The Madman - Страница 99

Chapter 28

Cleo's body was hustled out of the Amherst Building by Security at the same time that Big Black and his brother herded the distraught patients into the dining area for the morning meal. The last Francis saw of the sometime empress of Egypt was a great misshapen lump encased in a shiny black rubberized body bag disappearing through the front doors as he was being directed to stand in line by the serving counter. After a few moments, Francis found himself staring down at a desultory plate of French toast, dripping with sticky, tasteless syrup, trying to assess what had taken place in the hours that most of them had been asleep. He was joined at the table by Peter, who seemed in a deeply foul mood, and took to pushing his food about on his plate. Newsman wandered by, took one look at Peter, started to say something, only to stop when Peter said, "I know what today's headline is. Patient in Hospital Dies Hard. No One Gives a Damn."

Newsman looked as if he might burst into tears and hurried over to an empty table. Francis thought Peter was wrong, because there were a number of people who were upset by Cleo's death and he looked around as if to point these folks out to the Fireman, but instead, he saw the hulking retarded man first, who was having trouble cutting his toast into bite-size pieces, then his gaze traveled over to one of the other tables where three women sat, each indifferent to the meal in front of them, indifferent to each other, talking to themselves.

Another retarded man glared at Francis, as if there was something in the way he was sitting that made him angry, and so Francis looked away, back to Peter.

"Peter?" he asked slowly. "What do you think happened to Cleo?"

The Fireman shook his head. "Everything that can go wrong, did go wrong," he said. "She was filled with something evil, you know, where all the things that are supposed to connect up and keep us levelheaded somehow got short-circuited or frayed, and no one saw it or did anything about it and so there you have it. She's gone. Poof! Like a magic trick on a stage. Evans should have seen something. Maybe Big Black or Little Black or Nurse Wrong or Nurse Riches or even me, maybe, but someone should have seen something was happening. Just the same as Lanky, back before Short Blond's murder. All sorts of things happening inside his head. Hammers pounding, bulldozers, earth movers like a construction project going on by the side of the highway, except no one noticed. And then when they do take notice, it's too late."

"You think she killed herself?"

"Of course," Peter said.

"But Lucy said…"

"Lucy was wrong. Gulp-a-pill was right. No signs of a struggle. And the severed thumb well, that was probably just her craziness coming out. Some utterly weird delusion. Cutting her own thumb off probably made some crazy sense to her right at the last moment. We just don't exactly know what her logic was and we'll never know."

Francis swallowed hard, and asked, "Did you really examine that thumb, Peter?"

The Fireman shook his head. "I liked Cleo," he said. "She had personality. A character. She wasn't a blank slate, like so many people in here. I wish I could have gotten inside Cleo's head for just a second, to see how it all added up for her. There had to be some unique and twisted Cleo-like logic. Something to do with Shakespeare and Egypt and all of that. She was her own theater, wasn't she? Belonged on a stage somewhere, I guess. Or maybe, turned everything around her into its own stage. Maybe that's the best epitaph for her."

Francis could see churning within Peter some great storm of thoughts moving back and forth like tossed seas driven by wild winds. Nowhere in Francis's view, at that moment was Peter the arson investigator. Francis continued to ask questions, a little under his voice. "She didn't seem like the type who would kill herself, especially after mutilating herself."

"True enough," Peter answered, sighing deeply. "But I'm thinking that no one exactly seems like the type who would kill themselves, until they do, and then, all of a sudden everyone around here nods their heads and says, "Why of course…" because it seems so damn obvious."

He shook his head. "C-Bird," he said, "I've got to get out of here." He took another deep breath, then amended this statement: "We've got to get out of here."

Then Peter looked up and saw something in Francis's face, because he stopped short and spent more than a few seconds simply staring at the younger man. After a long stretch of quiet, he said, "What is it?"

"He was there," Francis whispered.

Peter knit his brows and leaned forward. "Who?"

"The Angel."

Peter shook his head. "I don't think so…"

Francis whispered. "He was. He was in at my bed the other night telling me how easy it would be to kill me, and this night he was there with Cleo. He's everywhere, we just cannot see him. He's behind everything that has happened here in Amherst, and he's going to be behind whatever happens next. Cleo kill herself? Sure. I guess so. But who else would unlock the right doors for her?"

"Unlock the doors…"

"Someone opened the door to the women's dormitory. Someone made sure that the stairwell door was unlocked. And someone helped her get past the nursing station so that she wasn't seen…"

"Well," Peter said, "that's a good point. Actually, several good points…" He seemed to chew this over for a moment, before saying, "You're right, C-Bird about one thing. Someone opened some doors. But how can you be so sure it was the Angel?"

"I can see it," Francis answered quietly.

Peter looked slightly perplexed, and more than a little doubtful. "Okay," he said. "What do you see?"

"How it happened. More or less."

"Keep going, C-Bird," Peter said, lowering his voice a little.

"The bedsheet. The one that was fastened into the noose…"

"Yes?"

"Cleo's bed was intact. Sheets still on it."

Peter said nothing.

"The thumb…"

The Fireman nodded encouragingly.

"The thumb wasn't dropped directly downward. It was like it had been moved a couple of feet. And if Cleo had sliced it off herself, well, there should have been something scissors or a knife or something right there. But there wasn't. And if it had been cut somewhere else, well, then there would have been blood. Maybe a trail of blood, leading out into the stairwell. But there wasn't. Just the single pool beneath her body."

Francis took another deep breath, and then whispered again: "I can see it."

Peter was a little openmouthed, about to ask the obvious question, when Little Black hovered up to where they were sitting. He pointed an index finger at Peter, jabbing the air, interrupting the conversation abruptly. "You're up," he said. "The big doc says for you to come over right now."

Peter seemed to waver between questioning Francis more closely and the impatience that Little Black seemed to have just at the edge of his voice. So, what he did say was, "C-Bird, just keep your opinions to yourself until I get back, okay?"

Francis started to respond, but Peter leaned forward and added, "Don't let anyone around here think you're any crazier than you already are. Just wait for me, okay?"

The point Peter was making made some sense, and Francis nodded. Peter deposited his tray over by the cleaning station and dutifully followed the attendant out the door. For a moment or two, Francis remained at his seat, alone in the midst of the dining area. There was a constancy of noise the clatter of plates and utensils, some laughter, some shouts, and one person singing off-key an unrecognizable tune that just didn't quite match up with the distant sound of a radio playing from back in the cooking area. The usual morning, he thought. But when he rose, unable to mouth another forkful of French toast, he saw that Mister Evil was standing in the corner eyeing him carefully. And, as he crossed the room, he had the sensation that there were other eyes watching him as well. For a moment, he wanted to turn, to see if he could spot the people tracking his path, but then he decided not to. He wasn't at all sure that he wanted to know who might or might not be taking notice of his movement around the dining hall. He wondered for a moment, as well, whether Cleo's death had prevented something from happening. He picked up his pace and started moving more swiftly, because it occurred to him that it might have been his own murder that had been planned for that night past, and interrupted only by another opportunity presenting itself.