The Madman's Tale (57 page)

“That might cause a significant conflict,” Peter replied with a grin.

“You’ll survive,” Lucy continued. “You’re not crazy like the rest of these folks. Soon as you get out, you’ll be okay. But C-Bird … what will happen to him?”

“Bigger questions for Francis,” Peter said, instantly turning glum. “He needs to prove he isn’t crazy, but how do you do that in here? This place is designed to make people more crazy, not less. It makes all the diseases people suffer, like, contagious …,” Peter said, bitterness creeping into his voice. “It’s as if you come in here with a cold, and it turns into strep or bronchitis and then into pneumonia, and finally into some terminal respiratory failure and then they say, ‘Well, we did all we could’”

“I need to get out of here,” Lucy said. “You need to get out of here, too.”

“Correct,” Peter replied, “But the person who needs out more than anybody is C-Bird, because otherwise, he’ll be lost forever.” Peter smiled again, but this was a smile that was merely a blanket thrown over all his sadness. “It’s as if you and I, we elect our own troubles. We choose them in some perverse, neurotic way. Francis, all his troubles were delivered to him. No fault of his own, not like you and me. He’s innocent, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for me.”

Lucy reached out her hand and touched Peter’s forearm, as if to buttress the truth in what he said. For a moment, Peter stayed stock-still, like a bird dog on point, his arm almost burning with the sensation of the touch. Then he stepped a little ways back, as if he couldn’t stand the pressure. But as he did that, he smiled, and sighed deeply, although he turned his face away from Lucy as he did it, as if, in that second, he couldn’t force himself to see what he could see.

“We need to find the Angel,” Peter said. “And we need to do it right away.”

“I agree,” Lucy said. But then she looked at Peter curiously, because she saw that he meant something beyond the simple encouragement.

“What is it?”

But before he could answer that question, Francis, who had been weighing
something inwardly and not paying attention to the others, looked up and approached the two of them. “I had an idea,” he said hesitantly, “I don’t know, but …”

“C-Bird, I need to tell you something …,” Peter started, then he interrupted himself. “What’s your idea?”

“What do you need to tell me?”

“It can wait a little bit,” Peter said. “But your idea?”

“I was so scared,” Francis began. “You weren’t there, and it was pitch-dark, and that knife was at my cheek. Fear is funny, Peter,” he continued, “because it rearranges all your thinking so much that you can’t see anything else because of it. And I bet Lucy already knows this, but I didn’t and it gave me an idea …”

“Francis, try to make a little more sense,” Peter said, like he would to a student in an elementary school. Affectionate, but interested.

“Fear like that, it makes you think of only one thing: How scared you are and what’s going to happen, and will he come back, and the terrible things he’s done and what he might still do, because I knew he could have killed me, and I wanted to descend into some sort of safe place where I could be all alone …”

Lucy bent to Francis, because suddenly she saw a glimmer of what he was driving at. “Go on,” she said.

“But all that fear, it covered up something that I should have seen.”

Peter nodded. “What?”

“The Angel knew you would not be there that night.”

“The log. Or he saw for himself. Or he heard I was being moved to isolation …”

“So, the situation was ripe for him to move last night, because he didn’t want to try to handle both of us at once, I don’t think. I’m kinda guessing here, but it makes some sense to me. Anyway, he had to move last night, because the situation was perfect for him to terrify me …”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “I can see that.”

“And he needed to kill the Dancer. Why?”

“To show us how he could do anything. To underscore the message. We’re not safe.” Francis breathed out hard, because the notion that the Dancer was killed simply to make a point truly unsettled him. He couldn’t imagine what could drive the Angel forward so dramatically, and then, in the same second, he realized that perhaps he could. This frightened him even more, but he took refuge in the bright light of the midday corridor, and being surrounded by Peter and Lucy. They were competent, and strong, Francis thought, and the Angel was being cautious with them because they weren’t mad and weak like he was. He breathed out slowly and continued, “But these are risks. Do you suppose there was another reason he had to be in that room last night?”

“What sort of reason?”

Francis was almost stuttering, each thought that he had seemed to echo within him, deeper and farther away, as if he was on the edge of some great hole that only promised oblivion. He closed his eyes for a second, and there was a red streak of light behind his lids, almost blinding him. He took his time forming each word, because in that second he saw what was in that room that the Angel needed.

“The retarded man …,” Francis began. “He had something that belonged to him …”

“The bloody shirt.”

“Well, I wonder …”

Francis didn’t get a chance to finish. He looked up at Peter, who turned to Lucy Jones. They didn’t have to agree out loud. Within seconds, the three of them had crossed the corridor and pushed into the dormitory room.

They were fortunate that the hulking retarded man was sitting on the edge of his bed, crooning softly to his Raggedy Andy doll. In the back of the dormitory, there were a few other patients, mostly lying about, staring out the window or at the ceiling, disconnected from anything. The retarded man looked up at the three of them and smiled. Lucy pushed forward, taking the lead.

“Hello,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

He nodded.

“Is that your friend?” she asked.

Again, he nodded.

“And is this where the two of you sleep?”

He patted the mattress, and she sat down at his side. As statuesque as Lucy was, she was still dwarfed by the retarded man, who shifted in his seat to make a little room for her.

“And this is where the two of you live …”

Again he grinned and smiled. He seemed to concentrate hard for a moment, and then he haltingly said, “I live in the big hospital.”

The words tumbled like boulders from his mouth. Each one was misshapen and rock hard, and she imagined that the effort to form each one was a monumental task.

“And this is where you keep your things?” she asked.

Again, his head moved up and down.

“Has anyone tried to hurt you?” she asked.

“Yes,” the retarded man said slowly, as if the single word could be drawn out so that it could say more than simply agreeing. “I had a fight.”

Lucy took a deep breath, but before she could ask another question, she saw that the retarded man’s eyes had filled with some tears.

“…I had a fight,” he repeated, and then he added, “I don’t like to fight. My momma told me, no fighting. Never.”

“Your momma is wise,” Lucy said. She had no doubt that the retarded man could do serious damage if he permitted himself to.

“I’m too big,” he said. “No fighting.”

“Does your friend have a name?” she asked, gesturing toward the doll.

“Andy”

“I’m Lucy. Can I be your friend, too?”

He nodded and smiled.

“Will you help me with something?”

He knitted his brows together, and she thought he was having trouble understanding, so she said, “I’ve lost something.”

He grunted a response, as if to indicate that he, too, had once lost something and that he didn’t like it.

“Will you look in your things for me?”

The retarded man hesitated, then shrugged. He reached down under the bed, and with a single hand pulled forward a green, military-style trunk. “What?” he asked.

“A shirt.”

He handed the Raggedy Andy doll to Lucy carefully, and then undid the clasp on the foot locker. She noted that the trunk wasn’t locked. He pulled the lid back and she saw his meager possessions. There were some underwear and socks folded on the top, next to a photograph of the retarded man and his mother. The picture was a few years old, and had a few creases in it, and was frayed around the edges from where it had been handled far too many times. Then beneath that were some jeans and a spare pair of shoes, a couple of sports shirts and a slightly threadbare dark green woolen sweater.

The bloody shirt was missing. Lucy rapidly looked over at Peter, who shook his head.

“Gone,” he said quietly.

She turned back to the retarded man. “Thank you,” she said. “You can put your things away now.”

He closed the trunk and shoved it back under the bunk. She handed him back the Raggedy Andy doll.

“Do you have any other friends in here?” she asked, gesturing around the room.

He shook his head. “All alone,” he said.

“I’ll be your friend,” she said, which made him smile, although she realized
what a lie this was, which made her feel guilty, in part for the hopelessness of the retarded man, and a little for herself, because she wasn’t sure she liked at all having the ability to deceive a person who was little more than a child, and who would only grow older, but never wiser.

Back in her office, Lucy sighed. “Well,” she said, “I guess the idea that we might actually find a bit of evidence seems to be too much.”

She sounded discouraged, but Peter was more upbeat. “No, no, we learned something. The idea that the Angel would plant something and then go to the trouble of removing it tells us something about his personality.”

Francis, however, felt his head spinning. He could feel a small quiver in his hands, because within him so much that was usually a turmoil of crosscurrents and murkiness, had an edge of clarity to it. “Closeness,” he said.

“What?”

“He picked the retarded man for a reason. Because he knew he would be questioned by Lucy. Because he was close enough to be able to plant a piece of evidence on. Because he wasn’t someone who would threaten him. Everything the Angel does has a purpose.”

“I think you’re right,” Lucy said slowly. “Because when you think about it, what does this tell us?”

Peter’s voice was suddenly cold. “It tells us that he’s not exactly hiding.”

Francis groaned, as if this idea pained him like a blow to the chest. He rocked back and forth, and Peter and Lucy eyed him with concern. For the first time, Peter understood that what was an exercise in intelligence for him and Lucy, an adventure in outsmarting a clever and dedicated killer, was, perhaps, something far more difficult and dangerous for Francis. “He wants us to search for him,” Francis said, the words bleeding through his lips. “He enjoys all this.”

“Well, then we’ve got to end the game,” Peter said.

Francis looked up. “We have to not do what he expects us to do because he knows. I don’t know how or why, but he knows.”

Peter took a deep breath, and for a moment or two, all three of them were quiet, as they chewed over what Francis had said. Peter didn’t think that the moment was right, but he could think of no other time that might be more appropriate, and any further delay might make things worse. “I don’t have much time left,” he said quietly. “Sometime in the next few days, I’m going to be shipped out of here. Forever.”

I
rolled over on the floor and felt the hardwood surface flush against my cheek as I fought against the sobs that captured my entire body. All of my life I had spiraled from one loneliness to another, and simply recalling the instant in time that I heard Peter the Fireman say that he would be leaving me by myself in Western State plummeted me into a black despair that mimicked the one I felt in the Amherst Building all those years ago. I suppose I had known from the opening second when we had met, that I was bound to be left behind, but still, hearing it firsthand was like a blow to the chest. There are some deep sadnesses that never leave one’s heart no matter how many hours slide by, and this was one of those. Writing the words that Peter spoke that afternoon rekindled all the feelings of despair that had been hidden for so many years by so many drugs and treatment plans and therapeutic sessions. My hurt erupted, filling me with a deep gray volcanic ash.