craziest thing he'd ever heard. He was filled with confidence. 'That would be his biggest mistake, wouldn't it?'
Francis didn't know how to reply, but he surely didn't think so.
The Angel leaned over me, hovering so close that I could feel every cold breath attached to each frozen word. I shook as I wrote, keeping my face to the wall, as if I could ignore his presence. I could feel him reading right over my shoulder, and he laughed with that same awful noise that I recognized from when he had sat on the side of my bunk inside the hospital and promised me that I would die.
'C-Bird saw so much. But couldn't quite put it together,' he scoffed.
I stopped writing, my hand paused just above the wall. I didn't look in his direction, but I spoke out, high-pitched, a little panicked, but still, needing the answers.
'I was right, wasn't I. About Cleo?'
He wheezed a laugh again. 'Yes. She did not know I was there, but I was. And what was most unusual about that night, C-Bird, was that I had every intention of killing her before dawn arrived. I figured simply to cut her throat in her sleep and then point some evidence at one of the other women in the dormitory. This had worked just as I knew it would with Lanky. It was likely to work again. Or perhaps just the pillow over the face. Cleo was asthmatic. She smoked too much. It probably wouldn't have taken long to choke the air from her. That worked with the Dancer.'
'Why Cleo?'
'It was when she pointed up at the building where I lived and shouted out that she knew me. I didn't believe her, of course. But why take the chance? Everything else was going just as I imagined it would. But C-Bird knows that, doesn't he? C-Bird knows, because he is like me. He wants to kill. He knows how to kill. He hates so much. He loves the idea of death so much. Killing is the only answer for me. And for C-Bird, too.'
'No,' I moaned. 'Not true.'
'You know the only answer, Francis,' the Angel whispered.
'I want to live,' I said.
'So did Cleo. But she wanted to die, too. Life and death can be so close. Almost the same, Francis. And tell me: Are you any different from her?'
I couldn't answer that question. Instead, I asked, 'You watched her die?'
'Of course,' the Angel replied, hissing. 'I saw her take the bedsheet from beneath her bed. She must have been saving it for just that reason. She was in a lot of pain and the medications weren't helping her in the slightest, and all she could see ahead of her, day after day, year after year, was more and more pain. She wasn't afraid of killing herself, C-Bird, not like you are. She was an empress and she understood the nobility of taking her own life. The necessity of it. I just encouraged her along the path, and used her death to my advantage. I opened the doors, then followed her out and watched her go into the stairwell…'
'Where was the nurse on duty?'
'Asleep, C-Bird. Dozed off, feet up, head back, snoring. You think they actually cared enough about any of you to stay awake?'
'But why did you cut her, afterward?'
'To show you what you guessed later, C-Bird. To show you that I could have killed her. But mostly, I knew that it would make everyone argue, and that the people who wanted to believe I was there might see it as proof, and the people who didn't want to believe I was there would see it as persuasive of their position. Doubt and confusion are truly helpful things, C-Bird, when you are planning something precise and perfect.'
'Except for one thing,' I whispered. 'You didn't count on me.'
He snarled and replied, 'But that's why I'm here now, C-Bird. For you.'
Shortly before ten pm, Lucy moved rapidly across the grounds of the hospital toward the Amherst Building, to take over the late-night solitary shift. The graveyard shift, as it was called in newspaper offices and police stations. It was an awful night, caught somewhere between storm and heat, and she lowered her head and thought that her white outfit cut a slice through the thick black air.
In her right hand, she carried a ring of keys that jangled as she quick marched down the path. Above her, an oak tree bent and swayed, rustling leaves with a breeze that she didn't feel and which seemed out of place in the still, humid night. She had thrown her pocketbook, with the loaded pistol concealed inside, over her right shoulder, giving her a jaunty look which was far from how she felt. She ignored an odd cry, something desperate and lonely, that seemed to float down from one of the other dormitories.
Lucy unlocked the two deadbolt locks at the door to Amherst, and put her shoulder to the heavy wood, pushing her way into the building with a scraping sound. For an instant, she was taken aback. Every time she'd been in the building, either in her office, or making her way through the corridor, it had been filled with people, light, and noise. Now, not even late, it had been transformed. What had seemed jammed and constantly busy, energized by all sorts of misshapen madnesses and misbegotten thoughts, was now quiet, save for the occasional eerie shout or scream that lurked through the empty spaces. The corridor was nearly black; some light that faded a little bit of the darkness to a manageable gray came weakly through the windows from distant buildings. The only real light in the corridor was a small cone of brightness, behind the barred door of the nursing station, where a single desk lamp glowed.
She saw a form move at the nursing station, and exhaled slowly when she saw Little Black uncurl himself from behind the desk and open the wire door.
'Right on time,' he said.
'Wouldn't miss this for the world,' she said with a measure of false bravado.
He shook his head. 'I'm guessing you're just in for a long, boring night,' he said. He pointed at the intercom on the desk. It was old-fashioned, a small squawk box with a single on off switch on the top and a dial to reduce squelch. 'This will keep you connected to my brother and I upstairs,' he said. 'But we really got to hear you sing out that Apollo word, because these things got to be ten, twenty years old and they don't work too good. The telephone, too, connects upstairs. Just dial two zero two, and it rings. Tell you what, if it rings twice and then you hang up, we'll take that as a signal, too, and come running.'
'Two zero two. Got it.'
'But ain't likely to need it,' Little Black said. 'In my experience, inside this place, nothing logical or expected ever happens right, no matter how much planning goes into it. I'm pretty sure that the guy you're hunting knows you're gonna be here. Word gets around pretty good, if you say the right thing to the right person. Gets broadcast real fast. But if this guy is as clever as you seem to think, I've got my doubts that he'll walk into something he's got to figure is a trap. Still, never know.'
'That's right,' Lucy said. 'You never know.'
Little Black nodded. 'Well, you call. You call if something happens with any of the patients you don't want to handle. Just ignore anybody calling out for help or something. We generally wait until morning for dealing with most any nighttime problems.'
'Okay.'
He shook his head. 'Nervous?'
'No,' Lucy replied. She knew she was something she just wasn't certain that nervous described it.
'When it gets late, I'll send someone to check up on you. That'd be okay, right?'
'Always appreciate the company. Except I don't want to spook the Angel.'
'I'm not guessing that he's the sort that gets spooked by much,' Little Black said. He looked down the corridor. 'I made sure the dormitory doors are locked,' he said. 'Men's and women's. Especially that one right over there that Peter wanted me to unlock. Of course, you know that's the key, right at the end of that chain that unlocks it…' He winked conspiratorially. 'My guess is, just about everyone in there is lights-out fast asleep by now.'
With that, Little Black shoved back and stepped down the corridor. He turned once and waved, but it was so dark at the end of the hallway, near the stairwell on that end, that she could barely make out his features, beyond the white attendant's suit he wore.
Lucy heard the door creak shut, and then put her pocketbook down on the table, next to
