by Ed Gorman
He went down the corridor to the desk where a plump nurse in a white pants suit sat reading a Danielle Steel paperback. "Yes?"
"I need to speak to Dr. Gonzalez."
She glanced at her wristwatch. "He'd usually be gone at this time."
"Would you check, please?" Hanratty couldn't keep the irritation from his voice.
The nurse looked equally irritated at his imposition.
"All right," she sighed, and buzzed the doctor's office.
The answer was almost instant. "Yes?" Gonzalez's young but rich voice said.
"There's somebody here to see you, Doctor."
"Who is it?"
"Hanratty," Hanratty said, leaning into the intercom console.
"Come on back."
When Hanratty got to Gonzalez's office, he found the doctor listening to the interview tapes with Anne Edmonds.
Somebody else was listening then: Chief of Police Stevens.
"You two know each other, I take it?" Gonzalez said.
Hanratty nodded. "Any word on Jamie yet?"
"None," Stevens said dourly. "There are twenty men looking for her. They're sweeping west first. We figured since she's a city girl she'd probably head for the interstate."
Dr. Gonzalez clicked off the tape machine. "Eerie stuff."
"So you agree with me?"
Gonzalez smiled. For the first time since Hanratty had met him, the young doctor looked tired and even a bit disheveled. "I agree with you that the tapes are eerie. I don't necessarily agree with you that they have to do with the supernatural."
"How else could you explain what Anne Edmonds describes—the unconnected phone calling her. The voice from the grave."
Gonzalez looked at Chief Stevens. "That's what we've been talking about. The tapes. The Chief came over because he hoped that something I'd say would help him find Jamie Baines. He's afraid she's going to kill somebody else."
Hanratty's eyes narrowed. "What's your impression of the tapes?"
"They're the words of a deeply disturbed girl."
Chief Stevens sighed. "What I'm worried about is another deeply disturbed girl running loose right now. Don't either of you have any idea where she might be?"
But Hanratty wanted to finish his conversation with Gonzalez. "So you're saying the tapes don't necessarily have to do with the supernatural?"
"Right."
"Then what are they?"
"Anne Edmonds could have been psychotic."
"So psychotic she'd kill four men?"
"Sure."
"I'm afraid I don't buy that."
Gonzalez offered a kind of half-smile. "I'm afraid I just don't buy the supernatural explanation."
Hanratty turned to the chief. "Do you know the cabin that Carleton Edmonds owns?"
"Of course."
"One Eye used to go there sometimes, I'm told."
"So?"
"I'm wondering if your men looked there for Jamie."
The chief shrugged. "Come to think of it, that wouldn't be a bad hiding place —if she knew about it. But it's in a pretty deep woods." He checked his watch. "That's northwest of the hospital. They probably haven't swept that area. Maybe it's worth a check."
To Gonzalez, Hanratty said, "I didn't leave things on such good terms with Sally Baines. I wonder if I could sneak down to her room."
Gonzalez grinned. "Why is it I sense a romance in the air?"
"I owe her an apology."
"If she's asleep, let her sleep."
"Of course."
"All right. Go ahead."
To the chief Hanratty said, "If there's anything I can do. . ."
"I'll let you know, Mr. Hanratty."
Hanratty went through a maze of right angles. The hospital might have been a mausoleum. All the rooms smelled of medicine or sickness or flowers.
He got to the small section of rooms in the back where Sally slept, went up to her door, and pushed it open gently to peer in.
Sally was gone.
2
The last thing she thought was: now Mama will never get that gift I was gonna get her.
She was thinking this as she stood in the lobby of the Royal, waiting for Edmonds to show up.
Then the ax caught her across the spine, shattering it in half.
As soon as her head hit the floor, he severed it from her shoulders.
Not that he stopped there.
He got her arm at the socket and it flopped away from her body, blood bursting from the hole.
Then the phone rang. The sound brought him back to reality. He was in the middle of the lobby with a body. A badly mutilated body.
He glanced up at the elevator.
When he picked her up, a substance like chopped liver began leaking from her arm. He started slipping and sliding in the liquid, and once he fell to his knees so that his face came within a quarter-inch of hers.
It was as if he were kissing a corpse. . .
In the half-light from the elevator, he stared at her dead face, the bulging eyes, the lips torn eternally open in a scream . . .
His wife had looked just this same way these long years ago . . .
By the time he finished dragging Bethel into the elevator and sopping up the rug with a mop, he was exhausted and had to sit down and have a Diet Coke and a Merit.
3
She stood in the nimbus of streetlight looking across the deserted street at the Royal Hotel.
Her eyes scanned the front of the place first, then rose to the higher floors, finally stopping at the attic. Her eyes rested on the intricate woodwork of the shutters on either side of the attic window. The blackness behind the glass seemed darker than any she'd ever seen—as if it were a different texture than ordinary gloom.
She crossed the street. A car swerved to avoid hitting her but she didn't care, didn't even see, just kept on walking, because she knew now with maternal certainty that in the attic would be the evidence she needed to set her little girl free.
She made it to the hotel and put her frail hand on the brass doorknob and twisted it. In the puddle beneath her feet streetlight sparkled. A roaming collie, yellow and soaked, stood nearby watching her. A drunk, clownish as any stereotype, passed by and looked her over. Even soaked and disheveled, she was a good-looking woman.
The door swung back and she walked inside.
The lobby smelled of cigarette smoke and plants. The registration desk was empty. She looked into the dining room: empty.
The sound of the ancient elevator startled her and she turned around. She had been under the assumption that it didn't work. Now, however, the doors creaked open.
She went over to them and watched as an eerie light the color of old newspaper escaped the battered doors and full across the threadbare rug.
She could not see inside the elevator itself. The doors hadn't opened far enough to see anything more than the elevator wall, a drab brown color.
"It'll take you all the way to the top."
She spun, unnerved, to see who it was.
Carleton.
She noticed his eyes before she noticed the ax in his hands.
The eyes were even more terrible than the ax—alive not with the madness of monster movies but with the madness of those who have somehow surrendered their humanity and become something else. There was no pity nor fear nor joy nor lust nor anger in those eyes—they simply burned with some inner need that tongues could never speak, that ears could never comprehend.
She could not believe this was the man she had given herself to, had trusted as a friend.
"She betrayed me," Carleton said. "I didn't have any choice." He spoke in a voice that matched his eyes.
And then he brought the ax down.
4
It took more than forty-five minutes for Bobby to explain to Jamie all the things that he had read in the diary. He began by telling her, "She told me where I'd find it."
"Who?"
"Anne."
"Were you scared?"
"I'd kind of hear
d her before—I mean, when I'd come out here to hide from people. She'd sort of whisper things in my ear but at first I'd just wonder if I wasn't crazy like people said."
"But she told you where to find the diary?"
"Uh-huh."
They were sitting in the middle of the moonlit living room, sharing a Coke and seated on the floor with their backs against the couch.
"So Anne didn't kill those four men?"
"No," he said.
He tried to explain what was in the diary: how Carleton Edmonds had planned the death of his wife and the four men over a period of a year. The men were his wife's lovers, men from surrounding towns who met her out here at the cabin, where they spent illicit hours. Then Jamie understood the images that had been flashing through her mind—the images of men and women together. It was Anne's mother and her lovers.
But Carleton Edmonds didn't plan to take the blame himself. Over a five-month period, he gave his daughter Anne drugs so that she would not sleep well. She became so exhausted at times that she started to hallucinate. Then he set his plan in action.
He wrote each of the four men a letter, a sexually promising letter, and invited each man to stay in the hotel with her—as sort of a joke on her husband, whom she professed to hate. The men were unaware of each other and were apparently intrigued by the idea.
In the two weeks before the men's arrival, he began making the phone ring in the attic by means of batteries which he concealed so that Anne would not find them. Then he invented an eerie voice and told her he was the same person who had killed people years ago in this hotel—and he commanded her to kill others. She was exhausted enough that she believed what she heard.
The night came when Carleton Edmonds killed the men. Given the condition of their bodies, he obviously enjoyed his work. He saved his wife for last. He spent a good deal of time on her.
He found his daughter in the doorway watching and he knew what he had to do. He ran to her and began screaming "Why did you do it? Why did you do it?" as if she had wielded the ax. He put the ax in her hands and soaked her in blood.
This was when Carlotta came up the attic steps and found her.
Carleton had gone to call the police.
By the time he had finished, Bobby saw something change in Jamie's expression.
"Did I make you mad or something?"
"No," she said.
"Then what's wrong?"
"Nothing—I mean, I'm not sure."
He listened real hard. You could hear barn owls and roaming, distant dogs.
"She's talking to you, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"What does she want you to do?"
"Please, Bobby, just be still."
He felt like a chastened child. He sat and watched her. Once she was wrenched violently to the right and had to grab the edge of the couch to keep from falling over. Another time she let out a shriek that terrified Bobby. He backed up from her.
She started crying. "I'm scared, Bobby."
"What's wrong?"
"Can I put my head on your chest again?"
He gulped. "Sure."
She came into his arms. He held her uncertainly. He smelled the rain in her hair, the faint tang of her perfume. She felt so frail and he felt so protective; he liked the feeling.
Then suddenly she was out of his arms and on her feet, running out of the room. Bobby had no idea what to do.
On the back porch he heard her smashing things, apparently searching for something. But what?
He knew he had to help her, so he overcame his fear and edged his way through the shadows of the kitchen to the back porch just in time to see her run out of the back door, carrying something.
The way it glinted in the moonlight, there was no mistaking what it was.
An ax.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1
Hanratty lit a Winston and listened to Chief Stevens say into the phone, "Tell them to start looking for the girl's mother, too. She seems to have left the hospital." He hung up and said, in his mildly accusatory way, "You sure you don't have any idea where she'd have gone?"
Hanratty shook his head. "None."
Gonzalez said, "Considering the condition she was in, virtually clinical shock, she may have started looking for Jamie again."
Hanratty exhaled blue smoke "Then that's what I'm going to start doing."
"Looking for the girl?"
"Right."
"Where?" Chief Stevens asked.
"I don't know." But of course he did know. He stubbed out his cigarette. Gonzalez's office had begun to smell of smoke even to Hanratty. He glanced at the anatomical chart on the wall. It reminded him of his glimpse of One Eye last night, the bits and pieces that had once been a human being.
Chief Stevens stood up, stretching his back and arms. It was late. He was looking and feeling every one of his sixty-some years. "Figure I may as well hop in my car and cruise around. See if I get lucky."
Gonzalez, his feet propped up on the desk, said, "I know this sounds callous, but I think I'll go home and try to get some sleep. I'm on call again at—" He glanced at his watch. "Hell, three and a half more hours." He nodded to Hanratty. "How about a ride home?"
"Sure," Hanratty said, confused. Gonzalez had his van. Why did he need a ride home?
Chief Stevens glanced at them and shrugged. "Well, wish me luck. Guess I’ll push off."
"'Night, Chief," Gonzalez said.
"Yeah, 'night."
As soon as the chief was gone, Gonzalez said "You stupid bastard."
"What?"
"You think he doesn't know you're hiding something?"
"Stevens?"
"Of course. You think everybody out here's such a hick they walk around sticking their dicks in light sockets, don't you?"
Hanratty grinned. "Well, I haven't met many Nobel Prize winners walking the streets."
Gonzalez nodded to the east wing of the hospital. "He'll be out there, waiting. He'll follow you. We'd better take my van."
"Where are we going?"
Gonzalez smirked. "We're going to the place you thought was important enough to keep a secret from Stevens."
"Then we're going to the cabin," Hanratty said. Gonzalez, clipping off the light, leading the way out of his office, said, "Then let's get going." Halfway down the hall, he turned to Hanratty and said, "Why the fuck're we going to the cabin?"
"I'm not sure."
Gonzalez laughed. "And what cabin are you talking about, anyway?"
"Let's just say it'll be a surprise."
Gonzalez shook his head. "And here I was under the impression that reporters were smart."
2
Carlotta knelt on the floor, dipping her hand into the mess on the carpet.
A long shadow came up behind her, splashed across the wall in front of her.
"Hello, Carlotta."
She froze. "Hello, Carleton."
He sounded almost giggly. "I see you've found it."
"Found what?"
"The mess I made. I was bringing some soup from the kitchen and spilled it all over the floor here."
"Soup. I see."
"You sound as if you don't believe me."
"Why wouldn't I believe you, Carleton?"
"Oh, I don't know. Actually, you've been acting strange lately."
"I believe you, Carleton. Soup. That's all it is. Soup."
"Don't worry about it. I'll clean it up."
"But that's why I'm here, Carleton. It's no trouble."
He paused. "You don't think it's soup, do you?"
She didn't know what to say.
"Why don't you taste it?"
"Taste it?" she asked.
"Sure. Dip your finger into it and then taste it. See if it's really soup."
"But I believe you."
"No, you don't. So be a good girl and do what I tell you."
She'd never heard him like this before; there was a sort of joking primness in his tone. She still couldn't see him, only his shadow
looming over her. She looked around for any sign of Ron Evars, but there was none. She wondered where he'd gone; he'd been here only minutes ago.
She was thinking about what Ron Evars said—about there being something going on here that she didn't understand—when Carleton brought his shoe down on her hand.
She screamed. Heavy droplets of sweat beaded her forehead.
"Taste it, I said."
"No, please, I—"
"Ron wouldn't taste it, either."
"Ron—"
"He's over there."
"Where?" She grimaced through her agony. He leaned even more weight on her hand.
"Now you're being a naughty girl. Now I want you to do what I told you."
"But I don't want to. Please don't make me." She was afraid she was going to start to cry.
And then the moan came and she turned her head abruptly away from the shadow on the wall and saw the lobby closet door fly open and Ron Evars burst forward.
Or what was left of Ron Evars.
His left arm had been cleaved off and there was a deep cut in the right side of his neck. There were so many gouges and holes in his body that he left puddles of his own blood as he made his tortured way to the man who'd obviously done this to him—Carleton.
Then Carlotta saw in the dim lobby light the glint of metal—and saw the ax in Ron's hand.
Ron tried to speak as he shuffled forward, but he had to try several times before he could form anything resembling human speech. Blood poured from his mouth. "He killed them all, Carlotta. He even killed Bethel—she's in the closet where he put me."
Then he raised the ax and attempted to angle it directly into the neck of Carleton Edmonds who, terrified, stood there frozen.
Carlotta saw that she was about to be set free—that Ron had saved her from Carleton's insanity. Ron was going to kill Carleton.
He raised the ax higher and higher and she turned away to watch the whole drama on the wall in shadow. Higher and higher the ax went over Ron Evar's head, about to come down on Carleton Edmonds.
And then something happened—right there in the shadow on the wall—that was both horrifying and very funny.
Ron Evars' head rolled off his neck.