The Madman's Tale (68 page)

Francis squirmed in his seat, hoping that no one, especially Big Black or Mister Evil or any of the other administrators could see how much turmoil he was in. He was pitched to the edge of his chair, nervous, frightened, but compelled to be there, and to listen, for he expected to hear something that day that was important. He wished that Peter was at his side, or Lucy, although he didn’t think he could have persuaded her that listening was crucial. Francis at this moment was alone, and guessing that he was closer to an answer than anyone else might imagine.

Lucy came through the doors to the hospital’s morgue and felt the chill of too much air-conditioning. It was a small, basement room, located in one of the distant buildings on the fringe of the hospital grounds that was generally used to house out-of-date equipment and long-forgotten supplies. It had the questionable
virtue of being near the makeshift burial ground. There was a single, shiny steel examination table in the center of the room, and a bank of a half dozen refrigerated storage containers built into one wall. A glass paneled and polished steel bureau held a modest selection of scalpels and other surgical implements. A filing cabinet and a desk with a battered IBM Selectric typewriter were stuffed into a corner, and a single window was set into the cinder block wall, high up, looking out onto the ground, and only permitting a single shaft of wan, gray light to slip in past a crust of dirt. A pair of insistently bright overhead lights hummed like a matched set of large insects.

The room had an empty, abandoned quality, save for a slight smell of human waste that lingered in the cold air. On the examination table there was a clipboard with a set of forms attached. Lucy looked around for an attendant but no one was around, and so she stepped forward. She noticed that there were sluicing channels on the examination table, and a drain in the floor. Both wore dark stains. She picked up the clipboard and read a preliminary autopsy report that stated the obvious: Cleo had died by strangulation caused by bed-sheet. Her eyes dwelt for a second on the entry: Self-Mutilation, which described her severed thumb, and for a moment on her diagnosis, which was schizophrenia, paranoid type, undifferentiated, with delusions and suicidal tendencies. Lucy suspected that this last observation had been, like so much else, added postmortem. When someone hangs themselves, their preexisting potential for self-destruction becomes a little clearer, she thought.

She read on: No next of kin. There was an entry for
In case of death or injury please notify:
which was answered with a line through the space.

A medical examiner, a famous man in forensic circles, had once addressed her senior year class on evidence, and had, in most grandiose terms told all the law students that the dead spoke most eloquently about the means of their passing, often pointing directly to the person who had illegally helped them on their path. The lecture had been well attended and energetically received, but in this moment, Lucy thought it was ridiculously abstract and very distant. What she had was a silent body in a refrigerated cooler in the corner of a dingy, forgotten room and an autopsy protocol crammed onto a single sheet of yellow paper fastened to a clipboard, and she didn’t think it was telling her anything, especially something that might help her in her pursuit of a killer.

Lucy put the clipboard back down on the examination table and moved over to the cooler. None of the doors were marked, so she pulled first one, then a second open, revealing a six-pack of Coca-Cola that someone had left behind to chill. The third, though, was hesitant, as if stuck slightly, and she guessed that it contained the body. She took a deep breath, and slid open the door a couple of inches.

Cleo’s naked body was jammed inside.

Her bulk made it a tight fit, and when Lucy tugged on the sliding pallet that Cleo rested on, it wouldn’t budge.

Lucy gritted her teeth, and got ready to pull harder, when she heard the door open behind her. She spun about and saw Doctor Gulptilil standing in the entranceway.

For a moment, he looked surprised. But he removed this look and shook his head.

“Miss Jones,” he said slowly, “this is unexpected. I am not sure that you should be here.”

She did not reply.

“Sometimes,” the medical director said, “even as public a death as Miss Cleo’s should have some privacy.”

“I would agree with that, at least in principle,” she said haughtily. Her initial surprise at the doctor’s arrival was immediately replaced by the belligerence that she wore as armor.

“What is it you expect to learn here?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy replied.

“You think this death can tell you something? Something that you don’t already know?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. She was slightly embarrassed that she couldn’t come up with some far better response. The doctor moved into the room, his portly figure and dark skin gleaming under the overhead lights. He moved with a quickness that contradicted his pear-shaped figure, and for a second she thought he was going to slam the door to Cleo’s temporary tomb shut. But, instead, he put his hand out and tugged; finally the dead woman slid forward, so that her torso was exposed on the slab between them.

Lucy looked down at the purplish red ligature marks that surrounded Cleo’s neck. They seemed to have been absorbed by skin that had already turned a porcelain white. The dead woman had a faint, grotesque smile on her face, as if her death had caused some joke somewhere. Lucy breathed in and out slowly.

“You want something to be simple, clear, obvious,” Doctor Gulptilil said slowly. “But, Miss Jones, answers are never like that. At least, not here.”

She looked up and nodded. The doctor smiled wryly, a little bit like the small grin that Cleo wore.

“The outward signs of strangulation are apparent,” he said, “but the real forces that drove her to this end are shrouded. And, I suspect, the actual cause of death would elude even the most distinguished examination by the greatest pathologist we have in this nation, for the reasons are obscured by her madness.”

Doctor Gulptilil reached out and touched Cleo’s skin for a second. He looked down at the dead woman, but he directed his words toward Lucy.

“You do not understand this place,” he said. “You have not made an effort to understand it since you arrived, because you arrived here with the same fears and prejudices that most people who are unfamiliar with the mentally ill embrace. Here, what is abnormal is normal and what is bizarre is routine. You have approached your investigation here as if it were the same as the world outside the walls. You have looked for documentary evidence and telltale clues. You have searched the records and walked the hallways, just as you might have were this not the place that it is. This is, of course, as I have tried to point out, useless. And thus, Miss Jones, I fear your efforts here are destined for failure. As I have suspected they would be from the start.”

“I have some time remaining.”

“Yes. And you have invited a response from the mysterious and perhaps nonexistent target of your pursuit. Perhaps this would be an appropriate activity in the world you are accustomed to, Miss Jones. But here?”

Lucy fingered her shorn locks. “Don’t you think this is unexpected, and might work?”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “But on whom will it work? And how?”

Again, she kept quiet. The doctor looked down at Cleo’s face and shook his head. “Ah, poor Cleo. I enjoyed her antics so much of the time, for she had a manic energy that was, when under some control, most entertaining. Did you know that she could quote the entirety of Shakespeare’s great drama, line for line, word for word? She is, alas, destined this afternoon for our own potter’s field. The undertaker should be here shortly to prepare her body. A life lived in turmoil, pain, and a great deal of anonymity, Miss Jones. Whoever cared for her once, and might at some point have actually loved her, has disappeared from our records and what institutional memory we have. And so, her years on this planet amount to very little. A most modest sum. It doesn’t seem altogether fair, does it? Cleo was rich in personality, decisive in opinion, strong in belief. That all these were mad in nature doesn’t diminish the passion that she had. I wish that she could have delivered a little mark on this world, for she deserved an epitaph larger that the notation in the hospital record that she will receive. No headstone. No flowers. Just another bed in this hospital, only this one will be six feet under. She deserved a funeral with trumpets and fireworks, elephants, lions, tigers, and a horse-drawn cortege, something fit for her queenliness.”

Lucy heard the doctor sigh. He looked up at her, pulling his eyes off the dead body. “And so, Miss Jones, where does it leave you?”

“Still searching, Doctor. Searching right up to my last moments here.”

He looked slyly toward her. “Ah, obsession. Single-minded pursuit in the face of all obstacles. A quality which you might admit comes closer to my profession than yours.”

“Perhaps
persistence
is a better word.”

He shrugged. “As you wish. But answer me a question, Miss Jones: Have you come here searching for a madman? Or a sane one?”

He did not wait to hear her answer, which was slow in coming anyway. Instead, the doctor pushed Cleo’s body back into the refrigerated unit with a grunt and a squealing sound of the runners complaining under her weight and said, “I must go to find the undertaker, who is expected shortly and has a busy day ahead. Good day, Miss Jones.”

Lucy watched the doctor exit, his plump body swaying a little under the harsh overhead lights and she thought to herself that she was a little in awe of the killer who had managed to find the hospital. Even with all her efforts, she recognized that he was still concealed within the walls, and probably, for all she knew, utterly immune to her powers of investigation.

That is what you thought, right?

I closed my eyes, knowing that it was inevitable the Angel would be at my side within moments. I tried to calm my breathing, slow my racing heart, for I thought that every word from here on was dangerous, both for him and for me
.

“
Not only was it what I thought. It was true
.”

I pivoted about, first right, then left, trying to see the source of the words I heard in the apartment. Vapors, ghosts, filmy lights that wavered and blinked seemed on either side of me
.

“
I was completely safe, every minute, every second, no matter what I did. Surely, C-Bird, you can see that?” His voice was rough-edged, filled with arrogance and anger and each word seemed to slap against my cheek like a dead man’s kiss
.

“
You were safe from them,” I said
.

“
They did not even understand the law,” he boasted. “Their own rules were completely useless
.”

“
But you weren’t safe from me,” I replied. Defiant
.

“
And do you think you are safe from me, now?” the Angel said harshly. “Do you think you are safe from yourself?”

I didn’t answer. There was a momentary silence and then an explosion, like a gunshot, followed by the shattering sound of glass breaking into hundreds of shards. An ashtray, filled with cigarette butts had burst against a sidewall, thrown with lightning speed and force. I shrank back. My head spun drunkenly, exhaustion, tension, fear all vying for purchase within me. There was a smell of stale smoke and I could see some dusty ashes still fluttering in the air next to a dark smudge against the white paint. “We are closing now, Francis, on the end,” the Angel said, mocking me. “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you sense it? Don’t you understand that it is almost all over?”

The Angel’s voice ragged me
.

“
Just like it was all those years ago,” he said bitterly. “Dying time getting closer
.”

I looked down at my hand. Did I throw the ashtray at the sound of his words? Or did he throw the ashtray to demonstrate that he was taking form, gaining substance, slowly returning to shape. Becoming real once again. I could see my hand quiver in front of me
.