“Who’s his doctor?” I asked quietly.
“His psychiatrist is Dr. Andrews, but I doubt he could tell you much. I hate to say this, but I’m not so sure Dr. Andrews would know who Bernie was without his chart in his hand. Dr. Stover was just the reverse-he loved these people. But he moved to Milwaukee. I guess that’s the thing here, you know? The world keeps spinning away-people coming and people going. But here they pretty much stay still-until they die.”
I let a small pause fill the room, during which I could feel Willy’s impatience beginning to climb. “Harry,” I finally asked. “I’d like to talk with Bernie soon. Could you keep an eye on him, and let me know when that would be possible?”
He slowly emerged from his reverie and gave me a gentle smile. “Why not now? I know I said he was a little out of it, but it might do him good to have some company. That way you’ll know what he was like when you see him later, after he’s calmed down.”
I glanced at Willy. “Sure. Why don’t we go in just the two of us so we don’t crowd him. You mind waiting, Willy?”
He looked at me as if I’d just put a lampshade on my head.
“Right,” I said to Harry. “Lead the way.”
Bernie was being kept in a room at the far end of the hall. A bedroom much like the others I’d visited, it had a few discreet extras that distinguished its role on this ward-the bed was bolted to the floor, the windows were covered with steel mesh, and there were no loose items lying about that could be used offensively.
Bernie, still in his pajamas and bathrobe, was pacing back and forth energetically, his chin tucked in, his eyes locked on the floor before him. His fists made tiny jabs into the air at waist level.
“Hi, Bernie,” Harry said cheerfully.
Bernie whirled around. “Duck, you guys, and keep it quiet.”
Harry touched my shoulder and we both crouched down, making me doubly glad Willy had opted out of this one. “What’s up?” Harry asked in a stage whisper.
Bernie was back to pacing, apparently not needing to take cover. “They’re all around us-we’re all on our own now-and they’re dressed like us, talk like us. God, it’s cold.” He continued talking, but in a mutter I couldn’t hear. Following Harry’s lead, I rose back up and crossed over to the bed, sitting quietly next to the orderly.
“How’re things going, Bernie?” Harry asked.
The other man’s voice rose in reaction, but he didn’t acknowledge us-as if all dialogue in the room were solely contained in his head. “How the hell do you think they’re going? They’re killing us. We’re dying like flies, killed in our beds, freezing to death. We got no support, no orders, no ammo, no front line, no rear. We are fucked, buddy. We are going to die in this frozen piece of French shit.”
“Who died in their beds?” I asked.
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” he wailed, still pacing, still punching the air. “We’re here on R and R, for Christ’s sake. ‘A quiet corner of the war,’ they said. Dumb bastards. God, it’s cold… Cold, cold, cold, cold. Wish I could light a fire.” He lapsed back to muttering.
I nodded to Harry and pointed toward the door. Outside, I asked him, “You said he acted like this once before, after seeing a fight. Did he mention people dying in their beds?”
“No-never.”
“How long did the episode last?”
“A few hours. He was twitchy for days afterward, but at least he knew you were in the room. It was the only other time he got so lost in the war memories.”
“Let me know when he starts to climb out of it, okay? And thanks.”
The shy smile returned. “Sure thing.”
Willy picked me up outside the ward and escorted me downstairs and out into the freezing cold. “That was quick. He spill his guts?”
“He’s a little out of it. I do think he saw something, though.”
Willy sighed. “So that’s the plan? Wait around for him to snap out of it and give us a statement?”
“If he saw what I hope he did, we could do worse,” I answered simply. “You have any other leads?”
He’d left his coat inside and crossed his chest with his right arm in a vain attempt to keep warm. “We just started, for Christ’s sake.”
“What’s Sol doing?”
“I got him looking into Sawyer’s past history.” He hesitated, glaring off into the night-not a happy man. “We don’t have shit,” he finally said.
I stepped into his line of vision, forcing him to look at me. “We’ve got five major cases so far. Some of them look connected, like Wallis and Shawna. Some of them might be connected, like Wallis and the building project, and others so far look totally independent, like this killing of Mrs. Sawyer. What if we’re missing a common link-something we haven’t found yet?”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“Shawna Davis spent the last week of her life under sedation. Why do that if you’re going to kill her anyway?”
“’Cause you’re using her for leverage.”
“Probably, but you also do it because you can afford to-you’ve got the time. You’ve even got the time to make her death look like a Satanist sacrifice, just in case the body’s discovered.”
“All right.”
“Milo’s death is looking pretty screwy. Pending what the ME’ll say, let’s say he was murdered, too-purely for argument’s sake.”
Willy shook his head but remained silent.
“Again, you’ve got time-at its fastest, rabies takes a couple of weeks to kill someone-and as with Shawna, you’ve pointed the finger at someone, or in this case something, else as the culprit.”
“What’s that got to do with Sawyer?” Willy asked irritably.
“Maybe nothing, except that Dr. Riley said Sawyer’s killer obviously wasn’t a patient man, since she was so close to dying anyway. What’s the other one of our five cases that looks rushed and unplanned?”
“Wallis.”
“Right. The same element of time is there, only now you’re running out of it. You can’t wait to arrange something clever for Wallis, so you just grab her in the middle of the night and hope the cops’ll think she split. And you can’t wait for Sawyer to die of natural causes, so you strangle her and hope the ME’ll miss it.”
“Jesus, Joe. You don’t have one iota of evidence tying Sawyer to any of the others. And saying Milo was murdered is a pretty big stretch.”
“Is it? According to Katz, the Satanist and rabies angles were both leaked to the Reformer by the same anonymous caller. Besides, part of our job is fitting various hypotheses to the crimes we’re investigating, and seeing if they make sense. I’ll concede leaving Sawyer outside the pattern-for now-but the connections are beginning to grow among the others. We’d be nuts to ignore that.”
To his credit, Willy swallowed his criticisms. He merely looked at me for a long, quiet moment, muttered, “I’m freezing my ass off,” and left me standing by the curb.
Although it was closing in on midnight, I didn’t go home from the Skyview. My afternoon nap had thrown off my sleep cycle, so I returned to the office instead. I was also restless with the theory I’d propounded to Willy Kunkle. Coming up with hypotheses was fine early on, but the end result of our job always had to be a solid case, and I agreed with Willy’s silent skepticism that I had a long way to go yet-assuming I was even headed in the right direction.
I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. Once again, Sammie was hard at work in her cubicle, burning hours she probably wouldn’t put on the overtime clock, driven as I was to get the job done, and not bothering to scrutinize her reasons. Across the squad room, I noticed Sol Stennis had caught the same bug.
“How goes it?” I asked her quietly. “Besides the fact you should be home in bed?”