The Madman's Tale (58 page)

I wailed like a starving child, abandoned in the darkness. My body convulsed with the shock of recollection. Tossed down on the cold floor like a shipwrecked sailor thrown up on a distant, strange shore, I gave into the utter futility of my history and let every failure and flaw find voice in one wracking sob after another, until, exhausted, I finally quieted
.

When the awful silence of fatigue filled the air around me, I could just make out a distant mocking laugh, retreating into the shadows. The Angel still hovered nearby, enjoying every filigree of pain I experienced
.

I lifted my head and snarled. He remained close. Close enough to touch me
,
just far enough so that I couldn’t grasp him. I could sense the distance narrowing, closing by millimeters with each passing second. That was his style. Hide. Evade. Manipulate. Control. Then, when the moment was ripe, he would pounce. The difference was, this time I was the target
.

I gathered myself and struggled to my feet, wiping a sleeve across my tear-stained face. Pivoting about, I searched the room
.

“
Here, C-Bird. Over by the wall
.”

But it wasn’t the Angel’s hissing, murderous voice, it was Peter’s
.

I spun to the sound. He was sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall of writing
.

He looked tired. No, that’s not quite right. He had traveled beyond exhaustion, into a different realm altogether. His jumpsuit was streaked with soot and dirt, and I could see grime on his face, scarred by streaks of sweat. There were rips in his clothes, and his heavy brown work boots were ridged with mud, leaves, and pine needles. He toyed with his silver steel helmet, flipping it back and forth in his hands, spinning it like a child’s top. After a moment or two, as he seemed to regain a little bit of his strength and composure, he finally took the helmet and lifted it above his head, tapping it against the wall
.

“
You’re getting there,” he said. “I guess I really didn’t understand how terrified you must have been of the Angel. I could never see coming what you did. It’s a good thing one of us was crazy. Or just crazy enough
.”

Even with all the filth that covered him, Peter’s insouciance still clawed through. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. Still, I bent down, crouching just across from him, close enough so that I could reach out and touch him, but I didn’t
.

“
He’s here now,” I whispered, cautiously. “He’s listening to us
.”

“
I know,” Peter said. “The hell with him
.”

“
He’s come for me, this time. Like he promised back then
.”

“
I know,” Peter repeated
.

“
I need your help, Peter,” I said. “I don’t know how to fight him
.”

“
You didn’t know before, but you figured it out,” Peter replied. A little bit of his wide, white grin penetrated past his exhaustion, past all the collected dirt and debris
.

“
It’s different now,” I said. “Before it was …” I hesitated
.

“
Real?” Peter asked
.

I nodded
.

“
And this isn’t?”

I didn’t know what to reply
.

“
Will you help me?” I asked again
.

“
I don’t know that you really need it. But I’ll try to do what I can.” Peter wearily gathered himself and slowly rose to his feet. For the first time, I noticed
that the backs of his hands were charred raw and bloody. The skin seemed to be loosened, for it hung in flaps from the bones and tendons. He must have seen where my eyes went, because he glanced down and then shrugged. “Can’t do anything about that,” he said. “It gets worse
.”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate, because I thought I understood. In the momentary silence that followed, he turned and peered at the wall. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, C-Bird,” he said quietly. “I knew it would hurt you, but I didn’t really understand how harsh it would be
.”

“
I was alone,” I said. “I wonder sometimes if there’s anything worse in the whole world
.”

Peter smiled. “There are worse things,” he said. “But I understand what you mean. I didn’t have a choice though, did I?”

Now it was my turn to shake my head. “No. You had to do what they wanted. And that was your only chance. I understand that
.”

“
It didn’t exactly turn out great for me,” Peter said. He laughed, as if this was a joke, then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, C-Bird. I didn’t want to leave you, but if I’d stayed …
”

“
You would have ended up like me. I understand that, Peter,” I said
.

“
But I was there for the most important part,” he said
.

I nodded
.

“
And so was Lucy
.”

Again, I nodded my head in agreement
.

“
So, we all paid a price, didn’t we?” he asked
.

In that second, I heard a long, wolflike howl. It was an unearthly sound, filled with anger and revenge. The Angel
.

Peter heard it, too. But it didn’t frighten him the way it did me
.

“
He’s coming for me, Peter,” I whispered. “I don’t know if I can handle him alone
.”

“
True enough,” Peter replied. “One never can be sure of everything. But you know him, C-Bird. You know his strengths; you know his limitations. You knew it all, and it was what we needed once before, wasn’t it?” He looked over at the wall of writing. “Put it down, C-Bird. All the questions. And all the answers
.”

He stepped back, as if making a path for me to the next blank spot. I took a deep breath and moved forward. I wasn’t aware that Peter faded from my side, as I picked up the stub of pencil, but I did note that the chill from the Angel’s breath frosted the room around me, so that I shivered as I wrote:

By the end of the day, Francis was overcome by the sensation that things were taking place that all made sense, but that he couldn’t quite see the shape of the stage. The jumble of ideas that coursed through his imagination were still puzzling to him, complicated no end by the resurgence of his own voices that seemed to be as divisive and as doubting as they had ever been. They formed a knot of confusion within his head, shouting conflicting suggestions and demands, urging him to flee, to hide, to fight back, so frequently and fiercely that he could barely hear other conversations. He still held the belief that everything would become obvious if he simply looked at it through the right microscope.

“Peter, Gulp-a-pill said that there are some release hearings scheduled for this week …”

Peter’s eyes had arched up. “That will put people on edge.”

“Why?” Lucy asked.

“Hope,” Peter responded, as if that single word said everything at once. Then he’d looked back at Francis. “What is it, C-Bird?”

“It seems to me that somehow there’s some connection in all this to the dormitory room at Williams,” he said slowly. “The Angel had to pick out the retarded man, so he had to be familiar with his routine in order to place the shirt there. And he had to figure out that the retarded man would be one of the men Lucy was going to question.”

“Proximity,” Peter said. “Opportunity to observe. Good point, Francis.”

Lucy nodded, as well. “I think,” she said, “that I will get the roster of patients in that dormitory room.”

Francis thought for a moment, then asked, “Lucy, can you get the list of patients scheduled for release hearings, too?” He kept his voice low, so that no one could hear him.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “But so much seems to be happening and I’m trying to see how it might be connected.”

Lucy nodded, but Francis was unsure whether she actually believed him.

“I’ll see if I can get it, as well,” she said, but Francis had the distinct impression that she was saying this to accommodate him, and wasn’t seeing any potential connection. She looked over at Peter. “We could arrange to search the entire room over in Williams. It wouldn’t take long, and it might turn up something of value.”

Lucy thought to herself that it was critical to try to maintain the more concrete aspects of the investigation. Lists and suppositions were intriguing,
but she was much more comfortable with the sorts of details that people can testify to in courtrooms. The loss of the bloody shirt bothered her far more than she had let on, and she was eager to find some other morsel of hard evidence that could provide the foundation for a case.

Lucy thought again: knife; fingertips; bloody clothes and shoes.

Something had to be somewhere
she told herself.

“That might make some sense,” Peter said. He looked over at the prosecutor, and recognized what might be at stake.

Francis, however, was less sure. He thought the Angel would surely have anticipated that maneuver. What they had to come up with, he thought, was something oblique. Something the Angel wouldn’t think of. Something skewed and different and more in keeping with where they were, rather than where they wanted to be. The three of them started to head toward Lucy’s office, but Francis spotted Big Black over by the nursing station, and he peeled off to speak with the huge attendant. The others continued on, not fully aware, it seemed, that Francis had dropped behind.

Big Black looked up. “It’s early for medication, C-Bird,” he said. “But I’m guessing that isn’t what you want, is it?”

Francis shook his head. “You believed me, didn’t you?”

The attendant glanced around, before answering. “I sure did, C-Bird. The problem is, it never does any good in here to agree with a patient when the brass thinks something different. You understand, don’t you? It wasn’t about the truth or not. It’s about my job.”

“He might come back. He might come back tonight.”

“He might. I doubt it, though. If he thought killing you was the right thing, C-Bird, he would have done it already.”

Francis agreed with this, although it was one of those observations that was both reassuring and frightening at the same time.

“Mister Moses,” Francis croaked out breathlessly, “why is it that no one in here wants to help Miss Jones catch this guy?”

Big Black instantly stiffened and shifted about. “I’m helping, ain’t I? My brother, he’s helping, too.”

“You know what I mean,” Francis said.

Big Black nodded. “That I do, C-Bird. That I do.”

He looked about, as if to reassure himself of what he already knew, which was that no one was close enough or paying attention enough to overhear his response. Still, he kept every word beneath his voice, speaking cautiously. “You got to understand something, C-Bird. In here, finding this guy that Miss Jones wants, with all the publicity and attention and maybe a state investigation and headlines and television stations and all that showing up, why, that would
mean some people’s careers. Far too many questions, getting asked. Probably tough questions, like why didn’t you do this, or why didn’t you do that? Maybe even have to have hearings at the State House. Lots of rocking the boat, and there ain’t nobody who works for the state, especially a doc or a psychologist, who wants to be answering questions about how they let a killer live in the hospital here with nobody paying too much mind. We’re talking scandal here, C-Bird. A helluva lot easier to cover it up, explain away a body or two. That’s easy. No one gets blamed, everybody gets paid, nobody loses their job, and things go on day in and day out, just like before. Ain’t no different from any hospital. Or prison, either, you think about it. Keeping things keeping on, that’s what this is all about. Ain’t you figured that part out for yourself yet?”

He had, he realized. He just didn’t like it.

“You got to remember,” Big Black added, shaking his head, “no one cares all that much about crazy people.”