Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [56]
This might be true. But Cray would not have a lot of lunatics raising hell in the public parts of the hospital. They could scream all they liked while in seclusion, but the common areas must be kept safe and civilized.
He wandered among the patients in the day hall. They were men and women, young and old, all different, yet all curiously alike in their white sneakers and white socks and light blue, two-piece cotton garments, which looked very much like pajamas. At some institutions the patients were permitted to wear their street clothes, but Cray sniffed the dangerous scent of anarchy in this policy.
He ran a tight operation. His hospital was clean. The food in the commissary was nutritious and filling and sometimes even tasty. Discipline was enforced on both the patients and the staff. He made few mistakes.
But Kaylie—innocent little Kaylie with her freckled schoolgirl face and shy, hushed voice ...
He’d made a mistake with her. And he was paying for it even now. He had paid for twelve years.
At 11:15 his pager buzzed, displaying his secretary’s number. He called her from a phone in Dr. Bernstein’s office.
“One of the groundskeepers was working near your house,” Margaret said, worry in her voice. “He found your garage window broken. He says it looks like someone tried to get in.”‘
Cray did his best to sound concerned. “I’ll be right over to take a look.”
The morning had been routine so far, but all of that was about to change.
22
"Cornflakes.”
Shepherd stopped at the front steps of the Hawk Ridge Institute, facing a pair of gray-haired patients in matching cotton outfits.
“Excuse me?” he asked the one who had spoken, a chinless man with a face made of wrinkles and liver spots.
“Cornflakes,” the man repeated. “Cornflakes with milk.”
He smiled. His two front teeth were missing. He looked like a mischievous child.
The man’s companion, a woman with glazed eyes, asked Shepherd if he had ever been to Venice.
“No,” Shepherd said. “Never.”
The woman nodded, satisfied. She and her friend returned their attention to an empty ambulance slant-parked in a loading zone. They stood staring at it raptly, and Shepherd headed up the steps.
The front doors opened on a small lobby, musty and inadequately lit. Another patient was inside, this one a middle-aged woman who sat curled on a wooden bench, studying her sneakers as she hummed to herself.
She had a proud, photogenic face, and Shepherd felt a touch of sadness when he thought of the person she might have been, if illness hadn’t stolen her mind.
At the front desk sat a receptionist, paying no attention to the patient. Her concentration was fixed on the flickering amber monitor of an antique computer terminal. For a moment she reminded him of Ginnie. There was no physical resemblance, only the pose she had struck, the air of intent concentration as her careful hands worked the keyboard.
Somewhere deep inside him there was a revival of the old pain. He felt it, hated it, and at the same time, oddly, he was almost bored with it, because the pain had been with him for so long now, and had gotten tiresome.
Maybe this was what people meant when they spoke of healing. He hoped so.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked without looking up.
“I’d like to see Dr. Cray.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I’m afraid not.”
She frowned. The garish amber light glinted on her granny glasses. “Which patient is this regarding?”
“None.” He showed his badge. “I need to talk to Dr. Cray about a police matter.”
The woman barely glanced at the badge. She seemed unimpressed. It occurred to Shepherd that the institute’s staff must be accustomed to police inquiries. Kroft had said the hospital had regular dealings with the local sheriff’s department. Certain obviously unstable suspects—transients, arsonists—were held here for psychiatric evaluation.
“You’ll have to sign in, please.”
Shepherd filled out the sign-in sheet fastened to a clipboard. The receptionist put it away without