Peter took another step forward, then stopped. "Don't do it, buddy," he said.
The man seemed to gather himself for a charge.
Peter repeated, "It's not worth it." But as he spoke, he braced himself.
The retarded man took a single additional step toward them, then halted. Still grunting with an internal fury that seemed massive, he suddenly took his fist and slammed it against the side of his own head. The punch resounded down the corridor. Then he followed this, with a second blow, and a third, each one echoing loudly. A small trickle of blood appeared by his ear.
Neither Peter nor Francis moved.
The man let out a cry. It had some of the pitch of victory, some of the tone of anguish. It was hard for Francis to tell whether it was a challenge or a signal.
And, as it resounded down the hall, the man seemed to stop. He let out a sigh, and straightened up. He looked over at Francis and Peter and shook his head, as if clearing something from his vision. His eyebrows knit together abruptly, quizzically, as if some great question had penetrated within him, and in the same revelation, he'd seen the answer. Then he half snarled, half smiled, and abruptly lurched off down the hallway, mumbling to himself.
Francis and Peter watched him move unsteadily away.
"What was that about?" Francis asked, a little shakily.
Peter shook his head. "That's just it," he replied softly. "In here, you just don't know, do you? You just can't tell what has made someone burst like that. Or not. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, C-Bird. This is the strangest damn place I hope either of us ever has the misfortune to land."
The two men leaned back up against the wall. Peter seemed stricken by the attack that hadn't happened, as if it had said something to him. "You know, C-Bird, when I was in Vietnam, I thought that was pretty weird. Strange things were likely to happen all the damn time. Strange and deadly things. But, at least, they had some rhyme and reason to them. I mean, after all, we were there to kill them, and they were there to kill us. Made some perverse logic. And after I came home, and joined the department, sometimes, in a fire, you know things can get pretty dicey. Walls tumbling. Floors giving way. Heat and smoke everywhere. But still, there's some cosmic sense of order to it all. Fire burns in defined patterns, accelerated by certain stuffs, and, when you know what you're doing, you can usually take the right precautions. But this place is something else. It's like everything is on fire all the time. It's like everything is hidden. And booby-trapped."
"Would you have fought him?"
"Would I have had a choice?"
He looked around at the flow of patients moving throughout the building.
"How does anyone survive in here?" he asked.
Francis didn't have an answer. "I don't know that we're really supposed to," he whispered.
Peter nodded, his wry smile suddenly back in place. "That, my young and crazy friend, might be the most dead-on accurate thing you've ever said."
Chapter 13
When Lucy emerged from Mister Evans's office, she carried a legal-size yellow pad of paper in her right hand and a look of significant displeasure on her face. A long, quickly scrawled list of names ran down one side of the top page on the pad. She moved rapidly, as if driven to increase her pace by a sense of dismay. She looked up when she spotted Francis and Peter the Fireman waiting for her, and she gave a little, rueful shake of her head, as she approached them.
"I'd thought, rather foolishly it turns out, that this would simply be a matter of checking dates against hospital records. It's not that simple, primarily because the hospital records are something of a mess, and not centralized. A lot of busywork involved. Damn."
"Mister Evil wasn't as helpful as he said he might be?" Peter observed archly, asking a question that already had its answer contained within it.
"No. I think that would be a safe assessment," Lucy replied.
"Well," Peter said, affecting a mock, slightly British accent that almost managed to sound like Gulp-a-pill, "I am shocked. Simply shocked…"
Lucy continued down the corridor, her pace as rapid as her thoughts.
"So," Peter asked, "what were you able to find out?"
"What I learned was that I'm going to have to check every other housing unit, in addition to Amherst. And, beyond that, I'm going to have to find records for every patient that might have had a weekend furlough during the relevant time period. And, further complicating matters, I'm not at all sure that there's any sort of master list, which would make that easier. What I do have is a list of names from this building that more, or less, fit into the range of possibilities. Forty-three names."
"Did you eliminate some by age?" Peter asked, the jocularity now removed from his voice.
She nodded. "Yes. That was my first thought, as well. The old-timers, well, no need to question them."
"I think," Peter said slowly, as he started to rub his right hand across his cheek, as if by friction, he could loosen some ideas stuck within, "that we might consider one other important element."
Lucy looked at him.
"Physicality," Peter said.
"What do you mean?" Francis asked.
"What I mean is that it requires some strength to commit the crime that we're concerned with. He had to overpower Short Blond, then drag her to the storage room. There were signs of a struggle in the nursing station, so we know that he didn't manage to sneak up behind her and knock her out with some lucky punch. In fact, if I were to guess, he probably looked forward to the struggle."
Lucy sighed. "True. The more he beat her, the more he got excited. That would fit what we know of this type of personality."
Francis shuddered, hoping the others didn't see him. He had a little trouble discussing so coldly and casually some moments that were, he thought, far beyond horror.
"So," Peter continued, "we know we're looking for someone with some muscle. That rules out a bunch of people inside here right away, because, although Gulptilil would probably deny it, this place doesn't exactly seem to attract the physically fit. Aren't too many marathon runners and body builders inside here. And we should also reduce the pool of candidates to a range of ages. And then, it seems to me, there is one other area that might help further narrow the list. Diagnosis. Who is here with some significant violence in their past. Who suffers from the type of mental illness that might be expanded to include murder."
Lucy said, "My thinking exactly. We come up with a portrait of the man we're seeking, and things will come into focus." Then she turned to Francis. "C-Bird, I'm going to need your help in that area."
Francis bent toward her, eager. "What do you need?"
"I don't think I understand madness," she said.
Francis must have looked confused, because she smiled. "Oh, don't get me wrong. I understand the psychiatric language and the diagnosis criteria and the treatment plans and all the textbook stuff. But what I don't understand is how it all seems from the inside, looking out. I think you can help me in that regard. I need to know who could have done these crimes, and hard evidence is going to be tricky to come by."
Francis was uncertain, but he said, "Whatever you need…"
Peter, though, was nodding his head, as if he could see something that was obvious to himself and should have been obvious to Lucy, but which still eluded Francis. "He can do that, I'm sure. He's a natural. A teacher-in-training. Can't you C-Bird?"
"I'll try." Deep within him, he heard a rumbling, as if there was an argument going on within his inner population, and then, finally, he heard one of his voices insist: Tell them. It's okay. Tell them what you know. He hesitated one second, then spoke, feeling as if his words were being directed from sources within. "There's one thing you should realize," he said slowly, cautiously. Both Lucy and Peter looked at him, as if they were a little surprised he was joining the conversation.