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Chapter 22

But I knew, didn't I?

Perhaps not right at that moment, but soon enough. At first, I was still taken aback, surprised by the vehemence of the admission thrust in my face. I could feel a quiver within me, and all of the voices shouted out warnings and misgivings, contradictory impulses to hide, to follow, but mostly to pay attention to what I understood. Which was of course, that it didn't make sense. Why would the Angel simply walk directly up to me and confess his presence, when he had done so much to conceal who he was? And, if the stocky man wasn't really the Angel, why had he said what he did?

Filled with misgivings, my insides a turmoil of questions and conflicts, I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves and rushed through the dormitory door in order to trail the stocky man out into the corridor, leaving the Dancer and the retarded hulk behind. I watched him as he paused, lighting a cigarette with a dandified flourish, then looking up and surveying the new world that he'd been transferred into. I realized that the landscape of every housing unit was different. Perhaps the architecture was similar, the hallways and offices, dayroom, cafeteria, dormitory spaces, storage closets, stairwells, upstairs isolation cells all following more or less the same pattern, with maybe little design distinctions. But that wasn't the real terrain of each housing unit. The contours and topography were really defined by all the variety of madnesses contained within. And that was what the stocky man hesitated, assessing. I caught another glimpse of his eyes, and I knew that he was a man usually on the verge of an explosion. A man who had little control over all the rages that raced around his bloodstream contending with the Haldol or Prolixin that he was given daily. Our bodies were battlefields of contending armies of psychosis and narcotics, fighting from house to house for control, and the stocky man seemed to be caught up as much as any of us in that war.

I didn't think the Angel was.

I saw the stocky man push aside an elderly senile fellow, a thin, sickly sort who stumbled and almost fell to the floor and just as nearly burst into tears. The stocky man persisted down the corridor, pausing only to scowl at two women rocking in a corner singing lullabies to baby dolls held in their arms. When a wild-haired, disheveled Cato in loose pajamas and long, flowing housecoat, harmlessly meandered into his path, he screamed at the blank-faced man to move aside, and then continued on, his pace quickening, as if his footsteps could keep the beat defined by his anger. And every step he traveled took him farther, I thought, from the man we were pursuing. I don't think I could have said exactly why but I knew it with a certainty that grew as I followed down the corridor. I could see in my imagination precisely how when the fight broke out in Williams that had been orchestrated by Lucy, the stocky man had been instantly caught up in the trading of blows, and that was why he was transferred to Amherst. An addendum to the incident. He wasn't the sort who could ever idly sit back and watch a conflict unfold, shrinking into a corner, or taking refuge against the wall. He would respond electrically, leap in immediately, regardless of what the cause was, or who was fighting whom, or the why or wherefore of any of it. He just liked a fight, because it allowed him to step away from all the impulses that tormented him, and lose himself in the exquisite anger of trading blows. And then, when he rose, bloodied, his madness wouldn't allow him to wonder why he'd done what he'd done.

Part of his illness, I recognized, was in always drawing attention to himself.

But why had he been so specific, thrusting his face up to mine? "I'm the man you're looking for"?

In my apartment, I bent forward, leaning my head up against the wall, placing my forehead against the words that I'd written, while I paused, deep within my own memories. The pressure against my temple reminded me a little of a cold compress placed on the skin, trying to reduce a childhood fever. I closed my eyes for an instant, hoping to get a little rest.

But a whisper creased the air. It hissed directly behind me.

"You didn't think I would make it easy for you?"

I didn't turn. I knew that the Angel was both there and not there.

"No," I said out loud. "I didn't think you would make it easy. But it took me some time to figure out the truth."

Lucy saw Francis emerge from the dormitory, trailing after another man and not the one that she'd sent him to keep an eye on. She could see that Francis's face was pale, and he seemed to her to be riveted on what he was doing, almost oblivious to the pre dinner half step, do-si-do square dance of anticipation going on in the crowded corridor. She took a stride in his direction, then stopped, knowing somewhere within her that C-Bird probably had a reasonable grasp on what he was doing.

She lost sight of the two men as they headed into the dayroom, and she began to maneuver toward that room, when she saw Mister Evans steaming down the hallway toward her. He had the wild-eyed look of a dog that has had its well-gnawed bone stolen from him.

"So," he said angrily, "I hoped you're pleased. I've got one attendant over at the emergency room with a fractured wrist, and I've had to transfer three patients from Williams and put a fourth in restraints and in isolation for at least twenty-four hours, maybe more. I've got uproar and turmoil in one housing unit, and one of the transfers is probably significantly at risk, because he's had to shift locations after several years. And through no fault of his own. He just got caught up in the fight by accident, but ended up getting threatened. Damn! I hope you can appreciate what a setback this is, and how dangerous it is, especially for the patients who come to accept one thing and are suddenly tossed into another housing unit."

Lucy looked at him coldly. "You think I managed all that?"

"I do," Evans said.

"I must be far more clever than I thought," she answered sarcastically.

Mister Evil snorted, his face flushed. It was the appearance of a man who doesn't like seeing the carefully balanced world that he controls upset in any fashion, Lucy thought. He started to respond angrily, impetuously, but, then, in a manner that Lucy found unsettling, he managed to gain control, and speak in a far more contained fashion.

"My recollection," Mister Evil said slowly, "was that your arrangement here, working in this treatment facility was dependent on a lack of disruption. I seem to remember that you agreed to keep a low profile, and not to get in the way of the treatment plans already in place."

Lucy did not respond. But she heard what he was implying.

"That's my understanding," Mister Evil continued. "But correct me if I'm wrong."

"No, you're not wrong," she said, "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." These were falsehoods, she knew.

"I'll believe that when I see it," he said. "And, I presume, you intend to continue interviewing patients in the morning."

"I do."

"Well, we'll see," he said. And with the thinly veiled threat hovering in the air, Mister Evil turned and started to the front door. He stopped after a couple of strides, when he spotted Big Black accompanying Peter the Fireman. The psychologist immediately saw that Peter wasn't restrained, as he had been earlier. "Hey!" he called out, waving at Big Black and Peter. "Hold it right there!"

The huge attendant stopped, turning toward the dormitory head. Peter hesitated, as well.

"Why isn't he in restraints?" Mr. Evans shouted angrily. "That man is not allowed out of this facility without cuffs on his hands and feet. Those are the rules!"

Big Black shook his head. "Doctor Gulptilil said it would be okay."

"What?"

"Doctor Gulptilil," Big Black repeated, only to be cut off.

"I don't believe that. This man is under a court hold. He faces serious assault and manslaughter charges. We have a responsibility…"

"That's what he said."

"Well, I'm going to check on it. Right now." Evans spun, leaving the two men standing in the corridor, as he blasted toward the front door, first fumbling with his keys, swearing when he thrust the wrong one into the lock, swearing louder when the second one failed to work, and then finally giving up, and lurching off down the corridor toward his office, scattering patients out of his path.

Francis trailed behind the stocky man, as the new resident cut a swath through Amherst. There was something in the way his head was cocked slightly to the side, his lip raised, white teeth displayed, the bend of his shoulders forward and the thickly tattooed forearms swinging at his waist that clearly warned the other patients to steer to one side or the other. A predatory, challenging walk through Amherst. The stocky man took a long look through the dayroom, like a surveyor eyeballing a tract of land. The few remaining patients inside the room shrank to the corners, or buried themselves behind out-of-date magazines, avoiding eye contact. The stocky man seemed to like this, as if he was pleased to see that his bully status was going to be easily established, and he stepped into the center of the room. He didn't seem aware that Francis was following him until he stopped.

"So," he said in a loud voice, "I'm here now. Don't anybody try to fuck with me."

As he projected this, it seemed a little foolish to Francis. And perhaps cowardly, as well. The only folks left in the dayroom were old and obviously infirm, or else lost in some distant and private world. Nobody who might rise to challenge the stocky man was available.

Despite his voices shouting caution within him, Francis took several steps toward the stocky man, who finally grew aware of Francis's presence and spun to face him.

"You!" he said loudly. "I thought I'd already dealt with you."

"I want to know what you meant," Francis said cautiously.

"What I meant?" The man mocked Francis with a singsong voice. "What I meant? I meant what I said and I said what I meant and that's all there is to it."

"I don't understand," Francis said, a little too eager. "When you said I'm the man you're looking for," what did you mean?"

The man brayed out loud. "Seems pretty damn obvious, don't it?"

"No," Francis said cautiously, shaking his head. "It isn't. Who do you think I'm looking for?"

The stocky man grinned. "You're looking for one mean mother, that's who. And you've found him. What? Don't you think I can be mean enough for you?" He stepped toward Francis, bunching his hands into fists, bending forward slightly at the waist, cocking his body like the hammer on a pistol.

"How did you know I was looking for you?" Francis persisted, holding his ground despite all the urgent entreaties within him to flee.

"Everyone knows. You and the other guy and the lady from outside. Everyone knows," the stocky man said cryptically.

There are no secrets, Francis thought. Then he realized that was wrong.

"Who told you?" Francis asked suddenly.

"What?"

"Who told you?"

"What the hell do you mean?"

"Who told you I was looking?" Francis said, his voice rising in pitch and picking up momentum, driven forward by something utterly different from the voices he was so accustomed to, forcing questions out of his mouth when every word increased the danger he was facing. "Who told you to look for me? Who told you what I looked like? Who told you who I was, who gave you my name? Who was it?"

The stocky man lifted a hand and placed it directly under Francis's jaw. Then he gently touched Francis with the knuckles, as if making a promise. "That's my business," he said. "Not yours. Who I speak to, what I do, that's my business." Francis saw the stocky man's eyes widen slightly, as if opening to some idea that was elusive. He could sense that any number of volatile elements were mixing in the stocky man's imagination, and somewhere in that explosive concoction was some information that he wanted.

Francis persisted. "Sure, it's your business," he said, changing his tone to a slow pace, as if that might help. "But maybe it's a little bit of mine, as well. I just want to know who it was that told you to single me out and say what you said."

"No one," the stocky man replied, lying.

"Yes, someone," Francis countered. The man's hand dropped away from Francis's face, and he saw electric fear in the stocky man's eyes, hidden beneath rage. It reminded him, in that second, of Lanky, when he fixated on Short Blond, or earlier, when the tall man had fixated on Francis. A total absorption with a single notion, an overwhelming tidal wave of a single sensation, all set loose deep within, in some reach and cavern that even the most potent medication had difficulty penetrating.

"It's my business," the stocky man persisted.

"The man who told you, he might be the man I'm searching for," Francis said.

The stocky man shook his head. "Screw you," he said. "I'm not helping you with anything."

For an instant Francis stood directly across from the stocky man, not willing to move, thinking only that he was close to something and that it would be important for him to find it out, because it would be something concrete that he could take to Lucy Jones. And, in the same moment, he saw the machinery of the stocky man whirling faster and faster, anger, frustration, all the ordinary terrors of being mad coalescing, and in that volcanic moment, Francis suddenly realized that he had pushed something just a bit too far. He took a step backward, but the stocky man followed him.

"I don't like your questions," the man said low and cold.

"All right, I'm finished," Francis replied, trying to retreat.

"I don't like your questions and I don't like you. Why did you follow me in here? What are you trying to make me say? What are you going to do to me?"

Each of these questions hammered forth like blows. Francis glanced right and left, trying to spot somewhere to run to, somewhere he might hide, but there were none. The few people in the dayroom had shrunk away, concealing themselves in corners, or else staring at walls or ceiling, anything that might help them to will themselves mentally to some far different place. The stocky man pushed his fist into Francis's chest and knocked him back a stride, slightly off-balance. "I don't think I like you getting in my face," he said. "I don't think I like anything about you." He pushed again, harder.

"All right," Francis said, holding up his hand. "I'll leave you alone."

The stocky man seemed to tighten in front of Francis, his whole body growing taut and stretched. "Yeah, that's right," he said, growling, "and I'm going to make sure of it."

Francis saw the fist coming and managed to just lift his forearm enough to deflect some of the blow before it landed on his cheek. For a moment, he saw stars, and he spun back trying to keep his balance, stumbling slightly over a chair. This actually helped him, because it threw the stocky man's second punch astray, so that the left hook whistled just above Francis's nose, close enough so that he could feel its heat. Francis thrust himself backward again, sending the chair slamming across the floor, and the stocky man jumped forward, this time landing another wild blow that caught Francis high on the shoulder. The man's face was red with fury, and his rage made his attack inaccurate. Francis fell back, hitting the floor with a breath-stealing crash, and the stocky man leapt onto him, straddling his chest, looming above him. Francis managed to keep his arms free, and he covered up, and started kicking ineffectually, as the stocky man started to rain wild, freewheeling blows down onto Francis's forearms.

"I'll kill you!" he cried. "I'll kill you!"

Francis squirmed, shifting right and left, doing his best to avoid the flurry of punches, aware only peripherally that he hadn't really been hit hard, knowing that if the stocky man took even a microsecond to consider the advantages of his assault, he would be twice as deadly.

"Leave me alone!" Francis cried, uselessly.

In the narrow space between his arms, deflecting the attack, Francis saw the stocky man rise up slightly, gather himself, as if suddenly realizing that he needed to organize the assault. The man's face was still flushed, but it suddenly took on a purpose and rationale, as if all the fury collected within him had been channeled into a single flow. Francis closed his eyes, yelled, "Stop it!" one last helpless time, and realized that he was about to be hurt severely. He shrank back, no longer aware what words he was screaming to make the man stop, knowing only that they meant nothing in the face of the rage steaming toward him.

"I'll kill you!" the stocky man repeated. Francis had little doubt that he meant it.

The stocky man let out a single, guttural cry and Francis tried to avert his head, but, in that second, everything changed. A force like a huge wind slammed into the two of them, crashing together in a frenzied tangle. Fists, muscles, blows, and cries all gathered together, and Francis seemed to spin aside, aware suddenly that the weight of the stocky man was suddenly off of his chest, and that he had been cut free. He rolled over once, then scrambled back to the wall, and saw that the stocky man and Peter were suddenly entwined, knotted together in a pile. Peter had his legs wrapped around the man, and had managed to pin one hand with his own gripped around the man's wrist. Words disappeared in a cacophony of shouts, and they spun together like a top on the ground and Francis saw Peter's face set in a fierce rage of his own, as he twisted the stocky man's arm toward some breaking point. And, in the same moment, another pair of missiles suddenly flashed into Francis's vision, as the white-jacketed Moses brothers launched themselves into the fray. For a moment, there was an orchestra of screaming, shouting anger, and then Big Black managed to grab the stocky man's other arm, while at the same time throwing his own massive forearm across the man's windpipe, while Little Black pulled Peter away, slamming him awkwardly against a couch, while the larger brother wrapped the stocky man in a stifling embrace.

The stocky man screamed obscenities and epithets, choking, spittle flying from his lips, "Fucking nigger goons! Let me go! Let me go! I ain't done nothing!"

Peter slid back, so that his back was against the couch, his feet out in front of him. Little Black released him, and sprang to his brother's side. The two men expertly twisted the stocky man, so that he was beneath them, hands pinned, legs kicking for a moment, until they, too, stopped.

"Hold him tight," Francis heard coming from his side. He looked up and saw that Evans, brandishing a hypodermic syringe, was hovering in the doorway. "Just hold him!" Mister Evil repeated, as he took a bit of alcohol impregnated gauze in one hand, and the needle in the other, and approached the two attendants and the hysterical stocky man, who resumed twisting and struggling and shouting angrily, "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!"

Mister Evil swiped a bit of skin and plunged the needle into the man's arm, in a single, well-practiced motion. "Fuck you!" the man cried again. But it was the final time.

The sedative worked quickly. Francis wasn't sure how many minutes, because he had lost track of the steady passage of time, replacing it with adrenaline and fear. But within a few moments, the stocky man relaxed. Francis saw his wild eyes roll back, and a loose-fitting sort of unconsciousness take over. The Moses brothers relaxed as well, letting their tight grip loosen, and they moved back as the man lay on the ground.

"We'll need a stretcher to transport him to isolation," Mister Evil said. "He's going to be out cold in a second." He pointed at Little Black, who nodded.

The man groaned, twitched, and his feet moved like a dog's that dreams of running. Evans shook his head.

"What a mess," he said. He looked up, and saw Peter where the Fireman was still lying out on the floor, catching his breath and rubbing his own hand, which had a red bite mark on it. "You, too," Evans said, stiffly.

"Me, too, what?" Peter asked.

"Isolation. Twenty-four hours."

"What? I didn't do anything except pull that son of a bitch off C-Bird."

Little Black had returned with a folding stretcher and a nurse. He maneuvered over to the stocky man and started to put the drugged patient into a straitjacket. He looked up, as he worked, toward Peter and he shook his head slightly.

"What was I supposed to do? Let that guy beat the shit out of C-Bird?"

"Isolation. Twenty-four hours," Evans repeated.

"I'm not…," Peter began.

Evans arched his eyebrows upward. "Or what? Are you threatening me?"

Peter took a deep breath. "No. I just object."

"You know the rules for fighting."

"He was fighting. I was trying to restrain him."

Evans stood over Peter and shook his head. "An intriguing distinction. Isolation. Twenty-four hours. Do you want to go easy, or, perhaps, with a little more trouble?" He held the syringe up for Peter to see. Francis saw that Evans truly wanted Peter to make the wrong choice.

Peter seemed to control a surge of his own anger with great difficulty. Francis saw him grit his teeth together. "All right," he said. "Whatever you say. Isolation. Lead the damn way."

With that, he struggled up to his feet and dutifully followed Big Black, who, along with his brother, had loaded the stocky man onto the stretcher, and were maneuvering him out the dayroom door.

Evans turned to Francis. "You've got a bruise on your cheek," he said. "Have a nurse take a look at it."

Then he, too, pushed out of the dayroom, without even glancing at Lucy, who had taken up a position by the door, and who took that moment to fix Francis with a searing, inquisitive look.

Later that night, in her tiny room inside the nurse-trainees' dormitory, Lucy sat alone in the dark, trying to see progress in her investigation. Sleep had eluded her, and she had pushed herself up on the bed, back to the wall, staring out, trying to discern familiar shapes in the area around her. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the absence of light, but after a moment she could make out the unmistakable form of the desk, the small table, the bureau, the bedside stand and lamp. She continued to concentrate, and recognized the lump of clothes that she'd tossed haphazardly onto the stiff wooden chair when she'd come in earlier and prepared for bed.

It was, she thought, a mirror of what she was going through. There were things that were familiar, and yet they remained hidden, distorted, concealed by the darkness inside the hospital. She needed to find a way of illuminating evidence, suspects, and theories. She just couldn't see precisely how.

She leaned her head back and believed she'd done much to make a mess of things. At the same time, despite the lack of anything concrete to point to, she felt more persuaded than ever that she was dangerously close to achieving what she had come to the hospital for.

She tried to picture the man she was hunting, but found that just like the shapes in the room, he remained indistinct and elusive. The hospital world simply did not lend itself to easy supposition, she thought. She recalled dozens of moments, where she sat across from a suspect, either in a police interrogation room, or later, in a courtroom, and she had observed all the tiny details, the wrinkles on the man's hands, the furtive look in his eyes, perhaps the manner in which he held his head, all of which blended together into a portrait of someone narrowly defined by guilt and crime. When they sat across from Lucy, it always, she thought, seemed so obvious. The men she'd seen through arrest and prosecution had worn the truth of their actions like so many cheap suits of clothes. Unmistakable.

Continuing to stare into the night, she told herself that she had to think more creatively. More obliquely. More subtly. In the world she came from, there had been little doubt in her mind whenever she'd come face-to-face with her quarry. This world was the exact opposite. There was nothing except doubt. And, she wondered, feeling a chill that didn't come from the open window, she might even have been face-to-face with the man she hunted. But here he owned the context.

She lifted her hand to her face and touched her scar. The man who'd attacked her had been a cliche of anonymity. His face had been obscured by a knit ski mask, so that she only saw his dark eyes. He wore black leather gloves on his hands, jeans, and a nondescript pullover parka of the sort available in any number of outdoors equipment stores. On his feet had been Nike running shoes. The few words he spoke were guttural, rough, designed to conceal any accent. He didn't really need to say anything, she remembered. He let the glistening hunting knife that had sliced her face speak for him.

That was something she had thought about hard. In the processing of the event afterward, she had dwelt on this detail, for it spoke to her in an odd way, and had made her wonder if the rape had been less of the purpose of the whole encounter than the disfigurement of her face.

Lucy leaned back, bouncing her head off the wall once or twice, as if the modest blows could loosen some thought from where it was glued within her imagination. She wondered sometimes how it was that her entire life had been altered by the time she'd been assaulted in that dormitory stairwell. How long was it, she asked? Three minutes? Five minutes from start to finish, from the first terrifying sensation when she'd been grabbed, to the sound of his footsteps heading off?

No more than that, surely, she told herself. And everything from that moment on had been changed.

Beneath her fingers, she touched the ridges of the scar. They had retreated, almost blended back even with the rest of her complexion, as the years had passed.

She wondered whether she would ever love again. She doubted it.

It wasn't anything as simple as coming to hate all men for the acts of one. Or being unable to see the distinctions between the men she had come to know and the one who had harmed her. It was more, she thought, as if a place within her had been turned dark, and iced over. She knew that the man who had assaulted her had fueled much of her life and that every time she had pointed accusingly in a court of law at some sallow-faced defendant destined for prison she was slicing slivers of retribution from the world and gathering them to herself. But she doubted that the hole inside her would ever be filled enough.

Her mind slid then to Peter the Fireman. Too much like me, she thought. This made her sad, and unsettled, unable to appreciate that they were both damaged in like fashion, and that should have linked them. Instead she tried to picture him in the isolation room. It was the closest thing to a prison cell the hospital had, and in some ways it was worse. It existed for the sole purpose of eliminating any outside thoughts that might intrude on the patient's world. Gray, stuffed padding covered the walls. The bed was bolted to the floor. A single thin mattress and threadbare blanket. No pillow. No shoelaces. No belt. A toilet that had little water in the bowl to prevent someone from trying to drown themselves in that sad way. She didn't know if Peter would be put into a straitjacket. That would be procedure, and she guessed that Mister Evil would want to see procedure followed. For a moment she wondered how Peter was able to maintain any sanity at all, when just about everything that surrounded him was crazy. She guessed that it took a considerable force of will to constantly remind himself that he did not belong.

That would be painful, she thought.

In that regard, she realized, they were even more alike.

Lucy took a deep breath and told herself that sleep was critical. She needed to be alert in the morning. Something had driven Francis to confront the stocky man, and she didn't know what it was, but suspected it was relevant. She smiled. Francis was proving to be more helpful than she had imagined he would be.

She closed her eyes, and as she shut one dark away with another, she was suddenly aware that she could hear an odd sound, one that was familiar, but unsettling. Her eyes popped open and she recognized the noise as the soft padding sound of footsteps in the carpeted hallway outside her room. She let out a long slow whistle and realized her heart rate had increased, which she instantly told herself was an error. Footsteps weren't that unusual in the nurse trainees' dormitory. After all, there were different shifts, requiring twenty-four-hour attendance, and this caused the sleep patterns in the dormitory to be erratic.

But as she listened, she thought the footsteps paused outside her door.

She stiffened in the bed, craning her head in the direction of the faint, distinctive sound.

She told herself she was mistaken, and then thought she heard the handle of her door slowly turn.

Lucy instantly turned to the bed stand, and fumbling noisily, managed to click on the bedside lamp. Light flooded the room, and she blinked a couple of times, as her eyes adjusted. In almost the same motion, she threw herself out of the bunk, and stepped across the room, banging into a metal wastebasket, which skittered noisily across the floor. The door had a deadbolt lock, and she saw that it had not moved from the closed position. Crossing the room rapidly, Lucy pushed herself up to the solid wooden door and placed her ear against it.

She could hear nothing.

She listened for a sound. Anything that might tell her something; that someone was outside, that someone was fleeing, that she was alone, that she was not.

Silence gripped her as awfully as the noise that had plunged her into alertness.

She waited.

She let seconds slide past her, craning forward.

One minute. Perhaps two.

Through the window open behind her, she suddenly heard some voices passing by beneath. There was a laugh, then it was joined by another.

She turned back to the door. She reached up, threw the deadbolt lock, and with a sudden, swift motion, thrust the door open.

The corridor was empty.

She stepped out and peered to the right and to the left.

She was alone.

Lucy took another deep breath, letting the wind inside her lungs calm her racing heart. She shook her head. You were always alone she told herself. You are letting things get to you. The hospital was a place of unfamiliar extremes, and being surrounded by so much odd behavior and mental illness had made her jumpy. If she had something to fear, it was far less than whoever it might have been had to fear from her. This sense of bravado reassured her.

Then she retreated again into the room Short Blond had once occupied. She locked the door, and before getting back into bed, arranged the wooden chair so that it was balanced up against the door. Not as much as an additional barrier, because she doubted that would work. But propped in such a way that were the door to open, it would crash to the floor. She took the metal waste-basket and placed that on top, then added to the makeshift tower her small suitcase. She believed that the noise of it all tumbling to the floor would be enough of an early warning to rouse her, no matter how deep her sleep might be.


Chapter 21 | The Madman | Chapter 23