Legion, Page 24

  “Okay, sir.” The policeman sheathed the gun and left.

  “How many for lunch?” asked Mary’s mother. “I have to know now.”

  “What kind of shenanigan is this, Bill?” demanded Mary. She gestured at the woman. “What kind of a nurse is this that you sent me? I open the door for the woman and she faints. She falls down. She puts her head back and hollers something crazy, and then she faints. My God, she’s too old to be a nurse. She’s—”

  Kinderman waved her into silence. The woman looked innocently into his eyes. “Is it bedtime?” she asked him.

  The detective slowly sat at the table. He slipped off his hat and put it softly on a chair. “Yes, it’s almost bedtime,” he said to her gently.

  “I’m so tired.”

  Kinderman probed her eyes. They were honest and mild. He looked up at Mary, who was standing by with confusion and annoyance mixed in her face. “You said that she said something,” Kinderman told her.

  “What?” frowned Mary.

  “You said that she said something. What did she say?”

  “I don’t remember. Now, what’s going on?”

  “Please try to remember. What did she say?”

  “ ‘Finished,’ ” grunted Mary’s mother from the stove.

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Mary. “Now I remember. She screamed, ‘He’s finished,’ and then she fainted.”

  “ ‘He’s finished’ or ‘Finished’?” pressed Kinderman. “Which?”

  “ ‘He’s finished,’ ” said Mary. “God, she sounded like a werewolf or something. What’s wrong with this woman? Who is she?”

  Kinderman’s head was averted. “ ‘He’s finished,’ ” he murmured reflectively.

  Julie came into the kitchen. “So what’s happening?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  The telephone rang again. Mary answered it immediately. “Hello?”

  “Is it for me?” asked Julie.

  Mary held the telephone out to Kinderman. “It’s for you,” she said. “I think I’ll give the poor thing some soup.”

  The detective spoke into the phone. He said, “Kinderman.”

  It was Atkins. “Lieutenant, he’s calling for you,” said the sergeant.

  “Who?”

  “Sunlight. He’s yelling his head off. Just your name.”

  “I’ll come over right away,” said Kinderman. He quietly hung up the phone.

  “Bill, what’s this?” he heard Mary asking behind him. “It was in her shopping bag. Was that the package?”

  Kinderman turned and caught his breath. In Mary’s hands was a large and gleaming pair of surgical dissection shears.

  “Do we need this?” she asked.

  “No.”

  * * *

  KINDERMAN CALLED for another squad car and took the old woman back to the hospital where she was recognized as a patient in the open ward of Psychiatric. She was transferred immediately to the disturbed ward for observation. The injured nurse and attendant, learned Kinderman, had sustained no permanent damage and were expected back to duty sometime the next week. Satisfied, Kinderman left that area and went to the isolation section where Atkins was waiting in the hall. He was opposite the door to Cell Twelve, which was open. His back against the wall, his arms folded, he silently watched the detective approaching. His eyes seemed troubled and far away. Kinderman stopped and met his gaze. “What’s wrong with you?” asked the detective. “Is something wrong?”

  Atkins shook his head. Kinderman studied him for a moment. “He just said you were here,” said Atkins remotely.

  “When?”

  “Just a minute ago.”

  Nurse Spencer emerged from the cell. “Are you going in?” she asked the detective.

  Kinderman nodded, then he turned and walked slowly into the cell. He quietly closed the door behind him, went to the straightbacked chair and sat down. Sunlight was watching him, his eyes gleaming. What was different about him? the detective wondered.

  “Well, I simply had to see you,” said Sunlight. “You’ve been lucky for me. I owe you something, Lieutenant. Besides, I want my story set down as it happened.”

  “And how did it happen?” Kinderman asked him.

  “Close call for Julie, wouldn’t you say?”

  Kinderman waited. He listened to the dripping sound in the basin.

  Sunlight abruptly leaned his head back and chuckled, then he fixed the detective with a shining stare. “Haven’t you guessed it, Lieutenant? Why, of course you have. You’ve finally put it all together—how my precious little surrogates do my work, my dear, sweet, elderly empty vessels. Well, they’re perfect hosts, of course. They aren’t here. Their own personalities are shattered. And so in I slip. For a while. Just a while.”

  Kinderman stared.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. About this body. Friend of yours, Lieutenant?” Sunlight leaned his head back in rippling laughter that flowed into the strident braying of an ass. Kinderman felt ice at the back of his neck. Abruptly Sunlight broke it off and stared blankly. “Well, there I was so awfully dead,” he said. “I didn’t like it. Would you? It’s upsetting. Yes, I felt very poorly. You know—adrift. So much work left to do and no body. It wasn’t fair. But then along came—well, a friend. You know. One of them. He thought my work should continue. But in this body. This body in particular, in fact.”

  The detective was mesmerized. He asked, “Why?”

  Sunlight shrugged. “Let’s call it spite. Revenge. A little joke. A certain matter of an exorcism, I think, in which your friend Father Karras had been a participant and—well—expelled certain parties from the body of a child. Certain parties were not pleased, to say the least. No, not happy.” For a moment Sunlight’s gaze was far away and haunted. He gave a little shudder, then looked back at Kinderman. “So he thought of this prank as a way of getting back: using this pious, heroic body as the instrument of—” Sunlight shrugged. “Well, you know. My thing. My work. My friend was very sympathetic. He brought me to our mutual friend Father Karras. Not too well at the time, I’m afraid. Passing on. In the dying mode, as we say. So as he was slipping out my helpful friend slipped me in. Ships that pass in the night and all of that. Oh, some confusion by the steps when the ambulance team pronounced Karras dead, of course. Well, he was dead, technically speaking. I mean, in the spiritual sense. He was out. But I was in. A little traumatized, true. And why not? His brain was jelly. Lack of oxygen. Disaster. Being dead isn’t easy. But never mind. I managed. Yes, a maximum effort that at least got me out of that coffin. Then at the last a bit of slapstick and comic relief when that old Brother Fain saw me climbing out. That helped. Yes, it’s the smiles that keep us going at times, the bits of unexpected cheer. But after that it was rather downhill for a time. A time? Twelve years. So much damage to the brain cells, you see. So many lost. But the brain has remarkable powers, Lieutenant. Ask your friend, the good Doctor Amfortas. Oh. No, I suppose I should ask him for you.”

  Sunlight was silent for a time. “No reaction from the gallery,” he said at last. “Don’t you believe me, Lieutenant?”

  “No.”

  The mockery vanished and Sunlight looked stricken. In an instant his features had crumpled into helplessness. “You don’t?” he quavered.

  “No.”

  Sunlight’s eyes were beseeching and fearful. “Tommy says he won’t forgive me unless you know the truth,” he said.

  “What truth?”

  Sunlight turned away. He said dully, “They will punish me for this.” He seemed to be staring at a distant terror.

  “What truth?” the detective asked him again.

  Sunlight shivered and looked back at Kinderman. His face was an urgent plea. “I am not Karras,” he whispered hoarsely. “Tommy wants you to know that. I am not Karras! Please believe me. If you don’t, Tommy says he won’t leave. He’ll just stay here. I can’t leave my brother alone. Please help me. I can’t go without my brother!”

  Kinderman’s eyebrows were gathered in puzzlemen
t. He angled his head to the side. “Go where?”

  “I’m so tired. I want to go on. There’s no need for me to stay now. I want to go on. Your friend Karras had nothing to do with the murders.” When Sunlight leaned forward Kinderman was stunned by the desperation in his eyes. “Tell Tommy you believe that!” he pleaded. “Tell him!”

  Kinderman held his breath. He had a sense of the momentous that he could not explain. What was it? Why did he have this feeling? Did he believe what Sunlight was saying? It didn’t matter, he decided. He knew he must say it. “I believe you,” he said firmly.

  Sunlight slumped backward against the wall and his eyes rolled upward as from his mouth came the stuttering sounds, that other voice: “I l-l-l-love you, J-J-J-Jimmy.” Sunlight’s eyes grew heavy and somnolent and his head sagged onto his chest. Then the eyes closed.

  Kinderman quickly got up from the chair. Alarmed, he moved swiftly over to the cot and lowered his ear to Sunlight’s mouth. But Sunlight said nothing more. Kinderman rushed toward the buzzer, pushed it, then hastily stepped out into the hall. He met Atkins’ gaze and said, “It’s starting.”

  Kinderman raced to a charge desk telephone. He called his home. Mary answered. “Sweetheart, don’t leave the house,” the detective said urgently. “Don’t let anyone leave the house! Lock the windows and doors and don’t let anyone in until I get there!”

  When Mary protested, he repeated the instructions and then hung up the phone. He went back to the hallway outside Cell Twelve. “I want men at my house right away,” he told Atkins.

  Nurse Spencer emerged from inside the cell. She looked at the detective and said, “He’s dead.”

  Kinderman stared at her blankly. “What?”

  She said, “He’s dead. His heart just stopped.”

  Kinderman looked past her. The door was open and Sunlight was lying on his back on the cot. “Atkins, wait here,” the detective murmured. “Don’t call. Never mind. Just wait,” he said.

  Kinderman slowly entered the cell. He could hear Nurse Spencer coming in behind him. Her footsteps halted but he moved a little farther until he was standing close by the cot. He looked down at Sunlight. His restraints and straitjacket had been removed. His eyes were closed, and in death his features seemed to have softened: on his face was a look of something like peace, of a journey’s end that was long awaited. Kinderman had seen that look once before. He tried to collect his thoughts for a time. Then he spoke without turning. “He was asking for me earlier?”

  He heard Spencer behind him saying, “Yes.”

  “Only that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” answered Spencer.

  She came up beside him.

  Kinderman turned his head to her. “Did you hear him say anything else?”

  She had folded her arms. “Well, not really.”

  “Not really? What exactly do you mean?”

  Her eyes looked dark in the dimness of the room. “There was that stuttering thing,” she said. “A funny voice that he uses sometimes. It stutters.”

  “He said words?”

  “I’m not sure.” The nurse shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just before he started calling for you. He was still unconscious, I thought. I’d come in to take his pulse. Then I heard that sort of stuttering thing. It was something—well, I’m not sure—but like ‘father.’ ”

  “ ‘Father’?”

  She shrugged. “Something close to that, I think.”

  “And he was still unconscious at the time?”

  She said, “Yes. Then he seemed to come to and—Oh, yes, now I remember something else. He yelled, ‘He’s finished.’ ”

  Kinderman blinked at her. “ ‘He’s finished’?”

  “That was just before he started to shout your name.”

  Kinderman stared for a time; then he turned and looked down at the body. “ ‘He’s finished,’ ” he murmured.

  “Funny thing,” said Nurse Spencer. “He looked happy at the end. For a second, he opened his eyes and looked happy. Almost like a child.” Her voice was strangely disconsolate. “I felt sorry for him,” she said. “What a terrible person, psychotic or not. But there was something about him that made me feel sorry.”

  “He is part of the Angel,” murmured Kinderman softly. His eyes were still on Sunlight’s face.

  “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  Kinderman listened to a drop from the faucet smacking the porcelain of the basin. “You may go now, Miss Spencer,” he told her; “thank you.” He listened to her leaving, and when she was gone he reached down and touched Sunlight’s face. He held his hand there gently for a moment; then he turned and walked slowly out to the hallway. Something seemed different, he thought. What was it? “What is bothering you, Atkins?” he asked. “Please tell me.”

  The sergeant’s eyes had a haunted look. “I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged. “But I have some information for you, Lieutenant. The Gemini’s father,” he said. “We found him.”

  “You did?”

  Atkins nodded.

  “Where is he?” asked Kinderman.

  Atkins’ eyes seemed greener than ever, unblinking and whirling around a pinpoint of iris. “He’s dead,” he said. “He died of a stroke.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  Kinderman stared.

  “What the hell is going on, Lieutenant?” asked Atkins.

  Kinderman realized what was different. He looked up at the ceiling of the hallway. All of the lights were burning brightly. “I think it’s finished,” he murmured softly. He nodded his head. “Yes. I think so.” Kinderman lowered his gaze to Atkins and said, “It’s over.”

  Then he paused and added, “I believed him.”

  The next instant the terror and the loss flooded in, the relief and the pain, and his face began to crumple. He sagged against a wall and started sobbing uncontrollably. Atkins was caught by surprise and for a moment he didn’t know what to do; then he took a step forward and held the detective in his arms. “It’s all right, sir,” he repeated over and over as the sobbing and weeping went on. Just when Atkins was afraid it might never stop, it began to subside; but the sergeant held on. “I’m just tired,” whispered Kinderman at last. “I’m sorry. There’s no reason. No reason at all. I’m just tired.”

  Atkins took him home.

  SUNDAY, MARCH 20

  16

  Which was the real world, Kinderman wondered, the world beyond or the world in which he lived? They had interpenetrated each other. Silent suns collided in both.

  “It must be quite a knock for you,” Riley murmured. The priest and the detective stood alone at the gravesite staring at the coffin of the man who might be Karras. The prayers had ended and the men stood together with the dawn and their thoughts and the quiet earth.

  Kinderman lifted his gaze to Riley. The priest stood beside him. “Why is that?”

  “You’ve lost him twice.”

  Kinderman stared for a silent moment, then slowly returned his gaze to the coffin. “It wasn’t him,” the detective said softly. He shook his head. “No, Father. It never was him.”

  Riley looked up at him. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  EPILOGUE

  Kinderman was standing at the curbside directly in front of the Biograph Cinema. He was waiting for Sergeant Atkins. His hands in the pockets of his coat, he was sweating, anxiously glancing up and down M Street. It was almost noon and the date was Sunday, June the twelfth.

  On March twenty-third it had been determined that fingerprints lifted at three of the crime scenes matched three patients in the open ward. All three were currently in the disturbed ward, pending the results of a close observation.

  Early in the morning on March twenty-fifth, Kinderman had gone to the home of Amfortas along with Doctor Edward Coffey, a friend of Amfortas and a neurologist at District Hospital; he had ordered the CAT scan for Amfortas that had revealed the fatal lesion. At Coffey’s
insistence, the front-door lock of the house had been picked and Amfortas was discovered dead in his living room. It was later to be classified as an accidental death, for Amfortas had died of a subdural hematoma resulting from the blow to his head when he fell, although Coffey told Kinderman that, in any case, Amfortas would have died within two weeks because of the deliberately untreated lesion. When Kinderman had asked him why Amfortas would allow himself to die, Doctor Coffey’s only answer was, “I think it had something to do with love.”

  On the third of April, Kinderman’s only other suspect, Freeman Temple, suffered a mentally disabling stroke and was now a patient in the open ward.

  For three weeks following the murder of Keating, police security and precautions had continued in force at Georgetown General, then were gradually relaxed. No other murders took place in the District of Columbia involving the Gemini modus operandi, and on June eleventh the seemingly Gemini-related murders were placed on the Homicide inactive file, although classified as open and still unsolved.

  “I am dreaming,” said Kinderman. “What are you doing?” He stared numbly at Atkins, who was standing before him dressed in a pinstripe suit and tie. “Is this some joke?”

  Atkins looked inscrutable. “Well, I’m married now,” he said. He’d returned from his honeymoon the day before.

  Kinderman continued to look shell-shocked.

  “I cannot stand this, Atkins,” he said. “It’s strange. It’s unnatural. Have mercy. Remove the tie.”

  “I might be seen,” said Atkins without expression, his eyes unblinking as they stared into Kinderman’s.

  Kinderman grimaced in disbelief.

  “You might be seen?” he echoed. “By whom?”

  “People.”

  Kinderman silently stared for a moment, then he said, “I give up. I am your prisoner, Atkins. Tell my family I’m okay and am being well treated. I will write to them as soon as my hands stop shaking. My guess is two months.” His gaze dropped lower. “Who picked out the tie?” he asked in a hollow voice. It had a Hawaiian floral motif.