The Madman's Tale (27 page)

“Easy,” Lucy said, “for a patient man to pick out and stalk.”

Peter hesitated, in that second, as if something Lucy said raised some question within him. Francis could see that some notion was churning about within him, and he was unsure whether to put it to words and speak it out loud. Finally after a few moments had passed, Peter leaned back, and said, “Different jurisdictions. Different locales. Different agencies. All here together …”

“That’s right,” Lucy said carefully, as if she was suddenly watching her words.

“Interesting,” Peter replied. Then he leaned forward, back toward the materials on the desktop, surveying the entirety slowly. After a second, he stopped and picked up the three photographs of the victims’ right hands. He stared at the mutilated fingers for a moment. “Souvenirs,” he said briskly. “That’s pretty damn classic.”

“What do you mean?” Francis asked.

“In the studies done on repetitive killers,” Lucy said quietly, “one common characteristic is the need for the killer to remove something from the victim, so that he can relive the experience later.”

“Remove?”

“A lock of hair. A piece of clothing. A part of the body.”

Francis shuddered. He felt young, in that moment, as young as he’d ever been, and wondered how it was that he knew so little of the world, and Peter and Lucy, who weren’t more than eight, maybe ten years older than he was, knew so much. “But you said it told you a lot, too,” Francis said. “Like what?”

Peter looked over at Lucy, their eyes linking for a second. Francis eyed the young prosecutor carefully, and thought that his question had somehow crossed some sort of divide. There are moments, he knew, when words assembled and uttered suddenly created bridges and connections, and he suspected this was one of those moments.

“What all this says, Francis,” Peter said, speaking to his friend, but his eyes on the young woman, “is that Lanky’s Angel knows how to commit crimes in a manner that creates immeasurable problems for the folks who would want to stop him. That means that he has some intelligence. And a significant amount of education, at least, in the ways of killing. When you think about it, there are only two ways that crimes get solved, C-Bird. The first, and best way, is when the great mass of evidence gathered at the scene of the crime points inexorably in one direction. Fingerprints, clothing fibers, blood work, and murder weapons that can be traced and maybe even eyewitness testimony. Then these things can be coupled with clear-cut motives, like insurance money, or robbery, or an angry dispute between estranged couples.”

“What’s the other way?” Francis asked.

“That’s when you uncover a suspect, and then you find ways of linking him to the events.”

“That sounds like it’s backward.”

“It is indeed,” Lucy said.

“Is it more difficult?”

Peter sighed. “Difficult? Yes. That it is. Impossible? No.”

“That’s good,” Francis said. He looked at Lucy. “I would be worried if what we had to do were impossible.”

Peter burst out with a laugh. “Actually, C-Bird, it’s really simply a matter of us using some other means to figure out who the Angel is. We create a list of potential suspects, and then narrow that down until we are more or less certain we know who it is. Or, at the least, have a few names of potential killers. Then we apply what we know about each crime to these suspects. One, I trust, will stand out. And once we see that, it won’t be all that hard to put him in proximity to these victims. Things will fall together, we just don’t know yet how or what it will be. But there will be something in this mess of papers and reports and evidence that will trap him.”

Francis took in a deep breath. “What sort of other means are you talking about?” he asked.

Peter grinned. “Well, my young friend, there’s the rub. That’s what we need to figure out. There’s someone in this place who isn’t what everyone thinks he is. He’s got a whole different sort of crazy lurking about inside him, C-Bird. And he’s got it hidden pretty damn carefully. We just have to figure out who’s acting a lie.”

Francis looked at Lucy, who was moving her head up and down.

“That, of course,” she added slowly, “is more easily said than done.”

S
ometimes the lines of demarcation between dreams and reality become blurred. Hard for me to tell precisely which is which. I suppose that’s why I am supposed to take so much medication, as if reality can be encouraged chemically. Ingest enough milligrams of this or that pill, and the world comes back into focus. This is sadly true, and, for the most part, all those drugs do pretty much what they are supposed to do, in addition to all the other things not so pleasant. And, I guess, it is all in all positive. It just depends on how much value one places on focus
.

Currently, I wasn’t placing much value on it all
.

I slept, I don’t know for how many hours, on the floor of my living room. I had taken a pillow and blanket from my bed, and then stretched out beside all my words, reluctant to leave them, almost like an attentive parent, afraid to leave a sickly child at night. The floor was board hard, and my joints complained in protest when I awakened. There was some dawn light slipping into the apartment, like a herald trumpeting in something new, and I rose to my task not precisely refreshed, but at least a little less groggy
.

For a moment, or two, I looked about, reassuring myself that I was alone
.

The Angel was not far, I knew. He had not fled. That wasn’t his style. Nor had he concealed himself behind my shoulder again. My senses were all on edge, despite the few hours’ sleep. He was close. He was watching. He was waiting. Somewhere nearby. But the room was empty, at least for the time being, and I felt some relief. The only echoes were my own
.

I tried to tell myself to be very careful. In the Western State Hospital, there had been the three of us arrayed against him. And still it had been an equal contest. Now, here alone in my apartment, I feared that I wasn’t capable of the same fight
.

I turned to the wall. I remembered asking Peter a question and his response, spoken in an upbeat tone: “Detective work is about a steady, careful examination of facts. Creative thinking is always welcome, but only within the boundaries of known details
.”

I laughed out loud. This time irony overcame me, and I replied, “But that’s not what worked, was it?” Maybe in the real world, especially today, with DNA testing and electronic microscopes and forensic techniques honed by science and technology and screaming modern capabilities, finding the Angel wouldn’t have been so tricky. Probably not at all. Put the right substances into a test tube, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, run them through a gas chronometer, apply some space-age technology, get a computer readout and find our man. But back then, in the Western State Hospital, we didn’t have any of those things. Not a one
.

All we had was ourselves
.

Inside the Amherst Building alone, there were nearly three hundred male patients. That figure was duplicated in the other housing units, bringing the hospital total to close to 2,100. The female population was slightly less, measuring one hundred and twenty-five in Amherst, and a little over nine hundred in the hospital itself. Nurses, nurse-trainees, attendants, security personnel, psychologists, and psychiatrists brought the number of people at the hospital to well above three thousand. It wasn’t the widest world, Francis thought, but it was still a substantial one.

In the days after Lucy Jones’s arrival, Francis had taken to examining the other men walking the corridors with a different sort of interest. The idea that one among them was a killer unsettled him, and he found himself pivoting and turning whenever someone closed in on him from behind. He knew this was unreasonable, and knew also that his fears were misplaced. But it was hard for him to erase a sense of constant dread.

He spent a lot of time trying to make eye contact in a place that discouraged it. He was surrounded by all sorts of mental illness, in varying degrees of intensity, and he had no idea how to change the way he looked at all that sickness to spot an entirely different disease. The clamor he felt within himself, from all his voices, added to the nervousness racing about inside his body. He felt a little like he was charged with electrical impulses, all darting about haphazardly, trying to find some location where they might settle. His efforts to rest were frustrated, and Francis felt exhausted.

Peter the Fireman didn’t seem quite as hamstrung. In fact, Francis noted, the worse he felt, the better Peter seemed to be. There was more urgency in his voice, and quickness to his step, as he traversed the corridors. Some of the elusive sadness that he’d worn when first he’d arrived at the Western State Hospital had been shunted aside. Peter had energy, which Francis envied, because he had only fear.

But the time spent with Lucy and Peter, in their small office, managed to control even that for him. In the small space, even his voices quieted, and he was able to listen to what they said with relative peace.

The first order of business, as Lucy explained to him, was to create a means of narrowing the number of potential suspects. It was easy enough for her, she said, to go through the hospital records for each patient and determine who was
available
to kill the other victims that she believed were linked to the murder of Short Blond. She had three other dates, in addition to Short Blond. Each killing had taken place within a few days, or weeks, of the time the bodies were discovered. Clearly, the greatest percentage of hospital inmates were not out on the street during the time frame that all three of the other killings were performed. The long-term patients, especially the elderly, were easy to remove from their process of inspection.

She did not share this initial inquiry with either Doctor Gulptilil or Mister Evans, although Peter and Francis knew what she was doing. This created some tension, when she asked Mister Evil for the Amherst Building records.

“Of course,” he said. “I keep the primary dossiers in my office in some file cabinets. You can come there and inspect them whenever you like.”

Lucy was standing outside her own office. It was early in the afternoon, and Mister Evil had already come by twice that morning, knocking loudly at her door and asking if he could be of assistance, and to remind Francis and Peter that their regularly scheduled group session was going to take place as usual and that they would be required to be there.

“Now would be good,” she said. She took a step down the hallway, only to be interrupted by Mister Evil.

“Only you,” he said stiffly. “Not the other two.”

“They’re helping me,” she said. “You know that.”

Mister Evil nodded, in response, but then changed the nod into a vigorous back and forth negative. “Yes, they might be,” he said slowly. “That remains to be seen, and, as you well know, I have my doubts. Still doesn’t give them the right to examine the confidential files of other patients. There is sensitive, personal information in those dossiers, gleaned from therapeutic sessions, and I cannot permit that information to be examined by other clients of our little hospital, here. That would be unethical on my part and a violation of state laws concerning privacy of records. You should be aware of that, Miss Jones.”

Lucy paused, considering what he’d said. “I’m sorry,” she replied slowly. “You are, of course, correct. I simply assumed that the exigencies of the situation might create some leeway on your part.”

He smiled. “Of course. And I wish to provide you with the widest possible latitude on your wild-goose chase. But I cannot break the law, nor is it fair for you to ask me, or any of the other dormitory supervisors to do so.” Mister Evil wore long brown hair, and wire-rim glasses, giving him a close to scruffy look. To offset this impression, he often wore a tie and a white shirt, although his shoes were always scuffed and worn. It was, Francis thought, a little as if he did not want to be associated either with a world of rebellion or the land of the status quo. Not really wanting to be a part of either put Mister Evil into a difficult spot, he thought.

“Right,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Especially, because I have yet to see from you any real indication that the mythical person you are pursuing is actually here.”

She did not reply to this at first, only smiling.

“And,” she said, after a short silence had surrounded them unhappily, “precisely what sort of evidence is it that you’d like me to show you?”

Evans, too, smiled, as if he enjoyed the fencing back and forth. Thrust. Parry. Strike.

“Something other than supposition,” he said. “Perhaps a witness that was credible, although where you might find one inside a mental hospital presently eludes me …” He said this with a small laugh, as if it was a joke.“… Or perhaps the murder weapon that has, as of now, not been uncovered. Something concrete. Something solid …”Again, he seemed about to act as if this was all a great amusement, just for him. “Of course, as you’ve probably figured out, Miss Jones,
concrete
and
solid are
not concepts particularly suited to our little world, here. You know as well as I, that statistically, the mentally ill are far, far more likely to do harm to themselves than they are to hurt someone else.”