The Madman - Страница 106

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Francis nodded. He did not truly believe this although he wanted to. And, when he looked up once again into the darkening skies, hearing the distant noise of Cleo's grave being filled in, he thought right at that moment that he was listening to the overture of a symphony, notes and measures and rhythms that promised that there were surely still deaths to come.

It was, Lucy considered in reflection, the simplest, least adorned plan they could come up with, and probably the only one that held out any hope for success. She would simply take the late night nursing shift that had proven to be fatal for Short Blond. After taking up her position in the nursing station alone, she would wait for the Angel to show up.

Lucy was the tethered goat. The Angel was the man-eating tiger. It was the oldest of ruses. She would leave the hospital intercom open to the second-floor station, one flight above her, where the Moses brothers would wait for her signal. In the hospital, cries for help were pretty familiar and often ignored, so it was decided that if they heard Lucy say Apollo, they would race to her side. Lucy had chosen the word with a twinge of irony. They might as well have been astronauts heading for a distant moon. The Moses brothers did not think it would take more than a few seconds for them to descend the stairwell, which would have the added advantage of blocking one of the routes of escape. All Lucy had to do was keep the Angel occupied for a few moments and not die doing it. The front entrance to Amherst was double-locked, as was the side entry. They all imagined that they could corner the killer before he was either able to slice Lucy or to fumble his way through keys and out into the hospital grounds. But even if he dill flee, by then Security would be alerted, and the Angel's options would be rapidly narrowing. And, more important, they would see his face.

Peter had been particularly insistent on this point and one other detail. It was critical, he'd argued, that the Angel's identity be learned, regardless of what happened. It would be the only way to back build the cases against him.

He had also demanded that the door to the first-floor men's dormitory be left unlocked, so that he, too, could monitor the situation even if it meant a sleepless night. He argued that he would be a little closer to Lucy, and that the Angel was least likely to expect an attack from a door customarily locked. The Moses brothers had said that was true but that they could not leave the door unlocked themselves. "Against the rules," Little Black had said. "Big doc would have our jobs if he caught wind of that…"

"Well," Peter started, only to be shut down by Little Black holding up his hand.

"Of course, Lucy will have her own set of keys for all the doors around here. What she does with them while she's at the nursing station ain't our business…" Little Black said. "But it ain't gonna be my brother and I leave that door open. We find this guy, all is good. But I'm not looking for any more trouble than we've already got coming."

Lucy looked down at her bed. It was quiet in the nurse-trainees' dormitory, and she had the sensation that she was alone in the building, although she knew that couldn't be true. Somewhere there were people talking, perhaps even laughing over a joke, or sharing some story. Not her. She had laid out a white nurse's outfit on the surface of the cot. It was to be her costume for the night. Inwardly, she felt a little mocking laughter. First Communion dress. Prom dress. Wedding dress. Funeral dress. A woman laid out her clothes with care for special occasions.

In her hand, she hefted the small, snub-nosed pistol. She placed it into her handbag. She had not told any of the others that she had it with her.

Lucy did not truly expect the Angel to show, but she was at a loss as to what else she could do in the time remaining. Her own stay was coming to an end, her welcome long past expiration and by Monday morning Peter would be shipped out as well. That left this one night. In some ways, she had already begun to plan ahead, considering about what she would be forced to do when her mission ended in failure and she departed the hospital. Eventually, she knew, the Angel would either kill again inside the hospital or seek release and kill once he'd stepped outside the walls. If she monitored every release hearing, and kept a watch on every death at the hospital, sooner or later he would make a mistake and she would be there to accuse him. Of course, she realized, the problem with that particular approach was obvious: It meant someone else had to die.

She took a deep breath and reached for the nurse's outfit. She tried to not imagine what that other, nameless, faceless but very real victim would look like. Or who she might be. Or what hopes and dreams and desires she might have. She existed somewhere in some parallel world, as real as anyone, but ghostlike. For a second, Lucy wondered if this woman out there waiting to die was a little like the hallucinations that so many of the patients in the hospital had. She was just out there somewhere, not knowing that she was next in line for the Angel if he did not show up at the first-floor nursing station in the Amherst Building that night.

With the full weight of that unknown woman's future resting on her shoulders, Lucy slowly began to dress herself.

When I looked up from the words to catch my breath, Peter was there in the apartment, standing nonchalantly up against the wall, arms folded in front of his chest, a troubled look on his face. But that was all that was familiar about him; his clothing was in tatters, the skin on his arms was seared red and black. Dirt and blood streaked his cheeks and throat. There was so little left of him that I remembered, I am not sure whether I could have recognized him. The room filled with a foul odor and suddenly I could smell the awful stench of burned flesh and decay.

I shook off a sensation of dread, and greeted my only friend.

"Peter," I said, relief flooding my voice, "you're here to help."

He shook his head but didn't voice a reply. He gestured once to his neck and then his lips, like a mute signaling that words were lost to him.

I pointed back at the wall where my story was collected. "I was beginning to understand," I said. "I was there at the release hearings. I knew. Not everything, but I was beginning to know. When I walked across the hospital grounds that night, for the first time, I saw something different, didn't I? But where were you? Where was Lucy? All of you were making plans, but no one wanted to listen to me, and I was the one who saw the most."

He smiled again, as if to underscore the truth in what I was saying.

"Why weren't you there to listen to me?" I asked again.

Peter shrugged sadly. Then he reached out a hand that seemed almost stripped of flesh, like a skeleton's bony fingers reaching for my own. In the second that I hesitated, the hand reaching for me faded, almost as if a fog bank had slid between him and me, and after I blinked again, Peter was gone. Wordless. Disappearing like a conjurer's trick on a stage. I shook my head, trying to clear my thinking, and when I looked up again, filmy, slowly taking shape very close to where Peter's apparition had been, I saw the Angel.

He glowed white, as if there was some harsh, unblinking light within him. It blinded me, and I shaded my eyes, and when I looked back, he was still there. Only ghostlike, vaporous, as if he was opaque, constructed part of water, part of air, partially by imagination. His features were indistinct, as if they were slurred about the edges. The only thing sharp and distinct about him were his words.

"Hello, C-Bird," he said. "There's no one here to help you. No one left to help you anywhere. Now it is just you and I and what happened that night"

I looked at him and realized that he was right.

"You don't want to remember that night, do you Francis?"

I shook my head, not trusting my own voice.

He pointed across the room at the story growing on the wall.

"Close to dying time, Francis," he said coldly.

Then he added, "That night, and this one, too."

Chapter 31

Francis found Peter outside the first-floor nursing station. It was pill time, and patients were lining up for their evening medications. There was a little jostling back and forth, a few whiny complaints about this or that, a shove or two, but mostly things were orderly; if there was anything to suggest that this was just the arrival of another night in another week of another month of yet another year for the majority of them, it was impossible to see.

"Peter," Francis said quietly, but unable to hide the tension in his voice, "Peter, I need to speak with you. And Lucy, too. I think I saw him. I think I know how we can find him." In Francis's fevered imagination, all that was necessary was to pull the files of the three men who remained behind in the release hearing room. One of them would be the Angel. He was certain of this, and his excitement spilled into every word.

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