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!”
“I’m just telling you what the doctor told me. He also told me that Lester had been arrested a few times. It was always during an acute phase, which was why he would resist arrest. The police would generally use Tasers to subdue him, and Dr. Manning added that on two separate occasions, Lester was beaten by other prisoners while he was locked up. That, by the way, goes to what I said earlier about my suspicion as to why the charges were dropped. I’m guessing that Lester wasn’t coherent and it didn’t take all that long for everyone to figure it out.”
Margolis let out a sigh. “But back to Dr. Manning. Like I told you, he sounded worried and he said that if Lester wasn’t at the house or working regularly, then he was likely in an acute phase. Which also meant he’d likely be in one of two places: either hiding out in a vacant house somewhere, or at Plainview, which is a psychiatric hospital. Lester’s checked himself in there numerous times in the past, more frequently since his mother died. In her will, she left a trust fund large enough to cover the cost of his treatment there. It’s expensive, by the way. I couldn’t get any answers on the phone, so I called my friend again and asked if he could head over to Plainview in person. He did that this morning, about an hour before I called you. And sure enough, Lester Manning is currently a patient there. He admitted himself voluntarily, but that’s about all the detective could really tell me. As soon as Lester learned that a detective wanted to talk to him about Maria Sanchez, he just… freaked out. My friend could hear him screaming from down the hall and the next thing he knew, a couple of orderlies were rushing in that direction. Like I said, interesting, don’t you think?”
Maria wasn’t sure what to say. In the silence, she heard Colin’s voice.
“When was he admitted to the hospital?”
She watched as Margolis’s eyes shifted toward Colin.
“I don’t know. My friend couldn’t find out. Medical records are confidential and that kind of information can’t be released without the patient’s permission. That clearly wasn’t going to happen. At least, not right then. But my friend knows what he’s doing, and so he asked one of the other patients, and the guy said that he thought Lester had been there for five or six days. Of course, considering the source, you’d have to take that information with a grain of salt.”
“In other words, it’s possible that Lester slashed the tires and left the notes.”
“Or he might have been in the hospital. And if he was in the hospital, then obviously it isn’t Lester.”
“It has to be him,” Maria insisted. “I don’t know who else it could be.”
“How about Mark Atkinson?”
“Who?”
“Cassie’s boyfriend. Because I looked into him, too. It turns out that he may or may not be missing.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m still doing some preliminary work on that, but here’s what I can tell you. Mark Atkinson’s mother filed a missing persons report on her son about a month ago. But after I talked to the detective and right before I called you, I spoke with her to get more information, and I’m still not sure what to make of it. She told me that in August, he sent her an e-mail saying that he’d met someone online and that he was quitting his job and going to Toronto to meet her in person. She had no idea what to make of that, but in the e-mail, he told her not to worry. He said he’d prepaid his rent and that other bills were being paid online. The mother says she received a couple of printed letters from him saying that he was on a road trip with the woman, one of them postmarked from Michigan and another from Kentucky, but according to her, they were – and I quote – ‘vague and strange and impersonal, and not what my son would write.’ Other than that, there’s been no contact with him, and she insists that he’s missing. She says he would have called or texted her, and the fact that he hasn’t done those things means that something has happened to him.”
The new information left Maria’s head spinning, and it was all she could do to stay seated. Even Colin seemed at a loss for words.
Margolis looked from one to the other. “So that’s where I am right now. If you’re wondering what my plan is, moving forward, I’m going to give the good doctor another call and see if he can grease the wheels and find out when Lester was admitted. Or better yet, have his son give the physicians at Plainview permission to tell me. Depending on what I learn there, I may or may not check into the Mark Atkinson thing. But frankly, that’s a lot of legwork, and again, I don’t know how much more time I can commit to this.”
“It’s not Atkinson,” Maria repeated. “It’s Lester.”
“If that’s the case, then for now, I wouldn’t worry.”
“Why do you say that?”