Chapter 16 Dethroned #2
“I ask that you don’t upset her too much,” the director said. “Cassandra is a very fragile patient, and we don’t want to see her agitated. She can become very…difficult to handle.”
I understood. I promised to be gentle.
I drove two hours down a freeway studded with orange barrels.
Traffic should’ve been light, but the narrowing of the road to one lane in each direction slowed it, and there was nothing to be done about it.
I stared out the window at green hills, cow pastures, and knee-high corn.
It was bucolic here, in its way. Maybe therapeutic.
I was stuck in traffic when my phone rang. I took the call immediately: it was Nick. Nick never called; he only texted.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Hey.” His voice sounded taut. “I wanted to tell you the hospital lab tested that water you collected.”
“Yeah?”
“They found some stuff you’d expect—typical bacteria and algae. But they also found a weird viscous benzene compound that’s a liquid at room temperature.”
“Benzene?” I echoed.
“Yeah. It’s a component of crude oil, and is used in manufacturing industrial solvents.”
“Like what Copperhead Valley Solvents might be using.”
“That’s my guess. And it’s also my guess that this is what caused the death of that patient I mentioned losing two years ago.”
“Does this help at all with treating Mason or Ross? The water sample wasn’t from the pond where Mason nearly drowned, but…”
“I brought it up to the pulmonologist. She’s calling Ross back to the hospital to do a CT. She thinks Mason might be suffering the effects of having oil in his lungs—it’s called lipoid pneumonia. She can increase his steroids and do a lung lavage.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“Yeah. It’s a general-anesthetic procedure, essentially washing out the lungs one at a time.”
That would be a lot for a little kid to handle. But it didn’t sound like it was the only thing on Nick’s mind.
“Hey,” I said, “are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just…we’ll talk when you get home.”
We exchanged “I love yous,” and hung up. I didn’t like hearing stress in Nick’s voice. He was the most unflappable person I knew. Maybe work was getting to him. I hoped he was going to be all right.
He had to be. He was all I had.
When I’d pulled off the road to gas up the car, I bought a sandwich and called the state EPA’s enforcement division again.
I left a message describing the lab sample.
They probably thought I was an annoying local yokel trying to tell them how to do their job, but they were my best shot at getting to Sumner.
Sumner might be bulletproof where local politics were concerned, but I severely doubted he had that much influence at the state level.
I got back on the road and wound my way through a small town, and up a hill to a facility overlooking a small college. The college had a psychology program that provided mental health professionals to this facility. I’d never been here before.
Trinity Springs’s main building was from the 1930s, perched on top of a freshly mown green hill studded with mature maple trees. The gardens around the slate-roofed three-story brick building were well manicured, with purple roses of Sharon blooming near the foundation.
I checked in at the front desk, in a green-tiled atrium. The clerk sat behind plexiglass, and the doors to the facility within were locked. The reception clerk invited me to sit in a plastic chair in the waiting area. I noted that the chairs were bolted to the floor.
Eventually, a woman in a white coat was buzzed through a door. She was tall and square-shouldered, white hair held back in a messy bun. Her skin was tan and speckled with sun freckles.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Fox. It’s nice to meet you.”
She extended her hand to me, and it was cool when I took it. I swallowed my discomfort at dealing with people who dug around in minds for a living; I had too much to hide in my own, and feared pieces falling out.
“I’m Lt. Koray. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“I will always clear my calendar for a chance to help long-term residents. Would you like to take a walk outside to discuss the case?”
“Of course.” I thought it a bit odd that she seemed not to want me to see the facility’s interior, but maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt. Likely, the presence of strangers, especially police, upset the residents.
We headed out the front doors and walked around the corner of the building. I commented on the landscaping, observing that the blooming joe-pye weed had attracted monarch butterflies.
She smiled. “It’s important that our residents get to see nature, in the limited fashion that we can allow them to. We partner with our university’s entomology and botany departments to ensure that our gardens are appealing to songbirds and pollinators.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“It would be, but the contributing departments have found grant monies to help us as part of a permaculture initiative. We’re also fortunate to have received a windfall from the family of a long-term patient who found comfort in the gardens.”
I generally looked upon such facilities with skepticism, but perhaps it said something that a family had been pleased enough with the treatment to leave a bequest. Indeed, the exterior didn’t feel like any state institution I’d encountered before.
Through a gate we entered the back gardens, where broad sweeps of lawn were crossed by crushed-gravel paths and dotted with island gardens and trees.
Mature maples shaded gardens containing hardy plants: spiky blazing star, spiderworts with long fingers of leaves, and ninebark cultivars with crimson foliage.
I scanned the scene, where staff watched over people seeming to be generally elderly and in poor health.
I saw a man in a wheelchair; a woman with a cane; and a woman sitting in the grass, patiently plucking petals off a purple coneflower.
In the distance, a tall chain-link fence circled the entire garden, but it was painted green and blended in with the forest beyond.
I wished, for a moment, that my father could’ve wound up in a place like this. A place where he could have felt the shade of a tree and combed grass with his fingers.
But then anger flashed through me. He didn’t deserve this place. He deserved to rot behind cold concrete for decades, withering away from the source of his power. Even when he died, he had died outdoors, in his element. He’d won.
Dr. Fox gestured for me to sit at a table. The table and chairs were set in concrete. “But you’re not here to talk about flowers. You’re here about Cassandra Carson.”
“Yes. I’m working on her daughter’s disappearance. I’m trying to get familiar with the case, but it’s been twenty-five years.”
Dr. Fox frowned. “That was the inciting incident for her psychotic break. Cassandra was unable to cope with her daughter’s vanishing, and I’m concerned that discussing it might set her progress back.”
“How’s her progress? I learned from her daughter Viv that Cassandra attempted to commit suicide after Dana went missing.”
Dr. Fox sighed. “Cassandra has entirely broken with reality. When she was younger, we sometimes were able to bring her back to reality. But when she returned to her everyday life, she’d fall into a depression and attempt to kill herself.
The attempt immediately following her daughter’s disappearance wasn’t the only one.
She tried to kill herself twice after that time, once by hanging and the other time by stepping out into traffic.
Based on scans, we think her brain was structurally damaged by oxygen deprivation. ”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine what this was like for her.” Maybe coming here was a bad idea.
“When she’s here, removed from things that remind her of Dana’s loss, she’s able to exist in a liminal state. She believes that Dana is alive and still in high school. She remains frozen in a moment in time before Dana disappeared. When Viv comes to visit, she doesn’t recognize her.”
“I see.” My hopes for gaining information from Cassandra were fading.
“Cassandra is also prone to a number of other delusions. She believes she’s a powerful witch. She will come to the garden to gather plant matter and conduct her ‘spells.’ ” The doctor made air quotes around “spells.”
Not so different from Viv. I certainly didn’t have any room to decide where the line of reality should be drawn.
I wondered about the point at which a delusion became grounds to take a person’s rights away, to hide them away from the world.
When the delusion harmed others? When one caused harm to oneself?
I couldn’t say. I only knew that I’d been very close to that boundary in the past.
“Where did that delusion come from?” I asked neutrally.
Dr. Fox exhaled in frustration. “I suspect it was reinforced by her daughter. I’ve suggested that Viv might benefit from therapy, but she refuses. I find that after Viv has visited, Cassandra is agitated for many days afterward.”
“Would I be able to talk to her?”
“Under certain conditions. I would want this to be under my supervision. And I ask that you do not discuss Dana’s disappearance. We don’t know if she would survive another suicide attempt.”
I frowned. “You want me to pretend that Dana is alive and well?”