying to comprehend why she would be calling him "Wayne" - and why she would mention "Kelly" - when Conrad loudly gasped and yelped as she drove into him. She started to say something to him, but froze as he yelled out loudly, "Converge! Converge! Converge!" Suddenly everything was brightly illuminated by multiple handheld floodlights from the surrounding fields.

Mendes was at the lead of a group of male and female officers running behind the lights who grabbed me and threw me to the ground. Someone threw a blanket over the Sargent and started cutting him loose. He yelled loudly, "Next time your bait is unconscious and being stripped naked, just come on in. You could see what was going on. There was no Goddamned need to wait for the code word or the override."

"I'll keep that in mind," replied Mendes calmly. "I assume you don't want to figure at all in the collar tonight, Conrad?"

"It's all yours," he replied curtly.

Detective Mendes hustled me into the back of a waiting squad and we headed back into town. By the time we arrived, the news media had already gathered. Someone had tipped them that there had been an arrest in the Roadside Rapist case. Reporters were screaming questions and camera flashes were illuminating the night as he walked me toward the doors of the police station. A camera flash went off directly in my eyes, and then I was back in my cell staring at the clock. It was now a little after three.

Shortly after nine in the morning Detective Mendes came down to the lock-down cell. "We are sending you back to the ward. It appears that your testimony will not be needed."

He threw a copy of the morning paper onto the table in front of me. It proclaimed in a very large headline, "Detective Mendes Catches Another One!" Beneath the headline was a picture of him perp-walking Dr. Susan Barrington into the police station. They had removed the external dildo, but she was still wearing the skin-tight, full-body cat suit. Every detail of her body was clearly visible. That was one news photo that was going to circulate on the internet for a long, long time.

Suddenly, I understood. Wayne never came back to her after that first night. He released her inner sub in a night of wild sex at the club, but then he left her abandoned. She snapped. In her deranged state, she was trying to force a Master or Mistress to subdue her by becoming a threat to them. I said out loud, "She's crazier than I am."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," muttered Mendes. Then he pointed to the third paragraph of the article. There Mendes answered a reporter's question about how he was able to catch the Roadside Rapist by saying, "It was solid police work, a little luck, and a confidential informant who recognized the technology involved and told us what we probably should be looking for. I can't identify that informant, but I want to publicly thank him."

I looked up at him and he shrugged. "It's the most acknowledgment you are ever going to get. I still think you are a nutbag, but you are a nutbag that knows things that no one else knows."

I answered, "Thank you Detective Mendes. You have your reality and I have mine, and now I know that you know that sometimes they are the same."

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End of Tale Seven of Eight
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30.09.13

story continues in Tales From The Psych Ward 8: The Final Chapter

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