shaking hands with the law, maybe had a pending warrant or two against him back in the world.
"Mr. Ganton has been with us for seventeen years. He's the head orderly here. It was Mr. Ganton who escorted Rachel to her room last night. Mr. Ganton?"
Ganton crossed his ankles, placed his hands on his knees, and hunched forward a bit, his eyes on his shoes. "There was group at nine o'clock. Then - " Cawley said, "That's a group therapy session led by Dr. Sheehan and Nurse Marino."
Ganton waited until he was sure Cawley had finished before he
began again. "So, yeah. They was in group, and it ended round ten. I escorted Miss Rachel up to her room. She went inside. I locked up from
the outside. We do checks every two hours during lights-out. I go back at midnight. I look in, and her bed's empty. I figure maybe she's on the floor. They do that a lot, the patients, sleep on the floor. I open up - " Cawley again: "Using your keys, correct, Mr. Ganton?" Ganton nodded at Cawly, looked back at his knees. "I use my keys, yeah, 'cause the door's locked. I go in. Miss Rachel ain't nowhere to be found. I shut the door and check the window and the bars. They locked tight too." He shrugged. "I call the warden." He looked up at Cawley, and Cawley gave him a soft, paternal nod.
"Any questions, gentlemen?"
Chuck shook his head.
Teddy looked up from his notebook. "Mr. Ganton, you said you entered the room and ascertained that the patient wasn't there. What did this entail?"
"Sir?"
Teddy said, "Is there a closet? Space beneath the bed where she could hide?"
"Both."
"And you checked those places."
"Yes, sir."
"With the door still open."
"Sir?"
"You said that you entered the room and looked around and couldn't find the patient. Then you shut the door behind you." "No, I... Well..."
Teddy waited, took another hit off the cigarette Cawley had given him. It was smooth, richer than his Chesterfields, and the smell of the smoke was different too, almost sweet.
"It took all of five seconds, sir," Ganton said. "No door on the closet. I look there, I look under the bed, and I shut the door. No place she could have been hiding. Room's small."
"Against the wall, though?" Teddy said. "To the right or the left of the door?"
"Nah." Ganton shook his head, and for the first time Teddy thought he glimpsed anger, a sense of primal resentment behin& the downcast eyes and the "Yes, sirs" and "No, sirs."
"It's unlikely," Cawley said to Teddy. "I see your point, MarsHal, but once you see the room, you'll understand that Mr. Ganton would have been hard-pressed to miss the patient if she were standing anywhere within its four walls."
"That's right," Ganton said, staring openly at Teddy now, and Teddy could see the man carried a furious pride in his work ethic that Teddy, by questioning, had managed to insult.
"Thank you, Mr. Ganton," Cawley said. "That'll be all for now." Ganton rose, his eyes lingering on Teddy for another few seconds, and then he said, "Thank you, Doctor," and left the room. They .were quiet for a minute, finishing their cigarettes and then stubbing them out in the ashtrays before Chuck said; "I think we should see the room now, Doctor."
"Of course," Cawley said and came out from behind his desk, a ring of keys in his hand the size of a hubcap. "Follow me." IT WAS A tiny room with the door opening inward and to the right, the door cut from steel and the hinges well greased so that it swung hard against the wall on the right. To their left was a short length of wall and then a small wooden closet with a few smocks and drawstring pants hanging on plastic hangers.
"There goes that theory," Teddy admitted.
Cawley nodded. "There would have been no place for her to hide from anyone standing in this doorway."
"Well, the ceiling," Chuck said, and all three of them looked up and even Cawley managed a smile.
Cawley closed the door behind them and Teddy felt the immediate sense of imprisonment in his spine. They might call it a room, but it was a cell. The window hovering behind the slim bed was barred. A small dresser sat against the right wall, and the floor and walls were a white institutional cement. With three of them in the room, there was barely space to move without bumping limbs.
Teddy said, "Who else would have