stepped aside, as if to steady himself, suddenly dizzy. He thought there was no blood in his heart, and he worried that he might pass out.
'Stay back, C-Bird,' Peter whispered. He probably didn't mean this, but the words fell like some feathers caught in a gust of wind.
Big Black and Little Black stopped their own rush forward right behind the two patients, staring up, suddenly quieted. After a second, Little Black quietly said, 'Goddamn, goddamn…' but nothing else. Big Black turned his face to the wall.
Francis made himself look ahead.
Hanging from a makeshift noose fashioned from a twisted dingy gray bedsheet, tied to the iron railing leading to the second floor, was Cleo.
Her chubby face was misshapen, blown up and inflated, twisted gargoyle-like in death. The noose fashioned around her neck had creased the folds of skin, cutting in like a knot at the bottom of a child's balloon. Her hair cascaded wildly around her shoulders in a tangled mess, and her blank eyes were open, but fixed ahead. Her mouth was cracked slightly askew, giving her an appearance of shock. She wore a simple, gray shift that hung from her sloped shoulders like a bag, and one gaudy pink sandal had slipped from her foot to the floor. Francis saw that her toenails were painted red.
He thought he was having trouble breathing, and he wanted to turn his face away and avert his eyes, but the portrait of death in front of him had a sickly, compelling urgency to it, and he stayed rooted in position, fixed on the figure hanging from the stairwell. He found himself trying to reconcile Cleo with her constant torrent of obscenities, her bouncing, energetic devastation of all challengers at the Ping-Pong table, with the lumpy, grotesque figure before him. The stairwell had a shadowy half light, as if the single uncovered bulbs that lit each floor were inadequate to hold back the tendrils of darkness that were eager to creep into the area. The air seemed musty and hot, as if rarely circulated, like inside an attic never visited.
He let his eyes sweep over her figure again, and then he saw something.
'Peter,' Francis whispered slowly, 'look at her hand.'
Peter's eyes dropped from Cleo's face to her hand and for a moment he was silent. Then he said, 'I'll be damned.'
Cleo's right thumb had been severed. A streak of crimson ran down the outside of her shift, and along the side of her naked leg, finally pooling in a black splotch on the floor beneath her body. Francis stared at the circle of blood, then gagged.
'Damn,' Peter said again.
The severed thumb was on the floor about a foot, perhaps two, away from the center of the small maroon circle of sticky blood, left there almost as if it had been discarded like some petty afterthought.
A thought occurred to Francis, and he surveyed the scene rapidly, looking for one single item. His eyes raced right and left, searching as quickly as he could, but he did not see what he was looking for. He wanted to say something, but instead kept his mouth closed. Peter, as well, had grown silent.
It was Little Black who finally spoke. 'There's going to be hell to pay over this,' he said glumly.
Francis waited over by the wall, sitting on the floor, while a number of things took place in front of him. He had the odd sensation that he wished that it was all a simple hallucination, or perhaps a dream, and that any moment he would wake up, and the usual day in the Western State Hospital would simply begin all over again.
Big Black had left Peter, Francis, and his brother in the stairwell, looking up at Cleo's body, and had dutifully returned to the nursing station and called Security, and then Doctor Gulptilil's office, and finally, Mister Evil's apartment number. There had been a short lull, following the phone calls, during which time Peter had moved slowly around Cleo's dead form, assessing, memorizing, trying to fix it all firmly in his head. Francis admired the Fireman's diligence and sense of professionalism but he secretly doubted whether he would ever be able to forget any of the details of the death in front of him. Still, both Francis and Peter did as they had done before, when Short Blond's body was discovered, letting their eyes walk the entire scene, measuring, photographing, the way crime scene specialists might do, except that neither had any tape or camera, so they were left to form their own internal specifications.
In the corridor, Big Black and Little Black were trying to restore some calm to a setting that defied calm. Patients were distraught, crying, laughing, some giggled, some sobbed, some tried to behave as if nothing had taken place, others cowered in corners. A radio someplace was playing Top 40 hits from the 1960s, and Francis could hear the unmistakable strains of 'In the Midnight Hour' followed by 'Don't Walk Away, Renee.' The music seemed to make the whole situation even more demented than it already was, as guitar and vocal harmonies mingled with chaos. Then he heard a patient demanding in a loud voice that breakfast be served immediately, while another asked if they could go outside and pick flowers for a grave.
It did not take long for Security to arrive, followed in rapid succession by Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil. Both men hurried with that half run, half walk pace that made them seem slightly out of control. Mister Evil pushed a few patients out of his path, while Gulptilil simply sailed down the corridor oblivious to entreaties and pleas from the nervous crowd of residents.
'Show me!' Gulptilil demanded of Big Black.
There were three gray-shirted security personnel standing in the doorway waiting for someone to tell them what to do, blocking his sight. None of the quasi cops had done anything except stare up at Cleo's body since they arrived, and now they stepped aside to let Gulptilil and Evans enter the gloomy stairwell area.
The hospital director stepped forward, and gasped. 'My goodness!' he said, astonished. 'Oh, my, but this is terrible.' He shook his head back and forth.
Evans craned past him, also taking in the sight. His response, at least at first, was limited to 'Damn!'
The two administrators continued to examine the scene. Francis saw that they both absorbed the severed thumb, and the noose fastened to the stairway railing. But he had the curious thought that the two men saw something different from what he did. Not that they didn't see Cleo hanging dead. But that they were reacting differently. It was a little like standing in front of a famous work of art in a museum, and having the person next to him reach some opposing assessment, emitting a laugh, instead of a sigh, or a groan in place of a smile.
'What bad luck,' Gulptilil said quietly. Then he turned to Mister Evans. 'Has there been any indication…' he started, not truly needing to finish the question for the unit supervisor.
Evans was already nodding his head. 'I made a notation in the daily log yesterday that her sense of distress seemed to be increasing. There were other signs over the past week or so that she was decompensating. I sent you a memo last week about a number of patients who needed to be reassessed medically, and she was on it, right at the top. Perhaps I should have moved a little more aggressively, but she did not seem to be in such an immediate crisis that it was warranted. Clearly, that was in error.'
Gulptilil nodded. 'I recall the memo. Alas, sometimes even the best intentions…' he said. He added, 'Ah, well, it is difficult to anticipate these things, is it not?' He did not act like he expected an answer to this question. Hearing none, he shrugged. 'You will take careful notes, will you not?'
'Of course,' Evans said.
Gulp-a-pill then turned to the three security guards. 'All right gentlemen. Mister Moses will show you how to get Cleo down. Bring a body bag and a gurney. Let's get her over to the morgue promptly…'
'Wait just a second!'
The objection came from behind all of them, and they turned to the sound of the voice. It was Lucy Jones, standing a few feet back, and staring past them all toward Cleo's body.
'My goodness!' Gulptilil said, almost breathlessly. 'Miss Jones? My lord, what have you done?'
But the answer to this, Francis thought, was utterly obvious. Her long black hair was gone, replaced by a sheet of streaky blond dyed hair, cropped closely, almost haphazardly. He stared at her dizzily.
