Instead, he stammered, "The Angel, Peter. What about the Angel?"

"I'm hoping tonight's the night, C-Bird. It's pretty much our only chance. Last chance. Whatever. But it's a reasonable approach, and I think it will work."

There was a distinct murmuring within Francis, as the chorus of voices all seemed to mutter at once. He was caught between paying attention to them or paying attention to Peter, who briefly described the plan for that night. It was a little like Peter didn't want Francis to have too many details, as if he was trying to move Francis to the perimeter of the night, keeping him from the center, where he expected the action to take place.

"Lucy will be the target?" Francis asked.

"Yes and no," Peter replied. "She'll be there, and she'll be the bait. But that's all. She'll be fine. It's all worked out. The Moses brothers will cover her on one side, and I'll be there on the other."

Francis thought this was untrue.

For a moment, he hesitated. It seemed to him that he had almost too much to say.

Then Peter leaned toward Francis, bending his head down so that their words just flowed between the two of them. "C-Bird, what is bothering you?"

Francis rubbed his hands together, like a man trying to wash something sticky from his fingertips. "I can't be sure," Francis said, although he knew this was a lie, because he was sure. His voice stammered, and he wanted desperately to endow it with strength, passion, and conviction, but, as he spoke, he thought every word that tumbled past his lips was filled with weakness. "I just sensed it. It was the same feeling that I had when he came to my bed and threatened me. The night that he killed the Dancer with the pillow. The same I felt when I saw Cleo hanging there…"

"Cleo hung herself."

"He was there."

"She took her own life."

"He was there!" Francis said, mustering all the insistence he could.

"Why do you think so?"

"He mutilated her hand. Not Cleo. The thumb was moved, it couldn't have just dropped in the location it was found. There was no pair of scissors or homemade knife anywhere to be found. There was only blood there, in the stairwell, nowhere else, so slicing off the thumb had to be done there. She didn't do it. He did."

"But why?"

Francis put his hand up to his forehead. He thought he felt feverish, hot, as if the world around him had somehow been burnt by the sun. "To join the two together. To show us that he was everywhere. I can't quite tell, Peter, but it was a message and one that we don't understand."

Peter eyed Francis carefully, but noncommittally. It was as if he both believed and didn't believe everything Francis said. "And the release hearing? You say you could sense his presence?" Peter's words were endowed with skepticism.

"The Angel needs to be able to come and go. He needs access to both here and there. The world inside and the world outside."

"Why?"

Francis took a deep breath. "Power. Safety."

Peter nodded and shrugged, at the same time. "Maybe so. But when all is said and done, C-Bird, the Angel is just a killer with a particular predilection for a certain body type and hair style, with a penchant for mutilation. I suppose Gulptilil or some forensic shrink could sit around and speculate about the whys and wherefores, maybe come up with some theory about how the Angel was abused as a child, but it's not really relevant. What he is, when you think about it, is just another bad-acting bad guy, and my guess is we're going to catch him tonight, because he's a compulsive type, who won't be able to refuse the trap set for him. Probably what we should have done from the start, instead of spinning our wheels with interviews and patient files. One way or the other, he'll show. End of story."

Francis wanted to share Peter's confidence, but could not. "Peter," he said cautiously, "I suppose everything you say is true. But suppose it's not. Suppose he's not what you and Lucy think. Suppose everything that has happened so far is something different."

"C-Bird, I don't follow."

Francis swallowed air. His throat felt parched and he could barely manage more that a whisper. "I don't know, I don't know," he repeated. "But everything you and I and Lucy have done is what he would expect…"

"I've told you before: That's what any investigation is. A steady examination of facts and details."

Francis shook his head. He wanted to get mad, but instead felt merely fear. He finally lifted his head and looked around. He saw Newsman, who had a newspaper open and was studiously memorizing headlines. He saw Napoleon, who envisioned himself a French general. He wished he saw Cleo, who once lived in a queen's world. He fixed on some of the geriatrics, who were lost in memory, and the retarded men and women, who were stuck in some dull childishness. Peter and Lucy were using logic even psychiatric logic to find the killer. But, what C-Bird realized was that this was the most illogical approach of all, inside a world so filled with fantasy, delusion, and confusion.

His own voices shrieked at him: Stop! Run! Hide! Don't think! Don't imagine! Don't speculate! Don't understand!

Right at that moment, Francis realized that he knew what would happen that night. And he was powerless to prevent it.

"Peter," he said slowly, "maybe the Angel wants everything to be as is it."

"Well, I suppose that's possible," Peter said with a small laugh, as if that was the craziest thing he'd ever heard. He was filled with confidence. "That would be his biggest mistake, wouldn't it?"

Francis didn't know how to reply, but he surely didn't think so.

The Angel leaned over me, hovering so close that I could feel every cold breath attached to each frozen word. I shook as I wrote, keeping my face to the wall, as if I could ignore his presence. I could feel him reading right over my shoulder, and he laughed with that same awful noise that I recognized from when he had sat on the side of my bunk inside the hospital and promised me that I would die.

"C-Bird saw so much. But couldn't quite put it together," he scoffed.

I stopped writing, my hand paused just above the wall. I didn't look in his direction, but I spoke out, high-pitched, a little panicked, but still, needing the answers.

"I was right, wasn't I. About Cleo?"

He wheezed a laugh again. "Yes. She did not know I was there, but I was. And what was most unusual about that night, C-Bird, was that I had every intention of killing her before dawn arrived. I figured simply to cut her throat in her sleep and then point some evidence at one of the other women in the dormitory. This had worked just as I knew it would with Lanky. It was likely to work again. Or perhaps just the pillow over the face. Cleo was asthmatic. She smoked too much. It probably wouldn't have taken long to choke the air from her. That worked with the Dancer."

"Why Cleo?"

"It was when she pointed up at the building where I lived and shouted out that she knew me. I didn't believe her, of course. But why take the chance? Everything else was going just as I imagined it would. But C-Bird knows that, doesn't he? C-Bird knows, because he is like me. He wants to kill. He knows how to kill. He hates so much. He loves the idea of death so much. Killing is the only answer for me. And for C-Bird, too."

"No," I moaned. "Not true."

"You know the only answer, Francis," the Angel whispered.

"I want to live," I said.

"So did Cleo. But she wanted to die, too. Life and death can be so close. Almost the same, Francis. And tell me: Are you any different from her?"

I couldn't answer that question. Instead, I asked, "You watched her die?"

"Of course," the Angel replied, hissing. "I saw her take the bedsheet from beneath her bed. She must have been saving it for just that reason. She was in a lot of pain and the medications weren't helping her in the slightest, and all she could see ahead of her, day after day, year after year, was more and more pain. She wasn't afraid of killing herself, C-Bird, not like you are. She was an empress and she understood the nobility of taking her own life. The necessity of it. I just encouraged her along the path, and used her death to my advantage. I opened the doors, then followed her out and watched her go into the stairwell…"