Legion, Page 23

  Kinderman watched him hurrying away. When he’d rounded a corner, the detective kept listening to his footsteps as if they were the dwindling sound of reality. They faded away to silence and again there was darkness in Kinderman’s soul. He glanced up at the light bulbs in the ceiling. Three were still out. The hallway was dim. Footsteps. The nurse was approaching. He waited. She reached him and he pointed to the door of Cell Twelve. The nurse probed his eyes with a shifting glance, then unlocked the door. He walked inside. Sunlight’s nose had been taped and bandaged and his eyes were riveted to Kinderman’s, unblinking and unwaveringly following him as he walked to the chair and sat down. The silence was thick and claustrophobic. Sunlight was perfectly immobile, a frozen image with eyes staring wide. He was like a figure in a wax museum. Kinderman looked up at the dangling light bulb. It was flickering. Now still. He heard a chuckle.

  “Yes, let there be light,” said the voice of Sunlight.

  Kinderman looked down into Sunlight’s eyes. They were wide and vacant. “Did you get my message, Lieutenant?” he asked. “I left it with Keating. Nice girl. Good heart. Incidentally, I’m delighted that you’re summoning Father. One thing, though. A favor. Might you call United Press and make sure Father’s photographed together with Keating? That’s why I kill, you know—to disgrace him. Help me. I’ll make it worth your while. Death will take a holiday. Just once. For one day. I assure you, you’ll be grateful. In the meantime, I could speak to my friends here about you. Put in a good word. They don’t like you, you know. Don’t ask me why. They keep mentioning your name begins with K, but I ignore them. Isn’t that good of me? And brave. They’re so capricious with their angers.” He seemed to be thinking of something, and he shuddered. “Never mind. Let’s not talk about them now. Let’s go on. I pose an interesting problem for you, don’t I, Lieutenant? I mean, presuming you’re convinced now I really am the Gemini.” His face became a threatening mask. “Are you convinced?”

  “No,” replied Kinderman.

  “You’re being very foolish,” rasped Sunlight with menace. “And issuing a clear invitation to the dance.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Kinderman.

  “Neither do I,” said Sunlight blankly. His face was ingenuous. “I’m a madman.”

  Kinderman stared and listened to the dripping. Finally he spoke. “If you’re the Gemini, how do you get out of here?”

  “Do you like opera?” asked Sunlight. He began to sing from La Bohème in a deep, rich voice, then abruptly broke off and looked at Kinderman. “I like plays much better,” he said. “Titus Andronicus is my favorite. It’s sweet.” He gave a low chuckle. “How is your friend Amfortas?” he asked. “I understand he had a little visitation of late.” Sunlight started quacking like a duck, then fell silent. He looked away. “Needs work,” he growled. He turned back to Kinderman, staring intently. “You want to know how I get out?” he said.

  “Yes, tell me.”

  “Friends. Old friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “No, it’s boring. Let’s discuss something else.”

  Kinderman waited, holding his gaze.

  “It was wrong of you to hit me,” said Sunlight evenly. “I can’t help myself. I’m insane.”

  Kinderman listened to the dripping of the faucet.

  “Miss Keating ate tuna fish,” said Sunlight. “I could smell it. Damned hospital food. It’s disgusting.”

  “How do you get out of here?” Kinderman repeated.

  Sunlight leaned his head back and chuckled. Then he fixed a shining stare on Kinderman. “There are so many possibilities. I think of them a lot. I try to figure it out. Do you think this might be true? I think possibly I am your friend Father Karras. Perhaps they pronounced me dead but I wasn’t. Later I resuscitated at—well—an embarrassing moment and then wandered the streets not knowing who I was. I still don’t, for that matter. And needless to say, of course, I’m quite naturally and hopelessly mad. I have frequent dreams of falling down a long flight of steps. Is that something that really happened? If it did then I surely must have damaged my brain. Did that happen, Lieutenant?”

  Kinderman kept silent.

  “Other times I dream that I’m someone named Vennamun,” said Sunlight. “These dreams are very nice. I kill people. But I can’t sort out the dreams from the truth. I’m insane. You’re quite wise to be skeptical, I’d say. Still, you’re a homicide detective. So it’s clear there are people being killed. That makes sense. Do you know what I think? It’s Doctor Temple. Mightn’t he have hypnotized his patients into—well—certain actions that are socially unacceptable these days? Ah, the times, they keep changing for the worse, don’t you think? In the meantime, perhaps I’m telepathic or have psychic abilities that give me all my knowledge of the Gemini crimes. It’s a thought, is it not? Yes, I can see that you’re thinking about it. Good for you. Bye the bye, chew on this. You haven’t thought of it yet.” Sunlight’s eyes glittered tauntingly and he leaned his body forward a little. “What if the Gemini had an accomplice?”

  “Who killed Father Bermingham?”

  “Who is he?” asked Sunlight innocently. His eyebrows were gathered in puzzlement.

  “You don’t know?” the detective asked him.

  “I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “Who killed Nurse Keating?”

  “ ‘Put out the light, and then put out the light.’ ”

  “Who killed Nurse Keating?”

  “The envious moon.” Sunlight put his head back and lowed like a steer. He looked back at Kinderman. “I think I’ve almost got it now,” he said. “It’s fairly close. Tell the press that I’m the Gemini, Lieutenant. Last warning.”

  He was staring ominously at Kinderman. The seconds ticked by in silence. “Father Dyer was silly,” said Sunlight at last. “A silly person. How’s your hand, by the way? Still swollen?”

  “Who killed Nurse Keating?”

  “Troublemakers. Persons unknown and no doubt uncouth.”

  “If you did it, what happened to her vital organs?” asked Kinderman. “You would know that. What happened to them? Tell me.”

  “I like dinner,” said Sunlight in a monotone.

  Kinderman stared at the expressionless eyes. “Old friends.” The detective’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Daddy’s got to know,” said Sunlight at last. His gaze broke away from Kinderman’s and he vacantly stared into space. “I’m tired,” he said softly. “My work is never done, it seems. I’m tired.” He looked curiously helpless for a moment. Then he seemed to grow somnolent. His head drooped. “Tommy doesn’t understand,” he murmured. “I tell him to go on without me but he won’t. He’s afraid. Tommy’s … angry … with me.”

  Kinderman stood up and moved closer. He leaned his ear close to Sunlight’s mouth to catch whispered words. “Little … Jack Horner. Child’s … play.” Kinderman waited but nothing else came. Sunlight fell unconscious.

  Kinderman hurriedly left the room. He felt an awful foreboding. On the way out he buzzed for the nurse. When she arrived he went back to the neurology wing and looked for Atkins. The sergeant was standing at the charge desk, talking on the telephone. When he saw the detective beside him, he hurried through the rest of his conversation.

  A child was being checked into Neurology, a boy aged six. A hospital attendant had just pushed him up to the desk in a wheelchair. “Here’s a nice little fellah for you,” the attendant told the charge nurse.

  She smiled at the boy and said, “Hi.”

  Kinderman’s attention was fixed on Atkins.

  “Last name?” asked the nurse.

  The attendant said, “Korner. Vincent P.”

  “Vincent Paul,” said the boy.

  “Is that with a C or a K?” the nurse asked the attendant.

  He handed her some papers. “K.”

  “Atkins, hurry,” said Kinderman urgently.

  Atkins finished in another few seconds and the boy was wheeled away to a
room in Neurology. Atkins hung up the phone.

  “Put a man at the entrance to the open ward in Psychiatric,” Kinderman told him. “I want someone there around the clock. No patient gets out, no matter what. No matter what!”

  Atkins reached for the telephone and Kinderman grabbed his wrist. “Call later. Give me someone right now,” he insisted.

  Atkins signaled to a uniformed policeman stationed at the elevators. He came over. “Come with me,” said Kinderman. “Atkins, I am leaving you. Goodbye.”

  Kinderman and the policeman hurried toward the open ward. When they’d reached the entrance Kinderman stopped and instructed the policeman. “No patient comes out of there. Only staff. Understand?”

  “All right, sir.”

  “Do not leave for any reason unless relieved. Do not go to the bathroom, even.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kinderman left him and entered the ward. Soon he was standing in the recreation room a few feet to the right of the charge desk. He looked around slowly, checking each face with a sense of wariness and a quickening feeling of dread. And yet all seemed in order. What was wrong? Then he noticed the quiet. He looked toward the crowd around the television set. He blinked and moved closer but abruptly he stopped a few feet from the group. Rapt and staring, their eyes were riveted to a television screen that was blank. The set was not on.

  Kinderman glanced around the room and for the first time noticed there were neither any nurses nor attendants around. He squinted at the office behind the charge desk. No one was there. He looked at the silent group around the television set. His heart began to thump. The detective moved rapidly toward the charge desk, slipped around it and opened the door to the little office. He flinched in shock: a nurse and an attendant were sprawled on the floor, unconscious, blood seeping out of head wounds. The nurse was nude. No part of her uniform was anywhere in sight.

  Child’s play! Vincent Korner!

  The words struck Kinderman’s mind like a blow. Quickly he turned and rushed out of the office, only to freeze in his tracks at what he saw. Every patient in the room was moving toward him, approaching in a cordon that was closing in, the shuffling of their slippers the only sound in an awful, terrifying silence. They were leering, their glittering eyes fixed upon him, and from separate points of the room came their voices, lilting and staggered and eerily pleasant:

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “So nice to see you, dear.”

  They began to whisper unintelligibly. Kinderman shouted for help.

  * * *

  THE BOY had been medicated and was sleeping. The venetian blinds at the window had been closed and the darkness of the room was dimly illuminated by the flickering of cartoons that were running on the television set without sound. The door opened silently and a woman in nurse’s uniform entered. She was carrying a shopping bag. She closed the door quietly behind her, set the shopping bag down and took something out of it. She stared at the boy intently and then slowly and softly she approached him. The boy began to stir. He was on his back and he sleepily opened his eyes in a squint. As she leaned her body over the boy, the woman slowly raised her hands. “Look what I’ve got for you, dearie,” she crooned.

  Suddenly Kinderman burst into the room. Shouting hoarsely, “No!” he seized the woman from behind in a desperate chokehold. She made croaking, strangling noises, weakly flailing her arms behind her while the boy sat up, crying out in terror as Atkins and a uniformed policeman charged into the room. “I’ve got her!” croaked Kinderman. “The light! Hit the light! Get the light!”

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  The lights came on.

  “You’re choking me!” gurgled the nurse. A teddy bear dropped from her hands to the floor. Kinderman eyed it, taken aback, and slowly he released his frenzied grip. The nurse whipped around and kneaded her neck. “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed. “What the hell is the matter with you? Are you crazy?”

  “I want Mommy!” wailed the boy.

  The nurse put her arms around him, pulling him close. “You nearly broke my neck!” she squalled at Kinderman.

  The detective was straining for breath. “I’m sorry,” he wheezed, “very sorry.” He pulled out a handkerchief and held it against his cheek, where a long, deep scratch continued to bleed. “My apologies.”

  Atkins picked up the shopping bag and looked into it. “Toys,” he said.

  “What toys?” said the boy. He was suddenly calm and pulled away from the nurse.

  “Search the hospital!” Kinderman instructed Atkins. “She’s after someone! Find her!”

  “What toys?” the boy repeated.

  More policemen appeared at the door, but Atkins held them back and gave them new instructions. The policeman in the room went out and joined them. The nurse brought the shopping bag over to the boy. “I don’t believe you,” the nurse said to Kinderman. She dumped the contents of the bag onto the bed. “Do you treat your own family like this?” she demanded.

  “My family?” Kinderman’s mind began to race. Abruptly he saw the nurse’s nametag: JULIE FANTOZZI.

  “… an invitation to the dance.”

  “Julie! My God!”

  He raced from the room.

  * * *

  MARY KINDERMAN and her mother were in the kitchen preparing lunch. Julie was sitting at the kitchen table reading a novel. The telephone rang. Julie was farthest away but she got it. “Hello?… Oh, hi, Dad.… Sure. Here’s Mom.” She held out the telephone to her mother. Mary took it while Julie went back to her reading.

  “Hi, sweetheart. Are you coming home for lunch?” Mary listened for a while. “Oh, really?” she said. “Why is that?” She listened some more. At last she said, “Sure, honey, if you say so. In the meantime, lunch or no?” She listened. “Okay, dear. I’ll keep a plate warm. But hurry. I miss you.” She hung up the phone and went back to the bread that she was baking.

  “Nu?” said her mother.

  “It’s nothing,” said Mary. “Some nurse is coming over with a package.”

  Again the telephone rang.

  “Now they’re canceling,” muttered Mary’s mother.

  Julie jumped up to get the phone again, but her mother waved her back. “No, don’t answer,” she said. “Your father wants the line kept clear. If he calls, he’ll give you a signal: two rings.”

  * * *

  KINDERMAN STOOD at the neurology charge desk, his anxiety mounting with each unanswered dull ring of the telephone as he pressed the receiver to his ear. Someone answer! Answer! he thought, in a frenzy. He let the phone ring for another minute, slammed down the receiver and raced to a stairway. He didn’t even think of waiting for an elevator.

  Panting, he arrived in the lobby and breathlessly rushed out into the street. He hurried to a squad car, got in and slammed the door. A helmeted policeman sat behind the wheel. “Two-oh-seven-eighteen Foxhall Road and hurry!” gasped Kinderman. “The siren! Break laws! Hurry, hurry!”

  They took off with a screech of grasping tires, the squad car siren wailing shrilly, and soon they were careering down Reservoir Road and then up onto Foxhall toward Kinderman’s house. The detective was praying, his eyes shut tightly throughout the ride. When the squad car bumped to a jarring stop, he opened his eyes. He was in his driveway. “Go around! The back door!” he ordered the policeman, who jumped from the car and began to run, drawing a snub-nosed revolver from its holster. Kinderman squeezed himself out of the car, drew his gun and fished house keys out of a pocket as he rushed toward his door. He was trying to insert a key into the lock with a shaky hand when the door flew open.

  Julie glanced at the gun, and then called back inside the house, “Mother, Daddy’s home!” The next second, Mary appeared at the door. She looked at the gun and then at Kinderman severely.

  “The carp is dead already. What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Mary said.

  Kinderman lowered the gun and moved quickly forward, embracing Julie. “Thank God!” he whispere
d.

  Mary’s mother appeared. “There’s a storm trooper out in the back,” she said. “It’s beginning. What should I tell him?”

  “Bill, I want an explanation,” said Mary.

  The detective kissed Julie’s cheek and pocketed the gun. “I am crazy. That is all. That’s the whole explanation.”

  “I’ll just tell him we’re Febré,” Mary’s mother grunted. She went back into the house. The telephone rang and Julie ran to the living room to get it.

  Kinderman stepped inside the house and moved toward the back. “I will tell the policeman,” he said.

  “Tell him what?” demanded Mary. She started to follow him into the kitchen. “Bill, what is going on here? Will you talk to me, please?”

  Kinderman froze. Against the wall by the doorway to the kitchen he saw a shopping bag. He rushed forward to pick it up when he heard the elderly, lilting voice of a woman in the kitchen saying, “Hello.” Kinderman instantly drew his gun, stepped into the kitchen and aimed toward the table where an elderly woman in a nurse’s uniform was seated, staring at him blankly.

  “Bill!” Mary snapped at her husband, alarmed.

  “Oh, dear, I’m so tired,” said the woman.

  Mary put her hands on Kinderman’s arm and pushed it down. “I don’t want any guns in this house, do you hear me?”

  The policeman charged into the kitchen, his gun drawn and leveled.

  “Put down that gun!” Mary shouted.

  “Could you please hold it down?” cried out Julie from the living room. “I’m talking on the phone!”

  Mary’s mother muttered, “Goyim,” and continued to stir a pan of gravy at the stove.

  The policeman looked at Kinderman. “Lieutenant?”

  The detective’s eyes were glued to the woman. In her face was a look of confusion and weariness. “Put it down, Frank,” Kinderman said. “It’s all right. Go on back. Go on back to the hospital.”