Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [54]
Dennis Callaghan had been cured—at least for the moment. This was enough for his parents and for Dennis himself, and it was enough for Cray. He had learned humility in this field. He had learned not to expect to understand too much.
Once the Callaghans were gone, Cray asked Margaret to send for Walter Luntz. “There’s an errand I need him to run,” he added quite unnecessarily
Walter Luntz resided in a guest room adjacent to the kitchen area, quarters intended originally for a live-in cook. But Walter was not a cook. He was a permanent resident of the Hawk Ridge Institute, a man of forty-nine who had spent the last twenty-five years of his life under psychiatric care.
His was an unusual case. He had responded quite well to pharmacological treatment in certain respects. His thought processes were fairly lucid, and he suffered from no evident delusions. Within the structured environment of the hospital, or outside it for brief forays into the larger world, he was fine.
But send him to a halfway house or ask him to fend for himself in a rented apartment—two strategies that had been tried in the early years—and he quickly decompensated, reverting to an acute psychotic state.
Cray was just as glad that Walter could not leave the institute. The man was useful here. He did clerical chores, even ran errands, driving a used Toyota Tercel that Cray had paid for out of hospital funds. His driving was quite good, and his license had never been revoked throughout all his years of hospitalization.
The institute was understaffed, and Cray could use all the help possible.
Today Walter would perform his greatest service.
Cray heard him coming—fast, clumsy steps—and then Walter Luntz appeared in the office doorway, a tall, stoop-shouldered wreck of a man, with long, ropy, simian arms and a potbelly and a conical, hairless head.
Unlike the other patients, Walter was permitted to wear street clothes. His taste in fashion was idiosyncratic at best. Today he wore khaki trousers, a turquoise-encrusted belt, and a lime-green open-collar shirt.
“Dr. Cray?” he asked hesitantly, afraid to cross the threshold without permission.
His voice was reedy and weak, a wind instrument breathlessly played.
“Yes, Walter. Come in.”
Cray shut the door after him, then ushered Walter to the couch. The door was oak, solid-core, and it ensured privacy.
Then he explained to Walter what he wanted. He explained more than once, keeping his words simple. Walter was not unintelligent, but he was naive and prone to childish misunderstandings.
The assignment Cray offered was a challenge, perhaps too great a challenge for a man whose tasks rarely required driving more than a few miles into nearby Safford for some office supplies. But curiously Cray felt sure Walter was up to it, so long as he had clear instructions and a couple of visual aids.
One of these was a photo Cray had downloaded from the Internet during a brief on-line session this morning, and the other was a slip of paper filled out with a few letters and numbers in a large, careful hand.
“Do you understand?” he asked the man who sat with him on the sofa.
Walter nodded. His head gleamed in the sun. “I can do it, Dr. Cray”
Even so, Cray reviewed the matter one last time before sending Walter Luntz on his way.
At 10:30 he toured the facility, opening a succession of locked doors with his passkey, checking in with the psychiatrists and supervising nurses on duty in the two active wards. He had heard of hospital directors who stayed in their offices all day, inaccessible and aloof. This was not Cray’s approach.
Anyway, he needed to keep moving. There was a restlessness in him today, a droning background hum of frustration, of fury.
He had come so close with Kaylie. Had his reflexes been a few degrees sharper, or had he simply put the canister of liquid nitrogen in the backseat, safely out