"A congenital defect. Anyway, probably because I'm so afraid of losing sight in the other eye, I hate the dark. I sleep with a night-light on, and I never ride the subway for fear that it will break down and I'll have to walk out through one of the tunnels." She paused, released his hand and laughed again as her face grew slightly red. "Good grief, look at the things I'm telling you. My friends don't even know why I refuse to use the subways."
"Barry said there are also people down there," Bone said distantly, again tentatively probing the stranger's mind. Dark places; fear of darkness. When he now searched for the stranger's memories, he felt like a man groping around inside a pitch-black room in which there were unseen hazards—madness, mutilation and death.
Anne sighed. "There are an awful lot of homeless people in this city, Bone—and in other cities across the country. It's true that some of them go underground for warmth, for . . . whatever."
"I may have been one of those people, Anne."
The woman frowned. "Why do you say that?"
"First, the bone I carried; bones come from under the ground."
"Bones come from graveyards, and nobody's hinted that you rose from the dead."
"But in a way I did, didn't I?" he said very softly.
"That bone is a fossil," Anne said tightly. A tremor had appeared in her voice. "It's a museum piece. A fossilized bone is not, by any means, the strangest thing you'll find in garbage cans or on the streets of this city, believe me. You could have picked it up anywhere. I agree that it must have had some very special meaning for you, but you didn't necessarily find it underground."
"I . . . have dreams."
Anne abruptly sat down beside him on the bed, looked at him intently. "What dreams, Bone?"
"Of dark places; wet places."
"Tunnels?" Excitement now vibrated in Anne's voice.
"I'm not sure what you mean by tunnels."
"I'm talking about subway tunnels—concrete, steel rails; lots of noise and echoes. Do you ever dream of anything like that?"
Bone shook his head. "No; this is moist earth—and there are bones all around, under my feet and over my head." He paused, swallowed hard. "Like inside, under, a graveyard."
"Oh, Lord, Bone," Anne said as she once again gripped his hand. "How terrible."
He debated whether or not to tell her about the orange and purple figure, his fear that it was himself, and decided not to.
"The dreams tie in with the bone; they mean something. It means that the bone I carried did come from somewhere beneath the streets of the city. I'm sure of it."
Anne frowned, absently bit her lower lip. "I just can't connect you with the people who live in those tunnels, Bone. They're virtually all . . . crazy. And if they weren't crazy when they were above ground, living on the streets, then living down there like a rat or mole drove them crazy. They live worse than animals down there. God help them, they are animals. You . . . if you could have seen yourself walking the streets, Bone. There was pride in you, life, such a sense of vitality. It was what . . . drew me to you. There was such a mystery about you, and I just had to know who the hell you were. I know you can't connect with what I'm saying, but you just weren't—aren't—like any of those tunnel people."
"At least not during the day." He paused, took a deep breath, slowly let it out. "You said nobody knows where I went at night."
"I said I didn't know."
"There's obviously something very wrong with me, and I have to consider the possibility that I'm insane. I may have been quite different during the day from what I was like at night—as different as day and night. Did all of the killings take place at night?"
"I really don't know," Anne replied after a pause. "Even if they did, it's only logical that the killer would operate under cover of darkness. After all, the police were looking very hard for him."
"It's also only logical that the killer knew his victims very well. The killer may have been—may be—a street person himself."
"Why do you say that?"
"The police must have used decoys—lots of them. But the killer was never fooled by them."
"I hadn't thought of that," Anne said softly.
"You can be sure Lieutenant Lightning has." He thought of the orange-draped apparition, felt his throat and stomach muscles tighten. "I think the police should search underground."
"Why, Bone?"
"Lightning said there have been twenty-eight of the beheading murders—but he was talking about corpses that had been found on the streets. I'll bet some of those victims still haven't been identified; nobody ever noticed them, or at least paid much attention, until they became murder victims, and then only because their bodies were cluttering up the streets."
"You're saying there could be a lot more corpses under the streets," Anne said tightly.
"Yes."
"Even if you're right, it doesn't mean you left them there."
"No, but I could have—and I can't deny that possibility. Maybe when I came up and walked around during the day I was looking so good because I'm crazy as a loon and felt great because I'd killed somebody during the night. I want the police to look around down there, Anne. And I want Lieutenant Lightning to know the idea came from me—if he hasn't thought of it already, which he probably has."
Anne, her face suddenly pale, got off the bed, slowly turned to face him and moved back a step. "Bone, do you . . . are you saying that maybe you do remember . . . killing people down there?"
"No, Anne," he said evenly, realizing how much he had frightened her. "I'm just saying it's possible; and the bone and my dreams underline that possibility. If I'm ever going to remember who I am, then I have to have the courage to say what comes into my mind. I'm sorry if I upset you."
"I don't believe you murdered anyone."
"Tell Lightning what I said."
"I'm not going to tell the lieutenant anything, Bone," Anne said curtly. "It sounds to me like you're trying to hang yourself."
"I want the truth about myself, Anne, no matter how ugly that truth may turn out to be. Finding out the truth is the only chance I have to be free—from places like this, and in my own mind. But if I have . . . harmed people, then I don't want to be free to do it again."
"Well, I'm going to insist that you have a lawyer present the next time the police want to talk to you. And a lawyer will tell you to keep your notions about where to look for bodies to yourself. First of all, they don't have the manpower to search the hundreds of miles of subway and train tunnels, sewer and water mains that are beneath the streets of this city. What Lieutenant Lightning will say is that your kind of out-loud thinking is really the plea of a guilty man who wants his guilt proved beyond a doubt."
"Maybe that's true, Anne—even if I'm doing it unconsciously."
Anne's response was to glance at her watch, then head for the door. She knocked twice, and a few moments later the door buzzed and clicked open. When she turned to look back at Bone, there were shadows in her hazel eyes that might have been uncertainty, confusion, perhaps pain. "Tell Dr. Hakim about your dreams and conjectures, Bone," she said quietly. "He'll be in this afternoon, and he's very eager to talk to you."
And then she was gone. Bone wondered if he would ever see her again—and, if he didn't, how long it would take him to recover from the damage he had already done to himself by accepting her warmth, savoring the sound of her voice, thrilling to the touch of her hand. Now, he thought, the stranger would be haunted by another ghost.
Chapter Four
(i)
She had to face up to the possibility that the strange, ascetic man she was so powerfully attracted to was, in fact, a serial killer, Anne thought as she walked through the lobby of the Bellevue Hospital Center toward the First Avenue exit. And a liar—which was the prevailing opinion among virtually all the professionals involved in the case: police, social workers and medical staff. And if not a liar, then a man who was hopelessly insane, and very, very dangerous. She had broken protocol by staying alone
in the room with him, as Barry had broken protocol by leaving without her.
And yet . . .
She simply could not match the figure of the bright-eyed, jaunty man she had seen striding so purposefully through the streets of Manhattan, or sitting on the steps of St. Thomas listening to Zulu, with a murderer who had moved in the night slaughtering helpless men and women and cutting off their heads. And if he was a liar, if the majority of consulting psychiatrists were right about the form of amnesia he was describing being impossible, what was his motivation? Why had he stopped and squatted down in the Sheep Meadow? To die, or be caught, as Lieutenant Lightning claimed?
She did not hear a liar when he spoke, did not see a killer. What she saw, sensed, when she looked into the startlingly blue eyes or held one of the strangely battered yet powerful hands, was a man of integrity and courage. She had no real explanation for the strong attraction she had felt for the brown-haired man from the first time she had seen him. Sexual desire? Certainly. Bone exuded strength, self-confidence and sensuality in his every movement. But there were certainly other men she had been physically attracted to, and they had certainly been more appropriate than a mute, homeless man who walked the streets of New York City carrying a bone like a swagger stick. Was this feeling really a "Messiah Complex," which she had been warned against through so much of her training? Perhaps—but she doubted it. As Barry had pointed out countless times over the course of the past year, Bone had never looked like he needed anyone's help, and there were any number of people in New York City who did things that were far more offensive and self-defeating than walking around with a bone.
Then why the powerful attraction? Why the powerful need to trust and believe in him? She had been in New York too long, seen too much misery brought about by self-delusion and had had too many of her own dreams shattered, to believe in anything as naive as love at first sight.
And yet . . .
She had not been in New York so long that she had given up all hope for love and happiness, all belief in the mystery and magic of the human heart. And that, she knew, was what Bone represented to her—mystery and magic, feeling, hope. And she would trust that feeling, she thought, believe in herself and her instincts, until she was proved wrong. She might be a minority of one, with Ali's attitude—as in most things—uncertain, in considering the possibility that not only was Bone telling the truth when he said that he couldn't remember anything, but that he was innocent of the killings; but until such time as the police proved their case against Bone, she was determined to serve as his advocate and see that his rights were protected. That was, after all, her job.
Barry was waiting for her just outside the hospital entrance. He was leaning against the side of the van, which he had left idling in a No Parking zone at the curb, and was idly smoking a cigarette as he stared off into space. The anger that had been in him before seemed spent. Anne playfully slapped him on the rear, then climbed up into the passenger's seat at the front of the van.
Barry threw away his cigarette, came around the van and got in behind the wheel. "What's next on the agenda?" he asked quietly as he put the van into gear, cut in front of a cab and eased into the heavy traffic on First Avenue.
"Let's go check on the schizo in rags who's been hanging out on Sherman Square," Anne replied distantly, still distracted by thoughts of the man locked up in the secure ward of the hospital they were leaving behind. "He accepted a sandwich the day before yesterday. Maybe he's ready to let us take him to a shelter."
Barry grunted, turned the wheel sharply and headed cross-town. "So, what do you think?"
"Huh?"
"What do you think?"
"About what, Barry?"
"About the character we just visited. I'll say this for him: he sure as hell is disarming. I can't believe we were up there casually chatting for a half hour with a mass murderer."
Anne looked at the man beside her, saw now that he was not as subdued as she had first thought. His voice was soft, but his mouth was set in a tense, thin line, and his hands were clenched on the wheel. "You think it's all an act, don't you?"
"I'm not the only one, Anne, and you know it. I agree with the doctors who say he's been watching too many old movies. They all say amnesia doesn't work that way."
"Not all; Ali thinks there's a possibility he's telling the truth."
"Ali's out to lunch half the time. All those shrinks are."
"Then his opinion is just as good as the others', isn't it? And Ali Hakim just happens to be one of the world's foremost neuropsychiatrists. Do you know what that man's time is worth? It probably costs him a thousand dollars every time he comes out with us on a call."
"Ali's got other fish to fry with this Bone."
Anne frowned. "I don't understand what you mean."
Barry was silent for some time. Finally he shrugged, said, "I'm not sure what I mean. It just seems he's a lot more interested in this guy than I've ever seen him before. Ali's not really big on people, you know; he only cares about their brain waves."
"You're wrong about Ali, Barry. And why shouldn't he be interested? What Bone is suffering from falls right into the area of research that Ali is noted for."
"He's not the first amnesiac we've ever picked up."
"The others were alcoholics with Korsakoff's syndrome. Bone's no alcoholic."
"Every other shrink who's watched his tapes and read his record says it's almost certain he's putting on an act."
"If it's an act, it's a pretty good one, isn't it?"
"Is it? All of the shrinks, except for Ali, agree that the odds against being both anterograde and retrograde at the same time are at least a million to one, and that it's virtually impossible that such a person would then continue to track mentally the way your friend Bone does."
"What they mean is that they've never come across a patient like Bone before."
"For a man who supposedly can't remember anything that happened to him before a week ago, he doesn't seem all that distressed to me."
"Oh?" Anne asked coolly. "Just how distressed should he be?"
"More than he is."
"Has it ever occurred to you that he may be a lot more frightened—distressed, as you put it—than he lets on?"
"He's the serial killer the police are looking for, Anne," Barry said firmly. "He's killed twenty-eight people."
"You don't know that."
"He's a killer, and he thinks he's going to get off on an insanity plea."
"Serial killers rarely get off on insanity pleas," Ann replied tightly. "If you haven't learned that already in any of your sociology or criminology courses, you soon will."
"Maybe so, but he doesn't know that, does he? Come on, Anne; he had the old woman's locket around his neck, and her blood on his clothes. What more do you want?"
"The answer to why, if he's the serial killer, he just suddenly stopped one day and squatted down in the rain and mud in Central Park." Anne said distantly.
"You defend him because you like him," Barry said evenly. "We both know you liked him from the very first time you saw him." He paused and made a harsh, barking sound that might have been an attempt at laughter, but came out ugly. "I've heard about physical attraction, but chasing after a mute, homeless man for a year is ridiculous."
Anne bit off her sharp retort, swallowed her anger and turned to look out the window. There was too much truth in what Barry said for her to defend herself—which she did not want to do in any case. She was troubled by her feelings, and she did not want to exacerbate them any more by getting into a disagreeable, defensive argument with Barry, whose odd, emerging possessiveness was also beginning to increasingly trouble her. She would be silent, Anne thought, and let some time pass. Then, at an appropriate time when she hoped the man sitting next to her would be least offended, she was going to ask to be assigned a different partner or trainee. Bone's awakening had brought out a side to Barry's personality, a jealousy, she hadn't imagined existed, and it made her decidedly uncomfortable.
Barry was heading uptown on Broadway; as always, Anne was struck by how the mall-like traffic islands in the center of the avenue attracted the worst cases of the city's homeless. Sick people, many clad only in rags and carrying all their belongings in shopping bags, slumped on benches on the traffic islands, or occasionally rose to harangue passersby, as did the young man they were now on their way to see. Anne recognized many of the people—the old woman who always sat in the same place, on the island across the street from the apartment which had been her home and from which she had been evicted three years before; alcoholics who had drifted like human flotsam up from the Bowery, where they would eventually drift back; the former advertising executive who'd started drinking heavily after his wife had left him, taking with her their five children, and who had then proceeded to lose his job, his home and his self-respect, and who had ended up . . . where he was, living on a traffic island; the old man who was constantly looking up at the sky and talking, insisting that he was being interviewed on Martian television; the pretty young woman who proudly sat on a blanket by day, politely chatting with pedestrians and graciously accepting the money a few of them gave her, who at sundown moved three blocks to the west and spent most of the night screaming obscenities into the darkness. It was like driving through an open psychiatric ward,
Anne thought, and in the time it would take them to drive to Sherman Square they would pass by perhaps a hundred homeless people, most of them mentally ill. And why were they passing by all these people on their way uptown? Because a young man in desperate need had accepted her offer of a sandwich, Anne thought, and she now dared to hope that he was ready to accept their offer of food, shelter and medical treatment. He was being targeted. She had already approached, on many occasions, most of the people they were passing by, and she would approach them again. But first she would approach the young man on Sherman Square again. You had to target; otherwise, a person would burn out in a day, hurrying from one apparition on a traffic island to another sleeping inside a cardboard box in a doorway . . .
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