Chapter Ninety-Eight

When I arrived on Five, I felt I could almost hear an audible stretching of the thin red line between the sane and the mad.

The ward pretty much had the standard institutional look: Faded mauve and gray everything; occasional gashes in the walls; nurses carrying trays of little cups; strung-out men in drawstring hospital pants and stained robes. I had seen it all before, except for one thing. The mental-health workers carried whistles to sound an alarm if they needed help. That probably meant staff members had been hurt here.

The fourth and fifth floors comprised the ward for psychiatric patients. There were thirty-one veterans on Five, the ages ranging from twenty-three to seventy-five. The patients on Five were considered dangerous, either to others or to themselves.

I started my search on Five. Two of the patients on the floor were tall and burly. They somewhat matched the description of the man who'd been followed by detectives Crews and O'Malley. One of them, Cletus Anderson, had a salt-and-pepper beard and had been involved in police work in Denver and Salt Lake City after his discharge from the army.

I found Anderson loitering in the day room on the first morning. It was past ten o'clock, but he was still wearing pajamas and a soiled robe. He was watching ESPN and he didn't strike me as a mastermind criminal.

The decor in the day room consisted of about a dozen brown vinyl chairs, a lopsided card table, and a TV mounted on one wall. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke. Anderson was smoking. I sat down in front of the TV, nodded hello.

He turned to me and blew an imperfect smoke ring. "You're new, right? Play pool?" he asked.

"I'll give it a try."

"Give it a try," he said and smiled as if I'd made a joke. "Got keys to the pool room?"

He stood up without waiting for an answer to his question. Or maybe he'd forgotten that he'd asked it. I knew from the nursing charts that he had a violent temper, but that he was on a truckload of Valium now. Good thing. Anderson was six foot six and weighed over two hundred seventy pounds.

The pool room was surprisingly cheery with two large windows that looked out on to a walled exercise yard. The yard was bordered with red maples and elms, and birds twittered away in the trees.

I was in there alone with Clete Anderson. Could this very large man be the Mastermind? I couldn't tell yet. Maybe if he brained me with a pool ball or cue stick.

Anderson and I played a game of eight ball. He wasn't very good. I let him stay in the game by blowing a couple of chip shots, but he didn't seem to notice. His blue-gray eyes were nearly glazed over.

"Like to wring those fucking blue jays necks," he muttered angrily after missing a bank shot that wasn't even close to being his best opportunity on the table.

"What did the blue jays do wrong?" I asked him.

"They're out there. I'm in here," he said and stared at me," Don't try to shrink-wrap me, okay? Mr. Big Shit Mental Health Worker. Play your shot."

I sank a striped ball in the corner, then I missed another long shot I could have made. Anderson took the cue from me and he stood over his next shot for a long time. Too long, I was thinking. He straightened up suddenly. All six foot six of him. He glared at me as if something were wrong. His body was getting rigid; he was tensing his large arms.

"Did you just say something to me, Mr. Mental Health?” he asked. His hands were large and held the pool cue tightly, wringing its neck. He had a lot of fat on him, but the fat was hard like that on football linemen and some professional wrestlers.

"Nope. Not a peep."

"That s'posed to be funny? Little play on the peeping blue jays which you know I fucking hate?"

I shook my head. "I didn't mean anything by it."

Anderson stepped back from the pool table with the cue stick clasped tightly in both hands. "I could have sworn I heard you call me a pussy under your breath. Little puss? Wuss? Something derogatory like that?"

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I made eye contact with him. "I think our pool game's over now, Mr. Anderson. Please put the stick down."

"You think you can make me put down this cue stick? Probably do, if you think I'm a puss."

I held my mental-health-worker whistle to my mouth," I'm new here and I need the work. I don't want any trouble."

"Well then, you came to the wrong goddamn hellhole, man," he said "You're the fucking priss. Whistle-blower."

Anderson tossed the pool cue on to the table and he stalked toward the door. He bumped my shoulder on the way.

"Watch your mouth, nigger," he said, spitting as he spoke the words.

I didn't give Anderson anymore ground. I grabbed him, spun him around, surprised the hell out of him. I let him feel the strength in my arms and shoulders. I stared him down. I wanted to see what happened if he was provoked.

"You watch your mouth," I said in the softest whisper. "You be very, very careful around me."

I released my grip on Clete Anderson and he spun away. I watched the large man leave the pool room and I kind of hoped he was the Mastermind.

Chapter Ninety-Nine

The worst possibility I could imagine so far was that the Mastermind might disappear and never be heard from again. Hunting for the Mastermind had become more like Waiting for the Mastermind or maybe even Praying for the Mastermind to do something that would lead us to him.

Shifts at the veterans hospital began with a thirty-minute nursing-report-cum-coffee-klatch. During the meeting each patient was talked about briefly, and privilege changes noted. The report buzz words were affect, "compliance," of course, TTSD." At least half the men on the wards suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The shift report ended, and my day began. The psychiatric aide's main duty is to interact with patients. I was doing that, and it reminded me of why I'd gone into psychology in the first place.

Actually, a lot of my past life was rushing back, especially my feelings and understanding for the terrible power of trauma. So many of these men suffered from it. For them, the world no longer seemed safe or manageable. People around them didn't seem trustworthy or dependable. Self-doubt and guilt were always present. Faith and spirituality were nonexistent. Why had the Mastermind chosen this place to hide?

During the eight-hour shift I had a number of specific duties: Sharps check at seven (I had to count all the silverware in the kitchen; if anything was missing, which was rare, rooms would be searched); one-on-one specials at eight with a patient named Copeland who was considered extremely suicidal; fifteen-minute checks starting at nine (during which I was responsible for knowing the whereabouts of all the patients. Every fifteen minutes, I put a check by their names on a blackboard in the hallway outside the nurses' station); baskets (somebody has to empty the garbage).