White skin, straight dark hair, negroid features. According to records he’s not only mentally ill-schizophrenia-but also severely retarded. Anoxic insult, they figured. Sinclair’s not so sure. He’s noticed Eskew’s eyes following him around the room, wondering who he is maybe, what he’s doing here. Blinds are open, Sinclair’s shaving him, and just as he lifts the razor, a shaft of sunlight catches on it, gets thrown, blindingly, up onto the wall.
“‘Sharp,’ Eskew blurts out as his eyes find it.
“‘Razor’s too sharp?’ Maybe he was hurting him.
“‘Light.’
“He waited, but that was it. Week or so later, he was reading to this guy,
“‘No … story,’ he said.
“‘What do you mean?’ Then: ‘Danny?’
“A long time went by, Sinclair said, before Eskew said anymore. Then he said: ‘Me.’
“Hackles rose when I heard that. Hair standing up on my neck, what the Russians call chicken skin. Sinclair’d had much the same response, which is why he passed it along to me. That was it, though: the last thing he ever heard from Danny Eskew. ‘Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe I’ve been doing that all along,’ he said.
“I didn’t think so. But it was definitely time for me to surface, flip things over to official sites. So I logged on and started raking records for psychiatric facilities and private clinics in or around Fort Worth. Dredged up lots of nothing at first-not that I expected much else. I called in to work to let them know I’d be late, might not even make it at all, and kept going.”
“But you knew where he, this Sinclair, was.”
“Which helped not much at all. Records from facilities like that are locked down tight. They call themselves private and they damn well mean to stay that way. That’s a large part of their appeal, and what clients pay for.
“So what I’m doing is backtracking. Looking for ghosts, echoes, footprints on the beach. Records from local hospitals, say, from years back. Parkland, John Peter Smith. Those are public records and accessible-at least partially. Same with social services like Child Welfare, MHMR. Or schools, whose counselors and nurses often note what others fail to.
“Sometimes you only have to snag one loose end, a single thread. I found my strand a little after ten this morning and started worrying at it, hopscotching off a couple of Dallas-area hospital admissions. The second admission carried a court date-court’s held right there in MDC, just up Harry Hines from Parkland-but it got canceled for no apparent reason, and at the last moment. We’re talking pro forma here, cookiecutter. Cancellations like that just do
“But at that point, whatever weirdness is going on, I’ve got a fix on him. He’s in the system. Lawyers and conservators can tuck him away, but they can’t hide him. Another hour or so on the phone, I’ve got a rough history.”
“Lawyers and conservators,” I said.
“Mm-hm.”
Our Gentleman of the Half Suspenders was back at the window. Holding up a burger proudly, he proceeded to eat it for us. Grease worked its way along his whiskery chin; catsup, mustard and saliva splattered onto the glass. Finished, he wiped hands on wool pants and blew us a kiss.
“Plan on seeing Dr. Guidry anytime soon?”
“Why?”
Don and Rick exchanged glances.
“When you do, you might ask about Danny Eskew.”
“Yeah,” Don said. “Ask him how his son’s doing.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Let me assure you, Mr. Griffin, there’s absolutely no way, no way at all … this young man … could be involved.”
This young man.
“Dr. Guidry first learned of his existence,” Catherine said after a moment, “when Danny was fifteen, and then only because the boy had come onto such trouble. The mother was at wit’s end, with nowhere else to turn.”
“And she is …?”
“A former secretary.”
Guidry’s face was turned towards the window. He could have been remembering this woman he’d briefly loved so long ago. Or watching dark angels of regret gather out on the schoolyard.
“He’s never felt any connection or kinship to the boy. Why should he? But he has, from the moment he learned of the boy’s existence, taken full responsibility for his care.”
“Removing all authority from the mother-”
“At her express request, yes.”
“And committing his son for life.”
“What else was he to do, Lewis? The boy is incapacitated, profoundly ill. This isn’t some prime-time TV show where he’s going to snap out of it in the last five minutes and head over to the mall on a shopping spree.”
“Yet he seems to have been normal up till what-fourteen, fifteen?”
“That’s often when mental illness begins to manifest itself, especially schizophrenia.”
“No indication of deficiency, retardation.”
“At that point, no.” Giving me her full attention, she also managed somehow to keep an eye on Guidry, whose head again had lowered onto his chest, coaxing forth soft snores.
“Danny’s first serious hospitalization was in a satellite clinic in Oak Cliff, one of a dozen or more communities thronging around Dallas to make up the Metroplex. Six weeks, by court order. Fifth week, he took the meds he’d been hoarding all that time, fifty, sixty pills, maybe more. They didn’t find him till morning, just after seven, when an orderly went through bouncing beds and calling out. His head lay in a pool of vomit. Respirations were shallow, down to six or so, barely visible. The orderly screamed for help and started mouth-to-mouth. Danny came back, but he’d been down a while. His brain had gone too long without adequate oxygen. It was shortly after that that the boy’s mother got in touch with Dr. Guidry.”
“Did Guidry visit? Actually see Danny face-to-face?”
“Once. He never spoke of it afterwards.”
“So the boy’s care fell to others.”
“To the same group of lawyers and advisors who oversee all his financial affairs, yes.”
“Then he would have received regular reports.”
“He did.”
“Did he read them?”
“I can’t say. They were passed along to him.”
“Up the food chain. By?”
“Myself, for some years now. Others before I came.”
“Secretaries, you mean. Personal assistants.”
“Yes.”
We’d been speaking as though he were no longer in the room, which, in a sense, he wasn’t. But now Guidry’s head rose. He turned his gaze to us, eyes clear.
“I can say, Mr. Griffin.” He grimaced as pain thrust and withdrew. “I read every word, many times over. If words could be used up, those would have been empty shells, nothing more. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. Empty shells.”
I watched as something else, something in its own way as substantial as the pain, arrived.
“One summer, long ago, my parents rented a cabin up in Arkansas, a place called Maddox Bay. Near your homeland, I believe. Beautiful country.”
