Chris Holland and Emily Lindstrom had been in the Fane apartment for fifteen minutes now. While Marie had looked and sounded remarkably good, Chris now saw that the girl was still in the throes of shock. Soon, she would come in direct contact with her feelings about the slaying tonight and then-
Right now, the girl was instinctively using this interview as a way of avoiding her feelings. Chris had seen this following many traffic accidents, how badly injured people suddenly developed this great need to talk-this was just another manifestation of their shock-before they came crashing down.
'Please think back to his stomach,' Emily was saying.
Kathleen Fane was starting to watch Emily, too. The beautiful blond woman sounded as if she too were on the verge of snapping.
Chris said, 'Did he say anything to you while this was all happening?'
Marie's cheeks flushed. 'Dirty words.'
'I'm sorry.'
'The same dirty words over and over again.'
'And then he just grabbed Richie?'
'Yes. And-'
And Chris (so worried about Emily's insensitivity) saw that she'd asked exactly the wrong question at exactly the wrong time.
The question forced the girl to confront the images of her friend's murder again.
With no warning whatsoever, she began crying very softly, and then sobbing so hard that her entire body shook
Her mother was up from her chair in moments, and then sitting next to the girl and holding her with great tenderness.
'Please,' Kathleen Fane said, 'I think it's time you both leave.'
While there was no malice in the woman's tone, there was certainly steel. This was not a request; it was an absolute command.
'I'm sorry if I made you mad back there.'
'You got pretty intense.'
'I just had to know about his stomach.'
'I got the message.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I was just concerned about Marie.'
Emily Lindstrom's voice softened. 'The poor girl. She'll probably never really get over it.'
Chris was headed back to the station. The harsh wind was blowing litter across the lighted drive of a service station. At a 7-Eleven people were getting knocked around by the same wind as they tried to run to their cars. For a moment Chris felt snug and warm inside her car, even if it was rocking slightly with every other gust.
And that was when, over the rock station that Chris was playing low in the background, they first heard about the killings at Hastings House.
'Two, perhaps as many as three employees of the mental facility have been killed tonight. This is all the information we have right now. But please stay tuned. We'll be updating this story every few minutes.'
'To repeat-'
Emily snapped off the radio. 'He went back to the hospital.'
'But why? I thought he was trying to escape.'
'There's only one reason I can think of.'
'What's that?'
Emily Lindstrom said, 'He wants to get into the tower.'
For the second time tonight, O'Sullivan saw a section of the city turned into a kind of hell by the lights of emergency vehicles.
Hastings House had always had a quiet dignity for O'Sullivan-if you ever went crazy, this was clearly the place for them to take you-but tonight the dignity was being trampled by cops and reporters and onlookers roaming around the grounds, and by patients standing in heavily barred windows.
From the way the officials were running around, it was clear that they had no idea where Dobyns was.
Near the rear, at the entrance to the underground parking garage, an ambulance attendant was just closing the back doors on his boxy vehicle, three bodies having been set inside five minutes ago.
'Hey, O'Sullivan.'
A cop named Schultz came up. In his grey suit and fashionably greasy hair (what was with everybody wanting to look like Jerry Lewis all of a sudden?), Schultz looked to be on the same diet O'Sullivan was-pancakes and malts.
'Nice gut you've got there,' Schultz said, beating him to it.
'Yeah, like I didn't notice yours or anything,' O'Sullivan said.
'So I've put on a few pounds.'
'A few. Right.'
'I quit smoking anyway.'
'I don't even have that excuse,' O'Sullivan said.
The four redbrick buildings that made up the new section of I lastings House had always reminded O'Sullivan of the small liberal arts college he'd gone to, spending four and a half years of wasted time pleading with WASP princesses for just a glimpse of the treasure between their legs.
'The way I get it,' Schultz said, 'the guy who stiffed the three staffers in the garage is the same guy who escaped from here the other night. Why the hell would he want to come back here?'
O'Sullivan shrugged. 'You think he's still here?'
'Probably. There are a lot of places to hide.'
'Why wouldn't he run away?'
'The police shrink thinks he probably came back here to turn himself in but then one of the guards spooked him so he killed these three guys.'
O'Sullivan felt no temptation whatsoever to mention anything about cults or serpents that slithered inside the human body.
Schultz would never let him forget it.
'You still going out with Candy?' O'Sullivan said.
'Huh-uh.'
'How come?'
'Let's just say that Candy wasn't exactly the most faithful woman I've ever known.'
'I hear you. That's how my first wife was. I'm just glad she was hittin' on all these guys before AIDS showed up.'
Somebody shouted Schultz's name. Then he was gone and O'Sullivan was thinking of what Schultz had said about Dobyns: He was probably still around here somewhere.
For the first time that evening O'Sullivan raised his eyes to the black sky that was streaked with misty moonlight and racing grey clouds.
The tower appeared medieval and almost majestic against the night sky.
As they pulled into the parking lot of Hastings House, Emily said, 'I'm going up to the tower.'
'What?'
'It's the only way I can convince him to turn himself over.'
'But he'll kill you.'
'No, he won't.'
Chris shook her head. 'I don't know how you can be so sure of that.'
'The incantation.'
