Owen nodded.

Lis turned to her sister. “Portia, could I ask you to stay?”

The young woman said nothing. She seemed less irritated than daunted by a conspiracy to keep her there.

“We could really use your help.”

Owen looked from one sister to the other, frowning. “Weren’t you going to stay for a few days?”

“I’m really supposed to get back tonight.”

Supposed? Lis wondered. And who had dictated that? The hard-times boyfriend? “I’ll take you to the station tomorrow. First thing. You won’t miss more than an hour of work.”

Portia nodded. “Okay.”

“Listen,” Lis said sincerely, “I appreciate this.”

She hurried outside to the garage, giving a short, silent prayer of thanks for the weather that would keep her sister here at least for the night. Suddenly, however, this benediction struck Lis as a token of bad luck and superstitiously she retracted it. She then went to work assembling shovels and tape and burlap bags.

“Three in two years.” The tall man in the smart gray uniform rubbed his matching gray mustache and added, “They run away from you all here lickety-split.”

Dr. Ronald Adler fiddled with his waistband. With a monumental sigh meant to put himself on the offensive he said, “Aren’t there more valuable ways to use this time, Captain? Don? I’ll bet there are.”

The state trooper chuckled. “How come you didn’t report it?”

“We reported Callaghan’s, uhm, death,” Adler said.

“You know what I’m saying, Doctor.”

“I thought we could get him back without any fuss.”

“How exactly? By one orderly getting his arm exorcised around backwards and the other one crapping in his jumpsuit?”

“He is not essentially a dangerous man,” Peter Grimes offered, incidentally reminding both Adler and the state trooper that he was in the room, a fact they had forgotten.

“Any competent staff member would’ve handled it differently. They were playing cowboy. They fell off the cliff and were injured.”

“Fell. Uhm. You boys here tried a cover-up and that don’t sit well with me.”

“There’s nothing to cover up. I don’t call you every time Joe Patient wanders off the grounds.”

“Don’t go scratching me between the ears, Adler.”

“We almost got him.”

“Butcha didn’t. Now what’s he look like?”

“He’s big,” Grimes began before his voice froze in fear of careless adjectives.

“How the hell big? Come on, gemmuns. Time’s a-wasting.”

Adler gave the description then added, “He shaved his head and dyed his face blue. Don’t ask, he just did. He has brown eyes, a wide face, dirty teeth, and he’s twenty-seven years old.”

Captain Don Haversham, a man twice Hrubek’s age, jotted notes in even script. “Okay, we got a couple cars headed up to Stinson. I see that doesn’t appeal to you, Adler, but it’s gotta be done. Now tell me, how dangerous? Will he come jumping outta trees?”

“No, no,” the director said, glancing at Grimes, who poked into his mushroom crown of black hair. Adler continued, “Hrubek, he’s like-what would you say?-a big lovable dog. This escape, he’s playing a game.”

“Woof, woof,” the captain said. “Seem to recall he was the one involved in that Indian Leap thing. That’s not lovable, and that’s not a dog.”

Then why, Adler inquired, did the captain ask his opinion if the trooper’d already diagnosed Hrubek?

“I want to know if he’s still dangerous after he’s been in the care of you sawbones all these four months. I’d guess he is, though, what with that fellow you got on the slab tonight. Tell me, Hrubek, he taking his pills like a good boy?”

“Yes, he is,” Adler said quickly. “But wait a minute. Callaghan was probably a suicide.”

“Suicide?”

Grimes again looked toward his boss and tried to match round words and square facts.

“The coroner’ll tell us for sure,” Adler continued.

“I’m sure he will,” Haversham said cheerfully. “Kind of a coincidence though, wouldn’t you say? This Callaghan kills himself then your cuddle puppy Hrubek skedaddles in his body bag?”

“Uhm.” Adler pictured locking Haversham into the old hose room with Billie Lind Prescott, who would, off his Stelazine, masturbate while howling at the top of his lungs for hour after hour after hour.

Grimes said, “The thing is…” and, as both men turned to him, stopped speaking.

Adler filled the void, “Young Peter was going to say that in the months Hrubek’s been with us he’s been a model patient. He sits quietly, doesn’t bother anyone.”

“He’s like a vegetable.”

A wet laugh burst from Haversham’s throat. He said to Grimes, “Vegetable? Was a dog a minute ago. Must be getting worse. Tell me now, what kind of crazy is he exactly?”

“He’s a paranoid schizophrenic.”

“Schizo? Split personality? I seen that flick.”

“No, not multiple personalities. Schizophrenic. It means he has delusions and can’t cope with anxiety and stress.”

“He stupid? A retard?”

The professional in Adler bristled at the word but he remained placid. “No. He’s got a medium to high IQ. But he’s not calculating.”

The captain snickered. “He’d have to be kinda sorta calculating, wouldn’t you think? To get clean away from a hospital for the criminally insane.”

Adler’s lips vanished momentarily as he turned them inward in contemplation. The taste of his wife returned and he wondered if he’d get an erection. He didn’t, and he said to Haversham, “The escape was the fault of the orderlies. They’ll be disciplined.”

“Seems to me, they have been. At least the one with the broken arm.”

“Listen, Don, can we do this one quietly?”

The captain grinned. “Why, scared of a little publicity, Mr. Three in Two Years?”

Adler paused then spoke in a low voice that barely broke above the ghostly wail that still filled the halls. “Now, listen to me, Captain. You quit jerking my chain. I’ve got close to a thousand of the most unfortunate people in the Northeast in my care and money to treat about one quarter of ’em. I can-”

“All right now.”

“-I can make some of their lives better and I can protect the general populace from them. I’m doing the fucking best I can with the fucking money I’ve got. Don’t tell me that you haven’t had troopers cut back too.”

“Well, I have. That’s a fact.”

“If this escape becomes a big deal some prick of a reporter’s going to run with it and then maybe there goes more money or maybe the state’ll even look into closing down this place.” Adler’s arm swept toward the wards filled with his hapless charges-some asleep, some plotting, some howling, some floating through nightmares of madness or perhaps even dreaming dreams of sanity. “If that happens then half those people’ll be wandering around outside and they’re going to be your problem, not mine.”

“Simmer down now, Doc.” Haversham, whose law-enforcement career like most senior officers’ was informed more by his skills at self-preservation than detection, said, “Tell me the God’s truth. You say a low-security patient wandered away, that’s what I’ll go with. But you tell me he’s dangerous, it’ll be a whole different ball game. What’s it gonna be?”

Adler hiked up his waistband. He wondered if his wife was at home masturbating as ardently as Billie Lind Prescott. “Hrubek’s half-comatose,” Adler spoke directly into the eyes of Peter Grimes. The young assistant nodded numbly and added, “He’s stumbling around in a daze like a gin-drunk fool,” and wondered what on earth possessed him to say that.

“Okay,” Haversham said with finality. “I’ll send it out as a missing-patient notice. You got some fellow wandered off and you’re worried about his welfare. That’ll make sure it’s not scanner-feed. These boys and girls they call reporters round here won’t even notice it, not with a storm gonna take off roofs.”