Only the Hunted Run

by Neely Tucker

  Along the wall to his right were warped cabinets, lined with bottles and glasses. He reached over, grabbed one by the neck, turned and underhanded it high in the air, back down behind him, the bottle rotating end over end backward, until it crashed into the floor, shattering on impact. Then he did the same with another bottle, leaving it a little short of the other, then smashed two more right behind him, the floor now a carpet of glass shards.

  With his back protected, Sully moved forward once more, gun up. Soft as the rain, he slipped through the swinging doors, sliding his head and chest through, then shuffling his feet. This gave him a clear view of the hallway. It stretched fifty, maybe sixty feet to the exit.

  The steel double doors, leading outside, were slightly ajar.

  The night and sounds of sirens, the waaannhh waaannhh waaannhh, poured through the gap, flashes of the rotating red and blue lights of the police and ambulances and fire trucks splashing onto the yard from the street above.

  Just before the door, in the middle of the hallway, sat an orange plastic chair. It looked to be a refugee from the late 1960s. In the slightly curved seat stood two legs. These led to the jumpsuit-clad torso of George Hudson Harper. The white fabric was stained with dark blood at his chest and the left leg.

  Sully blinked. George had removed the cheap fiberboard panel of the ceiling and was working at something above. His head and shoulders and arms were up there. The upper left leg was heavily bound, the blood from the bullet hole still oozing. George kept his weight off of it, just a toe touching the chair.

  Sully crept forward, transfixed. It became apparent the blood on the chest was splotched from the outside but not pulsing from the inside. It wasn’t his. Lantigua’s, likely.

  It was a surreal scene—a bleeding, headless apparition in the hallway of an insane asylum, standing daintily, like a beauty queen bringing up her heel to better display the calves.

  From the ceiling, a cluster of wires dangled, suspended in air, ending in some small black blob. Sully blinked, took two silent steps closer. It was an egg timer.

  “Hey, Boo,” he said.

  The headless body in front of him froze. Then the shoulders stooped and George’s face appeared below the fiberboard. He had a large cut on his right cheek, which wasn’t bleeding. It was just a red stripe. Their eyes held and George’s were dilated and wild and then he stuck his head back into the ceiling.

  “Your friend left a few minutes ago. I thought you already had. He left the door open. You need to go.”

  Sully walked around him to the double doors, pushing one of them all the way open, making sure Sly wasn’t dead on the pavement out there, an ice pick sticking up from his face. Then he turned back. “George. It’s over. This is over. You, you, you fucked this up. They, this place, they were terrible to your mother and you had them and then, sweet Jesus, you’re as sick as the rest of them. Now get the fuck down.”

  “Sixty seconds, Sully.” George brought his head and arms down out of the ceiling again, his wiring finished. He put one hand on top of the chair back for balance and stepped down, bringing the wounded leg down lightly. The connecting cord to his plastic cuffs had been sliced through. The cuffs were still on each wrist, like jailhouse jewelry.

  “I need you to leave,” he said. “You, you, you owe it to my mother, to tell her story.”

  George dragged the chair across the floor to the side of the wall, metal legs scraping. The man was weirdly calm, the energy of earlier dissipated and gone, now sounding more like a tired husk than a mass killer.

  “Nobody knows it but you, Sully.”

  He had not expected this. The mother, Frances Harper, she did deserve some coda, some measure of justice. The dead didn’t get that from courts or the law. They got it only from stories that outlived them. He was the person who could do that.

  “Goddammit, George, don’t make me kneecap you. You’re not blowing any more shit up.” He glanced up at the wiring, the egg timer. “Cut that cord. Turn it backward. Or off or whatever.”

  George was limping toward him, slowly. “You can’t reach the timer or the wiring, Sully. Forty-five seconds. You’re going to die in here, you don’t leave. You can do something for our mothers. You’re the last one.” Sounding exhausted.

  Sully dropped the barrel of the gun and pointed it at George’s good knee and pulled the trigger. He flinched, expecting a detonation, but heard only a click. The Glock did not kick. He pulled the trigger again and got the same dry-firing snap.

  The thing was empty. That was what Sly had been trying to tell him.

  “God—”

  He saw the open O of surprise and fear curling up at the edges of Harper’s mouth give way to open-faced confusion, the features twisting, the eyebrows coming down, and then George bull-rushed him, plowing into him with a lowered shoulder.

  Sully’s knee gave way, the force of the tackle knocking him backward, gun flying out of his hand, hitting the wall beside him. His shoulder crashed into the double doors, knocking them wide open. They both stutter-stepped outside, into the rain, an awkward dance pair, and then Sully fell, his ass hitting the pavement before his head snapped back, cracking against it. George grunted and rolled off him. Sully blinked, vomit bubbling in his throat. George was up, running back through the doors, pulling them closed behind him.

  Sully fought to get to his knees. The revolving lights of the police and ambulances and fire trucks spun at the far end of the building, the vertigo returning. He stood and careened sideways, nearly falling, nausea sweeping over him. He righted himself and lurched back to the doors.

  They were locked.

  “George!” He bellowed, tugging at the handles. His hand, wet, slipped. He wobbled backward, struggling for balance, pinwheeling his arms, and then he turned, seeing the free-floating forms of the patients in their white jumpsuits wandering the grounds, in the grass, aimlessly heading this way or that, the lights of the city off to his right over the river, and then he got his feet under him and he was staggering downhill, down toward the cemetery and the dead and he tripped and fell face forward, the mud and soaked grass rushing up at him and then the world blew up behind him, the sad lost dead world of George and Frances Harper and Reggie and the nameless rest, the dark orange flames billowing high into the night.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “JOSH, BUDDY, EASE up on the throttle.”

  The boy, his unbuckled life jacket loose around his shoulders, was bringing them up the Potomac late in the afternoon. Washington lay to their right, Virginia to their left. They were under the Key Bridge, easing up to the Three Sisters. There were a dozen other boats, half of them yachts, party music thumping from the decks, anchored in the river, this little canyon between the bluffs, the houses way up there, the cars on the George Washington Parkway. The light in August fell from the west in a descending haze, the sun dropping behind the hills, the day feeling worn out from the heat, the humidity, half the river falling in shadow, half still in the amber light. Late on Sunday afternoon, Josh’s last day in town, the weekend after the horror show.

  “I’m barely going.”

  “The wake, brother. Let’s not rock it up on the other guys. Go to port here, get us in the shadows, drop anchor.”

  “Which one’s port again?”

  “We been over this. How many letters in ‘port?’”

  “Um, four.”

  “How many letters in ‘left?’”

  “Four.”

  “You at the helm and facing forward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then.”

  Alexis, sitting beside him on the back bench of the boat, gave him a playful elbow in the ribs. “Be nice,” she hissed.

  “‘So which direction is left?’” Sully whispered back, imitating Josh’s high voice. Then, louder, to Josh, “Star student. Kill the throttle. Here.”

  Josh did, and the motor, which
had been a low thrum, cut to silence. They drifted, a breeze coming, them passing from sunshine into shadow. Josh went to tend to the anchor. Alexis pulled her knees up to her chest, still holding her beer bottle in the left hand. She had his Saints jersey pulled over her two-piece, her concession to the season starting, her show of excitement about their trip to see them play in the Dome in October.

  “Wow,” she said, “chilly in the shade.”

  “So,” he said, leaning back in the seat, putting his right arm around her shoulders, “you’re taking the photo editor job.”

  “For a year, anyway,” She yawned, getting sleepy now, the sun, the skiing, the heat, the beer. They’d been out all day. She leaned her head over on his shoulder. “I like it. I like sitting in place for a while.”

  “And you, this spring, telling me to get my ass back abroad.”

  “Meant it.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “A break every now and then, you know. Not the worst thing. Facials. Workouts at the gym. Yoga.”

  “Christ. Yoga.”

  “Started. Who knows.”

  He turned his mouth to her ear. “If you stay here,” he whispered, looking up at the bluffs on the Virginia side, “I’ll keep you next to me. Safe.”

  She looked up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with green, her body warm against him, legs crossed at the knee, this living thing, allowing herself, he saw, to be as vulnerable as a woman of her life and experience could be. She was going to complain. He felt her body tense. She was going to good-naturedly tell him to bugger off, their version of flirting. But then he felt, under his touch, her body relax, release. It passed between them.

  She took her eyes off his and looked over the river. The yellow golden light there, on the D.C. side. He felt her breath rise in her lungs, her chest, and let go.

  “I know,” she whispered. She raised her head, then bopped it lightly against his chest, her hair wet against his skin, against his scars, as softly as a cat leaping from couch to floor.

  His phone rang. It was up by the wheel. Josh looked at it, picked it up, and underhanded it back to him. “Unknown number,” he said.

  “Why did . . .” and Sully caught it, left-handed, against his hip. He ordinarily would ignore it, but with the story finally on 1-A today, the centerpiece, the whole sordid family epic of George and Frances and St. E’s, the place that had killed them both, maybe it was Eddie calling him from his home line, something urgent.

  “This is Carter,” he said, putting some attitude behind it.

  There was a series of clicks and hisses, some static down the line.

  “Mr. Carter?” a voice finally said.

  He recognized Lionel’s voice before the second syllable of the first word. It jolted him off the vinyl seat, a quick step forward, moving to the front of the boat. The temperature, the air, it cooled over his shoulders. He put the phone tight against his jaw.

  “Hey now.”

  “You know who this is?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then let’s don’t fuck around,” Lionel said. “I’s calling to let you know I was taking over from the previous administration.”

  “Really now.”

  “He say to tell you he retired. He say, he’s just a building owner now, runs his apartments. Not into the life no more.”

  “I have to say,” Sully said, “I am not shocked to hear this.”

  “He say to tell you don’t be calling him no more.”

  “Not surprised about that, either.”

  “Don’t come around, neither. He say that, too.”

  “Okay.”

  There was a beat.

  “So, like, whatever. I got no beef with you, mister.”

  Sully found himself nodding. “Ditto.”

  “You need to know something, you call me, we see what we can work out.”

  “I’ll, I’ll be seeing you, Lionel,” he said, clicking off the call. He tossed the phone on the front seat of the boat. Should have thrown it into the river, that’s what he thought. People finding him when he didn’t want to be found.

  Turning, he saw Alexis and Josh, sitting next to each other on the back bench, both looking at him, apprehensive, wondering what was going on, what was with the sudden bitterness to his features. He could see it in them, written under the skin, that sense of dread—of the unknown, of things in the shadows that had fangs and claws and walked on two feet. They were seeing it in him. He was looking at a reflection of himself.

  In that instant, he felt something shift inside of him, a long-ballasted weight that came unmoored. It drifted through his chest. Let go of it, the night voices said. The voices he heard before sleep, usually an indistinct mumble, whispered inside his head, for once with perfect clarity. The weight rose through him like a balloon. Let go of it. The murder and violence and horror. A blood-red balloon, rising. He willed it to go. At least, he tried to, that afternoon on the river. He would remember that later, how he had willed the muscles in his face and in his heart to relax.

  Then he forced a smile to his lips and peeled off his shirt, just that quick, put his gimpy foot on the mat, then put his good one on the rail and pushed off. Sully Carter, over the side, poised in the darkening air, his arms out, the balloon rising fast above him, finally loosed, weaving skyward. He did not look upward to watch it. The evening chill fell over his skin. “Who’s with me?” he called.

  He saw Josh rising, taking the bait, before he hit the water.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AS IN ALL the Sully Carter books, I have worked factual events into a fictional universe. I have slightly altered the geography of the city, the layout of St. Elizabeths, and the architecture of several buildings to suit Sully’s purposes.

  In 1998, Russell Weston stormed the U.S. Capitol building, gained entrance, and killed two guards before being subdued. Long diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was held at St. Elizabeths for a time. He remains in a federal psychiatric hospital.

  Walter Freeman researched the mentally ill at St. Elizabeths and helped perform the first lobotomy in the United States, at George Washington University Hospital. He later pioneered the transorbital procedure. His ice picks, barnstorming trips across the United States, and autopsies at St. E’s are all historical details. The dates of his final lobotomies—carried out in D.C.—roughly match the historical narrative.

  The history of St. E’s is largely as described. The mentions of T. S. Eliot and Rosemary Kennedy are from historical records. St. E’s has been vastly downsized. Most of the former campus now houses the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

  The fictional is everything else.

  As always, I’m indebted to everyone who makes this particular railroad go. Most notably, my adorable spouse Carol, who runs everything from the locomotive to the caboose. She has her very own cowbell.

  I am very lucky to be represented by the redoubtable Elyse Cheney Literary Associates—Elyse, Alex, and Sam—thank you for that voodoo that you do.

  At Viking, Allison Lorentzen gave Sully Carter a home to call his own, and has made all three of the books about him better. Thanks also to Rebecca Lang, Bennet Petrone, and Diego Nunez.

  My day job for the past sixteen years has been at the Washington Post, one of the free world’s great newspapers. I’m indebted to my editors, Lynn Medford and Steven Ginsberg.

  Elsewhere, Jack El-Hai, author of the definitive biography of Freeman, The Lobotomist, first wrote an excellent book, and then entertained further questions from me. For anyone interested in the history of the mentally ill in the United States, the PBS American Experience documentary in which Jack appears, also titled “The Lobotomist,” is as well done, sad, and horrifying as the book.

  Freeman’s papers and tools are housed at the George Washington University Library in the Special Collections Research Center. I thank
the staff, none of whom are reflected here, for their assistance. The autopsy pictures that Sully sees there are historical items but are no longer on public view. The ice picks are.

  The Honorable Russell F. Canan’s stellar defense-counsel work took him to St. E’s to meet with clients on many an occasion before he became a judge at D.C. Superior Court. He patiently answered my queries about that process and about some of the basic legal language employed in C-10 hearings—although I changed almost everything about all of it. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney June M. Jeffries is always thoughtful when I ask about the mysteries of her profession.

  The Committee is the Committee and what happens there stays there. Love all y’all.

  Last, hugs to Chipo, Drew, and Paige. You guys are awesome. Erika, sweetheart, we love and miss you every day. You are with us everywhere we go.

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