The Madman's Tale (45 page)

I tried to remember: What scared me the most?

That was one of the moments, that time in Lucy’s office. I was beginning to see things. Not hallucinations, like those that rang in my ears and echoed in my head. Those, I was familiar with, and while they might have been irksome and difficult and helped define my madness, I was accustomed to them and their demands and fears and the things they might or might not ask of me at any given moment. After all, they had been with me since I was a child. But what scared me right then was seeing things about the Angel. Who he might be. How he might
think. For Peter and Lucy, it wasn’t the same. They understood that the Angel was an adversary. A criminal. A target. Someone hiding from them, whom they were empowered to uncover. They had hunted people before, stalked them and brought them to justice, so there was a different context to their pursuit than what I had suddenly surrounding me. In those moments, I had begun to see the Angel as someone like me. Only far worse. He had taken footsteps, and, for the first time, I believed that I was able to retrace them. Placing my own shoe in his well-trod path was something that everything inside me screamed was wrong. But possible
.

I wanted to flee. A chorus within me sang loudly that nothing right was happening. My voices were an opera of self-preservation, warning me to get out, get away, to run and hide and save myself
.

But how could I? The hospital was locked. The walls were high. The gates were strong. And my own illness barred me from flight
.

How could I turn my back on the only two people who had ever thought that I was worth anything?

“
That’s right, Francis. You couldn’t do that
.”

I had crept down and huddled in a corner of the living room, staring over at my words, when I heard Peter speak. Relief flooded me, and I pivoted about, searching the room for his presence
.

“
Peter?” I replied. “You’re back?”

“
I didn’t really leave. I’ve been here all along
.”

“
The Angel was here. I could feel him
.”

“
He will be back. He’s close, Francis. He will get closer still
.”

“
He’s doing what he did before
.”

“
I know, C-Bird. But you’re ready for him this time. I know you are
.”

“
Help me, Peter,” I whispered. I could feel tears flowering in my throat
.

“
Oh C-Bird, this time it’s your fight
.”

“
I’m scared, Peter
.”

“
Of course you are,” he said, with the matter-of-fact tones that he sometimes used, but always had the quality of being nonjudgmental. “But that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. It only means you need to be careful. Just like before. That hasn’t changed. It was your caution, the first time that was critical, wasn’t it?”

I stayed in my corner, my eyes darting around the room. He must have seen me, because when I spied him, leaning up against the wall opposite me, he gave a little wave of his hand, and broke into a familiar grin. I could see that he was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, but it had faded through use and was ripped and torn and smeared with dirt. He held a shiny silver helmet in his hands, and his face was streaked with soot and ash and lines of sweat. He must have seen me staring, because he gave a little laugh, a wave of the hand, and shook his head. “Sorry about the rough appearance, C-Bird
.”

I thought he looked a little older than I remembered, and behind his grin I could see some of the harsh inroads of hurt and trouble. “Are you okay, Peter?” I asked
.

“
Of course, Francis. It’s just I’ve been through a lot. So have you. We always wear the clothes that the fates dress us in, don’t we, C-Bird? Nothing new about that
.”

He turned over to the wall and his eyes ran up and down the columns of words. He nodded in agreement. “You’re making progress,” he said
.

“
I don’t know,” I answered. “Every word I write seems to make the room get darker
.”

Peter sighed, as if to say that he’d anticipated this. “We’ve been through a lot of darkness, haven’t we, Francis. And some of it together. That’s what you’re writing about. Just remember, we were there with you, and we’re here with you now. Can you keep that in mind, C-Bird?”

“
I’ll try
.”

“
Things got a little complicated that day, didn’t they?”

“
Yes. For both of us. And Lucy, too, because of it
.”

“
Tell it all, Francis,” he said
.

I looked over at the wall, and saw where I had left off. When I turned back to Peter, he had disappeared
.

I
t was Peter who suggested that Lucy proceed in two distinct directions. The first path, he emphasized, was to not stop interviewing patients. It was critical, Peter said, that no one, either patients or staff, know that they had uncovered a piece of evidence, because precisely what it meant, and where it pointed, was as yet unclear to any of them. But if the news got out, they would lose control over the situation. It was a by-product of the unstable world of the mental hospital, he told her. There was no way of anticipating what unrest, even panic, it might cause among all the fragile personalities that made up the population. This meant, among other things, that the bloody shirt had to be left where it was, and that no outside agencies should be involved, especially the local cops who’d taken Lanky into custody, even if they risked losing it as a piece of evidence down the road. And, he added, people in the Amherst Building were beginning to get accustomed to the steady stream of patients entering from other buildings at the elbow of Big Black in order to be questioned by Lucy, and there might be a way of working that routine into an advantage. The second suggestion Peter had was slightly harder to bring about.

“What we need to do,” he said to Lucy quietly, “is get that big guy and his things transferred over to Amherst. And we need to do this in a way that doesn’t draw much attention to the change.”

Lucy agreed. They were standing in the corridor, static amid the early afternoon ebb and flow of patients through the building, as therapy groups
and crafts classes were getting under way. The usual haze of cigarette smoke hung in the still air, and the clattering of feet mingled with the hum of voices. Peter, with Lucy and Francis, seemed to be the only people not moving. Like rocks in a fast-running river, activity bubbled around them. “Okay,” Lucy said. “I think that makes sense. He bears watching. But beyond that?”

“I don’t know. Not precisely,” Peter replied. “He’s the only suspect we have, and C-Bird here doesn’t think he’s the real suspect anyway, an observation that I think I subscribe to. But exactly how he fits into the greater scheme of things we’re going to need to find out. And the only way to do that—”

“… is to keep him close enough to watch. Yes. This makes as much sense as anything,” she said. Then she lifted an eyebrow, as if an idea had occurred to her. “I think I know what to do. Let me make some arrangements.”

“But quietly,” Peter said. “Don’t let anyone know …”

She smiled. “Peter, I can manage this. Being a prosecutor is all about making things happen in precisely the way you want them to happen.” Then she added, as if to underscore a bit of a joke: “More or less.” Lucy looked up and saw the Moses brothers making their way down the corridor. She nodded to them. “Gentlemen, I think we need to get back on track. I wonder if I could have a word with you quietly, before Mister Evans returns from wherever he is.”

“He’s over talking with the big doc,” Little Black said cautiously. He turned to Peter and made a little waving gesture with his hand, which was, in effect, a question. Peter nodded.

“I told her,” he said. “Does anyone else …”

“I told my brother,” Little Black said. “But that’s it.”

Big Black edged forward. “I’m not seeing that dude as the guy we’re looking for,” he said stolidly. “I mean the man can barely feed hisself. Likes to sit around and play with dolls. Maybe watch the television. I don’t see him as a murderer, unless you get him so riled up he takes a swing at somebody. Boy is strong. Stronger than he knows.”

“Francis said more or less the same thing,” Peter said.

“C-Bird’s got instincts.” Big Black laughed.

“So for the time being, nobody else gets told anything, okay?” Lucy interjected. “Let’s try to keep it that way.”

Little Black shrugged, but rolled his eyes, as if to say that in a place where everyone seemed to be filled with the secrets of their past, keeping a secret about their present was well-nigh impossible. “We’ll try,” he said. “One other thing. C-Bird, Gulp-a-pill wants to see you now.”

Then the large attendant turned toward Peter. “You, I’m supposed to get a little later.”

Peter looked intrigued. “What do you think …,” he started, but both the attendants shook their heads.

“Not speculating,” Little Black said. “Not yet.”

While his brother escorted Francis through the main entryway to Amherst en route to Doctor Gulptilil’s office, Little Black trailed Peter and Lucy into the interview room. The prosecutor immediately went over to the box of patient files that she had accumulated, and removed the one belonging to the hulking retarded man from the top of the pile. Then she rapidly checked through her handwritten master list of potential suspects, until she found one that she thought would do the trick. She thrust the file across to Little Black, and said, “This is the guy I want to speak with next.”

He glanced down at the file and nodded. “I know this man. Short-fused son of a bitch,” he said. Then he stammered in embarrassment. “Pardon my language, Miss Jones. It’s just I had a run-in or two with this guy. He’s one of the bad-news types around here.”

“All the better,” she said. “Considering what I have in mind.”

Little Black looked quizzically at her, and Peter slumped into his seat, smiling. “Miss Jones seems to have an idea,” he said.

Lucy picked up a pencil and rolled it around her fingers while she examined the patient’s file. The man in question was an institutional fixture, having spent much of his life either in prison for a garden-variety of assaults, robberies, and burglaries, or in various mental health facilities, complaining of auditory hallucinations and suffering from manic rages. Some of each, she guessed, were invented. Some were real. What was perhaps most real, of course, was that he had psychopathic, manipulative qualities, which were more or less ideal for what she had in mind. And an explosive anger.

“How has this guy been a problem?” she asked Little Black.

“He’s just one of those men, always wants to push the limits, you know what I’m saying? Ask him to move one way, he goes the other. Tell him to be here, he shows up over there. You try to push him a bit, he cries that you’re beating him and files a formal complaint with the big doc. Likes to get into the face of other patients, too. Always hassling one or the other. I think he steals stuff from folks behind their backs. Just a sorry excuse for a human all around, if you ask me.”

Lucy said, “Well, let’s bring him in, and see if we can’t get him to do what I want.”

Beyond that, however, she wasn’t willing to explain, although she noted that Peter seemed to concentrate carefully on what she was saying, and then
relax in his chair, as if he perceived something behind what she designed, like a delay switch on a mechanical device. Lucy guessed that this was true, and thought it was a quality that she would probably come to admire. Then, when she considered it a bit further, realized that she had seen several qualities in Peter that she was beginning to admire, which only made her even more curious as to why he was where he was and had done what he had done.

Miss Luscious took charge of Francis as soon as Big Black ushered him into the medical director’s office. As always, the secretary wore an unfriendly scowl, as if to say that any disruption in the carefully plotted daily routine that she had established with iron-fisted organization was something she personally resented. She handed Big Black a message to meet his brother at the Williams Building, and then she quickly half pushed Francis through the office door, saying, “You’re late. You need to hurry.”