Breakdown (47 page)

I was guessing that Colin had been a Ruhetal inmate with a treatable mental illness who’d stood trial, presumably for a worse crime than calling Tommy a ‘retard,’ although you never know.

I put Magda’s yearbook photograph on the table. The
Star’s
photographer had created a glossy out of it that made it look recent, modern. “Do you know this girl?”

“Of course I know her, silly. That’s Maggie! She lives next door to me, so I know her. Her brother, he’s the bad boy who kicked Good Dog Trey.”

“Is Maggie the girl you were watching at the lake?”

He pouted, not wanting to answer. Perhaps he assumed I was there to criticize him.

“If I saw someone lying in the water, I’d go watch her, too,” I said. “I don’t think watching is a bad thing. Tell me what happened.”

He inspected my face for any signs of anger, then blurted, “Maggie was lying in the water. I seen her, her hair was all floating around her head, like an angel. She floated, she didn’t say anything, she was sleeping. I wanted to see her eyes open, like when she lies out over by the lake on a towel, she does that sometimes, trying to make her skin turn brown, I watch her and then she opens her eyes and says, ‘That you, Tommy? I thought it was Prince Charming,’ and I laugh and she laughs, but then the police came, they said I did a bad thing. She never said, ‘Go away, Tommy, don’t be watching me,’ but it was very bad to watch her, that’s why they put handcuffs on me.”

He started to cry.

“It’s okay, Tommy,” I said quietly. “They took the handcuffs off, didn’t they? So they must know you’re a pretty good guy.”

He brightened again. “I am a pretty good guy, and when I’m good, I get my fire engines.”

He pulled a pair of red plastic fire trucks from his pocket and started running them across the table, making a little siren noise. I felt the hair prickle along the back of my neck. Leydon had come back from the locked ward, her speech incandescent with fire imagery. Was it from Tommy Glover’s fire trucks?

“You like fire engines, huh?” I said. “Do you like fires, too?”

“The firemen let me ride with them. Before. Now I have to stay here. Now they took my picture.”

I blinked. “The firemen took your picture?”

“No!” he shouted, pounding his trucks on the table. “Bad people stole my picture and now they won’t give it back!”

Fred heard the shouts and popped his head in through the door. “Everything okay here?”

“He’s upset about a picture he says someone took away,” I said.

“Oh, that. He had some old photo in his room and it’s disappeared. It’s not good to remind him about it. Come on, Tommy. No shouting, no getting upset, or we have to put your fire trucks in the garage for a week, remember?”

Tommy quickly stuck his fire engines back into his pocket. “Fire trucks are in the garage, Fred. They’re staying in the garage.”

“That’s the spirit. Maybe half an hour is enough for today, Vic.”

“You want me to go now, Tommy? I’m a lawyer. I’m here to make sure your rights are respected. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay. If you tell me to go, I’ll go. You get to choose.”

Tommy looked uneasily from me to Fred. “Vic says she’ll bring me jelly beans.” His tone was defiant.

“Jelly beans, huh? Maybe five more minutes, Vic. But no talk about p-i-x, savvy? Sometimes Tommy acts out a bit too much. We put the trucks in the garage, and when he’s behaved for a week, he gets them back.”

We were all pals now, apparently—no more ‘Ms. Warshawski.’ I turned back to Tommy. “Let’s see who else you know.”

Tommy recognized Miles Wuchnik and his face darkened. “He was here, he fought with the lady because I showed her my picture. She was so pretty, she let me touch her hair. The man got super-mad but I told him, mind your own darn beeswax, I’m talking to the lady.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “So the lady with the gold hair saw your picture. What was in it?”

“Me. I’m in it. Me and the firemen!”

I leaned across the table. “Tommy, what firemen gave you the picture
?”

“My friends, of course, silly. Good Dog Trey’s friends. I ride with them. Not now, I can’t because I live here. When I live with my mom, that’s when I ride with them.”

“Tommy. I’ll talk to the firemen. If they have another picture, I’ll bring it to you when I come next time. Ready for some more of these photographs?”

“No. I don’t like them, I want my own picture!” He took the fire trucks out of his pocket and started running them over the photos, making extra-loud siren noises.

“Of course, your own picture is best,” I agreed. “I’ll come visit you again soon, okay?”

“If you bring the jelly beans. Bring beans, beans, beans, beans, they make you fart, they’re good for the heart, fart fart fart.” He started laughing loudly and began pounding the table with his trucks.

Fred came into the room again. “Time’s up, huh, buddy?”

“I want to stay. My time’s not up, you can’t make me!” Tommy saw Fred eying the fire trucks and stuffed them into his pocket.

I stood. “Tommy, I’ll come back very soon. I’m your lawyer. I’ll come sometime this week, okay?”

“Don’t get him excited, Vic,” Fred said. “It’s bad for him and then we have to medicate him. And if we medicate him he won’t be able to talk to you.”

“And if you keep him medicated so that he can’t talk to me, then I’ll go to a judge and we’ll dance that dance.” I smiled, the kind of smile that is really a mask for anger.

“The pretty girl, she danced that dance, she danced with the boy,” Tommy said.

“Which boy was that, Tommy?” I knelt to pick up the pictures he’d flung about and spread them fanlike in front of him.

“That boy, they danced, they were in love.” He picked out the photo of Link, Maggie’s boyfriend. He started spinning slowly around on his heavy clumsy feet, dancing the dance.

“Why are you showing Tommy all these old photos?” Fred demanded.

“If I’m going to represent him in an appeal to the tribunal, I need to see how reliable his memory is.” I continued smiling. “He certainly knows a hawk from a handsaw.”

“What?” Fred scowled. “If you brought a saw in here, then you are in violation of the rules, and you could even be arrested yourself.”

We’d been pals when the afternoon started, but now he didn’t like me. “Relax, Fred—it’s just a figure of speech. And who knows, the wind may change tomorrow and it’ll be a different story.”

Tommy had been watching us, frowning with worry as he tried to follow our conversation. “I like Vic, Fred. Don’t be mad at her. Vic has curly hair, and it’s short like a boy, but she’s a girl and she’s very pretty.”

“I like you, too, Tommy,” I assured him. “And Fred and I were just joking. Nobody’s mad at anybody, are we, Fred?”

“No, I’m not mad. I just don’t think you should joke about saws in a place like this,” Fred growled. “Lot of unstable violent guys here. Some gals, too.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” I agreed quickly. “Sorry.”

I lowered my voice. “Miles Wuchnik, the detective who was murdered two weeks ago—he got onto the patient floors, didn’t he, and went into Tommy’s bedroom.”

Fred shifted uncomfortably. “Xavier let him in, way against regulations. I didn’t say nothing at the time, but, man, if that had got out, we’d all be working extra shifts for a year.”

“Miles did some work for my husband’s law firm,” I said. “But he never told anyone about the picture in Tommy’s room. Did you ever see it?”

“Don’t go bringing that up—gets him all wound up!” Fred jerked his head in Tommy’s direction. “It was just an old photo of him with some firemen. He’s been carrying on like it was the Last Supper or some damned thing!”

“And you don’t have any idea who took it?”

“Why do you care so much?” Fred demanded.

I smiled blandly. “It’s all part of my presentation to the tribunal, whether he’s getting the kind of care here that’s best for him. If the staff have enough time to protect him or not—as you said, there are a lot of violent offenders passing through here.”

“We take damned good care of Tommy, as long as he behaves himself. Now why don’t you leave so I can
protect
Tommy from predatory lawyers.”

As I left, I saw Tommy uneasily holding his hands in his pockets, protecting his fire trucks.

46.

WHAT’S IN A PICTURE?

V
ERNON
M
ULLINER, THE DIRECTOR OF SECURITY, WAS AT THE
locked wing’s gate when I left. He recognized me at once and pulled me aside.

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting one of the patients. How about you?”

“I thought I told you to keep clear of this hospital.”

“Mr. Mulliner, I’m a lawyer, and I represent one of the patients here. You may not like it, and I’m not crazy about it, but so much of life is like that these days.”

“You never said you were a lawyer. As I recall, you claimed you were a detective the last time I saw you.”

“It’s not impossible to be a member of two professions at the same time. As Mark Twain said, you can be an idiot and a congressman both at once. I do understand, though, after Xavier Jurgens’s death, you can’t be too careful here.”

“Jurgens stole from the pharmacy. He died in Chicago, probably killed in a drug deal. Nothing to do with us here at Ruhetal.”

“Except for lax security at the pharmacy, but you can’t be everywhere at once. And speaking of lawyers, how did the Ashford family find out that Leydon Ashford had agreed to represent Tommy Glover?”

Mulliner did a narrow-eyed Clint Eastwood impersonation. “We keep track of who tries to stir up trouble in the forensic wing. Which means, of course, that I’ll be keeping track of you.”

“They give you a bonus for keeping track of people?”

He glanced at the guard, who quickly looked away. “What are you talking about?”

“That beautiful house you just moved into. Five million dollars on your and your wife’s salaries—that’s a lot of appreciation.”

The look Mulliner gave me now was more in the Hannibal Lecter category. “Private eyes who snoop into people’s private lives don’t last long out here. If you come around here again, I’ll take steps.”

My hand went involuntarily to my chest, to the place where the stake had entered Miles Wuchnik. “Mr. Mulliner, I’ve agreed to represent a patient in the forensic unit, so any steps that get taken will be in front of a judge. And I don’t imagine you want that kind of spotlight on your security operation here at the hospital, because then we’d have to talk to the Ashford family, and find out why they got to send their own PI out here. And whether they paid you for that privilege.”

He took a hasty step toward me, then realized that not only the guard but visiting families were staring at him. The tendons in his neck strained, but he managed to master his fury enough to say, “You’d better really be a lawyer. Do you have any proof?”

I pulled out the laminated copy of my PI license and the card that declared I was a member of the Illinois bar in good standing. Meaning I paid my dues every year.

Danced the dance, as Link and Magda had done, watched over by my client, Tommy Glover. I’d been surprised that Tommy remembered Magda so clearly. He didn’t have a good sense of the passage of time, but he remembered people. I pictured him in the shrubbery between his mother’s house and the Lawlor place, spying on Lincoln Beringer and Magda Lawlor, and shivered.

I felt sickened, too, by my own behavior. Vernon Mulliner wasn’t that far wrong: I was pretending to be a lawyer, pretending to care about Tommy’s interests, when all I really wanted to know was what went on in the locked wing that had interested Miles Wuchnik and Leydon Ashford both. The photograph, apparently, but what was so arresting about the picture of Tommy Glover with his local fire department? Why would that make Leydon return to her therapist overflowing with language about fire?

The social workers weren’t in on Sunday, of course; I’d have to talk to Tania Metzger tomorrow, to see if Leydon had said anything about Tommy’s photograph.

I’d hit a nerve with Mulliner, bringing up his mansion and his brokerage account. I hadn’t wanted to accuse him of dealing drugs in a public space, so I’d blurted out the idea of someone paying him a bonus to report on visitors to the locked wing. It had been meant as a wild guess, but now I was wondering if there was some truth to it. Maybe Wade Lawlor wanted to make sure his sister’s killer stayed permanently behind bars.

I needed to do more digging, to see if I could find out a way to learn who was bulking up Mulliner’s account. Maybe Murray could do some of the heavy lifting on that. In the meantime, since I was out this far anyway, I drove back south to Tampier Lake Township.

Twenty-seven years ago, when Tommy lived there, they’d had a volunteer fire department, but the town had grown, become incorporated, had a full-fledged department with two station houses. I struck it lucky at the first, where one of the men on duty directed me to an Eddie Chez.

“He’s an old-timer, he was here when it was just a bunch of volunteers who worked day jobs. He never lets us forget how easy we have it, not having to fight fires after teaching high school all day, which is what he did. Mind, Sunday afternoons, Eddie is likely to be on the golf course, but you can take a chance, see if he’s home.”

My informant called Chez for me. My luck held: Chez didn’t mind if I stopped by, although I should know that the grandchildren were visiting, too.

“Hope you’ve got time to burn, miss,” one of the other firefighters called as I left. “Eddie can talk the hind leg off a donkey. When that falls off, he moves on to the front leg.”

The other men laughed, but not unkindly.

Chez’s home was in a cul-de-sac that backed onto a big public course, perfect for a golfing man. No one answered the door, but I could hear kids screaming and laughing behind the house, so I followed the noise and arrived at what looked like a small amusement park. Chez had one of those big aboveground pools, and it was filled with kids, some sliding on a plastic slide into the pool, some trying to play with a beach ball, others shouting that so-and-so was hogging the space. There were swings, bikes, and even a volleyball net tucked into a corner. A dog, barking madly, climbed a ramp on the pool’s far side and jumped in.