Secrets and Lies Read online

  Chapter 9

  After speaking to Arlene, I decided to go ahead and go to my office so that I could do some research on Attachment Disorder before heading home. I felt so sorry for his mother. She seemed like such a nice lady, and such a hard worker. She was a lady who didn’t have a lot of breaks in her life, but she obviously was someone who was full of love. She adopted Silas when he was only seven years old, knowing that he had special needs, and knowing that because of his background, with his father killing his mother in such a way, he was going to be a handful, to say the very least. And he was. It sounded like he gave his mother a lot of grief, and yet, the second he became somebody, he just ignored her and her husband.

  His mom and dad.

  That made me sick.

  I also decided to call Anna. I was going to have to see if she could get the records for Silas’ early life before I decided to go ahead and do the research on this disorder. I knew that I could get the records if I did a full request for them, as I did have a full waiver from Silas for medical records, but I didn’t have time for that. I wanted to get my hands on these records so that I could know a little bit more about who, exactly, I was dealing with. I had a feeling that probably Arlene herself didn’t have the full story on what had happened when Silas was a young boy.

  I got Anna working on finding those records, and I sat back in my chair. I knew that it would just be a few minutes before she was going to be emailing them to me.

  I was right about that, as the email came in not 10 minutes later.

  I got to the email attachment and read the information about Silas and his father and mother.

  It turned out that Anna did me one better. She was able to actually find the psychiatric records for Silas’ father. Arlene told me that Silas’ father was suffering from schizophrenia. That’s what these records seem to indicate, and the records also seemed to indicate that Silas’ father was still institutionalized after all these years.

  For about an hour, I read about all the incidents that his father, whose name was Jude Devereux, was involved with over the years. It seemed that he burned down the house because a voice was telling him to do that. For many years, he was a violent man, and for most of those years, he had been homeless. According to these records, Silas’ father had been involved in arson-related incidents when he was in his 20s, and he went into a mental institution after that, but he was out after just a few years. He got out of the mental institution when he was 31, and then he met Silas’ mother, whose name was Annette. According to the records, Jude was apparently in remission for five years, during which he didn’t have any kind of schizophrenic episodes. However, the remission ended when the voices came back, and his father ended up setting fire to the house and killing his wife, Silas’ mother.

  At the moment, Jude was in an institution for the criminally insane. He was currently being housed in the Missouri state hospital, in Fulton Missouri, which was in the rural part of the state, a good three hours away from where I lived. However, I was going to try to visit him as well.

  As I read the information on Silas’ early life, I realized that long before his father set fire to the house, he was having problems. Jude Devereux might’ve been technically in remission from his schizophrenia, however, it was plain that he was still not mentally sound. For years, he had been extremely abusive to both his wife and his young son. Family services had been called to the house many times, and there were several times when the social worker who visited had recommended that Silas be taken from the home.

  Even though I resented Silas for being so cruel to his adoptive parents, I also felt sorry for him. His early upbringing was much like mine, and I knew how painful that was to grow up that way. According to his therapist’s records, when he was a young boy, he didn’t have a chance to really bond with anybody. His mother was too terrified of his father to really have the mental energy to care for Silas, and his father was obviously suffering from extreme mental illness.

  I then looked at the records that indicated that his therapist had diagnosed him with Attachment Disorder when he was five years old. That was the first time he had been taken into foster care, because that was when his mother had been killed by his father. Apparently, in the two years between that first foster home, and his going to stay with Arlene and Bob, he had seen a court-appointed therapist many times.

  And then I saw the line that made my blood run cold. Silas has shown an unhealthy fascination with fire. Those were the words that his therapist had written down.

  Silas has shown an unhealthy fascination with fire.

  And as I read through some of the symptoms of people who suffer from Attachment Disorder, I learned about some of the symptoms. Along with having problems with trust, problems with empathy, and problems with relating to people, people who suffer from this disorder also often show other symptoms.

  One of them was fascination with fire.

  Was it a coincidence that Ava was killed in a fire?

  Or was it something else?

  Chapter 10

  The next day, I knew that I had to do one thing, and that was that I was going to have to pay a visit to Silas’ father before proceeding in talking to Ava’s parents to see what they had to say about Ava’s relationship with Silas. I’d gotten a better picture of my client by speaking with his adoptive mother. I felt that I had to see his birth father to see for myself what kind of person he was, and I hoped that he could also give me some insight on the kind of person that Silas was. Who he was.

  The Fulton State Hospital is the state hospital in Fulton Missouri, which is almost smack-dab in the middle of the state. I took a look at this hospital, realizing that it looked just like a prison, which is what it was, for the most part. After all, it housed the criminally insane - the criminals who were too insane to try or were adjudged to be insane by a jury of their peers. I knew how difficult it was to successfully argue an insanity plea - you pretty much had to not know what you were doing at the time that you committed the crime, or not know that what you were doing was a crime. This was a place for people who murdered others, not realizing that murder was against the law or not knowing that what they were doing actually was murder. People like Andrea Yates, who killed her five children in a psychotic fugue while suffering under religious delusions. People like John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan because he wanted to impress Jody Foster. Generally, the institution for the criminally insane housed people like this. I therefore knew that Jude Devereux was going to be somebody who wasn’t in touch with reality, to say the least. Still, I wanted to see him for myself.

  The hospital was situated behind a large barbed-wire fence. It was built in 1800s, and it looked like it. It was enormous, made with red brick, and its facade made the structure look foreboding and depressing at the same time. I had been to sanitariums like this before. When I was in high school, I took a field trip to a mental institution, and I was horrified by some of the rooms that they showed me. It seemed as if that hospital had been around since the 1800s as well, and I thought that if there were ghosts who roamed the halls, they would tell you stories about shock therapy that would often break the patient’s back, and being strapped into chairs to keep them from hurting themselves. They could also tell you about any number of crude procedures that were performed on the criminally insane throughout the years, like lobotomies and procedures like submerging the insane into cold baths for long periods of time.

  As I approached the entrance to this hospital, I realized that it was much the same as the hospital I visited long ago on that field trip. If these walls could talk, they would probably howl and scream.

  I went right up to the admissions officer, and I told her that I wanted to see Silas’s father, Jude Devereux.

  “Do you have an appointment?” The girl was young and blonde and looked like she wanted to be anywhere but where she was, not that I blamed her. This place was depressing, even more depressing than a regular hospital, and, for me, that said a l
ot.

  “No, I don’t.” And I showed her my bar card. “I’m an attorney who is in the middle of a criminal investigation involving my client, Silas Porter. Jude Devereux is the father of my client, and I really need to see him. If that’s possible.” I knew that because I was a professional, and a lawyer, that I wouldn’t have a problem unless Jude was still deemed to be dangerous. However, from what I understood from Anna’s records that she sent me, he had been heavily medicated, and had not had a dangerous episode for many years. So I imagined that he was still somebody who I could see and hopefully speak with.

  She nodded her head. “Since you’re an attorney, and it seems as if Jude Devereux is not somebody who has been dangerous, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to see him. However, I would like for you to be accompanied by a doctor. Let me just notify the doctor on call.” She looked at her file, and then she chose a doctor who would be able to go with me to see Jude. “Dr. Riley is the doctor who is on call on that ward. Just a second while I call him.” At that, she got on the phone, and she looked at me. “Dr. Riley will be right with you.”

  In about 10 minutes, Dr. Riley appeared before me. He was a tall, thin man, with a mop of curly hair, and glasses that were perched on his long nose. He saw me and extended his hand. “I’m Dr. Evan Riley, and I will accompany you to see Mr. Devereux.”

  I stood up. “Thank you for accommodating me. It’s very nice to meet you. I realize that this is on short notice, so I very much appreciate it.”

  He nodded his head. “Well, this is a fairly common thing. We get criminal defense attorneys in here quite frequently, so this is not something that’s out of the ordinary at all. I understand that you are representing the biological son of Mr. Devereux. Is that true?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Well, of course I can’t tell you anything about Mr. Devereux’s condition. That’s strictly confidential. But I can tell you that Mr. Devereux is not lucid, but he’s not dangerous. This has been his condition, off and on, for quite a few years now. He has been one of our better patients, to be honest with you.”

  I wondered why it was that Jude Devereux was still in the mental hospital. Anna was going to have to get into it to find out that information. From what I understood, he was not convicted for murdering his wife, because he was judged to be insane at the time that this happened, so he was adjudged to be not guilty by reason of insanity. Because of that, he had come to this place instead of being sent to prison. But if he hadn’t been dangerous for many years, then he might be eligible for release. Then again, a woman was dead because of him, and a house was burned to the ground. It probably wasn’t simple to get him out of this place, no matter how mild-mannered he had been acting.

  I followed Dr. Riley to a room, and he opened up the door. I saw a man who I assumed to be Jude. He was a slight man, completely bald, with green eyes that bugged out of his head as if he had some kind of hyper-thyroid issue like Graves’ Disease. He appeared to have dentures instead of teeth, as his choppers were perfect and white. He shared a room with a red-headed man who was catatonic and laying in his bed.

  Jude saw me coming in, and he stood up and smiled.

  “Jude,” Dr. Riley said. “This is –” he looked at me and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, this is so unprofessional of me, but I didn’t get your name.”

  I smiled, realizing that this was a mistake I made a million times myself. “Damien Harrington,” I said as pleasantly as possible.

  “This is Damien Harrington,” Dr. Riley said to Jude. “He’s an attorney.”

  Jude just smiled and held out his hand, and I shook it. “Very nice to meet you,” he said to me. “Want to sit down?”

  “Thank you very much.” I sat down in a plastic chair next to a small table where Jude apparently had been working a large jigsaw puzzle. “Mr. Devereux, I’m representing your biological son, Silas Porter, in a criminal matter.”

  “Son? I don’t remember having a son.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a son.”

  I was confused at first, but then I suddenly realized what happened. I knew that Dr. Riley was not able to explain to me what kind of treatments that Jude had received over the years, however, I had the feeling that electro-shock therapy probably was administered quite a few times. If they did this often enough, then he might not have memories of what had happened before he started receiving his treatments. I knew that amnesia was a common side effect from these kinds of treatments.

  This was going to be more complicated than I thought. “Mr. Devereux, do you remember why it is that you are here?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here. All that I know is I’ve been here for as long as I can remember. Why I’m here, I don’t know.”

  “So you don’t remember anything about the fire?”

  He looked at me with blank eyes. “Fire? What do you mean fire? What are you talking about?”

  I looked over at Dr. Riley to see if he was giving me any kind of warning, but he wasn’t. “Mr. Devereux, you have a son, his name is Silas, and he has been accused of murder. You haven’t seen him since he was a little boy. If you don’t remember having a son –”

  He looked at Dr. Riley. “Dr. Riley, can I please speak with this gentleman in private?” he asked the doctor politely.

  I looked at Dr. Riley. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  He nodded his head. “If you have any issues, here’s the button that you push.” He showed me a little red button that was attached to the bed. “Somebody will be just around the corner.”

  I felt a little out of sorts that we had to have a panic button, but, then again, I supposed that was how it was in this facility.

  Once the doctor left, Jude lowered his voice. “Are you sure that there’s not anybody around who can hear us?” He shook his head. “You never know when the government is going to be listening to you. You just never know when the FBI might be coming to your door, wanting to manipulate your thoughts for their own gain. You know that that happens, don’t you? You know that government agencies are able to share your thoughts, and change your ideas, and that they can arrest you without a warrant? Did you know that there are gulags where they put people who think these criminal thoughts? I’ll bet you didn’t know any of that. I’ll bet you didn’t know that our government is up to such terrible things. But I know. I know it all. That’s the reason why I’m here. I’m here because somebody high up, somebody powerful, wanted to shut me up. So they put me in here. That’s why I want to make sure that there’s nobody around who can hear me or listen to me.”

  I nodded my head, not saying a word that would contradict his delusions. It was pointless to try to talk sensibly to somebody who was living in an alternate reality, so I just didn’t even try. I had a difficult enough time trying to talk sense into people who weren’t actively schizophrenic. “No, I didn’t know about the gulags, and I didn’t know that the government –”

  “Shhhh…. Listen, if you say things too loud in here, you’ll have thirty men on your tail like white on rice. You’re already in danger, because you’re here with me.” He pointed up at the ceiling. “You can’t see them, but there’s listening devices in that ceiling, and somebody is always listening to everything I say. They report everything directly to Washington. I’m a dangerous person. And now you’re in here talking to me, so they’re gonna think that you’re also a dangerous person. Just fair warning.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Mr. Devereux, do you really not remember that you have a son?”

  He leaned in close to me. And then he spoke in a whisper. “Of course I remember I have a son. I just didn’t want to say that in front of a doctor. I have to speak in a whisper, because I’m afraid that the people from the government, if they find out that I have a son, they’re going to come after him next. They’re going to start harassing him, and try to get him to give them information about me.” He nodded his head with a smile
. “Yes, I know I have a son. I haven’t seen him since he was five years old, but I know that I have one.”

  “So what do you know about him?”

  “Are you asking me if I think that he has the same kinds of problems I have?”

  I felt confused. Did he realize that he had problems? Was he experiencing a brief period of lucidity? Or was he just talking about something else? “What kind of problems do you have?” I asked him.

  “Problems with having the government listening to my every word. I can’t help that I’m such a powerful person and such a dangerous person to the United States government, that they have to keep me here. And I know about my Silas. I know about him. I’ve been following his story over the years. And I know that he has become a very wealthy and powerful man himself. And that scares me. He’s so rich that…” He lowered his voice again.

  “He’s so rich that I know that the government is going to want to shut him down. Plus, he’s been developing new technologies. These technologies scare the people in the government. They don’t want his technologies to be known to the public. They want to shut him down. They really want to shut him down because he’s my son. That’s all I can really tell you.”

  I shook my head. I should have known that he wasn’t referencing his schizophrenia when he indicated that he had problems. He wasn’t that self-aware.

  He smiled. “Don’t you think I know about what happened with Silas and his wife? Did you know that I know that he’s been framed for murder? Know all about it. I know all about what happened with him and his wife. I’ve been reading about it in the paper. I can tell you that somebody set that fire. It wasn’t my son. I think that somebody else set that fire. Set that fire so that he could go to prison for the rest of his life.” He nodded his head and lowered his voice to a whisper again. “The government wants him out of the way, so they want him to go to prison. They hired somebody to frame my son for killing his wife. I guarantee you that that’s just what happened. It was the same with me. I was framed so that I could be locked up for the rest of my life. They want to shut up people like us. We know too much.”