by JA Schneider
She stopped short, staring ahead. “Oh please don’t tell me that’s Dara Walsh again.”
They followed her gaze. Thirty yards north, just passing the next water fountain, was indeed Brian Walsh’s wife, moving fast.
“Must have entered at Ninth Street,” Alex said low.
They watched her leave the pedestrian path and head briskly up Avenue B.
“Headed where we’re headed.” Keri frowned; and Alex, tight-lipped, said, “What the hell…?”
They left the park, and at a good distance followed Dara Walsh the four remaining blocks to St. Mary’s.
Which Dara passed. Walked right past the old red-brick pile, then passed the yellow police barriers and the closed church behind them, and disappeared around the corner.
Alex radioed to have her followed. He then stood eyeing the two shadowy service alleys on both sides of St. Mary’s. The one on the left was wrought-iron-gated. The one on the right, between St. Mary’s and a brownstone, was open. “We’ll be in there,” he told Jill, gesturing to the right. “Hugging the building, just yards away.” He put his ear pod back in.
Keri subtly slipped in hers too. “Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Jill’s heart started banging. She pulled out her syringe for both of them to see. “Valium. Works fast. Big help unless I get jumped from behind.”
They didn’t look reassured.
“Keep your voice steady,” Alex said. “If we hear the slightest alarm in it, we’re in there in a second.”
Jill nodded numbly, swallowing. Stood there on the sidewalk and watched them duck into the alley.
Then looked up at the building. Four stories and brooding, its red bricks looking ready to crumble. She could imagine the creaks coming from its old wooden floors and doors. ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL read the faded carving on the lintel.
It was five minutes past three. She pulled in a deep breath, checked her Mace under her sweater sleeve and the Valium in her pocket again.
Then climbed the few steps and went in.
28
The lobby was small, dark, and smelled old. Jill asked the receptionist for Ralph Nash.
“Christine Connor,” she said. “He’s expecting me.” She’d planned on another last name. Joe Connor’s just came to her.
“Ah Christine, yes, he told me.” The receptionist looked delighted. He had a thin but affable face, thinning pale hair, and looked maybe forty. “My name is Will,” he said proudly. “I’m not really a receptionist, I’m a patient.”
“Oh?” A medicated patient. No real receptionist. “Good for you,” Jill said a bit awkwardly.
“Good for this great place that helped me. Terrible its funding is drying up, staff let go. My disorder’s been under control for weeks.”
“That’s awesome.”
Will wanted to talk more about his bipolar disorder, the neighbors complaining about his vacuuming at 4 a.m., but when Jill just stood there, saying little, he sighed, smiled again, and pointed to a set of swinging double doors. “Ralph is on the first floor in room 12. Six doors past the stairway. Careful, don’t trip over the threshold. It’s broken, the wood pops up. They’ve even had to lay off the maintenance people.”
Jill thanked him, took a deep breath, and pushed through the swinging doors. A darkened hall stretched ahead. On her right were winding wooden stairs with dusty banisters, and on her left was a small waiting room with magazines on a table. No television. Were there any TVs in this place? Likely not, come to think of it. TV news and violent shows would upset the patients. Will’s eyes had shown no glimmer of recognition from the media.
Jill started walking, looking up and around. There seemed to be no security cameras. She touched her medallion. “I’m in,” she whispered. “Entrance is swinging doors to the left of reception.”
The medallion gave an almost inaudible beep.
Plaques outside each closed door marked the room numbers. She crept past several, soundless within, and reached number 12. Belatedly it occurred to her to switch her cell phone onto “record.”
Then she knocked.
Inside, a chair scraped. The sound of footsteps came closer and a male voice said, “Christine?”
Jill breathed in, her heart thudding. “Yes, it’s me.”
The door opened, revealing a different-looking Megaphone Man. He looked neater, in laundered jeans and a frayed white shirt. His eyes were an overly bright brown, and his graying dark hair was combed. The red, angry face that they’d seen outside the hospital was pale now that there was no crowd hassling him. He looked to be in his mid forties.
“Come in,” he said eagerly, his bright eyes fixed on her.
The room was tiny, with a bed, a crucifix over it, a small desk, a chair before it and another chair by the window. Papers covered with large, handwritten scrawls littered the desk, the floor, and the bed. The chair by the window afforded a view of the closed church’s tan blank wall.
“Do you mind keeping the door open?” Jill asked primly. “I’m not accustomed to being alone in a room with a man.”
“Because you are a decent woman,” Nash said approvingly. “Of course.”
Jill opened the door wider and stood there awkwardly. She kept her jacket on. Nash did not offer to take it.
“Please, have a seat.” He motioned her to the chair by the window as he fumbled through his computer and assorted jumble on his desk, took an old transistor radio into his arms, and sat stiffly facing her on his bed.
“I am so glad you came,” he said, hugging his transistor, his eyes lit with magnetic neediness. That made it easier to respond.
“Of course.” Jill was facing the open door and the hallway. It was so quiet out there. Not a sound. “When you wrote about your woes with the police I had to.”
Nash shuddered and hugged his transistor. “You’re not afraid of them?”
“Should I be? Please tell me.” She kept her voice level.
“They’re after me, spying on me. Told Sister Meg about my website, and she told me to shut it down. But I won’t. Is this still a country of free speech?”
“Last I heard.” Jill forced an earnest look, though her heart was throbbing. “Why should the police be spying on you?”
“Because of my website. It contains truth, and an urgent alert that Satan is among us.” Nash spoke with a creepy intensity. “That Madison hospital – you saw the name on the website?”
“Yes, yes.” She leaned forward with an expression from a revival tent.
Nash leaned forward too, lowered his creepy voice. “They’ve had the arrogance to take the place of the Creator, and that child up there is Satan’s son. The world must be saved from him.”
He fixed intently on Jill across the tiny room. “And you agree, yes?”
What to say now? Oh jeez…Jill licked dry lips. “The truth shall prevail,” she said, wondering where that interpret-any-way cliché came from. Then she sidestepped as a question came to her. “You are skilled to have put up that website by yourself.”
A modest smile crept across Ralph’s face. “I didn’t.”
Jill cocked her head, let her confusion show.
“God did,” he said.
God built his website?
“Oh,” Nash said brightly. “Rick showed me that free web site place, and gave me a lesson. It’s easy. Rick and Sister Meg were so pleased that I’d found something I liked” – a slow, unhappy headshake - “until they found out what it was. Now they’re letting the Devil Police intimidate them and telling me to take it down.”
“Who’s Rick?”
“One of the only two nurses left. Gary is the other nurse and Sister Meg is St. Mary’s director.” Nash looked up at the ceiling. “They must be with patients upstairs. They’re too sick to merit being on the first floor,” he said proudly. “I moved down nine weeks ago, when they started transferring patients out, and because I was…happy on my medication.”
Nash smiled again, and glanced briefly out the open door. “There are
empty rooms on this floor too. It’s so sad. The Archdiocese has no more money, but that’s the work of the devil too. Taking their money.”
Time to steer him back. “You said God put up the website?”
Nash patted his old transistor. “God speaks to me through this. He told me what to say.”
Jill blinked uncertainly. She’d never had experience in psych. “Oh, how wonderful,” she managed. “Will God speak to me too?”
A slow, sorry headshake, another modest smile. “Unfortunately, no. Only I am the chosen one to bear witness. Besides, God speaks to me just at night, and only at a certain frequency. I cannot divulge what it is.”
Uh, great, now what? Jill frowned a little, turned, and peered out the window to the service alley. It stretched between this building and the closed church. Trash bins had been pushed right up to the front wrought iron gate. Odd. For easier access to collect garbage or…for climbing over? She noticed too that the window latch, once cemented closed, had been broken open.
Inhaling, she turned back and moved her chair away from the window, then said with fake anxiety, “Do people look through that window?”
“I don’t think so.” Nash blinked placidly and glanced at his watch. “The gates are locked at both ends.”
Huh? Paranoia about police spying on him but not looking through the window?
“But those gates are low,” Jill said. “Only four feet.” She rubbed her hands together. “When I came you … asked if I was scared of the police. I’m not yet, but I am afraid of that murderer…”
“Murderer?” Nash looked politely confused.
Genuine or good acting? “Yes. It’s been in the papers. There have been murders of pregnant women. They were beaten to death and left with snakes wound around their necks.”
“Snakes! Oh how horrible!” Nash’s whole body contorted in revulsion and he almost dropped his transistor.
No reaction to the murdered women.
There was a sound in the hall. Footsteps and someone knocking on another door.
Nash glanced out and then back. Jill did too.
“So maybe that’s why the police don’t like your website,” she went on, still faking anxiety. Nash seemed distracted again by sounds in the hall, voices talking. Jill craned for his attention. “Because these women were pregnant by IVF, do you know what that is?”
She saw him blink. “Of course.” He turned his head back to her, his voice whispery soft. “It’s a sin. It violates the place of the Creator,” he said again. “Even fundamentalist Protestants deem it adultery.” His hand swept the sprawl of papers littering his room. “This is what I study. Why I work so hard to restore God’s will.”
Does restoring God’s will include murder?
“The newspapers also said these women were surrogate mothers,” Jill blurted. Let’s see this reaction, she thought.
A male voice yelled down the hall. Another male voice placated. Jill’s glance darted again to the hall, saw no one.
Then saw that Nash’s eyes had turned hard, venomous. “Surrogates? Then those women were prostitutes. They took money for their adulterous, God-defying service. What they did is a mortal sin. And the snakes, though horrible, signify their evil.” He lifted his chin importantly. “Galatians 6:7: ‘As ye reap, so shall ye sow.’”
Jill faked more torn by doubt and squirmed dramatically. “But murder…that has to be why the police are involved. Oh, I do want to help you, but what if they think we both have something to do with the murders? Suddenly…I guess I am afraid.”
Nash looked down at his transistor, his eyes hooded, seeming deep in thought. Then he looked up appraisingly. “But you agree with me? In my beliefs and in my horror at what is being done against God’s will?”
Jill floundered for an answer, her gaze sweeping the floor and desk. “I must study, understand more. Can I have a copy of one of your papers you’ve written?”
“Of course.” Nash reached to the floor for a scrawled-on paper and handed it across to her. Fingerprints! She took the paper by a corner he hadn’t held, folded it carefully and put it into her pocket not containing the syringe.
Nash smiled aggressively. “I asked you a question. Do you agree with my beliefs-”
Footsteps and a knock on the door jam saved her.
“Time for your pills,” said a male nurse entering. Rick? Gary? He was lanky with short dark hair in white pants and a white shirt open at the collar. Looked in his late thirties. Looked familiar, too. Jill’s lips parted and she racked her brain. Where had she seen him before?
Nash looked displeased with him. “What you gave me is still working.”
“That was four hours ago. It’s wearing off. Time for more.” The nurse looked at Jill and smiled. “Hi, I’m Rick.” His nametag read Rick Burrell. He had friendly brown eyes and small features in a pleasant face. On Nash’s desk he placed a tray laden with small white paper cups and a plastic water pitcher.
“You must be Christine,” he said affably, pouring some water into one of the cups. “Ralph told me he was having a visitor.”
Jill smiled at him, and then it hit. Burrell was Nash’s nurse? He was also the guy they’d seen trying to deal with him screaming into his megaphone. He’d been Nash’s handler! Looked different now with short hair and dressed in his whites.
She looked anxiously at Nash. His medication was wearing off?
Burrell approached him, one hand carrying a cup of water, the other a paper cup containing pills.
Nash stiffened on his bed, clutching his transistor more tightly. “I’m not taking them.”
“C’mon Ralph, you want to upset Sister Meg again?” Rick stretched his hands out and held both cups closer.
Nash tightened his lips and ducked his head away from Burrell’s hands.
“Ralph?” Burrell got serious. “I’m going to stand here and make sure you take these. And swallow them. No spitting them out after I’m gone like you been doing.”
“The church.” Nash’s words came out like a hiss. “The rally and it’s almost 3:30.”
“’Fraid not, Ralph. Sister Meg says no more outings until you take that website down. Then you can go and I’ll go with you-”
“I don’t need you always chaperoning me!”
Nash’s fist flashed up and sent both of Burrell’s cups flying. Water splashed, pills flew. Jill jumped up, her hand going to her pocket. Saw Nash leap up with his fist smashing Burrell’s face, the blow knocking him backward onto the floor with a crash. Nash jumped onto his chest, his hands grabbing Burrell’s throat.
“Gary!” Burrell managed as Nash clenched his throat tighter - until he felt the stinging jab through his jeans, and glared up to see Jill over him, her thumb pushing down on a glinting syringe.
“Whore!” he screamed, trying to thrash away. “Lying devil whore like all the others!”
Jill scrambled away from him, breathing hard.
“All’s well,” she gasped low into the medallion. “It’s all over.”
No signal.
“Really,” she whispered. “Valium’s in, patient’s subdued.”
Hesitation, then: Beep.
Commotion as another male nurse, big and muscular, rushed into the room. “Oh Jesus!” The second man bent, pulled Nash half-collapsed off Burrell who was gasping and clutching his throat. Jill pulled in a huge breath, pocketing her syringe. Burrell would have been dead by the second nurse’s arrival.
Greg Clark, his nametag read. He got Nash back onto his bed still fighting him weakly, and sweet talked him as he got woozier. Must have figured that his fellow nurse had subdued him.
Nash grew limp but his eyes bulged furiously. He was fighting the drug. His hand went out and he pointed at Burrell, now in a sitting position on the floor, head bent.
“He!” Nash whispered viciously. “Thinks he’s God!”
Greg Clark said in a friendly manner, “Well now, how could he be God if you’re God?” He turned to his colleague. “Hey Rick, go recover. I’m on th
is.”
With difficulty Burrell got to his feet. Jill helped him. His nose was bleeding.
There were tissues near the door. She took a handful, and helped Burrell out.
29
“Subdued isn’t enough!” In the alley, Keri moved forward in a crouch behind Alex. “We can still use that as a call for help and go in.”
Alex had just hung up his phone. “No need,” he said. “A warrant’s on its way to search Nash’s room and shut down his website.”
Seconds later a squad car roared up with the warrant. Fast, they were up the front steps and past the startled receptionist. They pushed through the double doors and saw Jill ahead, kneeling and swabbing some guy’s face. A wiry male in white pants and white shirt, bloody-nosed, his head leaning against the wall.
Jill looked up at them. “Hello,” she said noncommittally. No sign that she knew them, though her heart was still in her throat.
Alex returned the blank look. “Ralph Nash?” he asked. “He’s a patient here?”
Jill gestured to the open door. “In there.”
“What happened here?” Keri asked, very cop. They all pretended not to know each other.
Burrell spoke up feebly. “This lady saved my life.” He looked both stunned and grateful. “Nash tried to strangle me.”
“Have a flashlight?” Jill asked both cops.
Alex got one from his gym bag, and Jill, hooding the beam with her fingertips, gently checked Burrell’s eyes.
“We’ll call an ambulance,” Keri said.
“No need.” Jill handed the light back. “Pupils normal, react to light.” She gently wiped at Burrell’s nose. It didn’t look broken. A top button of his white shirt had snapped off and opened his shirt a little wider. Underneath he wore a blue shirt with a center strip of letters visible. AL’S OWLIN LEA, Jill made out.
