Heidi Ott stood by herself under a sad-looking carrotwood tree, arms crossing her chest, checking out the terrain in all directions. When she spotted us, she gave a small wave and headed for the only vacant bench in sight. A pile of fresh dog turd nearby explained the vacancy. Wrinkling her nose, she moved on and we followed her to a shady spot near the swing set, under an old Chinese elm. The surrounding grass was bruised and matted. A lone young woman pushed her toddler in a gently repeating arc. Both she and the child seemed hypnotized by the motion.
Heidi leaned against the elm and watched them. If I hadn't been looking for the fear, I might not have noticed it. She wore it lightly, a glaze of anxiety, hands knotting then releasing, eyes fixing too intently on the swinging child.
"Thanks for meeting with us, ma'am," said Milo.
"Sure," she said. "My roommate's sleeping, or I would've had you come to my place."
She moistened her lips with her tongue. She wore low-slung jeans, a ribbed white T-shirt with a scalloped neck and high-cut sleeves, blunt-toed brown boots. Her hair was drawn back, just as it had been at Starkweather, but in a ponytail, not a tight bun. Dangling earrings of silver filigree, some eye shadow, a smear of lip gloss. Freckles on her cheeks that I hadn't noticed on the ward. Her nails were clipped short, very clean. The T-shirt was form-fitting. Not much meat on her, but her arms were sinewy.
She cleared her throat, seemed to be working up the courage to speak, just as a tall, thin man with long hair came loping by with a panting mutt. The dog had some Rottweiler in it. The man wore all black and his coarse hair was a dull ebony. He stared at the ground. The dog's nose was down; each step seemed to strain the animal.
Heidi waited until they passed, then smiled nervously. "I'm probably wasting your time."
"If there's anything you can tell me about Dr. Argent, you're not."
Squint lines formed around her eyes, but when she turned to us they disappeared. "Can I ask you one thing first?"
"Sure."
"Claire Dr. Argent was anything done to her eyes?"
Milo didn't answer immediately, and she pressed herself against the tree trunk. "There was? Oh my God."
"What about her eyes concerns you, Ms. Ott?"
She shook her head. One hand reached back and tugged her ponytail. The man with the dog was leaving the park. Her eyes followed him for a second before returning to the swinging child. The boy squalled as the young woman pulled him off, struggled to stuff him into a stroller, finally wheeled away.
Just the three of us now, as if a stage had been cleared. I heard birds sing; distant, foreign chatter, some traffic from Fuller Avenue.
Milo was looking at Heidi. I saw his jaw loosen deliberately and he bent one leg, trying to appear casual.
She said, "Okay, this is going to sound weird but… three days ago, one of the patients-a patient Dr. Argent wo±ed with-said something to me. The day before Dr. Argent was killed. It was at night, I was double-shifting, doing bed check, and all of a sudden he started talking to me. Which by itself was unusual, he's barely verbal. Didn't talk at all until Dr. Argent and I began-"
She stopped, pulled the ponytail forward so that it rested on her shoulder, played with the ends, squeezed them. "You're going to think I'm flaky."
"Not at all," said Milo. "You're doing exactly the right thing."
"Okay. This is the situation: I'm just about to leave his room and this guy starts mumbling, like he's praying or chanting. I pay attention because he hardly ever talks-never really talks at all. But then he stops and I turn to leave again. Then all of a sudden, he says her name-'Dr. A.' I say, 'Excuse me?' And he repeats it a little louder. 'Dr. A.' I say, 'What about Dr. A?' And he gives this strange smile-till now, he never smiled either-and says, 'Dr. A bad eyes in a box.' I say, 'What?' Now he's back to looking down at his knees the way he always does and he's not saying anything and I can't get him to repeat it. So I leave again and when I reach the door he makes this sound I've heard him make a few times before- like a bark-nth nth ruh. I never knew what it meant but now I get the feeling it's his way of laughing-he's laughing at me. Then he stops, he's back in space, and I'm out of there."
Milo said, " 'Dr. A bad eyes in a box.' Have you told anyone about this?"
"No, just you. I planned to talk to Claire about it, but I never got to see her because the next day…" She bit her lip. "The reason I didn't mention it to anyone at the hospital was because I figured it was just crazy talk. If we paid attention every time someone talked crazy, we'd never get any work done. But the next day, when Claire didn't come to work, and later in the afternoon I heard the news, it freaked me out. I still didn't say anything, because I didn't know where to go with it-and what connection could there be? Then when I read the paper and it said she'd been found in her car trunk, I'm like, ' "Boxed up" could be a car trunk, right? This is freaky.' But the paper didn't mention anything about her eyes, so I thought maybe by 'bad eyes' he meant her wearing glasses, it probably was just crazy talk. Although why would he say something about it all of a sudden when usually he doesn't speak at all? So I kept thinking about it, didn't know what to do, but when I saw you yesterday, I figured I should call. And now you're telling me something was done to her eyes."
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."