I nodded.
“Still,” he said, “that’s an awful lot of gabbing for old Monster.”
“Unless he’s been faking.”
“I brought that up at the beginning. You said it was unlikely.”
“The context has changed.”
He shot out of his chair, paced the room, buttoned and unbuttoned his coat. “If Wark was threatened, why not kill Peake?”
“Why bother?” I said. “Back on a full dose-or a higher one, if someone’s tinkering in the opposite direction- Peake’s no threat. He’ll live out his life in his S&R room, the tardive symptoms will intensify until he’s neurologically cooked, one day someone will walk in and find him dead. Just like Denton.”
“Claire could just do that?” he said. “Pull pills with nobody noticing?”
“Starkweather gives its staff plenty of latitude. Dr. Aldrich was Claire’s nominal supervisor, and he didn’t seem to know much about her cases. Neither did Swig. In that respect, working at Starkweather was similar to her job with Theobold-plenty of solitude. The style to which she’d become accustomed since childhood.”
“So,” he said, “I waltz in there again and ask to look at the personnel files.
Swig’s gonna roll out the carpet.”
“You can use the publicity threat-filing for warrants, the media getting hold of it.
No reason for him to know the judges haven’t cooperated. Ask to meet with the men in
Claire’s group. That’s certainly reasonable. While you’re there, try to work in the personnel records.”
He circled some more. “One more thing. The Beatty brothers. Why would Crimmins/Wark tell Peake about killing them? On the contrary, if Peake’s hassling him, the last thing he’d want would be for Peake to know anything.”
“Good point,” I said. “So maybe it’s Column A: Peake and Crimmins still are colluding. Carrying on the alliance that led to Peake’s original blood walk. Having fun with it- recording it on film.” My gut tightened. “I just thought of something.
The eye wounds. What’s a camera lens?”
He stopped pacing. “An eye.”
“An all-seeing eye. Invisible, omniscient, director as god. These crimes are about power and control. Actors as subjects. Subjected. Camera observation goes only one way. I see, you don’t. No eyes for you.”
“Then why weren’t the Beattys’ eyes messed with?”
“Maybe because they were already impaired. Drunk- blind drunk?”
“Nutso,” he said. “Back to the booby hatch. Maybe while I’m there I’ll rent a room.
… Okay, I’ll set it up for tomorrow. I’d like you there, see what else you can pick up. Meanwhile, I’ll do more tracing on Crimmins, see if I can find out the last time he surfaced under his own name, learn more about those family accidents.”
A big finger poked the expanse of wash-and-wear that covered his heart. He winced.
“You okay?” I said.
Laboriously, he stood up. “Just gas-serve me something healthier next time.”
27.
GLOSSY WALLS PAINTED a peach pink that managed to be unpleasant. A dozen blond fake-wood school desks lined up in two rows of six. The facing wall was nearly spanned by a spotless blackboard. Rounded edges blunted the plastic frame; no chalk, two soft erasers.
Directly in front of the board was an oak desk, bolted to the floor. Nothing atop the surface. The right-hand wall bore two maps of the world, equal-area and Mercator projection. Posters taped to the walls offered treatises on table manners, nutrition, the basics of democracy, the alphabet in block and cursive, a chronology of U.S. presidents.
Duct tape fastened the posters: no thumbtacks.
The American flag in the corner was plastic sheeting atop a plastic rod, also bolted.
Outward trappings of a classroom. The students wore khaki uniforms and barely fit behind the blond desks.
Six of them.
Up front sat an old man with beautiful golden-white hair. Kindly granddad on a laxative commercial. Behind him were two black men in their thirties, one mocha-toned, freckled, and heavy, with Coke-bottle glasses and a rashlike beard, the other lean, with a hewn-onyx face and the glint-eyed vigilance of a hunter surveying the plains.
At the head of the next row was a very thin creature in his twenties with hollow cheeks, haunted eyes, and blanched lips. Gray fists knuckled his temples. He sat so low his chin nearly touched the desktop. Stringy brown hair streamed from under a gray stocking cap. The hat was pulled down to his eyebrows and made his head appear undersized.