Unbelievable how the room brightened again.
Joe was smiling, holding both my hands in his. He said, “When you’re ready, let me know so I can put this ring on your finger. And tell my folks that we’re going to have a big Italian wedding.”
Chapter 129
IT WAS JUNE 6 when Jacobi called me and Rich into his office. He looked really pissed off, as bad as I’d ever seen him.
“I got some bad news. Alfred Brinkley escaped,” he said.
My jaw dropped.
Nobody got out of Atascadero. It was a mental institution for the criminally insane, and that meant it was a maximum-security prison more than a hospital.
“How’d it happen?” Conklin asked.
“Bashed his head against the wall of his cell . . .”
“Wasn’t he medicated? And under a suicide watch?”
Jacobi shrugged. “Dunno. Anyway, the doc usually comes to the cell block, but this doc named Carter insists that the prisoner be brought to his office. Under guard. In the minimum-security wing.”
“Oh, no,” I said, seeing it happen without being told. “The guard had a gun.”
Jacobi explained to Conklin, “The guards wear their guns only when moving prisoners from one wing to another. So the doc says Brinkley has to be unshackled so he can give him the neuro test.”
Jacobi went on to say that Brinkley had grabbed a scalpel, disarmed the guard, snatched the gun. That he’d put on the doctor’s clothes, used the guard’s keys to get out, and took the doctor’s car.
“It happened two hours ago,” said Jacobi. “There’s an APB out on Dr. Carter’s blue Subaru Outback. L.L.Bean edition.”
“Probably dumped the car by now,” Conklin said.
“Yeah,” said Jacobi. “I don’t know what this is worth,” he added, “but according to the warden, Brinkley was all cranked up about this serial killer he read about, Edmund Kemper.”
Conklin nodded. “Killed about six young women, lived with his mother.”
“That’s the guy,” said Jacobi. “One night he comes home from a date, and his mother says something like, ‘Now I suppose you’re going to bore me with what you’ve been doing all night.’ ”
“His mother knew about the killings?” I asked.
“No, Boxer, she did not,” Jacobi said. “She was just a ballbreaker. Look, I was on the way to the can when the call came in, so may I finish the story, please?”
I grinned at him. “Carry on, boss.”
“So anyway, Mother Kemper says, ‘You’re going to bore me, right?’ So Edmund Kemper waits until she goes to bed and then cuts off her head and puts it on the fireplace mantel. And then he tells his mother’s head all about his night out. The long version, I’m sure.”
“That psycho turned himself in, I seem to remember,” Conklin said. He cracked his knuckles, which is what Rich does when he’s agitated.
I was rattled, too, at the idea of Brinkley at large, armed and seriously psychotic. I remembered the look on Brinkley’s face when he’d stared Yuki down after his trial. He’d leered at her and said, “Someone’s got to pay.”
“Yeah, Kemper turned himself in. Thing is, when he confessed to the cops, he said that he’d actually killed those girls instead of his mother. Get it?” Jacobi was talking to me now. “He’d finally killed the right person.”
“And the warden said that Kemper meant something to Alfred Brinkley?”
“Right,” Jacobi said, standing, hoisting up his pants by the belt, making his way around Conklin’s long legs toward the door. “Brinkley was obsessed with Edmund Kemper.”
Chapter 130
FRED BRINKLEY WALKED ALONG Scott Street, looking straight ahead under the brim of Dr. Carter’s baseball cap. He was watching the small peaks of sails in the marina at the end of the street, smelling the air coming off the bay.