Upstairs, we met Harry beyond the double doors separating Bernie’s ward from the rest of the home. He was holding the cat in his arms.
Andrews, who apparently never saw a detail he didn’t take an interest in, leaned forward and thrust his face into the cat’s. She peered back at him with a sleepy, almost drugged expression, purring loudly. “She’s great. What’s her name?”
“Georgia,” Gail answered. “Named after Georgia O’Keeffe.”
Andrews straightened back up. “Perfect-she looks half-dead. How’s he doing, Harry?”
Harry showed his gentle smile. “Pretty quiet, doc. He killed the lights in his room to see the snow better. He’s been sitting by the window for an hour, talking to himself.”
Andrews patted the other man’s arm. “Good. The mood sounds about right.” He turned to face Gail and me. “Dark room, his focus on what’s outside-let’s lead in with Gail and Georgia, then me. Joe, if you could stay in the shadows at first, that might be best, until we can gauge what he’s thinking. Don’t hide-just don’t make a big deal of being there.”
Given what we knew of this man-a traveler lost in time, using stray, unrelated signposts as references, his faulty memory damaged by disease-the setting he’d created for himself was downright eerie. The snow outside the darkened room had taken on the glow of the streetlights and was reflecting it back with an energy all its own, lighting the ceiling and walls with a ghostly iridescence, and backlighting Bernie with a thin, shifting corona.
Quietly, as if entering a church, the three of us filed in, Gail going directly to the window and taking the chair opposite Bernie’s. She placed Georgia in his lap without a word.
He took his eyes off the snow and looked down at the cat, smiling. “Hello, Ginger-where did you come from?”
“I thought you’d like some company,” Gail said softly.
Andrews quietly lifted a chair and placed it nearby. Bernie glanced at him but otherwise kept his attention on Gail.
“I always love your company, Lou. You know that.”
I moved within his sight, so he knew I was there, but settled on the bed across the room-a mere shadow in his peripheral vision.
Gail took her cue from the name he’d given her. “How are you doing, Dad?”
His hands began to unconsciously stroke the cat. He went back to gazing out the window. “Too many dreams.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Uh-huh.”
She waited for more, got nothing, and so prodded him with, “What are you looking at?”
“Anything-anybody.”
I could almost feel her trying to follow, remembering what Andrews had told us. “Are they out there?”
“You bet. They wear white uniforms, so we can’t see ’em.” Georgia stretched in his lap. He looked at Gail. “Is Lou here?”
After a split-second hesitation, she said, “She’ll be here soon.”
Very gently, Andrews leaned forward and removed the cat from Bernie’s hands, placing her on the floor, where she wandered off in my direction, her job done. The psychiatrist took a short, blunt, smooth stick from his pocket, and placed it across Bernie’s palm. The old man’s fingers curled around it and he lifted it to his cheek, his expression darkening.
“Gotta have a gun,” he murmured. “Gotta keep alive.”
“When did you last sleep, Private?” Andrews asked.
Bernie snorted gently.
“Who knows?” He shivered.
“Cold?”
Bernie nodded. The shivering intensified. He stamped his feet. “Wish I could feel my feet.”
“And you’re hungry,” Andrews stated. “And scared.”
Bernie’s voice was pitiable. “I want to go home.”
“Gotta keep alive to get home.”
“Right-keep alive.” Bernie’s eyes were now glued to the view outside. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, the stick gripped in his hand like the butt of a pistol. Instinctively, we all looked outside and saw a dog cut across the snowy ground, just at the edge of the light.
“What was that?” Andrews asked. “Was it them?”
Bernie slipped off his chair and crouched by the windowsill, barely peering over the top. “Yeah.”
“But they’re dressed like us.”
He placed his finger against his lips. “Listen.”
Andrews got down next to him, in front of Gail’s knees. I noticed her face was frozen, her eyes intense-almost fearful. “That’s German they’re speaking,” he said.
“Right,” Bernie agreed. “The spies.”
“Who’re ‘Dem Bums’?” Andrews asked in a whisper.
“Brooklyn Dodgers,” was the quick reply.
“Where’s L’il Abner live?”
“Dogpatch, USA.”
“They don’t know any of the answers.”
“Damn Krauts-why do they have to dress like us?”
“’Cause they’re out to get us, Private-just like they got Johnnie.”
I stretched my own memory back to when I first met Bernie, right after he’d attacked the other patient. “They got Johnnie,” he’d said at the time. I was impressed Andrews, with all his other patients, had remembered that small detail from Bernie’s file.
An important detail, too. Bernie grabbed Andrews’s sleeve. “God damn you, Johnnie. I told you not to sleep there. You gotta hide. They look for you where it’s warmer. They know where we’ll be.”
“I’m tired,” Andrews said in a sagging voice.
“You die, I’m all alone, you bastard… ” Bernie’s hand dropped, and his gaze shifted to me, far across the room. “I’m all alone.”
Andrews gestured to me to come forward slowly. “But you saw the man who killed Johnnie, right?”
Tears were flowing down Bernie’s face. “I was so close, I could’ve touched him. I was scared… So scared. I didn’t want to die.”
Andrews pulled Gail off her chair so she would be kneeling with them in a tight group. “Johnnie’s mom needs to know, Bernie, so she can get some peace. She needs to know who killed Johnnie. We all need some peace. We all want to sleep.”
Andrews motioned to me to crouch before Bernie, who stared at the bandage on my head with wide eyes. Andrews nodded, and I silently removed a stack of pictures from my breast pocket and handed them to Bernie.
“Krauts, Bernie,” the doctor suggested. “Which one of them killed Johnnie?”
Bernie looked at the stack in his hand, hesitating. The light from the street lamps was strong enough to see the pictures, but I worried the leap from memories to reality might prove too wide. In his mind, Bernie had transformed a stick into a gun, and Gail into three completely different women. What would he do with what I’d handed him?
Andrews seemed intent on the same problem. He gently removed the top picture from the pile-one of Eddy Knox. “This him? The one who killed Johnnie?”
Bernie touched the photo with his finger.
“No.”
Andrews replaced it with another, this one of Willy Kunkle.
“No.”
A third came up. Bernie shook his head.
Andrews put the whole stack in his hands, his voice firm. “Look through them, Private. Find Johnnie’s killer-the man who strangled him as he slept.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Bernie did as he’d been told, peeling off pictures one after the other, moving faster, shifting his position so I could no longer see which ones he was looking at.
And then he stopped, one picture held out before him, crying openly now. “Johnnie… God damn it… ” He took the photo and placed it, facedown, against Gail’s breast. Her hands closed on his and he bent over, his cheek against her stomach.
Andrews began rubbing Bernie’s back, mouthing instructions soundlessly at Gail, who by now was crying also, a victim of her own nightmares. “Thank you,” she said with difficulty. “Thank you for helping me. Thank you for letting me sleep again.”
She raised his head in her hand and kissed him on the cheek. Andrews rose and helped Bernie to stand, and then escorted him to the bed. “Lie down. Your job is done. You’ve brought peace to yourself and others-peace and quiet. The war is over, Bernie. Time to sleep.”
He helped Bernie stretch out, smoothed his bathrobe and arranged his pillow. Bernie looked up at us all for a moment and smiled. “My friends,” he said quietly and shut his eyes, sighing deeply.