The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  He grunted a response, as if to indicate that he, too, had once lost something and that he didn’t like it.

  “Will you look in your things for me?”

  The retarded man hesitated, then shrugged. He reached down under the bed, and with a single hand pulled forward a green, military-style trunk. “What?” he asked.

  “A shirt.”

  He handed the Raggedy Andy doll to Lucy carefully, and then undid the clasp on the foot locker. She noted that the trunk wasn’t locked. He pulled the lid back and she saw his meager possessions. There were some underwear and socks folded on the top, next to a photograph of the retarded man and his mother. The picture was a few years old, and had a few creases in it, and was frayed around the edges from where it had been handled far too many times. Then beneath that were some jeans and a spare pair of shoes, a couple of sports shirts and a slightly threadbare dark green woolen sweater.

  The bloody shirt was missing. Lucy rapidly looked over at Peter, who shook his head.

  “Gone,” he said quietly.

  She turned back to the retarded man. “Thank you,” she said. “You can put your things away now.”

  He closed the trunk and shoved it back under the bunk. She handed him back the Raggedy Andy doll.

  “Do you have any other friends in here?” she asked, gesturing around the room.

  He shook his head. “All alone,” he said.

  “I’ll be your friend,” she said, which made him smile, although she realized what a lie this was, which made her feel guilty, in part for the hopelessness of the retarded man, and a little for herself, because she wasn’t sure she liked at all having the ability to deceive a person who was little more than a child, and who would only grow older, but never wiser.

  Back in her office, Lucy sighed. “Well,” she said, “I guess the idea that we might actually find a bit of evidence seems to be too much.”

  She sounded discouraged, but Peter was more upbeat. “No, no, we learned something. The idea that the Angel would plant something and then go to the trouble of removing it tells us something about his personality.”

  Francis, however, felt his head spinning. He could feel a small quiver in his hands, because within him so much that was usually a turmoil of crosscurrents and murkiness, had an edge of clarity to it. “Closeness,” he said.

  “What?”

  “He picked the retarded man for a reason. Because he knew he would be questioned by Lucy. Because he was close enough to be able to plant a piece of evidence on. Because he wasn’t someone who would threaten him. Everything the Angel does has a purpose.”

  “I think you’re right,” Lucy said slowly. “Because when you think about it, what does this tell us?”

  Peter’s voice was suddenly cold. “It tells us that he’s not exactly hiding.”

  Francis groaned, as if this idea pained him like a blow to the chest. He rocked back and forth, and Peter and Lucy eyed him with concern. For the first time, Peter understood that what was an exercise in intelligence for him and Lucy, an adventure in outsmarting a clever and dedicated killer, was, perhaps, something far more difficult and dangerous for Francis. “He wants us to search for him,” Francis said, the words bleeding through his lips. “He enjoys all this.”

  “Well, then we’ve got to end the game,” Peter said.

  Francis looked up. “We have to not do what he expects us to do because he knows. I don’t know how or why, but he knows.”

  Peter took a deep breath, and for a moment or two, all three of them were quiet, as they chewed over what Francis had said. Peter didn’t think that the moment was right, but he could think of no other time that might be more appropriate, and any further delay might make things worse. “I don’t have much time left,” he said quietly. “Sometime in the next few days, I’m going to be shipped out of here. Forever.”

  chapter 25

  I rolled over on the floor and felt the hardwood surface flush against my cheek as I fought against the sobs that captured my entire body. All of my life I had spiraled from one loneliness to another, and simply recalling the instant in time that I heard Peter the Fireman say that he would be leaving me by myself in Western State plummeted me into a black despair that mimicked the one I felt in the Amherst Building all those years ago. I suppose I had known from the opening second when we had met, that I was bound to be left behind, but still, hearing it firsthand was like a blow to the chest. There are some deep sadnesses that never leave one’s heart no matter how many hours slide by, and this was one of those. Writing the words that Peter spoke that afternoon rekindled all the feelings of despair that had been hidden for so many years by so many drugs and treatment plans and therapeutic sessions. My hurt erupted, filling me with a deep gray volcanic ash.

  I wailed like a starving child, abandoned in the darkness. My body convulsed with the shock of recollection. Tossed down on the cold floor like a shipwrecked sailor thrown up on a distant, strange shore, I gave into the utter futility of my history and let every failure and flaw find voice in one wracking sob after another, until, exhausted, I finally quieted.

  When the awful silence of fatigue filled the air around me, I could just make out a distant mocking laugh, retreating into the shadows. The Angel still hovered nearby, enjoying every filigree of pain I experienced.

  I lifted my head and snarled. He remained close. Close enough to touch me, just far enough so that I couldn’t grasp him. I could sense the distance narrowing, closing by millimeters with each passing second. That was his style. Hide. Evade. Manipulate. Control. Then, when the moment was ripe, he would pounce. The difference was, this time I was the target.

  I gathered myself and struggled to my feet, wiping a sleeve across my tear-stained face. Pivoting about, I searched the room.

  “Here, C-Bird. Over by the wall.”

  But it wasn’t the Angel’s hissing, murderous voice, it was Peter’s.

  I spun to the sound. He was sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall of writing.

  He looked tired. No, that’s not quite right. He had traveled beyond exhaustion, into a different realm altogether. His jumpsuit was streaked with soot and dirt, and I could see grime on his face, scarred by streaks of sweat. There were rips in his clothes, and his heavy brown work boots were ridged with mud, leaves, and pine needles. He toyed with his silver steel helmet, flipping it back and forth in his hands, spinning it like a child’s top. After a moment or two, as he seemed to regain a little bit of his strength and composure, he finally took the helmet and lifted it above his head, tapping it against the wall.

  “You’re getting there,” he said. “I guess I really didn’t understand how terrified you must have been of the Angel. I could never see coming what you did. It’s a good thing one of us was crazy. Or just crazy enough.”

  Even with all the filth that covered him, Peter’s insouciance still clawed through. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. Still, I bent down, crouching just across from him, close enough so that I could reach out and touch him, but I didn’t.

  “He’s here now,” I whispered, cautiously. “He’s listening to us.”

  “I know,” Peter said. “The hell with him.”

  “He’s come for me, this time. Like he promised back then.”

  “I know,” Peter repeated.

  “I need your help, Peter,” I said. “I don’t know how to fight him.”

  “You didn’t know before, but you figured it out,” Peter replied. A little bit of his wide, white grin penetrated past his exhaustion, past all the collected dirt and debris.

  “It’s different now,” I said. “Before it was …” I hesitated.

  “Real?” Peter asked.

  I nodded.

  “And this isn’t?”

  I didn’t know what to reply.

  “Will you help me?” I asked again.

  “I don’t know that you really need it. But I’ll try to do what I can.” Peter wearily gathered himself and slowly rose to his feet. For the fi
rst time, I noticed that the backs of his hands were charred raw and bloody. The skin seemed to be loosened, for it hung in flaps from the bones and tendons. He must have seen where my eyes went, because he glanced down and then shrugged. “Can’t do anything about that,” he said. “It gets worse.”

  I didn’t ask him to elaborate, because I thought I understood. In the momentary silence that followed, he turned and peered at the wall. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, C-Bird,” he said quietly. “I knew it would hurt you, but I didn’t really understand how harsh it would be.”

  “I was alone,” I said. “I wonder sometimes if there’s anything worse in the whole world.”

  Peter smiled. “There are worse things,” he said. “But I understand what you mean. I didn’t have a choice though, did I?”

  Now it was my turn to shake my head. “No. You had to do what they wanted. And that was your only chance. I understand that.”

  “It didn’t exactly turn out great for me,” Peter said. He laughed, as if this was a joke, then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, C-Bird. I didn’t want to leave you, but if I’d stayed …”

  “You would have ended up like me. I understand that, Peter,” I said.

  “But I was there for the most important part,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “And so was Lucy.”

  Again, I nodded my head in agreement.

  “So, we all paid a price, didn’t we?” he asked.

  In that second, I heard a long, wolflike howl. It was an unearthly sound, filled with anger and revenge. The Angel.

  Peter heard it, too. But it didn’t frighten him the way it did me.

  “He’s coming for me, Peter,” I whispered. “I don’t know if I can handle him alone.”

  “True enough,” Peter replied. “One never can be sure of everything. But you know him, C-Bird. You know his strengths; you know his limitations. You knew it all, and it was what we needed once before, wasn’t it?” He looked over at the wall of writing. “Put it down, C-Bird. All the questions. And all the answers.”

  He stepped back, as if making a path for me to the next blank spot. I took a deep breath and moved forward. I wasn’t aware that Peter faded from my side, as I picked up the stub of pencil, but I did note that the chill from the Angel’s breath frosted the room around me, so that I shivered as I wrote:

  By the end of the day, Francis was overcome by the sensation that things were taking place that all made sense, but that he couldn’t quite see the shape of the stage…

  By the end of the day, Francis was overcome by the sensation that things were taking place that all made sense, but that he couldn’t quite see the shape of the stage. The jumble of ideas that coursed through his imagination were still puzzling to him, complicated no end by the resurgence of his own voices that seemed to be as divisive and as doubting as they had ever been. They formed a knot of confusion within his head, shouting conflicting suggestions and demands, urging him to flee, to hide, to fight back, so frequently and fiercely that he could barely hear other conversations. He still held the belief that everything would become obvious if he simply looked at it through the right microscope.

  “Peter, Gulp-a-pill said that there are some release hearings scheduled for this week …”

  Peter’s eyes had arched up. “That will put people on edge.”

  “Why?” Lucy asked.

  “Hope,” Peter responded, as if that single word said everything at once. Then he’d looked back at Francis. “What is it, C-Bird?”

  “It seems to me that somehow there’s some connection in all this to the dormitory room at Williams,” he said slowly. “The Angel had to pick out the retarded man, so he had to be familiar with his routine in order to place the shirt there. And he had to figure out that the retarded man would be one of the men Lucy was going to question.”

  “Proximity,” Peter said. “Opportunity to observe. Good point, Francis.”

  Lucy nodded, as well. “I think,” she said, “that I will get the roster of patients in that dormitory room.”

  Francis thought for a moment, then asked, “Lucy, can you get the list of patients scheduled for release hearings, too?” He kept his voice low, so that no one could hear him.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “But so much seems to be happening and I’m trying to see how it might be connected.”

  Lucy nodded, but Francis was unsure whether she actually believed him.

  “I’ll see if I can get it, as well,” she said, but Francis had the distinct impression that she was saying this to accommodate him, and wasn’t seeing any potential connection. She looked over at Peter. “We could arrange to search the entire room over in Williams. It wouldn’t take long, and it might turn up something of value.”

  Lucy thought to herself that it was critical to try to maintain the more concrete aspects of the investigation. Lists and suppositions were intriguing, but she was much more comfortable with the sorts of details that people can testify to in courtrooms. The loss of the bloody shirt bothered her far more than she had let on, and she was eager to find some other morsel of hard evidence that could provide the foundation for a case.

  Lucy thought again: knife; fingertips; bloody clothes and shoes.

  Something had to be somewhere she told herself.

  “That might make some sense,” Peter said. He looked over at the prosecutor, and recognized what might be at stake.

  Francis, however, was less sure. He thought the Angel would surely have anticipated that maneuver. What they had to come up with, he thought, was something oblique. Something the Angel wouldn’t think of. Something skewed and different and more in keeping with where they were, rather than where they wanted to be. The three of them started to head toward Lucy’s office, but Francis spotted Big Black over by the nursing station, and he peeled off to speak with the huge attendant. The others continued on, not fully aware, it seemed, that Francis had dropped behind.

  Big Black looked up. “It’s early for medication, C-Bird,” he said. “But I’m guessing that isn’t what you want, is it?”

  Francis shook his head. “You believed me, didn’t you?”

  The attendant glanced around, before answering. “I sure did, C-Bird. The problem is, it never does any good in here to agree with a patient when the brass thinks something different. You understand, don’t you? It wasn’t about the truth or not. It’s about my job.”

  “He might come back. He might come back tonight.”

  “He might. I doubt it, though. If he thought killing you was the right thing, C-Bird, he would have done it already.”

  Francis agreed with this, although it was one of those observations that was both reassuring and frightening at the same time.

  “Mister Moses,” Francis croaked out breathlessly, “why is it that no one in here wants to help Miss Jones catch this guy?”

  Big Black instantly stiffened and shifted about. “I’m helping, ain’t I? My brother, he’s helping, too.”

  “You know what I mean,” Francis said.

  Big Black nodded. “That I do, C-Bird. That I do.”

  He looked about, as if to reassure himself of what he already knew, which was that no one was close enough or paying attention enough to overhear his response. Still, he kept every word beneath his voice, speaking cautiously. “You got to understand something, C-Bird. In here, finding this guy that Miss Jones wants, with all the publicity and attention and maybe a state investigation and headlines and television stations and all that showing up, why, that would mean some people’s careers. Far too many questions, getting asked. Probably tough questions, like why didn’t you do this, or why didn’t you do that? Maybe even have to have hearings at the State House. Lots of rocking the boat, and there ain’t nobody who works for the state, especially a doc or a psychologist, who wants to be answering questions about how they let a killer live in the hospital here with nobody paying too much mind. We’re talking scandal here, C-Bird. A helluva lo
t easier to cover it up, explain away a body or two. That’s easy. No one gets blamed, everybody gets paid, nobody loses their job, and things go on day in and day out, just like before. Ain’t no different from any hospital. Or prison, either, you think about it. Keeping things keeping on, that’s what this is all about. Ain’t you figured that part out for yourself yet?”

  He had, he realized. He just didn’t like it.

  “You got to remember,” Big Black added, shaking his head, “no one cares all that much about crazy people.”

  Miss Luscious looked up and scowled when Lucy walked into the reception area outside of Doctor Gulptilil’s office. She made a point of busying herself with some forms, turning to her typewriter and furiously starting to type, just as Lucy approached her desk. “The doctor is occupied,” she said, her fingers flying over the keyboard, and the steel ball of the old Selectric banging away on a piece of paper. “I don’t have you scheduled for an appointment,” she added.

  “This should only take a second or two,” Lucy said.

  “Well, I’ll see if I can work you in. Have a seat.” The secretary didn’t make an effort to change position, or even pick up the telephone until Lucy moved away from the desk and plopped herself down onto a lumpy waiting room couch.

  She kept her eyes directly on Miss Luscious, boring into her with intensity, until the secretary finally tired of the scrutiny, picked up the office phone and turned away from Lucy as she spoke. There was a brief exchange, and then the secretary turned and said, “The doctor can see you now,” an almost comical cliché, given the circumstances, Lucy thought.

  Doctor Gulptilil was standing behind his desk, staring out at the tree just beyond the glass. He cleared his throat as she entered, but remained in his position, not moving, as she hovered waiting for the physician to acknowledge her presence. After a moment or two, he turned, and with a small shake of his head, slumped down into his seat.

  “Miss Jones,” he said cautiously, “Your arrival here is most fortuitous, for it saves me the trouble of summoning you.”