Starkweather, he’s an outcast.”
“But Claire saw something workable in him,” I said.
“I guess,” she said. “She told me he was a challenge. And actually, he did respond a bit-the last few weeks, I got him to pay attention, sometimes nod when I asked yes-or-no questions. But no real sentences. Nothing like what he said that day.”
“‘Dr. A. bad eyes in a box.'”
She nodded. “But how could he know? I mean, it doesn’t make sense. This is nothing, right?”
“Probably,” I said. “Did this man associate with anyone who could’ve planned to hurt
Claire? Maybe someone who’s been discharged?”
“No way. He didn’t associate with anyone, period. And no one’s been discharged since
I’ve worked there. No one gets out of Starkweather.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Five months. I came on right after Claire did. No, I wouldn’t be looking for any friends of this guy. Like I said, no one hangs out with him. On top of his mental problems, he’s physically impaired. Tardive dyskinesia.”
Milo said, “What’s that?”
“Side effects. From the antipsychotic drugs. His are pretty bad. His walk is unsteady, he sticks his tongue out constantly, rolls his head. Sometimes he gets active and marches in place, or his neck goes to one side, like this.”
She demonstrated, straightened, kept her back to the tree trunk. “That’s all I know.
I’d like to go now, if that’s okay.”
Milo said, “His name, ma’am.”
Another tug on the ponytail. “We’re not supposed to give out names. Even our patients have confidentiality. But I guess all that changes when…” Her arms went loose and her hands joined just below her pubis, fingers tangling, remaining in place, as if protecting her core.
“Okay,” she said. “His name’s Ardis Peake, maybe you’ve heard of him. Claire said he was notorious, the papers gave him a nickname: Monster.”
10.
MILO’S jaw was too smooth: forced relaxation. “I’ve heard of Peake.”
So had I.
A long time ago. I’d been in grad school-at least fifteen years before.
Heidi Ott’s calm was real. She’d been a grade-school kid. Her parents would have shielded her from the details.
I remembered the facts the papers had printed.
A farm town named Treadway, an hour north of L.A. Walnuts and peaches, strawberries and bell peppers. A pretty place, where people still left their doors unlocked. The papers had made a big deal out of that.
Ardis Peake’s mother had worked as a maid and cook for one of the town’s prominent ranch families. A young couple. Inherited wealth, good looks, a big old frame house, a two-story house-what was their name? Peake’s name was immediately familiar. What
did that say?
I recalled snippets of biography. Peake, born up north in Oregon, a logging camp, father unknown. His mother had cooked for the tree men.
As far as anyone could tell, she and the boy had drifted up and down the coast for most of Ardis’s childhood. No school registrations were ever found, and when Peake and his mother Greyhounded into Treadway, he was nineteen and illiterate, preternaturally shy, obviously different.
Noreen Peake scrubbed tavern floors until landing the job at the ranch. She lived in the main house, in a maid’s room off the kitchen, but Ardis was put in a one-room shack behind a peach orchard.
He was gawky, mentally dull, so quiet many townspeople thought him mute. Unemployed, with too much time on his hands, he was ripe for mischief. But his sole offenses were some paint-sniffing incidents out behind the Sinclair store, broad-daylight acts so reckless they confirmed his reputation as retarded. The ranch owners finally gave him a job of sorts: rat catcher, gopher killer, snake butcher. The farm’s human terrier.
His territory was the five acres immediately surrounding the house. His task could never be completed, but he took to it eagerly, often working late into the night with pointed stick and poison, sometimes crawling in the dirt-keeping his nose to the ground, literally.
A dog’s job assigned to a man, but by all accounts Peake had found his niche.
It all ended on a cool, sweet Sunday morning, two hours before dawn.
His mother was found first, a heavy, wide woman sitting in a faded housedress at the kitchen table, a big plate of Granny Smith apples in front of her, some of them cored and peeled. A sugar bowl, white flour, and a stick of butter on a nearby counter said it would have been a pie-baking day. A pot roast was in the oven and two heads of cabbage had been chopped for coleslaw. Noreen Peake was an insomniac, and all-night cooking sprees weren’t uncommon.