It was long past visiting hours at the Providence Medical Center psych ward. Henry rode the back elevator up to a small waiting room with a locked door, a telephone, two chairs, and a table with a sign-in sheet and a stack of Al-Anon brochures. Henry didn’t sign the sign-in sheet. No one ever did.

He picked up the phone. It automatically connected to the nurse’s station inside and in a moment a female voice picked up.

“Can I help you?” the voice said. She didn’t sound like she meant it.

“I need to see Archie Sheridan,” Henry said. He didn’t recognize her voice. He didn’t know the night-shift nurses. “My name’s Henry Sobol. It’s police business.”

There was an extended pause. “Hold on,” the voice said.

After a few minutes the door buzzed and then popped open, revealing a tired-looking woman in scrubs and a Peruvian cardigan. “I’m only letting you in because he said he’d see you,” she said with a tight-lipped smile.

“I know the way,” Henry said. “I’m here three times a week.”

“I’ll walk you anyway,” the nurse said.

There were no TVs in the rooms, but Henry could hear Animal Planet blasting from the break room. Animal Planet was always on in the break room. Henry didn’t know why.

The place had been shocking at first. Fluorescent lights, tile linoleum floors, patients in green scrubs. Everywhere you looked were reminders of suicide—the patients wore socks so they couldn’t hang themselves with their shoelaces, the garbage bags were paper so patients couldn’t pull the plastic ones over their heads, the utensils were plastic so patients couldn’t stab themselves in their jugulars, the mirrors in the rooms were metal sheets so patients couldn’t use the shards to fillet their wrists; there were no outlets in the rooms that could be used for electrocution, no electrical cords that could be used for nooses.

Archie had now had two run-ins with Gretchen Lowell, each of which had left him near death. He was addicted to painkillers. She’d done a number on his psyche. Henry, more than anyone, knew he needed rehab, knew he needed a mountain of analysis. But what he hadn’t expected was that once Archie got in, he wouldn’t want to get out.

The night nurse followed Henry into Archie’s room.

Archie’s roommate was asleep, snoring loudly, that particular kind of wet, choking apnea that was a product of being overweight and heavily sedated. It was the kind of thing that would drive you crazy, if you weren’t already crazy to begin with.