drained her life in seconds.
Peter the Fireman stepped back into the hallway, next to Francis. He took in a long, slow breath, then exhaled slowly, whistling slightly as the wind passed his clenched teeth.
'Look carefully, C-Bird,' he said cautiously. 'Look at everything carefully. Try to remember everything we see here tonight. Can you do that for me, C-Bird? Be the second pair of eyes that records and registers everything here?'
Francis nodded slowly. His eyes tracked Peter the Fireman, as the man stepped back into the storage room and wordlessly started to point at things. First the gash that cruelly marred her throat, then the overturned bucket and the clothing sliced and tossed aside. He pointed at a visor of blood on Short Blond's forehead, parallel lines that dripped toward her eyes. Francis could not imagine how they had gotten there. Peter the Fireman, lingered momentarily, as he pointed at the marks, then he started to maneuver carefully in the small space, his index finger pointing out each quadrant of the room, each element of the scene, like a teacher with a pointer rapping it impatiently on a blackboard to gain the attention of his dull-witted class. Francis followed it all, printing it like a photographer's assistant on his memory.
Peter lingered longest pointing at Short Blond's hand, extended out from the body. Francis saw suddenly that it appeared that the tips of four of her fingers were missing, as if they'd been sliced off and removed. He stared at the mutilation and realized his breath was coming in short spasms.
'What do you see, C-Bird?' Peter the Fireman finally asked.
Francis stared at the dead woman. 'I see Short Blond,' he said. 'Poor Lanky. Poor, poor Lanky. He must have thought truly he was killing evil.'
'You think Lanky did this?' he asked, shaking his head. 'Look closer,' Peter the Fireman repeated. 'Then tell me what you see.'
Francis gazed almost hypnotically at the body on the floor. He locked on the young woman's face, and was almost overcome with a mingling of fear, excitement, and a distant emptiness. He realized that he had never seen a dead person before, not close up. He did remember going to a great-aunt's funeral, when he was young, and being gripped tightly by the hand by his mother, who had steered him past an open coffin, muttering to him all the time to say nothing and do nothing and behave, for she was afraid somehow that Francis would draw attention to them all by some inappropriate act. But he hadn't, nor had he really been able to see the great-aunt in the coffin. All he could remember was this white porcelain profile, seen only momentarily, like something spotted through the window of a speeding car, as he was shunted past. He didn't think that was the same. What he saw of Short Blond was far different. It was dying at its absolute worst, he realized. 'I see death,' Francis whispered.
Peter the Fireman nodded. 'Yes, indeed,' he said. 'Death. And a nasty one, at that. But you know what else I see?' He spoke slowly, as if measuring each word on some internal scale.
'What?' Francis asked cautiously.
'I see a message,' the Fireman replied.
Then, with an almost crushing sense of sadness, he added, 'And Francis, evil hasn't been killed. It is right here among us and is as alive as you or I.' Then he stepped back into the corridor and quietly added, 'Now we need to call for help.'
Chapter 6
Sometimes I dream about what I saw.
Sometimes I realize that I am no longer dreaming, but I am wide-awake and it is a memory imprinted like the raised outline of a fossil in my past, which is far worse. I can still see Short Blond in my mind's eye, perfectly framed, like in one of the pictures that the police came and took later that night. But I suspect the police photographs weren't nearly as artistic as my memory's vision. I recollect her form a little like some lesser Renaissance painter's vivid but journalistically inaccurate imagination of a martyred saint's death.
What I remember is this-Her skin was porcelain white and perfectly clear, her face was set in a beatified repose. All it lacked was a glowing halo around her head. Death as a little more than an inconvenience, a mere momentary bit of distasteful and uncomfortable pain on the inevitable, delicious, and glorious road to heaven. Of course, in reality {which is a word I have learned to use as infrequently as possible) it was nothing of the sort. Her skin was streaked with vibrant dark blood, her clothes were ripped and torn, the slice in her throat gaped like a mocking smile and her face was wide-eyed and twisted in shock and disbelief. A gargoyle of death. Murder at its most hideous. I stepped back from the doorway to the storage closet that night filled with any number of vibrating, unsettling fears. To be that close to violence is the same as having one's heart suddenly scraped raw by sandpaper.
I didn't know her much in life. I would come to know her much better in death.
When Peter the Fireman turned away from the body and the blood and all the big and little signs of murder, I had no idea what was about to happen. He must have had a much more precise notion, because he immediately admonished me once again not to touch anything, to keep my hands in my pockets, and to keep my opinions to myself.
'C-Bird,' he'd said, 'in a short amount of time people are going to start asking questions. Really nasty questions. And they may ask these questions in a most unpleasant fashion. They may say they just want information, but trust me, they're not about helping anyone but themselves. Keep your answers short and to the point and don't volunteer anything beyond what you have seen and heard this night. Do you understand that?'
'Yes,' I'd said, but I really had little idea what I was agreeing to. 'Poor Lanky,' I repeated once again.
Peter the Fireman had nodded. 'Poor Lanky is right. But not for the reasons you think. He's about to get a real up close and personal look at evil, after all. Maybe we all are.'
He and I walked down the corridor to the empty nurses' station. Our bare feet made little slapping sounds against the floor. The wire gate entranceway that should have been locked was swinging open. There were a few papers scattered around the floor but these could have tumbled off the desk when someone simply moved too quickly. Or they might have been swept to the floor in the midst of a brief struggle. It was hard to tell. There were two other signs that something had happened there: The locked cabinet that contained medications was wide open, and a few plastic pill containers littered the floor and the sturdy black telephone on the nurses' station desk was off its hook. Peter pointed at both these observations, just as he had earlier as we had surveyed the storage closet. Then he reached down and replaced the receiver, then immediately picked it back up to get a dial tone. He pushed zero, to connect himself with hospital security.
'Security? There has been an incident in Amherst,' he said briskly. 'Better come quickly.' Then he abruptly disconnected the line and waited for another dial tone. This time he punched in 911. A second later, he calmly said, 'Good evening. I want to inform you that there has been a homicide in the Amherst Building at the Western State Hospital in the area adjacent to the first-floor nursing station.' He paused, and then added, 'No, I'm not giving my name. I've just told you all you need to know at this point: the nature of the incident and the location. The rest should be pretty damn apparent when you get here. You will need crime scene specialists, detectives, and the county coroner's office. I would also suspect you should hurry up.' Then he hung up. He turned to me and said, with just a slight if wry touch and perhaps a little more than interest, 'Things are about to get truly if exciting.' f That is what I remember. On my wall, I wrote:
' Francis had no idea the extent of the chaos about to break above his head like a thunder burst at the end of a hot summer afternoon… Francis had no idea the extent of the chaos about to break above his head like a thunder burst at the end of a hot summer afternoon. The closest he'd ever been to a crime up to that point was what he had unfortunately created all by himself when all his voices had shrieked at him and his world had turned upside down, and he had blown up and threatened his parents and his sisters and ultimately himself with the kitchen knife, the act which landed him in the hospital. He tried to think about what he'd seen and what it meant, but it seemed as if it was just beyond the reach of contemplation and more in the realm of shock. He became aware of his voices speaking in muted, but nervous fashion, deep within his head. All words of fear.
