“No, I'm afraid it didn't. I took the liberty of phoning her earlier, and she mentioned that nothing had come in the mail for you there.”
“Oh. Well, then."
Guess I'd just have to crash the party.
NINE
Panecraft continued to rise into the darkening sky, silhouetted in the lustrous moon as black and silver clouds roiled onwards. Not even five o'clock yet and already the day had drifted into a deepening night with the approach of another storm.
Looking up at the hospital, it didn't take a great leap of imagination to believe every rumor about this place was true, and that even greater secrets prowled within that had never even been whispered about.
Yesterday Lowell had made calls. To whom I didn't know, and had no clue how effectual they might actually be. The institute had a black-and-white striped semaphore arm at the front gate checkpoint. When I told the guard my name he made a big show of flipping page after page of lists on his Lucite clipboard and not finding me anywhere. He said, "Wait right here. Turn off the engine," and picked up a red phone in his little booth. He muttered unhappily for a while before finally palming a button that opened the gate.
He dismissed me without a word or gesture, pulled out a men's magazine called Gozangas and turned back to the centerfold he'd been staring at before I'd disturbed him. I drove through thinking of every low-budget horror movie I'd ever seen where madmen in asylums leaped onto the hoods of visiting cars and giggled maniacally, their insane faces splashed against the windshield.
I found the parking lot and got out. There were a great many people walking the grounds, some accompanied by nurses or guards, others alone or with visiting friends and family. Regardless of the dusk, several patients still read beneath trees, and a couple of guys threw a football. At the main doors there was another checkpoint where two guards looked over my identification. I was frisked and told to turn out my pockets; they nabbed my cell phone and went through more pages on other clipboards.
I looked up and down the long, well-lit corridors: they were completely empty. I wondered where all the other people listed on the clipboards might be. The guards pointed at a bench and told me to sit. I waited and they made a couple more phone calls, first on a red phone and then on a yellow phone.
Eventually one of them said, "Dr. Brent will allow you access to non-restricted areas B and C. Your visit will be limited to Sector Seven."
I nodded because it seemed the thing to do.
I was escorted to the elevators and up to the sixth floor to a sterile-looking white office so bright that I had to shield my eyes until I got used to it. The ceiling buzzed loudly with fluorescent lighting. There was nothing on the burnished white walls, not even a calendar with the days neatly X-ed out or a poster of Freud. Three clean white chairs formed a half-circle around a clean white desk. The clean white floor didn't have so much as a shoe scuff. Maybe the room was supposed to make the patients feel comfortable, passive, secure and con-tented as if they were back in the womb, or ascending toward heaven. I thought that sitting in here for any length of time would drive me to scrawling all over the place with Dayglo paint, just before I broke out and hung onto the hood of a visiting car, giggling maniacally with my insane face splashed on the windshield.
Dr. Brent sat at his desk smoking a pipe despite there being two No Smoking paperweights in front of him. He said to the guard, "Thank you, Philip. Proceed with your rounds." Philip spun on his heel with the well-practiced maneuver of a country music line-dancer and slipped down the hall.
Dr. Brent's first name turned out to be Brennan. He had a large badge on his white button-up sweater with his name printed evenly in big block letters. Maybe I'd just missed orientation at the asylum, or somebody was having a party on another floor. Maybe that's where all the other folks listed on the sheets were, everybody off having a bash on the ninth floor. Hi! Welcome to Panecraft! My name is Brent! What's yours?
He stood five foot five or thereabouts and wasn't sure whether he felt more empowered standing behind his desk or sitting there. He sucked his pipe loudly, leaned forward, fell back in his chair, stood in a half-crouch, and went through the motions again. When I sat he abruptly followed suit and dropped heavily into his seat. He was sweating and couldn't quite meet my eyes. A mustache like an unhappy insect skittered beneath his nose, his top lip wriggling as if he had an itch in the middle of his head. He didn't have Tourette's Syndrome and wasn't exhibiting any other signs of psychosis.
He was just very nervous.
"I'll have you know this is highly improper, Mr. Kendrick."
"I understand."
"You are not a peace officer?"
"No, I'm not."
"Then I'm afraid I must object."
"You must?"
"Yes."
"Why must you?"
That threw him, and he frowned uncertainly. "Why? Because I don't see the value in your visiting at this time. It is severely disruptive to the nature of the situation at hand, grim as it is."
Doug Hobbes, Lisa's husband, had visited her every day for the week-long period it took the doctors to conclude that she could be tried for the murder of her best friend Karen Bolan. Willie Bolan, Karen's husband, had come to see Lisa as well, before he'd moved out of town.
"Your duty is to determine if Crummler is legally competent to stand trial for murder, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, of course."
"But he is considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Isn't he allowed visitors?"
"Technically, yes, but these circumstances are exceedingly unusual. Though Zebediah Crummler has held a position of some . . . uhm, trust and respect in the community, his inability to clearly articulate the day in question and circumstances thereof have left many unanswered questions. Questions not only pertaining to the crime itself and such events occurring before, during, and directly following the homicide, but also to his state of mind at this same time."
I got the sinking feeling that Dr. Brennan Brent was seriously trying to snow me.
"I'd like to see him," I said.
"For what purpose?"
"Because I'm his friend."
The mustache kept crawling until I thought it would scurry right out of the clean white room. "I'm afraid I don't understand." The pipe had gone out but he continued to gnash it, teeth clicking repeatedly.
"What's to understand? I'm his friend. I'd like to see him.”
“But he … that is, Mr. Crummler …" The words trailed off, but I could see he wanted to say Crummler has no friends.
"You appear nervous, Doctor."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Is Crummler all right?"
"Certainly. What kind of a foolish question is that to ask? What are you implying? How dare you make such an insinuation."
I stood and said, "Take me to him, please."
"And in what capacity are you working on this investigation with the police?"
"In no capacity."
He smiled, and showed that the teeth on one side of his mouth were little more than stubs from all the pipe chewing he'd done in his life. He had a presumptuous sneer hiding beneath the skittering bug. "You speak with a fraudulent authority, Mr. Kendrick. You have none here."
"I never said I did."
"Well, then . . ."
"If you deny my request to see Mr. Crummler I can assure you I'll notify the National Board of Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Psychiatry, and the respective staffs of the Journal of Research in Personality, Psychology Today, and Mental Health magazines."