She exhaled. Licked her lips.

Milo said, "I didn't exactly say that, ma'am. I asked why Dr. Argent's eyes concerned you."

"Oh." She slumped. "Okay, so I'm making a big deal. Sorry for wasting your time." She started to walk away. Milo placed a big hand on her wrist.

"No apologies necessary, Ms. Ott. You did the right thing." Out came his pad. "What's this patient's name?"

"You're going to pursue it? Listen, I don't want to make waves-"

"At this point," said Milo, "I can't afford to eliminate anything."

"Oh." She picked some bark from the tree trunk and examined a fingernail. "The administration doesn't like publicity. This is not going to earn me gold stars."

"What's the problem with publicity?"

"Mr. Swig believes in no-news-is-good-news. We depend on politicians for funding and our patients aren't exactly looked upon kindly, so the lower the profile, the fewer the budget cuts." She flicked bits of bark from under her nail. Slender fingers twirled the ponytail again. Shrug. "I opened the can, what did I expect. No big deal, I've been thinking about leaving anyway. Starkweather's not what I expected."

"In what way?"

"Too repetitious. Basically, I baby-sit grown men. I was looking for something a little more clinical. I want to go back to school to become a psychologist, thought this would be a good learning experience."

"Dr. Delaware's a psychologist."

"I figured that," she said, smiling at me. "When Hatterson said he was a doctor. You wouldn't exactly be taking a surgeon around on the ward, would you?"

"This patient," I said. "Is there any particular reason he'd pay attention to Dr. Argent?"

"Not really, except she worked with him. I was helping her. We were trying to raise his verbal output, getting him to interact more with his surroundings."

"Behavior modification?" I said.

"That was the ultimate goal-some kind of reward system. But it didn't get that far. Basically, she just talked to him, trying to build up rapport. She had me spending time with him, too. To bring him out of his isolation. No one else bothered with him."

"Why's that?"

"Probably no one wanted to. He's got difficult… personal habits. He makes noises in his sleep, doesn't like to bathe. He eats bugs when he finds them, garbage off the floor. Worse stuff. He doesn't have roommates because of that. Even at Starkweather, he's an outcast."

"But Claire saw something workable in him," I said.

"I guess," she said. "She told me he was a challenge. And actually, he did respond a bit-the last few weeks, I got him to pay attention, sometimes nod when I asked yes-or-no questions. But no real sentences. Nothing like what he said that day."

" 'Dr. A. bad eyes in a box.' "

She nodded. "But how could he know? I mean, it doesn't make sense. This is nothing, right?"

"Probably," I said. "Did this man associate with anyone who could've planned to hurt Claire? Maybe someone who's been discharged?"

"No way. He didn't associate with anyone, period. And no one's been discharged since I've worked there. No one gets out of Starkweather."

"How long have you worked there?"

"Five months. I came on right after Claire did. No, I wouldn't be looking for any friends of this guy. Like I said, no one hangs out with him. On top of his mental problems, he's physically impaired. Tardive dyskinesia."

Milo said, "What's that?"

"Side effects. From the antipsychotic drugs. His are pretty bad. His walk is unsteady, he sticks his tongue out constantly, rolls his head. Sometimes he gets active and marches in place, or his neck goes to one side, like this."

She demonstrated, straightened, kept her back to the tree trunk. "That's all I know. I'd like to go now, if that's okay."

Milo said, "His name, ma'am."

Another tug on the ponytail. "We're not supposed to give out names. Even our patients have confidentiality. But I guess all that changes when…" Her arms went loose and her hands joined just below her pubis, fingers tangling, remaining in place, as if protecting her core.

"Okay," she said. "His name's Ardis Peake, maybe you've heard of him. Claire said he was notorious, the papers gave him a nickname: Monster."

Chapter 10

Milo's jaw was too smooth: forced relaxation. "I've heard of Peake."

So had I.

A long time ago. I'd been in grad school-at least fifteen years before.

Heidi Ott's calm was real. She'd been a grade-school kid. Her parents would have shielded her from the details.

I remembered the facts the papers had printed.

A farm town named Treadway, an hour north of L.A. Walnuts and peaches, strawberries and bell peppers. A pretty place, where people still left their doors unlocked. The papers had made a big deal out of that.

Ardis Peake's mother had worked as a maid and cook for one of the town's prominent ranch families. A young couple. Inherited wealth, good looks, a big old frame house, a two-story house-what was their name? Peake's name was immediately familiar. What did that say?

I recalled snippets of biography. Peake, born up north in Oregon, a logging camp, father unknown. His mother had cooked for the tree men.

As far as anyone could tell, she and the boy had drifted up and down the coast for most of Ardis's childhood. No school registrations were ever found, and when Peake and his mother Greyhounded into Treadway, he was nineteen and illiterate, preternaturally shy, obviously different.

Noreen Peake scrubbed tavern floors until landing the job at the ranch. She lived in the main house, in a maid's room off the kitchen, but Ardis was put in a one-room shack behind a peach orchard.

He was gawky, mentally dull, so quiet many townspeople thought him mute. Unemployed, with too much time on his hands, he was ripe for mischief. But his sole offenses were some paint-sniffing incidents out behind the Sinclair store, broad-daylight acts so reckless they confirmed his reputation as retarded. The ranch owners finally gave him a job of sorts: rat catcher, gopher killer, snake butcher. The farm's human terrier.

His territory was the five acres immediately surrounding the house. His task could never be completed, but he took to it eagerly, often working late into the night with pointed stick and poison, sometimes crawling in the dirt-keeping his nose to the ground, literally.

A dog's job assigned to a man, but by all accounts Peake had found his niche.

It all ended on a cool, sweet Sunday morning, two hours before dawn.

His mother was found first, a heavy, wide woman sitting in a faded housedress at the kitchen table, a big plate of Granny Smith apples in front of her, some of them cored and peeled. A sugar bowl, white flour, and a stick of butter on a nearby counter said it would have been a pie-baking day. A pot roast was in the oven and two heads of cabbage had been chopped for coleslaw. Noreen Peake was an insomniac, and all-night cooking sprees weren't uncommon.

This one ended prematurely. She'd been decapitated. Not a neat incision. The head lay on the floor, several feet from her chair. Nearby was a butcher knife still flecked with cabbage. Another knife from the same cutlery set-heavier, larger- had been removed from the rack.

Bloody sneaker prints led to a service staircase. On the third floor of the house, the young rancher and his wife lay in bed, covers tossed aside, embracing. Their heads had been left on, though severed jugulars and tracheas said it wasn't for lack of effort. The big knife had seared through flesh but failed at bone. Facial crush wounds compounded the horror.

A gore-encrusted baseball bat lay on the floor in front of the footboard. The husband's bat; he'd been a high school slugger, a champ.

The papers made a big deal about how good-looking the couple had been in life-what was their name… Ardullo. Mr. and Mrs. Ardullo. Golden couple, everything to live for. Their faces had been obliterated.