He pointed to the waiting security personnel.

"… We must get this residence hall back on some kind of routine track."

Francis expected Peter to say something, but the Fireman kept his mouth closed.

"And, Miss Jones," Gulp-a-pill added, "I would like to discuss at your earliest convenience the impact of your, ah, shall we say haircut."

With that, the hospital director turned to Mister Evil and added, "Serve breakfast. Get the morning activities started."

Evans nodded. He looked over at Francis and Peter and he gave them a small wave. "You two, back to the dining hall, please," he said. The words spoken carried polite tones but were as much a command as any issued by a prison guard.

Peter seemed to bristle at Evans giving him any sort of instructions. But instead he looked over at Gulptilil. "I need to speak with you," he said. Evans snarled, but Gulp-a-pill nodded.

"Of course, Peter," he said. "I have been anticipating that conversation."

Lucy seemed to sigh, and take a last look up at Cleo's body. Francis could not tell whether it was discouragement that went through her eyes, or some other sense of resignation. It was almost as if he could see that she thought that everything was coming to an end unhappily, no matter what she did. It was the look of someone who believes that something is just beyond reach.

Francis turned back and stared at Cleo's body as well. He let his eyes survey the scene one last time as the security personnel moved to lower her to the ground.

Murder or suicide, he thought. For Lucy, one was likely. For the hospital director, the other was obvious. Each had his own needs for one outcome or the other.

Francis, however, felt an empty cold deep within his heart, because he saw something different.

Murder or suicide? he thought to himself. He stepped back from the stairwell door and took a quick glance into the women's dormitory. He knew Cleo's bed was right inside the door. He took notice that both sheets were intact, and there was no sign of a knife or blood, if that had been the place where she'd severed her thumb. He could hear echoes from his own voices shouting conflicting visions inside, but he shut them all away almost as if he could close the lid on their complaints. Murder or suicide? How about both? he whispered to himself, as then he turned and followed Peter back down the corridor.

Chapter 28

Cleo's body was hustled out of the Amherst Building by Security at the same time that Big Black and his brother herded the distraught patients into the dining area for the morning meal. The last Francis saw of the sometime empress of Egypt was a great misshapen lump encased in a shiny black rubberized body bag disappearing through the front doors as he was being directed to stand in line by the serving counter. After a few moments, Francis found himself staring down at a desultory plate of French toast, dripping with sticky, tasteless syrup, trying to assess what had taken place in the hours that most of them had been asleep. He was joined at the table by Peter, who seemed in a deeply foul mood, and took to pushing his food about on his plate. Newsman wandered by, took one look at Peter, started to say something, only to stop when Peter said, "I know what today's headline is. Patient in Hospital Dies Hard. No One Gives a Damn."

Newsman looked as if he might burst into tears and hurried over to an empty table. Francis thought Peter was wrong, because there were a number of people who were upset by Cleo's death and he looked around as if to point these folks out to the Fireman, but instead, he saw the hulking retarded man first, who was having trouble cutting his toast into bite-size pieces, then his gaze traveled over to one of the other tables where three women sat, each indifferent to the meal in front of them, indifferent to each other, talking to themselves.

Another retarded man glared at Francis, as if there was something in the way he was sitting that made him angry, and so Francis looked away, back to Peter.

"Peter?" he asked slowly. "What do you think happened to Cleo?"

The Fireman shook his head. "Everything that can go wrong, did go wrong," he said. "She was filled with something evil, you know, where all the things that are supposed to connect up and keep us levelheaded somehow got short-circuited or frayed, and no one saw it or did anything about it and so there you have it. She's gone. Poof! Like a magic trick on a stage. Evans should have seen something. Maybe Big Black or Little Black or Nurse Wrong or Nurse Riches or even me, maybe, but someone should have seen something was happening. Just the same as Lanky, back before Short Blond's murder. All sorts of things happening inside his head. Hammers pounding, bulldozers, earth movers like a construction project going on by the side of the highway, except no one noticed. And then when they do take notice, it's too late."

"You think she killed herself?"

"Of course," Peter said.

"But Lucy said…"

"Lucy was wrong. Gulp-a-pill was right. No signs of a struggle. And the severed thumb well, that was probably just her craziness coming out. Some utterly weird delusion. Cutting her own thumb off probably made some crazy sense to her right at the last moment. We just don't exactly know what her logic was and we'll never know."

Francis swallowed hard, and asked, "Did you really examine that thumb, Peter?"

The Fireman shook his head. "I liked Cleo," he said. "She had personality. A character. She wasn't a blank slate, like so many people in here. I wish I could have gotten inside Cleo's head for just a second, to see how it all added up for her. There had to be some unique and twisted Cleo-like logic. Something to do with Shakespeare and Egypt and all of that. She was her own theater, wasn't she? Belonged on a stage somewhere, I guess. Or maybe, turned everything around her into its own stage. Maybe that's the best epitaph for her."

Francis could see churning within Peter some great storm of thoughts moving back and forth like tossed seas driven by wild winds. Nowhere in Francis's view, at that moment was Peter the arson investigator. Francis continued to ask questions, a little under his voice. "She didn't seem like the type who would kill herself, especially after mutilating herself."

"True enough," Peter answered, sighing deeply. "But I'm thinking that no one exactly seems like the type who would kill themselves, until they do, and then, all of a sudden everyone around here nods their heads and says, "Why of course…" because it seems so damn obvious."

He shook his head. "C-Bird," he said, "I've got to get out of here." He took another deep breath, then amended this statement: "We've got to get out of here."

Then Peter looked up and saw something in Francis's face, because he stopped short and spent more than a few seconds simply staring at the younger man. After a long stretch of quiet, he said, "What is it?"

"He was there," Francis whispered.

Peter knit his brows and leaned forward. "Who?"

"The Angel."

Peter shook his head. "I don't think so…"

Francis whispered. "He was. He was in at my bed the other night telling me how easy it would be to kill me, and this night he was there with Cleo. He's everywhere, we just cannot see him. He's behind everything that has happened here in Amherst, and he's going to be behind whatever happens next. Cleo kill herself? Sure. I guess so. But who else would unlock the right doors for her?"

"Unlock the doors…"

"Someone opened the door to the women's dormitory. Someone made sure that the stairwell door was unlocked. And someone helped her get past the nursing station so that she wasn't seen…"

"Well," Peter said, "that's a good point. Actually, several good points…" He seemed to chew this over for a moment, before saying, "You're right, C-Bird about one thing. Someone opened some doors. But how can you be so sure it was the Angel?"