Harvestland

TWENTY-TWO

"Celia Gannon. Now that is a name I have not heard for quite some time."

Eliza Lehman was in the secluded mobile home of Dr. Matthew Chance. He lived alone on several acres of land out in the ass middle of nowhere. It was hardly the home she had pictured for the retired Smith's Grove psychiatrist.

But nothing was what she had imagined when it came to Matthew Chance. She had found a few old pictures of him in her search dating back to Smith's Grove Sanitarium circa the sixties and seventies. In every picture, he wore a suit or a lab coat and thick-framed glasses, looking remarkably typical for a doctor of that era. So she had in her mind the image of an old man in a button-up and cardigan, living in that organized clutter of the erudite bachelor, an old academic still buried in his work after all these years, a home without the influence of a woman's touch or a woman's love.

But the man that met her at the door of the trailer was a veritable American Indian.

He stood about six feet tall, with tan skin and dark hair and a long face with high cheekbones and a dour expression. He wore a buckskin shirt, breechcloth, leather leggings, and moccasin boots.

She wondered if this guy was for real.

The inside of the trailer was, in her opinion, garishly over-decorated with Native American regalia. Though she was no student of tribal history, she saw the markings of several different tribes in the decorations. There were paintings of Indian scenes, framed tribal clothing and weapons, war bonnets, feathered head dresses, something that resembled a lacrosse stick, and seemingly any open wall space was claimed by various symbols. Food, animals, weather patterns, the sun and the moon.

Nowhere did she see the study lined with psychiatric journals and textbooks she had expected. Instead there seemed to be sprawled everywhere except a shelf various dog-eared books on Native American religion and culture.

"Why, it must be almost forty years since I've seen Ms. Gannon," Chance said. "Tell me, have you come across her?"

"Not exactly. Doctor, do you recognize this?" Eliza handed him the typescript patient analysis of Celia Gannon.

Chance did not reveal anything in his face as he read the memo. When he was done he looked up with his eyes only and stared at her. "How did you get this?"

"Found it."

"Found it."

"Leisurely walk through the old hospital."

"Is venturing through abandoned mental institutions a hobby of yours, Ms. Lehman?"

"The short story is this: A file from my office went missing. I tracked it down. It led me to the old hospital. To room 616 and that piece of paper."

"Room 616," Chance said.

"Yes. It's more out of curiosity than anything else that I'm here. It's...perplexed me. And I'm not the type of woman who tends to be perplexed."

"I see."

"Do you know what became of all the old patient files when the hospital closed?"

Chance shrugged. "I imagine most were transferred to other institutions. At least patient files that were still active. The old ones? My guess is those are buried in some vault belonging to the state somewhere."

"My thoughts as well. Which is why it is so perplexing that I even found that sheet of paper. There's no indication of any other paperwork still inside the hospital."