familiar with V-State’s history, all those terrible things carried out in the name of medicine. By the time I got there- the reason I went there-all that had been expunged and we had a well-justified reputation for being humane.” He studied me. “When you were there did you find indications to the contrary?”
“Not at all. I got great training.”
“Glad to hear you say that. Glad and proud… there was the notion that he wouldn’t be safe in Kansas. Too much notoriety.”
“What caused Marlon Quigg to be concerned?”
“I’m sure you recall the beauty of our grounds.”
Apparent non sequitur. I nodded.
He said, “ Pastoral was a term I heard bandied about quite often. Abundant flora and fauna.”
I said, “Animals. He trapped them. Resumed exploring.”
“Small animals,” said Cahane. “Analysis of the bones identified squirrels, mice, lizards. A garter snake. A stray cat. Birds, as well, we never figured out how he caught them. Caught any of them. He was clever enough to conceal his handiwork for months. Found a quiet spot behind a remote storage shed, conducted his experiments, buried the remains and tidied the ground. He’d been allowed to leave the ward for two hours a day, once in the morning, once before dinner. From the body count, we estimated he worked with one creature a day.”
Tidying. I thought of the clean dirt at Marlon Quigg’s kill-site. “How was he discovered?”
“Young Mr. Quigg had grown suspicious and chose to follow him one evening. The chosen creature was a baby mole.”
“What made Quigg suspicious?”
“The boy had grown uncommunicative, even surly. Should someone else have noticed? Perhaps. What can I tell you?”
“Teachers and nurses spend a lot more time with patients than we do.”
“They do… In any event, faced with a new set of facts, we needed to shift our paradigm but we weren’t sure how. Some of the staff, most vocally Marlon Quigg, agitated for an immediate transfer to Specialized Care. Others disagreed.”
Cahane’s eyes shifted to the right. “I listened to everyone, said I’d take some time and decide. As if I was being deliberative. The truth was I was unable to make a decision. Not only because he posed problems I was ill prepared for. My own life was in shambles. My father had just died, I’d applied for positions at Harvard and UC San Francisco, had been turned down at both places. My marriage was falling apart. There had always been issues but I’d brought them to a head by straying with another woman, a beautiful, brilliant woman but, of course, that doesn’t excuse it. In a pathetic attempt to reconcile with my wife, I booked a cruise through the Panama Canal. Even under the guise of sensitivity I was being selfish, because sailing through the canal was something I’d always wanted.”
He picked up his glass, changed his mind, put it down hard. “Twenty-four days on a ship, preceded by several weeks on the Outer Banks of North Carolina because Eleanor hailed from there. I was away from the hospital for forty-three days and during my absence, someone took it upon himself to deal with the boy. The psychologist who’d come to me with Quigg’s original complaint. He agreed with Quigg, viewed the boy as untreatable and tainted. His term. He was a foolish, authoritarian man, too confident in his own meager abilities. I’d long had my reservations about him but his credentials, though foreign, were excellent. As a state employee he had all sorts of contractual protection, had never made an error that would jeopardize that.”
Cahane’s shaky fingers entangled in his hair. “Then, he did. And now this moment has arrived.”
His eyes lost focus. “There I was, on a beautiful ship, dining, dancing. Marveling at the canal.” He poured bourbon, spilled some, studied the droplets on his sleeve. “Dear God.”
I said, “The boy was sent to Specialized Care.”
“If only that was all of it,” said Cahane. “That man, that overconfident ass, decided-on his own, with no evidence or prior discussion-that the boy’s problems were primarily hormonal. Glandular irregularity was the way he termed it. Like something out of a Victorian medical book. He prepared papers, had the boy transported to a clinic in Camarillo where he was operated on by a surgeon who lacked the judgment to question the request.”
“Thyroidectomy,” I said.
Cahane’s head jerked back. “You already know?”
“A witness described a scar across the front of his neck.”
He gripped his glass with both hands, hurled it awkwardly across the room. It landed on the carpet, rolled. “A complete thyroidectomy for absolutely no reason at all. After a week’s recuperation, the boy was transferred to Specialized Care. The quack claimed he was looking out for the boy-trying to regulate his behavior because clearly nothing else had worked. But I always suspected there was an element of base, vicious revenge.”
“You like to operate, Sonny? See how it feels?”
“One of the animals the boy had chosen to explore had been the fool’s unofficial pet. A stray cat that he fed from time to time. Of course he denied that this was all about helping the lad. I returned from my cruise, learned what had happened, was horrified, livid at my staff for not intervening. Everyone claimed they’d been unaware. I sat the bastard down, had a long talk with him, told him he was retiring and that if he ever applied for a position at another state hospital, I’d write a letter. He protested, switched to sniveling, tried to bargain, ended up making a pathetic threat: Anything he’d done had been under my supervision so I wouldn’t escape scrutiny. I called his bluff and he deflated. He was over the hill, anyway. Pushing eighty.”
He smiled. “Younger than I am today. Some of us rot more quickly than others.”
“Foreign credentials,” I said. “From where?”
“Belgium.”
My chest tightened. “University of Louvain?”
Cahane nodded. “A fussy little twit with a fussy, comical Teutonic accent who wore ridiculous bow ties and slicked his hair and strutted around as if he’d kissed Freud’s ring.”
“What was his name?”
Unnecessary request.
Cahane said, “Why the hell not? His name was Shacker. Buhrrrn- hard Shacker. Don’t waste your time looking for him, he’s quite dead. Suffered a heart attack the day after I fired him, collapsed right in the hospital parking lot. No doubt stress was a factor but those sandwiches he brought to staff lunches couldn’t have helped. Fatty pork and the like, slathered with butter.”
“What happened to the boy?”
“Did I remove him from Special-C?” said Cahane. “That didn’t seem advisable, given signs of impending puberty and the enormity of what had been done to him. Instead, I created a custom environment for him within the walls of Special. Kept him out of a barred cell and put him in a locked room that been used for storage but had a window and a nice view of the mountains. We painted it a cheerful blue, moved in a proper bed not a cot, installed wall-to-wall carpeting, a television, a radio, a stereo, audiotapes. It was a nice room.”
“You kept him in Special-C because you expected him to grow increasingly violent.”
“And he defied my expectations, Dr. Delaware. Developed into a pleasant, compliant adolescent who spent his days reading. At that point, I was a good deal more hands-on, visiting him, making sure everything was going well. I brought in an endocrinologist to monitor his Synthroid dosage. He responded well to T4 maintenance.”
“Did he receive any psychiatric treatment?”
“He didn’t want any and he wasn’t displaying symptoms. After what he’d been through, the last thing I wanted to do was coerce. Which isn’t to say he wasn’t monitored thoroughly. Every effort was made to ensure that he didn’t regress.”
“No access to animals.”
“His recreational time was supervised and confined to the Special-C yard. He shot hoops, did calisthenics, walked around. He ate well, groomed himself just fine, denied any delusions or hallucinations.”
“Who supervised him?”
“Guards.”
“Any guard in particular?”
“No.”
“Do you recall a guard named Pitty or Petty?”
“I didn’t know any of their names. Why?”
