then cut off their head, then burn 'em. That's what you gotta do, and I… ” Tears, now. Big ones. “I couldn't do that.” He got blubbery. “I luh, luh, loved Edie!”
While he cried, Hester looked questioningly at me.
“I said something about Edie's dead body giving us information at autopsy, the other day, and I remember the look on his face.” I spoke very softly. “Well, at least I do now, for sure. He looked kind of shocked. Now I know why, I guess.” I looked at Toby, who was pretty self-involved at the moment. “Where do you suppose the 'crypt' is? The basement?”
“That'd be my guess,” she half whispered back.
“But there was no blood evidence down there… ”
“He said he couldn't kill her there,” said Hester, staring at Toby. “Probably wouldn't be, then… ”
Well, sure, Carl. Pay attention. “Ah,” I said, tapping the side of my head with my finger. “Thank you.”
“He called and told me I'd be really strong,” came from Toby. We both looked at him. “He said I'd have his strength. I did, too, boy. I did. I hit that stake once, and it went right into her chest.” The tears had stopped, but his nose was running. He grinned, an evil grin if there ever was one. “Slicker 'n shit. One powerful hit, was all. He was so fuckin' right.” Then a worried frown came over him. “But I couldn't take her head off. I just got… weak.” His face screwed up, tears started again, and he went back to referring to himself in the third person. “Toby's a failure. But he tries!”
Hester pushed a piece of scratch paper over to me, with one word written on it. “Committal?” I nodded. It looked like we'd have to.
“The first time we killed her, she knew it, and she asked me for help,” he said, and this time the crying that he did was nearly hysterical. He lurched to his feet, and came right at Hester. She started to step to the side, and I started for him, and he tripped on the chair leg, and went facedown on the carpet with a resounding thud. He just laid there and cried. “Help!” he wailed, into the greenish gray nap.
“The first time we killed her” I mouthed to Hester. She was wide-eyed, and nodded.
“Where were you, you and Edie, the first time you killed her?” I really hated to ask, but we just had to know where she'd been killed.
He stopped crying instantly, and turned his head so he could see me. “No fuckin' way, dude. No way. That's between me and her and Dan.”
Well, it had been worth the try, I thought. Probably couldn't have used it anyway, at least not against him.
I picked up the phone and dialed Dispatch, while Hester knelt down by his head. “This is Houseman. We need an ambulance back here, to transfer one subject to the Maitland Hospital.”
“Is it ten-thirty-three?”
“No, but ASAP would be real nice.” Crap. Once there, the diagnosis would probably be of a psychotic episode, or something. The committal process to the Mental Health Institute at Independence would take about two hours. Then one of us would either have to haul him the fifty miles to the mental ward, or one of us would have to go with him in the ambulance. The Board of Supervisors would crap, because, since he was in custody, Nation County would have to pay the bill. And, since he was in custody, we might have to either hire a cop to watch him down there, or send one of ours to stay. Those damned complications, as they say, complicate things. But it needed to be done. Not that I was all that altruistic, or anything. If we didn't commit at this point, and we did have a murder suspect on our hands, we could well lose the case. We were going to need excellent medical testimony as to the fact that Toby was totally tweaked on either meth or ecstasy, or some combination thereof, and not insane. We really needed not insane.
Hester and I sat him back up in his chair. Physically, he seemed to be just fine. Hester got a wet paper towel and wiped his face, clearing away the tears, mucus, and spittle and that seemed to help. It at least made him easier to look at. I figured the ambulance would take about fifteen minutes.
And, of course, Attorney Junkel picked that moment to make an entrance.
“What's going on here?” asked a strident, courtroom voice. I didn't even have to turn around to know it was Junkel.
“Hi.”
“What have you done to my client?”
“Very little, actually.” I shrugged. “Basically, we arrested him,” I explained.
“How are you, son?” he asked.
“Toby is shitty,” said Toby. “And Toby thanks you for asking.”
Junkel looked at me. “Just what is going on here?”
It took about all I could muster not to answer him in third person. What I said was, “We arrested Toby for breaking in to the Freiberg Funeral Home, and driving a stake into the chest of the corpse of Edie Younger.”
You just don't get to see an attorney look like that every day. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped perceptibly. Seeing his startled look, I had an inspiration.
“It's either a simple misdemeanor, or, if you consider it a hate crime, it becomes a serious misdemeanor. The statutory bond for the most serious one is fifty dollars. Cash.”
“Can he post?” asked Junkel.
I played my ace. “Nope. Looks like he's ours.”
It worked. Just to spite me, Junkel reached into his back pocket, pulled out his billfold, and removed a fifty- dollar bill. Why not? He'd probably received a call from Jessica Hunley, he was on retainer, and the bill would now include a fifty-dollar expense.
“The hell he is,” he said. “He's now in the care of his attorney!”
I looked down at the money, then up at Junkel. “I suppose you'll want a receipt?” I tried to sound disappointed.
He glared at me. “Of course I will.”
I thought for about two seconds about a possible aiding and abetting in a murder case as another charge for Toby. But to pop him on his statements, while in his current state, would just be asking for trouble. We didn't have any good evidence against him yet, and moving too soon would tip our hand. I rejected the notion.
“And you might as well also help him with his committal to the Mental Health Institute. We've started that. You might not have noticed, but your client is pretty well pharmaceutically enhanced,” I said.
Eventually, the mental health referee came up, pretty much took one look at Toby, and told Junkel that, “Your client's having a bad trip,” and offered to sign Toby into the MHI for detoxification and counseling. Translated, that was roughly a three-day involuntary commitment. I was very pleased with detox.
“Unless, of course, your client wished to commit himself,” said the referee. I could tell he was thinking about the paperwork. “If that's the case, all this would be unnecessary.”
Junkel leaped at the offer, so Toby obligingly agreed to commit himself. Cheap trip, as he could check out any time he wanted to, he would be guaranteed to be back out in three days, and his attorney was going to have to figure out how to haul him to the mental health facility at Independence. But at least he wasn't a drain on our meager resources.
Besides, with what we actually had on him, it would have been three and out, anyway.
About two hours after we had arrived at the office, Toby was on his way. As we helped pack him into Junkel's car, he giggled, and began to say “Plonk, plonk,” faster and faster.
“What's he saying?” asked Junkel. “Isn't plonk a term for cheap wine?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe he's thirsty.” Actually, plonk, in this instance, is a usenet term, and it's the sound that a novice internet user makes when he hits the bottom of the kill ffle. To be “kill ffled” means that his correspondents have told their computers to automatically ignore anything from him. The meaning here was that Toby was, if not already dead, considering himself as good as. I felt no compunction to enlighten Junkel. Let him ask his own kids.
Toby hadn't been out the door five minutes, when Dispatch told me that Lamar was on the phone. He was calling from the church hall, where the after-funeral luncheon was winding up.
“Hi, boss.”
“Marteen told me the details,” he said slowly, evenly. “All of 'em.”
“Shit, Lamar, I really didn't want you to have to deal with that.” I was about ready to kill the funeral director, too, but didn't say so.
