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direction. It was lined with the usual bevy o: turn-of-the-previous-century, brick-fronted stores. About midway a large white steepled church stood behind a green across from -i granite municipal building. A swelling and noisy throng of schoolkids with bookbags were moving north along the sidewalks like migratory wingless birds.
    "It's a cute town," Deborah commented as she leaned forward to get a better view through the windshield. She slowed to less than twenty miles per hour. "It looks almost too cute to be real, like it's part of a theme park."
    "I didn't see any sign for the Wingate Clinic," Joanna commented.
    "Hey, did you hear the one about why it takes a hundred million sperm to fertilize one egg?"
    "Can't say that I have," Joanna said.
    "Because none of them are willing to stop and ask directions."
    Joanna chuckled. "I suppose that means we're going to stop."
    "You've got that right," Deborah said as she turned into a parking spot in front of the RiteSmart drugstore. There was angled parking up and down both sides of Main Street. "Do you want to come in or wait here?"
    "I'm not going to let you have all the fun," Joanna said as she alighted from the car.
    The women had to dodge children chasing each other along the sidewalk. Their taunting yells and screeches were just shy of the auditory pain threshold, and it was a relief for both women when the drugstore door closed behind them. In contrast, the interior of the store was engulfed in a relative hush. Adding to the calm was the fact that there were no customers. There weren't even any store personnel in sight.
    After exchanging shrugs when no one appeared, the two women walked down the central aisle toward the prescription section in the back of the store. Positioned on the counter was a bell, which Deborah struck decisively. The noise was considerable in the comparable silence. Within moments a mostly bald, obese man in a pharmacist's tunic unbuttoned at the collar appeared through a pair of swinging doors like those leading into saloons in Hollywood westerns. Although it was relatively cool in the store, beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
    "Can I help you ladies?" the proprietor asked cheerfully.
    "We're looking for the Wingate Clinic," Deborah said.
    "No problem," the proprietor said. "That's out in the Cabot State Mental Hospital."
    "Excuse me?" Deborah said with surprise. "It's in a mental institution?"
    "Yup," the proprietor said. "Old Doc Wingate bought or rented the whole damn place. I'm not sure which. Nobody really knows, not that it matters much."
    "Oh, I understand," Deborah said. "It used to be a mental institution."
    "Yup," the proprietor repeated. "For about a hundred years or so. It was also a TB sanitarium. Seems that the people down in Boston were eager to banish their mentally ill and people suffering with tuberculosis. Kinda locked 'em up in a fortress of sorts. Kinda outta sight, outta mind. A hundred years ago Bookford was considered to be way out in the sticks. Boy, times have sure changed. Now we're a Boston bedroom community."
    "They just locked these people up?" Joanna questioned. "Didn't they try to treat them?"
    "I suppose," the proprietor said. "But there wasn't much treatment back in those days. Well, that's not entirely true. They did a lot of surgery out there. You know, experimental stuff like collapsing the lungs of the people with TB and lobotomies on the crazies."
    "That sounds awful," Joanna said. She shuddered.
    "I imagine it was," the proprietor agreed.
    "Well, there's no TB or mental patients anymore," Deborah added.
    "Of course not," the proprietor said. "The Cabot, as we call it around here, has been closed for twenty to thirty years. I think it was in the seventies when the last patients were moved out. You remember: That was when the politicians began to seriously screw around with health care. It was a tragedy of sorts. I think they just bused the remaining patients back to Boston and let 'em loose in the