The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [84]
“Lonnie got sent here as a kid,” Hinst said. “Mother and two sisters raised him. He was a giant, and he was also retarded. When he got a little older, he started to hump one of his sisters, so his mom made him live in the basement. I guess that changed him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, one day he came upstairs when his mother and sisters were eating dinner. Had a sledgehammer in his hand. He bludgeoned his mother and one of his sisters to death. The other sister got away and called the police. They arrested him, and sent him here. Lonnie was thirteen.
“I remember the day they brought Lonnie in. They wanted to put him in a juvenile detention center, only Lonnie was too big. He was six foot six inches tall, and weighed a hundred sixty pounds. Boy was nothing but skin and bones.”
“He’s plenty strong now. Why do you think that is?” I asked.
Hinst finished his cigarette and threw the butt into the courtyard. Lit up another and offered me the pack. Mine wasn’t done, but I took a fresh one anyway.
“You know anything about giants?” Hinst asked.
I shook my head.
“They have something wrong with their pituitary gland, and can’t stop producing growth hormones. Unless they get treated by a doctor, they’ll keep on growing until they die. But here’s the strange thing. They’re not very strong. They’re so big, their bones have a hard time supporting their muscle mass. As a result, they cramp a lot. Something to do with all the sodium in their bodies.”
“So what happened to Lonnie?”
“The doctors fucked with him. They did a procedure that stopped his pituitary gland from producing hormones. By then, Lonnie was six-ten and still skinny as a rail. The doctors decided to beef him up.”
“How? By feeding him?”
Hinst shook his head. The expression on his face was pained. My mind flashed back to the bloody cotton ball and plastic syringe I’d found in Lonnie’s motel room.
“Don’t tell me they gave him steroids.”
“That’s exactly what they did. And boy, did he get strong. Put on a hundred twenty pounds of muscle in a few months. I used to go into that room and see him doing push-ups for a half-hour straight. He was a monster.”
“Weren’t people afraid of him?”
“Sure they were afraid. But the folks running this place didn’t care. Lonnie was an experiment to them, not a person. They didn’t care about him at all.”
“When did Mouse enter the picture?”
“You know about Mouse?”
“He and Lonnie are still together.”
Hinst swallowed hard. Again he shook his head. “Mouse was a criminal. Can’t say I ever heard his real name. He convinced a judge he was crazy, so he got sent here. But he was crazy like a fox. He used Lonnie. They were a team. Even the guards were scared of them.”
“Do you know this area well?”
Hinst nodded. “Sure. I grew up around here.”
“There’s an abandoned farm a few miles north of here. Lonnie and Mouse hid there with a nurse they abducted from this facility. A woman named Kathi Bolger.”
I thought Hinst was going to hit the floor.
“You mean Kat Bolger? Oh, my God. She used to take care of Lonnie.”
“I need for you to tell me about her.”
Hinst ground the tiny butt of his cigarette into the floor, and made a Follow me motion with his hand. Together we walked down the hall to the sleeping quarters.
“This was the last place I saw Kat Bolger,” Hinst said, standing in the room’s center. “Right in this very spot. She was helping push a patient on a gurney.”
“When was this?”
“It was the last day, right before Daybreak was shut down. The state medical examiner had made a surprise visit, and saw all the shit the doctors were pulling. You know, doing experiments on patients without their permission. Like with Lonnie.”
“So Lonnie wasn’t the only one they messed with.”
“No. It was widespread. Later the state went and blacked out all the records, just so no one would find out what the doctors were doing.”
“What happened the day Daybreak was closed?”
“The place was a madhouse, and that’s no joke. The patients were screaming