The Dead Man: Ring of Knives

CHAPTER FOUR

Matt shoved out the door, banging loudly into the chair that Maloria had been dozing in.

'I'm awake,' she said automatically, jerking upright, disoriented.

'Sorry that took so long. C'mon, let's get out of here.'

'Arright, hold up.' Getting stiffly out of the chair. 'You find out what you was looking for?'

'No. But at least now I know where it is. Let's go back to the Control Room.'

'Whoa, whoa, whoa!'

He turned. Maloria had one eyebrow arched, and her fat hands on her fatter hips. Not a good sign. 'What's up?'

'What's up?' Her head started a dangerously cobra-like side-to-side sway. 'What's up is that I ain't yo' full- time Sherpa. I said I'd take you to Dindren, and I did. So now we square. 'Cause I got responsibilities, you know? I gotta get back to Module One, make sure them no-count ma'fuckah's ain't doggin' that white chick's shit.'

Matt paused. She had a point.

He had an idea. 'You've got a master key, right—one that opens the Admin and Control Room doors?'

'Uh-huh. Which I need, and you ain't gonna get.'

'I'll give you one hundred bucks for it.'

'Lucky for you, I got a spare.' She held it up. 'An' I'm always misplacin' this one, on account of my thyroid actin' up.'

Matt reached for it, and she pulled it away.

'Only my thyroid don't kick in for less than two hundred, if you know what I mean.'

Matt gave her a low-lidded look. 'One fifty.'

'I feel an attack comin' on right now.' She pried it free of the ring, dropped in his hand. But not before pausing to say, 'And BTW? My thyroid don't take checks.'

# # # # # #

Maloria escorted him out of Module Two, and they parted company at the quad. Using her key, he let himself back into Admin via the kitchen (six roaches, a lot fewer knives, and the weird wood-and-leather cuffs still hung inexplicably from the rack).

Back in the Control Room, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that, as Matt had suspected, the file cabinet marked 'Treatment Plans / Overflow' was not—as it should have been—locked. In fact, it had no lock.

Nice, Matt thought, pulling out a metal drawer and scanning ahead for the Ws.

The bad news was that not only were the treatment plans in an unlocked file cabinet, but someone had long ago stopped bothering to file them alphabetically. Even worse, not only were there Joneses filed under S and Millers under Q, but pieces of Jones' file were in Miller's folder, and pieces of Miller's were in Jones'.

It was a mess.

It was such a mess that three hours passed before Matt felt like he had found most of Jesse Weston's file. Even then, just when he had decided to quit looking, he would find a psych profile or incident report or med plan with Weston's name on it, and he'd decide to search a little further.

There was only one interruption. About two hours into his search, right after he had found a big chunk of Weston's drug records, the door had creaked open behind him and he'd turned to behold a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Or so it seemed. Matt supposed that the guy was probably an aide, just one whose official uniform consisted of a black hoodie with a red Chinese-dragon print, and a do-rag covered in dollar signs. He had a yin-yang symbol tattooed to his neck, a Black Belt magazine in one hand, and a bag of Famous Amos cookies in the other. Clearly looking for a place to kill a few hours.

''Sup,' the aide said.

'Hi. I'm Matt.' Matt held out his hand. The aide stared at it blankly, like he had no idea what Matt wanted him to do with it. Matt cleared his throat. 'I'm the swing. And you're, uh . . . ?'

The aide glowered at him. 'Darak.'

'Right. Maloria asked me to organize these files.'

Darak quirked one corner of his lips and gave a bored shrug. 'Fine with me,' he said, and made as if to come in and kick back.

'Actually, Maloria mentioned that you might show up. She said that if you did, I was supposed to tell you to go clean the men's washroom in Module One.'

Darak stared at him with eyes as dull and hard as ball bearings. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and just for a second, Matt thought there'd be trouble.

But Darak just slapped the Black Belt magazine against his thigh, gave a tight smile, and said, 'Well, ain't that a bitch.' And left.

Matt let out a relieved breath and dumped the file into his rucksack.

He hadn't read most of the files he found—there would be time for that later. For now, he skimmed them to see if Weston's name was on them, and if it was, it went in his bag. There wasn't time for anything else.

He made an exception, however, for a partial case file with 'Dindren' typed at the top. Instead of being in the Ds, he'd found it in the Xs. Flipping through it, he found multiple references to persecution complex, paranoia, 'gender disorder,' and pica. He riffled the pages, looking for a definition of pica. Towards the middle he found it described as a pathological desire to put nonfood items in one's mouth. Towards the end he found out which 'nonfood items' Dindren had gobbled.

It turned out that Dindren's pica had changed over time. It had begun, several months ago, with eating erasers, paper clips, and plastic straws. Eventually he had graduated to paint and safety scissors, and soon after that to lightbulb glass and feces. And as recently as last month, his diet had expanded again, this time to include the thumb, index finger, and nose of Jesse Weston.

Goddamn. Matt's stomach felt queasy. Towards the end of Dindren's file, inexplicably, were several documents that belonged in Jesse Weston's psychopathy profile. The most recent one was from ten days before Matt's arrival. It was a hastily written incident report. Besides the signature (which was illegible), all it said was

3/22/11 2:20 AM—Herd a yell form forensic 9 & came in. Found residant on floor real bad shape

No employee-of-the-month award for that report, Matt thought, adding it to his findings. He'd look at the rest of the reports later.

But then, just as he was about to zip up his file-filled rucksack and head out of this godforsaken place, his eye fell on a cardboard box beneath the control panel.

It was filled with videotapes.

Matt looked down at the incident report again, found the date: March 22. Then got up and went over to the box. Pulled it out. Sure enough, all of the tapes had dates on them. He dug through them, and there at the bottom of the box was 'Forensic 3/22/11—3rd Shift.'

Matt picked it out and was about to put it in his rucksack, then stopped.

When was the next time he was going to have access to an actual VCR? At the hotels he was staying at, he was lucky if the toilet flushed.

Matt walked over to the TV/VCR on the rolling metal rack and pushed the tape in, wondering if the incident had been taped over or if it would be too hard to find.

He didn't have to wait long.

As soon as he put the tape in, the crackling snow of the monitor was replaced by a grainy, low-resolution shot of a small room. The camera was obviously set in an upper corner, near the ceiling. Its range was not wide, but it still managed to capture a piece of the ceiling, all of the gray, carpeted floor, and three of the four padded