Ed Gorman: Serpent's kiss

Todd shook his head.

"Well, that's what he said, Andy. Hope is what people live by, even in nuthouses."

Todd glanced around the room. "Don't use that goddamn word anywhere around Bellamy. You know what he did to Dolan for calling it a loony bin."

Dolan had been fired summarily, his perks, including health insurance, cancelled at once.

"Sorry," Claiborne said. A stocky, thirtyish man with a rugged head and shaggy blond hair, Claiborne usually wore a smock that got him mistaken for a doctor. The black horn-rimmed glasses didn't hurt, either.

"Let me try the other two floors," Todd said, "See if Unger or Lumley know anything about this."

Each floor had its own security guard around the clock.

"Shouldn't you call Bellamy?" Claiborne said as Todd started out the door.

Todd paused in the doorway and grinned. "You really want to see me get my ass whipped, don't you, Jeff?"

"But I thought-"

"I'll call Bellamy as a last resort. After I've exhausted every other possibility." He shook his head again. "You know what that sonofabitch would say if I told him we couldn't find Dobyns?"

"Pissed, huh?"

"Pissed? Are you crazy? Pissed isn't the half of it." He swept a beefy arm out to the corridor. "You keep looking around up here, all right?"

"Sure, Andy."

With that, Andy Todd left Dobyns's room.

Nothing useful had been found.

The time was 9:29 P.M.

As he sat in the guardhouse at the front gate, sipping decaf coffee and listening to a night call in show about alien abductions, Frank Dvorak kept thinking about what he'd seen in the back window of the laundry truck.

A face.

He'd been sure of it.

Then why the hell hadn't he done anything about it?

The question could be answered in two words: Heather Moore. Ever since Frank had been transferred to the night shift here at Hastings, Heather had shown definite signs of becoming restless. By now, it was pretty obvious she wanted to start dating other guys and drop Frank who, she had lately been hinting, was too old for her anyway. Frank was thirty-two.

They had been in the middle of one of their marathon phone arguments three hours ago, just at dusk, when the laundry truck pulled up to the gate from the inside and beeped. The laundry service usually did its pick-up around this time and Frank hadn't thought much about it. How the hell could he think about anything with the battle raging over the phone, anyway?

The white panel truck had just pulled between the open gates when Frank had glimpsed the man's face. Instantly Frank had flashed on what most likely happened. A patient had climbed into one of the laundry carts the driver loaded up and somehow managed to get into the truck without being detected.

Just as the truck had been leaving the grounds, the patient had sat up and peeked through the window.

Right at Frank.

Frank had wanted to do the right thing, of course, but just as he'd seen the guy, Heather had gone into her sly story about the cute new guy at the insurance office where she worked. This was obviously the guy Heather planned to start dating anytime now. If she wasn't already.

So there you had it. Frank should have hung up right away and called Andy Todd pronto.

But he'd been so pissed at Heather, so intent on finding out this cute guy's name that…

So now he sat in the guardhouse sipping decaf and listening to tales of alien abductions.

If only he could be so lucky to have an alien ship swoop down and pick him up and take him somewhere out among the stars. No more worries about Heather or cute new guys at the office. Or the kind of mistake he'd made by not calling Andy Todd at once.

The time was 9:31 P.M.

Andy Todd had guards on the respective floors walk him around. They searched everything, including toilet stalls, closets, stairwells, and nursing offices. Nothing.

It was at this point that Ames, one of the guards whom Todd had taken into his confidence, said the unthinkable. "You checked the floor below, right, Andy?"

"Right."

"And the floor above?"

"Right."

"Where the hell could he be?"

They were having diet Pepsis in the staff lounge. Andy was also gnawing on a Clark bar from one of the lounge's seven vending machines.

"He couldn't have got out of this building," Andy Todd said. "It's locked up tight. That leaves me no place else to look." He frowned. "That leaves me picking up the phone and calling Bellamy and telling him Dobyns is missing."

"Uh-uh."

"Uh-uh? If Dobyns isn't on the first floor and isn't on the second and isn't on the third, then just where the hell could he be?"

"The tower."

"The tower?" Andy Todd looked at the other man as if he'd just suggested that George Bush owned a complete collection of Liberace records. "The tower? Nobody goes into the tower. Not you; not me. Hell, I've never even seen Bellamy himself go into the tower."

"It's a thought. It's the only likely place left."

The tower. Jesus God. Hastings had been built in Victorian times, when the architecture ran to sprawling estate houses with turrets and spires and widow's walks. Off the east end of the building rose a four-storey tower that, so far as Andy Todd knew, had been shut down. The windows were boarded up, the elevator that led to it had long ago been closed, and the door to the interior stairs was bolted closed and padlocked with a Yale the size of a catcher's mitt. Among the staff there was, of course, great speculation about what had once been in the tower-there was even the kind of urban campfire talk that passed for ghost stories, tales of lights shining in the windows and horrifying screams being heard on the wind.

"No way he's in the tower," Andy Todd said, polishing off his Clark bar.

"Then where the hell is he?" Ames said.

"By now he could be back in his room. Lemme check."

Just as Todd got up to grab the receiver from the wall phone, the thing surprised him by ringing.

"Todd here."

"Andy, this is Frank at the front gate."

"Right, Frank. I know where you are. I assigned you there, remember?" Dvorak had an irritating way of belabouring the obvious and with one of Bellamy's prize fruitcakes strolling around somewhere, Andy Todd was in no mood. "So what can I do for you?"

"Wondered if we could talk a little."

Todd sighed. "You still want May off for vacation?"

"This time it ain't about vacation."

"I'm real busy, Frank. Could it wait till tomorrow?"

There was a pained pause. "One of the patients got free, didn't he, Andy?"

"How'd you know about that?"

Another pained pause. "Something kind of happened earlier tonight, Andy."

"Oh, yeah?" Andy Todd was preparing himself to get violently, explosively angry, high blood pressure or no high blood pressure. "Like what?"

"Well, maybe I saw something."

"Such as?"

"This face."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, Andy. I can tell you're gettin' pissed. I can feel it over the phone." Right now Frank Dvorak sounded as if he were about six years old.

"You screwed up, didn't you, Frank?"

"I'm real sorry, Andy. I was arguin' with Heather and-"

"What happened, Frank? About this face you mentioned?"

Pause. "I know you're gonna get even more pissed off when I tell you, Andy. I mean, I know how you are."

Andy had to hold in the rage or Dvorak would take all night getting it out. "Tell me, Frank. Tell me fast. That way maybe I won't get so pissed."

"I saw somebody in the back of the laundry truck. You know what I'm saying, Andy? Like the patient hid in the laundry cart and stowed away inside the truck and rode right out to freedom. You know?"

"The laundry truck left here about six o'clock."

"Yeah, 'bout six."

"You waited three hours to call me?"

"I'm afraid I did, Andy."