“We think there’s going to be an attack on the city.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
The desk sergeant escorted them down a hall to a small room with a two-way mirror. On the other side of the glass, Carr was slumped in a chair with a deranged look on his face. The doctor was wrapped in a wool blanket and shaking uncontrollably. A pair of balding, overweight detectives were raking him over the coals. Their voices were harsh, and carried through the glass. “No more screwing around. Tell us who took the knapsack,” the first detective said.
“He was the Devil,” Carr replied, hugging himself fiercely.
“You ever see this devil before?”
“Never.”
“How close did you get to him?”
“Close as I am to you,” Carr replied.
“Think you could pick him out of a book of mug shots?”
Carr cast his eyes downward and laughed hoarsely.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” the detective said.
Carr looked up. “He was the Devil. That was who took my knapsack. The Devil incarnate. That’s all I have to say.”
“He’s been giving us this same line of crap since we hauled him in,” the desk sergeant said, cracking a piece of gum in his mouth.
“Think you can get into his head?” Garrison asked Peter.
“I don’t see why not,” Peter replied.
“Go for it.”
Peter moved for the door. He’d never plumbed the thoughts of a crazy person before, and supposed there was a first time for everything. The desk sergeant blocked his way.
“Hold on a second,” the desk sergeant said. “What are you going to do? Put him under hypnosis?”
“Something like that,” Peter replied.
“You don’t look like a shrink,” the desk sergeant said.
“I’m not. Tell your detectives to stop. I need to be in the room alone with Dr. Carr.”
“No can do. It’s against department rules,” the desk sergeant said.
“Do it anyway,” Garrison told him.
The desk sergeant didn’t like it. He looked at Perry, thinking she might come to his aid. When Perry didn’t respond, he left the room in a huff.
54
Fear had a smell. It tinged the air like rotting flesh, and so much desperation. The room in which Carr sat had such a smell. It was pouring off the doctor like bad cologne. Peter got up close to him anyway, and pulled up a chair. He sat so their knees were touching. Touching was important. It established intimacy, and created a physical bond. Carr stirred in his chair.
“Who are you?” Carr asked.
“My name’s Peter. I need to talk to you.”
Carr rocked forward in his chair. “You look like that young magician fellow. What’s-his-name. My daughter dragged me to his show once. It was dreadful.”
“You don’t like magic?” Peter asked.
“Hate it.”
“But your daughter does.”
“Katie loved magic,” Carr said. “She always made me hire a magician for her birthday party. Had to have a rabbit.” His eyes glistened with tears. “I loved my daughter so much. When she and my wife were killed, it was a like a piece of my heart was torn out.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he said furiously. “There’s no way you could understand. You’re too young to know that kind of pain.”
“My parents were killed when I was a boy,” Peter said quietly.
“You’re not making that up?”
Peter shook his head. “No,” he added for emphasis.
Carr hugged himself with the blanket. “I’m sorry to hear that. Were you angry after they died? I was so angry after I lost my wife and daughter. I lost control, and did a terrible thing. And now I’m going to pay for what I did. Both in this life, and the next.”
Carr had let his guard down. Peter gazed into his eyes, and read the doctor’s thoughts. It was like watching a disjointed movie, the scenes cutting into each other for reasons that only the doctor understood. In the first scene, Carr was taking his wife and daughter to a show in the city. In the next, a car was tumbling down a ditch on a darkened road. Badly shaken, Carr climbed out, but his wife and daughter did not. It was there that the movie ended. How ironic that Carr’s last good memory with his family had occurred seeing a show in the city. Just like me, Peter thought.
“Tell me about the Devil you saw this afternoon,” Peter said.
“Who told you about the Devil?” Carr asked.
“I heard you tell the detectives.”
“You were listening in?”
“Tell me about him.”
“God sent him to punish me.”
“How did you know he was a devil?”
“Easy. He wasn’t human.”
Carr wasn’t making sense, so Peter took another look inside his head. The doctor sat in the back of a cab with a child’s knapsack resting on his lap. The door flung open, and a man reached in, and stole the knapsack. The man was only there for a brief moment; just long enough for Peter to get a fleeting glimpse at him. What he saw did not make sense. The man’s clothes looked burned. His face was dark. Not black or brown, but a sickly purple color. There was no life in his eyes. Peter wondered if the man was real, or a figment of Carr’s distorted imagination.
“How did you know this man wasn’t human?” Peter asked.
“It was his skin,” the doctor replied.
“What was wrong with it?”
Carr glanced suspiciously at the two-way mirror. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It was the skin of a dead man. He wasn’t alive.”
“He was a corpse? You saw a corpse?”
“That’s right,” Carr whispered.
Peter felt his body slowly deflate. Carr was insane. Dead men did not hijack cabs and steal knapsacks loaded with deadly nerve agent. The images he’d seen inside Carr’s head weren’t real, but the product of a sick mind. He was wasting time. He needed to help the police find the man with the knapsack. Rising from his chair, he went to the door.
“Are you leaving?” Carr asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
Peter was not going to lie, and shook his head.
“Just wait,” Carr said. “You will.”
Peter entered the hallway outside the interrogation room to find the two overweight detectives waiting for him. Both were smoking cigarettes. It was against the law to smoke inside buildings, but these were not the kind of men you said something like that to. Peter started to tell them that Carr was crazy, but stopped the words from coming out. He’d been reading minds since childhood, and not once had a person been able to substitute an image. Why should it be different for a crazy person?
“Learn anything?” one of the detectives asked.
“He told me a dead man took the knapsack from him,” Peter said.
“Hah,” the detective said.
Peter returned to the viewing room where Garrison and Perry were waiting. Garrison stood in the corner with his cell phone pressed to his face. The veins were popping on his forehead, and he looked like a candidate for a stroke.
“What’s going on now?” Peter asked.
“I’m not sure,” Perry admitted. “Garrison is talking to some cops downtown, and keeps swearing under his breath. This case is going to kill him if he’s not careful.”
Him and me both, Peter almost said.
“Did you hear what Carr told me? He said the man who stole the knapsack was a corpse.”
“Yeah, we heard him,” Perry replied. “There’s a hidden mike in the light fixture in the ceiling. It’s sensitive enough to pick up a fly buzzing around.”
“He was telling the truth.”
“Excuse me?”
“Carr was telling the truth. I looked inside his head, and saw the dead guy. That’s what caused Carr to flip out.”
Perry’s face betrayed her. She didn’t believe him. Peter wasn’t going to argue with her. When it came to the supernatural, nothing would change a nonbeliever. Perry didn’t believe in the spirit world, or that the forces of evil regularly did battle with the forces of good, often in plain view of people just like herself.