Always Leave ’Em Dying (6 page)

"Watch it, mister," I said. "What's the idea?"

"Come along quiet," he said. "Be easier on you."

He wasn't even breathing hard, and he sounded almost bored. The other guy stood in front of me and a little to the side in case he was needed. I still wanted to know what was coming off.

"Listen, stupid, I'm not a patient," I said. "So unwind your—" and that was all.

He jerked my arm up behind my back and shoved me forward, and it hurt enough so that I no longer cared to reason with the bastard. He had me in a good arm lock, and he must have expected me to be awed and cooperative. I was neither. I let him shove me almost to the door, then I stepped straight up instead of ahead and slammed my heel down on his instep as hard as I could. The thin bones crumpled like paper. As he yelled and loosened his grip, I jerked my arm free, swung toward him with my left fist on its way. It landed with a satisfying smack against his lips.

He staggered back. I stepped aside, ducking, as the other guy hit me from behind and bounced past me. When he spun toward me raising a hamlike fist, he was wide open, and because it was his left fist moving, I swung my open right hand down first, cracked its edge against his collarbone. It caved in with a sound like that of bone breaking, which is exactly what it was, and he yelled just before the edge of my left palm landed and broke his collarbone on the other side.

The guy who'd grabbed me in the first place was facing me, his face dripping red, but he didn't worry me much now because the other guy wouldn't be lifting even a finger for a while. And that was where I made my mistake—assuming there were only two of them.

My back was to the door and I heard the small sound behind me, but the sound immediately after that was a great big crashing sound, and it was inside my head. I was conscious clear down to the floor, even felt myself sprawling out on the carpet, but that was all, and it got black everywhere.

I couldn't have been out very long. When I came to, a couple of guys were carrying me down the corridor. Both guys were strangers; the other two apes wouldn't be carrying anything but grudges for a long time. It took me a little while, but I figured out that I was on a stretcher and in a strait jacket. Everything was blurred, but I could see the two doctors and the little psychiatrist, or whatever the hell they were.

I started talking softly, but I soon was yelling. They all ignored me. I kept yelling; they kept carrying me down the corridor.

 

Chapter Six

I realized my eyes were closed, and forced them wide again. I'd lost track of the number of times that had happened; with the drug making my thoughts sluggish, my body numb, it was difficult to know if my eyes were actually open or not. I couldn't even think any more. I'd gone back over this whole day without remembering a thing to explain what had happened, explain why somebody had tried to kill me—and I never would know unless I got out of here.

I arched my body violently, more in anger than with any purpose, felt pain burn across my back, but pushed with all my strength at the cloth around me—and heard the sound of canvas tearing. My arms moved. The shock of that movement, plus the sharp pain, cleared my head a little, and I understood what had happened. The blade that had cut me must first have sliced nearly through the canvas sleeves that held my arms and extended on around my body; my sudden movement had torn them the rest of the way.

In another few seconds, my hands were bare; soon I'd pulled the jacket off and was standing beside the bed, sweat beaded on my face. Dizziness swept over me and I almost fell, catching the bed's edge for support; then I groped my way to the room's rear, forced the window up, slid through, and dropped to the ground outside. My coat and gun had been taken from me before I'd been put in the strait jacket, and it was cold; fog had drifted inland from the sea. For a moment, I leaned back against the building's wall. Felicity's name spun in my brain. I knew that I'd come here because of her, but I couldn't remember the rest of it, couldn't remember why.

Then I started walking, trying to keep in my mind the thought that I had to get out, get away from Greenhaven, forget everything else except getting away. It had seemed cold at first, but my body felt warm now and I was dizzy, lightheaded. It was almost as if I were floating, and I thought with amusement that maybe I could float over the wall. I staggered and stumbled like a drunk, getting a kick out of it; I thought it was funny. It was like walking through a crazy dream.

I found a table, placed it next to the wall, and put a chair on top of it. A siren wailed somewhere, got louder as I climbed onto the table and then the chair, rolled over the wall. I landed heavily but got to my feet and trotted, stumbling, toward my car. The siren was loud as I reached my Cad, turned the keys still in the ignition, and started the motor. When I was a block away, driving without lights, a police car screeched to a stop back at the Greenhaven gate.

I awakened suddenly, head pounding, my thoughts swimming and jumbled. Pain seared my spine and my movements were restricted, my body cramped. Slowly memory came back to me. Moments before my eyes had closed and stayed closed, I'd pulled off the road into brush, and turned off the lights and motor before falling across the seat.

I was on my back, lying on the floorboards of my car. I must have rolled in my sleep, fallen from the seat to the floorboards, and suddenly awakened. I pulled myself behind the steering wheel, looked at my watch. It was only 11 p.m. I'd slept little more than an hour. My muscles were stiff, cramped, and a throbbing ache pulsed inside my skull.

The bloodstained shirt stuck to me as I peeled it off, traced the cut with my fingers. The cut was deep in only one spot; the rest of it was a shallow gash halfway across my back. It wasn't dangerous, only painful, and the bleeding had stopped. From the Cad's trunk, where I keep everything from electronics equipment to spare .38 cartridges, I got a crumpled cloth jacket and slipped it on.

Miles away a siren shrilled. Undoubtedly that cop car that had pulled up at Greenhaven as I left had been called out because of me. Since then the police must have been looking for me—looking, I realized, for an escaped nut. That wouldn't make the next hour or so any easier, because I knew I had to go back to Greenhaven.

A few minutes later I stopped at an all-night diner, bought a quart container of black coffee, and drank it in the Cad as I drove. By the time I reached the rear of Greenhaven I felt halfway alive, the short sleep and hot coffee having cleared some of the fog from my brain. I parked off the road in darkness beneath some trees, left the ignition key in place, and dropped the other keys from the ring into my pocket. From the Cad's trunk I got a twenty-foot length of rope. Trees grew outside Greenhaven's rear wall, and it was easy to tie the rope to a limb and throw the line inside; nobody was worried about people sneaking into Greenhaven. I had to jump from the tree limb to the wall's top, then hang onto the rope as I slid down inside the grounds. I left the line hanging and walked toward the building.

A cold fog, heavier now, swept against my face and beaded on my skin as I walked over wet grass. There was no illumination on the grounds at this hour, and only a few lights showed through curtained windows a few yards ahead of me. At the building's rear I turned right. Cement steps led up to a closed door, and I skirted them, then went toward the first of two windows behind which light showed dimly. I thought the second window was the chief psychiatrist's office, where I'd been earlier. The shade inside was pulled, but a thin slice of light pressed past its lower edge and fell on grass ahead of me. I'd seen filing cabinets in there; Hunt's name, maybe Dixon's—and by now I was thinking perhaps even Felicity's—might be in them. One thing was sure: I couldn't ask people questions this trip.

There was a faint noise behind me, a soft, sharp click. I turned, but there was nothing nearby. Then there was a soft noise again; something grunted. Movement stirred a few yards away in the darkness.

The door at the top of stone steps I'd passed moments before swung outward with unnatural slowness. I heard the grunting sound again as I crouched on the grass, pressing against the wall. My leg muscles tightened and I could feel my heart beating heavily. There was a swirl of movement, soft scraping sounds—and then I could hear, and dimly see, the door swing closed.

A shadow glided down the stone steps, and muscles tensed at the base of my skull; there was a slight movement of hairs upon my neck. The shadow moved away and I stood erect and followed it, trying to see who it was—or what it was. Because it was a strange shadow that couldn't be a man. It was an upright blob topped by another mass of darkness, like a misshapen letter T. And then the shadow passed before a beam of light slanting from one of the windows and I saw that it was a man.

It was a man with his left arm stretched up, light sparkling from his hand, and I remembered a sparkling diamond on a hand that earlier had gripped a knife or scalpel. The man walked easily through the light, slightly bent forward, and I could see what had made the shadow seem so unreal. He carried something upon his shoulder, arm stretched up to clasp it tight, and the thing had looked in my one brief glimpse of it like something wrapped in cloth or in a blanket.

It had looked, I thought, like a body.

 

Chapter Seven

The man disappeared beyond the glow of light. My mind wasn't functioning normally, I knew, because of the drug and my weariness combined, and for seconds I stood undecided what to do. The clang of metal on metal decided me. I ran forward and reached an unlocked gate as a car motor started outside. The car raced forward.

A minute later I was in my Cad, following where the other car had gone, but I couldn't see a thing in the road ahead. In a few seconds lights suddenly flicked on, blocks beyond me. I drove without my own lights, not trying to lessen the distance between us. After half a mile he turned left.

A minute later I swung into a narrow dirt road where he had turned shortly before. His car was empty, facing me, when I passed it; yards beyond it I turned in the road and parked. The fog had turned into a soft drizzle of rain and we were near no lights, no houses; this area was barren except for brush and trees.

Damp earth slanted upward as I walked away from the road, moving rapidly for a few yards, then pausing to listen. But I heard nothing. In my hand I carried a flashlight that I meant to use only when I found the man, and blackness was almost complete. When I heard a sound other than those I made myself, it was higher up the slanting ground ahead of me. I ran toward it, barely avoiding trees that loomed before me. Then I stopped, and heard the sound again. It was the sound of digging, and I knew the man was digging a grave.

I started walking again and there was the sound of a shovel's blade driven into soft earth, and then the hiss as earth slid from the blade and fell with a soft splattering thud. There was silence again. I stopped, stood motionless with my head turned to one side, listening, and heard a whisper of sound. I walked on slowly. A minute passed; a twig snapped somewhere nearby and I swung around, waited. When I stepped forward again, my right foot sank into softer ground, into earth that had been freshly turned.

But the only sound was rustling branches over my head, the whispering of rain. When I heard a car motor start and roar, I didn't know what it meant at first. Then I realized he'd been here and gone—and that I hadn't seen his face.

I ran. His headlights were cutting through the darkness, then reached the highway, turned back toward Greenhaven. I stumbled and fell, got up and ran again, puzzled, not understanding. There had been too little time for him to walk up that hill, dig a grave, and bury whatever he had carried, then fill the grave and leave again.

There was a dull ache in my chest when I reached the Cad. His lights were out of sight. I drove back to Greenhaven with the accelerator down, but I didn't catch him. His car was already parked where it must have been before, and his figure was going through the same high gate he had used earlier. When I reached it, seconds after him, it was closed. None of the keys on my ring would unlock it, and I drove around the corner, parked where I'd been before, went over the wall again where the rope dangled inside it. As I turned and started to run across the grounds, light flashed from inside one of Greenhaven's halls. Somebody went through the door and closed it quickly, smothering the light. I ran to the door, jerked it open. The corridor was empty.

It stretched the length of the building before me, silent and bare, the polished floor gleaming dully from white lights overhead. I walked down half its length; on my right was the big entrance through which I'd first come last night, the doors closed. Just beyond the corner ahead was the wire-enclosed room in which I'd seen bins containing boxes and clothing.

I walked to the room, peered through the heavy wire. Probably my coat and gun were in one of those compartments now, but I couldn't see them. A frail-looking metal door, crisscrossed with wire, was on my left. It was locked, and when my keys failed to work, I wound my fingers in the wires at its top, put one foot against the screen near it, and yanked with all my strength.

The sound rattled down the hall. The ripped flesh on my back burned suddenly and blood seeped from the cut again. But the door was sprung. I yanked again and the lock scraped and grated, then the door came open. My coat was in an upper bin, the gun and my wallet inside it. I checked the .38, made sure it was still loaded, then took off my cloth jacket, strapped on the gun and holster, shrugged into my coat.

No one was in the hall as I walked down it to the door marked, "Dr. Nichols, Chief Psychiatrist." There wasn't any light behind it and one of my skeleton keys worked. Inside I flipped on the lights; the room was empty. I walked to the filing cabinets.

There were hundreds of cards, alphabetically arranged. None had the name Gifford or Dixon on it, but I found one card bearing the name Hunt, Randolph. Under "Room" was the notation "114EW." I was in the east wing of Greenhaven now.