Billy and Gus came back within half an hour, then went out for a second walk. When Billy returned the second time, about six o’clock, Gillott was busy with a new admission, but she heard him say, “That girl was screaming.”

She knew it wasn’t Billy talking. She recognized Davids voice.

“What did you say?”

“She’s gonna get hurt.”

Gillott followed him down the hall. “What are you talking about?”

“There was a girl. I could hear a girl screaming somewhere when I was outside.”

“What girl?”

“I don’t know. There were two of them. One of the girls told Gus to bring me back because I was in the way.”

Gillott smelled his breath to see if he’d been drinking, but there was no indication that he had.

A few minutes later the downstairs switchboard called for her. Mrs. Gillott went down to see a security officer bring Marsha in. She could smell the liquor on Marsha’s breath as she brought her upstairs and took ner to her room.

“Where’s Lori?” Gillott asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have been drinking, haven’t you?”

Marsha hung her head. She was sent to Ward 1, the women’s maximum-security ward.

In the meantime Billy switched from David to Danny. He seemed disturbed when he saw Marsha alone, without Lori, and suddenly he took off out of the building to go find the missing Lori. Gillott went puffing after him. By the time she had caught up to him behind the Beacon School cottage, Security Officer Glenn was bringing Lori in. She’d been throwing up and had been lying on the grass, her face in the vomit, Glen told Gillott. “She could have strangled,” he said.

Gillott could see that Danny was worried about the women. She heard people in the corridor whispering the word “rape,” but she felt that neither of the young men had been out long enough to do anything to either Lori or Marsha. She just didn’t believe it. When she left at eleven that night, everything seemed calm, both women in WaTd 1 and Milligan and Holston off in their rooms asleep.

When Pat Perry came on duty at seven the next morning, rumors had spread over the ward and the hospital. The two young women had been found drunk and unconscious out on the hill. Loris clothes had been ripped. Some said she’d complained of having been raped; others said there had been no mention of rape. Billy and Gus Holston had been out for a walk at the same time, and suspicion pointed to them. But almost everyone on the Admissions and Intensive Treatment ward agreed that there could not have been a rape.

The state highway patrol was called to investigate, and they requested that AIT be locked temporarily to ensure that all the males on the ward be available for questioning. Dr. Caul spoke to several of the staff; Billy and Holston weren’t awake yet. The question was, Who would tell Billy about the accusations being made against him and Holston? Pat Perry could see he didn’t want to do it himself. Everyone else refused. Perry hadn’t been on duty the day last spring when Ragen exploded, threatening the attendants with the broken drinking glass, but others who had been feared the same violence might happen when Billy heard the news.