He started to sit back but thought of something else. “You defend people accused of crimes. Have you never gotten someone off and had him go out and commit another one? Have you never obtained an acquittal for a killer and had him kill someone else?
Did that mean you did not do the same thing again: defend another person you knew might harm someone if you won your case and he was found not guilty?”
I was not in the mood to let him take comfort in a false analogy. “My job is to put on a defense; your job is to make sure people who are a danger to themselves or others can’t hurt other people.”
He knew he had struck a nerve, and that gave him sufficient pleasure not to contest the point. “I’m sure we both do the best we can.” With a brief, professional smile, he asked, “You said something about another patient?”
I ignored him. “All right. He wasn’t your patient. Did Elliott know him?”
“Whittaker? I don’t know. He might have.”
“He might have? Don’t you know who your patients know in here and who they don’t?”
Friedman lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes. “They might have known each other,” he repeated. “There are hundreds of patients in the forensic ward. Besides, what’s your point? What if they did know each other? It doesn’t mean the same thing in here that it does out there,” he said, nodding toward the windows and the world outside. “We have people in here who sleep in adjoining beds and never exchange a word. We have people in here who never speak. This is a mental hospital, Mr. Antonelli; it isn’t a private sanatorium for wealthy, intelligent people who don’t happen to feel very well,” he said with a condescending glance.
“So because some of them can’t talk, you don’t take any notice of what any of them might be saying to each other?” I asked sharply. “For all you know they could be spending all their free time plotting the murder of half the people in Portland.”
“Again, Mr. Antonelli, I think you’ve confused the state hospital with the state prison. We provide treatment and a decent, safe place to live to people suffering severe mental illness.”
He pronounced each word of the official declaration of policy with an unquestioning assurance. It seemed to remind him of who he was, and of the great advantages he had over someone who lacked his training. He looked at me with a kind of tolerance and became, in his way, almost considerate.
“I owe you an apology, Mr. Antonelli. I know your office has been trying to schedule an appointment. It’s just that I’ve had so much to do lately. And then, when your secretary called this morning and said you were on your way… I was a little annoyed-more with myself, you understand.” He pressed his fingertips together and, putting me under his observant gaze, waited behind his professional mask.
“Has Elliott been out, the way Whittaker was-on a pass?”
Friedman shook his head. “No, never. Maybe someday, but-
Why? You don’t imagine he had something to do with the murder of the judge-Jeffries? Is that why you wanted to know if he knew Whittaker?” He shook his head again, this time more emphatically. “That’s quite impossible.”
“Why is it impossible? People have been known to convince someone else to do their killing for them. Why is it impossible?
You don’t know if he knew Whittaker or not, and if he did know him you certainly don’t know what they talked about.”
“It’s impossible,” he insisted, spreading his hands apart. “I know Elliott. I’ve worked with him for several years now. He barely remembers what happened to him. It was too traumatic.”
“He remembers he wanted to kill me, and he remembers why.”
“Yes, but he realizes he was sick and that what he thought then had little if any basis in reality. He doesn’t blame anyone for what happened to him. He knows it’s a disease. No, I’m afraid you’re wrong,” he said, watching me over the tips of his fingers as he again pressed them together. “And you’ve forgotten something.
Even if after all this time he wanted to do something like this, what in the world could he ever have done to convince Whittaker to do it for him? These cases you talk about-aren’t they usually cases in which someone does it for money, or out of some misguided sense of love? What did Elliott have to offer?” he asked with an irritating smile.
“Then you think it’s just a coincidence?”
“Yes, why not? An unfortunate coincidence,” he added with a dour look. “A mental patient takes the life of someone he doesn’t know. Just because another mental patient-who may never have known the other one-happens to have known the victim some dozen years earlier, before he was a mental patient… It’s quite a reach, isn’t it?”
“Now you’re forgetting something. There was another patient who escaped.”
“What are you talking about? There hasn’t been anyone since Whittaker. I can assure you of that, Mr. Antonelli.” He saw the surprise register on my face. “Why? What made you think there was?”
He had to be wrong and I wondered if he was lying. “No one in the forensic ward has escaped? No one who might have been let out on a pass has failed to come back?” I stared at him, searching his eyes, trying to discover if there was something he was attempting to hide. If there was, he did not show it.
“No, as I told you: no one since Whittaker,” he insisted. “I can assure you, we’re even more conscious of our security precautions than we were before.”
Pressing his lips into a brief, bureaucratic smile, he punctuated his decision that there was really nothing more to be said about it with a single, abrupt nod of his head. The next instant he was on his feet, moving with dispatch toward the door, where he flashed another grating smile and waited for me to come.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more time. If you would like to see Elliott, I’ll walk you over.”
We went across the parking lot to the main building. A stoop-shouldered gray-haired man in a denim shirt trimmed the shrub-bery below the first-floor windows with a pair of steel-bladed gardening shears. I raised my head and squinted into the light, looking up at the painted metal orb on the pole that stood atop the cupola. There was nothing there. The bird I had seen before had found another home.
Friedman was all business as we walked together down the broad central corridor, ignoring the few casual remarks I made as if he was too preoccupied with his own affairs to waste any more time than he had already. We got to the wire mesh screen that fenced off the area where Elliott was kept, and the doctor fumbled for his key.
“I’d like to see Elliott’s file before I leave,” I said as he slid open the gate. He stopped, both hands gripping the edge.
“That’s impossible,” he said, frowning. “Patient records are confidential. You know I can’t let you look at them.”
On the far side of the large day room, a group of patients were crowded together around a table next to a barred window. At the sound of Friedman’s voice, Elliott Winston raised his head and looked around. He seemed to stiffen and draw into himself. Taking it as a cue, the others slunk away and, watching me with curious eyes, scattered to different parts of the room. Elliott stared straight ahead, peering into the distance, his pale features as rigid as ice.
It was the same look, or should I say the same mask, he had worn the first time I had come to see him. The question, which had only just begun to form in my mind, was whether when he wore it, he was lost behind it in a world of his own; or whether he used it to make you think he was not the whole time subjecting you to a scrutiny so close you would have flinched from it had it been more obvious and direct.
We stood next to the table, Elliott staring right past us. Friedman did not seem to know quite what to do. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke Elliott’s name. When there was no response, he placed his hand on Elliott’s shoulder.