Sorrow's Crown (26 page)

The sound of the door unlocking drove a spike into my headache, and it took me a moment to realize that my palms weren't wet simply from sweat, but also because I was squeezing my fists so tightly that my fingernails had cut them open.

Brent didn't bother with a cheerful greeting, but his voice sounded inordinately loud anyway. "Hello,
Zebediah
, your friend Mr. Kendrick has returned to see you."

The brown blanket lay draped on the bed but couldn't quite hide the arm, leg, and chest restraints.
Crummler
stared straight up at the ceiling, eyes full of bewilderment and despair, his upper lip occasionally quivering. His baby's face had a shadow of his former beard across it; his shaved head showed specks of hair. There were dried salt tracks down his cherubic cheeks and in the corners of his eyes. I sat beside him. Not only had his manic happiness and the ecstatic fire and passion gone out of him, but so had the terror and horror and his imprisonment.

Brent had let me see
Crummler
because he knew I wouldn't be able to do any good for my friend. His nostrils and lips had crusts of dried blood on them. I didn't doubt that he'd rammed his face against the little plastic window. I would have done the same. I spoke to his inert form for about fifteen minutes while Brent gazed on complacently, but
Crummler
didn't stir in the slightest. I wanted to show him the sketches but he wouldn't even see them. Anna probably sat beside him and put her hand on his head and kept it there for a moment, knowing better than to waste her time trying to talk to him. I tried to coax and placate his steaming mind, but nothing got through. He would know when I possessed the power to free him, and he understood—even from his black slumber—that I couldn't help him at the moment. Without his duty of burying the dead, he had no life himself.

Harnes
didn't need Freddy Shanks to torture or kill
Crummler
.

He'd be dead in a couple of days if I didn't get him out of here.

We left the cell and Brent escorted me to the elevators. I thought about my friend Lisa Hobbes again, locked here for a time before being sent to jail for murder, and what it must be like to so easily lose yourself into these walls, into the clouds and cliffs painted there.

The migraine dissolved in an instant, and I was slowly able to open my fists again. "Teddy met somebody here, didn't he?"

Brent said, "What do you mean?"

I stared at him and grinned, and wondered if I was half as repugnant to him as he was to me. "Who was it, Doctor? Who did he recognize?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Teddy volunteered at the hospital, didn't he?"

"What makes you think that?"

Teddy wasn't very good with painting murals: the size and texture of the wall apparently threw him, but he'd made a decent enough attempt to fill his work with the qualities of Chinese art he admired so much. The way the clouds and whitecaps curled, that sharpness of each angle of rock and wave. "Who did he see in here while he worked in that group counseling room? Was it his mother?" I unfolded the sketches and swept them under his face. "Is Marie
Harnes
still alive and rotting under your supervision?"

The mustache looked like it was having an epileptic fit, scampering all around his face so badly that he had to snort to clear his nostrils. "I believe she's been dead for over twenty years, Mr. Kendrick." He motioned for one of the guards, who quickly came to attend him. "And it's you who should be seeking psychiatric help."

"I know what kind of care you dole out, Brent, I think I'll take a pass."

I wondered, was it possible?

Marie Harries trapped here for over twenty years?

"If you continue to harass and threaten me, Mr. Kendrick," Brent told me. "I promise you our next meeting will be a most unpleasant experience."

"Certainly," I said.

~ * ~

I sat in the parking lot of the hospital, looking at the visitors, nurses, and patients wandering the grounds despite the oncoming chill. Several people were underdressed, but they so valued their time outdoors they didn't mind the cold. I gazed up at the rows of cube windows and settled on the highest one in the farthest corner of the building. No matter how stable Marie
Harnes
might have been going into
Panecraft
, she'd be totally insane now.

I pulled out the cell phone and saw it was blinking angrily at me. The Low BATTERY flashed. I searched my jacket pockets but realized I'd left the second battery recharging in Anna's van. I still got a dial tone, though, and called my grandmother.

"Hello," she answered with a faint barb that nobody would have noticed but me. From just that single word I could hear that her voice was thick and weighty with frustration.

"What the hell is going on, Anna?"

"What is the matter,
Johnathan
?"

"You tell me. You're with him?"

"If by 'him' you mean Theodore
Harnes
, then yes, in a matter of speaking I am. Actually, at the moment I'm putting on a sweater, it is getting quite brisk out again. Did you dress warmly, dear?"

I repressed a sigh of irritation. "I'm not in my Mukluks but I'll get by. Why are you spending the day with him? Why did you go see
Crummler
with him? And for heaven's sake, what happened when you did?"

The barb hooked a little deeper. I got the feeling she was doing her best to control a great and painful passion within her. It had been brought out in both of us. "I wanted to see Theodore
Harnes
in his natural habitat, as it were, acting his most characteristic," she said. "I was hoping to humanize
Crummler
in his eyes, but I fear that none of us has ever been quite human in his regard, not even his son."

"I know why you went, Anna, but why did he go?"

"Perhaps because he feels most at home in his burrow."

"That's not why he did it." I thought about it for a minute, the way he followed me and Anna, skulking about the streets of the town in his limo, slowly circling
Panecraft
. "He's fascinated with you, and has been since you nearly ran him over fifty years ago. I also think he's trying to lure Nick
Crummler
out into the open."

"Why?" she asked.

"Nick knew Shanks from his time in
Panecraft
. Maybe he knows something about
Harnes
, too.
Harnes
has lost his right-hand psycho. Who knows?" I asked. "Maybe he wants Nick to replace Sparky."

"Yes. Perhaps Theodore
Harnes
believes Nick helped his brother murder Teddy."

"There's still more going on here than we know about.”

“Or less. I fear we haven't handled this situation very effectively."

"That's an understatement."

I heard a few snaps, a tinny voice, something being clicked. "Is that my micro-tape-recorder?" I asked. "What are you doing?"

"Testing it. I failed horribly today in not bringing it with me earlier."

"Why? Is he opening up at all?"

She did something then I had never heard her do, not even in the hospital the day my parents died, when she'd had tubes and needles plunged into her thin arms pumping painkillers throughout her system while the massive casts held her shattered legs and spine immobile.

My grandmother
cackled
; a high, painful, and somehow loathsome noise that drove an icicle against my spine. I shivered so hard I nearly dropped the phone.

"There is nothing in him left to open," she said. "He is completely guileless in a most heinous and unsettling manner. I'm thoroughly convinced he genuinely did not have anything to do with Teddy's murder, or, if Teddy is still alive, with his son's disappearance. He is not honest due to any conscience or moral fiber on his part. He admits to the truth because he is the incarnation of baseness, so utterly at ease with his own vices." Her breath caught in her throat, and my hand shook worse. "He and I have spent the day in his limousine discussing how he murdered my friend Diane—“

"Oh, good Christ."

"—and speaking at length on any number of his other crimes, including the poisoning of Teddy's mother. Apparently he had no need to find exotic toxins. Simple household cleaning products mixed into wine can often prove untraceable. He is quite knowledgeable about a whole host of such lethal misdeeds, and prefers to handle them himself rather than entrust minions to accomplish such tasks."

"He admitted her murder to me as well. Why didn't you call me, Anna? Did you call Lowell?"

"What, dear?"

"Why didn't you call me?" I shouted.

"I had a chance to finish it fifty years ago before any of the real horror began. And I did
nothing
."

I could feel her getting further away from me. "Anna, listen, I'll be home in twenty minutes…"

"I won't be here by then. Jocelyn is mounting the front steps even as I speak, Jonathan. They have been idling outside while I changed into heavier clothing. My day with them hasn't ended yet. Don't worry, dear, I pose no threat to him."

"Yes, you do, we both do."

"His ego needs an audience, you see. And now, as when I first met him, I'm a spectator to his dementia. I'd like to catch some of what he relates on tape, though ultimately I fear it will be useless in a court of law. I shall be home early, dear. I've left some roast beef in the refrigerator, help yourself."

"Anna, do
not
go with him!" I started the car and jammed the accelerator and spun in a tight circle heading for the gate.

"You see, Jonathan—" A sob nearly broke within her, but she caught it on the cusp and quickly reined herself. "You see, dear, he enjoys talking of murder. We needed only to
ask
."

She hung up and I gunned it, trying to dial Lowell's number and stay on the road, watching the patients wandering the grounds staring mournfully at me as if begging to take them home.

A woman, staring emptily at me.

I gasped when I spotted her, and the world grew insanely white and too wide. A male nurse frowned and his patient blinked as the new tires on Katie's car squealed. I suddenly spun the wheel tightly and roared off toward a pine tree overhanging a splintering wooden bench. One of the guards stood his ground and put his hand on his firearm. I jammed the brake, jumped out, and started yelling, "Help! He's in my back seat trying to escape! Somebody stop him!" I waved my hands about my face because they did it in the movies.

The guard drew his weapon and came over while I hopped around some more. The nurse and the patient he'd been standing with both stirred; the woman appeared to be self-assured, giddy, and frightened at the same time.

The guard said, "Who's in there? What happened?"

I stopped hopping, turned, and swung at him as hard as I could, connecting with his chin in such a beautiful display of action and reaction that I gave a grunt of pleasure, watching him fly over the hood of the car the way
Harnes
had done five decades ago when my grandmother had nearly run him over. His gun went off and the woman almost smiled.

I grabbed her hand and pushed her into the passenger seat while several nurses came running after us. I slammed my foot down and drove through the semaphore arm while the guard at the gate popped his head out of the little cubicle. I'd been wrong. He didn't want to pull his gun, he just wanted to be left alone to finish reading the socially and politically absorbing articles in
Gozangas
. The woman stared at me and suddenly giggled.

She was the lady Teddy had sketched—and because of her, for some reason, I knew, he'd been murdered.

Dipping over a clawing tree line, the bloated moon wobbled through the clouds, looking ready to keel over backward and roll out of sight. The woman smiled as we drove along the empty back roads toward
Harnes
' estate. She took my hand briefly, let it go, and then grasped hold again. Her teeth glowed in the flow of moonlight. Shadows twisted and filled her face. I spoke to her, trying to explain the situation, but she clearly didn't understand a word I said. Her small, strange smile remained firmly affixed.

Teddy was at once a better and worse artist than I would've believed; he managed to capture so much of her likeness, but not quite enough so that I could've pieced it all together days ago in his own bedroom, when I'd searched through the books he'd bought from me. Irony settled heavily on my shoulders. If only he'd been a slightly better artist.

I called Lowell and listened to phantom echoes of his voice, the phone battery so low and the static so awful that we had to scream at each other to be heard. He yelled, "You know what you've done? That's kidnapping. The feds will be involved now. What the hell are you doing? You finally lost your bird?"

I shouted, but in a few seconds the green power light dimmed and the phone went dead in my hand. I tossed it in the back seat and jammed the accelerator, pressing seventy along the snaking road and waiting for FBI helicopters to start swooping in low. The woman clapped and giggled some more.

When we passed the two rearing stone lions at the entrance to
Harnes
' private road, she nearly jumped out of her seat and started wailing and slapping me in the arm. I pulled over, unsure of what to do. If I let her out and anybody else found her in the state she was in, dressed like a hospital patient, I suspected they'd only toss her back in. Besides, showing up with her might be the trick I needed to pull. She scrabbled at the door like a dog scratching to be let out. I spoke plainly and calmly, and though my words meant nothing to her, I hoped my tone would get through.