Sorrow's Crown (15 page)

I looked up and down the long, well-lit corridors: they were completely empty. I wondered where all the other people listed on the clipboards might be. The guards pointed at a bench and told me to sit. I waited and they made a couple more phone calls, first on a red phone and then on a yellow phone.

Eventually one of them said, "Dr. Brent will allow you access to non-restricted areas B and C. Your visit will be limited to Sector Seven."

I nodded because it seemed the thing to do.

I was escorted to the elevators and up to the sixth floor to a sterile-looking white office so bright that I had to shield my eyes until I got used to it. The ceiling buzzed loudly with fluorescent lighting. There was nothing on the burnished white walls, not even a calendar with the days neatly X-
ed
out or a poster of Freud. Three clean white chairs formed a half-circle around a clean white desk. The clean white floor didn't have so much as a shoe scuff. Maybe the room was supposed to make the patients feel comfortable, passive, secure and con-tented as if they were back in the womb, or ascending toward heaven. I thought that sitting in here for any length of time would drive me to scrawling all over the place with
Dayglo
paint, just before I broke out and hung onto the hood of a visiting car, giggling maniacally with my insane face splashed on the windshield.

Dr. Brent sat at his desk smoking a pipe despite there being two No Smoking paperweights in front of him. He said to the guard, "Thank you, Philip. Proceed with your rounds." Philip spun on his heel with the well-practiced maneuver of a country music line-dancer and slipped down the hall.

Dr. Brent's first name turned out to be Brennan. He had a large badge on his white button-up sweater with his name printed evenly in big block letters. Maybe I'd just missed orientation at the asylum, or somebody was having a party on another floor. Maybe that's where all the other folks listed on the sheets were, everybody off having a bash on the ninth floor.
Hi! Welcome to
Panecraft
! My name is Brent! What's yours?

He stood five foot five or thereabouts and wasn't sure whether he felt more empowered standing behind his desk or sitting there. He sucked his pipe loudly, leaned forward, fell back in his chair, stood in a half-crouch, and went through the motions again. When I sat he abruptly followed suit and dropped heavily into his seat. He was sweating and couldn't quite meet my eyes. A mustache like an unhappy insect skittered beneath his nose, his top lip wriggling as if he had an itch in the middle of his head. He didn't have
Tourette's
Syndrome and wasn't exhibiting any other signs of psychosis.

He was just very nervous.

"I'll have you know this is highly improper, Mr. Kendrick."

"I understand."

"You are not a peace officer?"

"No, I'm not."

"Then I'm afraid I must object."

"You must?"

"Yes."

"Why must you?"

That threw him, and he frowned uncertainly. "Why? Because I don't see the value in your visiting at this time. It is severely disruptive to the nature of the situation at hand, grim as it is."

Doug Hobbes, Lisa's husband, had visited her every day for the week-long period it took the doctors to conclude that she could be tried for the murder of her best friend Karen Bolan. Willie Bolan, Karen's husband, had come to see Lisa as well, before he'd moved out of town.

"Your duty is to determine if
Crummler
is legally competent to stand trial for murder, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, of course."

"But he is considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Isn't he allowed visitors?"

"Technically, yes, but these circumstances are exceedingly unusual. Though
Zebediah
Crummler
has held a position of some . . .
uhm
, trust and respect in the community, his inability to clearly articulate the day in question and circumstances thereof have left many unanswered questions. Questions not only pertaining to the crime itself and such events occurring before, during, and directly following the homicide, but also to his state of mind at this same time."

I got the sinking feeling that Dr. Brennan Brent was seriously trying to snow me.

"I'd like to see him," I said.

"For what purpose?"

"Because I'm his friend."

The mustache kept crawling until I thought it would scurry right out of the clean white room. "I'm afraid I don't understand." The pipe had gone out but he continued to gnash it, teeth clicking repeatedly.

"What's to understand? I'm his friend. I'd like to see him.”

“But he ... that is, Mr.
Crummler
..." The words trailed off, but I could see he wanted to say
Crummler
has no friends
.

"You appear nervous, Doctor."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Is
Crummler
all right?"

"Certainly. What kind of a foolish question is that to ask? What are you implying? How dare you make such an insinuation."

I stood and said, "Take me to him, please."

"And in what capacity are you working on this investigation with the police?"

"In no capacity."

He smiled, and showed that the teeth on one side of his mouth were little more than stubs from all the pipe chewing he'd done in his life. He had a presumptuous sneer hiding beneath the skittering bug. "You speak with a fraudulent authority, Mr. Kendrick. You have none here."

"I never said I did."

"Well, then . . ."

"If you deny my request to see Mr.
Crummler
I can assure you I'll notify the National Board of Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Psychiatry, and the respective staffs of the
Journal of Research in Personality
,
Psychology Today
, and
Mental Health
magazines."

"See here, now, if you're attempting to discredit. . ."

"I'm not finished." I didn't know what the hell I was talking about but it sounded plausible enough. Lowell had told me to fake it, so if we were sending protocol to hell on the bullet train, I might as well be the engineer and ride that sucker all the way down the line. "I'm personal friends with Dr.
Asa
Hutchings of Channel Three News, and he's been considering a four-part series on the history of
Panecraft
Hospital and its current standing. There are quite a number of questions surrounding procedure at this facility."

"This is simply outrageous."

"Will you let me see
Crummler
?"

I thought of Lisa Hobbes in here, being asked questions about her miscarriages and her desperate want for a child. They'd go round and round about when and how her husband's affair had been discovered, and exactly what had brought up the rage that carried her to murder her friend and dump the body on my grandmother's lawn. I also wondered how she'd fared in the clean chair beneath these boiling white lights, and what she'd felt when faced with this kind of over-whelming arrogance, finding her name at the top of the list of the first page of every clipboard in the place.

Dr. Brennan Brent kept staring at me and sweating. He champed the pipe a few more times and finally assented. "All right."

~ * ~

I followed him back into the normally lit world, down the hall to the elevators. We passed a huge room where someone had just finished reading bad poetry aloud and others were commenting on how powerful the imagery of smashed frogs had been. Beautiful murals of cliffs and cloudscapes covered the walls, designed to take the patients' focus off the bars on the windows. I was surprised to see so many young people seated in a semi-circle among other, older, more harried and plagued faces.

Brent said, "Volunteers working with our non-violent patients. Mostly church-affiliated, though sometimes we get high school students or college freshman hoping to earn credit before formally applying to the psychology department."

We went up to what I suspected were non-restricted areas B and C of Sector Seven. It was also the twelfth floor. Two more guards met us there, and I was frisked again. We were led down a series of corridors to a cell that looked like little more than the drunk tank in the jail where I'd visited my dad. There was a small plastic window and a slot in the door. I didn't know what I expected, but I didn't expect such overbearing silence. The lights were tapered so that one corner proved to be a bit darker than the rest of the room. I didn't see
Crummler
anywhere. A guard unlocked the door and ushered us in.

Brent gave a cheerful greeting that sounded excessively loud as it rang around the cell. "Good evening,
Zebediah
, you have a visitor!" He started to chortle but gulped it down at the last second. "
Zebediah
? Would you like to see your visitor? Are you awake? Did you enjoy your dinner?"

A thick brown blanket rustled on the bed and a figure slowly began to unfurl like an animal awakening from its lair.

The blanket slid back to reveal, inch-by-inch, the pale shape of a baby's face, eyes wide with confusion and tears. Two streams dripped down the cherubic cheeks to land on the quivering bottom lip, hanging there before dropping off. A tiny gurgle escaped, and another, and another, until they became sounds that were almost words, but I didn't know what those words might be. The blanket clung like a robe as he got to his feet and took a few halting steps forward.

They'd shorn him.

"Oh, good Christ," I whispered. I swallowed repeatedly but my mouth had gone desert dry.

Crummler
shuffled almost into my arms but didn't seem to recognize me. The happiness and the fire, his ecstatic energy and fervor, all of it gone, and nothing remained but unbridled terror.

His, and now mine.

I spun on Brent and could feel every muscle locking up one by one, even my elbows popping as I began to shake. "What have you done to him?"

The guard moved in as well, one hand resting on a
billy
club and the other on something I'm sure I didn't want to get sprayed with in the face. Brent's self-assurance grew here, surrounded by his men. "Do not take that tone with me, sir. Shaving is a requirement of this facility. He proved to be quite wild when placed in confinement and physical restraints originally proved to be necessary. Remember, he is charged with murder."

"You keep leaving out the important part," I said. "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, Doctor. A court, Brent, and this facility isn't one."

Crummler
kept staggering forward, sobbing and muttering harshly now, and rested his face against my chest.

I'd have given anything in the world at that instant to have been Lowell Tully. Lowell would have known what to do, how to play this round, how to lash out or bide his time waiting, and he wouldn't have tipped his hand. I took the blanket and wrapped it around
Crummler's
shoulders like a shawl and walked him back to the bed. A barred window showed rain pulsing against the glass.

I said, "I want to talk with him alone."

Brent saw the value in not pushing this scene for more than it was worth. He champed his pipe once more and followed the guard out of the cell. The lock latched with an unbelievably loud clack that sounded like a bear trap snapping shut.

I checked
Crummler
thoroughly for bruises and welts, under the arms and on his thighs and lower back where someone might think they could get away with pounding him. In a little while he stopped weeping and just sat there staring out the window. All I found was a slight discoloration on the point of his chin, where I'd punched him.

A slab of ice collapsed within me as I looked at the man child, his mouth open and stunned face so much like a toddler's.

"I've seen your brother," I told him.

Crummler's
voice flattened and hardened, and became serious and full of understanding. It scared the hell out of me. "Nick? You've seen my brother Nick?"

"Yes."

"He shouldn't be in town. Tell him to stay away. If they catch him they'll put him in here. They'll put him back in here."

"He'll stay away," I said. "It's all right. We're both going to help you."

"I am cold."

"I'll tell them to give you more blankets."

"They won't listen. They don't listen. They never listen to anyone, and never have, and never will. I don't want more blankets, I want to go home. I want to go home, Jon."

"
Crummler
..."

"Please, Jon, make them let me out." Tears welled in his eyes again and I felt a furious animal scratching inside my chest trying to scrabble its way out.

"I'm going to try. Tell me what happened that day in the cemetery."

"I like it there, Jon. I want to go back to the cemetery.”

“You will, I promise.
Crummler
, tell me what happened. Do you remember that day?"

"An errant night fallen before the dragon."