The nurse’s frown deepened as she examined the order.
“That was your shift,” said Temple. “Two P.M. until ten.”
The nurse looked up at him. “Sir, I didn’t write this,” she said.
The psychiatrist’s face began to redden. “Are you kidding me, tootsie?”
The nurse grew agitated and flustered under his gaze. “No, I didn’t. I swear it. She wasn’t even gone. I made bed check at nine and I saw her in her bed.”
“Isn’t that your handwriting?” Temple demanded.
“No. I mean, yes. Oh, I don’t know,” exclaimed Allerton. She was looking at the order form again. “Yes, this looks like my writing, but it isn’t. Something’s different.”
“What’s different?” asked Temple.
“I don’t know. But I know I didn’t write it.”
“Let me see it.” Temple snatched the order form from her hand and began to examine it. “Oh, I see,” he said. “These little circles, you mean? These little circles over the i’s in place of dots?”
“May I see that?” asked Kinderman. He was holding out his hand for the form.
Temple turned it over to him. “Sure.”
“Thank you.” Kinderman examined the document.
“I didn’t write that,” the nurse was insisting.
“Yeah, I think you may be right,” murmured Temple.
The detective glanced up at the psychiatrist. “What was that you just said?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing.” Temple looked up at the nurse. “It’s okay, babe. Come around on your break and I’ll buy you some coffee.”
Nurse Allerton nodded, then she quickly turned and left the room.
Kinderman handed the order form back to Temple. “This is strange, don’t you think? Someone forges a permission to leave for Miss Lazlo?”
“It’s a nuthouse.” The psychiatrist threw up his hands.
“Why would someone want to do that?” asked Kinderman.
“I just told you. All the nuts around this place aren’t inmates.”
“You mean staff?”
“It’s contagious.”
“And who on your staff in particular, please?”
“Ah, well, hell. Never mind.”
“Never mind?”
“I was kidding.”
“You’re not terribly concerned about this?”
“No, I’m not.” Temple tossed the order form onto his desk and it landed on the ashtray. “Shit.” He removed it. “It’s probably some half-assed intern’s joke, or maybe some bird who’s got something against me.”
“But if that were the case,” the detective pointed out, “the writing would have doubtless resembled yours.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“This is known as paranoia, is it not?”
“Sharp cookie.” Temple’s eyes shuttered down to slits. A blue-gray ash from the cigarillo fell onto the shoulder of his jacket. He brushed it and it darkened into a stain. “She might have written it herself,” he said.
“Miss Lazlo?”
Temple shrugged. “It could happen.”
“Really?”
“No, it’s doubtful.”
“Did anyone see Miss Lazlo leaving? Was anyone with her?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out.”
“Would there have been another check of the beds after nine?”
“Yeah, the night nurse makes one at two,” answered Temple.
“Would you ask her if she saw Miss Lazlo in her bed?”
“Yeah, I will. I’ll leave a note. Listen, what’s so important about this? Does it have something to do with the murders?”
“What murders?”
“Well, you know. That kid and the priest.”
“Yes, it does,” said Kinderman.
“I thought so.”
“Why did you think so?”
“Well, I’m not exactly stupid.”
“No, you’re not,” said Kinderman. “You’re an extremely intelligent man.”
“So what has Lazlo got to do with these murders?”
“I don’t know. She’s involved, but not directly.”
“I’m lost.”
“The human condition.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” said Temple. “So it’s safe to bring her back here?” he asked.
“I would say so. In the meantime, you’re convinced that the order form was forged?”
“There’s not a doubt of it.”
“Who forged it?”
“I don’t know. You keep repeating your questions.”
“Is there someone on your staff who makes circles over i’s?”
Temple stared directly into Kinderman’s eyes, and then after a pause he looked away and said, “No.” He said it emphatically.
Too emphatically, Kinderman thought. The detective watched him for a moment. Then he asked, “Now, what’s the meaning of Miss Lazlo’s odd movements?”
Temple turned back to him with a grin of self-satisfaction. “You know, my work is a lot like yours in many ways. I’m a sleuth.” He leaned forward toward the detective. “Now, here’s what I did. You’ll appreciate this, I know it. Lazlo’s movements have a pattern to them, isn’t that right? It’s the same thing every time.” Temple mimicked her gestures. “So one day I’m in a shoemaker’s shop waiting for my soles to be mended. And I look and see this carpenter stitching up the soles. You know, they do it by machine. So I went over there and asked him, ‘Tell me, how did you do that before you had machines?’ He was old and had an accent, sort of Serbo-Croatian. I was working on a hunch that just came to me sitting there. ‘We did it by hand,’ he says, laughing. He thinks I’m dumb. So I said to him, ‘Show me.’ He says to me he’s busy, but I offered him some money, five bucks I think it was, and he sits down and puts my shoe between his knees and starts to work with these imaginary long leather strips they used to use to attach the soles to the shoes. And don’t you know it looked exactly like what Lazlo always does? There it was! The same movements! So as soon as I could I got hold of her brother in Virginia and I asked him some questions. Guess what came out? Just before she went crazy, Lazlo got jilted by her sweetheart, the guy that she thought was going to marry her. Can you guess his occupation?”
“He was a shoemaker?”
“Right on the money. She couldn’t bear losing him, so she became him. When he left her, she was only seventeen years old, but for all of her life she’s completely identified with the man. Over fifty-two years now.”
Kinderman felt sad.
“How about that for sleuthing, though?” the psychiatrist said expansively. “You’ve either got it or you don’t. It’s an instinct. It comes early. When I was a resident, I worked up a paper on a patient, a depressive. One of his symptoms was a clicking in the ear that he heard all the time. So when I finished interviewing the guy, I had a sudden thought. ‘Which ear is the clicking in?’ I asked him. He said to me, ‘I hear it all the time in the left one.’ ‘Not ever in the right one?’ I asked him. He said, ‘No, I hear it only in the left one.’ ‘Would you mind if I listened?’ I asked him. He said, ‘No.’ So I put my ear against his and listened. And Christ, don’t you know I could hear the clicking? As loud as could be! The hammer in his tympanum was constantly slipping and making the noise. We cured it with surgery and released him. You know he’d been in there for almost six years? Because of the clicking, he thought he was crazy, and because of that he got depressed. As soon as he knew that the clicking was real he got over his depression overnight.”
“That’s really something,” said Kinderman. “Really.”
“I tend to use hypnosis a lot,” said Temple. “A lot of doctors don’t like it. They think it’s too dangerous. But are these people better off the way they are? Christ, you have to be a sleuth and an inventor to be good. Above all, though, you’ve got to be creative. Always.” He giggled. “I was just thinking,” he said. “When I was a medical student putting in time in Gynecology, there was this patient
, a woman in her forties, who was in for some mysterious pains in her pussy. Hanging around her, I got convinced that she definitely belonged in Psychiatric. I was certain she was loco, but really bananas. So I talked to the psychiatric resident about her, and he went and talked to her for a while, and then later he told me that he didn’t agree with me. Well, days went by, and I got more and more certain she was a fruitcake. But the psychiatric resident wouldn’t listen. So one day I went to this woman’s room. I had a little short stepladder with me and a sheet made out of rubber. I locked her door, put the sheet on top of her up to her neck, and then got up on the ladder, pulled out my dork and pissed on the bed. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. I got down from the ladder, folded up the sheet and left the room with the sheet and the ladder. Then I bided my time. Maybe one day later, I run into the psychiatric resident at lunch. He looks me in the eye and says, ‘Freeman, you were right about that woman. You’ll never believe what she told all the nurses.’ ” Temple leaned back in his chair with satisfaction. “Yeah, it takes a lot of doing,” he said. “It sure does.”
“This has been an education for me, Doctor,” said Kinderman. “Really. It’s opened my eyes in so many ways. You know, some doctors, other branches, they keep knocking psychiatry.”
“They’re assholes,” snorted Temple.
“Incidentally, I had lunch with your colleague today. You know, Doctor Amfortas? The neurologist?”
The psychiatrist’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Yeah, Vince would be knocking psychiatry, all right.”
“Oh, no, no,” protested Kinderman. “He didn’t. No, not him. I just mentioned him because I had this lunch. He was jolly.”
“He was what?”
“A nice man. Incidentally, maybe someone could show me around?” He stood up. “Miss Lazlo’s surroundings. I should see them.”
Temple got up and stubbed out the cigarillo in the ashtray. “I’ll do it myself,” he offered.
“Oh, no, no, you’re a very busy man. No, I couldn’t impose. I really couldn’t.” Kinderman’s hands were upraised in protestation.
“No sweat,” said Temple.
“You’re sure?”
“This place is my baby. I’m proud of it. Come on and I’ll show you around.” He opened the door.
“You’re positive?”
“Positive,” said Temple.
Kinderman walked through the door. Temple followed. “It’s this way,” said Temple, pointing to the right; then he bounded off. Kinderman trailed him, struggling to catch up with the springing steps. “I feel so guilty,” said the detective.
“Well, you’re with the right man.”
Kinderman toured the open ward. It was a maze of hallways, most of them lined with the patients’ rooms, although in some there were conference rooms and offices for the staff. There was also a snack bar, as well as a physical therapy set-up. But the center of activity was a large recreation room with a nurse’s station, a Ping-Pong table and a television set. When Temple and Kinderman arrived there, the psychiatrist pointed to a large group of patients who were watching something that sounded like a game show. Most of them were elderly and stared dully at the television screen. They were dressed in pajamas, robes and slippers. “That’s where the action is,” said Temple. “They bicker all day over what show to watch. The duty nurse spends all her time refereeing.”
“They seem happy with it now,” said Kinderman.
“Just wait. Now, there’s a typical patient,” said Temple. He was pointing to a man in the group watching television. He was wearing a baseball cap. “He’s a castrophrenic,” Temple explained. “He thinks enemies are sucking all the thoughts from his mind. I dunno. He could be right. And then there’s Lang. He’s the guy standing up in the back. He was a pretty good chemist, then he started in listening to voices on a tape recorder. Dead people. Answering his questions. He’d read some kind of book on the subject. That’s what started him.”
Why does that strike me as familiar? wondered Kinderman. He felt a strangeness in his soul.
“Pretty soon he was hearing all these voices in his shower,” said Temple. “Then in any kind of running water. A faucet. The ocean. Then in branches in the wind or rustling leaves. Pretty soon he was hearing them in his sleep. Now he can’t get away from them. He says the television drowns them out.”
“And these voices made him mentally ill?” asked Kinderman.
“No. The mental illness made him hear all these voices.”
“Like the clicking in the ear?”
“No, the guy is really wacked. Take my word. He really is. See that woman in the crazy hat? Another beauty. But one of my successes. You see her?” He was pointing to an obese middle-aged woman who was sitting with the television crowd.
“Yes, I see her,” said Kinderman.
“Oh-oh,” said Temple. “Now she sees me. Here she comes.”
The woman was rapidly shuffling toward them. Her slippers slid gratingly against the floor. Soon she was standing directly in front of them. Her hat, made of rounded blue felt, was covered with candy bars that were held to it with pins. “No towels,” the woman told Temple.
“No towels,” the psychiatrist echoed.
The woman turned around and started back toward her group.
“She used to hoard towels,” said Temple. “She’d steal them from the other patients. But I cured that. For a week, we gave her seven extra towels every day. Then the next week twenty and the next week forty. Pretty soon she had so many in her room she couldn’t move, and when we brought her her ration one day, she started screaming and throwing them out. She couldn’t stand them anymore.” The psychiatrist was quiet for one or two moments, watching as the woman settled into her place. “I guess the candy comes next,” said Temple tonelessly.
“They’re so quiet,” observed the detective. He looked around at some patients in chairs. They were slumping and listless, staring into space.
“Yeah, most of them are vegetables,” said Temple. He tapped a finger against his head. “Nobody’s home. Of course, the drugs don’t help.”
“The drugs?”
“Their medication,” said Temple. “Thorazine. They get it every day. It tends to make them even spacier.”
“The drug cart comes in here?”
“Sure.”
“It has drugs besides Thorazine on it?”
Temple turned his head to look at Kinderman. “Why?”
“Just a question.”
The psychiatrist shrugged. “Could be. If the cart is on its way to the disturbed ward.”
“And that is where electroshock therapy is done?”
“Well, not so much anymore.”
“Not so much?”
“Well, from time to time,” said Temple. “When it’s needed.”
“Have you patients in this ward who have medical knowledge?”
“Funny question,” said Temple.
“It’s my albatross,” said Kinderman. “My bear. I cannot help it. When I think of a thing, right away I have to say it out loud.”
Temple looked disoriented by this answer, but then turned and made a gesture toward one of the patients, a middle-aged, slender man in a chair. He was sitting by a window, staring out. Late afternoon sunlight slanted across him, dividing his body into light and dark. His face was expressionless. “He was a medic in the fifties in Korea,” said Temple. “Lost his genitals. He hasn’t said a word in almost thirty years.”
Kinderman nodded. He turned and glanced around at the nursing station. The nurse was busy writing a report. A well-built black attendant stood near her, resting his arm on the station counter while keeping his eye on the patients in the room.
“You have only one nurse here,” Kinderman observed.
“That’s all it takes,” said Temple easily. He put his hands on his hips and stared ahead. “You know, when the television set’s turned off, all you hear in this room is the shuffling of slippers. It’s a creepy sound,” he said. He continued to stare
for a time, then he turned his head to look at the detective. Kinderman was watching the man by the window. “You look depressed,” said Temple.
Kinderman turned to him and said, “Me?”
“Do you tend to brood a lot? You’ve been broody since you came to my office. Are you broody all the time?”
Kinderman recognized with surprise that what Temple was saying was the truth. Since entering his office, Kinderman hadn’t felt like himself. The psychiatrist had dominated his spirit. How had he done that? He looked at his eyes. There was a whirling within them.
“It’s my work,” said Kinderman.
“Then change it. Somebody asked me once, ‘What can I do about these headaches that I always get from eating pork?’ You know what I told him? ‘Stop eating pork.’ ”
“May I see Miss Lazlo’s room now, please?”
“Would you please brighten up?”
“I am trying.”
“Good. Come on, then, I’ll take you to her room. It’s close by.”
Temple led Kinderman through a hallway, and then into another, and soon they were standing in the room.
“There’s very little in it,” said Temple.
“Yes, I see.”
In fact, it was bare. Kinderman looked into a closet. Another blue bathrobe was there. He searched the drawers. They were empty. There were towels and soap in the bathroom; that was all. Kinderman looked around the little room. Suddenly he felt a cold draft against his face. It seemed to flow through him, and then it ebbed. He looked at the window. It was closed. He had an odd feeling. He looked at his watch. It was three fifty-five.
“Well, I must be going,” said Kinderman. “Thank you very much.”
“Any time,” said Temple.
The psychiatrist led Kinderman out of the ward and into a hall of the neurology wing. They parted by the doors to the open ward. “Well, I’ve got to get back inside,” said Temple. “You know the way out from here?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Have I made your day, Lieutenant?”
Legion Page 13