Something occurred to Madison just then. “Doctor, you are putting aside doctor-patient confidentiality here for some reason?”
Peterson sat at his desk. “Vincent Foley doesn’t have anyone else; he’s my responsibility now in every way. And I thought Ronald was being paranoid. I wanted him to come in for a chat. . .”
Madison nodded. She could well imagine the conversation and the doctor thinking quietly to himself that maybe Gray needed to lighten up and have a Happy Meal.
“Ronnie also does volunteer work here,” Peterson continued. “He visited Vincent once a week, and a few weekends he would do some filing or odd jobs around the place for us. He had his own volunteer staff ID.” He closed his eyes. “When he called and said no one should visit Vincent, that he should be kept inside, I thought he was, maybe, high or intoxicated.”
“Had that ever happened?”
“No, never.”
“Has Vincent Foley ever had any other visitors except for Gray?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Then you saw the news . . .”
“Yes.”
It was the oldest joke in the book: just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you. Gray had not been high; he had been right on the money.
“How could Mr. Gray or Mr. Foley afford this place?” Kelly asked out of the blue.
“We’re a nonprofit organization. Our patients pay on a sliding scale, depending on income, and some get government subsidies.”
“Why was Ronald Gray afraid for Vincent Foley?” Madison asked.
“I don’t know. I have no idea. Vincent is in his own world, and he has no contact with the outside.”
“We need to speak to him. You haven’t told him about his foster brother yet?”
“No.” Peterson straightened the papers in front of him, a small gesture of self-comfort. “Vincent doesn’t interact with people with ease; he has fixations and compulsions, and he lives every second of his life in a state of acute anxiety, but he recognized Ronald, and he was always calmer after his visits.”
“What is he afraid of?”
Madison regretted the words as she said them: Vincent Foley’s horrors lived this side of the walls and had no reach and thus no bearing on the outside.
“The sun going down,” Peterson replied. “He’s afraid of the darkness. He thinks someone is after him, and they will come at night.”
It was simple, straightforward: someone had done something to him in the past, and that someone might come again.
“Was there a police report of any kind of assault on Vincent?”
“No. Ronald told me long ago that he couldn’t get him to speak of whatever had upset him so, and he had no physical injuries. By the time Vincent was admitted here, it was months after whatever event happened. We tried pretty much any therapy we could, but nothing helped. Vincent used to stack shelves in a supermarket; he would come and go from work alone. He would have been an easy target for an assailant, I suppose, though, as I said, Ronald reported no injuries to his foster brother.”
“Have you ever seen this man before?” Madison produced Warren Lee’s photograph from his driver’s license.
“No.”
“His name is Warren Lee. Did Ronald Gray ever mention him?”
“No.” Something seemed to shift and click in Peterson’s mind. “That’s the man who was . . . found dead days ago.” He didn’t say the man on the chair, and yet the words hung in the room all the same.
“Yes.”
The news had reported enough details that even someone who wasn’t interested in the particulars of such a violent death knew of them.
“How did Ronald die?” he asked finally.
One of the few positive aspects of the Gray case was that the primary crime scene had been the deserted warehouse: his body had not been photographed huddled in a corner by casual passersby with cell phones, and the specifics of his murder were still, at least for the moment, not in the public domain.
Madison wanted to say quickly, he died quickly and painlessly, because Dr. Peterson seemed a kind man who already felt guilty for not taking Gray’s fears seriously. Even so, a lie was a lie, and in a double homicide investigation, the weight words might carry could be measured in tons.
“We’re still gathering all the facts,” she replied.
“I understand,” Peterson said.
“What color was it?” Kelly asked the doctor.
Madison and Peterson both turned.
“What color was what?” Peterson asked.
Madison snapped to the idea and kicked herself for not thinking of it before. Or not thinking about it first. “His staff ID. What color was the plastic volunteer staff ID Gray had?”