I was immediately reminded of Margaret Dutton and the remarkable senses of taste and smell she had displayed during our Thanksgiving dinner, super-keen faculties I now realized she must have developed within hours after she had started taking the drug in the capsules. I said, "The meds obviously relieved the symptoms of schizophrenia and restored your emotional balance. But you're saying the doctors at Rivercliff were mainly interested in the side effects of the drug?"
He shrugged, glanced nervously at the clock on the wall to our left. "I guess so. I really don't know, because we were never told why the questions were being asked. I'll bet they would have run tests on me too if they'd known about this chess thing."
"Oh, I think you're absolutely right. Michael, were any of the patients at Rivercliff ever taken off the meds, just to see what would happen?"
"No, at least not that I know of. We were always given our meds."
"Did any of the patients ever forget to take their meds?"
He shook his head. "A nurse always brought us our meds in a paper cup every day after lunch, and then would stand over us to make sure we took it."
I sipped at my coffee, which had gone cold, and thought about the many levels of what I could only think of as monstrous evil committed by the doctors at Rivercliff, and whoever was behind them. It was not only that they had imprisoned innocent men and women for life, but they had somehow, in secret, managed to develop what could only be called a wonder drug, the mental health equivalent of a cure for AIDS, and had not bothered to tell anybody about it because they were more interested in the drug's side effects. Then again, they had good reason to keep their activities secret; a drug that changed body chemistry to a point where a patient would spontaneously bleed to death if he stopped taking it wasn't a likely candidate for FDA approval.
"Mongo?" the other man continued anxiously. "Can I go now?"
"I just have a couple more questions, Michael. Dr. Sharon helped you escape from Rivercliff when this Raymond Rogers started running amok. What do you suppose caused Rogers to go wild like that?"
"I don't know. Sometimes things like that just happened."
"Raymond Rogers had gone wild before?"
"Yes. And they'd taken him away."
"Taken him away where?"
"I guess to another part of the hospital. Raymond wasn't the first person to suddenly become violent. When it happened to somebody, big guys would come and take him away. We'd never see them again- except once I saw one of them when I had to go to the infirmary. I think that's where Raymond must have been when he got loose; he must have been sick, and they took him there. That's where he would have found the scalpel and the surgical saw he was using to kill people."
"Did you actually see him kill anybody?"
His blue eyes again opened very wide, and he nodded in a quick, jerky movement. "He almost killed me. I had a cold and a sore throat, so I'd been sent to the infirmary. I was sitting on an examination table while this doctor was looking at my throat. Then Raymond just suddenly stepped into the room and slit the doctor's throat with a scalpel-sprayed blood all over me. Jesus, I was scared. I just sat there, like I was paralyzed, looking into Raymond's crazy eyes. I thought he was going to kill me next, but instead he started to cut up Dr. Sawyer while he played with himself. I came to my senses and ran the hell out of there while he was busy with Dr. Sawyer. I saw two dead guards and a nurse inside another office. There was blood all over the place." He paused, laughed nervously in a high-pitched giggle. "It scared the cold and sore throat right out of me."
"I can believe that," I said, nodding slowly. "You say Raymond was playing with himself while he mutilated the doctor. You mean he was masturbating, jerking off?"
Michael Stout reddened slightly. "Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing to talk about."
"There's no reason for you to be embarrassed. It's important that you tell me everything you can remember, in detail."
He shrugged. "I remember that, all right. Raymond's dong was already out of his pants when he came in the room. It was poking straight out of his fly, hard as a rock, and there was jism oozing out of the tip. He grabbed himself with one hand while he was slashing Dr. Sawyer's face and sprayed jism all over the floor. That's when I came to my senses and ran out of the office. But I kind of froze up again when I got out into the corridor, because I didn't know where I was going to go where Raymond wouldn't eventually find me, because now he had the run of the place. That's when Dr. Sharon found me. She was carrying a black plastic garbage bag. She must have come from someplace Raymond had already been, because her hands and face and the front of her smock were covered with blood. She shouted for me to follow her, and when I couldn't move she grabbed my wrist and pulled me after her. We ran out of the infirmary and through the halls of the residence area; Dr. Sharon was banging on doors and shouting at everyone she saw, telling them to follow her if they wanted to live. When we got to Emily's room, Dr. Sharon opened the door and went in. Emily was huddled on the floor over in a corner. Dr. Sharon grabbed her wrist, pulled her to her feet, and dragged Emily along behind her. She had to do that, because Emily wouldn't have come along with us on her own; she was too scared. Emily was usually like that-too upset to do anything. Emily was the only one Dr. Sharon took with her when we split up."
"Emily who?"
"I never knew Emily's last name."
"Was Emily somebody who had experienced side effects from the meds? Did she do anything special, have some special talent?"
"I don't know."
"You say she was upset most of the time?"
"If she came out of her room to try to mingle with the rest of us, yes. Sooner or later somebody would say something she didn't like, or there'd be an argument, and then she'd just crumple to the floor and cover her head with her hands. Emily was very sensitive, very shy. After the last time they changed the formulation of the meds, she never came out of her room at all. That's why Dr. Sharon had to go in and get her."
"The doctors locked Emily in her room?"
"No. There weren't any locks on the doors-at least not in our part of the hospital. Emily stayed in her room because she wanted to."
"Then the meds didn't work with Emily?"
He thought about it for a few moments, then shook his head. "I'm not sure you can say that. Sometimes she'd open the door and talk to people-as long as they stayed outside. I talked with her a couple of times, and she seemed rational enough. She just wanted to avoid close contact with people. Dr. Sharon was the only person she'd let in her room."
"All right, Michael, so Dr. Sharon was rounding up as many patients as she could to save you from Raymond. And she ended up with twelve."
He nodded. "She opened one of the doors to the outside with a key, and she put us all on one of the buses they'd use to take us on outings-picnics, the zoo, that kind of thing. The key was in the ignition. Dr. Sharon started up the bus, and we drove …"
He stopped in mid-sentence, and his face suddenly looked ashen.
"What is it?" I asked quickly. "What's wrong, Michael? Do you remember something else?"
"I'm. . I'm not sure. I was sitting near the back. It was all dark outside, so you couldn't see anything, but now I remember I think I heard a kind of thud at the back emergency door just as we were starting up, like something had run into us. Or somebody had jumped on. Oh, wow."
"You're saying the thump you heard could have been Raymond climbing on the back of the bus?"
"Now that I think of it, yes," he said in a voice just above a whisper. "There was a step on the back, and steel rungs he could have grabbed hold of."
"Did you hear anybody climbing up to the top?"
He swallowed hard, shook his head. "No. But I was scared. I wasn't listening for anything; it's only now that I even remember the thump, and I can't even be sure what that was. Everybody was scared and talking a lot-except for Emily, who was sitting on the floor up at the front next to Dr. Sharon. Mongo, I've seen newspaper headlines about how somebody's killing a l
ot of people here in New York. Do you think it could be Raymond?"
"He'd be my favorite candidate, except I don't see how anybody, even a homicidal maniac, could ride on down the New York Thruway on top of a bus for four hours at this time of year. If he didn't bounce off or freeze to death, he'd attract all kinds of attention up there and have cars honking, especially after the bus got to the city."
Michael licked his lips. His eyes had grown wide. "But there was stuff on top."
"What kind of stuff?"
"There was a railing around the edge, and storage bins bolted to the roof. They held sports equipment, tents, and other stuff we'd use when the staff took us on picnics, or camping. That's why there were rungs on the back. The bins were full of equipment, and not big enough to hide in, but nobody would have seen him if he lay down between them. And he could have wrapped himself in a tent to keep warm."
Ah. "Did Dr. Sharon stop anywhere to discuss what it was she planned to do with all of you?"
He again shook his head. "I don't think she knew then what she was going to do, except get us to New York. She drove right to the Thruway and headed south. She was quiet all the way, and every once in a while she'd reach down to stroke Emily's hair. I think she decided what she was going to do while she was driving, because once we got here she headed right for that place with the skating rink and the big statue."
"Rockefeller Center."
"Yeah. She parked at the curb of a street in the next block. Then she got up and came back through the bus, dividing up the capsules she'd brought with her in the plastic garbage bag. She told us she'd taken as many of the meds as she could find, and she hoped there were enough to get all of us through the next few weeks, at least until Christmas. She said each of us had a decision to make. She said she was afraid that the people who owned the hospital might send men after us to kill us, so we shouldn't help to identify ourselves by talking to anyone about Rivercliff. She said that if men were sent after us, the only way we could be safe was if we went to social workers or the police, told our story, and then asked them for their help and protection. But she also said there was no guarantee anyone would believe us, and she warned us that if we told the police or social workers about our meds, all of our meds might be taken away for testing, and we almost certainly wouldn't get them back in time to take the next day's dose. She said that if that happened, we'd get sick like we used to be, and might never be well again."
"Did she warn you that some or all of you might die if you didn't take your meds?"
"No. She just said we'd get crazy again. That was bad enough. So that's why each of us had to make a choice. She couldn't look after all of us-Emily was the only one she was taking with her. She said she was going to try to get more meds for us, but she wasn't sure she could do it. Any one of us could go to the police or social workers if we were willing to risk having our meds taken away. If any of us chose to take our chances living on the streets, then she would meet us by the Christmas tree next to the skating rink on Christmas Eve. She said she hoped she'd have a fresh supply of meds for us by then, and these would keep us going until she could come up with some kind of a plan for bringing us all in safely, maybe with a guarantee that we could keep taking our meds."
"You'd have had a better chance of being believed by the authorities if your psychiatrist had been with you. Why didn't she offer to go with you to the police?"
"I don't know. Maybe she needed time to come up with a plan. Maybe she was afraid they wouldn't believe her either, or that they'd still take away our meds."
And maybe arrest her, I thought. There had to be some very powerful people behind the operation at Rivercliff, and in the four hours or so it had taken Sharon Stephens to drive to the city they would almost certainly have found out what happened, and taken steps to protect themselves from exposure. They could have put out some kind of cover story to various agencies around the state, including key social welfare and medical authorities, and the police would have been waiting for this shepherdess and her lost flock. The capsules would have been confiscated, and then there wouldn't have been any need to send assassins; all of the patients would have died within forty-eight hours and Sharon Stephens would have been isolated. I wasn't willing to give this keeper at Rivercliff much credit for anything, including her rather belated acquiring of a moral sensibility and her heroics, but she obviously wasn't stupid, and she could think clearly under pressure.
I said, "She probably did the right thing."
"I know all of this sounds kind of weird, Mongo. Do you believe me?"
Nothing in the man's story sounded a bit weirder than what I'd already seen with my own eyes, and I said, "Yes, Michael, I believe you. And your Dr. Sharon knew what she was talking about. I believe people have come here to track you down and kill you, and I believe your meds would have been taken away if you'd gone to the authorities for help. To your knowledge, how many of the other patients made the same decision you did, to take your chances on the street and try to make it until Christmas Eve?"
"All of us did the same thing. It wasn't a hard choice to make, Mongo. Sometimes, even if you've been crazy for years, you can experience little snippets of memory, even if they only come in dreams, of what it was like to be able to think clearly, to be able to act normally and be with normal people, to not hear voices or screaming in your head all the time. Just those little pieces of memory can be so. . sweet. Then, to be able to function normally all of the time is like the most wonderful gift you've ever been given, and it's something you never take for granted. You never forget the torment of the craziness; to call it hell isn't an adequate description. It's worse than hell. All of us had maybe a month or more of sanity in our pockets, and it was worth being cold and hungry-and yes, maybe even dying-to keep that sanity for as long as was possible. To risk having our meds abruptly taken away from us was just. . unthinkable. I don't think you can understand."
I had a few vivid memories of my own, of the time when my brother's mind had gone over a very high cliff as a result of his being poisoned with "spy dust," a mysterious substance called nitrophenyldienal. I had suffered with him, in a very real way probably more than he did. I remembered him comatose, remembered how his consciousness had been warped when he'd recovered, his loss of "I," and his long, harrowing journey back to sanity. Garth had been changed forever, in many subtle but still distinct ways, but at least he could function again as a rational human being. I never again wanted to lose my brother to madness, didn't want to see anyone lost to madness. So I thought I could indeed understand what his meds meant to Michael Stout, but I didn't contradict him.
I asked, "Any sign of Raymond when you got off the bus?"
"No. Mongo, you're not going to tell anybody about me, are you?"
"No, Michael, I'm not going to tell anybody about you-at least not anybody who would do you harm. Where do you keep your supply of meds? Are the capsules back at Theo's place?"
"No. I never leave them anywhere, because I'm afraid somebody might steal them. I always carry them with me."
"Good. When Dr. Sharon dropped you all off at Rockefeller Center and told you to meet her on Christmas Eve, did she give any indication of just how she planned to get a fresh supply of your meds?"
"No."
"Did she or any of the other doctors ever mention who actually owned the hospital?"
"No."
"Did anyone ever tell you where the meds came from, or what company manufactured them?"
"No."
"When you split up, did Dr. Sharon give even a hint of where she and Emily might be going?"
"No. I've told you everything I know, Mongo. Can I go back now? Theo's really going to be angry at me for staying away so long. He'll call me a freeloader, say I'm costing him money."
"You can stop worrying about what Theo calls you, Michael," I said as I rose, picked up the fifty-dollar bill, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. "Also, your career as a chess hustler is over, at least for the time being. You're not goi
ng back to Theo's place. You're coming to live with me for a while."
Chapter 6
With two recovering schizophrenics in residence, the brownstone was beginning to resemble a halfway house. After introducing Michael to Francisco and Margaret Dutton, and leaving instructions for my bemused but sympathetic secretary to bring them anything they wanted, I ensconced myself in my private office on the ground floor and settled in for a good long, hard think. Although I hoped I had put up a cheerful, optimistic front for Francisco and my two guests, the fact of the matter was that I felt shaky, not only made sick to my stomach by what I had witnessed and heard but also not a little overwhelmed by the responsibility I had taken upon myself and the position I had put myself in. I needed time to center myself, and then figure out what I was going to do for my next trick. Of one thing I was certain, and that was the need for extreme caution.
I had entered the lair of monsters, and the ice-pick-wielding man who was dispatching New Yorkers by the dozens was only their mascot. The killings had started at just about the time when Raymond Rogers would have hit town.
I believed every word of Michael Stout's story, for so much of it jibed with what I had already seen and heard from Mama Spit. The horror of the patients' situation was not lost on me, and I was struck dumb by the unimaginable cruelty of the people who had run River-cliff on a day-to-day basis, physicians who had betrayed their Hippocratic oath and become willing pawns in conducting Nazi-like illegal and immoral research on fellow human beings. And then there was the equally monstrous, inconceivable motives and behavior of some pharmaceutical research team, possibly but not necessarily an arm of the company that manufactured the drug. They had come up with at least a preliminary model, however flawed, of a miracle drug for schizophrenia, one that was generations ahead of any medication currently available. Yet they had then kept it a secret for years because they or their backers were apparently more interested in the flawed drug's side effects than the fact that it might furnish normal lives to untold numbers of men, women, and children who suffered from one of the most debilitating of mental illnesses.
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