CHAPTER TEN
On Sarah’s last visit, Marie’s hair had been tangled, her buttons were misaligned, and her shoes were on the wrong feet. Now her medication schedule was down, her lips were the color of Galia 03 Rosy Nude lip gloss, and her eyes were outlined with Urban Decay 24/7 glide-on eye pencil.
Sarah didn’t bother to ask where her mother got the improved outlook on life and the cosmetics. It was obvious. Marie had found a male admirer with a credit card.
Inside a mental hospital. How does she do it?
“I feel Archie’s vibrations, everywhere. Robert taught me how.”
Just perfect, Sarah thought. A bipolar patient taught by a schizophrenic to fine-tune telepathic broadcasts from a sociopath. The lunatics were definitely running the asylum.
“I know how this looks, Sarah. You’ve seen my mood swing before, but this time it’s different.”
“It’s always different. Otherwise psychosis would be boring.”
“This time love is real, Sarah. Not just a delusion. Dr. Moon could tell you. He planned to be here for your visit. Something important must have come up.”
“Did Dr. Moon graduate from a medical school, or did a mental patient confer his degree, like Dr. Collins?”
“He brings me cosmetics. Smuggles them in a plain brown wrapper. Don’t you think that’s cute?”
“Now you have the shrink you’ve always wanted,” Sarah said. “Generous, flexible, putty in your hands.”
Marie checked her face in her brand new compact mirror. “He’s quite famous. Everybody says so, but no one seems to know specifics.”
“Perfect casting for a mental hospital,” Sarah said, “A doctor who is both famous and mysterious. Does Dr. Moon approve of your fixation on Archie Chatto?”
“Doesn’t disapprove—at least I don’t think so.” Marie motioned to someone across the room.
Sarah knew, without looking, that someone would be Robert Collins.
Be polite, but distant. He couldn’t help being a schizophrenic, and he was good for Marie.
Robert shook Sarah’s hand. He kissed her mother on the cheek. His greeting was warm and appropriately noninvasive. The man did not have the look of a mental patient. He didn’t talk like one either.
There was symmetry about Robert Collins’ face, appropriate for a television personality but totally out of place on a crazy man. His eyes beamed with intelligence, as untainted with guile and as blue as Andrew Tiger’s.
Bluer than the evening sky.
Bluer than the Atlantic Ocean.
Bluer than the bluest crayon that Crayola ever made.
She forced herself to stop thinking of Robert Collins’s eyes in comparatives and superlatives, especially those involving pigmented petroleum products. What would she do next? Write his name in the margins of her classroom notes?
“I’m so happy to see you again,” Robert said to Sarah, and she was somewhat surprised and slightly disappointed to find she was also happy to see him.
He walked Sarah and Marie to one of the couches lining the perimeter of the Commons and took a seat between them.
“I have something important to show you.” He opened a copy of the Daily Oklahoman and spread it over his lap. He read the headline of the featured article out loud. “Casino Manager commits suicide.”
There were accompanying photographs and a detailed description of the travails Jimmy Mankiller had endured prior to ending his own life.
“Like Wilma Mankiller.” Sarah wondered if the victim was related to the much-admired former chief of the Cherokee Nation.
“His wife died of a mysterious allergic reaction last month,” Robert said. “His daughter is missing. They say he was skimming profits from the casino and wiring them to temporary off shore accounts.”
“Did you know him?” Sarah lifted the paper from Robert’s lap and studied the pictures. She wasn’t really interested. There were stories of suicides, murders, and accidental deaths in the paper every day, but she didn’t want to appear callous if Robert had a personal stake in this one.
“I only saw him once,” Robert said. “The day they brought me to Flanders. Apparently the day before Mr. Mankiller died.”
He gave Sarah and Marie a brief rundown of his encounter in the cemetery. He pointed to the largest, clearest photograph of Jimmy Mankiller. He traced the shape of the dead man’s face with the tip of his little finger.
“This is the man I saw subdued in Riverside Gardens Cemetery.” Robert folded the newspaper, so the picture was centered on the page.
He handed the newspaper to Sarah. “There is something else I have to tell you. Something you may find difficult to believe.”
From the look on Marie’s face, Sarah could see she totally bought into Robert Collins’s story. So far, it was not totally unbelievable. Casino managers who were skimming tended to have impressive runs of bad luck. Their family members went missing and died mysteriously. People who stole from casinos often fell down flights of stairs. They ran into doors. They committed suicide in record numbers. Notorious thugs ran gambling houses. Incorporating didn’t make them law-abiding citizens.
“Go ahead,” Sarah said, hoping very much that Robert Collins wouldn’t venture too far into outlandish territory. “I’m listening.”
“The man who subdued Jimmy Mankiller in Riverside Gardens Cemetery was Doctor Moon.”
Marie inhaled so fast she choked on her own saliva. It took several seconds of back slapping and gasping before she breathed easily again.
“Impossible,” Marie told Robert. “Delusions come and go. Take it from one who knows.”
She shifted into her poor dear tone of voice and promised him Dr. Moon was a bona fide doctor of psychiatry, not some imposter who sneaked into a mental hospital on some secret criminal agenda. “Everyone at Flanders knows him. He’s famous.”
Sarah was forced to weigh the judgment of two crazy people. Right now her mother had the edge.
“The man in the cemetery looked different,” Robert said, “But he was Dr. Moon. I know it.” The steadiness of his voice, his posture, his unwavering eye contact were all unambiguous signs of a man who believed what he was saying.
“How can you be certain?” Sarah asked.
“There was an open window in my room,” he told her, as if that explained everything. “I can barely hear the wind when I’m on my medications, but she was loud and clear when she told me about the famous Dr. Moon.”
The arm of the couch set limits to the distance Sarah was able to edge away from Robert Collins.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I can prove at least part of my story.”
Marie was no longer listening. She opened Robert’s newspaper to the comics section and asked, “Whatever happened to Little Orphan Annie anyway? And Dick Tracy. He was my favorite.”
Robert directed his full attention to Sarah. “Jimmy Mankiller had something written on a paper. He discarded it before Dr. Moon knocked him out with his yellow powder.”
Crazier and crazier.
“Jimmy dropped like a rock, but the wind brought the evidence to me.”
Sarah knew she should call for a staff member, or at least beat a hasty retreat to the exit, but she sat still and listened to Robert Collins’s story.
“I hid the paper where he couldn’t get it,” Robert said. “Before they took me away.”
Sarah cleared her throat several times, but her voice still felt raspy when she asked Robert, “Where did you hide the paper?”
“In the shirt pocket of a dead man,” Robert said. “Just before he was buried. I don’t remember the man’s name, but I’m certain I can find the grave. That paper will prove everything.”
Sarah looked at her watch, “Got to go. Late for . . . an appointment.” She waved to her mother as she headed for the door. “Sorry mom. Have to cut the visit short. See you again real soon.”
She promised herself she would talk to someone on the staff before she came back. She wanted Robert C
ollins to be kept far away from her mother.
Owl Dreams Page 10
