Viper's Nest

by Shirley Raye Redmond

  “I think you’ll have to answer a lot more questions this time around,” she ventured.

  “I think you’re right. Reed will want to know in more detail why I even thought there’d be bodies. I overheard him telling Torres they should plan to bring in a cadaver dog. I guess they want to make sure they don’t overlook any possibility of there being more.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I didn’t think we’d find anything—not really. I just wanted another opportunity to get down there. The joke’s on me.”

  “What exactly did you find?” Wren’s voice was tight. “Reed mentioned something about an infant.”

  Wren didn’t talk much about her husband’s death, but yesterday’s shooting had probably brought it all back. As his assistant, Wren typed up his notes, looked through hospital files, and would be doing more research on medical experiments upon the insane. How could she possibly avoid the topic of untimely death?

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Wren said, as though reading his thoughts. “The details will be in the evening paper, I guess. They may even mention it on the local news station tonight.” Wren had a right to hear it from him.

  “We found the remains of an infant wrapped in what looks like a large kitchen dish towel. Just small bones, a tiny skull.”

  “A newborn?” She blinked, her face suddenly pale.

  “I think so,” he replied softly. “Maybe even a miscarriage or a premature infant.”

  “But how did the poor little thing come to be in the food tunnel?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared out at the sun-dappled, shadowy patterns that decorated the sprawling grounds. His mind raced a mile a minute, trying to come up with the most logical explanation for the presence of those tiny remains in the cookie tin.

  Wren didn’t push or nag. She waited for him to share his thoughts.

  “I have a theory or two,” he said finally.

  “Go on, tell me.” Wren smiled at him with sweet understanding.

  How attractive she was. She wouldn’t remain a widow for long.

  “I don’t really know how or why, but I could make some guesses—none of them good. Perhaps the infant was born here—the illegitimate offspring of one of the patients or a staff member.”

  “Was the baby killed?”

  “I don’t know. The police report will determine that.”

  “Why wasn’t the baby buried in the hospital cemetery?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “I think it would be hard to keep a patient’s pregnancy a secret here. You saw the women’s ward. You heard what Gorse said about the over population and the way they packed them into those rooms like sardines. There was no privacy. Someone would have noticed.”

  “Someone on staff may have separated a pregnant patient from the general population and hidden her away until after she gave birth. There are rooms enough—particularly that big one on the fourth floor,” he pointed out.

  “In the attic?” Wren asked, fixing him with a disbelieving stare. “Didn’t Gorse say the attic on the fourth floor was used for storage?”

  “That’s what he said, but I happen to know there are living quarters up there at the far west end. Fairly spacious. There’s a small kitchen and even a dumbwaiter that comes up from the main kitchen. The windows face the front lawn, looking down on the bandstand. Plenty of sunshine.”

  “How do you know that?” Wren looked at him, amazed.

  “I read about it. At one time during the 1960s, it was used as a staff lounge. Prior to that it was used as a special apartment for wealthy patients, like Mrs. Abraham Lincoln.”

  “This is all too incredible. It’s rather hard to take in.”

  “Wren, listen, when you get back to the office, I want you to pull out my notes regarding mental health studies conducted between the 1930s and 1950s—both in the United States and Europe.”

  “Even those in with the World War II folders?”

  “Especially those conducted during World War II. There was considerable medical experimentation going on before, during, and after the war years. The Nazis even had a secret breeding program, and the Japanese military doctors conducted hush-hush experiments on prisoners of war on islands all across the Pacific. Mental patients made the best guinea pigs. For the most part, no one really cared what happened to them.”

  “Do you really think that could have been going on here?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m going to find out. No matter what it takes.” He dangled the car keys. Wren’s fingers brushed his as she took possession of them. He experienced a mild tingling sensation, which surprised him. But not as much as her next comment.

  “Maybe your mother knew something immoral or illegal was happening here.”

  “Maybe,” he acknowledged, pondering the point. Was his mother afraid because she’d seen or heard something she wasn’t meant to? He opened his car door.

  Wren grasped his sleeve. “Wait, Allan, before you go, I need to speak to you about…about something else.”

  Did she intend to quit her job?

  “What is it?” he asked, bracing himself for the bad news. When she removed her hand from his arm, he realized how much he didn’t want to lose her—her services as a research assistant, of course.

  “Last week I received an anonymous note in the mail.” She fumbled with the outside pocket of her purse.

  Allan’s eyebrows shot up. “An anonymous note? What did it say?”

  “Here, read it for yourself.” She handed him a small invitation-size envelope with a single piece of ivory colored paper inside—nothing out of the ordinary. It was the type of paper that could be found in any discount store across the country.

  He unfolded the creased sheet and read the single sentence, printed in a childish scrawl: Your husband knew more than was good for him.

  “What does it mean?” he asked. “What did Peter know?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “What could it mean?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Peter was a pastor. People were always coming to him for counseling. He was privy to all sorts of personal secrets.”

  “Did he share them with you?”

  “No, of course not. That wouldn’t have been professional,” she replied. “People trusted him. Peter wouldn’t violate that trust by telling me what they’d confided.”

  Allan pondered the cryptic note again. “It seems odd that you should have received this now. Your husband died in the car accident more than a year ago, right?”

  Wren nodded. “I don’t even know why I’m showing this to you. You can’t do a thing about it. You didn’t know Peter either. I guess the baby’s remains in the tunnel and yesterday’s unexplained shooting have me on edge. At first, I thought it was nothing more than a cruel poison pen letter, you know? But now, I can’t help wondering if it’s something more sinister, that there might be some truth in it.”

  Allan felt his heart give a single, painful thud. “What are you saying? That you were the shooter’s target yesterday?”

  She gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. What do you think? Should I be worried about this?”

  “That depends,” he replied slowly. “It depends on what Peter knew and if the writer of this note thinks Peter told you what he knew.”

  What if someone had purposely caused that accident? But why? To make sure Pastor Peter Bergschneider kept his mouth shut? About what? Feeling foolishly over-dramatic, he laughed. “This is crazy, Wren! Maybe Reed’s right. I should be plotting thrillers or horror stories. I’m imagining all sorts of dreadful scenarios, like one of those old spine-tingling movies with murder, mayhem, and kidnapping.”

  After a moment’s reflection, she said in a tremulous voice, “In a lot of those old movies, the child gets kidnapped.”

  “I’m showing this to Reed,” he said, scrambling out of the car with more than his usual nimbleness.

  ~*~

  With a plastic jug
of apple cider in each hand, Wren tried to stifle a yawn as she followed Pippi and the other the elementary-age youngsters through the door of the nursing home. It was the second Friday of the month—time for Friday Night Flicks with the Old Folks, as Deb referred to the church youth group’s monthly service project. Wren normally enjoyed coming—the elderly residents, so easily entertained, looked forward to the children’s visit each month.

  But the day had been a long one, and she was tired and emotionally drained. After leaving Allan with the detectives in the parking lot at the asylum, she’d dutifully returned to his office on campus and spent most of the afternoon sorting through the notes on medical experimentation. It had been grim reading. Now her thoughts were plagued with the knowledge of man’s inhumanity toward others. Niggling thoughts of Pippi possibly being kidnapped also increased her mental unrest. Why had Allan even mentioned those old movies?

  Both the evening newspaper and television news had mentioned the police discovery of the tiny skeleton in the cookie tin hidden in a storage alcove in the food tunnels of the condemned asylum. A full-scale investigation was now underway.

  Allan would be right there in the thick of it. That meant, indirectly, she was also a participant. Wren wasn’t sure she was up to it.

  “What did you bring us this evening?” a smiling nurse asked, greeting them at the entrance of the community room. Her smooth, dark skin matched her chocolate brown eyes. A black pin with white lettering attached to a pocket on her crisp white uniform read Bea Cormeny.

  “Doughnuts and cider,” Wren replied.

  “And the Little Rascals’ Classic Hits,” Deb added with a grin.

  “My favorite!” Bea declared, grinning back.

  “Mine too,” a frail, white-haired woman said as she rolled up toward them in her wheelchair. “Love those little rascals. And the movie kids aren’t bad either.”

  They shared a laugh and then made their way into the large community room that had been set up for the evening’s entertainment. A few other parents from the church straggled in with their children in tow and bringing tubs of popcorn that had already been popped, buttered, and salted.

  “A smaller-than-usual crowd tonight,” Deb commented, looking around.

  Wren, who’d been keeping an eye on Pippi, scanned the room, counting close to three dozen residents, many of them in wheelchairs, waiting for the fun to begin. Some reached out their hands toward the youngsters, hoping to coax a child to come visit with them for a while.

  “There’s a flu bug going around,” Bea informed them as Deb unloaded paper cups from one of the plastic bags she’d carried in. “The sick residents have been confined to their rooms. But we do have a first-timer tonight. He’s not very sociable as a rule, but I convinced him to come this time.” Bea pointed a plump finger at a shriveled man sitting in a wheelchair slightly apart from the other residents. “His name is Freddy Grizzard. He has nightmares almost every night and often cries out in his sleep. He makes enough noise to wake the dead, I can tell you,” she said, shaking her head. “Whatever it is he’s dreaming about, I don’t want to know.”

  Wren peered around the nurse’s broad shoulder to look at Mr. Grizzard. The man was bald except for a few tufts of gray hair. Saliva oozed from the corner of his slack lower lip. It dripped onto the front of his blue chambray shirt, where it left a wet, sticky stain. His eyes were closed, and he gripped the arms of his wheelchair with fingers like talons.

  “He has no family at all,” Bea went on. “He used to be a patient at the old mental hospital until they shut it down. Because of his age, they transferred him here.”

  Her pulse quickening, Wren gave Mr. Grizzard a second glance.

  Bea leaned closer. “I read in the paper you were there with that professor when they discovered the skeleton.”

  Wren pulled her gaze from the old man in the wheelchair and fixed it on the nurse. “Yes, I was there.”

  “I can hardly believe it. It makes you wonder about all the rumors, doesn’t it? Do you think they’ll find any more?”

  “I hope not,” Wren said with sincerity. The very thought of another infant’s body turning up made her stomach roil. She quickly turned her attention back to the old man slumped in the wheelchair. None of the kids had made their way to him, preferring to speak with the elderly residents they were already familiar with. What had his life been like?

  “Hey, Bea, why don’t you take me over to Mr. Grizzard and introduce us?” Wren suggested.

  “Sure thing.”

  Wren followed Bea across the room, crowded now with laughing, chattering children, their parents and the senior residents of the home. One of the dads prepped the video while Deb and some of the other moms began passing out plastic bowls filled with buttery popcorn.

  Bea gave the old man a gentle touch on the shoulder. “Mr. Grizzard, you’ve got company.”

  Freddy opened his eyes slowly, regarding the women standing before him with stony indifference.

  Wren reached down to pat his gnarled hand. “Hello, Mr. Grizzard. My name is Wren, like the bird,” she said. “Would you like some popcorn or apple cider?”

  “I want a cigarette,” he replied in a low, quavering voice. “I’d do just about anything for one of those. Or maybe a Twinkie.”

  “Shame on you, Mr. Grizzard,” Bea said with a throaty chuckle. “You know they don’t allow cigarettes in the nursing home. No cigarettes and no Twinkies either. You need to keep an eye on your boyish figure.” She chuckled at her own joke. She looked at Wren and whispered an aside. “I am sorry he can’t have a Twinkie now and then. It’s a meager wish for an old fella almost ninety-two years old, but they don’t keep those sorts of snacks in the kitchen.” Bea left to help another resident with a walker, lingering in the doorway.

  Wren turned to Freddy. “I’ll try to remember to bring you a box of Twinkies next time I come, Mr. Grizzard. Would you like that?”

  The old man’s rheumy eyes sparkled with anticipation. “You bring me a Twinkie and I’ll tell…” He stopped abruptly, leaving his statement unfinished.

  “Tell me what?” Wren asked, politely curious.

  Breathing heavily, the old man fixed her with an intense stare. His lower jaw wagged with agitation. “I’ll tell about the corpses. Horrible, they was.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Unnatural.”

  Wren, her stomach fluttering with something like fear, cast a quick glance over her shoulder before kneeling beside the old man’s wheelchair. “What corpses?” she choked out in a harsh whisper.

  Freddy’s eyelids fluttered. “The Brain warned me not to tell anybody, not anybody. Threatened to do bad things to me with one of those electric wires.” He raised his haunted eyes to her face. “But I’ll tell you, if you give me a Twinkie…or a cigarette.”

  ~*~

  Wren stirred a packet of sugar into her iced tea.

  Allan sat across from her at his favorite bistro. She appeared every bit as jittery as she’d sounded when she called him earlier on the phone, suggesting they meet for lunch. He’d been surprised, of course. They never saw each other over the weekend and never did anything socially together. Considering her unnerving revelation about the anonymous note, Allan didn’t dare say no.

  “Do you think the old man at the nursing home might really know something?” she asked, after relating her conversation with Freddy Grizzard.

  “Might know what?” he asked, shoving a fork into his plate of fettuccine Alfredo. He couldn’t imagine an old man, wheelchair bound and perhaps suffering with senility or dementia, being any help at all. But not wanting to hurt Wren’s feelings, he didn’t share these thoughts.

  “Aren’t you even curious? He may have known your mother.”

  “I thought you meant he might know something about the baby’s skeleton in the cookie tin.”

  “Well, that too,” Wren admitted, taking a sip of tea.

  “It’s not likely,” he told her. “There were thousands of patients at the hospital when my mother was
there. Gorse said so. Chances of his knowing my mother are slim, at best. She would have been in the women’s ward most of the time. Besides, whoever buried the cookie tin in the tunnel wouldn’t have shared that kind of information with Freddy Grizzard, I’m sure.”

  “He rambled on about unnatural corpses. He mentioned someone called The Brain. He seemed pretty intimidated by him. The man threatened to torture him with an electrical wire of some kind.”

  Allan puckered his forehead. The old man’s story seemed pretty bizarre. Frankly, it was hard to believe. The clue perhaps was in the phrase rambled on. Grizzard was old. He might be getting things mixed up in his head.

  “Perhaps he’s a war veteran, or maybe he worked on the hospital’s burial detail,” he proposed, trying to account for the mention of corpses.

  “It can’t be a coincidence,” Wren insisted.

  When he cocked an eyebrow at her, she blushed and lowered her gaze. She’d barely eaten half of her chicken salad croissant.

  “I should probably tell you that I don’t believe in coincidences—not when I’ve been praying about this.”

  Allan didn’t believe in prayer or God or anything close to a higher Power. But it would be cruel to say so to Wren, considering that her dead husband had been a pastor. He decided to humor her. “What exactly have you been praying for?”

  “I’ve been praying that God will bring the truth to light about the baby’s skeleton and about your mother’s time at the asylum.” Her face glowed with a sincerity that Allan found moving.

  He decided to keep his unkind and skeptical thoughts to himself—that God wasn’t likely to lend a hand in either matter. But he didn’t have the heart to say so to this woman. So he nodded and thrust another forkful of pasta into his mouth before he inserted his foot there.

  “I think the Lord wanted us to find those remains. Justice needs to be done.”

  He couldn’t help chuckling this time, as he picked up his napkin and wiped his lips. “So the Lord picked us to get the job done—an American history professor and a preacher’s widow?”