Initially, in his confusion, the doctor assumed that Nurse Ganguss had mentioned to Nurse Hernandez that the actor was going to check himself out of the hospital and that this was the self-discharging patient about whom she was so exercised.
Since the whole story about the actor was a lie to cover the doctor’s true purpose in coming to the clinic this evening, he said, “Don’t worry, Nurse Hernandez, he won’t be leaving, after all.”
“What? What’re you talking about? They’re trying to hustle him out of here right now.”
Ahriman turned to look at the living room and the open door to the bedroom. He half expected to see several young women, perhaps members of a fan club, lowering the nearly naked and semicatatonic actor out of a window, with the intention of imprisoning him and making him their love slave.
No abductors. No movie star.
Turning to the nurse again, he said, “Who are you talking about?”
“
Martie descended the stairs, supporting Skeet.
The kid was so pale and frail that in his pajamas and white blanket, he might have been a ghost haunting the back ways of New Life. A feeble ghost. He doddered down the stairs, weak-kneed, unsure of his balance, and with every step he took, the trailing blanket threatened to snare his feet and trip him.
Lugging the suitcase, Dusty followed Martie and Skeet, edging sideways down the steps, covering their backs by keeping a lookout for Ahriman above them in the stairwell. He had drawn the.45 Colt out of his jacket pocket.
Gunning down a prominent psychiatrist wouldn’t ensure him a hallowed place in the Heroes Hall of Fame, alongside Smilin’ Bob Woodhouse. Instead of being feted at testimonial dinners, he’d be standing in a prison chow line.
In spite of all they had learned about Dr. Ahriman and all they had deduced, the bitter truth was that they didn’t have any proof that he was guilty of either any illegal or even unethical acts. The tape from the answering machine, with Susan’s message, was the closest thing to admissible evidence that they possessed, but in it she accused the psychiatrist of nothing more than being a bastard. If Susan had somehow videotaped Ahriman, as claimed, that video was gone.
Skeet was taking the steps as a toddler would negotiate them. He lowered his right foot to the next tread, then put his left foot beside it, hesitated a moment to contemplate his subsequent move, and repeated the procedure.
They reached the landing, and still there was no pursuit from above. Dusty waited here, covering the upper flight of steps, while Martie and the kid continued toward the door below.
If Ahriman entered the stairwell at the second floor and saw them in flight, he would know they were on to him, a danger to him, and so Dusty would have to shoot him on sight. Because if Ahriman had time to say
Alarmed but too experienced a performer to allow his concern to show, the doctor backed Nurse Hernandez out of 246 and into the hall as he assured her that Dustin and Martine Rhodes would make no rash decisions endangering Skeet’s rehabilitation. “Mrs. Rhodes, in fact, recently became a patient of mine, and I know she has full confidence in the care we’re giving her brother-in-law.”
“They had some story about
“Well, that would be a shame.”
“—but it sounded like so much refried beans, if you ask me. And considering the potential liability to the clinic—”
“Yes, yes, well, I’m sure I can straighten this out.”
After firmly pulling shut the door to 246, Dr. Ahriman walked down the hall to Room 250, shadowed by Jasmine Hernandez. He refused to hurry because haste would indicate that in fact he considered this matter more important than he pretended it was.
He was glad that he’d taken the time to remove his coat and roll up his shirtsleeves. This working-Joe touch and his manly forearms supported the aura of confidence and competence he wished to project.
The only life in 250 was the false life on the television. The bed was disarranged, dresser drawers open and empty, a clinic-issued bathrobe rumpled on the floor, and the patient gone.
“Please go ask Nurse Ganguss if she saw them leave by the front stairs or elevator,” the doctor instructed Jasmine Hernandez.
Because Nurse Hernandez wasn’t programmed, because she was in possession of her free will and far too much of it, she started to argue: “But there can’t have been enough time for them to—”
“Only one of us is needed to check the back stairs,” the doctor interrupted. “Now please see Nurse Ganguss.”
Scowling so fiercely that no one would have disputed her if she claimed to be a transsexual reincarnation of Pancho Villa, Jasmine Hernandez turned from him and stalked toward the nurses’ station.
At the back stairs, Ahriman opened the door, stepped into the upper landing, listened, heard nothing, and leaped down the stairs two at a time, his heavy footfalls slapping off the concrete walls, echoing and re-echoing over one another, until by the time he came to the bottom of the second flight, he seemed to have left a wildly applauding audience behind him.
The ground-floor hallway was deserted.
He pushed through a door into the receiving room at the back of the building. Nobody here.
One more door, this opening to the alleyway.
As Ahriman stepped outside, the wind rattled the lid on one of the Dumpsters and seemed to
Behind the wheel was Dustin Rhodes. He glanced at the doctor. Fright and too much knowledge were written across the housepainter’s face.
The dope-withered, snot-nosed, useless little shit of a brother was in the backseat. He waved.
Taillights dwindling like those of a spaceship going to warp speed, the Saturn rocketed recklessly into the night.
The doctor hoped the car would slam into a Dumpster behind one of the buildings along the alleyway, hoped it would spin out of control and tumble and explode into flames. He hoped that Dusty and Martie and Skeet would be burned alive, their carcasses reduced to scorched bones and charred hunks of smoking meat, and then he hoped that out of the sky would come a great flock of big mutant crows that would settle into the blasted ruins of the Saturn and tear at the cooked flesh of the deceased, tear and tear and rip and rend, until not an edible scrap remained.
None of that happened.
The car traveled two blocks before turning left at a corner, onto a main street.
Long after the Saturn was out of sight, the doctor stood in the middle of the alleyway, staring into its wake.
The wind buffeted him. He welcomed its cold blasts, as though it might blow the confusion out of him and clear his head.
In the outgoing waiting room earlier in the day, Dusty had been reading
Nevertheless, the possibility that the Condon novel alone would spur Dusty to make great leaps of logic, leading to his understanding of the doctor’s true nature and real agenda, was so remote that there was a far greater likelihood of astronauts discovering a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise on Mars, with Elvis chowing down in a corner booth. And he could see no — underscore that:
