Do No Harm

Chapter 53

When David stepped on the decrepit front porch, it sagged as though about to give way. The address on the side wall, composed of rusting numerals, read 17 1, the middle 1 having fallen off. The placard by the doorbell read pearson home for the developmentally disabled. The adjacent lot stood desolate and empty, save for a heap of trash and a burnt-out old car up on blocks that looked somehow haunted in the twilight.

A woman in a ratty sweatshirt opened the door, pinning the screen with her knee. She wore her hair in a high ponytail, a young style for someone who looked to be in her late thirties. Behind her, an overweight man with Down's syndrome sat cross-legged on the floor, folding and refolding a section of newspaper. "Can I help you?"

"Hello, I'm David Spier-I'm a doctor at UCLA. A man named Douglas DaVella used to live here. I was hoping you could put me in touch with someone who knew him."

"Oh sure. Doug was my dad, kind of. He passed on a few years back. He and his wife, Sue, used to run a foster home here. That's where I grew up." She smiled proudly. "I started working here after high school, and we switched the place to a retarded home in '86-more money available for that kind of stuff, you know."

"How do you mean?"

"The government subsidizes it when you take in kids, or people with disabilities. Not a ton of money in it, but it's a living. And you get to, you know, help people."

The man on the floor behind her made an incomprehensible noise.

"Okay, sweetie." She walked over and handed him a new section of newspaper, which he began assiduously folding. She smiled at David self-consciously. "He's a handful sometimes, but it's twenty-five hundred a month."

"That seems like a good arrangement," David said. "Did you live here in 1973?"

"Yup. I was… " Her head tilted back, her tongue poking at her lip. "Nine."

"Do you remember an incident that year involving a study run at the Neuropsychiatric Institute?"

"Yeah. But we weren't supposed to talk about it. Still aren't, I suppose. But you're from the hospital, didn't you say? I guess you know already."

"Pretty much," he lied. "I just wanted to talk to someone to flesh out the details."

"Would you mind if I took a look at your ID?" She smiled ingratiatingly. "I'm sorry; we do get all kinds through here."

"No problem." David pulled his UCLA badge from his pocket, and she examined it before stepping back from the door.

"Why don't you come in? Keep your voice down, though. It's quiet time. Except for those who did the most extra chores last week. Isn't that right, Tommy?" She ruffled Tommy's hair, but he remained fixated on the newspaper.

David sat on a plush maroon chesterfield. The house smelled strongly of cooked vegetables and ammonia. The mantel was decorated with well-dusted porcelain figurines and a collection of Jesus plates. "I'm Rhonda Decker, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Rhonda. Thanks for inviting me in."

Tommy rose and walked into an adjoining bathroom, and David and Rhonda pretended not to hear him urinating.

"When the study started, Doug didn't think much of it. They paid good-a grand a kid, I think-and he never dreamed they'd do anything harmful to any of them. Two kids went off and did the study. Frank Grant and Clyde something. It was an awful, awful thing. That's a vulnerable age, especially for kids like us. If they wanted to study fear in kids, they could have asked just about any one of us about it and we could have answered. We didn't need snakes and lights and stuff to scare us. Not us."

"Did Frank and Clyde have problems when they got back?"

"Frank wasn't back for long. He got moved somewhere else, down to San Diego or Oceanside or something. But the other kid, he did some awful stuff."

"Like what?"

Tommy returned and stood beside David. He rubbed the top of David's head, and David took his hand and held it, mostly because he wasn't sure what else to do with it. Rhonda stood and handed Tommy the Business section, and he sat and happily resumed his folding.

"That's what we weren't supposed to talk about. They gave some money, so we wouldn't talk to the press, or other foster homes that were involved in the study. They didn't want to admit anything to the others, you know. Liability and stuff. I guess I can understand."

"I'm a representative of the hospital, so that arrangement doesn't apply to me." The limits and conditions of David's honesty, he was discovering, were different from what he'd have hypothesized during a calmer week.

Rhonda took a deep breath. "The other kid, Clyde, he used to wake up the younger kids in the middle of the night and, well, sort of torture them. Doug had no idea this was going on. Not until later. Doug was a good parent to us."

It seemed that, despite the fact that DaVella had rented him out to the hospital, Clyde still felt a certain attachment to him. It was, after all, Da-Vella's name he had chosen to steal. "How would Clyde torture them?"

"Well, there's an upstairs room with exposed rafters. We had three kids in there, five to sevens. Clyde used to string rope over the rafters and make a noose, then dangle the kids just above the ground, so their tiptoes could barely reach. He'd sit there, holding the other end, watching them struggle. The thing that was most awful was, the other two kids had to watch. He'd rotate them, one a night. They were showing up all exhausted at breakfast, none of them sleeping at all, waiting up scared all night. Imagine that, lying in the dark, trying to sleep, but knowing what's coming… It must have been terrifying."

Clyde's own reversal of the experiments. Inflicting fear on others. Empowering himself. He'd certainly succeeded with his alkali assaults at the hospital. Not just by frightening the women he'd attacked, but in creating an environment of intense alarm and anxiety all through the Med Center. The same hospital that had once victimized him the same way.

Rhonda shook her head, her eyes clouding. "None of them would tell, either. Scared, I guess. Doug noticed red marks around one kid's neck but thought it was from wrestling. And then Jim Kipper died. Clyde dangled him too long and he just… died. Doug heard the body hit when Clyde relaxed the rope. Ran in there. The two other kids were crying. Clyde was in shock."

"What did he say?"

Her cheek twitched below her right eye. "He said he was just trying to scare him."

The same thing he'd told the cops about why he'd flashed the hooker. David tried not to let his emotions show in his face. It had been the Med Center that had expunged Clyde's juvenile record, in order to protect the cover-up from future investigations. And the Med Center had paid off DaVella specifically not to alert the other foster parents, so it wouldn't be opened up to paying other settlements. They'd taken kids already terrified of the world and their place in it, and turned up the volume of their fear, yielding remarkable results for the study. Then they'd released these kids back into society, traumatized and angry, and taken no steps to ensure their safety or the safety of those around them.

And David's mother had helped cover it up, providing spin control. His emotions, loose and searing, were of little use right now. He tried to refocus.

"They took him off to a youth detention center," Rhonda was saying. "You know how that goes. Vicious cycle picks up speed."

"Have you noticed anything strange around the house lately?"

"Oh, you know. Bad part of town, so the usual. Spray paint. Mail rifled through from time to time. Someone killed a dog out in our lot last night, but the cops thought it was a cult thing."

"Last night? Who found it?"

"One of my girls. Layla. Like from the Clapton song."

"Can I talk to her?"

"I think she's napping, but I guess I could wake her up."

David followed Rhonda up the stairs and into a cozy room, almost a large garret. A crude but charming rainbow was rendered in paint on the far wall. A child's desk sat in the corner, beside a single bureau. A retarded woman lay on her bed, facedown, wearing a dirty pink jumpsuit, snoring delicately. Rhonda sat beside her on the bed, plucking the fabric. "I can't get her to wear anything else," she whispered with a smile.

David pulled up a chair as Rhonda rubbed Layla's back in tight circles. "C'mon, sweetie, wake up. A man wants to talk to you."

Layla rolled over and sat up, yawning so wide David could distinctly make out her dangling uvula. Her face was puffy from sleep and, maybe, from crying. "Hi."

"Hi there. How are you?"

"Tired."

David smiled. "I am too. I wanted to ask you about the dog you found."

Her eyes welled instantly with tears. David admired her quick vulnerability.

"My dog. He got illed."

"What do you mean your dog?" Rhonda asked.

" 'Othing. Just that I iked im."

"Did you notice anyone out there watching you when you found him?"

Her eyes went to Rhonda. "No."

"Are you sure?" Rhonda asked.

"I idn't do anything." Her breathing quickened into jerks, threatening to grow to sobs. Rhonda's presence clearly made Layla less forthcoming.

"We didn't say you did. We're not blaming you for anything at all." David turned to Rhonda and said quietly. "Is there any way I could see her alone?"

"No, sir," Rhonda said. "I know you're a doctor and all, but I don't leave my girls alone with anyone."

"Okay. I understand." He turned back. "Have you seen anyone else around? Hanging around the place?"

" 'Ometimes he ooks at me from his car."

"From his car?"

"We get perverts drive by from time to time," Rhonda said. "Teenagers poking fun."

"Is that what you meant?"

Layla again cast a nervous glance at Rhonda, then nodded heavily, her full cheeks bouncing with the movement.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Nothing unusual or scary at all. No men hanging around?"

A big head shake.

Rhonda checked her watch, then ruffled Layla's hair. "Okay, sweetie. Why don't you go and round up the others for dinner?"

Layla shuffled out.

David stood up, noticing, for the first time, the exposed rafters. A coldness moved through him. "Was it here? Is this the room where Clyde tortured the boys?"

Rhonda nodded. "Obviously, we don't tell the kids that."

David stared around the room, feeling an irrational sense of awe. The rafters were lower than he'd imagined. "How often did he do this to them? More than a few times?"

Rhonda nudged the chair toward David with her foot. "See for yourself," she said.

Unsure what she wanted him to look at, he climbed on the chair, bringing the top of the rafters into view. Every few inches down the center rafter's length, shallow grooves had been worn in the wood. The kind of grooves a hanging body would make.