The Madman - Страница 103

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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.

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