This was beyond insulting. “I told Congreve I was leaving.”

“He asked me to make sure.”

Sandra was tempted to say something bitter in return, but it would probably be lost on the orderly. She shook his hand off her arm but forced a smile. “I’m not popular with management right now.”

“Yeah, well … I know that tune, I guess.”

“Dr. Congreve says there was some kind of an incident with Orrin Mather yesterday. You know Orrin? Skinny kid, he’s in the locked ward now?”

“Hell yeah I know him. And it wasn’t just an ‘incident,’ Dr. Cole. He’s stronger than he looks. He was making for the exit like his ass was on fire. I was the one who had to wrestle him down and hold him till he could be sedated.”

“Orrin was trying to escape?”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it. Dodging nurses like he was carrying the ball to the goal line.”

“So you, what, you tackled him?”

“Ma’am, no—I didn’t have to. I stood in front of him and told him to calm the fuck down. If anything, he tackled me.”

“You’re saying he initiated the violence?”

She must have sounded skeptical. Geddes stopped in midstride and rolled up the loose right-hand sleeve of his uniform. There was a thick bandage on his forearm, midway between wrist and elbow. “All due respect, but what’s that look like to you, Dr. Cole? The little shit bit me so hard I needed a dozen stitches and a fucking tetanus shot. Locked ward, yeah. A locked cage would be better.”

*   *   *

The heat enveloped Sandra like a clenched fist as she crossed the parking lot to her car.

Weather like this made it all too easy to imagine anaerobic bacteria blooming in the deeps of the sea, as in Orrin’s doomsday scenario. Out in the Gulf, Sandra had heard, there was already a deepwater anoxic zone that expanded every summer. The shrimping business had dried up and gone elsewhere, years since.

The sky was a sullen shade of blue. As yesterday, as the day before, cauliflower clouds stalked the horizon but brought no relief. When she opened the door of her car it released a gust of broiling air that smelled like molten plastic. She stood a while, letting the feeble breeze cool the interior.

When she climbed in she realized she had nowhere to go. Should she call Bose? But she was still thinking about what he had told her about himself before she left his apartment this morning. I guess you need to know this about me before we go any farther, he had said. Above all, she needed some time to think.

So she did what she almost always did whenever she had unscheduled free time and a problem on her mind: she drove out to Live Oaks to see her brother Kyle.

Chapter Eleven. Sandra and Bose

CHAPTER TEN