Sorrow's Crown (16 page)
"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."
"I take care of all the graves. I do a good job. I want to go back to the cemetery, Jon, please."
I could feel what span of attention he'd had to give quickly dwindling away, so I started throwing everything at him, hoping something would connect and make an impact. "Was another man there? A big man named Frost? A girl? Do you know Alice Conway? She says she was Teddy's girlfriend."
"He kept coughing."
"Who killed him?"
"The dragon's bite."
I sighed and sat back on the bed and saw motion outside the cell door. They'd be coming in to tell me that my time was up any second now. "Tell me about Maggie."
"Maggie?"
Crummler
said. He snapped up straight as if I'd passed a torch over his back. "Aunt Maggie?"
"Yes. What happened there?"
"Oh no. No, oh no."
"Tell me,
Crummler
, I need to know."
"I was. . . ." The muscles of his face tugged in every direction at once and his eyes filled with the fragments of his lifetime. His breathing sped and faltered. A mass of emotions slithered and scaled. Twin veins in his forehead bulged in a V pattern. I'd never seen his ears before: they were large and almost pointed. They turned crimson until I thought they might bleed. The corners of his mouth lifted and drooped as if fishhooks tugged repeatedly at his lips. He sat frozen, trapped by his own dead smile.
"I was happy there. I was so happy there!"
Crummler
bent forward and dropped to his knees, and crawled into a ball in the corner of the room sobbing wildly.
~ * ~
I knocked on the door and no one came. I knocked again, and played another scene in my mind, imagining them outside planning their strategy and filling out forms and giving me a new identity, never letting me go. I saw myself bald and in rags, ancient and mad, clambering in the shiny white rooms and subsisting on spiders and flies. I pounded harder. They could do what they want, claim I never arrived, drive the van into a lake.
In a near-panic, I hammered some more and the door opened slowly. Brent whirled past and a guard stepped into view.
It was Sparky.
"You," I said. "You did this to him."
"You know what the beauty of this moment is?" Sparky asked. He smiled, and the etched lines around his mouth and eyes continued to bend and twistâhis upper lip dipped toward me at that strange and ugly angle. "Seeing that look on your face. Christ, I wish I had my camera. Hey, I'm just doing my job, now ain't that right, Doc?"
"Please, Mr. Shanks," Dr. Brennan Brent said.
I thought about that for a minute, how the head of the hospital would call a guard "mister." Shanks. The name fit.
With an intense clarity I realized Theodore
Harnes
had bought them both, and that
Panecraft
was his to use as he needed. But was it to torture
Crummler
or to kill him and hide the truth of what happened that day in Felicity Grave?
"Hey, Doc, call me Freddy. Everybody does, except this asshole here, he likes to call me Sparky. Doc, you got a Polaroid around here anyplace? Look at his nostrils, I think they're quivering like a bunny's."
"So," I said. "
Harnes
has the hospital in his pocket."
"Sure," Shanks told me, more gleeful than anybody over the age of five ought to be. "He put three wings on this place. Mr. Theodore
Harnes
is a gen-you-
ine
philanthropist." He stopped and tried to appear thoughtful. "You know how much money this institution earns for this town? This county? How many employment opportunities that comes out to be? Nurses, doctors, pharmacists, custodians, security officers?"
"Patients," I said.
He smiled with that ripped mouth and said, "Oh yeah, lots of patients. Well hell, wouldn't be a hospital without them.”
“No, I suppose not."
I kept looking back and forth from him to Brent, thinking about how much time there was before something awful happened to
Crummler
. Shanks let a little of the ferocity ease though, jabbing like his namesake.
We drew a bead on each other and he said, "Hey, asshole, I told you once already, quit staring at me."
"With pleasure. Where do you keep the violently insane?"
Brent knew his place and kept silent. He'd been given his tasks and orders over the last few days. Maybe debts had been owed, and were now being paid. I didn't even guess at how many of them had been collected over the years. Who else had Harms hidden away here? Pregnant girls, irritating partners, mistresses, his ex-wives ... Teddy?
"The fifth floor, actually," Shanks said. "Always been partial to it myself. They got this water therapy tub down there, a big basin with one of them massagers, you know?" He put his hands on his lower back and stretched. His spine popped like pulling up a bath mat. "I get twinges on occasion, ain't young anymore." His white crew cut and corrupt persona didn't make me think of him as old and infirmed. "Me and this little nurse I know, we sometimes get together and we get to washing each other's backs and such. Better than a hot tub, I'm telling you. Next door, there's this cell, rubber all over, you get my drift?"
"Tell me later," I said.
"Anyway, it's the fifth. Why'd you ask that?"
I could picture him cutting off somebody's face, starting at the upper lip and carving outward from there, peeling back flesh as he unwound a boy's good looks. "I just wanted to make sure I knew where to visit when they lock you up in here." I turned and we stared at each other, and I thought about how much more of his lip I could ruin with my fists when the proper time came. "See you at the party tonight, Sparky? Or are you working late?"
~ * ~
Rain spattered down as heavily as syrup, smearing angry shadows across the streets. Despite a relatively cold night, lightning still occasionally speared the riled, cresting sky.
The bloated moon, fiery and flickering, bobbed in the clouds like a luminous buoy set adrift in the rolling ocean.
I expected an even more abundant security force at the
Harnes
estate than there'd been at
Panecraft
, but only two life-size stone lions rising to roar in the wind greeted me as I drove down the private road. The imposing electric gate had been left open just wide enough for the van to squeak through, as if daring me to enter. The name HARNES arced above, each letter an intricate piece of ironwork art. I continued on the road for a couple hundred yards more, the moon sliding down the wet trees and appearing in the sheen of windows haphazardly glinting through the woods. Backlit by lightning, the mansion loomed: four floors, perhaps thirty or thirty-five rooms, and yet hardly any lights on at all.
Oscar's truck sat parked out front in the impressive brick drive, along with several luxury vehicles, limousines, and Sheriff
Broghin's
police car. I noticed Alice Conway's mauled '68 Mustang directly across from a new Ferrari with so much wax on it that the rain beaded into thick pools gliding like mercury over the hood.
Quite a dinner party.
Dormers and colonnades filled the roof like a dark playground where glaring gargoyles could cavort and hide. The streaming panes of glass gawked like hundreds of bleary eyes gauging my approach.
I pressed the doorbell and the first several notes of Bach's "Air on the G String" played distantly within. There was no overhang at the front door. I waited and continued to get rained on. The six Burmese servants didn't scurry to let me in. I pressed the doorbell again and another classical piece seemed to play; it sounded like Mendelssohn. I'd never heard of a doorbell that switched tunes, but if such a thing existed I thought Theodore
Harnes
would be the man to have it. Then again, I was completely soaked, my ears were filling with water, and everything was beginning to sound like rain and my own breathing.
I tried the door, opened it, and walked inside.
Jocelyn stood directly in front of me.
She took a station at the foot of a magnificent staircase that wound to a landing filled with a line of sculptures. The statues receded into the murkiness like escaped convicts making a break. A chandelier burned dimly overhead, and most of the light seemed to drop down onto her like columns pitching forward. Her incredibly long, straight, shining hair continued to fall in a perfect crest. The dead gaze also hadn't altered.
Wearing a tight black dress and with her intensely black hair framing her pale face, she appeared cut from the fabric of darkness. She said nothing as I dripped on the marble floor. I realized immediately that she was actually a Ninja warrior, and in half a second my chest would be stuck with nineteen throwing stars that had earlier been dipped in poison.
"Your invitation?" she asked.
"Surely lost in the mail," I said. "Wouldn't Mr.
Harnes
have invited the man who captured his son's killer? Or should I consider the ride to the airport to be thanks enough?"
"You have extremely poor manners, Mr. Kendrick."
I simply nodded. "Not always, but tonight that happens to be the case. I apologize."
"Leave."
“No.”
"I can have you arrested."
"Just try to interrupt
Broghin
during the main course. He'd arrest you for bothering him."
She remained completely expressionless, showing no anger, no warmth, no clemency. I speculated again about what kind of childhood she might have had. Had
Harnes
bought her for table scraps from her starving family? I wondered where she fit into this game, and whether she was another of
Harnes
' lovers or just a captive like all the kids in Thailand and Nicaragua working themselves to death for him.
She took a step toward me and I could feel the welling of her presence, as though a crowd of people moved with her. I was amazed by the sudden shift in atmosphere and waited for her to take another step, but she didn't.
We stared at each other for a while longer and thunder growled as the wind tore at the door behind me. Finally Jocelyn took another step, and whatever ghosts had flocked around us receded into the gloom of the foyer. I reached and found some switches on the wall and hit them. The chandelier blazed. She lifted her chin as if to give me a clearer view of her face, displaying those exotic features and mysterious chemistry that comprised her being.
"I'd like to see my grandmother."
"Mr.
Hames
and his invited
quests
are currently enjoying their dinner, and you shall not disturb them." A Chinese empress couldn't have said anything that sounded more detached and indifferent, yet abiding no opposition. "However, they will be taking drinks in the library shortly, and I shall announce you then."
"Thank you."
We stared at each other some more. The discord running between us grew even heavier. In a romantic comedy we would be adversaries who would now begin slapping each other and then break down into frantic groping; the camera would cut to the two of us entwined in bed with the covers drawn up to our armpits, fondling happily, and the audience would get a laugh. I did not foresee such a scene occurring for us anytime in the near future. Though nothing registered in her face, I thought I noticed a slight uncertainty in her eyes, as if she did not know what I was, or what to do, or which can of spray to use on me.
Where were the Burmese servants who cleaned the mansion daily? Who knew what happened at night? Jocelyn's duties, whatever they might be, would not include the taking of guests' coats.
I said, "I guess we have some time on our hands.”
“What do you want here, Mr. Kendrick?"
"To find out more about Teddy."
"For what purpose?"
"To find out who killed him."
"You captured the man yourself."
"No," I said. "I made a mistake."
"I see."
I noticed that she hardly ever blinked, her black eyes filling with jagged incisiveness and emptying again. Her face was completely unmarred by lines of any kind, as if she were incapable of smiling, frowning, or showing a hint of what went on inside. In that moment I would have paid ten grand for a joke that would have made her giggle.
