The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  In her hand, she hefted the small, snub-nosed pistol. She placed it into her handbag. She had not told any of the others that she had it with her.

  Lucy did not truly expect the Angel to show, but she was at a loss as to what else she could do in the time remaining. Her own stay was coming to an end, her welcome long past expiration and by Monday morning Peter would be shipped out as well. That left this one night. In some ways, she had already begun to plan ahead, considering about what she would be forced to do when her mission ended in failure and she departed the hospital. Eventually, she knew, the Angel would either kill again inside the hospital or seek release and kill once he’d stepped outside the walls. If she monitored every release hearing, and kept a watch on every death at the hospital, sooner or later he would make a mistake and she would be there to accuse him. Of course, she realized, the problem with that particular approach was obvious: It meant someone else had to die.

  She took a deep breath and reached for the nurse’s outfit. She tried to not imagine what that other, nameless, faceless but very real victim would look like. Or who she might be. Or what hopes and dreams and desires she might have. She existed somewhere in some parallel world, as real as anyone, but ghostlike. For a second, Lucy wondered if this woman out there waiting to die was a little like the hallucinations that so many of the patients in the hospital had. She was just out there somewhere, not knowing that she was next in line for the Angel if he did not show up at the first-floor nursing station in the Amherst Building that night.

  With the full weight of that unknown woman’s future resting on her shoulders, Lucy slowly began to dress herself.

  When I looked up from the words to catch my breath, Peter was there in the apartment, standing nonchalantly up against the wall, arms folded in front of his chest, a troubled look on his face. But that was all that was familiar about him; his clothing was in tatters, the skin on his arms was seared red and black. Dirt and blood streaked his cheeks and throat. There was so little left of him that I remembered, I am not sure whether I could have recognized him. The room filled with a foul odor and suddenly I could smell the awful stench of burned flesh and decay.

  I shook off a sensation of dread, and greeted my only friend.

  “Peter,” I said, relief flooding my voice, “you’re here to help.”

  He shook his head but didn’t voice a reply. He gestured once to his neck and then his lips, like a mute signaling that words were lost to him.

  I pointed back at the wall where my story was collected. “I was beginning to understand,” I said. “I was there at the release hearings. I knew. Not everything, but I was beginning to know. When I walked across the hospital grounds that night, for the first time, I saw something different, didn’t I? But where were you? Where was Lucy? All of you were making plans, but no one wanted to listen to me, and I was the one who saw the most.”

  He smiled again, as if to underscore the truth in what I was saying.

  “Why weren’t you there to listen to me?” I asked again.

  Peter shrugged sadly. Then he reached out a hand that seemed almost stripped of flesh, like a skeleton’s bony fingers reaching for my own. In the second that I hesitated, the hand reaching for me faded, almost as if a fogbank had slid between him and me, and after I blinked again, Peter was gone. Wordless. Disappearing like a conjurer’s trick on a stage. I shook my head, trying to clear my thinking, and when I looked up again, filmy, slowly taking shape very close to where Peter’s apparition had been, I saw the Angel.

  He glowed white, as if there was some harsh, unblinking light within him. It blinded me, and I shaded my eyes, and when I looked back, he was still there. Only ghostlike, vaporous, as if he was opaque, constructed part of water, part of air, partially by imagination. His features were indistinct, as if they were slurred about the edges. The only thing sharp and distinct about him were his words.

  “Hello, C-Bird,” he said. “There’s no one here to help you. No one left to help you anywhere. Now it is just you and I and what happened that night.”

  I looked at him and realized that he was right.

  “You don’t want to remember that night, do you Francis?”

  I shook my head, not trusting my own voice.

  He pointed across the room at the story growing on the wall.

  “Close to dying time, Francis,” he said coldly.

  Then he added, “That night, and this one, too.”

  chapter 31

  Francis found Peter outside the first-floor nursing station. It was pill time, and patients were lining up for their evening medications. There was a little jostling back and forth, a few whiny complaints about this or that, a shove or two, but mostly things were orderly; if there was anything to suggest that this was just the arrival of another night in another week of another month of yet another year for the majority of them, it was impossible to see.

  “Peter,” Francis said quietly, but unable to hide the tension in his voice, “Peter, I need to speak with you. And Lucy, too. I think I saw him. I think I know how we can find him.” In Francis’s fevered imagination, all that was necessary was to pull the files of the three men who remained behind in the release hearing room. One of them would be the Angel. He was certain of this, and his excitement spilled into every word.

  Peter the Fireman, however, seemed distracted, barely listening. His eyes were fixed across the hallway, and Francis followed his gaze. He looked over at the line and saw Newsman and Napoleon, the hulking retarded man and the angry retarded man, three of the women with dolls and all the other faces that filled the Amherst Building with familiarity. He half expected to hear Cleo’s voice booming forth, with some imaginary complaint that the goddamn bastards had failed once again to address, followed by her unmistakable cackling laugh bouncing off the wire bars that separated the station from the corridor. Mister Evil was behind the counter, overseeing the evening dispensing of medications by Nurse Wrong, making notations on a clipboard. Every so often Evans would look up and glare in Peter’s general direction. After a second, Evans reached down and grasped a small paper cup from an array in front of him, then exited the station and made his way through the lineup of patients, who parted like river waters to let him pass. He came over to Peter and Francis before Francis had had time to say anything else to Peter about all that was troubling him.

  “Here you are, Mister Petrel,” Evans said stiffly, almost formally. “Thorazine. Fifty mikes. This should help quiet those voices that you continue to deny hearing.”

  He thrust the paper cup at Francis. “Down the hatch,” he said. Francis took the pill, popped it into his mouth and immediately slid it with his tongue to a place behind his teeth, cheeking it. Evans watched him closely, then gestured for Francis to open his mouth. Francis complied, and the psychologist took a perfunctory glance inside. Francis could not tell whether Evans had seen the pill or not, but Mister Evil spoke quickly, “You see, C-Bird, it doesn’t really matter to me whether you take the medication or you don’t. If you do, well, then there’s the chance you’ll get out of here someday. If you don’t, well, take a look around …”

  He gestured widely with his arm, finally bringing it to rest pointing at one of the geriatric patients, white-haired, fragile, skin as flaccid and thin as paper, an afterthought of a man locked into a dilapidated wheelchair that creaked as it moved.“… And imagine that this will be home for you forever.”

  Francis breathed in sharply, but didn’t respond. Evans gave him a second, as if he expected a reply, then shrugged and pivoted toward Peter. “No pills for the Fireman this night,” he said stiffly. “No pills for the real killer here. Not this imaginary killer you keep searching for. The real murderer in this place. You.”

  Evans’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t have a pill that can fix what’s wrong with you, Peter. Nothing that can make you whole. Nothing that can restore the damage you’ve done. You’re going to leave us despite my objections. I was overruled by Gulptilil and all the other important folks
who’ve been here to see you. A real sweetheart deal. Going to some fancy hospital and some fancy program a real long ways away to treat a nonexistent disease that fictionally plagues the Fireman. But no one has a pill or a treatment plan or even some sort of advanced neurosurgery that can truly fix what the Fireman has. Arrogance. Guilt. And memory. It doesn’t make any difference who you become, Peter, because inside you will always remain the same. A killer.”

  He looked closely at Peter who stood motionless in the middle of the corridor. “I used to think,” Evans said with frigid bitterness in every word, “that it was my brother who would carry the scars from your fire for the rest of his life. But I was wrong. He’ll recover. He’ll go on to doing good and important things. But you, Peter, you’ll never forget, will you? You’re the one who will be scarred. Nightmares, Peter. Nightmares forever.”

  With those words, Mister Evil turned abruptly and went back to the nursing station. No one spoke to him as he passed by the line of patients, who perhaps were not aware of many things, but recognized anger when they saw it, and carefully moved aside.

  Peter glared after Mister Evil, but contradictorily said, “I suppose he’s not entirely wrong to hate me. What I did was right for some and wrong for others.”

  He probably should have continued with that, but he did not. Instead, he turned to Francis and said, “What were you trying to tell me?”

  Francis glanced around to make sure none of the staff were watching him, and he spit the pill out into his palm, sliding it into his pants pocket in the same motion. He felt pummeled by conflicting emotions, unsure what to say. He finally took a deep breath and asked, “So you’re leaving … But what about the Angel?”

  “We’ll get him tonight. But if not tonight, then soon. So, tell me about the release hearings?”

  “He was there. I know it. I could feel it …”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then what did he do?”

  “Nothing. But …”

  “Then how can you be so sure, C-Bird?”

  “Peter, I could feel it. I’m sure.” The words expressed a certainty that wasn’t matched in the doubtful tone Francis used.

  Peter shook his head. “It’s not much to go on, C-Bird. But we should tell Lucy if we get a chance.”

  Francis looked at Peter and felt a sudden surge of frustration and perhaps a little anger. He wasn’t being listened to now, they hadn’t listened to him yet, and he realized that they would never listen to him. What they wanted to pursue was something solid and concrete. But in the mental hospital, such things barely existed.

  “She’s leaving. You’re leaving …”

  Peter nodded. “I don’t know what to tell you, C-Bird. I hate leaving you behind. But if I stay …”

  “You and Lucy will leave. You’ll both get out. I’ll never get out.”

  “It won’t be that bad, you’ll be fine,” Peter said, but even he knew this was a lie.

  “I don’t want to stay any longer, either,” Francis said. His voice quivered.

  “You’ll get out,” Peter said. “Look, C-Bird, I’ll make a promise. After I go through whatever the hell this program they’re shipping me to, and then, once I’m clear, I’ll get you out. I don’t exactly know how, but I will. I won’t leave you here.”

  Francis wanted to believe this, but didn’t dare allow himself to. He thought that in his short life many people had made promises and predictions—and that precious few of them had ever happened. Caught between the two pillars of the future, one described by Evans, the other pledged by Peter, Francis did not know what to think, but he knew he was a whole lot closer to one than the other.

  Instead, he stammered, “The Angel, Peter. What about the Angel?”

  “I’m hoping tonight’s the night, C-Bird. It’s pretty much our only chance. Last chance. Whatever. But it’s a reasonable approach, and I think it will work.”

  There was a distinct murmuring within Francis, as the chorus of voices all seemed to mutter at once. He was caught between paying attention to them or paying attention to Peter, who briefly described the plan for that night. It was a little like Peter didn’t want Francis to have too many details, as if he was trying to move Francis to the perimeter of the night, keeping him from the center, where he expected the action to take place.

  “Lucy will be the target?” Francis asked.

  “Yes and no,” Peter replied. “She’ll be there, and she’ll be the bait. But that’s all. She’ll be fine. It’s all worked out. The Moses brothers will cover her on one side, and I’ll be there on the other.”

  Francis thought this was untrue.

  For a moment, he hesitated. It seemed to him that he had almost too much to say.

  Then Peter leaned toward Francis, bending his head down so that their words just flowed between the two of them. “C-Bird, what is bothering you?”

  Francis rubbed his hands together, like a man trying to wash something sticky from his fingertips. “I can’t be sure,” Francis said, although he knew this was a lie, because he was sure. His voice stammered, and he wanted desperately to endow it with strength, passion, and conviction, but, as he spoke, he thought every word that tumbled past his lips was filled with weakness. “I just sensed it. It was the same feeling that I had when he came to my bed and threatened me. The night that he killed the Dancer with the pillow. The same I felt when I saw Cleo hanging there …”

  “Cleo hung herself.”

  “He was there.”

  “She took her own life.”

  “He was there!” Francis said, mustering all the insistence he could.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “He mutilated her hand. Not Cleo. The thumb was moved, it couldn’t have just dropped in the location it was found. There was no pair of scissors or homemade knife anywhere to be found. There was only blood there, in the stairwell, nowhere else, so slicing off the thumb had to be done there. She didn’t do it. He did.”

  “But why?”

  Francis put his hand up to his forehead. He thought he felt feverish, hot, as if the world around him had somehow been burnt by the sun. “To join the two together. To show us that he was everywhere. I can’t quite tell, Peter, but it was a message and one that we don’t understand.”

  Peter eyed Francis carefully, but noncommittally. It was as if he both believed and didn’t believe everything Francis said. “And the release hearing? You say you could sense his presence?” Peter’s words were endowed with skepticism.

  “The Angel needs to be able to come and go. He needs access to both here and there. The world inside and the world outside.”

  “Why?”

  Francis took a deep breath. “Power. Safety.”

  Peter nodded and shrugged, at the same time. “Maybe so. But when all is said and done, C-Bird, the Angel is just a killer with a particular predilection for a certain body type and hair style, with a penchant for mutilation. I suppose Gulptilil or some forensic shrink could sit around and speculate about the whys and wherefores, maybe come up with some theory about how the Angel was abused as a child, but it’s not really relevant. What he is, when you think about it, is just another bad-acting bad guy, and my guess is we’re going to catch him tonight, because he’s a compulsive type, who won’t be able to refuse the trap set for him. Probably what we should have done from the start, instead of spinning our wheels with interviews and patient files. One way or the other, he’ll show. End of story.”

  Francis wanted to share Peter’s confidence, but could not. “Peter,” he said cautiously, “I suppose everything you say is true. But suppose it’s not. Suppose he’s not what you and Lucy think. Suppose everything that has happened so far is something different.”

  “C-Bird, I don’t follow.”

  Francis swallowed air. His throat felt parched and he could barely manage more that a whisper. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he repeated. “But everything you and I and Lucy have done is what he would expect …�
��

  “I’ve told you before: That’s what any investigation is. A steady examination of facts and details.”

  Francis shook his head. He wanted to get mad, but instead felt merely fear. He finally lifted his head and looked around. He saw Newsman, who had a newspaper open and was studiously memorizing headlines. He saw Napoleon, who envisioned himself a French general. He wished he saw Cleo, who once lived in a queen’s world. He fixed on some of the geriatrics, who were lost in memory, and the retarded men and women, who were stuck in some dull childishness. Peter and Lucy were using logic—even psychiatric logic—to find the killer. But, what C-Bird realized was that this was the most illogical approach of all, inside a world so filled with fantasy, delusion, and confusion.

  His own voices shrieked at him: Stop! Run! Hide! Don’t think! Don’t imagine! Don’t speculate! Don’t understand!

  Right at that moment, Francis realized that he knew what would happen that night. And he was powerless to prevent it.

  “Peter,” he said slowly, “maybe the Angel wants everything to be as it is.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s possible,” Peter said with a small laugh, as if that was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. He was filled with confidence. “That would be his biggest mistake, wouldn’t it?”

  Francis didn’t know how to reply, but he surely didn’t think so.

  The Angel leaned over me, hovering so close that I could feel every cold breath attached to each frozen word. I shook as I wrote, keeping my face to the wall, as if I could ignore his presence. I could feel him reading right over my shoulder, and he laughed with that same awful noise that I recognized from when he had sat on the side of my bunk inside the hospital and promised me that I would die.

  “C-Bird saw so much. But couldn’t quite put it together,” he scoffed.

  I stopped writing, my hand paused just above the wall. I didn’t look in his direction, but I spoke out, high-pitched, a little panicked, but still, needing the answers.