by John Case
That ought to get me through the door. Unless… he recognizes my name.
So I call him. And of course he’s flattered by the attention. A little wary, maybe, but-
“No camera crew?”
“No,” I tell him. “To start, I thought we’d ‘talk about talking,’ see if we can find a comfort level. Keep it off the record and then, down the line… if we can work it out – great! And if we can’t, well, it’s no big deal.”
“I should tell you up front that if it comes to going on camera, I’d have to think about it.”
I’m reassuring. And flattering. “You have a good voice for it, but we’re a long way from any shooting.”
“Good, because I’d have to clear it, you know, with the powers that be.”
I don’t say anything.
I can hear the wheels turning at the other end of the receiver. Finally he says, “Looks like I have a window Thursday afternoon. If you can be here at three o’clock?”
“I can do that.”
“I’ll tell the gate.”
Louis Armstrong Airport, New Orleans. Along with every other locale in the States, New Orleans had commoditized itself, with jazz and voodoo and Mardi Gras ruling the T-shirt and trinket trade. The voodoo connection – the coins – seems more evidence that I’m on the right track. If I can get Peyton Anderton to talk about Vermillion…
The woman at the Alamo counter is friendly, asks where I’m headed, do I need directions?
“Port Sulfur.”
“Say where?”
“Plaquemines Parish.” I pronounce Plaquemines so it rhymes with nines. She corrects me.
“Plak-a-mihn,” she says. “And we don’t bother with that s, no.” She slides my license and credit card back to me, pulls out a map, and marks the route with a green pen. “Follow I-10 across the river to 23. You get to Belle Chasse and then you just head on south. The highway follows the river all the way.” She folds the map and hands it to me with a smile. “Now, why you want to go there for? You got all the city, Cajun country, and what-all, and you gonna pick Plaquemines?” She cocks her head. “Must be here on business and not pleasure.”
“No fun in Plaquemines?”
“Not unless you really like to fish; you don’t go to Plaquemines for fun, no. Oil and gas and fish, that what they got down there. Oranges. Also, it’s scary.”
“Scary? What do you mean?”
“Plaquemines give a bad name to Louisiana a while back – and that ain’t so easy, know what I’m saying? And I don’t know it’s really changed all that much. You take me – I’m half black. I just wouldn’t go there. No, thank you.”
“Why not?”
“You heard of Leander Perez?”
I shake my head.
“Back in the day, he ran that place like… I don’t know. He was like a dictator and people like me, we were slaves there. Vote? Forget it. Black people couldn’t vote. Hell, they could hardly drive. It was all… like… juke joints and lynchings…” She shakes her head, plunks down the car keys. “Row seven, space twelve.”
I scoop up the keys and I’m about to leave when she adds something. “You ain’t no person of color, but you’re a Yankee – so y’all be careful.”
I promise I will.
“And wear your seat belt. They’ll bust you for that in Plaquemines.”
An hour later, I’ve made the turn at Belle Chasse. It doesn’t seem scary except for an excessive number of patrol cars, but it does seem… boring.
Sprawl gives way to orange groves and back to more sprawl. Land carved up into ten-acre parcels, bright For Sale signs everywhere, big McMansions under construction.
And then I’m past the sprawl, driving down a new four-lane highway through undeveloped countryside. I pass an occasional cattle farm, a few little towns, and not much else.
The names are a trip in themselves: Concession, Live Oak, Jesuit Bend, Myrtle Grove.
There’s not much to see. On the river side, the levee blocks any view, and as far as I can tell, the Gulf side is just flat country. I know that there are oil rigs out there, and a big deepwater port, but all I can see is low-lying trees and reedy vegetation and, once in a while, a lone house. I read in one of the guidebooks that the area had been hit hard by hurricanes a few years back, with many old houses destroyed.
West Point a La Hache, Diamond, Happy Jack, Magnolia.
And then I’m there: Port Sulfur. I read in a guidebook that the town got its name from a sulfur mine out in the salt marsh.
Downtown is a gas station/convenience store. Across from this stands the Port Sulfur High School (home of the Mighty Broncos), along with the library, sheriff’s office, and Department of Human Services. Half of these establishments are housed in trailers.
I pass the gas station and follow Anderton’s directions, turning right a mile past town on Lousiana 561. After the specified two point seven miles, I see the small sign for the Port Sulfur Forensic Facility and turn up a long drive. I can see the hospital, an ugly rectangle of yellow brick – but in front of it is a fine old plantation house, with white pillars and a verandah, and glorious live oaks. Surrounding both structures is a fence strung with concertina wire.
The guardhouse windows are occluded by condensation. The man inside slides open his window with some reluctance, then asks my business. I spell my name for him and he slides his window shut again. He studies his clipboard, running his finger down a list, finds what he’s looking for, then laboriously fills out two bright orange visitor’s passes. He slides open his window and passes them to me. “Clip one on your shirt,” he tells me, “and place the other on your dashboard. Turn them both in when you leave.” He raises the gate and retreats to the comfort of his air-conditioned cubicle.
I know from his CV that Dr. Peyton Anderton is forty-three years old. But with his round baby face and rosy skin he still looks like a boy pretending to be a man. Even his mustache has the look of being pasted-on for the senior play, and I’m sure he grew it to make himself look older. He wears a seersucker suit and a bright smile.
“Mr. Callahan!” he says, shaking my hand with an enthusiastic grip. “Glad you found us.” He’s wearing some kind of cologne.
It’s a big room, and still has the graceful dimensions of another age and use. High ceilings, generous windows, heavy moldings. A ceiling fan turns overhead. Several antique maps of Louisiana grace the walls behind Anderton’s desk, and a set of beautiful wood-and-glass display cases line the walls. “Some of the artwork,” Anderton says, following my gaze, “created by the patients. We’ve had some talented folks here.”
We sit in a pair of easy chairs, drinking iced tea and talking about the challenges the workforce faces in what he refers to as “the facility.”
“For myself, it’s not so bad,” he says, after we’ve been shooting the breeze for fifteen minutes or so. “Down here in the administration building, where I spend most of my time, it’s quite pleasant, as you can see.”
“It’s beautiful.”
He beams with pride. “It tends to surprise folk,” he says. “The main building is a whole different story. It’s what you’d expect of a facility that’s a hybrid of hospital and prison. Security for the patients and staff is a priority, of course, and it doesn’t exactly make for a comfortable ambience.”
“And the work – do you find it gratifying?”
He thrusts his chin forward and nods sadly, then gives me a look that is meant to be frank, but again has a rehearsed quality. “Not really,” he says with a sigh. “Most of our patients fall into two categories. Many are here for pretrial evaluations – to see if they’re capable of standing trial. The rest are insanity acquitees.”
I must look puzzled because Anderton explains: “‘Not guilty by reason of insanity.’ Not guilty, see what I mean? The point being, our patients are here to be treated, not punished. And we do treat them. But I’m afraid we don’t cure too many.”
“Because…?”
“Because their illness
es are often chronic – like diabetes. We can manage that disease with insulin and diet, but we can’t cure it. It’s the same with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. And that can make the job very frustrating.”
“Ah.”
“So long as the patients are monitored and taking their medication, they’re not a threat to themselves or anyone else. But when they’re released – and we have to release many of them at some point – we have no means of keeping track of them or their meds.”
“Isn’t there some kind of… parole?”
“Conditions might be set for release, yes. There might be a period when they’re required to continue outpatient therapy. But it’s a gray area. It’s not like they’re on parole, not in a criminal sense. If they don’t show up for therapeutic sessions, if they go off their meds – we have limited resources to force compliance.”
“When you say you ‘have’ to release them-”
He shakes his head. “There, once again, we have limited resources. Overcrowding is a huge constraint. When the population reaches a certain size, we tend to progress patients through privilege levels because we simply don’t have the staff to enforce the more restrictive confinement.”
“Privilege levels?”
“That’s the way it works in most places like this. Can a patient exercise without supervision? Without sign-out? Can he join the general population for meals, or is he confined to his room? Can he take a shower without supervision? Without some kind of reward system, we simply couldn’t encourage good behavior.”
“And the ultimate reward is to be released.”
“Exactly. And we have to release people. The courts have held that unless we have clear and convincing evidence that someone is mentally ill and dangerous to himself or others, we can’t keep him here. He can be antisocial and capable of all kinds of things, but if he isn’t crazy, he gets a bus ticket. Because he has a right to freedom even if he’s a nasty sonofabitch.” He pauses and adds: “Foucha versus Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71.”
I smile encouragingly, and make a note, wondering how I’m going to bring up Cannibal Charley without putting a bullet in this conversation. But Anderton is on a roll.
“You see the problem,” he says, leaning forward with a confidential air. “Guys in here, like guys in prison, have all day to file writs. They get some starry-eyed baby lawyer to help them appeal for release on the grounds that their constitutional rights are being violated. The release committee meets. It doesn’t want to let a guy go – everyone knows the asshole in question is going to get into trouble. But that’s not enough. Maybe we don’t want to, maybe it’s against our better judgment, but the courts are not interested in educated guesses. Lots of times, we have to release. We have no choice.”
I decide to take a flier. “It’s like that guy a few years back,” I tell him. “What’s-his-name…?”
Anderton laughs. “Which guy? I’m telling you this happens every month.”
“The one who killed those little boys out West.”
Anderton sags and lets his head droop. “Charley Vermillion,” he says in an exhausted voice. “You see? We could turn every patient into a Nobel Prize winner and we’d still have Charley Vermillion thrown in our faces. He’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Charley Vermillion had a personality disorder that was chronic and probably incurable. He was a violent pedophile. And that made him a danger to the community. No question about it. But here, in the context of this facility, with the right medication… he was a model patient.”
“So you felt he could be trusted?”
“In the context of this facility? Absolutely. He had every privilege. Of course,” Anderton says with a chuckle, “we don’t have children running around.”
I return the chuckle. “So how did he get here?”
Anderton frowned, trying to remember. “Attacked a child. I think it was in a restroom. As I recall, the boy’s father intervened and Charley cut him up pretty bad.”
“‘Cut him up’?”
“With an oyster knife. That was his job. Shuckin’ oysters in the Quarter.”
“And he was acquitted?”
“Drug-induced psychosis.”
“So he got off.”
“Well… he spent nineteen years at this address, so I wouldn’t say he ‘got off.’ But the point is we didn’t have a choice. Charley Vermillion was disturbed, and he could be violent if he didn’t take his meds. But he definitely knew right from wrong when he walked out this door.”
It made sense, except for one thing. “It took… nineteen years to decide that?”
Anderton shrugs. “He petitioned for release.”
“He waited nineteen years to petition for release?”
“Nope. Someone put a bug in his ear. Probably another patient.”
“Any idea who?”
Anderton frowns, and instantly seems on guard. I’ve struck the wrong chord. The question was too specific. “I’m really not at liberty to talk about individual cases,” he says in a stiff voice.
“I’m sorry, of course you can’t. I understand. It’s just a pretty dramatic example of what can happen-”
“There are patient confidentiality issues.”
I can’t stop myself. “Yes, but in this case Vermillion is dead, isn’t he?”
A mistake. I regret it instantly. I try to change the subject, ask about Anderton’s training, his doctoral thesis, his prior experience. I suck up to him, doing my best to reestablish our earlier chumminess, but the doctor is now on guard.
I urge him to think hard about going on camera, and this revives his mood a little, although he reminds me that he’ll have to consult with his “masters.”
“And my comments, I’m afraid, would have to be restricted to general discussion or hypothetical cases.”
I tell him that’s not a problem, that I’m going to be spending a couple of days in the area, maybe I could buy him lunch and we could talk some more.
Another mistake. I see it in his body language. He clasps his arms around himself; his lips flatten into a line.
“A couple of days here? The closest motel is all the way down in Empire and I don’t think you’d like it.”
“I meant I’ll be in New Orleans. It’s not a bad drive.”
“Well,” Anderton says. He stands up, looks at his watch. The interview is over.
I’m getting to my feet, thinking that the interview has been something of a bust, and wondering what I’m going to do next. Probably I should call the Ramirezes. They filed a suit, maybe they learned something in discovery. And then there’s the lawyer who helped Vermillion petition for release. That petition would be in the public record. I could get the lawyer’s name, try and track him down, see what brought him to Vermillion’s case.
I’m mulling this over as I get to my feet and follow Anderton toward the door. And then I see something in the display case along the wall – and the hair stands up on the back of my neck.
Inside the case is an arts-and-crafts exhibition of artifacts made by the patients as a part of their therapy. There are small sculptures, weavings, pottery, drawings, beadwork, each piece identified with a date – going back to the 1930s. And among the objets is a set of origami figures, a whole menagerie, each one a stunning little sculpture. A rhino, an elephant, a lion… and a duplicate of the rabbit I found on Sean’s dresser.
A second later, I’m standing in front of the display case with my fingers pressed against the glass. In front of the origami figures is a little paper tent of thick stock, like a place card at a table.
1995
I can’t speak. There’s a hammer in my chest. Finally, I hear myself speak. “Who made these origami figures?” I ask him. “Was it Vermillion?”
“Oh, no. Good Lord. Charley wasn’t interested in art. Not at all. Works such as these are far beyond Charley’s capabilities.” He hesitates and now his voice is suspicious. “Why do you ask?”
I can’t
take my eyes off the rabbit. And I’m not sure what to do. Anderton is wrapped in his bureaucratic armor now. If I tell him the truth, will that get through to him? Will he identify the patient who folded the rabbit?
“Dr. Anderton, I have to confess something to you…”
I know after thirty seconds that it’s a mistake. Anderton is less interested in what I’m telling him than he is angry at my deception and irritated that the documentary was a ploy. I blunder on, pleading for the name of the inmate who created the origami menagerie. I explain about finding the little rabbit on my son’s dresser. I spell out my theory that Charley Vermillion was not the real killer of the Ramirez twins, that the man who folded the rabbit was the real murderer.
He shakes his head. “That sounds like kind of a wild theory to me,” he says. “I mean, these showgirls and all? I don’t know how you can make all these connections.”
I tell him if my boys die, I’ll consider that he has blood on his hands.
But Anderton won’t budge. He cites “the sanctity” of medical records, the “holy pact” of patient confidentiality.
“Just tell me one thing,” I plead. “Whoever it was, he’s not still in custody, is he? How long was he here? When was he released?”
“That’s three things.”
I say nothing.
Anderton presses a finger against his chin and stares into space, as if searching for a reason to deny my request. In the end, either he can’t come up with one or he suffers a momentary spasm of compassion.
“No,” he tells me. “The inmate in question is not in custody. Came to us in 1983. Released in 1996.”
“What did he do? What was he in here for? What’s his name? We’re talking about my sons here. Please.”
Dr. Peyton Anderton wags his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Callahan.”
I want to throw him into the display cases and knock him out and then ransack his office. But I don’t. I get control of myself. “Thanks for your help,” I tell him, and step through the doorway. Two huge orderlies wait outside in the hall and I realize that at some point Anderton summoned help. A silent alarm or something.