CHAPTER NINETEEN #2
'We last had a murder in 1987,' the Chief went on.
'That was a real Cain and Abel saga. Two brothers fighting over the land.
Drink was involved, the gun went off. Very sad.
But rare. You know when they expanded the Mayhew in 2010, folks said it was bound to bring more trouble.
Crazies wandering the town, getting up to no good.
Stealing and robbing to buy drinks or drugs, following people…
bad things in their hearts. I don't think they understand that those people in there are the most gentle souls on earth.
The most gentle, and the best looked-after.
They're not going to do anyone any harm.
If they did, they'd have to leave, and none of them want that. '
‘So there’s been no crime associated with that institution?’ Kate clarified. ‘No breakouts or protests?’
‘More like the other way round. Couple of our local junkies tried to break in, hoping to get their hands on the medication. That was 95, I think, or 96. And there was a big commotion in 2010, just after the new wing was completed. Someone in the town said there was a notorious child molester staying there. It was a simple case of mistaken identity. We explained, everyone went home. The thing is, Agent Valentine, everybody understands this, apart from a few people on the lunatic fringe. Kampen needs the Mayhew hospital, and the Mayhew needs Kampen.’
She recalled that conversation later, while speaking to Duncan MacLeish, the editor, photographer, writer, and sole proprietor of The Kampen Clarion.
MacLeish’s viewpoint couldn’t have painted a starker contrast to the Chief’s.
According to him, the Catskill forests were full of illegal stills and makeshift meth labs, the booming trade jealously guarded by a local Hell’s Angels chapter called the Hellcats.
Meanwhile, according to MacLeish, the town was seething with discontent, old grudges fusing with a whole new source of trouble, brought about by the extension and enlargement of the Mayhew hospital, fifteen years ago.
‘But what would you say to people who point out that the Mayhew has been good for the town?’ Kate queried.
‘By “people”, I take it you mean Arno Walters,’ MacLeish responded drily.
‘His wife is a nurse there. His son-in-law the catering manager. I believe it was a relation of his wife who won the contract for the halfway houses. I’m not suggesting he’s corrupt or dishonest, Agent Valentine.
But the Chief of Police is just one of the many hundreds of local people who benefit from the presence of the Mayhew facility. You know about the new wing, right?’
‘Not really. The Chief mentioned it in passing.’
‘It’s a public-private partnership deal, aim being to establish the Mayhew as the flagship centre of mental healthcare excellence on the eastern seaboard.
Replacing outdated facilities and methodologies with the best of the newest. Beds for a hundred and ten new patients.
Facilities for education and workshops, sports, training, and physical therapy.
Three halfway houses, two here in Kampen, another over in Broome, enabling people to transition from institutional care to productive lives in the community. All good stuff, right?
'When you factor in the new patients, all the new staff, the trainee psychiatrists, the teachers and so forth, you're talking a major influx of people,' he went on, not giving Kate a chance to respond.
'Which is okay on one level, because we were shrinking.
It's also attractive to the Chief of Police, because he can argue that he needs more officers, a new patrol car, and an upgrade of their comms equipment.
You see how it works? There's no such thing as a new road.
You build a new road, you gotta put in new lights, new signs.
Of course, Arno approves, and of course, he doesn't want to look at the negatives. '
‘But what are the negatives? We’re talking about people with mental health problems, Mr MacLeish; they’re not all Hannibal Lecter.’
‘It only takes one,’ MacLeish replied. ‘Look – you’re right, in a sense.
And we’d all like to hope that those individuals who need to be under lock-and-key are kept under those conditions.
But we don’t know that for sure. We don’t know for sure who’s staying in the facility, and if they’re dangerous, or if they were dangerous, but are now thought not to be.
We can’t find out that sort of information, because the law cares more about their rights and their privacy, than it does about the safety and wellbeing of the people who have suffered at the hands of…
well, others who are just plain wrong inside. ’
Once again, Kate made an attempt to interrupt, but MacLeish just steamrolled her.
‘And even if we do know who’s staying there, it doesn’t mean that mistakes can’t be made.
You only need to take a cursory look at the newspapers to know that some people can game the system, and some people make the most blindingly stupid errors because they haven’t been trained, or they don’t care, or their mind’s somewhere else.
This is a small town, Agent Valentine. The arrival of 110 new people makes a significant difference.
And the needless death of just one, just one person, represents a risk we shouldn’t be asked to take.
Where are our rights, Agent Valentine? Who is caring about our safety? ’
On the back of that conversation, if it could be called that, Kate started to look at the Mayhew’s website.
It was an impressive-looking place, far removed from the associations that typically sprang to mind: none of the barred windows or tough-looking staff, no locks and keys or harsh lighting.
Instead, in picture after picture, people seemed to be living fulfilled and productive lives, whether they were practising Tai Chi, or sitting in a group therapy circle, learning how to cook dinner, or sketching at an easel.
She clicked on a video address from the Clinical Director, a kindly-looking man in his late fifties, sitting in an oak panelled office.
His name was Dr Jack Coltrane; he had a rich, actor's voice, the kind of reassuring tones you'd hear on a TV commercial for life insurance.
He spoke about the values of the clinic, tracing its origins in the 'therapeutic community' Adams Mayhew had founded in Essex, England, originally for the traumatized veterans of World War One.
She returned to the photographs, which had been professionally composed and lit, but still managed, just about, to seem candid and spontaneous. One in particular caught her attention.
It featured a woman with short, gray hair and spectacles balanced on the end of her nose.
In her paint-stained denim smock, she looked the very epitome of an art teacher.
And indeed, that's what she seemed to be.
A group of students (or patients, Kate wasn't sure how to think of them) sat at tables in a brightly-lit room.
Most wore aprons, and some were sketching on large pieces of paper.
The man sitting with the art teacher, like most of the other occupants, was hard at work, on an image of a bird in flight.
It was a strong metaphor, for these people were under various levels of confinement at the clinic.
Perhaps it also spoke to the shackling effects of mental illness itself, conditions from which they all longed to soar free.
Kate knew that longing well, herself; she'd even looked with envy at the gulls that gathered near her apartment building.
But she couldn’t help noticing that most of the people in the room weren’t expressing their feelings with paper and pencil. They were making sculptures, out of clay.