Doctor Gulptilil cleared his throat several times, and shifted about in his seat. He could see the potential for trouble at virtually every turn. Trouble had an explosive quality that he spent much of his time and energy defeating. It was not as if he particularly enjoyed his job as psychiatric director of the hospital, but he came from a tradition of duty, coupled with a near religious commitment to steady work, and working for the state combined many virtues that he considered paramount, not the least of which was a steady weekly paycheck and the benefits that went with it, and none of the significant risk of opening his own office and hanging up a shingle and hoping for a sufficient stream of local neurotics to start making appointments.
He was about to interrupt, when his eyes fell upon a photograph on the corner of his desk. It was a studio-setting portrait of his wife and their two children, a son in elementary school, and a daughter who had just turned fourteen. The picture, taken less than a year earlier, showed his daughter's hair falling in a great black wave over her shoulders and reaching halfway to her waist. This was a traditional sign of beauty for his people, no matter how far removed they were from his native country. When she was little, he would often simply sit and watch, as her mother passed a comb through the cascade of shiny black hair. Those moments had disappeared. In a fit of rebellion a week earlier, the daughter had sneaked off to a local hairdresser and had her hair cropped to a pageboy length, defying both the family tradition and the predominant style of that year. His wife had cried steadily for two days, and he had been forced to deliver a stern lecture which was mostly ignored and a significant punishment which consisted of banning her from any non school activities for two months, and limiting her telephone privileges to homework, which prompted an angry outburst of tears and an obscenity or two that surprised him that she even knew. With a start, he realized that all the victims wore short haircuts. Boyish cuts. And they were all noticeably slender, almost as if they wore their femininity reluctantly. His daughter was much the same, still all angles and bony lines, with curves only hinted at. His hand quivered a little, as he considered that detail. He also knew that she resisted his every attempt to limit her travels around the hospital grounds. This knowledge made him bite down momentarily on his lower lip. Fear, he thought abruptly, doesn't belong to psychiatrists; it belongs to the patients. Fear is irrational, and it settles parasitic ally on the unknown. His profession was about knowledge and the study and steady application of it to all sorts of situations. He tried to dismiss the connective thought, but it left only reluctantly.
"Miss Jones," he said stiffly, "precisely what is it you propose?"
Lucy took a deep breath before answering, giving herself a moment to array her thoughts with machine-gun-like precision. "What I propose is to uncover the man who I believe committed these crimes. These are the murders in three different jurisdictions in the eastern part of the state followed by the murder that took place here. I believe that the killer remains free, despite the arrest that has been made. What I will need, to prove this, is access to your patient files and the ability to conduct interviews on the wards. In addition" and it was here that the first hesitation crept into her voice "I will need someone who will work at uncovering this individual from the inside." she glanced over at Francis "Because I think this individual will have anticipated my arrival. And I think his behavior, when he knows I am investigating his presence, is likely to change. I'll need someone able to spot that."
"Exactly what do you mean by anticipate?" Gulp-a-pill asked.
"I think the person who killed the young nurse-trainee did so in such a manner because he knew two things that he could easily blame it on another person, the unfortunate fellow you call Lanky; and that someone very much like me would still come searching for him."
"I beg your pardon…"
"He had to know that if investigators of the other crimes were hunting for him, then they would be drawn here, too."
This revelation created another small silence in the room.
Lucy fixed her eyes on Francis and Peter the Fireman, examining both with a distant, detached gaze. She thought to herself that she could have found far worse candidates for what she had in mind, although she was concerned about the volatility of the one, and the fragility of the other. She also glanced over at the two Moses brothers. Big Black and Little Black were poised in the rear of the room. She guessed that she could enlist them in her plan, as well, although she was unsure if she would be able to control them as efficiently as she could control the two patients.
Doctor Gulptilil shook his head. "I think you ascribe a criminal sophistication to this fellow whom I am still uncertain actually exists that is be yond what we can or should reasonably expect. If you want to get away with a crime, why do you invite someone to look for you? You only raise the potential for being captured and prosecuted."
"Because killing for him is only a small part of the adventure. At least, that's what I suspect."
Lucy did not add to this statement, because she did not want to be asked what she feared were the other elements of what she called "the adventure."
Francis was aware that a moment of some depth had arrived. He could feel strong currents at work in the room, and for an instant had the sensation that he was being pulled into water beyond his touch. His toes stretched forward inadvertently, like a swimmer in the surf, searching in the foam beneath for the bottom.
He knew that Gulp-a-pill no more wanted the prosecutor there than he did the person she believed she was cornering. The hospital was, no matter how mad they all were, still a bureaucracy, and subject to pencil pushers and second-guessers throughout state government. No one, who owes their livelihood to the creaky machinations of the state legislature, wants anything that in any way, shape, or form, rocks the proverbial boat. Francis could see the physician shifting about in his seat, trying to steer his path through what he guessed was a potentially thorny political thicket. If Lucy Jones was correct about who was hiding in the hospital, and Gulptilil refused her access to the hospital records, then Gulp-a-pill opened himself up to all sorts of disasters if the killer chose to kill again and the press got wind of it.
Francis smiled. He was glad that he wasn't in the medical director's position. As Doctor Gulptilil considered the rather difficult canyon he was in, Francis glanced over at Peter the Fireman. He seemed on edge. Electric. As if he'd been plugged into something and the switch had been turned on. When he did speak, it was low, even, with a singular ferocity.
"Doctor Gulptilil," Peter said slowly, "if you do what Miss Jones suggests, and subsequently she is successful at finding this man, then you will get to claim virtually all the credit. If she, and we who help her, fail, then you are unlikely to get any of the blame, for the failure will be of her own making. That will land on her shoulders, and those of the crazy folks who tried to help her."
After assessing this, the doctor finally nodded.
"What you say, Peter" he coughed once or twice as he spoke "is probably true. It perhaps is not completely fair, but it is true, nevertheless."
He looked at the gathering. "This is what I will permit," he said slowly, but with each word gaining confidence. "Miss Jones, certainly you can have access to whatever records you need, as long as complete patient confidentiality is maintained. You may also select from whatever group you isolate as suspicious, people to interview. Either myself, or perhaps Mister Evans, will need to be present during any interviews you conduct. That is only fair. The patients even those who might be suspected of crimes have some rights. And should any object to being questioned by you, then I will not force them. Or, conversely, will recommend that they be accompanied by a legal advocate. Any medical decisions that might arise from any of those conversations must come from the staff. This is fair?"