“The patient he was asking about is in the forensic unit?”
Tania and Chantal exchanged glances and then gave the barest of nods. They wouldn’t reveal the person’s name, nor would they give me the name of the orderly. I wheedled in vain: they couldn’t see any connection to Leydon, and they didn’t believe one lapse in discretion, assuming someone had blabbed to Wuchnik, was any excuse for a second one.
“Would Leydon have gone to the forensic wing?” I asked.
Again the women exchanged looks. “It’s completely secure,” Tania said, “and you can’t get there from the other buildings, I mean, not through any interior hallways. But Leydon is a lawyer, and she did sweet-talk her way over there one afternoon. She apparently persuaded one of the men that she could help him with his case.”
“Who?”
Tania shook her head. “That isn’t confidential, but I just don’t know. The warden was furious with me for letting her get over there, as if I was supposed to run twenty-four-hour surveillance on her, but if he knew who she was talking to, he didn’t say. Just that the whole wing was in an uproar for days after her visit.”
21.
SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING HERE, BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
THE TWO WOMEN COULDN’T TELL ME ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT Wuchnik. I pulled my photographs together but said idly, “Wasn’t it strange that Leydon was admitted out here, instead of in the city? She has private money, even if she doesn’t have private insurance.”
“We didn’t ask about that,” Chantal said. “It was an involuntary admission, as you know, and we were focused more on her well-being than her financial health.”
“Is that true for most of your patients?”
Tania grimaced. “More and more in these times, when Medicaid budgets are being slashed. The state is so hard up for funds they make us jump through fifteen hoops before they’ll let us admit anyone. A lot of our patients get pretty unraveled, even the ones who seek a voluntary admission, before we’re allowed to find a bed for them.”
“But you must be pretty full—the website says you have forty-three social workers on staff.”
Tania’s cell phone beeped. She looked at the screen. “I have a patient in five minutes. She’s an outpatient and that’s true of about half our load. We run group therapies as well as one-on-ones with a lot of people in DuPage County.”
Tania got to her feet. “If you visit Leydon, tell her everyone here is rooting for her. Remember, people in comas or with brain damage can still hear what we say to them! It does them good.”
I pulled my photos together. By the time I’d helped Chantal extricate herself from the table, Tania had disappeared into some counseling room.
Instead of heading for the main entrance, I wandered on down corridor B until I came to a side door. This led to a recreation area, where a few people were sitting on the patchy grass, or walking aimlessly about. A group of children was kicking a soccer ball in the distance. I wondered if they were inmates, or just waiting while their parents went to one of Tania’s group-therapy sessions.
The forensic wing, a few hundred yards to my right, was surrounded by the triple fences of all prisons. When I walked over to look at it, a guard surged forward to demand my business.
“I’m a colleague of Miles Wuchnik. I’m trying to find the orderly he was talking to last month. Before he was killed, you know.” I pulled out one of my pictures of Wuchnik and held it up to the gate, with a twenty beneath my thumb.
The guard looked at the photo, and then looked beyond me. “We don’t give out any confidential information here, young lady. Anyone you need to talk to, you go through Mr. Waxman in the main building.”
I looked behind me. Eric Waxman was standing near the door I’d just come out of with a woman and another man, who looked a bit like David Niven, if Niven had just had an attack of reflux. The guard saw them; they apparently had enough authority that the guard didn’t think he should be seen talking to me. Even so, he’d learned some nimble tricks over the years—the twenty was missing when I tucked the photo back in my briefcase. I handed him a business card.
“Call me if you think of something nonconfidential you can tell me,” I said, before ambling back to the door where the trio was standing.
“What were you doing there?” the Niven look-alike demanded.
“And you are asking because?”
“Because I’m in charge of security for the hospital,” he said.
He had that aura, the suit, the tie, but I asked for identification. “This is a mental hospital,” I said. “Anyone could impersonate the head of security and fool a stranger like me.”
The security chief glared, but the woman laughed. “She’s right, Vernon. Show her your ID.”