Patricia Cornwell - Point of Origin

'Maybe we should have tried one of the parks,' I said. 'I hope we don't start a riot.'

Lucy lowered into a five-foot hover, weeds and tall grass thrashing violently. A pheasant and her brood were appropriately startled and darted along the bank and out of view amid rushes, and it was hard to imagine anything innocent and vulnerable living so close to disturbed humanity. I suddenly thought of Carrie's letter to me, of her odd listing of Kirby's address as One Pheasant Place. What was she telling me? That she had seen the pheasants, too? If so, why did it matter?

The helicopter settled softly and Lucy rolled the throttle to flight idle. It was a very long two-minute wait to cut the engine. Blades turned as digital seconds did, and patients and hospital personnel stared. Some stood perfectly still, pinning us with glazed eyes, while others were oblivious, tugging on fences or walking with jerky motions and staring at the ground. An old man rolling a cigarette waved, a woman in curlers was muttering, and a young man wearing headphones started into a loose knee rhythm on the sidewalk, for our benefit, it seemed.

Lucy rolled the throttle to idle cut-off and braked the main rotor, shutting us down. When the blades had fully stopped and we were climbing out, a woman emerged from the gathering crowd of the mentally deranged and those who took care of them. She was dressed in a smart herringbone suit, her jacket on despite the heat. Her dark hair was short and smartly styled. I knew before being told that she was Dr Lydia Ensor, and she seemed to pick me out as well, for she shook my hand first, then Lucy's, as she introduced herself.

'I must say, you've created a lot of excitement,' she said with a slight smile.

'And I apologize for that,' I said.

'Not to worry.'

'I'm staying with the helicopter,' Lucy said.

'You sure?' I asked.

'I'm sure,' she replied, looking around at the unnerving crowd.

'Most of these are outpatients at the psychiatric center right over there.' Dr. Ensor pointed at another high rise. 'And Odyssey House.'

She nodded at a much smaller brick building beyond Kirby, where there appeared to be a garden, and an eroded asphalt tennis court with a billowing torn net.

'Drugs, drugs, and more drugs,' she added. 'They go in for counseling, and we've caught them rolling a joint on their way out.'

'I'll be right here,' Lucy said. 'Or I can head out to get fuel, and then come back,' she added to me.

'I'd rather you wait,' I said.

Dr Ensor and I began the brief walk to Kirby while eyes glared and poured out black unspeakable pain and hate. A man with a matted beard shouted out to us that he wanted a ride, making gestures towards the heavens, flapping arms like a bird, jumping on one foot. Ravaged faces were in some other realms or vacant or filled with a bitter contempt that could only come from being on the inside looking out at people like us who were not enslaved to drugs or dementia. We were the privileged. We were the living. We were God to those who were helpless to do anything except destroy themselves and others, and at the end of the day, we went home.

The entrance to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center was that of a typical state institution, with walls painted the same teal as the footbridge over the river. Dr Ensor led me around a corner to a button on a wall, which she pressed.

'Come to the intercom,' an abrupt voice sounded like the Wizard of Oz.

She moved on, needing no direction, and spoke through the intercom.

'Dr Ensor,' she said.

'Yes, ma'am.' The voice became human. 'Step on up.'

The entrance into the heart of Kirby was typical for a penitentiary, with its airlocked doors that never allowed two of them to be opened at the same time, and its posted warnings of prohibited items, such as firearms, explosives, ammunition, alcohol, or objects made of glass. No matter how adamant politicians, health workers, and the ACLU might be, this was not a hospital. Patients were inmates. They were violent offenders housed in a maximum security facility because they had raped and beaten. They had shot their families, burned up their mothers, disemboweled their neighbors, and dismembered their lovers. They were monsters who had become celebrities, like Robert Chambers of the Yuppie murder fame, or Rakowitz, who had murdered and cooked his girlfriend and allegedly fed parts of her to street people, or Carrie Grethen, who was worse than any of them.

The teal-painted barred door unlocked with an electronic click, and peace officers in blue uniforms were most courteous to Dr Ensor, and also to me, since I clearly was her guest. Nonetheless, we were made to pass through a metal detector, and our pocketbooks were carefully gone through. I was embarrassed when reminded that one could enter with only enough medication for one dose, while I had enough Motrin, Immodium, Tums, and aspirin to take care of an entire ward.

'Ma'am, you must not be feeling good,' one of the guards said good-naturedly.

'It accumulates,' I said, grateful that I had locked my handgun in my briefcase, which was safely stored in the helicopter's baggage compartment.

'Well, I'm gonna have to hold on to it until you come out. It will be waiting right here for you, okay? So make sure you ask.'

'Thank you,' I said, as if he had just granted me a favor.

We were allowed to pass through another door that was posted with the warning, Keep Hands Off Bars. Then we were in stark, colorless hallways, turning corners, passing closed doors where hearings were in session.

'You need to understand that legal aid attorneys are employed by the Legal Aid Society, which is a nonprofit, private organization under contract with New York City. Clearly, the personnel they have here are part of their criminal division. They are not on the Kirby staff.'

She wanted to make sure I understood that.

'Although, after a number of years here, they certainly may get chummy with my staff,' she kept talking as we walked, our heels clicking over tile. 'The lawyer in question, who worked with Miss Grethen from the beginning, will most likely arch her back at any questions you might ask.'

She glanced over at me.

'I have no control over it,' she said.

'I understand completely,' I replied. 'And if a public defender or legal aid attorney didn't arch his back when I appeared, I would think the planet had changed.'

Mental Hygiene Legal Aid was lost somewhere in the midst of Kirby, and I could only swear that it was on the first floor. The director opened a wooden door for me, and then was showing me into a small office that was so overflowing with paper that hundreds of case files were stacked on the floor. The lawyer behind the desk was a disaster of frumpy clothing and wild frizzy black hair. She was heavy, with ponderous breasts that could have benefited from a bra.

'Susan, this is Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of Virginia,' Dr Ensor said. 'Here about Carrie Grethen, as you know. And Dr Scarpetta, this is Susan Blaustein.'

'Right,' said Ms Blaustein, who was neither inclined to get up or shake my hand as she sifted through a thick legal brief.

'I'll leave the two of you, then. Susan, I trust you will show Dr Scarpetta around, otherwise I will get someone on staff to do it,' Dr Ensor said, and I could tell by the way she looked at me that she knew I was in for the tour from hell.

'No problem.'

The guardian angel of felons had a Brooklyn accent as coarse and tightly packed as a garbage barge.

'Have a seat,' she said to me as the director disappeared.

'When was Carrie remanded here?' I asked.

'Five years ago.'

She would not look up from her paperwork.

'You're aware of her history, of the homicide cases that have yet to go to trial in Virginia?'

'You name it, I'm aware of it.'