Tom Piccirilli - Sorrow's crown

Harnes didn't need Freddy Shanks to torture or kill Crummler.

He'd be dead in a couple of days if I didn't get him out of here.

We left the cell and Brent escorted me to the elevators. I thought about my friend Lisa Hobbes again, locked here for a time before being sent to jail for murder, and what it must be like to so easily lose yourself into these walls, into the clouds and cliffs painted there.

The migraine dissolved in an instant, and I was slowly able to open my fists again. "Teddy met somebody here, didn't he?"

Brent said, "What do you mean?"

I stared at him and grinned, and wondered if I was half as repugnant to him as he was to me. "Who was it, Doctor? Who did he recognize?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Teddy volunteered at the hospital, didn't he?"

"What makes you think that?"

Teddy wasn't very good with painting murals: the size and texture of the wall apparently threw him, but he'd made a decent enough attempt to fill his work with the qualities of Chinese art he admired so much. The way the clouds and whitecaps curled, that sharpness of each angle of rock and wave. "Who did he see in here while he worked in that group counseling room? Was it his mother?" I unfolded the sketches and swept them under his face. "Is Marie Harnes still alive and rotting under your supervision?"

The mustache looked like it was having an epileptic fit, scampering all around his face so badly that he had to snort to clear his nostrils. "I believe she's been dead for over twenty years, Mr. Kendrick." He motioned for one of the guards, who quickly came to attend him. "And it's you who should be seeking psychiatric help."

"I know what kind of care you dole out, Brent, I think I'll take a pass."

I wondered, was it possible?

Marie Harries trapped here for over twenty years?

"If you continue to harass and threaten me, Mr. Kendrick," Brent told me. "I promise you our next meeting will be a most unpleasant experience."

"Certainly," I said.

I sat in the parking lot of the hospital, looking at the visitors, nurses, and patients wandering the grounds despite the oncoming chill. Several people were underdressed, but they so valued their time outdoors they didn't mind the cold. I gazed up at the rows of cube windows and settled on the highest one in the farthest corner of the building. No matter how stable Marie Harnes might have been going into Panecraft, she'd be totally insane now.

I pulled out the cell phone and saw it was blinking angrily at me. The Low BATTERY flashed. I searched my jacket pockets but realized I'd left the second battery recharging in Anna's van. I still got a dial tone, though, and called my grandmother.

"Hello," she answered with a faint barb that nobody would have noticed but me. From just that single word I could hear that her voice was thick and weighty with frustration.

"What the hell is going on, Anna?"

"What is the matter, Johnathan?"

"You tell me. You're with him?"

"If by 'him' you mean Theodore Harnes, then yes, in a matter of speaking I am. Actually, at the moment I'm putting on a sweater, it is getting quite brisk out again. Did you dress warmly, dear?"

I repressed a sigh of irritation. "I'm not in my Mukluks but I'll get by. Why are you spending the day with him? Why did you go see Crummler with him? And for heaven's sake, what happened when you did?"

The barb hooked a little deeper. I got the feeling she was doing her best to control a great and painful passion within her. It had been brought out in both of us. "I wanted to see Theodore Harnes in his natural habitat, as it were, acting his most characteristic," she said. "I was hoping to humanize Crummler in his eyes, but I fear that none of us has ever been quite human in his regard, not even his son."

"I know why you went, Anna, but why did he go?"

"Perhaps because he feels most at home in his burrow."

"That's not why he did it." I thought about it for a minute, the way he followed me and Anna, skulking about the streets of the town in his limo, slowly circling Panecraft. "He's fascinated with you, and has been since you nearly ran him over fifty years ago. I also think he's trying to lure Nick Crummler out into the open."

"Why?" she asked.

"Nick knew Shanks from his time in Panecraft. Maybe he knows something about Harnes, too. Harnes has lost his right-hand psycho. Who knows?" I asked. "Maybe he wants Nick to replace Sparky."

"Yes. Perhaps Theodore Harnes believes Nick helped his brother murder Teddy."

"There's still more going on here than we know about.”

“Or less. I fear we haven't handled this situation very effectively."

"That's an understatement."

I heard a few snaps, a tinny voice, something being clicked. "Is that my micro-tape-recorder?" I asked. "What are you doing?"

"Testing it. I failed horribly today in not bringing it with me earlier."

"Why? Is he opening up at all?"

She did something then I had never heard her do, not even in the hospital the day my parents died, when she'd had tubes and needles plunged into her thin arms pumping painkillers throughout her system while the massive casts held her shattered legs and spine immobile.

My grandmother cackled ; a high, painful, and somehow loathsome noise that drove an icicle against my spine. I shivered so hard I nearly dropped the phone.

"There is nothing in him left to open," she said. "He is completely guileless in a most heinous and unsettling manner. I'm thoroughly convinced he genuinely did not have anything to do with Teddy's murder, or, if Teddy is still alive, with his son's disappearance. He is not honest due to any conscience or moral fiber on his part. He admits to the truth because he is the incarnation of baseness, so utterly at ease with his own vices." Her breath caught in her throat, and my hand shook worse. "He and I have spent the day in his limousine discussing how he murdered my friend Diane-“

"Oh, good Christ."

"-and speaking at length on any number of his other crimes, including the poisoning of Teddy's mother. Apparently he had no need to find exotic toxins. Simple household cleaning products mixed into wine can often prove untraceable. He is quite knowledgeable about a whole host of such lethal misdeeds, and prefers to handle them himself rather than entrust minions to accomplish such tasks."

"He admitted her murder to me as well. Why didn't you call me, Anna? Did you call Lowell?"

"What, dear?"

"Why didn't you call me?" I shouted.

"I had a chance to finish it fifty years ago before any of the real horror began. And I did nothing ."

I could feel her getting further away from me. "Anna, listen, I'll be home in twenty minutes…"

"I won't be here by then. Jocelyn is mounting the front steps even as I speak, Jonathan. They have been idling outside while I changed into heavier clothing. My day with them hasn't ended yet. Don't worry, dear, I pose no threat to him."

"Yes, you do, we both do."

"His ego needs an audience, you see. And now, as when I first met him, I'm a spectator to his dementia. I'd like to catch some of what he relates on tape, though ultimately I fear it will be useless in a court of law. I shall be home early, dear. I've left some roast beef in the refrigerator, help yourself."

"Anna, do not go with him!" I started the car and jammed the accelerator and spun in a tight circle heading for the gate.

"You see, Jonathan-" A sob nearly broke within her, but she caught it on the cusp and quickly reined herself. "You see, dear, he enjoys talking of murder. We needed only to ask ."

She hung up and I gunned it, trying to dial Lowell's number and stay on the road, watching the patients wandering the grounds staring mournfully at me as if begging to take them home.