Sorrow's Crown (25 page)

"You don't have nowhere else better to be?" he asked.

"Believe it or not," I said. "I do."

He finished and wanted to charge me extra and instantly saw I wasn't having any. He tried to get me to thank him for putting in so much extra time and effort, instead of owning up to the fact that he'd fouled the job the first time.

I drove out without another word and pulled up outside
McGreary's
discount store at about four-thirty, where I waited almost forty-five minutes before seeing Kristin
Devington
leave for the day. I hoped to seem careless in my approach, but the gravel crunched loudly underfoot and I sounded like a lost water buffalo moving through the parking lot. She heard me coming and wheeled and waited for me to step up.

"Hi, Jonny."

"Hi, Kristin."

"You don't plan on causing any more trouble for
Arnie
, do you?" she asked. "Not just for his sake, because it took my mother two days to calm down. She's got high blood pressure and diabetes. She's supposed to take a couple of different medications and watch her diet, but she only swallows some of the pills and she eats a half pound of peanut brittle almost every night."

"No," I said. "I don't want to fight with your brother anymore."

"That's good to know. What brings you here then?”

“I thought we might talk for a few minutes."

"Okay.

Neither one of us had grown so much as an inch since we were seventeen, and she reached exactly the same place on me as back then, just about my shoulders. I put my hand on her arm, thinking about the night I'd taken her to her junior prom. I remembered how lovely Kristin had looked that evening when I'd pinned the corsage on her, both of us lit by the bug light on her front porch, back when
Arnie
and I and the rest of the team used to wrestle in the mud of the high school fields and go drink beer in the moonlight behind the gymnasium or the bleachers.

"What's been happening at your house?" I asked.

"He's been fighting with my mother something awful the past few months. She'll put her teeth in somebody's throat to defend him most of the time, but when she's alone in the house with him it's a different story, all right. It gets ugly a couple of times a year, and Sheriff
Broghin
had to put handcuffs on her once just so she'd settle down in her recliner long enough to keep from killing
Arnie's
dog with the meat cleaver." She tipped her chin aside and I saw her mother there in her face, lurking below. "Stupid dog died anyway a couple of weeks later from eating rat poison over in the tool shed.
Arnie
got out his shotgun and blew up the roof a little, aiming for the weathervane."

"Did he ever hit it?"

"No, but some of the shot nailed a passing crow and brought it down into the blueberry patch. He was pretty happy with himself over that."

"I'll bet." I could see him plugging at nothing and laughing morosely, creeping around that quarter-acre of crabgrass covered with trash and shards. The mold and ivy was so thick and heavy on the gingerbread trim that he must've felt as if it covered him as well. He'd be wishing his wife was still with him, his father back from the grave. Christ, we weren't so different after all. None of us.

"Why don't you leave?" I asked.

She shrugged with the same despondency I'd seen in most of my high school crowd after they found themselves still living with their parents ten years after graduation. "Where am I going to go?"

I watched the pedestrian traffic go by, thinking that Katie might be right, the bookstore could have a fair flow of business between ten and six. The Barbara
Cartland
and Danielle Steele shelves would turn over quickly because of sorrowful women who had nothing better to do than scarf down peanut brittle; the
Mission M.I.A.
and
The Executioner
series would be selling well due to the NRA enthusiasts flocking over from Oscar's hunting goods store.

Kristin didn't seem to mind just standing here at the back of the parking lot with me. Her mother's features rose for a moment like a drowned woman's face bobbing to the surface. Maybe Mrs.
Devington
had been going for a wrench the other day, or maybe Kristin had just wanted to brain me with that broom handle.

Abruptly she said, almost too softly to be heard, "I'm sorry."

Arnie
Devington
wouldn't have slashed tires. That showed plenty of rage, all right, but directed toward Katie.
Arnie
hadn't broken into Katie's shop or mashed the orchids in the street. "Why'd you do it?"

"I don't know exactly," Kristin said. "I guess. . . I guess, maybe, because when you showed up at the house the other day, it reminded me of the prom, how handsome you looked, and the way I thought it was going to be, you know, one day. With you, or maybe with just anyone, but it never was. I ironed the corsage between two pieces of wax paper, still have it saved in the bible on my nightstand. You never asked me out again."

She was wrong, we'd had a couple more dates afterwards. Then she'd joined her family in badmouthing me in order to keep what little self-respect they had in the wake of their life-long failures. I thought she might cry, but she didn't appear to be particularly abashed.

"Sometimes," she told me. "I wish it hadn't been that stupid dog that ate the rat poison. I should've done it myself. You ever feel like that, Jonny?"

Nothing I could do would change anything. There was nothing left to be said except what I came here to say. "Please, Kristin. Don't go near her again."

The gentleness in her eyes as she'd watched her brother and I tearing it up on the lawn had fled; she had her own harbored resentments to deal with. Or those she'd failed to deal with. The orchids stepped on in the street, like a flattened corsage kept between pages in a book, might still haunt her years from now.

Kristin looked at me the same way she had the other day; as if she knew this wasn't over, and might never be.

~ * ~

Panecraft
continued to rise into the reddening sky, silhouetted in the rotund face of the full moon breaching the sunset. Rest-less clouds curled, parted and twisted in argument, then thinned and drifted away. The air grew heavy and began to still, and the temperature dropped significantly in only a few minutes.

I drove up to the black-and-white striped semaphore arm at the front gate checkpoint, and the same guard performed another extravaganza of looking for my name on the pages of his clipboard.

I said, "Just call ahead to Dr. Brent."

He didn't pick up the red phone in his little booth, and wouldn't do so until he'd gone through the rest of his paperwork. I leaned out of the car window and scanned the tiny cubicle again. He actually had a bookmark placed in the men's magazine so he wouldn't lose his place. If he was really reading the articles in a magazine called
Gozangas
then no wonder he had to entertain himself with his clipboard. He must've desperately wanted to pull his firearm just to fend off the tedium.

I didn't think Brent would let me inside without a growing series of threats that might culminate with my reaching for the red phone myself and finally giving the bored guard a chance to wave his gun around. I waited while the guy ran his finger down another sheet. He said, "Yes sir, Mr. Kendrick. Enjoy your visit." I shot up in my seat as he palmed the button that opened the gate, and waved me on.

So, Brent wanted to see me.

Or perhaps
Harnes
wanted Brent to see me.

I found the parking lot and left Teddy's books in the back seat, but took his folded sketches and put them in my back pocket. I got out and scanned the thickets in the distance where Nick
Crummler
had told me he'd been watching from when I'd first visited the hospital. I didn't see him anywhere but that didn't mean he wasn't out beyond the fields and back fence, where Michelle and I had made love years ago. At the main doors two guards gave my identification a cursory viewing. I was frisked much more poorly this time and wasn't even told to turn out my pockets. They let me keep my cell phone.

The same guard, Philip, escorted me up to the sixth floor again, and back to Brent's disinfected white office. I got used to the fluorescent brightness quickly this time. We were all getting used to one another. The decontaminated white walls, chairs, and floor appeared to be even cleaner, if possible.

Dr. Brennan Brent sat at his desk sucking his pipe loudly. For a man who should be on edge he looked annoyingly serene and self-possessed. The murder of his right-hand employee raised his confidence level, now that he wouldn't have to call a subordinate "mister" anymore. His mustache continued to skitter on its own, but like a friendly cat it perked up some when he spotted me. He smiled pleasantly. I thought perhaps my plan had already been foiled.

He nodded to the guard and said, "Thank you, Philip. Proceed with your rounds." Philip spun on his heel and slid down the hall, and I felt my chest hitch with an overwhelming sense of
déjà vu
, as if the hospital had a piece of me now that would forever play out these exact same scenes.

His smile widened, and he showed the stubby brown teeth on one side of his mouth where he'd been gnawing the pipe half his life. "And what can I do for you today, Mr. Kendrick?" He said it like a clerk behind a counter.

"I'd like to see
Zebediah
Crummler
, please."

"Yes, certainly."

The good doctor made no move though, resting in his chair peacefully, as though he'd just been walked on by a Geisha girl with sandalwood slippers. I shifted and tried to appear indignant. His eyelids lowered to half-mast and he let out a sigh. I was not exactly impressing him with my self-righteous contempt. If he'd had a desk piled high with files, books, and personal mementos I might've reached over and swept them onto the floor in a gesture of scorn. I didn't think I'd get the same effect by knocking over his No Smoking paperweights.

"It's all falling apart, Brent," I said. "How many new cases came in this week?"

"Twelve."

"I'll guarantee that one of them is undercover, a cop or a reporter who'll be keeping carefully detailed notes about this facility."

At least his eyes opened wide again, though he didn't appear to be concerned. "This is one of the leading rehabilitation clinics in the state. Who do you think you are threatening in such an insolent manner?"

"Better I should threaten you in a respectful manner?"

His mustache appeared to want to leave his face, sidle up to me, and make friends by rubbing itself against my ankle. "You are not an officer of the law."

I figured I'd push the bluff. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

So much for bluffing. "I'd like to see
Crummler
now.”

“Certainly."

"You already said that. Let's go."

He almost pouted, and the milieu between us shifted as if he considered himself some exasperated but beloved uncle of mine. "I must say," he whined. "Your grandmother didn't behave in such an impolite manner."

"What?"

"She is a woman of refinement, manners and gentility.”

“My grandmother? My grandmother was here today?”

“Certainly. With Mr.
Harnes
."

For a moment I thought he might be lying, but recalled the signs posted around the hospital showing it to be fully accessible to the physically handicapped. While I'd been at Duke's garage and sitting out front of
McGreary's
store waiting for Kristin, Anna had been here, with him—the emperor of the asylum.

Brent and I walked down the corridor and passed that same room with the murals of cliffs and cloudscapes, the kids already battling drugs and liquor seated in a semi-circle among the older faces that regretted too much of their own lives. A few were crying, most of them looked annoyed and angry that their parents, wives, and husbands had forced them into rehab. Maybe some of them, like my father, would get the help they needed to stop robbing their families and taking off their clothes and singing "Green Dolphin Street" at five AM and finally manage to straighten out.

Brent nodded to the counselor pontificating in front of the two fuming teenagers. We went up to the twelfth floor, down the winding maze of hallways to
Crummler's
cell. I noticed the small plastic window had a smear of dried blood on it.

The migraine burst full-blown into my head so suddenly that I nearly pitched forward. My heart began a slow crawl up my throat. Cold sweat exploded across my face and I wondered if I really should get a therapist to help me control my temper. The tapered lighting seemed to draw the world back into one corner, and again
Crummler
lay in the darkness where I couldn't see him.

"We've had some troubles recently.
Zebediah
has grown torpid to the point of becoming cataleptic. He refuses to shower or even use the toilet."

"How does a catatonic wind up bleeding on the door?" I whispered.

"He had a psychotic outburst two days ago, hammering himself, wailing to be set free. He forced us to use restraints so he wouldn't bring further harm to himself."