“Leydon told him she was a lawyer,” I added, “which of course she was. I know you said she didn’t tell you the name of the person she visited, but did she talk about his story in a general way? I’m wondering how she got to him to begin with. If it was through his mother, how did Netta find her?”
Metzger mulled over what she could say without violating Leydon’s confidentiality rights. “She talked a lot about the law and mental illness, and she used the Internet here to look up Illinois case law on mental incompetence. I thought she was preparing some defense of her own, because she’d also started talking about people spying on her.”
Her voice became tinged with anger. “I thought she was being delusional. Now I see she thought she couldn’t trust me—she thought I knew that her family, or the hospital, had sent this investigator to the hospital! How could I—well, never mind that now. This person, Glover, did you say his name is? I don’t know much about the people in the forensic wing, but if Leydon had encountered his mother, that wouldn’t have been hard, given what a warren this place is, and how easy it is for patients to move around, despite the watch that the staff try to keep on them. On top of which, Leydon is a skilled escape artist; she’s so articulate that she could fool unwary staff members into thinking she had some official role in the hospital. What does Glover’s mother say?”
“She died. Killed by a hit-and-run driver a few days after Leydon was released from Ruhetal.”
“Oh my God, not another death! You don’t think—”
“What, that it had something to do with Leydon talking to her son? I know that life throws up a lot of coincidences, but that’s not one I believe in. I think Netta Glover’s death and Leydon’s fall had everything to do with each other, and probably something to do with Wuchnik’s and Jurgens’s deaths as well.”
“I’m keeping a patient waiting,” Metzger said. “Unless there’s something else—something quick?”
“The photograph that went missing from Tommy Glover’s room. Did Leydon describe it, or describe arguing with Miles Wuchnik about it? Or even bring it back and give it to you? It’s missing and I think it’s a crucial item in sorting out what went on with Glover and Leydon and a whole bunch of other people.”
“I told you she came back speaking about fires, but she didn’t say anything about a picture, at least not that I can remember. She talks—talked—so much that I didn’t always catch everything. I tried to listen for the subtext, since I couldn’t follow her across the surface. She was always showing me newspaper articles, either online or things she’d cut out of the daily paper. She managed to get hold of some paper every day, even though I tried to stop that; I thought reading the news overexcited her.”
She hung up on that note. I took one of Leydon’s printouts and tried to construct a chronology on the back.
The first thing that happened was that Leydon met Netta Glover—somehow—wandering around, the escape artist leaving the ward and roaming the halls at Ruhetal. Leydon heard Netta’s sad story and introduced herself as a lawyer; Netta got permission for Leydon to meet Tommy.
Miles Wuchnik showed up in the same bat cave at the same time. Because he was following Leydon, on her mother’s orders? Or a coincidence? How had Wuchnik become aware of Tommy Glover? If he’d been spying on Leydon, then he knew she was talking to Glover, but what made him bribe Jurgens into taking him to Tommy’s room?
Lawlor did not want anyone looking at Tommy Glover. Because memories of his sister were so painful that they made him cry on-air, or because, like Netta Glover, he knew Tommy was innocent? Which meant he was protecting his sister’s killer.
I felt queasy. Could Lawlor have killed Magda himself? But why? He adored her, and he needed her—that wasn’t just his on-air story but what everyone said who’d known the two as children.
A lot of deaths around Leydon, her social worker had pointed out. But there was also a lot of death around Tommy Glover. Despite what Murray thought, I had to find that damned picture.
I’d looked through Leydon’s car after I’d been to her apartment the first time; I would have remembered a photograph of a group of firemen. I smacked my forehead in annoyance: Leydon’s had been in the shop. It was Sewall’s car she’d driven down to the University of Chicago. His BMW, which he kept in the garage at the building on North Franklin, where Ashford Holdings had their offices.
Rafe knocked on the door as I was getting to my feet; he was ready to leave for the day; was I finished? When he stuck his head into the room and looked around, he was dazzled by the order I’d created, the stack of some dozen recycling bags.
“Leave them there. I’ll get Clarence—the super—to take them out tomorrow.”