The Madman - Страница 64

As Francis might have guessed, Mister Evans waved his hand dismissively. "You don't think that anything they say might be important, C-Bird? Because, if not, then what is the purpose of this little exercise?"

Francis shrank back in his chair, a little afraid to contradict Mister Evil. There are some men, he knew, that stored up slights and affronts, and then paid one back at some later time, and Evans was one of them.

"Words," Francis said slowly, a little quietly. "Words aren't going to mean anything. We're going to need to speak a different language to find the Angel. A wholly different means of communicating, and one of these people, coming through that door, will be speaking it. We just need to recognize it, when it arrives. We can find it in here," he continued, speaking cautiously, "but it won't exactly be what we expect."

Evans snorted slightly, and then pulled out his notebook, and wrote a small notation down on a lined sheet. Lucy Jones was about to respond to Francis, but she saw this action on the psychologist's part, and instead she turned to him. "What was that?" she asked, pointing to the notebook.

"Nothing much," he said.

"Well," she persisted. "It had to be something. A reminder to pick up a quart of milk on the way home. A decision to apply for a new job. A maxim, a play on words, a bit of doggerel or poetry. But it was something. What?"

"An observation about our young friend, here," Evans replied blankly. "A note to myself that Francis's delusions are still current. As evidenced by what he said, about creating some sort of new language."

Lucy, instantly angered, was about to reply that she had understood everything Francis had said, but then she stopped herself. She stole a quick glance in Francis's direction and she could see that every word that Mister Evans spoke had scorched itself into his world of fears. Say nothing, she told herself abruptly. You will only make it worse.

Although precisely how things could be worse for Francis, she was a little at a loss to imagine.

"So, who do we have next?" Lucy said instead.

"Hey, Fireman!" Little Black said in a slightly lowered voice, but with some added urgency. "You got to hurry up." He stared down at his watch, then looked up and tapped the face on his wrist with his index finger. "We got to get a move on," he said.

Peter was running his hands through the bedding of one of Lucy's potential suspects, and he looked up a little surprised. "What's the rush?" he asked.

"Gulp-a-pill," Little Black said quickly. "He usually makes his midday rounds pretty damn soon, and I need to get you back over to Amherst and out of those clothes before he starts wandering around the hospital and spots you somewhere you ain't supposed to be, dressed like you ain't supposed to be dressed."

Peter nodded. He slid his hands under the edges of the bed, palpitating the mattress beneath. One of Peter's fears was that the Angel had managed to slice a section out of a mattress, and then concealed his weapon and his souvenirs inside. It was, Peter thought, what he himself would have done if he'd had any items that he'd wished to hide from attendants or nurses or any other patient with prying eyes.

He felt nothing and shook his head.

"You just about finished?" Little Black asked.

Peter continued working the mattress, probing every shape and lump to make certain that it was what it should be. He saw that the usual sorts of patients were still eyeing him from across the room. Some were intimidated by Little Black, because they cowered in the corner, pressed up against the wall. A few others were sitting vacantly on the edge of their bunks, looking off into a void, as if the world they inhabited was somewhere else.

"Yeah, just about," Peter mumbled to the attendant, who tapped his watch face again.

The bed was clean, Peter thought. Nothing immediately suspect. There was now only the matter of a quick search of the man's belongings, which were gathered in a foot locker beneath the steel frame of the bed. Peter pulled the locker out. He rifled through, finding nothing more suspect than some socks that were in dire need of laundering. He was about to step back when something caught his eye.

It was a flat white T-shirt, folded up and placed near the bottom of the locker. It was no different from the cheap type sold at discount stores throughout New England and worn by many of the men in the hospital beneath a heavier winter shirt during the colder months. But that wasn't what caught his attention.

The shirt was stained with a huge dark red brown splotch across the chest.

He had seen stains like that before. In his training as an arson investigator. In his time in the jungle in Vietnam.

Peter held the shirt in his hands for a second, rubbing the fabric beneath his fingers as if he could tell something more by touching it. Little Black was a few feet away and finally insistence crept into his voice. "Peter, we got to leave now. I don't want to have to do any explaining that I don't have to, and I sure as hell don't want to have to explain nothing to the big doc, if I don't need to."

"Mister Moses," Peter said slowly. "Look at this."

Little Black stepped forward, so that he could lean over Peter's shoulder. Peter said nothing, but he heard the attendant whistle softly.

"That could be blood there, Peter," he said after a moment. "Sure looks like it."

"That's what I thought," Peter replied.

"Ain't that one of the things we're supposed to be looking for?" Little Black asked.

"It is, indeed," Peter replied quietly.

Then he carefully folded the shirt back precisely as it was when he'd discovered it, and slipped it into the same position that it had occupied before he had drawn it forth. He returned the foot locker to its customary spot beneath the bed, hoping that it was positioned as it had been. Then he stood up. "Let's go," he said. He glanced over at the small gathering of men across the room from him, but whether they had noticed anything or not was impossible for Peter to tell from the vacant eyes that stared back at him.

Chapter 19

Peter slid out of the white attendant's uniform in the area just inside the door to the Amherst Building. Little Black took the baggy pants and loose-fitting jacket from him, folded them up and stuffed them beneath his arm, while Peter pulled on a pair of wrinkled jeans. "I'll stash these," he said, "until we're sure Gulptilil has finished his rounds and we can get back to business." The wiry attendant then looked narrowly at Peter and added, "You gonna tell Miss Jones about what we saw and where we saw it?"

Peter nodded. "As soon as Mister Evil steps away from her side."

Little Black grimaced. "He'll find out. One way or another. Always does. Sooner or later, man seems to know everything going on around here."

Peter thought that was an intriguing bit of information but he didn't comment on it.

For an instant, Little Black seemed indecisive. "So, what we gonna do about a man got a shirt hidden away all stained with blood we don't think is his own?"

"I think we need to keep quiet and keep what we found to ourselves for the time being," he said. "At least until Miss Jones decides how she wants to proceed. I think we need to be very careful. After all, the man whose bunk that was is in there talking with her right now."

"You think she's gonna pick up on something, talking to him?"

"I don't know. We just need to be cautious."

Little Black nodded in agreement. Peter could see that the attendant was alert to the volatility of the knowledge they had acquired. A single bloodstained T-shirt, that could cause all sorts of difficulties. Peter ran his hand through his hair, as he considered the situation, recognizing that he needed to be both wary and aggressive. His first thought was technical: How to isolate and proceed against the man who slept in the bunk where he'd made his discovery. There was much to do, he realized, now that he had a genuine suspect. But all his training suggested caution in his approach, even if that contradicted his own nature. He smiled, because he recognized the familiar dilemma that he'd faced throughout his life, the balance between small steps and headlong plunges. He was aware that he was where he was, at least in part, because of a failure to hesitate.