“Except yourself.”
“There isn’t enough.” She’s very quick, even now, he thought.
She shook her head and he spoke fast. “Everything is so new. And you’re sick. Give it time — please. That’s all I ask.”
She breathed out with evident irritation and brushed a hair from her face, saying nothing. Diogenes glanced at the bag. He had upped the flow to run it in as quickly as possible, and already about half was gone.
“Your bad humor is a symptom of the misformulated arcanum,” said Diogenes.
As soon as he said this, he realized that was a mistake. “My bad humor,” she said, “is due to your excessive solicitousness, your creeping about the house listening for my every movement. I feel like I’m being stalked.”
“I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized I was bothering you so. I’ll give you all the freedom you wish. Just tell me how to act.”
“For starters, get rid of that telescope in the tower. It makes me feel like you’re spying on me.”
Against his will, Diogenes found his face flushing.
“Yes,” she said, looking at him keenly. “I see that you have spied on me. No doubt when I was swimming the other day.”
Diogenes was flummoxed. He couldn’t bring himself to deny it. He simply could not find an answer, and his silence was all the admission she needed.
“Everything was fine here while you were gone. I wish you hadn’t come back.”
This cut Diogenes to the quick. “That’s not only cruel, but unfair. Everything I’ve done — everything — has been for you.”
“Cruel? This coming from the maestro of cruelty himself?”
Diogenes felt this like another blow. He could feel a rising humiliation, and something else — the stirrings of anger. “You chose to come down here, knowing full well my history. It’s wrong of you to throw it back in my face.”
“Wrong? Who are you to decide what’s right and what’s wrong?” She issued a loud, sarcastic laugh.
This savage escalation left Diogenes reeling. He had no idea how to respond, what to say. The drug was three-quarters through. He could only hope to God it would take effect soon. Constance was talking herself into a rage.
“When I think back on what you’ve done,” she said, “on all that history, when I recall how you made Aloysius desperately unhappy, I wonder how you can live with yourself!”
“Aloysius made me miserable, as well. Please, Constance.”
“Please, Constance,” she said mockingly. “What a mistake I made, trusting you. Instead of making me better, you’ve poisoned me. How do I know this isn’t more of the same?” She shook the IV stand with her free hand.
“Oh, careful! Careful!” Diogenes steadied the stand, protecting his precious drug.
“I should have known your promises would prove worthless.”
“Constance, my promises are inviolate. All this anger of yours — that’s your sickness talking. That’s not you.”
“Isn’t it now?” She grasped the tubes. He lunged to stop her, but was too late — she ripped them out of her arm, the violet liquid spraying about, dotted with flecks of blood, the rack toppling to the floor with a crash.
“Constance! Good God! What are you doing?”
She flung the tubes at him and turned, running from the room. He stood there, frozen in shock, as he heard her feet hurrying up the back stairs, the door to her wing shutting and the bolt slamming home. He tried to get the pounding of his heart down so that he could hear; and he did hear, a faint, stifled sobbing from above. Constance, weeping? That shocked him more than anything else. He looked down at the floor to see the last of his precious arcanum drain out of the bag and onto the rug.
52
After spending almost an hour conducting a minute search of the hospital room in which the elderly female patient and a doctor had met their deaths, Pendergast — with Longstreet’s tacit approval — had appropriated one of the doctors’ lounges at Miami Baptist for a series of interviews. Longstreet looked on with detached bemusement. He’d been relieved enough to leave the scene of the crimes — although he was no stranger to blood, the extravagant Jackson Pollock — like sprays and spatterings that covered a remarkable amount of the room’s surface area were a bit much even for him. Now he looked on, curious to see exactly what Pendergast was onto — if anything.
First, Pendergast spoke to the lieutenant in charge of the crime. He grilled the cop at great length about everything they had learned so far. There was, it seemed, no apparent motive. The killer had chosen a victim, apparently at random — a most bizarre choice of victims, too; one who was about to die anyway. The killer had been interrupted by an eminent young cardiologist, Dr. Graben, who paid for his discovery with his life. Both victims had been mutilated with scalpels in the most lavish way imaginable, basically sliced to ribbons.
The police had begun a careful investigation into the killer, about whom there seemed to be little question. He had been identified by security cameras, by witnesses, and by the doctor’s badge he’d used to enter various areas of the hospital. He was a Dr. Walter Leyland of Clewiston, Florida. He was not affiliated with Miami Baptist and, as far as was known, had never previously met or had dealings with either of the victims. While the official inquiry had only just begun, it appeared that this Dr. Leyland spent a great deal of time abroad doing volunteer work with Médecins Sans Frontières and other such organizations, and that his patient list was very small — in fact, they were still trying to gain access to his office; there was no secretary or nurse to answer the phone, and a court order was in the works. In addition, it seemed Dr. Leyland operated, in a very limited capacity, as a state-appointed M.E., but once again the investigation into that was in its infancy. They would know more, the lieutenant said, in the hours and days to come. The doctor’s car had been located and was still being swept and analyzed, along with his cell phone and credit cards. The biggest mystery, however, was why he should snap like he did and kill two people in such a savage way.
Next, Pendergast spoke with a nurse from the ICU, who corroborated the story that Dr. Leyland entered the room of eighty-two-year-old Frederica Montoya, who was just days, even hours, from death due to congestive heart failure. A few minutes later, Dr. Graben had entered the room. Puzzled, the nurse had been about to do the same when Dr. Leyland stuck out his head and told her to please leave matters to the two doctors. Five minutes later, Dr. Leyland had left the room and told the nurse that Dr. Graben was still with the patient and was not to be disturbed. When Dr. Graben did not emerge in another five minutes, the nurse became alarmed and investigated.
Dismissing the nurse, Pendergast called for the head of hospital security. The man said that they had not yet completed their examination of all the security tapes, but that — while they had numerous images of Dr. Leyland passing hospital reception, entering a doctors’ locker room, and other places — they had yet to find any images of him leaving. No, the video tech could not explain the discrepancy.
Pendergast asked for an image of Dr. Leyland and the man complied with a grainy screen capture. Pendergast and Longstreet studied the image for some time: a salt-and-pepper-haired man with puffy cheeks.
“Doesn’t look like your typical serial murderer,” Longstreet said. “All the same, there’s something familiar about him.”
“Isn’t there,” Pendergast murmured.
Finally, he called for the chief crime scene investigator. The man had had two days to write up his findings, and he had a very interesting observation to make. While the old woman had died first, the violent slashings and stabbings had begun with the unlucky doctor who’d blundered into the room.