The Madman's Tale (66 page)

“The bedsheet. The one that was fastened into the noose …”

“Yes?”

“Cleo’s bed was intact. Sheets still on it.”

Peter said nothing.

“The thumb …”

The Fireman nodded encouragingly.

“The thumb wasn’t dropped directly downward. It was like it had been moved a couple of feet. And if Cleo had sliced it off herself, well, there should have been something—scissors or a knife or something—right there. But there wasn’t. And if it had been cut somewhere else, well, then there would have been blood. Maybe a trail of blood, leading out into the stairwell. But there wasn’t. Just the single pool beneath her body.”

Francis took another deep breath, and then whispered again: “I can see it.”

Peter was a little openmouthed, about to ask the obvious question, when Little Black hovered up to where they were sitting. He pointed an index finger at Peter, jabbing the air, interrupting the conversation abruptly. “You’re up,” he said. “The big doc says for you to come over right now.”

Peter seemed to waver between questioning Francis more closely and the impatience that Little Black seemed to have just at the edge of his voice. So, what he did say was, “C-Bird, just keep your opinions to yourself until I get back, okay?”

Francis started to respond, but Peter leaned forward and added, “Don’t let anyone around here think you’re any crazier than you already are. Just wait for me, okay?”

The point Peter was making made some sense, and Francis nodded. Peter deposited his tray over by the cleaning station and dutifully followed the attendant out the door. For a moment or two, Francis remained at his seat, alone in the midst of the dining area. There was a constancy of noise—the clatter of plates and utensils, some laughter, some shouts, and one person singing off-key an unrecognizable tune that just didn’t quite match up with the distant sound of a radio playing from back in the cooking area. The usual morning, he thought. But when he rose, unable to mouth another forkful of French toast, he saw that Mister Evil was standing in the corner eyeing him carefully. And, as he crossed the room, he had the sensation that there were other eyes watching him as well. For a moment, he wanted to turn, to see if he could spot the people tracking his path, but then he decided not to. He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to know who might or might not be taking notice of his movement around the dining hall. He wondered for a moment, as well, whether Cleo’s death had prevented something from happening. He picked up his pace and started moving more swiftly, because it occurred to him that it might have been his own murder that had been planned for that night past, and interrupted only by another opportunity presenting itself.

When Peter, accompanied by Little Black, entered Doctor Gulptilil’s waiting room, he could hear the high-pitched noise of the psychiatrist’s voice, raised in frustration and barely restrained anger coming from the inner office. The attendant had only handcuffed him, having left the leg shackles off on this trip across the hospital grounds, so that Peter was, at least in his own mind, only a partial prisoner. Miss Luscious was behind her desk, but she only glanced in Peter’s direction as he came through the door, gesturing with a nod of her head toward the waiting bench. Peter strained to hear precisely what Gulp-a-pill
was so upset about—because he thought that a compliant medical director was one far more likely to help him than a furious one. After a second, he realized that the object of the doctor’s wrath was Lucy, and this startled him.

His first instinct was to rise, and burst into the doctor’s office.

He reined this urge in, taking a deep breath.

Then he heard, penetrating right through the thick wall and wood of the door, “Miss Jones, I am holding you personally responsible for all the disruption here at the hospital. Who knows what other patients might be in jeopardy due to your actions!”

The hell with it
, Peter said to himself, and he rose abruptly, and crossed the room before either Little Black or Miss Luscious were able to react.

“Hey!” the buxom secretary said, “You can’t …”

“Sure I can,” said Peter, reaching for the door handle with both his handcuffed hands.

“Mister Moses!” Miss Luscious cried.

But the wiry black attendant moved languidly, almost nonchalantly, as if Peter bursting into Doctor Gulptilil’s office was just about the most routine thing in the world.

Gulp-a-pill looked up red-faced and startled. Lucy was sitting in the inquisition’s seat in front of his desk, a little pale, but icy, as well, as if she had adorned herself with some hardened casing and his words, no matter how enraged were simply rebounding off of her skin. She remained expressionless, as Peter tumbled through the doorway, trailed by Little Black.

The medical director took a deep breath, regaining some composure, stared coldly across the room and said, “Peter, I will be with you in a moment. Please wait outside. Mister Moses, if you will—”

But Peter interrupted. “It’s as much my fault as anyone’s,” he said.

Doctor Gulptilil was in midwave, dismissing him, but he stopped, leaving his hand in the air. “Fault?” he said. “And how so, Peter?”

“I’ve concurred with every step she’s taken so far. And clearly, to smoke out this killer here, some extraordinary steps must be involved. I’ve urged that from the start, so I’m as much to blame for any disruption.”

Doctor Gulptilil hesitated, then said, “You ascribe much power to your choices, Peter.”

This oblique statement left Peter a little befuddled. He inhaled sharply and said, “It is a simple fact of any criminal investigation that at some point dramatic steps must be taken to force the target to act in a way that will isolate him, and make him vulnerable.” This sounded, to Peter’s ears, smug and sophomoric, and, he understood, wasn’t actually all that true, but, he guessed, at least it was something to say right in that moment and he said it with enough conviction to make it at least
seem
to be true.

Gulptilil rocked back in his seat, taking a breath, pausing. Both Lucy and Peter looked over at him, and both thought more or less the same thing: What made the doctor a curiously dangerous person was his capacity to step back from outrage, insult, anger, or whatever passion was knocking so eagerly to emerge, and settle instead, into a quiet, observant mode. It unsettled Lucy, for she was more comfortable seeing people act out their rages, even if she was unwilling to do the same. Peter thought this a formidable capacity. It seemed to him that every conversation anyone had with the psychiatrist was really a little more like playing a hand of high stakes poker, where Gulptilil held most of the chips, and anyone sitting across from the doctor was betting money they didn’t have. It seemed to both of them as if the doctor was calculating in his head. Little Black reached out and seized Peter by the arm, to pull him back into the waiting room, but now, abruptly, the doctor seemed to change his mind. “Ah, Mister Moses,” he said, his voice returning to normal, the anger that had penetrated the walls dissolving rapidly. “Perhaps that won’t be necessary, after all. Actually, come in, Peter.”

He motioned to another chair.

“Vulnerable, you say?”

“Yes,” Peter replied. What else, he thought, could he say?

“More vulnerable, say, than Miss Jones has rendered herself with this childishly transparent attempt to mimic the physical characteristics of the victims that she is interested in?”

“It is difficult to say,” Peter responded.

The doctor smiled weakly. “Of course it is. But would you say that if this person she pursues—this possibly
imaginary
killer—actually exists here within these walls, that she has done something which will, of necessity, gain his immediate and probably undivided attention?”

“I believe so.”

“Very good. I suspect so, as well.
If
this gentleman is here. So, we could postulate, could we not, Peter, that were
nothing to
happen to Miss Jones in the immediacy of time, that we could reasonably believe that this maybe killer of hers was not, in actuality present in the hospital? That the unfortunate nurse-trainee was in fact killed by Lanky in a fit of homicidal delusion, as the evidence indicates?”

“That would be a considerable leap, Doctor,” Peter answered. “The man Miss Jones and I have been pursuing might have more discipline than we have come to believe.”

“Ah yes. A killer with discipline. A most unusual characteristic for a killer being driven by psychosis, no? You are, as we have discussed, pursuing a man who is
dominated
by his murderous impulses, but now that is seemingly a less convenient diagnosis? Or, if he is, as Miss Jones suggested upon her arrival
here, some Jack the Ripper mythological sort, that might explain things. But, then, in the small amount of reading I’ve managed about this historical fellow, I have learned that he seemed to have precious
little
in the area of discipline. Compulsive killers are driven by immense forces, Peter, and ultimately incapable of restraining themselves. But that is a conversation for historians of these things to have, and concerns us little here, today. Might I ask the two of you: If the killer you are so persuaded is here were to be able to constrain himself, wouldn’t that make it even more unlikely that you would ever discover him? No matter how many days, weeks, or even years you were to search?”

“I cannot predict the future any more than you can, Doctor.”

Gulptilil smiled. “Ah, Peter, a most clever response. And one that speaks of your potential for recovery when we get you into this most progressive program suggested by your friends in the Church. That, I take it, was your actual reason for bursting into my office here today? To signal your desire to take them up on their most generous and thoughtful offer?”

Peter hesitated. Doctor Gulptilil eyed him closely.

“That was, of course, your reason?” he asked a second time, his voice precluding any response but the obvious one.

“Yes,” Peter said. He was impressed with the way Gulptilil had managed to conflate the two issues: an unknown killer and his own legal problems.

“So, Peter wishes to leave the hospital for a new course of treatment and a new life, and Miss Jones has done something which she believes will encourage the reason for her presence to emerge so that she can bring him to justice. Is that not a fair assessment of the moment we find ourselves in?”

Both Lucy, who had remained silent, and Peter nodded.

Doctor Gulptilil allowed himself a small grin, just around the corners of his mouth. “Then, I think, we can safely say that a small, but suitable amount of time will allow us to answer both these questions with certainty. It is Friday. I would think that on Monday morning I will be able to say farewell to both of you. No? That would be more than enough time to discover whether Miss Jones’s approach might bear fruit. And for Peter’s situation to be, well,
accommodated
.”

Lucy shifted about. She thought of several things she might say that could alter the doctor’s deadline. But, as she squirmed slightly, she saw that Gulptilil was thinking hard, turning over one thing after another in his own head. She imagined that at the chess game of bureaucracy she would always finish second to the psychiatrist, especially as it played out on his own turf. So, instead, she replied: “Monday morning. Okay.”

“And, of course, by putting yourself in this hazardous position, you will undoubtedly sign a letter absolving the hospital administration from any responsibility for maintaining your safety?”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed, and her voice freighted the one word response with as much contempt as she could muster. “Yes.”

“Wonderful. So, that part is settled. Now, Peter, let me just make a call …”

He pulled a small black leather address book from the top drawer of his desk. After casually flipping it open, he grasped an ivory colored business card. In short order, Doctor Gulptilil read a number off and dialed it. He rocked back in his seat, while the connection was being made. After a second, he said into the handset, “Father Grozdik, please. This is Doctor Gulptilil at the Western State Hospital.”

There was a small pause, and then, Gulp-a-pill said, “Father? Good day. You will be pleased to learn that I have Peter here in my office and he has agreed to the arrangements we discussed recently. In all regards. Now, I believe there is some paperwork that will need to be processed so that we can bring this unfortunate situation to a speedy close?”

Peter sat back heavily, realizing that his entire life had just changed. It was almost as if he were outside of himself, watching it happen. He didn’t dare to steal a look at Lucy, who was also on the threshold of something, but was unsure precisely what, because success and failure seemed to have muddied in her head.