Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

“Paige, don’t be foolish.”

“I’ve already cleared it with Dr. Spencer.”

DeMaris sighed and stood and went to the window.

I pocketed the money. Felt good. “Did you find a shovel?”

“Negative,” said DeMaris.

“I’d like to see his room.”

Hickman’s room was 25, second floor, a yellow door that DeMaris unlocked with a key card. Inside it was decent-sized and set up like a hotel suite. A window looked west over the mountains and some of the trees were close enough you could ID the birds in them. The walls were bare. No kitchen. There was a desk by the window and a laptop computer on it. I thought he would have taken it with him. I nudged one corner of the laptop but it did not move. “We bolt them to the desks,” said DeMaris. “Had an incident.”

“You can log on to it, see what he’s been doing online?”

“Remotely or right here,” said DeMaris. “Care to take a peek?”

“Later, from my office, if possible.”

“Can’t let you do that,” said DeMaris. “Our network isn’t secure if we give out usernames and passwords.” He gave the doctor a preemptive look.

In the small bedroom the bed was tightly made, as a former airman might do. There was a dresser against one wall with pictures on it — matted but no glass — long-ago shots of Clay Hickman as a boy with his family, mom and dad, two sisters, varying dogs through the years. A dock with a boat, a swimming pool, a tennis court. Clay was the baby. As a child he looked unhealthy and unhappy. Not like the sisters. The older he became the better he looked. “How often do they visit him?” I asked.

“Once a year,” said Dr. Hulet.

“That’s all?”

“It’s difficult for all of them. Their visits bring great anxiety to Clay. Very destabilizing.”

“Once a year when?”

“Spring. Usually April. Their visit was scheduled for next week.”

“Who all comes to see him?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Hickman and the older sister, Kayla. Never the younger sister. I believe she is estranged from the family. Her name is Daphne.”

“I want their numbers.”

“Daphne’s, too?”

“Hers especially.”

A beat. Then, “Of course.”

“Show me where he dug out.”

“I’ll leave that to you two,” said the doctor.

DeMaris bucked the quad along a path through the trees to the property line, driving stupidly fast, as guys like DeMaris do. The chain-link fence was ten feet high and topped with strands of razor wire thoughtfully tilted inward toward a would-be escapee. A standard correctional setup, nonelectric. DeMaris’s security people had already filled in the escape hole, though its shape was plainly visible. I contemplated it. Big enough for a man to climb in, wriggle under the fence, then climb up and out again on the other side. Digging it had been a big job, done quickly enough to foil security. Which meant that another person was likely digging from the other side. Both of them feeling the pressure, with Arcadia staff soon to catch on to Clay’s absence.

I toed through the top few inches of soil with my boot, found it typical for this part of the county — decomposed granite and scattered quartz. I saw bloodhound tracks and shoe prints around the hole, and bike or motorcycle tracks on the firebreak that paralleled the fence. The Arcadia property was sixty acres, according to DeMaris, and this section of fence stood some five hundred well-wooded yards from the main building.

“How did he evade you guys?” I asked.

“Used the after-breakfast transition,” said DeMaris. “Lots of patients on the move, too many for staff to monitor individually. At some point you really have to give these nutcases a little trust. So we didn’t catch on until the post-lunch head count.”

“Did he sneak off often, try to lose you?”

“Not until recently. He got away from us twice in the last month. Found him still on the grounds. He knew this property, and he was getting to know the security patterns. Some of our cameras are hidden pretty damned well. For exercise he liked to run the fence line around the property. We always sent someone with him. He ran fast, good endurance. Some of my day-shift guards brought running shoes to work, liked the workout.”

I looked at the rough dirt road on the other side of the fence. Public but unmaintained looked about right. Ruts and rocks, coyote scat, more paw and footprints. There were vehicle tracks, too, difficult to make out on the hard, rough road. “Sounds like he was practicing up for a getaway.”

“I think so,” said DeMaris.

“You’re sure he doesn’t have a phone?”

“Our body and room checks are thorough. But someone could have smuggled one in. It happens.”

I pictured someone bringing Clay a shovel, and maybe one for himself, and them digging under the fence just enough for Clay to squeeze out. I saw them toss the shovels in the car and hit the road. I imagined them driving fast, laughing low and quietly. Clay smiling. You bet he’d be smiling — the airman flying his coop.

“Just to clarify the obvious, Mr. Ford. When you locate Clay, you contact me. No one else. Here’s my card. Use the cell number.”

We rode back. Through the trees rushing past I saw a pod of five patients on bikes on the concrete path, led and followed by white-clad Arcadia staffers. The bikes were big-tired beach cruisers with high, swept-back handlebars like I used to ride as a kid growing up on the California coast.

Back in the hospital, Dr. Paige Hulet gave me a folder containing Clay Hickman’s medical charts, USAF service record, arrest reports, and a list of friends and family and their numbers.

She escorted me through the lobby and outside, into the bright early-afternoon sun. Mountain sunlight always seems stronger than sea-level sunlight, especially in spring. On a sunny patch of lawn, four partners had squared off for a game of horseshoes, plastic. Concentration, then laughter. Dr. Hulet waved to them as we walked toward the parking area, and two of them waved back, smiling.

“I thank you again for helping us, Mr. Ford.”

“Thank you for the work, Dr. Hulet.”

We walked at a thoughtful pace. A warm and somehow promising day. Spring had arrived without resistance after another parching winter. Sixth year of the Great Drought. We came to my truck and stopped.

“This would be more than mere work to you,” she said. “If you knew him. All my patients are important, but Clay is dear to me. I feel responsible for him.”

“In the sense that he served your country and appears to have lost his mind for his trouble?”

“Yes. Yes. I feel as if I personally sent him into all that.”

“All what?”

Dr. Hulet squinted up at me. “Iraq. Clay is very closed about what he did there. But I know that he was damaged.”

“Where was he stationed?”

“Ali Air Base. He was a mechanic. It’s in the file I gave you. Where were you, Mr. Ford, in that war?”

“First Fallujah.”

“The door-to-door campaign?”

“Yes.”

“A dark chapter.”

“Dark book.”

She peered at me. “How does it make you feel to see Fallujah in the news again?”

Took me a minute to find the words. “Fooled. Pissed. A lot of good people suffered for nothing.”

“Are you at peace with what you saw and did there?”

“At peace because I surrendered,” I said.

“To the facts of what you saw and did.”

I let a moment pass, for some reason unsure of how to say yes.

“I’ve never been to war,” she said. “Yet, I’ve become a student of what it does to the mind.”

“There is nothing comparable.”

“No. Mr. Ford, I want to ask a favor of you. When you locate Clay, call me first. Before you call anyone else. Do not call Alec DeMaris until you and I have talked.”