“Yes, of course you do.”
“I trust you,” Walter said again, more softly. “I think… I think you’re the greatest man in the world. I think you’re like…” He turned away, bashful in this moment of absolute sincerity. When he finished his thought, he was blushing. “I think you’re like God.”
Cray uncapped a vial and spilled a few small dark pills into his hand.
“I always wanted to tell you,” Walter went on, his voice hushed with embarrassed reverence. “But I was afraid you’d say I was crazy. I mean… more crazy than usual.”
“We’re all crazy, Walter,” Cray said without emotion. “The mind itself is our disease. We seek a cure. Now take your medicine.”
Humbly: “Yes, Dr. Cray.”
With the practiced skill of a lifelong patient, Walter dry-swallowed the pills.
“You’ll be feeling tired soon,” Cray said. “I’ll let you rest.”
“Don’t go, Dr. Cray.”
“No? Well, I suppose I can stay a little while.”
As things turned out, Cray lingered in the room for hours, holding Walter’s hand and speaking soft, comforting, meaningless words, while Walter first blinked at his blurring vision, then clutched his belly in a spasm of pain. Finally Walter closed his eyes and slept.
Even then Cray maintained his vigil. He monitored his patient’s pulse, observing the onset of bradycardia, the most common symptom of a digitalis overdose.
Walter’s heart rate dropped below sixty beats per minute, then below forty, then became irregular.
At dawn his heart stopped. Supine on the sofa, his mouth open, head lolling, the big man shivered all over like a wet dog and lay still.
Watching him, Cray reflected that he was indeed like God, in at least one way.
He could take a life.
He remembered that stray thought now, as he crossed the grounds of the institute under the clean blue sky and the crisp peaks of the Pinaleno range.
He felt whole. He felt strong. He felt—
“Dr. Cray!”
Cray stopped.
He knew that voice.
Damn.
He looked down the long driveway toward the front gate, where a guard had detained a burly, bearded man of seventy.
“Dr. Cray, I demand to speak with you!”
The man’s voice carried easily. Several patients were staring in his direction. An orderly pushing a woman in a wheelchair had stopped on the greensward, his gaze swinging between the unwelcome visitor and Cray himself.
“I know you can hear me!”
“Oh, hell,” Cray muttered.
He would have to acknowledge this man, much as he hated to. Straightening his shoulders, he marched along the driveway toward the gate, where Anson McMillan, Kaylie’s father-in-law, waited by his pickup truck, glaring at Cray through the wrought-iron bars.
McMillan had gray hair and a gray beard. He was all squares and rectangles — hard, blocky face, squat frame, wide shoulders. In his denim shirt and corduroy pants he looked like an aging cowhand, lacking only a lasso and a wide-brimmed hat.
Cray had expected him to return eventually, but not so soon. McMillan had visited the hospital only last week, immediately after Kaylie’s arrest.
“Dr. Cray,” McMillan said again, with dangerous courtesy, as Cray drew close.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McMillan.” Cray kept his voice even. “What seems to be the problem?”
“The problem is that this glorified night watchman”—McMillan threw a contemptuous glance at the guard, who stiffened under the insult—“won’t let me pass.”
“Don’t denigrate my employees, please,” Cray said, reaching the gate at last and coming face to face with McMillan across the iron barricade. “Officer Jansen here is doing his job.”
“His job is to keep me out?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Why?” McMillan barked the word, baring his teeth in a threat display. Cray thought he looked like an ape in a cage.
“Surely, Mr. McMillan, you don’t need it explained to you. It’s my policy to deny access to any visitor who might be reasonably expected to disrupt this hospital.”
“I’m not here to disrupt anything.”
“Your behavior last time suggested otherwise. Perhaps it’s slipped your mind that you had to be escorted off the premises by several members of the institute’s security detail.”
“Slipped my mind — hell.” McMillan chewed the words and spat them out. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a senile old fool.”
Cray kept his expression blankly formal. “I’m merely explaining why Officer Jansen is under orders not to allow you readmittance to this facility.”
“Damn it, I wouldn’t have raised a ruckus if you’d acted sensible about things.”
“Mr. McMillan, I know what’s best for the patients treated here—”
“And visitors aren’t what’s best? Family?”
“You’re not a blood relation.” Cray spread his hands. “Frankly, given the circumstances, I’m surprised you care to see her at all.”
“Well, I do.” McMillan hesitated, then added in a gentler voice, “She needs to talk to someone.”
“She talks to me every day. I see her for therapy. And there are nurses and orderlies to chat with, if she lacks company.”
“That’s not what I mean. She needs somebody who’ll listen to her. Who… who believes in her.”