"See here, now, if you're attempting to discredit. . ."
"I'm not finished." I didn't know what the hell I was talking about but it sounded plausible enough. Lowell had told me to fake it, so if we were sending protocol to hell on the bullet train, I might as well be the engineer and ride that sucker all the way down the line. "I'm personal friends with Dr. Asa Hutchings of Channel Three News, and he's been considering a four-part series on the history of Panecraft Hospital and its current standing. There are quite a number of questions surrounding procedure at this facility."
"This is simply outrageous."
"Will you let me see Crummler?"
I thought of Lisa Hobbes in here, being asked questions about her miscarriages and her desperate want for a child. They'd go round and round about when and how her husband's affair had been discovered, and exactly what had brought up the rage that carried her to murder her friend and dump the body on my grandmother's lawn. I also wondered how she'd fared in the clean chair beneath these boiling white lights, and what she'd felt when faced with this kind of over-whelming arrogance, finding her name at the top of the list of the first page of every clipboard in the place.
Dr. Brennan Brent kept staring at me and sweating. He champed the pipe a few more times and finally assented. "All right."
~ * ~
I followed him back into the normally lit world, down the hall to the elevators. We passed a huge room where someone had just finished reading bad poetry aloud and others were commenting on how powerful the imagery of smashed frogs had been. Beautiful murals of cliffs and cloudscapes covered the walls, designed to take the patients' focus off the bars on the windows. I was surprised to see so many young people seated in a semi-circle among other, older, more harried and plagued faces.
Brent said, "Volunteers working with our non-violent patients. Mostly church-affiliated, though sometimes we get high school students or college freshman hoping to earn credit before formally applying to the psychology department."
We went up to what I suspected were non-restricted areas B and C of Sector Seven. It was also the twelfth floor. Two more guards met us there, and I was frisked again. We were led down a series of corridors to a cell that looked like little more than the drunk tank in the jail where I'd visited my dad. There was a small plastic window and a slot in the door. I didn't know what I expected, but I didn't expect such overbearing silence. The lights were tapered so that one corner proved to be a bit darker than the rest of the room. I didn't see Crummler anywhere. A guard unlocked the door and ushered us in.
Brent gave a cheerful greeting that sounded excessively loud as it rang around the cell. "Good evening, Zebediah, you have a visitor!" He started to chortle but gulped it down at the last second. "Zebediah? Would you like to see your visitor? Are you awake? Did you enjoy your dinner?"
A thick brown blanket rustled on the bed and a figure slowly began to unfurl like an animal awakening from its lair.
The blanket slid back to reveal, inch-by-inch, the pale shape of a baby's face, eyes wide with confusion and tears. Two streams dripped down the cherubic cheeks to land on the quivering bottom lip, hanging there before dropping off. A tiny gurgle escaped, and another, and another, until they became sounds that were almost words, but I didn't know what those words might be. The blanket clung like a robe as he got to his feet and took a few halting steps forward.
They'd shorn him.
"Oh, good Christ," I whispered. I swallowed repeatedly but my mouth had gone desert dry.
Crummler shuffled almost into my arms but didn't seem to recognize me. The happiness and the fire, his ecstatic energy and fervor, all of it gone, and nothing remained but unbridled terror.
His, and now mine.
I spun on Brent and could feel every muscle locking up one by one, even my elbows popping as I began to shake. "What have you done to him?"
The guard moved in as well, one hand resting on a billy club and the other on something I'm sure I didn't want to get sprayed with in the face. Brent's self-assurance grew here, surrounded by his men. "Do not take that tone with me, sir. Shaving is a requirement of this facility. He proved to be quite wild when placed in confinement and physical restraints originally proved to be necessary. Remember, he is charged with murder."
"You keep leaving out the important part," I said. "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, Doctor. A court, Brent, and this facility isn't one."
Crummler kept staggering forward, sobbing and muttering harshly now, and rested his face against my chest.
I'd have given anything in the world at that instant to have been Lowell Tully. Lowell would have known what to do, how to play this round, how to lash out or bide his time waiting, and he wouldn't have tipped his hand. I took the blanket and wrapped it around Crummler's shoulders like a shawl and walked him back to the bed. A barred window showed rain pulsing against the glass.
I said, "I want to talk with him alone."
Brent saw the value in not pushing this scene for more than it was worth. He champed his pipe once more and followed the guard out of the cell. The lock latched with an unbelievably loud clack that sounded like a bear trap snapping shut.
I checked Crummler thoroughly for bruises and welts, under the arms and on his thighs and lower back where someone might think they could get away with pounding him. In a little while he stopped weeping and just sat there staring out the window. All I found was a slight discoloration on the point of his chin, where I'd punched him.
A slab of ice collapsed within me as I looked at the man child, his mouth open and stunned face so much like a toddler's.
"I've seen your brother," I told him.
Crummler's voice flattened and hardened, and became serious and full of understanding. It scared the hell out of me. "Nick? You've seen my brother Nick?"
"Yes."
"He shouldn't be in town. Tell him to stay away. If they catch him they'll put him in here. They'll put him back in here."
"He'll stay away," I said. "It's all right. We're both going to help you."
"I am cold."
"I'll tell them to give you more blankets."
"They won't listen. They don't listen. They never listen to anyone, and never have, and never will. I don't want more blankets, I want to go home. I want to go home, Jon."
"Crummler …"
"Please, Jon, make them let me out." Tears welled in his eyes again and I felt a furious animal scratching inside my chest trying to scrabble its way out.
"I'm going to try. Tell me what happened that day in the cemetery."
"I like it there, Jon. I want to go back to the cemetery.”
“You will, I promise. Crummler, tell me what happened. Do you remember that day?"
"An errant night fallen before the dragon."
"How did you get covered in blood?"
"He was coughing."
"Teddy?" I asked. "Do you mean Teddy was coughing up blood?"
"The knight."
"Teddy was coughing?"
"The dragon kissed and bit him to death."
"The dragon coughed? How did you get covered in blood? Did you hold him? Did you cradle him?"
"He was coughing."
Part of me wanted to shake him into answering me, and the rest of me realized that if I hadn't been so quick on the draw in the first place all of this might have been avoided. "Did you know Teddy Harnes? Was it him? Had you met him before?" He continued to look out the window and tsked with a groan, as if hoping the rain and wind wouldn't mess the cemetery much in his absence. I thought he might recognize a headstone more easily than a living person. "He was visiting his mother, Marie Harnes. You take care of her grave."