His wide lips twisted in a bitter smile. “We have limited resources, too. Do you know the Kiels?”

“I’m only slowly meeting people in town.” I explained my mission yet again. “I want to talk to Sonia, if she recovers, because she phoned me early this morning claiming she’d seen my missing persons. I haven’t met Dr. or Mrs. Kiel, but I do plan to talk to them after I leave here.”

He started to speak, grimaced again, got up, and shut the conference-room door. “Even when you think the halls are empty, someone manages to listen in on confidential conversations. Sonia Kiel is an odd duck by any standard. She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t stay here—I mean, because she is often drunk, which is in violation of our rules. I make her leave when she’s drunk, but I have to take her back.”

He fiddled with his coffee cup again: he was pushing himself to reveal confidences. “The psychiatrist involved with our residents is a Dr. Chesnitz. Ernst Chesnitz. He’s been treating Sonia for a lot of years, he’s on our board, and he’s close to Nathan Kiel. The Kiels made a substantial donation to St. Rafe’s when we agreed to take Sonia. It was a condition of taking her. Tough love, which is possibly the only kind they know how to manifest.”

His expression became bleaker, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

“You don’t want her here, do you?” I asked.

“She doesn’t belong here. It’s true she’s got an addiction problem, but we’re only equipped to handle addicts or homeless people who are trying to stay sober. Sonia needs help that we can’t provide, and the help she does need isn’t available in Lawrence, at least not in my opinion.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Back when she was a teenager, Sonia had what Chesnitz considered a psychotic break. The Kiels called him in, and he prescribed lithium. He made a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with paranoid tendencies, and every time he examines her, which might be once a year or whenever Dr. Kiel can force her to see Chesnitz, he says there’s no reason to change that diagnosis.”

“She’s forty-something now,” I said. “Chesnitz has been her physician all this time?”

Marx hunched a shoulder. “I suppose he’s seventy. Maybe it’s strange, but it’s not improbable.”

“Is she still taking lithium?”