Brent nodded to the counselor pontificating in front of the two fuming teenagers. We went up to the twelfth floor, down the winding maze of hallways to Crummler's cell. I noticed the small plastic window had a smear of dried blood on it.
The migraine burst full-blown into my head so suddenly that I nearly pitched forward. My heart began a slow crawl up my throat. Cold sweat exploded across my face and I wondered if I really should get a therapist to help me control my temper. The tapered lighting seemed to draw the world back into one corner, and again Crummler lay in the darkness where I couldn't see him.
"We've had some troubles recently. Zebediah has grown torpid to the point of becoming cataleptic. He refuses to shower or even use the toilet."
"How does a catatonic wind up bleeding on the door?" I whispered.
"He had a psychotic outburst two days ago, hammering himself, wailing to be set free. He forced us to use restraints so he wouldn't bring further harm to himself."
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?"