The Madman - Страница 108

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"Why do you think so?"

"He mutilated her hand. Not Cleo. The thumb was moved, it couldn't have just dropped in the location it was found. There was no pair of scissors or homemade knife anywhere to be found. There was only blood there, in the stairwell, nowhere else, so slicing off the thumb had to be done there. She didn't do it. He did."

"But why?"

Francis put his hand up to his forehead. He thought he felt feverish, hot, as if the world around him had somehow been burnt by the sun. "To join the two together. To show us that he was everywhere. I can't quite tell, Peter, but it was a message and one that we don't understand."

Peter eyed Francis carefully, but noncommittally. It was as if he both believed and didn't believe everything Francis said. "And the release hearing? You say you could sense his presence?" Peter's words were endowed with skepticism.

"The Angel needs to be able to come and go. He needs access to both here and there. The world inside and the world outside."

"Why?"

Francis took a deep breath. "Power. Safety."

Peter nodded and shrugged, at the same time. "Maybe so. But when all is said and done, C-Bird, the Angel is just a killer with a particular predilection for a certain body type and hair style, with a penchant for mutilation. I suppose Gulptilil or some forensic shrink could sit around and speculate about the whys and wherefores, maybe come up with some theory about how the Angel was abused as a child, but it's not really relevant. What he is, when you think about it, is just another bad-acting bad guy, and my guess is we're going to catch him tonight, because he's a compulsive type, who won't be able to refuse the trap set for him. Probably what we should have done from the start, instead of spinning our wheels with interviews and patient files. One way or the other, he'll show. End of story."

Francis wanted to share Peter's confidence, but could not. "Peter," he said cautiously, "I suppose everything you say is true. But suppose it's not. Suppose he's not what you and Lucy think. Suppose everything that has happened so far is something different."

"C-Bird, I don't follow."

Francis swallowed air. His throat felt parched and he could barely manage more that a whisper. "I don't know, I don't know," he repeated. "But everything you and I and Lucy have done is what he would expect…"

"I've told you before: That's what any investigation is. A steady examination of facts and details."

Francis shook his head. He wanted to get mad, but instead felt merely fear. He finally lifted his head and looked around. He saw Newsman, who had a newspaper open and was studiously memorizing headlines. He saw Napoleon, who envisioned himself a French general. He wished he saw Cleo, who once lived in a queen's world. He fixed on some of the geriatrics, who were lost in memory, and the retarded men and women, who were stuck in some dull childishness. Peter and Lucy were using logic even psychiatric logic to find the killer. But, what C-Bird realized was that this was the most illogical approach of all, inside a world so filled with fantasy, delusion, and confusion.

His own voices shrieked at him: Stop! Run! Hide! Don't think! Don't imagine! Don't speculate! Don't understand!

Right at that moment, Francis realized that he knew what would happen that night. And he was powerless to prevent it.

"Peter," he said slowly, "maybe the Angel wants everything to be as is it."

"Well, I suppose that's possible," Peter said with a small laugh, as if that was the craziest thing he'd ever heard. He was filled with confidence. "That would be his biggest mistake, wouldn't it?"

Francis didn't know how to reply, but he surely didn't think so.

The Angel leaned over me, hovering so close that I could feel every cold breath attached to each frozen word. I shook as I wrote, keeping my face to the wall, as if I could ignore his presence. I could feel him reading right over my shoulder, and he laughed with that same awful noise that I recognized from when he had sat on the side of my bunk inside the hospital and promised me that I would die.

"C-Bird saw so much. But couldn't quite put it together," he scoffed.

I stopped writing, my hand paused just above the wall. I didn't look in his direction, but I spoke out, high-pitched, a little panicked, but still, needing the answers.

"I was right, wasn't I. About Cleo?"

He wheezed a laugh again. "Yes. She did not know I was there, but I was. And what was most unusual about that night, C-Bird, was that I had every intention of killing her before dawn arrived. I figured simply to cut her throat in her sleep and then point some evidence at one of the other women in the dormitory. This had worked just as I knew it would with Lanky. It was likely to work again. Or perhaps just the pillow over the face. Cleo was asthmatic. She smoked too much. It probably wouldn't have taken long to choke the air from her. That worked with the Dancer."

"Why Cleo?"

"It was when she pointed up at the building where I lived and shouted out that she knew me. I didn't believe her, of course. But why take the chance? Everything else was going just as I imagined it would. But C-Bird knows that, doesn't he? C-Bird knows, because he is like me. He wants to kill. He knows how to kill. He hates so much. He loves the idea of death so much. Killing is the only answer for me. And for C-Bird, too."

"No," I moaned. "Not true."

"You know the only answer, Francis," the Angel whispered.

"I want to live," I said.

"So did Cleo. But she wanted to die, too. Life and death can be so close. Almost the same, Francis. And tell me: Are you any different from her?"

I couldn't answer that question. Instead, I asked, "You watched her die?"

"Of course," the Angel replied, hissing. "I saw her take the bedsheet from beneath her bed. She must have been saving it for just that reason. She was in a lot of pain and the medications weren't helping her in the slightest, and all she could see ahead of her, day after day, year after year, was more and more pain. She wasn't afraid of killing herself, C-Bird, not like you are. She was an empress and she understood the nobility of taking her own life. The necessity of it. I just encouraged her along the path, and used her death to my advantage. I opened the doors, then followed her out and watched her go into the stairwell…"

"Where was the nurse on duty?"

"Asleep, C-Bird. Dozed off, feet up, head back, snoring. You think they actually cared enough about any of you to stay awake?"

"But why did you cut her, afterward?"

"To show you what you guessed later, C-Bird. To show you that I could have killed her. But mostly, I knew that it would make everyone argue, and that the people who wanted to believe I was there might see it as proof, and the people who didn't want to believe I was there would see it as persuasive of their position. Doubt and confusion are truly helpful things, C-Bird, when you are planning something precise and perfect."

"Except for one thing," I whispered. "You didn't count on me."

He snarled and replied, "But that's why I'm here now, C-Bird. For you."

Shortly before ten pm, Lucy moved rapidly across the grounds of the hospital toward the Amherst Building, to take over the late-night solitary shift. The graveyard shift, as it was called in newspaper offices and police stations. It was an awful night, caught somewhere between storm and heat, and she lowered her head and thought that her white outfit cut a slice through the thick black air.

In her right hand, she carried a ring of keys that jangled as she quick marched down the path. Above her, an oak tree bent and swayed, rustling leaves with a breeze that she didn't feel and which seemed out of place in the still, humid night. She had thrown her pocketbook, with the loaded pistol concealed inside, over her right shoulder, giving her a jaunty look which was far from how she felt. She ignored an odd cry, something desperate and lonely, that seemed to float down from one of the other dormitories.

Lucy unlocked the two deadbolt locks at the door to Amherst, and put her shoulder to the heavy wood, pushing her way into the building with a scraping sound. For an instant, she was taken aback. Every time she'd been in the building, either in her office, or making her way through the corridor, it had been filled with people, light, and noise. Now, not even late, it had been transformed. What had seemed jammed and constantly busy, energized by all sorts of misshapen madnesses and misbegotten thoughts, was now quiet, save for the occasional eerie shout or scream that lurked through the empty spaces. The corridor was nearly black; some light that faded a little bit of the darkness to a manageable gray came weakly through the windows from distant buildings. The only real light in the corridor was a small cone of brightness, behind the barred door of the nursing station, where a single desk lamp glowed.

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