A barked laugh escaped from the director’s thin lips, on which to his shock he detected the scent of his wife. The smile faded. “Blue? Incredible. Blue?”
Callaghan had died, Grimes explained, by strangulation. “He was blue when they found him this afternoon.”
“Then he wasn’t blue for long, my friend. As soon as they cut the sheet off him, he was un-blue. Didn’t the fucking orderlies think of that?”
“Well,” Peter Grimes said, and could think of nothing to add.
“Did he hurt the meat-wagon boys?” Adler asked. At some point tonight he’d have to total up how many people might sue the state as a result of the escape.
“Nope. They said they chased him but he disappeared.”
“They chased him. I’m sure.” Adler sighed sardonically, and turned back to the file. He motioned for Grimes to be quiet and began to read about Michael Hrubek.
DSM-III diagnosis: Paranoid schizophrenic… Monosymptomatic and delusional… Claims to have been committed in seventeen hospitals and escaped from seven of them. Unconfirmed.
Adler glanced up at his assistant. “Escaped from seven hospitals?” Before the young man could answer the question, to which there really was no answer, the director was reading once more.
… committed indefinitely pursuant to Section 403 of the State Mental Health Law… Hallucinatory (auditory, nonvisual)… subject to severe panic attacks, during which Pt. may become psychotically violent. Pt.’s intelligence is average/above average… Difficulty processing only the most abstract thought… Believes he is being persecuted and spied upon. Believes he is hated by others and gossiped about… Revenge and retribution, often in Biblical or historical contexts, seem to be integral parts of his delusion… Particular animosity toward women…
Adler then read the intake resident’s report about Hrubek’s height, weight, strength, general good health and belligerence. His face remained impassive though his heart revved up a few beats and he thought with dread and clinical admiration, The son of a bitch is a killing animal. Jesus, Lord.
“ ‘Presently controlled by chlorpromazine hydrochloride, 3200 mgs./daily. P.O. in divided doses.’ Is this for real, Peter?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so. Three grams of Thorazine.”
“Fuck,” Adler whispered.
“About which…” The assistant rocked against the desk with his thumbs pressed on a stack of books, the digits growing bright red under the pressure.
“Let’s have it. All of it.”
“He’s been cheeking his meds.”
Adler felt a bristle of heat course over his face. He whispered, “Tell me.”
“There was a movie.”
“A movie?”
Grimes clicked together two untrimmed nails. “An adventure film. And the hero pretended to take some drug or something-”
“You mean in the rec room?… What are you telling me?”
“An adventure film. But he didn’t really take them. The pills. He pretended to but he cheeked them and spit ’em out later. Harrison Ford, I think. A lot of patients did that for a few days afterwards. I guess nobody thought Hrubek was that cognitively functional so they didn’t watch him that closely. Or maybe it was Nick Nolte.”
Adler exhaled slowly. “How long was he off the candy?”
“Four days. Well, make that five.”
Flipping through his ordered mind Adler selected the Psychopharmacology file cabinet and peeked inside. Psychotic behavior in schizophrenics is controlled by anti-psychotic medication. There’s no physical addiction to Thorazine, as with narcotics, but going cold turkey off the drug would render Hrubek nauseous, dizzy, sweaty, and intensely nervous, all of which would increase the likelihood of panic attacks.
And panic was what made schizophrenics dangerous.
Off their Thorazine, patients like Hrubek sometimes fly into psychotic rages. Sometimes they murder.
Sometimes voices tell them what a good job they did with the knife or baseball bat and suggest that they go out and do it again.
Hrubek, Adler noted, would also experience severe insomnia. Which meant that the man would be wide awake for two or three days-ample opportunity to spread his mayhem about quite generously.
The moaning grew louder, filling the dim office. Adler’s palms rose to his cheeks. Again he smelled his wife. Again he wished he could turn back the clock one hour. Again he wished he’d never heard of Michael Hrubek.
“How’d we find out about the Thorazine?”
“One of the orderlies,” Grimes explained, chewing water again. “He found it under Hrubek’s mattress.”
“Who?”
“Stu Lowe.”
“Who else knows? About him cheeking the candy?”
“Him, me, you. The chief nurse. Lowe told her.”
“Oh, that’s just great. Now listen to me. Tell Lowe… tell him it’s his job if he ever repeats that. Not a single fucking word. Wait…” A troubling thought occurred to Adler and he asked, “The morgue’s in C Ward. How the hell did Hrubek have access to it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out.”
“This all happened very fast, extremely fast,” the flustered assistant blurted. “We don’t have half the information we need. I’m getting files, calling people.”
“Don’t call people.”
“I’m sorry?”
Adler snapped, “Don’t call anybody about this without my okay.”
“Well, the board…”
“Jesus, man, especially the board.”
“I haven’t yet,” said Grimes quickly, wondering what had become of his cockiness.
“Good God!” Adler exploded. “You haven’t called the police yet?”
“No, no. Of course not.” This was a call he’d been about to make just as Adler arrived at the hospital. Grimes noticed with alarm how violently his own fingers were quivering. He wondered if he’d have a vagus-nerve lapse and faint. Or pee on his boss’s floor.
“Let’s think about this, shall we?” Adler mused. “He’s sure to be wandering around out near… Where was it?”
“Stinson.”
Adler repeated the name softly then touched the file under eight firm fingertips as if preventing it from rising into the inky stratosphere of his Victorian asylum office. His mood lifted slightly. “Who were the orderlies who schlepped the body from the morgue to the hearse?”
“Lowe was one. I think Frank Jessup was the other.”
“Send ’em up to me.” Forgetting his ill-fitting slacks Adler stood and walked to the grimy window. It hadn’t been washed in six months. “You’re responsible,” Adler said sternly, “for keeping this absolutely quiet. Got it?”
“Yes sir,” Grimes said automatically.
“And, goddamn it, find out how he got off E Ward.”
“Yessir.”
“If anyone… Tell the staff. If anyone leaks anything to the press they’re fired. No police, no press. Send those boys up here. It’s a hard job we’ve got here, isn’t it? Don’t you agree? Get me those orderlies. Now.”
“Ronnie, are you feeling better?”
“I’m okay,” the young heavyset man snapped. “So what? I mean, what’re you going to do about it? Honestly. ”
Dr. Richard Kohler felt the cheap bedsprings bouncing beneath Ronnie’s weight as the patient scooted away from him, moving all the way to the headboard, as if Kohler were a molester. Ronnie’s eyes flicked up and down suspiciously as he examined the man who’d been his father, brother, friend, tutor and physician for the past six months. He carefully studied the doctor’s curly fringe of thinning hair, his bony face, narrow shoulders and thirty-one-inch waist. He seemed to be memorizing these features so he might have a good description in mind when he reported Kohler to the police.