Praying for Sleep
grounds where the hospital’s nonprofit farm, operated by volunteers and staffed by patients, spread for some ten acres into the rocky hills.
“Why wasn’t any of this in the file?” Adler slapped the folder once again, as if disciplining a puppy.
“I think there’re some other files we don’t have. I don’t know what happened to them. Something funny’s going on.”
“Did the board recommend Hrubek for the program?” Adler, as a member of the Marsden Board of Directors, prayed for one particular answer to this question.
“No,” Grimes said.
“Ah.”
“Maybe Dick Kohler slipped him in somehow.”
“ ‘Slipped him in’?” Adler pounced. “We have to be very buttoned up about this, my friend. Did you mean that: ‘slipped him in’? Think now. Think carefully.”
“Well, I don’t know. Hrubek was always closely supervised. It’s not quite clear who okayed it. The paperwork’s sketchy.”
“So maybe he wasn’t,” Adler reflected, “‘slipped in’ after all? Maybe some other idiot here dropped the ball.”
Grimes wondered if he was being insulted.
The hospital director breathed slowly. “Wait a moment. Kohler’s not on staff. Does he have an office here?”
Grimes was surprised Adler didn’t know. “Yes, he does. It’s part of the arrangement with Framington. We supply facilities for the attendings.”
“He’s not an attending,” Adler snapped.
“In a manner of speaking, he is.” With the trooper absent, Grimes inexplicably felt bolder.
“I want to find out what the hell is going on here and I want to know in the next hour. Who’s the E Ward resident on call?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I think—”
“Peter, you’ve got to get on top of this,” Adler snapped. “Find out who it is and tell him to go home. Tell him to take the evening off.”
“Yes. Go home? Are you sure?”
“And tell him not to talk to anyone. . . . I’m curious about this woman. . . .” Adler looked for a scrap of paper, found it and handed it to Grimes. “Did Hrubek ever mention her? Anybody ever mention her?”
Grimes read the name. “Mrs. Owen Atcheson? No. Who’s she?”
“She was at Indian Leap. She testified against Hrubek at the trial. She claims she got a threatening letter from him last September when our little boy was playing with blocks at Gloucester. The sheriff says her husband thinks Hrubek’s after her.”
“Ridgeton,” Grimes mused. “Forty miles west of here. Not a problem.”
“Oh?” Adler turned his red eyes on the young doctor. “Good. I’m so relieved. Now tell me why you think it’s quote not a problem.”
Grimes swallowed and said, “Because most schizophrenics couldn’t get three miles on their own, let alone forty.”
“Ah,” Adler said, sounding like a crotchety old Oxford don. “And with what little qualifiers, dear Grimes, did you shore up your substandard assessment?”
Grimes surrendered. He fell silent and fluffed his crinkly hair.
“A, what if he isn’t on his own, Doctor?” Adler barked. “What if there are co-conspirators, witting or un? And B, what if Hrubek isn’t like most schizophrenics? How ’bout them apples, Doctor? Now, get on it. Find out exactly how the son of a bitch got out.”
Grimes had not grown so bold that he failed to say, “Yes, sir.” And he said it very quickly.
“If this . . . Hold up a minute there. If this—” Adler gestured, unable or unwilling to give a name to the potential tragedy. “If this becomes a problem . . .”
“How’s that?”
“Get Lowe on the phone. I need to have another little talk with him. Oh, and where’s Kohler?”
“Kohler? He’ll be at the halfway house tonight. He sleeps over on Sunday.”
“You think he’ll be in for rounds tonight?”
“No. He was here at four-thirty this morning. And after evaluations he went right to the halfway house. And he was dead on his feet then. I’m sure he’s in bed now.”
“Good.”
“Should I call him?”
“Call him?” Adler stared at Grimes. “Doctor, really. He’s the last one we want to know about this. Don’t say a word to him. Not . . . a . . . word.”
“I just thought—”
“No, you didn’t just think. You weren’t thinking at all. I mean, for God’s sake, do you call up the fucking lamb and say, ‘Guess what? Tomorrow’s Easter’?”
7
The steam rising from the plastic cup of coffee left a foggy ellipse on the inside of the windshield.
Dr. Richard Kohler, slouching in the front seat
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