The Madman - Страница 34

The doctor considered this for an instant. For a moment, a quite nasty smile crept in at the corners of his mouth, but was dismissed rapidly. Francis suspected that he was the only one who had seen it. "Certainly," he said. "There is a bedroom available in the nurse-trainees' dormitory."

Francis realized the doctor did not have to actually identify who its previous occupant had been.

Newsman was in the corridor of the Amherst Building when they returned. He smiled as they approached. "Holyoke Teachers Mull New Union Pact," he said briskly, "Springfield Union-News, page B-1. Hello, C-Bird, what are you doing? Sox Face Weekend Series Against Yankees With Pitching Questions, Boston Globe, page D-1. Are you going to meet with Mister Evil, because he has been looking for you and he doesn't seem very happy. Who's your friend, because she's very pretty and I'd like to meet her."

Newsman gave a little wave, a little shy grin toward Lucy Jones, then opened up the broadsheet he had stuffed under his arm, walking down the corridor a little like a drunken man, his eyes locked onto the words of the newspaper, his attitude intent on memorizing each word. He passed a pair of men, one old, one middle-aged, dressed in loose-fitting hospital pajamas, neither of whom seemed to have ever brushed or combed his hair in the current decade. Both were standing in the center of the passageway, a few feet away from each other, speaking softly. It was as if the two were conversing, until one took a closer look at their eyes, and realized that each was having a conversation with no one, and certainly not the other, and that each was oblivious to the other's presence. Francis thought for a moment that people like them were part of the architecture of the hospital, as much a presence as furniture, walls, or doors. Cleo liked to call the catatonics Catos which, he thought, was probably as good a word as any. He saw a woman walking briskly down the corridor suddenly stop. Then start. Then stop. Then start. Then she giggled and went on her way, trailing a long, pink seersucker housecoat behind her.

"It's not precisely the world you might expect," he heard Peter the Fireman say.

Lucy was a little wide-eyed.

"Do you know much about madness?" Peter asked.

She shook her head.

"No crazy Aunt Martha or Uncle Fred in your family? No weird Cousin Timmy, who likes to torture small animals? Neighbors, perhaps, that talk to themselves, or who believe that the president is actually a space alien?"

Peter's questions seemed to relax Lucy. She shook her head. "I must be lucky," she said.

"Well, C-Bird can teach you all you'll need to know about being crazy," Peter answered with a small laugh. "He's an expert, now, aren't you C-Bird?"

Francis didn't know what to say, so he simply nodded. He watched some unchecked emotions race across the prosecutor's face, and he thought that it is one thing to burst into a place like the Western State Hospital with ideas and suppositions and suspicions, but an altogether different thing to then act upon them. She had the look of someone considering a tall peak before them, a mixture of doubt and confidence.

"So," Peter continued. "Where do we start, Miss Jones?"

"Right here," she said briskly. "At the crime scene. I need to get a feel for the place where the murder happened. Then I need to get a sense of the hospital, as a whole."

"A tour?" Francis asked.

"Two tours," Peter answered. "One that inspects all this," and with that, he gestured at the building, "and a second one that starts to examine this," and with that, he tapped on the side of his forehead.

Little Black and his brother had accompanied them back to Amherst from the administration building, but had left the three of them while he and Big Black conferred at the nursing station. Big Black then had disappeared into one of the adjacent treatment rooms. Little Black was smiling as he approached the group.

I "This," he said not unpleasantly, "is a pretty damn unusual set of situations we've got here." Lucy did not reply and Francis tried to read in the wiry black man's face what it was that he really thought of what was happening. This was, at least initially, impossible. "My brother went in to get your new office straight, Miss Jones. And I filled in the nurses on duty that you're gonna be here for a couple of days, at the very least. One of them will show you over to the trainees' dormitory later. And I'm guessing that right about now, Mister Evans is having himself a long and unhappy conversation with the head doc, and that he's going to want to speak with you, too, real soon."

"Mister Evans is the psychologist in charge?"

"Of this unit. That's right, ma'am."

"And you don't think he will be pleased by my presence?" She said this with a small, wry smile.

"Not exactly, ma'am," Little Black responded. "Something you got to understand about how things are here."

"What's that?"

"Well, Peter and C-Bird can fill you in as well as I, but, to be short and sweet about it, the hospital is all about getting things to just sail along nice and smooth. Things that are different, things that are out of the ordinary well, they makes folks upset."

"The patients?"

"Yes, the patients. And if the patients are upset, then the staff is upset. Staff gets upset, then the administrators get upset. You get the picture? People like things smooth. All people. Crazy folks. Old folks. Young folks. Sane folks. And I'm not thinking you're about making things be smooth at all, Miss Jones. No, I'm guessing that you are all about the exact opposite."

Little Black said this with a wide grin, as if he found it all amusing. Lucy Jones noted this, lifted her shoulders lightly, and asked, "And you? And your rather large brother? What do the two of you think?"

At first, Little Black let out a short burst of laughter. "Just because he's big and I'm small, don't mean we both don't have the same large ideas. No, ma'am. How you think ain't about how you look." He gestured at the knots of patients moving through the corridor, and Lucy Jones saw the truth in those words. Then the attendant took a short breath and stared at the prosecutor. When he replied, it was in a voice lowered so that only the small group could hear. "Maybe we both think that something wrong did happen here, and we don't like that, because, if it did, then in a little way, we are to blame, and we are not liking that one little bit, not at all, Miss Jones. So, if a few feathers get ruffled, then we're thinking that ain't such a bad thing."

"Thank you," Lucy said.

"Don't thank me quite yet," Little Black replied. "You got to remember, when all is said and over and done, me, my brother, the nurses and the doctors and most of the patients, but not all, well, we're gonna still be here, and you're not. And so don't be thanking anyone quite yet. And a whole lot depends on whose feathers are the ones that get the ruffling, if you know what I mean."

Lucy nodded. "Point well taken," she said. She looked up and spoke under her breath, "And I'm guessing this must be Mister Evans?"

Francis pivoted and saw-Mister Evil striding swiftly in their direction. He had a welcoming appearance in his body language, a smile, his arms held wide. Francis did not trust this for an instant.

"Miss Jones," Evans said quickly, "let me introduce myself." There were perfunctory handshakes.

"Did Doctor Gulptilil inform you of the reason for my presence here?" Lucy asked.

"He explained that you have suspicions that perhaps the wrong person was arrested here in the young nurse's murder, a suspicion that I find somewhat laughable. Nevertheless, you are here. This, he told me, was something of a follow-up investigation."

Lucy eyed the psychologist carefully, aware that his response fell somewhat short of the complete truth, but in a broadly painted sort of way, was accurate. "So I can count on your help?" she asked.

"Most certainly."

"Thank you," she said.

"In fact, perhaps you would like to begin an assessment of the Amherst Building's patient files? We could begin that now. There's still some time before dinner and evening activities."

"First, I'd like a tour," she said.

"I can do that now," he replied.

"I was hoping that the two patients might take me around."

Mister Evil shook his head. "I don't think that's such a good idea."