Francis shook his head, and then nodded. Contradictions that seemed so clear to him weren't to the other two. "He can't fake voices. He can't fake delusions. He couldn't fake being…" Francis took a deep breath, before continuing, "… like me. The doctors could see through that. Even Mister Evil would recognize that before too long."
"So?" Peter asked.
"Look around," Francis answered. He pointed across the hallway to where the large, hulking retarded man who'd been transferred from Williams was leaning against the wall, clutching his Raggedy Andy doll and crooning softly to the gaily colored bits of fabric with its jaunty hat and crooked smile. Then Francis saw a Cato standing motionless in the center of the corridor, eyes raised to the ceiling, as if his vision could penetrate the soundproofing, the support beams, the flooring and furniture on the second floor, straight through, past everything, right through the roof and up into the morning blue sky above. "How hard," Francis asked quietly, "would it be to be dumb? Or quiet? And if you were like one of them, who in here would ever pay any attention to you?"
Howling, screeching, caterwauling noise like a hundred screaming feral cats scraped at every nerve ending in my body. Clammy, moist sweat dripped down between my eyes, blinding me, stinging. I was short of breath, wheezing like a sick man, my hands quivering. I barely trusted my voice to make any sound other than a low, helpless moan.
The Angel hovered next to me, spitting with rage.
He did not have to say why, for every word I'd written told him.
I twisted on the floor, as if some electric current were charging through my body. They never gave me electric shock treatment at Western State. Probably that was the only cruelty masquerading as a cure that I haven't had to endure. But I suspected the pain that I was in this moment was little different.
I could see.
That was what hurt me.
When I turned in that corridor inside the hospital and spoke those words to Peter and Lucy, it was as if I were opening the one door within myself that I had never wanted to open. The greatest barricaded, nailed shut and sealed tight door within me. When you are mad, you're capable of nothing. But you're also capable of everything. To be caught between the two extremes is agony.
All my life, all I wanted was to be normal. Even tortured, like Peter and Lucy were, but normal. Able to modestly function in the outside world, enjoy the simplest of things. A fine morning. A greeting from a friend. A tasty meal. A routine conversation. A sense of belonging. But I couldn't, because I knew, right in that moment, that I would forever be doomed to be closer in spirit and action to the man I hated and the man that scared me. The Angel was giving in and luxuriating in all the murderous evil thoughts that lurked within me. He was a fun house mirror version of myself. I had the same rage. The same desire. The same evil. I had just concealed it, shunted it away, thrown it into the deepest hole within me that I could find and covered it up with every mad thought, like boulders and dirt, so that it was buried where I hoped it could never burst forth.
In the hospital, the Angel truly made only one mistake.
He should have killed me when he could.
"So," he whispered in my ear, "I'm here now to rectify that error in judgment."
"There's no time," Lucy said. She was staring down at the cluttered files spread across her desk in the makeshift office where her makeshift investigation was centered. Peter was pacing to the side, clearly sorting through all sorts of conflicted thoughts. When she spoke, he looked up, slightly cockeyed at her.
"How so?"
"I'm going to get pulled out of here. Probably within the next few days. I spoke with my boss, and he thinks that I'm just spinning my wheels here. He didn't like the idea of me being here in the first place, but when I insisted, he gave in. That's about to come to a sudden stop…"
Peter nodded. "I'm not going to be here much longer, either," he said. "At least I don't think so." He didn't elaborate, but did add, "But Francis will be left behind."
"Not just Francis," Lucy said.
"That's right. Not just Francis." He hesitated. "Do you think he's right? About the Angel, I mean. Being someone we wouldn't look at…"
Lucy took a deep breath. She was clenching her hands tightly, then releasing them, almost in rhythm with her breathing, like someone on the verge of fury, trying to control their emotions. This was an alien concept in the hospital, where so many people gave vent to so many emotions on a near constant basis. Restraint other than that encouraged by antipsychotic medications was pretty much impossible. But Lucy seemed to wear some sort of punishment behind her eyes, and when she looked up at Peter, he could see great waves of trouble behind her words.
"I cannot stand it," she said, very quietly.
He did not respond, for he knew she would explain herself within moments.
Lucy sat down hard on the wooden chair, and then, just as swiftly, stood back up. She leaned forward to grasp the edges of the desk, as if that would steady her from the buffeting winds of her turmoil. When she looked over at Peter, he was unsure whether it was a murderous harshness in her eyes, or something else.
"The idea of leaving a rapist and killer behind in here is almost too much to imagine. Whether or not the Angel and the man who killed the women in my other three cases are one and the same and I think they are leaving him in here untouched makes my skin crawl."
Again, he did not say anything.
"I won't do it," she said. "I can't do it."
"Suppose you're forced to walk away?" Peter asked. He might as well have been asking the same question of himself.
She looked hard at him. "How do you do that?" she answered, a question to match a question.
There was a momentary silence in the room, and then, suddenly, Lucy looked down at the stack of patient dossiers on the desktop. In a single, abrupt motion, she swept her arm across the desk, dashing the folders against the wall. "Goddamn it!" she said.
The manila folders made a slapping sound, and papers fluttered to the floor.
Peter kept quiet and Lucy stepped back, took aim with her shoe at a metal wastebasket and sent it skittering across the room with a well-placed kick.
She looked up at Peter. "I won't do it," she said. "Tell me, which is more evil? Being a killer or allowing a killer to kill again?"
There was an answer to this question, but Peter wasn't sure that he wanted to say it out loud.
Lucy took a few deep breaths, before lifting her eyes to where they locked in on Peter's.
"Do you understand, Peter," she whispered, "I know in my heart one thing: If I leave here without finding this man, someone else will die. I don't know how long it will be, but sometime, a month, six months, a year from now, I will be standing over another body, staring down at a right hand that's missing four fingers and now a thumb, as well. And all I'll be able to see is the opportunity that I lost, right here. And even if I catch the guy, and see him sitting in a courtroom, and get to stand up and read off the list of charges to a judge and jury, I'll still know that someone died, because I failed here, right at this moment in time."