“How could they call him if he doesn’t have a phone?”
“I asked that very same question. The way it works there is they post open shifts on the employee section of their website – Henderson said it was easier to get a list of people and have them check than always scrambling to get the shifts covered. I had the sense there’s quite a few people who check the list regularly. Anyway, Lester sometimes worked two or three nights a week, but in the last couple of weeks, he hasn’t worked at all. Nor has Mr. Henderson heard from him. I found that interesting, so I called the house a couple of times, and no one answered. In the end, I sent my friend over there, and as far as he could tell, no one had been in the house or the apartment for at least a week. There were flyers in the mailbox, newspapers on the porch, that kind of thing. So I reached out to Dr. Manning a second time. And this is where things get kind of interesting.”
“Because you couldn’t reach him?”
“On the contrary,” he said. “Again, I left a message, and again, I got a call back within minutes. When I told Dr. Manning that Lester hadn’t been at work and that it didn’t appear that anyone had been at the house or apartment, his surprise gave way to concern. He asked again about the police matter – I hadn’t yet told him what it was – and I mentioned that I was looking into a case of slashed tires. He insisted that Lester wouldn’t do such a thing. He said his son isn’t violent; if anything, he’s terrified of conflict of any sort. He also admitted that he hadn’t been as forthcoming about Lester in the previous call as he could have been. When I asked what he meant, he told me that Lester…” Margolis reached for a page in the file. “Suffers from a delusional disorder, more specifically, ‘persecutory delusions of the nonbizarre type.’ While his son can generally function normally for extended periods, there are times when the disorder enters a more acute phase, sometimes lasting more than a month. In Lester’s case, it has its roots in the occasional usage of illegal drugs.”
Margolis looked up. “The doctor went into a bit more about the specifics of Lester’s disorder – way more than I needed to know, in fact – but essentially, it can be boiled down to this: When Lester is in an acute phase – when the disorder moves from simple paranoia to actual delusions – Lester ceases to function entirely normally. In these moments, Lester strongly believes that the police are out to get him and that they’ll stop at nothing to put him in prison for the rest of his life. He’s convinced they want to hurt him, and he’s convinced they will set other prisoners against him. He also has the same delusions about you.”
“That’s ridiculous. Lester’s been stalking me!”