The Thomas Berryman Number

“I don’t want to play on your emotions,” I said, “but I knew Horn for about eight years before this happened.

“In a lot of ways we were friends. In

some

ways,” I corrected myself. “That doesn’t have anything to do with you … except that it gives you an idea of what’s going on in my head right now. My mind is a fucking wreck.”

The aide nodded. Once again, the coffee.

“OK,” I sighed. “

The problem …

I’d like to read what’s been written about Toy since he’s been in here … I could ask Alan Shulman. But I’m afraid to. If Shulman turns me down, I’m fucked. I’m looking for names, dates, anything about Thomas Berryman. I swear to you that I won’t use anything that would hurt anybody else in here. On Bowditch.”

Asher nodded again. He really looked exhausted and I felt sorry for him. His eyes shifted out the kitchen window into the dark exercise yard.

Beyond the floodlights on the wall was a staff parking lot. Then the end of the hospital grounds. Then the ocean. At night you could only see the wall, though. Salvador Dali couldn’t have done it better.

“When you turn left outside the front door, the inside door,” Asher turned to me, “there’s a small conference room. Wait in there. I’ll try to get you what you need.”

The aide brought me Ben Toy’s admission notes, workup notes, daily nursing charts—over two hundred pages in all.

Everything was stamped CONFIDENTIAL or NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THIS ROOM. Some of it was typed, but most of the notes were handwritten in black ink.

I started to copy names, addresses, telephone numbers

Jimmie Horn was mentioned several times in the daily notes; Harley Wynn was mentioned; Thomas Berryman didn’t come up that frequently.

I recognized none of the other names or addresses. There was nothing to immediately connect anyone in Tennessee.

I found Toy’s admission note especially interesting though:

Mr. Toy is an extremely handsome, well-developed young man from the northwestern part of Texas. He has a history of not having close, stable relationships, with the exception of one longstanding boyhood relationship.

Mr. Toy claims to have killed a man and a woman, and some traumatic incident has precipitated a severe depression with accompanying physical hostility. (He punches walls and people.)

Mr. Toy has also had auditory hallucinations. Immediate care inside a psychiatric hospital is recommended, and suicidal behavior should not be discounted with this young man

I stopped reading as I remembered one fact that put a damper on my excitement and speculation about Toy and Thomas Berryman. Jimmie Horn had been shot down by Bert Poole. I’d seen it several times on film. It was as clear in my mind as the famous televised sequence in which Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

Bowditch was silent around me, reminding me of late nights in my own house. The only sound was water running through the old building’s pipes. Then it

glug-glugged

off. It was 2:30 in the morning. I was feeling ever so slightly deranged.

I sat with my stockinged feet up on a green-blottered desk, smoking, drinking machine coffee, thinking about both Ben Toy and Ronald Asher.

I knew I had a story now, probably a pretty good one, and I started to consider more thorough approaches for future interviews.

I knew from past experience that I should quickly identify myself and my newspaper. People like to have situations with strangers defined … Then, I thought it would be best to work off people’s natural sympathies for Jimmie Horn. For political assassinations anyway.

I scribbled out a speech for myself, but it was so convoluted people would have forgotten the beginning by the time I reached the end.

Then I considered a very simple, direct approach.

“My name is Ochs Jones,” it went. “I’m a reporter for the

Nashville Citizen-Reporter

(local newspaper if necessary). I’m investigating the murder of Jimmie Horn of Nashville. Would you help me?”

It was an introduction that never failed me during four months of investigation, in six states.

Watching out for the inevitable attendant or security guard, I let myself out Bowditch’s unlocked outside door. (There were three doors; two of them were locked, but the one leading into the foyer wasn’t.)

Alan Shulman was waiting for me, sitting on the front steps.

The young doctor was dressed in well-worn sixties street clothes; he was scratching little xs and os in the driveway gravel with two-toned desert boots.

“Asher called you,” I said.

He nodded. “I wish you’d asked me for those files,” he said. “That really bothers me, Mr. Jones.”

Then he got up from the front steps and walked inside. I listened to the two inner doors being unlocked, closed. Then it was silent again.

I wished I’d asked him too.

I also wished he hadn’t dealt with it in quite that way.

West Hampton, July 10

For breakfast the next morning I sat alone in a wrinkled double bed at Howard Johnson’s and tried to write the first news story about Thomas Berryman. I didn’t do spectacularly well.