Gilman waved her off with a distracted gesture.
"Not now, Louise, I'm busy."
The woman began to turn away, but Bolan's voice stopped her on the threshold.
"Why don't you stay, Mrs. Gilman?"
She paused, looking again from her husband to Bolan with narrowed eyes. At last Gilman nodded, reluctantly, and beckoned her inside. She walked past Mack Bolan to stand beside her husband's chair, one hand resting on his shoulder.
"Louise," Gilman began, "this is Mr... er..."
"La Mancha," Bolan finished for him.
"Yes, quite. He's here about Courtney."
Conflicting emotions instantly twisted the lady's face into a kaleidoscope of mingled hope and horror. Bolan watched her fingers dig unconsciously into her husband's shoulder, making him wince.
"Have they found him?" she blurted. "Is he... is he..."
Gilman shook himself free, and snapped, "Louise! Control yourself!"
Bolan frowned at them both.
"He's still out there, Mrs. Gilman. I'm hoping you can help me find him."
There was a long pause as Gilman and his wife looked at each other searchingly. Finally, Gilman reached up to take hold of her hand, and she nodded to him, her eyes brimming with tears.
Gilman swallowed hard, and there was a catch in his voice as he began speaking.
"We don't know where he is. That's the truth. He... has no reason to trust us, Mr. La Mancha."
Bolan read the painful truth in Gilman's voice and saw the same hurt on the lady's face.
He believed the guy, yeah.
"All right. Let's start at the beginning."
Another soul-searching pause, and then Gilman resumed speaking, his voice broken.
"The beginning. How do you single out a point in time when you know your child is... different? Courtney was always a quiet boy. Introverted. Smart as a whip, but so damned quiet. Even as a child he could never open up or share his thoughts with us."
"He wasn't a bad child," Louise Gilman chimed in, sounding desperate.
Gilman gave her hand a gentle squeeze and continued.
"We both know what he was. What he is. By the time Courtney was six or seven years old, he had a violent, explosive temper. Not just the normal childish tantrums... there was real fury in him, deep down. He fought with classmates in grade school, and by high school he'd been in trouble several times. We changed his schools twice to protect him... from his own reputation."
"And to protect yourself?" Bolan asked, probing.
Gilman's head snapped up, eyes flaring angrily.
"No, sir!" he snapped, then the voice softened.
"Not then. That all came... later. After..."
Gilman took a moment to compose himself and collect his disordered thoughts before continuing.
"In his senior year, a few weeks before graduation, there was... an incident. It involved a schoolgirl... a co-ed. There was some question of expulsion... of denying Courtney his diploma. I couldn't let that happen."
"So you pulled some strings," Bolan said. It wasn't a question.
Thomas Gilman nodded jerkily, and swallowed as if something had lodged itself in his throat.
"I have friends, Mr. La Mancha, connections. It is possible to arrange certain things. He was our child."
"And you had your own reputation to consider," Bolan added.
The suggestion didn't seem to anger Gilman this time.
"I don't honestly believe I thought of that... at that time," he said. "Subconsciously... who knows? Anyway, I promised to get help for Courtney, and we kept that promise. He spent eighteen months in analysis."
"It didn't take," Bolan said.
Gilman nodded grimly.
"We realized that, in time... too late. It's always too late, isn't it?"
Bolan had no answer. He stood, watching the tortured couple in silence.
Gilman continued his narrative.
"Something over two years ago, there was... a murder. I paid no attention to it at the time. There were elections to win, and there was legislation to pass. Courtney was staying out all night, every night, doing who knows what."
"Anyway, one night he was arrested... as a prowler, I think. Apparently he broke down under questioning and... he confessed... to rape and murder."
The final words were almost strangled, coming out in a barely audible whisper. Beside Gilman, his wife turned away, stifling a sob with one hand.
Mack Bolan was starting to get the picture.
"You got a phone call," he offered, certain what the answer would be.
Tom Gilman nodded, unable to meet Bolan's gaze as he shifted his hands nervously in his lap.
"From a lieutenant named Fawcett?" Bolan pressed, seeking the final raw nerve that would release the last of the story.
Gilman looked up quickly at that, his expression one of confusion.
"Who? No, I don't recognize the name. I was called by Assistant Commissioner Smalley. Of course, he was only a deputy chief at the time."
Bolan concealed his surprise at the name. Things were beginning to fit. Only too well.
"What did Smalley have in mind?"
Gilman flashed a bitter, sardonic grin.
"Oh, nothing complicated," he said. "A sort of symbiosis. Mutual back scratching. He would guarantee 'fair treatment' for Courtney, and I would be... properly grateful."
"Your son's confession was misplaced?"
Gilman spread his hands.
"Presumably. Filed away for future reference, I suppose. At the time, I wasn't interested in the mechanics, only results. Smalley was... effective. The prowler charge was quietly dismissed, and we placed our son in a suitable institution."
"How did he escape?"
Gilman shrugged listlessly.
"No one seems to know, or at least they won't admit it. The hospital wasn't designed for maximum security."
Bolan saw no need to dwell upon the murders that had followed Courtney Gilman's first escape... or his second. The Executioner had heard enough about the lax security in even the best mental hospitals to know that escapes were commonplace. The Boston Strangler, for one, had made a habit of leaving his padded room behind to kill, returning when he was finished, and no one had been the wiser until he confessed, probably from sheer boredom and frustration.
In any case, Bolan was more interested in the mechanics of the cover-up than in the details of murder.
"How was he recaptured?" Bolan asked.
Gilman still wore the bitter smile.
"Smalley has his ways, I suppose. He keeps the details to himself, but he made sure we realized that Courtney had... been in trouble again."
And, yeah, Bolan could see the pattern clearly now. The mad youth escaping, killing, being recaptured probably by Jack Fawcett returned to the sanitarium, only to escape and kill again. And again. And with each new crime, each new escape, Tom Gilman's complicity increased, Roger Smalley's blackmail hold was strengthened.
Gilman's taut voice interrupted the Executioner's train of thought.
"I made Smalley, you know," he was saying. "At least, I helped put him where he is. A nudge here, a word there. I was properly grateful, oh, yes."
Bolan read a bitterness approaching self-hatred in the politician's voice.
"Five lives!" Gilman said, almost sobbing. "Five young women dead. Oh, I'm well aware of my achievements, Mr. La Mancha."
Bolan's frown deepened.
"There's guilt enough to go around, Gilman," he said soberly. "Sort it out later. Right now, I need your help. Your son's sixth victim needs help."
Louise Gilman let out a strangled gasp. "A sixth? Dear God!"
"A survivor," Bolan said. "The next may not be so lucky."