Sorrow's Crown

by Tom Piccirilli

  I didn't think Brent would let me inside without a growing series of threats that might culminate with my reaching for the red phone myself and finally giving the bored guard a chance to wave his gun around. I waited while the guy ran his finger down another sheet. He said, "Yes sir, Mr. Kendrick. Enjoy your visit." I shot up in my seat as he palmed the button that opened the gate, and waved me on.

  So, Brent wanted to see me.

  Or perhaps Harnes wanted Brent to see me.

  I found the parking lot and left Teddy's books in the back seat, but took his folded sketches and put them in my back pocket. I got out and scanned the thickets in the distance where Nick Crummler had told me he'd been watching from when I'd first visited the hospital. I didn't see him anywhere but that didn't mean he wasn't out beyond the fields and back fence, where Michelle and I had made love years ago. At the main doors two guards gave my identification a cursory viewing. I was frisked much more poorly this time and wasn't even told to turn out my pockets. They let me keep my cell phone.

  The same guard, Philip, escorted me up to the sixth floor again, and back to Brent's disinfected white office. I got used to the fluorescent brightness quickly this time. We were all getting used to one another. The decontaminated white walls, chairs, and floor appeared to be even cleaner, if possible.

  Dr. Brennan Brent sat at his desk sucking his pipe loudly. For a man who should be on edge he looked annoyingly serene and self-possessed. The murder of his right-hand employee raised his confidence level, now that he wouldn't have to call a subordinate "mister" anymore. His mustache continued to skitter on its own, but like a friendly cat it perked up some when he spotted me. He smiled pleasantly. I thought perhaps my plan had already been foiled.

  He nodded to the guard and said, "Thank you, Philip. Proceed with your rounds." Philip spun on his heel and slid down the hall, and I felt my chest hitch with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, as if the hospital had a piece of me now that would forever play out these exact same scenes.

  His smile widened, and he showed the stubby brown teeth on one side of his mouth where he'd been gnawing the pipe half his life. "And what can I do for you today, Mr. Kendrick?" He said it like a clerk behind a counter.

  "I'd like to see Zebediah Crummler, please."

  "Yes, certainly."

  The good doctor made no move though, resting in his chair peacefully, as though he'd just been walked on by a Geisha girl with sandalwood slippers. I shifted and tried to appear indignant. His eyelids lowered to half-mast and he let out a sigh. I was not exactly impressing him with my self-righteous contempt. If he'd had a desk piled high with files, books, and personal mementos I might've reached over and swept them onto the floor in a gesture of scorn. I didn't think I'd get the same effect by knocking over his No Smoking paperweights.

  "It's all falling apart, Brent," I said. "How many new cases came in this week?"

  "Twelve."

  "I'll guarantee that one of them is undercover, a cop or a reporter who'll be keeping carefully detailed notes about this facility."

  At least his eyes opened wide again, though he didn't appear to be concerned. "This is one of the leading rehabilitation clinics in the state. Who do you think you are threatening in such an insolent manner?"

  "Better I should threaten you in a respectful manner?"

  His mustache appeared to want to leave his face, sidle up to me, and make friends by rubbing itself against my ankle. "You are not an officer of the law."

  I figured I'd push the bluff. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  So much for bluffing. "I'd like to see Crummler now.”

  “Certainly."

  "You already said that. Let's go."

  He almost pouted, and the milieu between us shifted as if he considered himself some exasperated but beloved uncle of mine. "I must say," he whined. "Your grandmother didn't behave in such an impolite manner."

  "What?"

  "She is a woman of refinement, manners and gentility.”

  “My grandmother? My grandmother was here today?”

  “Certainly. With Mr. Harnes."

  For a moment I thought he might be lying, but recalled the signs posted around the hospital showing it to be fully accessible to the physically handicapped. While I'd been at Duke's garage and sitting out front of McGreary's store waiting for Kristin, Anna had been here, with him—the emperor of the asylum.

  Brent and I walked down the corridor and passed that same room with the murals of cliffs and cloudscapes, the kids already battling drugs and liquor seated in a semi-circle among the older faces that regretted too much of their own lives. A few were crying, most of them looked annoyed and angry that their parents, wives, and husbands had forced them into rehab. Maybe some of them, like my father, would get the help they needed to stop robbing their families and taking off their clothes and singing "Green Dolphin Street" at five AM and finally manage to straighten out.

  Brent nodded to the counselor pontificating in front of the two fuming teenagers. We went up to the twelfth floor, down the winding maze of hallways to Crummler's cell. I noticed the small plastic window had a smear of dried blood on it.

  The migraine burst full-blown into my head so suddenly that I nearly pitched forward. My heart began a slow crawl up my throat. Cold sweat exploded across my face and I wondered if I really should get a therapist to help me control my temper. The tapered lighting seemed to draw the world back into one corner, and again Crummler lay in the darkness where I couldn't see him.

  "We've had some troubles recently. Zebediah has grown torpid to the point of becoming cataleptic. He refuses to shower or even use the toilet."

  "How does a catatonic wind up bleeding on the door?" I whispered.

  "He had a psychotic outburst two days ago, hammering himself, wailing to be set free. He forced us to use restraints so he wouldn't bring further harm to himself."

  The sound of the door unlocking drove a spike into my headache, and it took me a moment to realize that my palms weren't wet simply from sweat, but also because I was squeezing my fists so tightly that my fingernails had cut them open.

  Brent didn't bother with a cheerful greeting, but his voice sounded inordinately loud anyway. "Hello, Zebediah, your friend Mr. Kendrick has returned to see you."

  The brown blanket lay draped on the bed but couldn't quite hide the arm, leg, and chest restraints. Crummler stared straight up at the ceiling, eyes full of bewilderment and despair, his upper lip occasionally quivering. His baby's face had a shadow of his former beard across it; his shaved head showed specks of hair. There were dried salt tracks down his cherubic cheeks and in the corners of his eyes. I sat beside him. Not only had his manic happiness and the ecstatic fire and passion gone out of him, but so had the terror and horror and his imprisonment.

  Brent had let me see Crummler because he knew I wouldn't be able to do any good for my friend. His nostrils and lips had crusts of dried blood on them. I didn't doubt that he'd rammed his face against the little plastic window. I would have done the same. I spoke to his inert form for about fifteen minutes while Brent gazed on complacently, but Crummler didn't stir in the slightest. I wanted to show him the sketches but he wouldn't even see them. Anna probably sat beside him and put her hand on his head and kept it there for a moment, knowing better than to waste her time trying to talk to him. I tried to coax and placate his steaming mind, but nothing got through. He would know when I possessed the power to free him, and he understood—even from his black slumber—that I couldn't help him at the moment. Without his duty of burying the dead, he had no life himself.

  Harnes didn't need Freddy Shanks to torture or kill Crummler.

  He'd be dead in a couple of days if I didn't get him out of here.

  We left the cell and Brent escorted me to the elevators. I thought about my friend Lisa Hobbes again, locked here for a time before being sent to jail for murder, and what it must be like to so easily lose yourself into these walls, into the clouds and cliffs painted th
ere.

  The migraine dissolved in an instant, and I was slowly able to open my fists again. "Teddy met somebody here, didn't he?"

  Brent said, "What do you mean?"

  I stared at him and grinned, and wondered if I was half as repugnant to him as he was to me. "Who was it, Doctor? Who did he recognize?"

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "Teddy volunteered at the hospital, didn't he?"

  "What makes you think that?"

  Teddy wasn't very good with painting murals: the size and texture of the wall apparently threw him, but he'd made a decent enough attempt to fill his work with the qualities of Chinese art he admired so much. The way the clouds and whitecaps curled, that sharpness of each angle of rock and wave. "Who did he see in here while he worked in that group counseling room? Was it his mother?" I unfolded the sketches and swept them under his face. "Is Marie Harnes still alive and rotting under your supervision?"

  The mustache looked like it was having an epileptic fit, scampering all around his face so badly that he had to snort to clear his nostrils. "I believe she's been dead for over twenty years, Mr. Kendrick." He motioned for one of the guards, who quickly came to attend him. "And it's you who should be seeking psychiatric help."

  "I know what kind of care you dole out, Brent, I think I'll take a pass."

  I wondered, was it possible?

  Marie Harries trapped here for over twenty years?

  "If you continue to harass and threaten me, Mr. Kendrick," Brent told me. "I promise you our next meeting will be a most unpleasant experience."

  "Certainly," I said.

  ~ * ~

  I sat in the parking lot of the hospital, looking at the visitors, nurses, and patients wandering the grounds despite the oncoming chill. Several people were underdressed, but they so valued their time outdoors they didn't mind the cold. I gazed up at the rows of cube windows and settled on the highest one in the farthest corner of the building. No matter how stable Marie Harnes might have been going into Panecraft, she'd be totally insane now.

  I pulled out the cell phone and saw it was blinking angrily at me. The Low BATTERY flashed. I searched my jacket pockets but realized I'd left the second battery recharging in Anna's van. I still got a dial tone, though, and called my grandmother.

  "Hello," she answered with a faint barb that nobody would have noticed but me. From just that single word I could hear that her voice was thick and weighty with frustration.

  "What the hell is going on, Anna?"

  "What is the matter, Johnathan?"

  "You tell me. You're with him?"

  "If by 'him' you mean Theodore Harnes, then yes, in a matter of speaking I am. Actually, at the moment I'm putting on a sweater, it is getting quite brisk out again. Did you dress warmly, dear?"

  I repressed a sigh of irritation. "I'm not in my Mukluks but I'll get by. Why are you spending the day with him? Why did you go see Crummler with him? And for heaven's sake, what happened when you did?"

  The barb hooked a little deeper. I got the feeling she was doing her best to control a great and painful passion within her. It had been brought out in both of us. "I wanted to see Theodore Harnes in his natural habitat, as it were, acting his most characteristic," she said. "I was hoping to humanize Crummler in his eyes, but I fear that none of us has ever been quite human in his regard, not even his son."

  "I know why you went, Anna, but why did he go?"

  "Perhaps because he feels most at home in his burrow."

  "That's not why he did it." I thought about it for a minute, the way he followed me and Anna, skulking about the streets of the town in his limo, slowly circling Panecraft. "He's fascinated with you, and has been since you nearly ran him over fifty years ago. I also think he's trying to lure Nick Crummler out into the open."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Nick knew Shanks from his time in Panecraft. Maybe he knows something about Harnes, too. Harnes has lost his right-hand psycho. Who knows?" I asked. "Maybe he wants Nick to replace Sparky."

  "Yes. Perhaps Theodore Harnes believes Nick helped his brother murder Teddy."

  "There's still more going on here than we know about.”

  “Or less. I fear we haven't handled this situation very effectively."

  "That's an understatement."

  I heard a few snaps, a tinny voice, something being clicked. "Is that my micro-tape-recorder?" I asked. "What are you doing?"

  "Testing it. I failed horribly today in not bringing it with me earlier."

  "Why? Is he opening up at all?"

  She did something then I had never heard her do, not even in the hospital the day my parents died, when she'd had tubes and needles plunged into her thin arms pumping painkillers throughout her system while the massive casts held her shattered legs and spine immobile.

  My grandmother cackled; a high, painful, and somehow loathsome noise that drove an icicle against my spine. I shivered so hard I nearly dropped the phone.

  "There is nothing in him left to open," she said. "He is completely guileless in a most heinous and unsettling manner. I'm thoroughly convinced he genuinely did not have anything to do with Teddy's murder, or, if Teddy is still alive, with his son's disappearance. He is not honest due to any conscience or moral fiber on his part. He admits to the truth because he is the incarnation of baseness, so utterly at ease with his own vices." Her breath caught in her throat, and my hand shook worse. "He and I have spent the day in his limousine discussing how he murdered my friend Diane—“

  "Oh, good Christ."

  "—and speaking at length on any number of his other crimes, including the poisoning of Teddy's mother. Apparently he had no need to find exotic toxins. Simple household cleaning products mixed into wine can often prove untraceable. He is quite knowledgeable about a whole host of such lethal misdeeds, and prefers to handle them himself rather than entrust minions to accomplish such tasks."

  "He admitted her murder to me as well. Why didn't you call me, Anna? Did you call Lowell?"

  "What, dear?"

  "Why didn't you call me?" I shouted.

  "I had a chance to finish it fifty years ago before any of the real horror began. And I did nothing."

  I could feel her getting further away from me. "Anna, listen, I'll be home in twenty minutes…"

  "I won't be here by then. Jocelyn is mounting the front steps even as I speak, Jonathan. They have been idling outside while I changed into heavier clothing. My day with them hasn't ended yet. Don't worry, dear, I pose no threat to him."

  "Yes, you do, we both do."

  "His ego needs an audience, you see. And now, as when I first met him, I'm a spectator to his dementia. I'd like to catch some of what he relates on tape, though ultimately I fear it will be useless in a court of law. I shall be home early, dear. I've left some roast beef in the refrigerator, help yourself."

  "Anna, do not go with him!" I started the car and jammed the accelerator and spun in a tight circle heading for the gate.

  "You see, Jonathan—" A sob nearly broke within her, but she caught it on the cusp and quickly reined herself. "You see, dear, he enjoys talking of murder. We needed only to ask."

  She hung up and I gunned it, trying to dial Lowell's number and stay on the road, watching the patients wandering the grounds staring mournfully at me as if begging to take them home.

  A woman, staring emptily at me.

  I gasped when I spotted her, and the world grew insanely white and too wide. A male nurse frowned and his patient blinked as the new tires on Katie's car squealed. I suddenly spun the wheel tightly and roared off toward a pine tree overhanging a splintering wooden bench. One of the guards stood his ground and put his hand on his firearm. I jammed the brake, jumped out, and started yelling, "Help! He's in my back seat trying to escape! Somebody stop him!" I waved my hands about my face because they did it in the movies.

  The guard drew his weapon and came over while I hopped around some more. The nurse and the patient he'd been standing wit
h both stirred; the woman appeared to be self-assured, giddy, and frightened at the same time.

  The guard said, "Who's in there? What happened?"

  I stopped hopping, turned, and swung at him as hard as I could, connecting with his chin in such a beautiful display of action and reaction that I gave a grunt of pleasure, watching him fly over the hood of the car the way Harnes had done five decades ago when my grandmother had nearly run him over. His gun went off and the woman almost smiled.

  I grabbed her hand and pushed her into the passenger seat while several nurses came running after us. I slammed my foot down and drove through the semaphore arm while the guard at the gate popped his head out of the little cubicle. I'd been wrong. He didn't want to pull his gun, he just wanted to be left alone to finish reading the socially and politically absorbing articles in Gozangas. The woman stared at me and suddenly giggled.

  She was the lady Teddy had sketched—and because of her, for some reason, I knew, he'd been murdered.

  FIFTEEN

  Dipping over a clawing tree line, the bloated moon wobbled through the clouds, looking ready to keel over backward and roll out of sight. The woman smiled as we drove along the empty back roads toward Harnes' estate. She took my hand briefly, let it go, and then grasped hold again. Her teeth glowed in the flow of moonlight. Shadows twisted and filled her face. I spoke to her, trying to explain the situation, but she clearly didn't understand a word I said. Her small, strange smile remained firmly affixed.

  Teddy was at once a better and worse artist than I would've believed; he managed to capture so much of her likeness, but not quite enough so that I could've pieced it all together days ago in his own bedroom, when I'd searched through the books he'd bought from me. Irony settled heavily on my shoulders. If only he'd been a slightly better artist.

  I called Lowell and listened to phantom echoes of his voice, the phone battery so low and the static so awful that we had to scream at each other to be heard. He yelled, "You know what you've done? That's kidnapping. The feds will be involved now. What the hell are you doing? You finally lost your bird?"