Valhalla Hospital was situated on a rise in the genteel world of Albemarle County, where my faculty ties with the University of Virginia brought me periodically throughout the year. Though I had often noticed the formidable brick edifice rising from a distant foothill visible from the Interstate, I had never visited the hospital for either personal or professional reasons.

Once a grand hotel frequented by the wealthy and well-known, it went bankrupt during the depression and was bought by three brothers who were psychiatrists. They systematically set about to turn Valhalla into a Freudian factory, a rich man's psychiatric resort where families with means could tuck away their genetic inconveniences and embarrassments, their senile elders and poorly programmed kids.

It didn't really surprise me that Al Hunt had been farmed out here as a teenager. What did surprise me was that his psychiatrist seemed so reluctant to discuss him. Beneath Dr. Warner Masterson's professional cordiality was a bedrock of secrecy hard enough to break the drill bits of the most tenacious inquisitors. I knew he did not want to talk to me. He knew he had no choice.

Parking in the gravel lot designated for visitors, I went into a lobby of Victorian furnishings, Oriental rugs, and heavy draperies with ornate cornices well along their way to being threadbare. I was about to announce myself to the receptionist when I heard someone behind me speak.

"Dr. Scarpetta?"

I turned to face a tall, slender black man dressed in a European-cut navy suit. His hair was a sandy sprinkle, his cheekbones and forehead aristocratically high.

"I'm Warner Masterson," he said, and smiling broadly, he offered his hand.

I was about to wonder if I had forgotten him from some former encounter when he explained that he recognized me from pictures he had seen in the papers and on the television news, reminders I could do without.

"We'll go back to my office," he added pleasantly. "I trust your drive up wasn't too tiring? May I offer you something? Coffee? A soda?"

All this as he continued to walk, and I did my best to keep up with his long strides. A significant portion of the human race has no idea what it is like to be attached to short legs, and I am forever finding myself indignantly pumping along like a handcar in a world of express trains. Dr. Masterson was at the other end of a long, carpeted corridor when he finally had the presence of mind to look around. Pausing at a doorway, he waited until I caught up with him, then ushered me inside. I helped myself to a chair while he took his position behind his desk and automatically began tamping tobacco into an expensive briar pipe.

"Needless to say, Dr. Scarpetta," Dr. Masterson began in his slow, precise way as he opened a thick file folder, "I am dismayed by Al Hunt's death."

"Are you surprised by it?" I asked. "Not entirely."

"I'd like to review his case as we talk," I said. He hesitated long enough for me to consider reminding him of my statutory rights to the record. Then he smiled again and said, "Certainly," as he handed it over.

I opened the manila folder and began to peruse its contents as blue pipe smoke drifted over me like aromatic wood shavings. Al Hunt's admission history and physical examination were fairly routine. He was in good physical health when he was admitted on the morning of April tenth, eleven years ago. The details of his mental status examination told another story.

"He was catatonic when he was admitted?" I asked. "Extremely depressed and unresponsive," Dr. Master-son replied. "He couldn't tell us why he was here. He wasn't able to tell us anything. He didn't have the emotional energy to answer questions. You'll note from the record that we were unable to administer the Stanford-Binet or the MMPI, and had to repeat these tests at a later date."

The results were in the file. Al Hunt's score on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test was in the 130 range, a lack of smarts certainly not his problem, not that I'd had any question. As for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, he did not meet the criteria for schizophrenia or organic mental disorder. According to Dr. Masterson's evaluation, what Al Hunt suffered from was "a schizotypal personality disorder with features of borderline personality, which presented as a brief reactive psychosis when he cut his wrists with a steak knife after locking himself in the bathroom."

It was a suicidal gesture, the superficial wounds a cry for help versus a serious attempt to end his life. His mother rushed him to a nearby hospital emergency room, where he was stitched up and released. The next morning he was admitted at Valhalla. An interview with Mrs. Hunt revealed that the incident was precipitated by her "husband losing his temper" with Al during dinner.

"Initially," Dr. Masterson went on, "Al would not participate in any of the group or occupational therapy sessions or social functions the patients are required to attend. His response to antidepressant medication was poor, and during our sessions I could barely get a word out of him."

When there was no improvement after the first week, Dr. Masterson continued to explain, he considered elec-troconvulsive treatment, or ECT, which is the equivalent of rebooting a computer versus determining the reason for the errors. Though the end result may be a healthy reconnecting of brain pathways, a realignment of sorts, the formatting "bugs" causing the problem will inevitably be forgotten and, possibly, forever lost. As a rule, ECT is not the treatment of choice in the young.

"Was ECT administered?" I asked, for I was finding no record of it in the file.

"No. Just at the point when I was deciding I had no other viable alternative, a small miracle occurred during psychodrama one morning."

He paused to relight his pipe.

"Explain psychodrama as it was conducted in this instance," I said.

"Some of the routines are done by rote and are warm-ups, you might say. During this particular session, the patients were lined up and asked to imitate flowers. Tulips, daffodils, daisies, whatever came to mind, each person contorting himself into a flower of his private choosing. Obviously, there is much one can infer from the patient's choice. This was the first time Al had participated in anything at all. He made loops with his arms and bent his head." He demonstrated, looking more like an elephant than a flower. "When the therapist asked what flower he was, he replied, 'A pansy.' "

I said nothing, experiencing a mounting wave of pity for this lost boy we had conjured up before us.

"Of course, one's first reaction was to assume this was a reference to what Al's father thought of him," Dr. Masterson explained, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. "Harsh, mocking references to young Al's effeminate traits, his fragility. But it was more than that."

Slipping his glasses back on, he looked steadily at me. "Are you aware of Al's color associations?"

"Remotely."

"Pansy is also a color."

"Yes. A very deep violet," I agreed.

"It is what you get if you blend the blue of depression with the red of rage. The color of bruises, the color of pain. Al's color. It is the color he said radiated from his soul."

"It is a passionate color," I said. "Very intense."

"Al Hunt was a very intense young man, Dr. Scarpetta. Are you aware that he believed he was clairvoyant?"

"Not exactly," I replied uneasily.

"His magical thinking included clairvoyance, telepathy, superstitiousness. Needless to say, these characteristics became much more pronounced during times of extreme stress, when he believed he had the ability to read other people's minds."

"Could he?"

"He was very intuitive."

His lighter was out again. "I have to say there was often validity in his perceptions, and this was one of his problems. He sensed what others thought or felt and sometimes seemed to possess an inexplicable a priori knowledge of what they would do or what they had already done. The difficulty came, as I briefly mentioned during our telephone conversation, in that Al would project, run too far with his perceptions. He would lose himself in others, become agitated, paranoid, in part because his ego was so weak. Like water, he tended to take the shape of whatever he filled. To use a cliche, he personalized the universe."

"A dangerous way to be," I observed.

"To say the least. He's dead."

"You're saying he considered himself empathic?"

"Definitely."

"That strikes me as inconsistent with his diagnosis," I said. "People with borderline personality disorders generally feel nothing for others."

"Ah, but this was part of his magical thinking, Dr. Scarpetta. Al blamed his social and occupational dysfunction on what he believed was his overwhelming empathy for others. He truly believed he sensed and even experienced other people's pain, that he knew their minds, as I've already mentioned. In fact, Al Hunt was socially isolated."

"The staff at Metropolitan Hospital described him as having a very good bedside manner when he worked there as a nurse," I pointed out.

"Unsurprisingly," Dr. Masterson countered. "He was a nurse in the ER. He would never have survived in a long-term care unit. Al could be very attentive providing he didn't have to get close to anyone, providing he wasn't forced to truly relate to that person."

"Explaining why he could get his master's degree but then be unable to function in the setting of a psychotherapy practice," I conjectured.

"Exactly."

"What about his relationship with his father?"

"It was dysfunctional, abusive," he replied. "Mr. Hunt is a hard, overbearing man. His idea of raising a son was to beat him into manhood. Al simply did not have the emotional makeup to withstand the bullying, the manhandling, the mental boot camp that was supposed to prepare him for life. It sent him fleeing to his mother's camp, where his image of himself became increasingly confused. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you, Dr. Scarpetta, that many homosexual males are the sons of big brutes who drive pickups with gun racks and Confederate flag bumper stickers."

Marino came to mind. I knew he had a grown son. It had never occurred to me before this moment that Marino never talked about this only son, who lived out west somewhere.