Castle Danger--The Mental States Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  PART TWO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  PART THREE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Book

  “Hey, it’s me again, Manny. Are you surprised? It’s the dress, right? You’ll get used to it. So, when we last met, I’d been fired, assaulted, chased by cops and criminals alike, and coerced into a political conspiracy.

  This time, I’m working for the next governor of the state of Minnesota. Alongside Joel. Sort of. He’s still adjusting to the new me. But corruption spreads like fire and somebody has to douse the flames … Here’s the thing. They say that knowledge is power. But nobody tells you that what you know can be the death of you.”

  The CASTLE DANGER saga continues in THE MENTAL STATES as Manny and Joel work together doing what they do best: getting into deep trouble.

  State Senator Andrew Marquette looks like a shoo-in for the governorship — appealing to votes across the political spectrum — and he’s brought Manny and Joel aboard to help steer the ship. But when one of Marquette’s most trusted advisors goes missing, our heroes can’t help but play detective once again, in spite of everyone around them trying to block their path. Is there more to this disappearance than meets the eye? It will take a harrowing journey around Minnesota’s backwoods, the back alleys of the Twin Cities, and the mysterious “dark web” online, where some sick individuals pay a fortune to see their most depraved wishes come true.

  About the Author

  Anthony Neil Smith is a Professor and the Chair of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. He is the author of various previous novels. Originally from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, he now lives on the frozen prairie with his wife, two needy dogs and two sneaky cats.

  © Anthony Neil Smith

  Readers can connect with Neil on various social media platforms:

  Anthony Neil Smith

  CASTLE

  DANGER

  THE MENTAL STATES

  »be« by BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

  Digital original edition

  »be« by Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

  Copyright © 2017 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Cologne, Germany

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is written in American English.

  Written by Anthony Neil Smith

  Edited by Len Wanner

  Cover illustration: © shutterstock / Max Topchii; shutterstock / Husjak

  Cover design: © Frank & Reed, Stuttgart

  E-book production: Urban SatzKonzept, Düsseldorf

  ISBN 978-3-7325-3015-1

  www.be-ebooks.com

  Twitter: @be_ebooks_com

  PART ONE

  1

  “That’s a beautiful one right there. Flawless.”

  ‘That’ was a vagina. The doctor had turned his computer monitor so we could both see photographs of …

  Vaginas.

  Almost-vaginas.

  Not-quite-almost vaginas.

  A shrunken penis on a man whose scrotum had been removed.

  Disembodied images rendered even more abstract by the running commentary from the doctor, technical information offered in the hope of reassuring me about the procedures of sexual reassignment, from the very beginning stages (counseling, hormones, living as a woman for a long time before a scalpel touches your balls) on through the removal of penis and testes, the creation of a vagina, and so on.

  And if that time lapse slide show of genital devolution isn’t bizarre enough for your liking, picture my face as the doc’s voice became ever more animated until he started sounding like an art critic. He pointed to the screen, ran his finger along one side of the crotch. “Smooth. You can’t even see the scar. There is a lot of finesse in that. I remember it was a long procedure, like working with the finest marble.”

  “Please,” I turned away, held up my hand. “It’s early.”

  God, it was just after seven in the morning and he was awaking memories of every porn flick I’d ever watched. I crossed my legs and reminded myself that the doc wasn’t trying to titillate my twisted fantasies. Quite the opposite, he had been kind enough to come in before his official opening hours, after I explained that I couldn’t live as ‘out’ as I would like just yet. But still, I was Hannah as I sat across from him, in Manny’s jeans but with a pair of women’s boots I’d bought the week before, a top from Maxx, a better wig, this one not so blindingly blonde. My own hair would take half a year to grow long enough to ditch it. Paula had helped me choose natural makeup shades. If, she said, the goal was to become a woman, rather than just dress like a caricature of one, I couldn’t hit the face paints at full speed. Likewise, before I went for hormones or hair removal or plastic surgery (that last one scared me, I won’t lie), she’d told me to act and dress as natural as possible.

  “It’s about faith. You’re a woman, you say? Show me, don’t tell me. Believe it.”

  So far, I hadn’t had much chance, nor a strong-enough will, to go out on my own as Hannah, around people who didn’t already know me. I’d only lived in the cabin a week before having to relocate to St. Paul, where the Senator had set up his campaign HQ. In the cities, spring was beginning to thaw the ground; it was even beginning to thaw the people, though at least with the latter only a local would notice the subtle changes. Along the North Shore, however, the ice, snow, and grim faces would stick around for several more weeks. Before leaving the lake behind me, I had ventured out on the sly, a quick trip to the store in Two Harbors. Took some walks on the shore among the other cottage owners and lodge guests, watched the cleaning vans come and go from Chief Neudecker’s cabin, looking to erase the damage done when he killed himself (at least, that’s what Joel said happened, though I’m still not quite sure he didn’t finish the job himself). Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Faulkner — “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Or something like that. I got a B- in Literature.

  Today, though, felt different. Talking about my sexuality openly with a doctor, I started wondering how many glances it would take for someone on the streets of Minneapolis to realize a part of me was still Manny. I wasn’t sure anyone cared. At least I hope they didn’t. The best illusionists made you think it was real. I was a terrible illusionist so far.

  “Doctor, let’s talk about my … issues. Would that cause any problems for the surgery?”

  He’d seen my junk. I don’t use that term lightly. It wasn’t all that long ago that I accidentally (on purpose) set my cock and balls on fire with carburetor cleaner at the family hobby farm. The damage wasn’t only on the surface. This was some deep-level roasting. As long as I kept things the way they were — and I’d already turned down penile reconstruction, since I wasn’t looking to get an upgrade — peeing would be awkward, ejaculating difficult and painful.

  Doctor Lamb nodded, tee-peed his fingers, and stared a
t a spot somewhere above my head. I even turned to see what he might be looking at. Nothing above me but a framed photo of him in surgical gear; gloved hands raised and bloody. Ew.

  “Even the most cracked stone can contain a sculpture if you know how to see it. We let the medium tell us how it wants to be sculpted, not the other way around.”

  “It’s my dick, Doc.”

  That made him blink. His eyes dropped to the body part in question, seemed to penetrate my jeans with a flash of resentment at the fact that I had dared to break his aesthetic reverie, then shot back up to his serene counterfeit. A second later he was all professional calm again. “Perhaps it’s too early to get into the details. After all, we’ll need you to talk with—”

  “I know that, I get it, but I’m just asking if you think it will be a problem.”

  The doc tossed his hands up, a hint of irritation, pretended to search for something on his desk, a file or a paper. We both knew he wouldn’t find an answer there. When his stalling became awkward, I cleared my throat.

  “Would you like to take another look, Doc?”

  Startled, he glanced at my crotch. “You mean now?”

  “Please?”

  He’d already examined me an hour ago, then left me alone in his office for fifteen minutes after pointless x-rays and blood tests — pointless as far as I could tell, but what did I know? I was just eager for any forward movement. Paula had warned me about getting impatient. All in good time. One day I would be glad not to have rushed this, she said.

  Today was not that day.

  I walked around the desk, unzipped my jeans. Tugged them down to my knees, along with my newly bought women’s underwear — some sensible cotton ones, mint green. There it was, flaccid, shriveled and bent to the left. Scrotum leathery, red, some angry ingrown hair follicles.

  The doctor reached for my sack, lifted it with his fingertips. He wasn’t wearing gloves. Warning bells, y’all. Then both hands, cupping me. Tugging slightly. If my guy could have shriveled any more, it might have done. I turned to stare out the window.

  “Down here, please.”

  “What?”

  “I said look down here. Look at me.”

  Eye to eye while he caressed my ball sack. There was no doubt. This wasn’t an examination anymore.

  I pushed his hands away, yanked up my pants. “The fuck are you doing?”

  He rolled his chair backwards, cleared his throat. “Miss Jahnke, I don’t think your burns prevent you from being a candidate for surgery. We might need some skin grafts from other areas. In the meantime, why don’t you set up an appointment with …”

  Yes, the counselor. And the counselor would decide when I should start hormone therapy, or if at all. Then another counselor had to back up the findings of the first one. It would take months and months, and worse still, there were no guarantees. In the meantime, I had to balance my two identities — Manny and Hannah — without losing my mind.

  I wanted to slap the doctor across his insolent face. Clearly he’d done this sort of thing before. Vulnerable patients like me. Desperate to get the surgery, desperate to get it soon, desperate enough to let creeps like him get their rocks off just to speed things along. There were other doctors in town, sure, but they would all know each other. It was tough to fight back if it might mean a bad word in the ear of the other physicians. I was guessing he’d always got away with it. Always.

  And I didn’t have the balls to call him out. I was embarrassed. I was angry.

  I also wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t made him stop?

  That’s the sort of thing that would make horror movies unscary and porn unsexy. My nightmares were covered for the next few weeks, thank you very much, Doc.

  “Thank you very much, Doc,” I said as he handed me the numbers of some counselors he recommended. “Thanks again.”

  My skin was creepy-crawly all the way down the elevator to the parking garage. All the way home to Hannah’s townhouse, where I took a scalding shower to wash away the past couple of hours. To thaw out Manny. He had some work to do and couldn’t afford to get hung up on Doctor Perv.

  My life was in transition. Literally, as far as my cock was concerned, and as far as my career went …

  Think about it: I’d lost my job as a cop by solving a missing person’s case, a murder, and a psychological puzzle all rolled up into one. The sort of thing that usually gets someone a promotion and a raise, but not me. Now I was straddling the fence between the man I needed to be for this new job, and the woman I wanted to be in order to feel ‘me’, whatever that meant anymore.

  A woman goes into the Lake. She shouldn’t have come back out. Most souls lost in the Lake stay down there, their ghosts left haunting the depths. But not this one. Hans Marquette — Hannah — somehow got snagged on an ice fisherman’s hook, as if demanding to be remembered. The police were called, and it just happened to be my patrol that morning. That one call started me down a whole new path, one I’d half-heartedly tried to take a couple of times before — dressing in my sister’s clothes as a teenager, then later with my burns — but which led me much farther along once I’d met Hannah.

  Which eventually led me to working for her brother, Andrew, a state senator now running for governor. A Republican who stood up for LGBT rights. The favorite.

  For the moment, anyway.

  “Motherfucker!”

  It wasn’t me. The voice came from another office. A man I hadn’t met yet, one of the new strategists who had been pouring in since it had transpired that Andrew Marquette — much to no one’s surprise — had no primary challengers. The man seemed unbeatable, so much so that even the DFL had been reluctant to nominate anyone to challenge the golden boy.

  After all, they didn’t want to appear fractured, fighting among themselves, when the Republicans had, with minor exceptions, rallied around one obvious candidate.

  Well, today was the day the Democrats moved their queen into the game. Figuratively speaking.

  I got up from my tiny desk in my tiny office — tiny, but at least it was mine and not shared with three phone-zombie college interns — and wandered down to the conference room. We had ‘borrowed’ a floor of the Pioneer building in St. Paul for one of our main campaign headquarters. There was a shinier one in Minneapolis at ground floor, but over here we wanted to make it a little more difficult for people to find us. Over here, we did the hard work, the borderline-sleazy stuff. We raked in the money. The Minneapolis location was where Andrew made a show of hanging out with the volunteers, giving inspirational soundbites, and generally hobnobbing with anyone who wanted to come in and express support or ask him ‘tough’ questions. Like he hadn’t heard them all before.

  Back when his brother Hans was still alive and working for his campaign, it had been his idea to distract the public with the pretense of transparency that came with the Minneapolis office. And I agreed one hundred percent.

  I didn’t want Andrew to look ‘handled’.

  (Yes, I know I wasn’t a trained political operative, but I wasn’t stupid. I binge-watched West Wing and The Thick of It over a weekend and figured the spin doctoring out for myself. It ain’t rocket science, baby.)

  The lay of the land: I’d suggested to Andrew that bringing me in as a woman might actually be a good thing, considering his position on the issue. But, in the end, he asked that for the duration of the campaign, I please stay in character as ‘Manny’. So I did, if only in the office.

  The man who had yelled “Motherfucker” craned his neck, grit his teeth, and covered his ears with his hands. “No more, no more, I don’t want to hear it!”

  He was surrounded by several other volunteers, a few senior advisors, and our director of communications. None of them liked me. All of them had to deal with me, though. But the man in the middle, I’d never seen him before. Dark brown skin, shaved head, about as tall as me, which meant short, but thick across the shoulders. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a tan suit, a wide floral tie with a Blath
us knot, and red leather shoes. The man was impressive and if he knew one thing it was how to command a room. Though by the sounds of that “motherfucker”, he knew a lot more.

  I leaned in. “What’s up?”

  Much to my surprise, I didn’t get the usual icy silence.

  “We’ve got a challenger. Finally.”

  I clapped my hands. “Good! Good! We can take him apart, right?”

  A lawyer named Wolle shook his head. “Her. It’s a her. And this bitch is a nightmare.”

  He pointed to a laptop on the table that was streaming live. A woman standing at a podium, waving her hands as she spoke to what looked like a crowded hotel ballroom. A nice-looking woman with short blonde hair, spiked, and a blazer over a black t-shirt. I bet there were jeans and boots behind the podium.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Jolene?”

  “Yeah, Jolene.” The communications director, Beverly, stood against the far wall, arms crossed. “Fucked.”

  The man in the middle spoke up. “That woman is going to be President one day, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Get used to it. But if we want to win this race, we’ve got to drag her through all of the sewers, you hear me? All of them.”

  The cadence was familiar, at least to someone like me who’d been crash-coursing in American politics, spending the past weeks watching every speech I could stand. But he was on a roll. I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “But listen, Bev, it can’t look like the dirt is coming from us.”

  “Of course.” Verbal version of an eye roll.

  He shook his head. “You don’t get it. I don’t mean our campaign team. I mean our entire side. Republicans. It’s got to look like there are Democrats who hate her. And I mean hate. Same way these evangelicals are fuming over the Senator.”

  “Well, when you put it that way, no sweat,” she said, mostly mumbling to herself.