Kurt.”
Kurt hustled off and we waited among the inmates. Patients. Did it make a difference what you called them? I started to notice lots of tardive symptoms-a tremor here, lip work there-but nothing as severe as Peake’s. Some of the men seemed oriented; others could have been on another planet. Shuffling feet in paper slippers. Food stains on clothing.
Swig went into the nursing station, used the phone, glanced at his watch. He was back just as Heidi Ott came through the double doors.
“Hello, Heidi.”
“Sir?”
“Because of the information you provided, Detective Sturgis has been trying unsuccessfully to communicate with Ardis Peake. Since you’ve got a track record, why don’t you give it a shot?”
“Sir, I-”
“Don’t worry,” said Swig. “Your sense of duty is beyond reproach. The main thing is, let’s get to the bottom of this.”
“One thing before you go in there. You’re sure Peake actually spoke to you-real words, not just grunts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
Heidi repeated the story.
“And this was the day before Dr. Argent died?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had Peake talked to you before?”
“Not about Dr. Argent.\
“What did he say?”
“Nothing much. Mostly mumbles. Yeah, no, nods, grunts. When we asked him questions.”
Tug on the ponytail. “Nothing, really. That’s why I paid attention to when he did start-”
“You were monitoring his speech.”
“Yes, sir. Dr. Argent was hoping she might be able to increase his verbal output.
His behavioral output in general.”
“I see,” said Swig. “Any particular reason she wanted to do that?”
Heidi glanced at us. “Like I told these gentlemen, she said he was a challenge.”
A faint, scraping sound grew louder, and we all turned. Paper soles on linoleum. A few of the men in the hall had drifted closer. Swig looked at them and they stopped.
Retreated.
He smiled at Heidi. “Looks like you’ve got the challenge, now.”
She went in alone, stayed for twenty minutes, emerged, shaking her head. “How long do you want me to try?”
“That’ll be enough,” said Swig. “It was probably just an isolated incident.
Meaningless rambling. For all we know, he does that when he’s alone. Thanks, Heidi.
You can get back to work. We’d all better get back to work.”
As I drove off the grounds, Milo said, “What the hell turns a human being into thaf!”
“Answer that and you’ve got the Nobel,” I said.
“But we’ve got to be talking biology, right? No amount of stress can do that.” The air-conditioning was on, but sweat dripped offhis nose and spotted his trousers.
“Even in concentration camps people rarely went mad from suffering,” I said. “And schizophrenia has the same prevalence in nearly every society-two to four percent.
Cultural factors influence how madness is expressed, but they don’t cause it.”
“So what is it-brain damage, genetics?”
“The highest risk factor is having a relative with schizophrenia, but only a very small percentage of schizophrenics’ relatives become ill. Slightly more schizophrenics are born during winter and spring, when virus levels are higher. Some studies have implicated prenatal influenza. It’s all speculation.”
“Hell,” he said, “maybe it’s just bad luck.”
He wiped his face with a tissue, pulled out a panatela, unwrapped it, and jammed it in his mouth, but didn’t light up.
“I had a couple crazy relatives,” he said. “Two aunts-my mother’s cousins. Loony
Letitia had this thing for baking, did it nonstop. Cookies every day, hundreds of them. She ended up spending all her money on flour and sugar and eggs, started neglecting herself, trying to steal ingredients from the neighbors. They finally put her away.”
“Sounds more like manic behavior than schizophrenia,” I said. “Anyone ever try her on lithium?”
“This was years ago, Alex. She died in the asylum- choked on her dinner, how’s that for a bad joke? Then there was Aunt Renee, stumbling around the neighborhood, looking like a mess. She lived till she was pretty old, died in some county facility.”
He laughed. “That’s my pedigree.”
“I had a schizophrenic cousin,” I said. Brett, two years my senior, son of my
father’s older brother. As children we’d played together. Brett had competed fiercely, cheated chronically. During college he metamorphosed from a Young