by L V Gaudet
On the way to Marjory McAllister’s room, Lawrence looks into the open doorway of one of the rooms they are passing.
An elderly and very frail looking woman sits restrained to a wheelchair. She stares at him with fierce intelligence, not the blissful unawareness the Director implied all the residents have.
“Help me,” she mouths to him. “Get me out of here. They are trying to kill me.”
Feeling disturbed, he quickly moves on, catching up to Jim and the facility manager.
“There are no men here,” Lawrence observes.
“We keep them in a separate wing for our residents’ safety. Here we are,” Miss Krueger says, stopping in front of a room. “Do not say anything to upset her.”
She walks briskly into the room, putting a smile on that does not lessen the severity of her face.
“Mrs. McAllister, we have some visitors today.”
The elderly woman sitting in an uncomfortable looking hospital chair in the small room looks up at them.
“Did we not get dressed this morning?” Miss Krueger asks.
Marjory looks down at her nightgown, then up at the two men and the Director. “No, I think I’m the only one who did not get dressed.”
“Aren’t we just the card today,” Miss Krueger says.
Marjory frowns at her in response.
“These gentlemen would like to visit with you. Gentlemen, please introduce yourselves. There is no need for formalities here.”
“Jim McNelly,” Jim says, catching her meaning. He steps forward to shake her hand.
“Lawrence Hawkworth,” Lawrence follows suit.
Miss Krueger nods at them to go ahead.
“Mrs. McAllister, how are you doing today?” Jim asks.
“I’m fine.” She is sizing him up.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about your son, Jason.”
Marjory’s hands come up in a nervous motion, and she lowers them again, resting them on her lap.
“What has the boy done this time?” she asks.
“Actually, we’re more interested in his friend, Michael. Do you know Michael?”
Marjory frowns at them. “Michael? No, I don’t know any Michael. Jason doesn’t really have any friends. Whatever Jason and this Michael have done, we will deal with it when William comes home.” Her hands flinch, touching each other. She flattens them on her lap.
“Michael Underwood, the name isn’t familiar?”
“No, I’m afraid not. You did not say what this is about. Did something happen at school? I don’t recognize you. Are you new teachers at the school?”
“We’re police, Mrs. McAllister.”
Her hands come up, holding each other in a nervous gesture. She looks alarmed. She starts wringing her hands.
“Where is Rick Dalton? Where is the sheriff? Why isn’t he here? What has Jason done?” She is glancing around nervously.
“Do you know Katherine Kingslow?” Jim asks. “Have you heard the name?”
“No, I don’t know the family. Is she a new girl in Jason’s class?”
“Something like that,” Jim says. “Mrs. McAllister, we are looking for Katherine Kingslow. She is missing and we believe she may be with Michael Underwood. Are you sure Jason never mentioned either of them?”
“No, he never did. Jason can’t be involved in whatever they have done; he’s been home with me. He’s missed school again because there is so much work to be done on the farm and his father is away a lot. So, whatever these other kids have been up to, it’s nothing to do with Jason. You need to go now. William will be home soon and he doesn’t like visitors.”
Marjory is wringing her hands anxiously in her lap now.
“Mrs. McAllister, we know that your son knows Michael and Katherine. We believe he knows where Michael took her.”
“No, no, no.” Marjory is wringing her hands harder, twisting them like she’s trying to strangle them. “Jason is not involved.” She looks around in confusion.
“Jason? Jason. Where is he? He’s here somewhere, doing his chores.”
She looks at them, her eyes muddled in a haze of confusion.
“Who are you? Where is William? William?” She looks around for him. She is talking to herself now, oblivious to the people in the room. “William does not like visitors. He does not like attention brought to the family. William is going to be angry. He is going to whip that boy like he has never whipped him before.
I burned it, I burned it, it’s gone. No one will ever find his little treasure.”
She looks up at them, suddenly realizing they are there.
“Hello?” She looks a little alarmed to see them there. “Why are you here?” She looks around quickly. “William will be home soon.
She frowns. “Where’s Sophie? Sophie? I told that girl not to go into the woods.”
She looks at Miss Krueger. “I don’t know you. Whose mother are you?”
Jim and Lawrence exchange a look. Clearly the woman is too far gone to be of any help.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Jim says.
“Where am I?” Marjory asks. “How did I get here?”
“Mrs. McAllister, we’ve been over this many times,” Miss Krueger says. “You are in a hospital.”
“Hospital?” Some of the confusion melts away and sadness creeps in. “William never visits me.”
Miss Krueger gives Jim and Lawrence a look that says she has heard this many times from all their residents. The old complain that family does not visit enough.
“You don’t get visitors?” Lawrence asks.
Marjory is still looking around in confusion, not recognizing the place.
“Sophie?” she says, “Does Sophie come to see me?”
“Yes, Sophie visits you. Not very often,” Miss Krueger says.
Marjory nods. “Jason visited me a few times. I remember. Until his father told him not to come back.”
A cloud crosses her eyes. “I miss Jason, and Sophie. David came to see me once too.”
“David?” Jim pounces on it. “Who is David?”
Marjory looks alarmed again. She is wringing her hands so hard that Jim is afraid she’ll hurt herself.
Marjory looks up at him and he can see the lucidity in her eyes, the fog of confusion clearing away.
“William does not visit me.” She looks around at each of them, repeating it louder. “William does not visit me. Why doesn’t he come?” Her expression and voice are growing agitated.
“Where are my kids? Where are Jason and Sophie?”
She’s struggling out of her chair, to stand, clearly not accustomed to doing it often.
“Mrs. McAllister, please sit back down or I’ll have to call the nurses,” Miss Krueger warns.
A look of fear flashes across Marjory’s eyes, but then her expression sets with determination.
“You can’t keep me here. You can’t keep my kids away. You can’t keep William away.”
“Mrs. McAllister, sit down and calm down,” Miss Krueger says sternly.
“I want out, I want to go home!”
Miss Krueger steps to the door, calling out to the hallway, “Nurse!”
They hear footsteps running and a look of fear flashes across Marjory’s eyes again.
Two large nurses push their way in, grabbing Marjory and manhandling her down onto the bed. Marjory tries to fight them off, crying and wailing at the sudden attack.
Jim cringes at the way they roughly handle this frail looking old woman, watching as they hold her down while one stabs her arm with a needle, pressing the plunger home. He looks at Lawrence.
Lawrence is leaning forward, watching the nurses with alarm.
“Do you have to handle her so roughly?”
“The residents must be kept from getting too agitated,” Miss Krueger says. “She will get the whole ward going.”
Marjory’s struggles are already growing weaker and her cries softer.
Miss Krueger is ushering Jim and Lawrence out.
“Her husband n
ever visits her?” Jim asks as she walks them briskly down the hall.
“He visits her every day, she just doesn’t remember. Most of the time she doesn’t even know who he is.”
“And her kids? They visit her?”
“Her daughter does, not often. I think her son did once or twice. He hasn’t been here in years.”
“What about this David she mentioned? Any idea who he is? Would you have a record?”
“We would if he has ever visited. But she has never had any visitors except her immediate family. We don’t normally allow visitors outside of the immediate family.
Lawrence turns to look as they pass the room with the old woman strapped down to a wheelchair.
She stares into his eyes as they pass, her eyes still filled with a fierce lucid clarity.
The Director escorts them back through the secure door, past the reception there, and into the outer reception area.
The false funereal opulence makes the wretched inner sanatorium even more shocking once the silence settles around them once again.
“I hope you gentlemen aren’t too disappointed,” Miss Krueger says with a superior air. “I did warn you that you would be wasting your time.”
“No, it was good. It crosses one witness off our list. Thank you for your cooperation.” Jim nods his way out and makes a hasty exit, Lawrence on his heels and grateful to escape.
“Remind me never to get old or senile,” Lawrence says as they walk quickly back to the car.
Jim turns to Lawrence once they are seated back in his car.
“Any ideas who this David could be?”
“None.”
“Marjory is pretty far gone. She won’t be any help.”
“I have a feeling she isn’t as far gone as she seems.”
“You think?” Jim fires up the engine and starts pulling away.
“Any suspicions?”
“We know Michael Underwood is an alias.” Lawrence nods to himself, thinking, running scenes through his mind, trying to imagine who David could be. He is tense and stressed, off. He was barely able to concentrate in the care facility, images bombarding him and trying to play out in his mind. He tries to sift through those ghosts of moments past in his mind.
One teases at him. It is an unfamiliar place. A boy, not quite a teen. His eyes are haunted. He looks like he probably hasn’t eaten in days.
“Are you his mother?” the boy asks.
A woman turns around. Marjory, younger, past middle age.
“Who are you?” she asks. “Why are you here?”
The boy cringes, struggling with the words.
“David.” He makes a face like the name tastes bad.
“Are you his mother? Jason McAllister’s?”
“Yes. What do you want?” She is wringing a towel she holds in her hands, twisting it nervously.
“My sister…”
“Are you all right?” Jim’s voice breaks the image. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Lawrence’s complexion is pale, grey and pasty. He looks shaken. He turns to Jim.
“David.”
“Did you think of something?”
“He was a kid. Jason McAllister had kids he got from somewhere. It would make sense. Who doesn’t bring their kids to visit their grandparents some time?”
“A man who has no kids; who kidnapped them and probably murdered their mother.”
“What if he did, though? Marjory said David visited her once.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Michael. The two kids Jason kidnapped. His age fits. I’d bet David is Michael, that that’s what he called him. McAllister changed the kids’ names after he ended up with them. He could have called the boy David.”
Jim’s jaw clenches. “And the girl. At the prison, Michael raised his voice when he went to see McAllister. He demanded to know where she was. He demanded to know where Cassie was.”
He takes his eyes off the road, turning to look at Lawrence.
“Now I know who Cassie is.”
“His sister,” they say almost in unison.
“Now what?” Lawrence asks. “Marjory can’t help us find Michael.”
“We need to visit Auntie Sophie.”
“Any idea where she is?”
“No.”
The severe Director of Bayburry Street Geriatric Home purses her lips at the retreating detectives’ backs as they make their quick exit, the heavy front door closing behind them.
“There’s something off about that pair.”
She turns away and returns to her office just behind the empty reception desk of the funereal entrance to the home.
In contrast to the elaborate display that greets visitors when they first walk in, her office is simply decorated without the attempt at looking like anything but a utilitarian office devoid of all personality. There are no flowers or pictures. Not even a single family photo.
She sits at her desk, making a quick call to summon one of the nurses to her office, and then waits with quiet reserve. Minutes later, the woman arrives somewhat breathless from running across the facility and looking ruffled.
“Have a seat,” Miss Krueger nods her in. “How is our Marjory McAllister after her visit?”
“She is agitated and is in and out of cognizance. She kept going on, talking nonsense gibberish. She’s talking about lost children, coyotes, little toes, and graveyards. I’ve never seen her in such a state. She starts, then she seems to realize we hear her and she clamps up. Something is really upsetting her. She had to be sedated a second time. She is sleeping now.”
Miss Krueger nods thoughtfully. “When is the last time Mr. William McAllister was here to visit?”
“Three days. She’s been growing more agitated each day he doesn’t come.” She pauses, unsure if she should say what is on her mind or not. She decides to take a chance. Concern has been eating at her gut for the old man who shows so much devotion to his wife.
“It’s not like him. In the years Marjory has been here, he has never missed a day visiting her. What if something is wrong? I mean, he is pretty old. What if-?” she breaks off.
“If the old bird has passed on, then Mrs. McAllister will forget he ever existed. It’s not pretty, but it is how the ailing mind works. She already doesn’t know who he is most days. The outside world will forget she exists here too. Mrs. McAllister will while away her remaining years here in obscurity, blissfully unaware that her family has abandoned her like so many others have abandoned their elders to our care when they become too bothersome to visit.”
The nurse frowns. She thinks it is deplorable how the elderly seem to be just dumped off and forgotten at their facility to spend their final years locked in a prison of both hospital starkness and their own minds.
But there are those few cases whose mental incapacity she doubts. Mrs. Marjory McAlister is one of them.
“Maybe we should make some effort to contact him,” she suggests. She knows her boss will most likely shoot the idea down. She is pretty sure the woman has given up on their patients’ families.
“I’ll contact Mr. McAllister.”
Miss Krueger‘s words shock her. They give her hope.
She swallows uncertainly. Something about the woman who is her boss has always terrified her. She just can’t put her finger on what.
“Is there anything else?” Miss Krueger looks at her pointedly. She senses the nurse has something else to say.
“Mrs. Bheals got out of her restraints again,” the nurse says uncertainly. “She was at it again, trying to escape.” She pauses and almost holds the next bit back. “She’s been unusually lucid.”
Miss Krueger‘s lips are a grim tight line.
“Thank you. We will need to keep both ladies sedated. We don’t want anyone hurting themselves. That will be all.”
Dismissed, the nurse hurries out, regretting telling her boss about Mrs. Bheals.
I was worried about Mrs. Bheals. I don’t think she belongs here. It’s horr
ible how we keep her tied down to a wheel chair. I’ve seen her in there, behind those eyes, intelligent and alert. I know she’s in there, not like some of the others. There is no confusion there.
I think Marjory is in there too. She’s upset and forgot herself today, but she seems so … careful … in what she says.
She passes through the ladies lockdown unit, wanting to take another look at the two ladies. She stops at Mrs. Bheals’s doorway and is heartbroken by what she sees.
The frail old woman is sitting in her wheelchair, slumped and staring off vacantly, her eyes unblinking and dry looking. A string of spittle hangs down from her slack mouth. She has been strapped down to the chair again, although in her state it is pointless.
She pulls a small bottle from her pocket, slipping into the room. Tilting Mrs. Bheals’s head back, she quickly drops a few drops of saline into each eye. It’s as much to help the old woman as to give her a chance to reassure herself that she’s still breathing. The old woman is oblivious to her presence, but she feels her faint breath on her wrist.
She quickly moves on, finding Marjory McAllister’s room down the hall. She stops in the doorway and looks in.
Marjory is lying on her back on the bed just as she was left when the nurses finished sedating her. Her nightgown is hiked up and her hair dishevelled from the fight.
She slips in, straightening the old woman’s nightgown and trying to straighten her hair. She quickly drops a few drops of saline in each drying eye.
“They could at least leave her with a little dignity.”
The drugs have left her in a state that is not sleep. Her eyes are half open, drugged into oblivion. She hears the rattle of the old woman’s breathing. She grips her and rolls her onto her side.
Just as she suspected, her mouth is filling with drool. She would have eventually choked on it. It dribbles from the corner of her slack mouth, thick and stringy like the other old woman.
Tears burning at her eyes, she leaves the old woman.
“I wish I had some way to contact their families and tell them to take them out of here.”
Part Six
Solving Problems
33Old Men Talking
William McAllister shuffles up to the door of the little coffee house, pushing it open to the delighted jangle of a bell over the door. His arthritic hands are knotted with bulging veins, the bones showing through the age-spotted skin covering them.