Trey Campbell, thirty-six, leaned back on the couch. Carly was asleep in the crevice of his arm and chest. She snored lightly. He was naked; she had managed to retain the blue T-shirt through their lovemaking. The house was dark; the sky outside, pink. It was late afternoon, maybe three-thirty, four at the latest. They had been asleep at least an hour. He wondered, for a second, about the kids, as he always did when he didn’t know their whereabouts. But Jenny had taken them to the movie down at Monte Casino. Probably for ice cream cones and a walk, afterwards. Catalina was possibly the safest place to be in southern California. What was he worried about?
After a few minutes, he slid clumsily out from under Carly—she snarfled before settling down again on the couch. He stretched, yawned, and walked outside to the swimming pool.
He stood at the edge, looking at his shadowy reflection. There was the “me” that Marky had been talking about, the self that looked brave and strong, the reflection; but the flesh itself, to Trey, felt weak and tired and ready to throw in the towel. Another week of vacation, he thought, that’s all I need.
He dove into the pool carefully, his hands in front of his head even beneath the water to protect himself in case the pool proved too shallow. But it was fine and deep, as small as it was. He came up gasping clean pure air.
It felt good to swim naked. He splashed around, feeling a bit like a kid again. Carly came out with some iced tea, and kept her T-shirt on (no matter how much he begged).
“Well,” she said, after he’d gotten out of the water and was sitting buck-naked on the pool recliner, “I guess you’re feeling a little more frisky.”
“A bit,” he laughed, shaking his head in her direction to try to get her wet, “I guess I am not absolutely essential to the running of Darden State.”
“Maybe not. But you’re essential for the running of this family.”
“Isn’t it funny.”
“What?”
“Oh, Carl, that we fight and get tense a lot at home, and then we come here and we’re like two lovebirds on Spanish Fly.”
“My my, Mr. Campbell, but you do flatter. And you know I hate being called Carl.”
“Carly my baby,” he puckered his lips in a mock-kiss.
“You better keep worshipping me if you want to stay happy, bubba,” Carly lay back and pointed to the sky. “Look at that sky. Pink and blue and yellow. Yikes, it’s like a Spielberg movie.”
Trey watched the play of pink and gold light out to the other side of the western hills of Catalina. The sun wouldn’t set for several more hours, but the heat of the day had abated, and the feeling was bucolic. “Like a movie,” he whispered, feeling drunk although he was not. “You and me live happily ever after, Carly, and nobody needs to call me again because the whole complex of Darden State’s running smooth.”
He reached across to where she sat, took her hand in his, squeezed it.
She gave him a strange look.
“I’ve got to tell you something,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows, expecting some further protestation of love or lust.
“Something you might not be too happy about.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I unplugged the phone before. Now, honey, you were just starting to relax. I wasn’t about to have that Jim person calling every ten minutes with some screw-up that was going to keep us from enjoying ourselves. It’s a hospital for the criminally insane, horrible things happen there. We don’t need to bring them everywhere we go.” And then, her head down, she said, “I’m sorry.”
He felt himself tense up at first; but then, shook his head. “No biggie. You’re right. I may be resigning soon, anyway, right? Who needs ‘em?”
But, after a few minutes pretending to enjoy the view, he stood and excused himself to go take a shower.
On the way to the bathroom, he plugged the bedroom phone back into its wall-jack.
The phone rang immediately.
He picked it up. “Jim?”
The person on the other end of the line said nothing.
But he heard the breathing.
Her breathing.
The line went dead.
21
“What’s going on?” Carly asked. She stood in the doorway.
Trey Campbell sat on the bed, staring at the phone.
“Trey?”
He looked up at her. “She’s out,” he said.
“Who?”
His mouth was dry. “The Gorgon.”
22
Agnes Hatcher stared at the phone.
She wanted to say something, but she was afraid of being overheard. Someone had just walked back into the room. She couldn’t trust the animals. She had spent most of the day squeezed into a crawlspace above the acoustic tile on D Ward. The rest of the time, she’d hidden in a room.
Someone stood over her, as she sat and thrummed her fingers on the desk’s surface. One of the two who had come into the room, a man, was leaving. A man in a police uniform.
The woman who remained said, “I wish those cops would get out of our hair.”
Agnes said nothing. Then, she looked up at the woman who had just spoken and said, “Thanks for letting me use your phone.”
“No problem.” The woman was preoccupied, scanning a chart on a clipboard. The woman had fine features, but her forehead was wrinkled from stress. Her badge read: Kuehl. Agnes had never seen her before. But then, Agnes had seen so few of their faces; likewise, few working on the ward had ever seen hers. The cloth face cover was usually on her face, except when the animals fed her. Only then did she see a face or two. Only then could she begin to understand how these animals operated.
The waiting room was large and square. It contained three small desks, six chairs, and two potted plants. There was a television set suspended from the ceiling in the northeast corner. An I Love Lucy rerun was showing. Beneath the television set, a long window. Outside, the dried, matted lawn of Darden State, and two other buildings. Double-doors led out to the sidewalk between the buildings. Agnes didn’t know the layout of the other wards. She surmised that there was a diamond-pattern to them, for each one had a courtyard. Beyond these buildings, were the high fences, and beyond these, the canyon, and freedom.
Agnes Hatcher wore a dress that was loose and long for her frame. It was not the sort of fabric she would’ve chosen—these were Donna Howe’s day clothes. Agnes had had to double-tuck the waist into the belt to keep from looking too clownish in the larger woman’s clothes. The dress stank of barnyards, but Agnes tolerated it. She knew that a false move would land her back in the bed, back in the restraints. She’d had forty minutes after dealing with Donna Howe. She had washed in the sink in her room. She had shampooed her hair carelessly with yellow soap, and knew that it still contained some blood, matted at the nape of her neck. She had brushed it out with her fingers before leaving her room. Donna’s street clothes had been in her locker, which was down the hall from her room. Because she knew that destiny was on her side, she was able to walk down the corridor undetected; changed in the hall bathroom; and then tried to go outside, but had seen the police arrive. She went to sit in an elderly patient’s room, opened a bible, and began reading sections of it to the old man in the bed. When the police had come in to search the room, she had smiled at them and said, “Brothers, these poor souls, how desolate are their spirits.” It was enough to make them leave her alone
She watched the woman named Kuehl.
“Is something bad happening?” Agnes asked.
The woman didn’t look up from her clipboard for a second. Then, she said, “Oh, just some trouble with the patients.”
“But that policeman that was just here? Did he know anything?”
“Nothing new.” This time the woman named Kuehl looked at her. “You said your friend is meeting you?”
Agnes nodded. “My boyfriend. Jack. He’s a doctor here. We’re supposed to have a very late lunch. Is it four yet?”
The woman named Kuehl glanced at her wristw
atch.
Agnes stood up from the desk. She walked over to the woman as the woman looked up from her watch.
“It’s just past.”
“Well,” Agnes sighed, “then it’s too late.”
The woman looked at her face strangely, and Agnes worried for a second. She normally was never worried, but the woman seemed to notice something around Agnes’ eyes.
“I think you’re bleeding,” the woman named Kuehl said.
“Oh, that. It’s an old wound. I think I’ll just leave a note for my friend,” she said. “Do you have a pen?” The woman reached into her breast pocket and withdrew the weapon, the cutter, the slicer, the skinner, the Bic ballpoint pen.
23
As Agnes performed the surgery on the woman named Kuehl, it came back to her like a scent from the past, a day from her childhood remembered in a few seconds:
Her father would go into her room and find her make-up every morning and then throw it out or hide it so she couldn’t find it. She was eleven, and her father was a puritan from the old school who didn’t believe that girls her age wore any make-up unless they were practicing to become whores. So, every day, on her way to school, she would walk up Laconia Boulevard, past the liquor store and the coffee shop, until she came to the Mobile station. She’d put coins in the machine to get a Coke, take a sip, and then ask the manager for the key to the rest room. She’d get it, unlock the room, and go in. It often smelled bad there, so she’d open her small purse and draw out a bottle of her mother’s best perfume, usually Shalimar, which she had stolen from the dresser in her parents’ bedroom. She’d spray some of it around the restroom, and apply a bit to the back of her neck. Then, she’d take lipstick from her purse, and mascara, and a small compact with powder. These she would’ve bought at the drug store and kept well concealed in a small music box in her room. Her father never opened the music box because it had once belonged to Agnes’s grandmother. Her father hated her grandmother so much that he had smiled when he had heard the news of the old woman’s death two years before.
Agnes considered this her magic hour, when she would transform herself at the Mobile restroom. From plain Agnes Hatcher to Francine, a young French goddess with dark eyelashes and rosy cheeks and cherry red lips, a woman of intrigue and seductive charm. Francine had shapelier calves than Agnes, and she had a great deal of poise and joie de vivre. She would brush her hair our again so that it sparkled, and spray it carefully so as to keep it looking full and fresh all day long. Then, she would finish her morning Coke, repack her supplies, pick her books up, and open the door to the rest room. School was two blocks further. If she walked slowly she would not sweat too much, and so the boys in homeroom would look at her a certain way, which made her happy. She had found that if she lifted her dress just a bit as she sat down, they would smile at the glimpse of panties.
Then, after school, she would walk back to the Mobil station, get into the rest room and wipe the make up off with a Kleenex and some cold cream. She would wash her face and become, in her mind, plain Agnes again. Francine was there, still, in the mirror, left behind as Agnes trudged slowly home to a family which never fought or disagreed or said anything bad to each other.
It was on a Tuesday that this changed. Agnes walked up Laconia Boulevard by herself, but noticed someone watching her. She had just passed the liquor store, and looked at some of the champagnes advertised in the front window—she tried to see the reflection of the man who watched her in the glass, but all she saw was her own reflection and the sun’s flat light. She turned to look at the man, shielding her eyes from the sunlight, thinking it was someone she knew. It was a man wearing chinos and boots, with a yellow shirt on it. It looked like a cowboy shirt, because there were lassos and horses embroidered on it. The man had blond hair and looked cute to her, even though she knew he must be nearly twice her age. She realized that he wasn’t watching her at all. Apparently, he was just watching the road. His thumb was out and he had a green canvas duffel bag at his feet. He was hitchhiking.
She continued on to the Mobil station, and waved to the two old men who sat out front. She tried to get a key to the rest room, but the attendant was busy, and the manager was nowhere to be seen. The manager was usually nice to her, and sometimes gave her a free Coke and patted her head. She missed him today; he was nicer than her father. Agnes bought a Coke and waited out by the garage bays, hoping to see the manager.
Then, she went to try the restroom door.
Someone was inside the restroom and seemed to be taking forever. She waited almost ten minutes, and realized that she’d be late for school if she waited much longer. The transom to the women’s room was open, and she heard the fan from within, and the sound of water running. And still the woman inside didn’t come out.
Agnes knocked on the door. She was already finished with her Coke. Her books felt heavy in her arms.
The door to the men’s room was open just a crack. The transom up top was open, too, and there was no fan on, no sound at all. Agnes had never been in a men’s restroom before, and had, frankly, been curious.
The men’s room was shadowy. She pushed the door a bit further open, and it creaked. She glanced back to the attendant at the gas pump, but he was talking with a customer who had come for a fill-up. Quickly, Agnes stepped inside the men’s room. No one was there. She heard the steady drip of water at the sink, and went to shut the water off. Once inside, she used the back of her heel to shut the door. She didn’t want to touch anything, as it all looked extraordinarily filthy. She turned the lock on the doorknob. She sighed. She flicked the light switch, but no light came on. She tried it a few times, but the room remained dark. There was some light coming from the transom, and she had a pen light in her purse, so she set her purse on the sink and rummaged in it for the light. She brought it out and turned it on. Her reflection seemed spooky with the small intense light in her hand. She looked ugly in the light.
But I’ll turn into Francine, she thought, in a few minutes.
She set the pen light down on the sink, and picked out the perfume from her purse. She sprayed it in the air, but the smell of the place remained bad. It was still fairly dark, so she had a difficult time putting the make-up on.
As she was carefully applying lipstick, someone tried the door. Because she hadn’t used a key to get into the men’s room—the door had been left open—she wondered if the man outside would go get the key from the attendant or the manager. She grew scared. She closed the lipstick up, and dropped all her make-up into her purse. She went back to the toilet stall and shut the door behind her. She would wait until the man outside went away, and then she would wait another five minutes. The toilet stank, so she had to hold her nose.
In less than a minute, someone opened the door.
She saw the light on the ceiling above her, as the door opened and closed. A breath of clean air whisked through the stink of the men’s room.
The intruder tried the light switch. She heard the sound of water in the sink. She looked through the crack in the stall door. He was walking back. She hoped he was going to use the urinal, but instead he tried the tall door. He tried it twice. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he thinking: hmm...pretty strange that the door isn’t opening considering no one else is here. Or was he thinking: I better go to another rest room, this one’s out of order? She stood there, back against the wall, holding her breath.
She heard his footsteps as he walked away.
She heard him peeing in the urinal. The flush. The door of the room opening and closing.
No sound.
He had left.
Water was still running in the sink.
She figured that she had better get out of there quickly, so she unlocked and opened the stall door and stepped out into the rest room.
He was there. He stood in front of her, blocking her way.
Agnes dropped her purse, gasping. She tried to move, but her limbs seemed to be made of stone.
She couldn’t see his f
ace because of shadow.
He said, “Knew I seen you come in here.”
He reached down and grabbed her around her shoulders. She struggled against him, but he held her tight. He covered her mouth with his hand and took her over to the sink. She managed to work a hand free and slammed it back, hoping to hit him in the face. Instead, her hand went into the mirror, and she felt glass splinters. She grasped one of the glass shards and brought it up to his face and sliced across what she hoped was his ear, when she realized that she could not breathe at all, and that was the last thing Agnes Hatcher remembered until she woke up in the motel room in Las Cruces, her wrists tied together.
“Where am I?”
The man didn’t look at her. He was watching TV. He said, “Las Cruces.”
She began crying.
“I didn’t rape you or nothin’.”
After she finished crying, she said, “please let me go home, mister. Please.”
The man turned off the TV. and looked at her.
She knew who he was.
He was the manager from the Mobil station. Mr. Farquhar. She had known him since she was eight. He had always been the manager of the Mobil station. He said, “Can’t do that.”
She said nothing. Her throat was sore, and she was thirsty. She didn’t want to ask him for a glass of water because she was afraid that he might do something terrible to her. She heard a fly buzzing at the window.
“It’s not awful,” he said. “What I’m gonna do. It’s not awful.”
She shut her eyes and pretended she was Francine and not stupid Agnes Hatcher.
“All I’m gonna do,” he said, “is fulfill my destiny with you.”
“You kidnapping me?” she asked.
“Naw. Can’t call it that. But I know ‘bout who you are...I seen it in your eyes. I know you go in the room to change so other kids’ll think you’re just like them. You and I, we know each other from ways back. Centuries.” He turned to point across to the window, as if behind the curtains and venetian blinds was all of human time. She noticed that part of his ear had been sliced off. I did it, she thought, and her heart beat slightly fast, thinking that she could really hurt him if she wanted. If only her hands weren’t bound. He said, “I been huntin’ you a long time.”
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 6