The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  “Well, C-Bird can teach you all you’ll need to know about being crazy,” Peter answered with a small laugh. “He’s an expert, now, aren’t you C-Bird?”

  Francis didn’t know what to say, so he simply nodded. He watched some unchecked emotions race across the prosecutor’s face, and he thought that it is one thing to burst into a place like the Western State Hospital with ideas and suppositions and suspicions, but an altogether different thing to then act upon them. She had the look of someone considering a tall peak before them, a mixture of doubt and confidence.

  “So,” Peter continued. “Where do we start, Miss Jones?”

  “Right here,” she said briskly. “At the crime scene. I need to get a feel for the place where the murder happened. Then I need to get a sense of the hospital, as a whole.”

  “A tour?” Francis asked.

  “Two tours,” Peter answered. “One that inspects all this,” and with that, he gestured at the building, “and a second one that starts to examine this,” and with that, he tapped on the side of his forehead.

  Little Black and his brother had accompanied them back to Amherst from the administration building, but had left the three of them while he and Big Black conferred at the nursing station. Big Black then had disappeared into one of the adjacent treatment rooms. Little Black was smiling as he approached the group.

  “This,” he said not unpleasantly, “is a pretty damn unusual set of situations we’ve got here.” Lucy did not reply and Francis tried to read in the wiry black man’s face what it was that he really thought of what was happening. This was, at least initially, impossible. “My brother went in to get your new office straight, Miss Jones. And I filled in the nurses on duty that you’re gonna be here for a couple of days, at the very least. One of them will show you over to the trainees’ dormitory later. And I’m guessing that right about now, Mister Evans is having himself a long and unhappy conversation with the head doc, and that he’s going to want to speak with you, too, real soon.”

  “Mister Evans is the psychologist in charge?”

  “Of this unit. That’s right, ma’am.”

  “And you don’t think he will be pleased by my presence?” She said this with a small, wry smile.

  “Not exactly, ma’am,” Little Black responded. “Something you got to understand about how things are here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, Peter and C-Bird can fill you in as well as I, but, to be short and sweet about it, the hospital is all about getting things to just sail along nice and smooth. Things that are different, things that are out of the ordinary—well, they makes folks upset.”

  “The patients?”

  “Yes, the patients. And if the patients are upset, then the staff is upset. Staff gets upset, then the administrators get upset. You get the picture? People like things smooth. All people. Crazy folks. Old folks. Young folks. Sane folks. And I’m not thinking you’re about making things be smooth at all, Miss Jones. No, I’m guessing that you are all about the exact opposite.”

  Little Black said this with a wide grin, as if he found it all amusing. Lucy Jones noted this, lifted her shoulders lightly, and asked, “And you? And your rather large brother? What do the two of you think?”

  At first, Little Black let out a short burst of laughter. “Just because he’s big and I’m small, don’t mean we both don’t have the same large ideas. No, ma’am. How you think ain’t about how you look.” He gestured at the knots of patients moving through the corridor, and Lucy Jones saw the truth in those words. Then the attendant took a short breath and stared at the prosecutor. When he replied, it was in a voice lowered so that only the small group could hear. “Maybe we both think that something wrong did happen here, and we don’t like that, because, if it did, then in a little way, we are to blame, and we are not liking that one little bit, not at all, Miss Jones. So, if a few feathers get ruffled, then we’re thinking that ain’t such a bad thing.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy said.

  “Don’t thank me quite yet,” Little Black replied. “You got to remember, when all is said and over and done, me, my brother, the nurses and the doctors and most of the patients, but not all, well, we’re gonna still be here, and you’re not. And so don’t be thanking anyone quite yet. And a whole lot depends on whose feathers are the one’s that get the ruffling, if you know what I mean.”

  Lucy nodded. “Point well taken,” she said. She looked up and spoke under her breath, “And I’m guessing this must be Mister Evans?”

  Francis pivoted and saw Mister Evil striding swiftly in their direction. He had a welcoming appearance in his body language, a smile, his arms held wide. Francis did not trust this for an instant.

  “Miss Jones,” Evans said quickly, “let me introduce myself.” There were perfunctory handshakes.

  “Did Doctor Gulptilil inform you of the reason for my presence here?” Lucy asked.

  “He explained that you have suspicions that perhaps the wrong person was arrested here in the young nurse’s murder, a suspicion that I find somewhat laughable. Nevertheless, you are here. This, he told me, was something of a follow-up investigation.”

  Lucy eyed the psychologist carefully, aware that his response fell somewhat short of the complete truth, but in a broadly painted sort of way, was accurate. “So I can count on your help?” she asked.

  “Most certainly.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “In fact, perhaps you would like to begin an assessment of the Amherst Building’s patient files? We could begin that now. There’s still some time before dinner and evening activities.”

  “First, I’d like a tour,” she said.

  “I can do that now,” he replied.

  “I was hoping that the two patients might take me around.”

  Mister Evil shook his head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  She did not respond.

  “Well,” he continued, puncturing the momentary silence, “Peter and Francis are, unfortunately, currently restricted to this floor. And outside access for all patients, regardless of their status, is being limited until the anxiety created by the murder and the arrest of Lanky has dissipated. To make things more complicated, your very presence on the unit—well, I hate to say this, but it really prolongs the minicrisis we are experiencing. So for the foreseeable future, we’ll be in a heightened security mode. Not precisely unlike a prison lock-down, Miss Jones, but our own version of the same. Movement around the hospital is being curtailed. Until we get the affected patients fully stabilized again.”

  Lucy started to respond, but then stopped. Finally, she asked, “Well, certainly they can show me the crime scene, and this floor, and fill me in on what they saw and what they did, just as they have for the police. That’s not too challenging to the rules, is it? And then perhaps you, or one of the Moses brothers can accompany me through the remainder of the building and to the companion units?”

  “Of course,” Mister Evil replied. “A short tour followed by a longer tour. I will make the arrangements.”

  Lucy turned back to Peter and Francis. “Let’s just go over that night once more,” she said.

  “C-Bird,” Peter said, stepping in front of Mister Evil, “lead the way.”

  The crime scene in the closet had been dutifully swabbed down and cleaned up, and when Lucy opened the door, it stank of recently applied disinfectant, and no longer seemed to Francis to contain any of the evil that he recalled. It was as if a place of utter hellishness had been returned to normalcy, suddenly completely benign. Cleaning fluids, mops, buckets, spare lightbulbs, brooms, stacked sheets, and a coiled hose were all arranged in an orderly fashion on the shelves. The overhead light made the floor glisten, but not with any sign of Short Blond’s blood. Francis was slightly taken aback by how clean and routine it all appeared, and he thought for a moment that turning the closet back into a closet was almost as obscene as the act that had taken place there.

  Lucy bent down and ran
her finger over the place where the body had come to rest, as if, Francis thought, by feeling the cool linoleum floor she could somehow connect with the life that had flowed out in that spot.

  “So, she died here?” Lucy said, turning toward Peter. He bent down beside her, and when he did answer, it was in a low, confidential voice.

  “Yes. But I think she was already unconscious.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the stuff that surrounded the body didn’t resemble a setting where a fight took place. I think that the cleaning fluids were thrown about to disrupt the crime scene, and to make people think something different about what took place.”

  “Why would he douse her body in cleaning fluid?”

  “To compromise any forensic evidence he might have left behind.”

  Lucy nodded. “That would make sense.”

  Peter looked across at Lucy, saw that she wasn’t saying something, rubbed his hand against his chin, then rose up, shaking his head slightly. “The other cases you’re looking at. How was the crime scene in those?”

  Lucy Jones smiled, but it was humorless. “Good question,” she said. “Hard rain,” she said quietly. “Thunderstorms. Each killing took place out-of-doors during a rainy period. As best as anyone can figure, the murders happened in one spot, then the corpse was moved to a hidden, but exposed location. Probably preselected. Very difficult for the crime scene analysts. The weather compromised virtually all the physical evidence. Or so I have been told.”

  Peter looked around the closet, then stepped back.

  “He made his own rain, here.”

  Lucy stepped out of the closet as well. She looked down toward the nursing station. “So, if there was a fight …”

  “It took place down there.”

  For a moment, Lucy’s head pivoted about. “But what about noise?” she asked.

  Francis had been quiet up to that point. But with that question, Peter turned to him. “You tell her, C-Bird.”

  Francis flushed, abruptly put on the spot, and his first thought was that he had absolutely no idea, and he opened his mouth to say that, but stopped. Instead, he considered the question for an instant, saw an answer and then replied, “Two things, Miss Jones. First, all the walls are thickly insulated and all the doors are steel, so it is difficult for sound to penetrate any of them. There’s lots of noise here in the hospital, but it is usually muffled. But more important, what good would it do to call for help?”

  Deep within him, he heard a rumbling of his own voices. Tell her! they shouted. Tell her what it’s like!

  He continued. “People cry out all the time. They have nightmares. They have fears. They see things or they hear things, or maybe just feel things. Everyone here is accustomed to the noises made by tension, I guess. So, if someone yelled out, ‘Help me!’” He paused, then finished: “It would be no different from any other time someone cried out with more or less the same request. If they yelled out ‘Murder!’ or simply screamed, it wouldn’t be all that much out of the ordinary. And no one ever comes, Miss Jones. No matter how scared you are and how hard it is. In here, your nightmares are your own to handle.”

  She looked at him, and in that second she saw that he spoke from experience on that point. She smiled at the young man, and saw that he was rubbing his hands together slightly nervously, but with an eagerness to contribute and she thought suddenly that inside the Western State Hospital there must be all sorts of different types of fears, beyond the one she had come hunting for. She wondered if she would have to come to know all of them. “Francis,” she said, “you seem to have a poetic streak. Still, it must be difficult.”

  The voices that had been so muted in recent days had raised their own sound to a near shout that seemed to echo through the space behind Francis’s eyes. To quiet them, he said, “It would probably help, Miss Jones, if you understand that while we are all thrown in here together, we are all really alone. More alone than anywhere else, I guess.”

  What he truly wanted to say was more alone that anywhere else in the entire world.

  Lucy looked at him closely. She understood one thing: In the outside world, when someone calls for help, there is a duty for the person who overhears that plea to act. A basic civility, she thought. But in the Western State Hospital, everyone called out, all the time. Everyone needed help, all the time. Ignoring those summons, no matter how desperate and heartfelt, was really just a part of the hospital’s daily routine.

  She shrugged off a bit of the claustrophobia that descended upon her in that second. She turned to look at Peter, and saw him standing with his arms crossed, but a grin on his face. “I think,” he said, “you should see the dormitory where we were asleep when all this happened.”

  And, with that, he led her down the corridor, pausing only to point at spots where blood had pooled up. But these, too, had been erased.

  “The police,” he said quietly, “thought all these blood spots were like the trail Lanky left behind. And, they were a mess, because the idiot security guard stepped all over them. He even slipped on one and fell and spread it all over the place.”

  “What did you think?” Lucy asked.

  “I thought they were a trail, all right. But one that led to him. Not one that he made.”

  “He had her blood on his nightclothes.”

  “The Angel embraced him.”

  “The Angel?”

  “That’s what he called him. The Angel that came down to his bedside and told him that evil was destroyed.”

  “You think …”

  “What I think, Miss Jones, is pretty obvious.”

  He opened the door to the dormitory, and they went inside. Francis pointed out where his bunk was, as did Peter the Fireman. They also showed her Lanky’s bed, which had been stripped, and the mattress removed, so that only the steel frame and metal coils remained. The small foot locker that he’d had to hold his few clothes and personal items had also been taken, so that Lanky’s modest space in the dormitory now seemed nothing more than a skeleton. Francis saw Lucy note the distances, measuring with her eyes the space between the bunks, the path to the door, the door to the adjacent bathroom. For a moment, he was a little embarrassed showing her where they lived. He was acutely aware, in that moment, how little privacy they had, and, in that crowded room, how much humanity had been stripped away from them. It made him angry, and more than a little self-conscious, as he watched the prosecutor survey the room.

  As always, a couple of men lay on their beds, staring up at the ceiling. One man was mumbling to himself, carrying on a discussion of some intensity. Another saw her, then rolled over to watch. Others simply ignored her, lost in whatever series of thoughts occupied them at that moment. But Francis saw Napoleon rise up, and with a grunt, move his portly body across the room as rapidly as possible.

  He approached Lucy, and then, with something of a misshapen flourish, bowed. “We have so few visitors from the world,” he said. “Especially such beautiful ones. Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “Are these two gentlemen filling you in adequately?” he asked.

  Lucy smiled. “Yes. So far, they have been quite accommodating.”

  Napoleon looked slightly downcast. “Ah, well,” he replied, “that is good. But please, should you require anything, please do not hesitate to ask.” He fumbled about for a moment, patting his hospital garb. “I seem to have forgotten my business cards,” he said. “Are you, perhaps, a student of history?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Not particularly. Although I took some European history courses as an undergraduate.”

  Napoleon’s eyebrows rose. “And where might that have been?”

  “At Stanford,” Lucy Jones replied.

  “Then you should comprehend,” Napoleon said, waving a single arm wide, as the other suddenly pressed in on his side. “Great forces are in play. The world hangs in balance. Moments become frozen in time, as immense seismic convulsions shake humanity. History holds its breath; gods stri
ve on the field. We live in times of huge change. I shudder at the significance of it all.”

  “We each do what we can,” Lucy replied.

  “Of course,” Napoleon answered, bowing at the waist. “We all do what is asked of us. We all play a part on history’s great stage. The little man can become great. The minor moment looms large. The tiny decision can affect great currents of time.”

  Then he leaned forward, whispering, “Will night fall? Or will the Prussians arrive in time to rescue the Iron Duke?”

  “I think,” Lucy said confidently, “that Blücher arrives in time.”

  “Yes,” Napoleon said, almost winking. “At Waterloo, this was true. But what about today?”

  He smiled mysteriously, gave a little wave to Peter and Francis, then turned and walked away.

  Peter lifted his shoulders, in a motion of release, with a familiar wry smile on his face. Then he whispered to Francis, “I’ll bet Mister Evil heard every word of that, and that Nappy gets his medications increased tonight.” He spoke quietly, but loud enough so that Lucy Jones could hear, and, Francis suspected, that Mister Evans, who had trailed them into the dormitory, could hear, as well.

  “He seems quite friendly,” Lucy said. “And harmless.”

  Mister Evil stepped forward. “Your assessment is accurate, Miss Jones,” he said briskly. “That is the case for most everyone here. They mostly do harm to themselves. The problem for us staff is: which have the potential for violence. Who has that capacity reverberating about inside. Sometimes, that is what we look for.”

  “That would be what I am here for, as well,” she replied.

  “Of course,” Mister Evans said, shifting his eyes over to Peter the Fireman, “with some, we already have those answers.”

  The two men glared at each other, just as they always did. Then Mister Evil reached out and gently took Lucy Jones by the arm, a gesture of old world gallantry that, given their circumstances, seemed to mean something much different. “Please, Miss Jones,” he said briskly, “allow me to take you through the remainder of the hospital, although much of it is the same as what you see here. There are afternoon group sessions and activities scheduled, and dinner, as well, and much to do.”