Viper's Nest

by Shirley Raye Redmond

  The unexplained gunshot hadn’t been thrilling either. The more she thought about it, the more Wren was convinced the shooting was accidental. If the shooter had intended to injure or kill one of them, he would have taken a second shot. If he’d wanted to simply scare them away from the kitchen complex, he’d have shot again too. But he hadn’t. There’d been one shot, as if someone had fired a gun without intending to.

  Tiptoeing into Pippi’s room, Wren heaped a few stuffed animals in the white wicker toy basket and then shuffled quietly over to the bed. The small freckled face lying on the pillow, lips slightly parted, was identical to Peter’s, only younger and more pixie-like. Wren gently swept back her daughter’s tumbled mass of brown curls, as she bent over to kiss Pippi's cheek.

  The doorbell rang as she came back down the hall. Wren's heart lurched as it always did now whenever the phone rang or someone knocked. She was much too edgy these days and had been ever since Peter’s death. Peering through the peephole, she recognized Detective Reed standing upon the doorstep. Apprehension slid down her spine as she opened the door. “I didn’t know detectives worked on weekends,” she said with a tentative smile.

  “Sometimes we do,” he admitted. “I need to talk to you, Mrs. Bergschneider, about your anonymous note.”

  “It’s rather late, don’t you think? It’s after nine o’clock,” she protested.

  “True, but I understand you have a little girl, and I didn’t want to discuss the matter while she might be around to overhear our conversation.” He fixed her with a measuring glance.

  “I suppose Dr. Partner told you that,” she said, reluctantly opening the screen door to let him in.

  “He did,” Reed admitted. As he stepped inside, the detective glanced around the room with professional curiosity. Wren wondered what he was thinking as he observed the comfortable, clean lines of her simple Scandinavian furniture, the crowded book shelves, the assorted framed photographs of her daughter on the walls and on top of every available surface.

  “I suppose you could come down to the station next week and we could talk then,” he told her.

  Wren shook her head. “You’re here now. Have a seat.” She silently prayed that God would soon make all of this go away—the anxiety over the note, the police investigation into the unsolved shooting, and the horrifying discovery in the tunnel underneath the old asylum.

  She should have given the note to the police right away, but she didn’t want to come across as some crazy widow lady, easily alarmed by a prank letter. The note wasn’t a threatening one—Your husband knew more than was good for him. It sounded as though it had been written by an unkind, disgruntled person, but not a dangerous one.

  “So how can I help you? What have you learned?” She became mindful of her role as hostess. “Would you like some coffee or iced tea or anything?” She asked dutifully.

  Reed declined. “I know this won't be pleasant, and as you pointed out, it is rather late, so let’s get this out of the way. I want to ask a few questions about the note.” He pulled out the paper, now encased in an evidence bag, and regarded her with a searching look.

  Wren’s stomach began to twist in an assortment of knots. “OK.”

  “I’ve gone over your husband’s accident report and talked with the two officers who worked the scene,” Reed told her. “I even went through the autopsy report to make sure we didn’t overlook anything the first time.”

  “And did you find anything?”

  Reed shook his head. “No. Apparently, your husband’s accident was just what it appeared to be—a tragic car accident, nothing more. It was late, he presumably fell asleep at the wheel, woke up too late to keep from colliding with the telephone pole. No drugs or alcohol in his system. No reason to suppose that he was murdered either.” Reed added rather awkwardly, “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t know if he meant he was sorry he hadn’t found any new leads to pursue or if he was simply sorry her husband had died. She said nothing, fixing her tired gaze upon her hands, clutched tightly now upon her lap.

  Reed cleared his throat. “I guess that’s a relief, then. That we didn’t overlook anything,” he prompted.

  Wren didn’t feel relieved at all. There were still too many unanswered questions.

  “Regarding this note,” he went on, “Torres and I were talking and we think whatever the sender meant by your husband knowing more than was good for him, that it didn’t have anything to do with the accident, that it wasn’t anything worth killing a man for. It’s something else altogether, and that’s why you’re just receiving it now rather than shortly after the accident. If you’d like, we can go through your husband’s appointment books, personal files, and letters to see if we can find a new angle to pursue in regards to finding out who sent the note.”

  Wren gave a short, exasperated sigh. “Detective, my husband’s files, as you call them, were nothing more than sermon notes. Any business related letters or church records have either been sorted or purged by the church secretary. I certainly didn’t keep anything like that here.”

  “Would any of your husband’s notes and files been passed on to the new pastor?” Reed inquired. “Client files perhaps?”

  “No, Peter didn’t keep those kinds of files and records. He wasn’t a psychologist or anything. He didn’t have clients, as you put it. He did pastoral counseling occasionally. If he made any notes at all, it would have been to jot down the title of a book or video or some other resource to recommend to someone who’d come to him for advice.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about his counseling sessions?” Reed asked.

  “I can’t even name those Peter spent the time with in his office. The church secretary might not even know because most of the time people just stopped in when they had something on their minds.”

  “If that’s the case, then we’re at a dead end…until you get another note,” Reed told her, placing his large hands on his knees.

  “Do you think that’s likely?” Wren demanded, feeling a pang of anxiety.

  “I don’t know.” He reached into a pocket to retrieve a business card and handed it to Wren. “If you do receive another note, don’t give it to the professor and don’t sit around wondering who it’s from and what you should do. Call me right away.”

  7

  Sweating and breathing heavily, Allan gulped down a chocolate protein shake. He’d gone for his usual Sunday morning run. He’d done nine miles. Time now for a shower, followed by coffee and a cheesy mushroom omelet. He glanced at the kitchen clock over the sink.

  Wren and her little girl must be attending church services now. He wondered if she went to the same church that her husband once pastored or if she’d found a new congregation to worship with. Wouldn’t it be painful to go each week and see people who constantly reminded her of her loss? Allan had no intention of asking her about it. She might even resent his curiosity.

  Pushing aside thoughts of Wren, he decided to spend time this morning researching medical experimentation conducted in the United States during World War II and later during the Cold War years.

  Wren had flagged an online article about a man born and raised in a Lebensborn home—one of the eight thousand babies born as part of the Nazi’s secret breeding program.

  After he showered, Allan would start with that one. He knew many German doctors and scientists had come to the United States following the war. Some of them had even been Nazis with false identities and travel papers. It would be natural for them to continue their research here, either secretly or under the auspices of the U.S. government.

  Allan shampooed his hair as he considered Detective Reed’s reluctance to believe that such research could go on without being discovered. Not long ago, the local paper had printed a syndicated news story about the U.S. government sponsoring stem cell research using human embryos. That meant the taxpayers would be funding the project, which would be overseen by the National Institute of Health. But it didn’t mean the results would be made public.<
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  Digging for information was time consuming, however, and Allan couldn’t afford to indulge too often or too long when he had writing deadlines to meet, papers to grade, and lectures to plan. Wren Bergschneider, thorough and persistent, was worth her weight in gold as his research assistant. With her help, he could stay on task.

  Yesterday, after they’d parted in the parking lot across from the restaurant, he’d told Wren not to worry about the woman in the red blazer. As far as he’d been concerned, the whole duck-and-cover game had been a bit of a lark.

  But Wren hadn’t thought so. She’d been nervous, edgy.

  Allan couldn’t blame her really. Her life had been turned upside down since her husband’s death, and the traumatic events that followed were worrisome. It was a lot to cope with all at once.

  He suppressed a nagging urge to encourage Wren to take her daughter and leave town for a month or so, until all the hoopla died down. He needed her to continue the research for the Dix biography. His schedule was only going to get crazier with finals only eight weeks away, and the press was dogging his heels too. The department secretary had taken four calls for him on Friday afternoon, reporters wanting to speak to him about the infant’s remains and how he would tie the discovery into his upcoming book. He’d had two voice mail messages on his home phone as well. Sooner or later, reporters would start showing up on Wren’s doorstep too, hoping to pursue the story from a fresh angle. Then she’d have no peace at all.

  Stop thinking about her! He dressed quickly and focused his attention on Wren’s notes, which she’d already sorted into preliminary piles to correspond with his planned chapters. He glanced at the numerous resources he and Wren had found that provided information about the Nazi’s breeding program—another avenue to explore, no matter how unlikely, in light of the discovery of the infant’s skeleton. He’d put in nearly two hours of work before a knock at the front door interrupted him.

  Opening it, Allan was surprised to find Detective Torres. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket. Allan lifted an eyebrow, saying, “I didn’t know you guys worked weekends.”

  “Don’t you?” Torres replied, his gaze flitting past Allan to the desk piled with folders and stacks of notes.

  Allan gave a short laugh as he stepped back and invited the detective inside. “Guess I do at that. But I’m actually not grading papers today. I’m working on my book manuscript.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Torres told him. “The other day when you were at the police station with your assistant, you mentioned something about medical experiments. I want you to fill me in.”

  “Why are you interested?”

  “I have a hunch it might all be related—Mrs. Bergschneider's anonymous note, the human remains, maybe even the shooting.”

  Allan chuckled as he made his way to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee for his guest.

  “What’s so funny?” Torres asked with a frown, following him into the kitchen.

  “I was just thinking about something Wren said earlier about policemen and hunches, that’s all. Private joke. Go ahead, have a seat.”

  Torres sat down at the small kitchen table. Over coffee, Allan gave him a summary of the kind of medical research and experimentation conducted upon mental patients, not only by the Nazis prior to and during World War II, but also those conducted by the Japanese government, particularly the military.

  “You can go online to various internet sites maintained for universities and historical societies and read some pretty grim oral history accounts about the vivisections and experiments that Japanese surgeons performed on Chinese and Korean prisoners of war.”

  “Are you suggesting that sort of thing went on here in our own country and at the asylum in particular?” Torres appeared incredulous.

  “I’m not suggesting anything. It’s something I’d have to research more thoroughly. But I can tell you this—mental patients in hospitals such as the one here have often been the subjects of controversial medical procedures. For instance, during the 1930s and 1940s, doctors performed lobotomies on mental patients to see if they could cure everything from depression to schizophrenia to shell shock. Many of the patients died. Most were left incapacitated for the remainder of their lives. Some of the surgeries were successful in calming violent behavior. Tens of thousands of these surgeries were performed until researchers developed antipsychotic drugs.”

  “And you think maybe we’ll find the bodies of these patients, who might have been experimented on?” Torres asked.

  “I didn’t say that. To be honest, I never thought we’d find anything of interest in the food transportation tunnels. I merely hinted at it, hoping to get the opportunity to go back down there.”

  He noted the detective’s frown.

  “Mental patients have been used as guinea pigs for centuries. The state hospital had its own cemetery. The deceased would be buried there—those who died of natural causes and illnesses, as well as those who did not survive experimental procedures. And did you notice the huge incinerator down in the tunnel? Any written evidence of such medical experiments or illegal activities would surely have been burned in that incinerator long ago.”

  “But the infant’s remains down there-–that doesn’t make sense at all to me. I can’t help wondering if that minister who died in the car accident knew something was going on at the state hospital before it was closed down. The police report indicates that his death was merely a vehicular accident, but…” Torres shrugged.

  “According to his widow, Peter Bergschneider was the sort of man who would have taken his concerns to the police immediately,” Allan replied. “Besides, the old asylum has been closed for years and the patients parceled out to other facilities across the state. If Bergschneider discovered anything illegal or immoral, it would have been long after the fact.”

  Torres accepted this with a shrug and swallowed the rest of his coffee.

  “Any new information regarding the gunshot that shattered the window?” Allan asked. He still shuddered thinking how close he and Wren—and Gorse too—had come to being killed or seriously injured.

  “Nothing since the ballistics report. We know the weapon used was a .22 caliber rifle, but we still have no way of knowing if the shot was intended to kill or injure any one of you. It may well have been an accident, but no one has come forward, and we haven’t found any witnesses. If we catch the shooter, he will be cited minimally for firing a weapon inside city limits.”

  “Well, keep digging,” Allan pressed. “One of us could have been killed. I’m not completely satisfied that it was an accident.” He ignored the detective’s speculative gaze.

  He remembered Wren’s wide-eyed terror, the way her body quivered with fright as he’d covered it protectively with his own. If anything happened to Wren, he’d never forgive himself.

  ~*~

  Wren dropped Pippi at school and made her way to Allan’s office. She looked up Bea Cormeny’s name in the phone book, hoping the woman still had a landline. There it was under Geoffrey and Beatrice. It had to be the same woman. Cormeny was not all that common as a last name. Wren knew from previous conversations with the friendly nurse that she worked the three-to-eleven p.m. shift at the nursing home. She tapped out the number, hoping the woman would be in. When Bea answered on the third ring, Wren sighed with relief. “Hi, Bea, this is Wren Bergschneider—with the church youth group,” she began.

  “Sure, Wren, I remember. How are you?”

  “I’m fine thanks, and I’m wondering if you would do me a favor?” Wren held her breath.

  There was a slight hesitation. “If I can,” Bea answered cautiously.

  “Do you remember the elderly man you introduced me to last Friday night, Mr. Grizzard? I’d like to find out what years he was a patient at the mental hospital and why he was admitted there in the first place.”

  “I couldn’t possible show you his medical records.” Bea’s tone was firm. “I could lose my job.”

  �
�I understand that, of course,” Wren hastened to assure her. “I just wondered if you could look in the file and let me know the dates. I need the information for Allan Partner, the professor I work for. He’s writing a biography about Dorothea Dix.” She threw in a few interesting facts about the reformer, just in case Bea wasn’t familiar with Miss Dix’s reputation.

  “I’m not really sure I should do that,” Bea went on uncertainly.

  “I understand,” Wren assured her. “Professor Partner could request that specific information directly from one of the former administrators. Dr. Sylvia Leadill has already agreed to grant him access to some old files for his research. I just wanted to save him some time. Actually,” she hurried on thinking quickly, “it will save me time too. I’m the research assistant, and I’ll have to go through the files to take notes before passing them on to him. Professor Partner is planning to interview Mr. Grizzard. Considering how old Mr. Grizzard is, it isn’t likely he’ll remember the exact years he was a patient there or why he was admitted in the first place.” Wren waited.

  There was another pause before Bea answered. “Let me think about it. If I do give you what you want, you can’t tell anyone—except your boss, I guess. You didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Absolutely!” Wren promised. “I wouldn’t breathe a word.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  Wren gave the woman her home phone and cell numbers, and prayed that she’d cooperate. Knowing the time frame that Freddy Grizzard had been living in the asylum would give her a good place to start searching for other information related to the recently discovered human remains and to Mrs. Partner’s time there.

  Wren wondered, too, what she’d find in Dr. Leadill’s files and why the woman appeared so willing to pass those along. What kind of files would she be sharing anyway? If Bea didn’t provide the information, would Dr. Leadill be willing to look up the information for Allan? Somehow, Wren doubted it.