right out of school. Gilbert is smart, very smart, but he’s also very ill. There’s no doubt in my mind that he committed the horrible murders he was charged with. I also have no doubt that he’s committed more such crimes. He’s extremely paranoid and thinks the government, the hospital, and especially me are all trying to kill him. He has delusions that he’s a government hit man and spy who was trained to kill. He doesn’t deny that he killed the victims, he says that it was his duty, and he did it for his country. I can tell you that he truly believes that. The reason that he was on lockdown recently is that we have to secure him from time to time when we know he’s planning an escape. He is constantly making plans to escape and usually attempts in the spring. He organizes an escape attempt every year because he thinks that he has to make his way to Spain, where he is to meet his government contact. He says that he and his government handler have a pre-arranged meeting on April twenty-eighth at the Plaza de Toros in Madrid. If he can make it to the meeting he’ll be taken to a safe house; if he doesn’t make it, the government will send a hit man to kill him. So, every year we lock him down periodically and for most of the month of April. The first year he tried it he made it to the front gate. We still don’t really know how he did that. Like I said, he’s very intelligent. It took us a couple years to put two and two together. We interviewed some of the other patients, who told us about his plans. If you look at your letters, it appears that he was trying to contact you just before April each year. We call it Gilbert’s Spring Break Out.”
The escape plan made perfect sense to Seven and it explained many of the cryptic messages in the letters. Whatever hopes he had of formulating some type of reasonable relationship with his father were quickly dissolved. The extent of his father’s mental illness reached further than Seven had fathomed. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue on to the visit or not, but he knew that he would forever have questions and regrets if he walked away.
“I understand, Walter. I have to at least see him one time,” he said.