The Madman - Страница 105

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He understood why. Occasionally, he would close his eyes, trying to get some rest. But it didn't help much. He continued sweating, feeling every muscle in his entire body tensed. That no one had as yet seen the struggle he was trapped within surprised him for he thought anyone who truly looked at him would see in an instant that he was teetering on some razor edge.

Francis breathed in hard, but thought there was no air in the room.

What can't they see? He asked himself.

The hospital is where the Angel hides. In order to be free to kill, he has to be able to come and go.

He looked across the room at the hearing board. This is the exit door, he reminded himself.

Francis stole a quick look at the gathering of family and friends surrounding the patients. Everyone thinks that the Angel is a lone killer. But I know something they don't: Someone here, whether they know it or not, is helping him.

And then: Why did he kill Short Blond? Why did he draw attention to himself here, where he was safe?

Neither Lucy nor Peter had asked that question, Francis heard himself say deep inside. As much as anything, it scared him. That he knew to ask this made Francis's head swirl and he felt as if a wave of nausea might overcome him. His voices resounded within him, warning him, cajoling him, insisting that he not venture into the darkness that beckoned.

They think he killed Short Blond because he had to kill.

He took a short breath of stale air.

Maybe so. Maybe not.

He hated himself in that second more than ever before. You could be a killer, too, Francis heard himself say. For an instant he thought he'd spoken out loud, but no one turned and paid any attention to him, and so he guessed that he hadn't actually uttered the words.

Big Black had wandered off, bored with the droning routine of each hearing. When he returned to the room, Francis made an immense effort to conceal the anxiety that pummeled him. The huge attendant slumped into the seat next to Francis and whispered, "So, C-Bird, you got the hang of this yet? You see enough?"

"Not quite," Francis replied softly. What he had not seen yet was what he both feared and expected.

Big Black craned forward to muffle his words. "We've got to be getting back to Amherst. Day's almost finished. People gonna be looking for you pretty soon. There a therapy session scheduled for this evening?"

"No," Francis half lied for he didn't really know the answer. "Mister Evans canceled it after all the excitement."

Big Black shook his head. "Shouldn't be canceling those." He spoke to Francis, but more to the world of the hospital. The attendant looked up. "Come on, C-Bird," he said. "We've got to be getting back. There's only a couple of these hearings left. Ain't gonna be any different from what you've already seen."

Francis didn't know what to say, because he didn't want to tell Big Black the truth, which was that one was going to be quite a bit different. He looked across the room.

There were three patients still waiting. Each was easy to pick out in the remaining crowd of people. They simply weren't as well groomed. Their hair was either slicked down, or frizzy and uncontrolled. Their clothes weren't as clean. They wore striped pants and checked shirts, or sandals with mismatched socks. Nothing about them seemed to quite fit, not what they wore, or how they looked out at the proceedings. It was a little as if they were all slightly lop sided. Their hands shook and their faces twitched at the corners of their mouths those were the different medications and their side effects. All three were men, and Francis would have guessed their ages to be between thirty and forty-five. None was particularly distinctive; they weren't fat or tall or white-haired or scarred or tattooed or anything that made them stand out. They wore their emotions inwardly. Outwardly, they seemed blank, as if the drugs had worn away not only their madness, but much of their names and pasts, as well.

None had turned aside and looked at him, at least that he could tell. They had remained stoic, almost impassive, staring ahead as each case had been heard throughout the long day. He could not quite see their faces; at best they were profiles.

One man was surrounded by perhaps four visitors. Francis guessed an elderly set of parents and a sister and her husband, who squirmed in his seat, clearly unhappy to be there. Another patient sat between two women, both far older than he, and Francis supposed a mother and an aunt. The third sat beside a stiff older man in a blue suit with a stern, unrelenting look on his face, and a much younger woman, a sister or a niece, Francis thought, who seemed unafraid and listened intently to all that was being said, occasionally taking down some notes on a yellow pad of legal paper.

The overweight judge banged his gavel down. "What have we got left?" he asked briskly. "It's getting late."

The woman psychiatrist looked up. "Three cases, Your Honor," she said with a slight stutter. "They shouldn't be difficult. Two of the men are here with diagnoses of retardation and the third has emerged from a catatonic state, and shown great progress with the help of antipsychotic medication. None have any current charges pending…"

"Come on, C-Bird," Big Black whispered, a little more insistently. "We've got to get back. Ain't nothing different gonna happen in here now. These cases are going to be rubber-stamped and out-of-here quick. Time for us to leave."

Francis stole a glance toward the young woman psychiatrist, who was continuing to speak to the retired judge."… All these gentlemen have been committed and released on several prior occasions, your honor…"

"Let's go, C-Bird," Big Black said in a tone that didn't leave room for debate. Francis didn't know how to say that what was about to take place was what he had spent the day waiting for.

He stood up and Francis realized that he wasn't being given a choice. Big Black gave him a little push in the direction of the door, and Francis stepped that way. He did not turn around, although he had the impression that at least one of the three remaining men had slightly turned in his chair and aimed a glance in his direction, his eyes burning into Francis's back. He could feel a presence that was both cold and hot all at the same time, and he understood that was what the killer felt, when he held sway with knife and terror over his victim.

For a second, he thought he heard a voice shouting after him: We are the same, you and II but then he realized that there was no real noise in the hearing room, except the routine voices of the participants in the daylong exercise. What he heard was hallucination.

But it was real, and not real, all at once.

Run Francis, run! His own voices clamored.

But he did not. He simply walked forward slowly, imagining that the man they had hunted was directly behind him, but that no one, not Lucy, Peter, or the Moses brothers, Mister Evil, or Doctor Gulp-a-pill would believe him if he blurted this out. There were three remaining patients in that room. Two were what they were. One was not. And Francis thought behind that one false mask of madness he could hear the Angel laughing at him.

He understood another thing: The Angel seemed to like risks, but Francis might have slipped past the acceptable category. He would not leave Francis alive much longer.

Big Black held the door to the administration building open and the two of them stepped out into a haphazard drizzle. Francis turned his face skyward, and felt the mist flow over him, almost as if he could get the sky to clean away all his fears and doubts. The day was rapidly closing down, the gray skies fading to a washed-out black that heralded night. In the distance, Francis could make out the sound of some heavy machinery laboring hard and fast, and he turned in that direction. Big Black, as well, had pivoted about and was staring across the hospital grounds. Over by the garden, in the makeshift cemetery in the most distant corner of Western State, a bright yellow backhoe was dumping a final load or two of moist dirt onto the ground.

"Hold on, C-Bird," Big Black said abruptly. "We need to take a minute here." The huge attendant lowered his head down, and then Francis heard him whisper, "Our Father, who art in heaven…" and the rest of the brief prayer.

Francis listened quietly. When Big Black lifted his head, the attendant said, "I'm thinking that'll be just about the only words spoken over poor Cleo." He sighed. "Maybe she'll have more peace now. Lord knows, she had little enough while she was alive. That's a sad thing, C-Bird. A real sad thing. Don't make me have to speak a prayer over you. You hang in there. Things will get better, sure enough. You trust me."

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