The Madman - Страница 86

"What else goes into that book?"

"Any changes ordered by the head doc, or Mister Evil. Anything out of the ordinary, like a fight or lost keys or a death like the Dancer's. Any switches in the routine. Lots of little, stupid crap, too, Peter. Like when you take your bathroom break at night, and when you check the doors and when you check the sleeping dormitories and any phone calls that come in or anything like I say that just about anybody who works here might think was out of the ordinary. Or you notice, maybe, one patient making progress for some reason or another. That can go in here, too. When you get on station at the start of your shift, you're supposed to check the over nights And then, before you clock out, you're supposed to make some entry and sign it. Even if it's only a couple of words. This goes on every day. Log book is supposed to make things easier for the next folks that come in, so they're up to date on anything happening."

"Is there a book like that "

Little Black interrupted him. "One on every floor, by every nursing station. Security got their own, too."

"So, if you had that, you would know, more or less, when things happen. I mean, the routine things?"

"Daily log is important," Little Black said. "It keeps track of all sorts of things. Got to have a record of everything that happens in here. It's like a little history book."

"Who keeps those logs, when they get filled up?"

Little Black shrugged. "Stored down in the basement somewhere in boxes."

"But if I were to get a look at one of those, I'd know all sorts of things, wouldn't I?"

"Patients not supposed to see daily log books. It ain't like they're hidden or anything. But they're for the staff."

"But if I did see one… even one that had been retired and put in storage, I'd have some pretty good ideas about when things take place on what sort of schedule, wouldn't I?"

Little Black slowly nodded his head.

Peter continued, but now he was speaking to Lucy Jones. "For example, I might have a pretty good idea when I could move around the hospital without being detected. And I might know the best time to find Short Blond alone at the first-floor nursing station in the middle of the night and drowsy because she routinely worked a double shift one day each week, wouldn't I? And I'd know, too, that Security had long since been by to check on the doors and maybe gab a little bit and that no one else at all was going to be around, except a bunch of drugged out, sleeping patients, right?"

Little Black didn't have to answer this question. Or any of the others.

"That's how he knows," Peter said softly. "He doesn't know absolutely for certain, with military precision, but he knows enough, so that he can guess with a great deal of certainty, and with a little bit of foresight, can wait and pick the right moments."

Francis thought this was possible. He felt cold inside, because abruptly he began to think that they had just taken a step closer to the Angel, and he had already been too close to the man, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to get that close again to the knife and the voice.

Lucy was shaking her head back and forth, and finally said to Peter and Francis, "I can't put my finger on it exactly, but something is wrong. No, that's not it, it's more that something is right and wrong, both at the same time."

Peter grinned. "Ah, Lucy," he said, almost mocking the way that Gulptilil liked to begin his sentences with an elongated pause, and adopting the Indian physician's lilting accented English. "Ah, Lucy," he repeated, "you make the sort of sense that belongs here in the madhouse. Please continue."

"This place is getting to me," she said quietly. "I think I'm being followed back to the nurse-trainees' dormitory at night. I hear noises by my door that disappear when I get up. I sense that someone has been into my belongings, although there is nothing missing. I keep thinking we're making progress, and yet, I can't point at what it is. I'm beginning to think that I'll start hearing voices any second now."

For a moment, she turned and looked at Francis, who seemed not to be listening, but was lost in thought. She peered down the corridor and saw Cleo holding forth on some incredibly important issue or another, waving her arms energetically, her voice booming out, not that anything she said made particularly cogent sense. "Or," Lucy said, shaking her head, "I will come to imagine that I'm the reincarnation of some Egyptian princess."

"That might cause a significant conflict," Peter replied with a grin.

"You'll survive," Lucy continued. "You're not crazy like the rest of these folks. Soon as you get out, you'll be okay. But C-Bird… what will happen to him?"

"Bigger questions for Francis," Peter said, instantly turning glum. "He needs to prove he isn't crazy, but how do you do that in here? This place is designed to make people more crazy, not less. It makes all the diseases people suffer, like, contagious…," Peter said, bitterness creeping into his voice. "It's as if you come in here with a cold, and it turns into strep or bronchitis and then into pneumonia, and finally into some terminal respiratory failure and then they say, "Well, we did all we could…" "

"I need to get out of here," Lucy said. "You need to get out of here, too."

"Correct," Peter replied, "But the person who needs out more than anybody is C-Bird, because otherwise, he'll be lost forever." Peter smiled again, but this was a smile that was merely a blanket thrown over all his sadness. "It's as if you and I, we elect our own troubles. We choose them in some perverse, neurotic way. Francis, all his troubles were delivered to him. No fault of his own, not like you and me. He's innocent, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for me."

Lucy reached out her hand and touched Peter's forearm, as if to buttress the truth in what he said. For a moment, Peter stayed stock-still, like a bird dog on point, his arm almost burning with the sensation of the touch. Then he stepped a little ways back, as if he couldn't stand the pressure. But as he did that, he smiled, and sighed deeply, although he turned his face away from Lucy as he did it, as if, in that second, he couldn't force himself to see what he could see.

"We need to find the Angel," Peter said. "And we need to do it right away."

"I agree," Lucy said. But then she looked at Peter curiously, because she saw that he meant something beyond the simple encouragement.

"What is it?"

But before he could answer that question, Francis, who had been weighing something inwardly and not paying attention to the others, looked up and approached the two of them. "I had an idea," he said hesitantly, "I don't know, but…"

"C-Bird, I need to tell you something…," Peter started, then he interrupted himself. "What's your idea?"

"What do you need to tell me?"

"It can wait a little bit," Peter said. "But your idea?"

"I was so scared," Francis began. "You weren't there, and it was pitch-dark, and that knife was at my cheek. Fear is funny, Peter," he continued, "because it rearranges all your thinking so much that you can't see anything else because of it. And I bet Lucy already knows this, but I didn't and it gave me an idea…"

"Francis, try to make a little more sense," Peter said, like he would to a student in an elementary school. Affectionate, but interested.

"Fear like that, it makes you think of only one thing: How scared you are and what's going to happen, and will he come back, and the terrible things he's done and what he might still do, because I knew he could have killed me, and I wanted to descend into some sort of safe place where I could be all alone…"

Lucy bent to Francis, because suddenly she saw a glimmer of what he was driving at. "Go on," she said.

"But all that fear, it covered up something that I should have seen."

Peter nodded. "What?"

"The Angel knew you would not be there that night."

"The log. Or he saw for himself. Or he heard I was being moved to isolation…"

"So, the situation was ripe for him to move last night, because he didn't want to try to handle both of us at once, I don't think. I'm kinda guessing here, but it makes some sense to me. Anyway, he had to move last night, because the situation was perfect for him to terrify me…"