Loud voices—angry voices— drifted from down the hall. Were Gorse and Dr. Leadill having an argument?
“We’ve come to see Dr. Leadill,” Wren announced.
“She’s busy,” the first woman replied, her plain face a mask devoid of emotion.
Allan gave her one of his dazzling smiles and said, “She’ll make time to see us, I’m sure.” Without waiting to be invited in, he clasped Wren by the elbow and propelled her efficiently through the door. Allan’s charm had no effect on either of the black-clad women.
“You’ll do no such thing!” A woman’s voice—presumably Dr. Leadill’s—exclaimed with venom from down the hall.
Allan’s grasp upon Wren’s elbow tightened. “Shall we join the discussion?” Without waiting for a response, he turned to the two perplexed women. “There’s no need to announce us.”
Before either could stop them, he and Wren made their way down the hall to what appeared to be a library. The door was open. They stepped inside.
Dr. Leadill was seated behind a massive desk made of gleaming wood. It was covered with piles of papers, file folders, and a colorful assortment of glass paperweights. She wore a white lab coat and the same black gloves she’d worn the day she’d dropped by Allan’s office. The doctor raised her heavily penciled eyebrows with surprise when she observed Wren and Allan standing upon the threshold.
With fists clenched, Gorse spun around, mouth gaping. “What are you doing here?” he blurted out.
~*~
Releasing his hold upon Wren, Allan quickly took in the situation, letting his glance slide from the seated surgeon to the red-faced man standing belligerently in front of her desk. “We followed you here, Gorse,” he announced. Both Gorse and Dr. Leadill appeared surprised by his candor. He decided to keep them off balance. “We have a long list of questions we want to ask both of you. Let’s start with Freddy Grizzard,” he said, indicating that Wren should be seated in one of the two chairs across from Leadill’s desk. Allan remained standing, however, placing himself between Wren and Gorse, who stood in a rigid stance, a deep, angry frown marring his features.
Sylvia Leadill began to chuckle, a deep, throaty sound that roused apprehension. The hard eyes glinted with amusement and something else—something fiercer.
A gun cabinet stood to the left of the desk against the wall. Through the glass door, Allan could see a shotgun and two rifles.
“Do you shoot?” he asked.
“Indeed,” she admitted with a brief nod. “I’m an excellent shot. I used to shoot competitively as a girl and in my college years. I could have competed in the Olympics, but my medical studies came first.”
“It was you!” he declared, staring at the surgeon. “You fired at us that afternoon when we toured the old mental hospital with Gorse here.”
“I did,” Sylvia readily admitted.
Wren gave a strangled gasp.
“I knew I’d get away with it too,” the doctor went on. “No one would expect an old woman like me as the perpetrator of a random shooting. Ha!”
“What were you thinking? One of us could have been killed!” Allan exclaimed sharply.
Sylvia gave a snort of disgust. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
“Then why shoot at us at all, if you didn’t intend to kill one of us?” Wren spoke.
The doctor regarded Wren, and then Allan through half lowered lashes. Her heavy eyebrows knitted together into one dark line across her forehead, which gave her an unusually stern appearance. “I had hoped to scare the two of you from going back again. Gorse’s provocative note had not prevented Mrs. Bergschneider from tagging along with you, Professor, so I thought to intimidate her more effectively.”
“Note?” Wren asked, perplexed, a mix of emotions fluttering across her pale face. “You sent me the anonymous note—about Peter?” she asked, regarding Gorse with disbelief.
Gorse gave a curt nod. “I did, as soon as Professor Partner made the appointment to tour the old facility. I expected you to show it to him immediately and hoped the two of you would become distracted by its implications and give up. The place was set to be demolished in a week or two and the book was closed, so to speak, on its history. But my ruse didn’t work.”
“So what did Peter Bergschneider know that you found so threatening?” Allan demanded.
“Nothing I’m aware of,” Gorse admitted. “He visited one of Sylvia’s…er…wards in the nursing home about two years ago. She was ill, dying actually. I doubt she told him anything, though. I came by your house last night intending to tell you I’d sent the note. But I changed my mind.” He shot a quick, nervous glance in the doctor’s direction.
“My neighbor saw you,” Wren told him. “She called the police.”
“But you two wouldn’t leave well enough alone,” Leadill interjected, giving Allan a venomous glare. “I had hoped offering you some files pertaining to your mother’s time at the hospital would appease your curiosity. That didn’t work, either.”
Allan was beginning to think the old woman was more than a little crazy, like the proverbial mad scientist. “So why did you swipe my camera that day you came to my office?”
“I wanted to see what you’d been taking photos of. Simple curiosity, that’s all. Why have you come here?” The woman’s frown was disconcerting.
“The files you gave regarding my mother’s time at the hospital, they are not the complete files.”
“I told you they were my personal files.”
“I want to know what my mother was afraid of—whom she was afraid of,” he insisted.
Dr. Leadill gave an indifferent shrug. “She was always afraid of something or someone while she was with us. Most of the patients were, I observed. They behaved better if they were fearful, so I confess, I allowed the staff to bully them now and again, if we felt it was necessary to keep them in line.”
“Was there someone in particular bullying my mother?” Allan pressed.
“Your mother was easily intimidated. She came to us sad, depressed, and weepy—quite melancholy. Based on my brief encounters with your father, I’d say he was an impatient, harsh man. We’d have released your mother in a short time. She suffered from what the medical community now calls postpartum depression. But she jumped. There were witnesses. I assure you she was not pushed. Between her injuries and a severe bout of influenza, she never fully recovered her health. She died at the hospital. There were plenty others just like her over the years. Her case was hardly exceptional.”
A surge of outrage fountained, and Allan clenched his jaw.
“What about Freddy Grizzard? Did Allan’s mother know him? Was she afraid of him? He told me he was afraid of someone he called The Brain.” Wren whipped around to face Gorse. “It was you, wasn’t it? He was afraid of you.”
“I was The Brain. I still am.” Dr. Leadill sat up straighter in her chair. “I am brilliant. I studied to be a surgeon when few women did, and I excelled. I was a far better surgeon than the men I went to medical school with, and I was ahead of my time in considering medical experimentation. America is hampered by an old-fashioned set of ethics. We seem to always look to Europe for philosophical ideas of any merit. We’re a nation of doers but not thinkers, I fear.” Sylvia continued in a tone both harsh and demeaning. “I knew I could never pursue the cutting edge science I wanted to, so when the administrative position came open at the asylum, I applied. Because I’d already performed successful lobotomies, they saw that as an advantage, and as a woman, they could offer me a salary lower than my male counterparts. They were happy to get someone with my surgical experience so inexpensively.”
“What was in it for you?” Allan, his heart pounding, wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Leadill gave him a cruel smile. “Why, a hospital full of guinea pigs—both patients and staff to do my bidding. I was a doctor—a surgeon with an advanced medical degree. Few people in this rural backwater would question someone like me. Doctors always know what we’re doing.�
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“You ruined lives!” Wren protested.
“And improved some too,” Leadill countered. “The two women living here in my home are just two examples. They were born at the asylum—their mothers were both mad and promiscuous. I brought the infants home and hired a nanny to care for them.”
“Did you experiment on them?” Allan asked quietly.
“Certainly,” Leadill replied, unmoved. “But I’ve experimented on myself as well.” She shoved up the long sleeves of her black sweater. Her scrawny, wrinkled arms sported row upon row of needle marks. “Over the years, I paid a price for my medical studies. I once had an accident in the lab.” This time, she removed her gloves, revealing hands that had been badly burned and permanently scarred. She held them out for their perusal. “For some years now, Freya and Embla have been my hands when I need to do something requiring fine motor skills,” Leadill continued as she tugged her gloves back on.
“You knew about this?” Allan asked, turning to Gorse.
The man only shrugged, suddenly diminished.
“So the two women out there, they are your adopted daughters?” Wren ventured.
Sylvia answered her with a smirk. “I didn’t adopt them. They are merely my…er…minions. They do as I say.”
“Like setting fire to the old annex?” Allan asked.
Sylvia glanced down at her desk and toyed with a pen. “Among other things.”
At the sound of the commotion in the hall, she snapped up her head.
Allan placed a reassuring hand on Wren’s shoulder.
They all turned as Judith hurtled through the door, the two minions, as Sylvia had called them, close upon her heels. “Have I missed anything important?” Judith’s face was aglow with curiosity and bravado. “Has she confessed to knowing about the baby peddling? Are there more dark secrets yet to be uncovered, Dr. Leadill?”
Snarling, Sylvia rose slowly from the chair behind the desk. “More than you could hope to uncover in a lifetime, you two-bit news hack!”
15
Wren’s unease became stronger. It was time to go before someone got hurt. Judith’s arrival had increased the tension in the room. But there was one thing she had to know before leaving the reporter to grill Dr. Leadill about her role in the baby peddling scheme.
Wren turned to Gorse. “I think you lied when you told me you didn’t know Freddy Grizzard. You did know him, didn’t you?”
“I knew the man.”
“And the infant’s remains in the cookie tin? Any idea how they came to be there?” she asked.
“Good question,” Judith chimed in. “I’ve been wondering about that myself.”
“Actually, I have no idea. One of the mothers, perhaps. Maybe even Grizzard. I don’t know. I was just as surprised as you were when those turned up.”
“Dolly,” Wren uttered in a near whisper. Frowning, she glanced up at Allan.
“Who’s Dolly?” Judith asked.
“Maybe Freddy had some reason for not wanting to dispose of the remains in the same manner he’d disposed of the others.”
A trickle of dread ran along the back of Wren’s neck.
“What others?” Allan asked in a quiet voice.
“The miscarriages and stillbirths, the deformed,” Gorse said. “They couldn’t be buried in the cemetery. That would have attracted notice and prompted an endless stream of questions, which possibly would have led to an investigation. We used the incinerator.”
“Shut up!” Sylvia ordered, slamming one of her gloved fists upon the desk. “Don’t say another word.”
“It’s over, Sylvia,” Gorse said, his shoulders slouching.
“It’s over when I say it is!” the doctor snapped. You’re going to help me take care of these interfering busybodies—permanently—so that I can carry on with my research.”
Heart pounding, Wren rose from the chair and turned an imploring gaze upon Allan. It was time to go. It would be up to the police to sort it all out.
Allan caught her glance, acknowledging it with a slight nod. “I believe Wren and I will be going now,” he said, addressing Dr. Leadill, who was coming toward them from around the corner of her desk, hand outstretched as if to shake. “I appreciate your willingness to allow my access to some of your personal files. I’ll return those to you as soon as possible. I’m fairly certain Ms. Uravich has a notebook full of questions she wants to ask you.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Sylvia said. The doctor’s gloved hand slid into the large pocket of her lab coat, pulled out a gun, and shoved its cold, hard barrel into Wren’s side.
Allan, Gorse, and even Judith seemed to freeze where they stood.
Sylvia’s minions hovered silently in the doorway of the library, tense and wary.
It was Judith who moved first, taking a tentative step forward. She clutched her shoulder bag with both hands. Wren noticed the whiteness of her knuckles. “Hey, Dr. Leadill, there’s no need for that. We just want to talk.”
Sylvia grimaced and thrust the weapon harder into Wren’s side. “Step back! I’ll kill her. You’d better believe I will.”
“Isn’t it bad enough that you killed her husband?” Allan demanded, eyes blazing. “Have you no conscience?”
“I didn’t kill the pastor, but I’ll admit I wasn’t sad to hear the news that he’d died in a car accident,” Sylvia confessed. “It proved quite convenient for me that he died when he did. You see, he’d met Sigyn at the nursing home. One of my other minions.” She paused, face twisting into a cruel smile. “Sigyn was considerably older than those two and very ill.” She tipped her head toward the two black-clad women lingering watchfully in the doorway. “The pastor treated her kindly. He was a good listener. She told me so following their first visit. But over time, she might have told him more than she should have.”
Wren was both mindful of the pressure of the gun against her ribcage and the erratic, fearful pounding of her heart.
Dr. Leadill was insane, the proverbial mad scientist. A murderer. It would almost be melodramatic if it weren’t so frightening, so dangerous.
Wren was nearly numb with terror and her knees begin to wobble. She needed to sit down. Sylvia grabbed her by the arm in a viselike grip. Wren cried out. The elderly woman proved to be amazingly strong for her age. “Don’t you dare faint,” Sylvia rasped in her ear. To the others, she said in a tight voice, “You do realize that I can’t let you walk way. Any of you.” The sweep of her cruel gaze included Allan, Judith, and Gorse.
They were all going to die.
Lord, help us. Maybe she could make a desperate attempt to appeal to the doctor’s better nature. “Please don’t shoot me. I have a little girl.” Her statement came out like a whimper. “She’s already lost her father. She’ll be all alone.”
“Pity,” Sylvia replied, unmoved.
“Dr. Leadill, let her go,” Judith begged.
“You can’t kill all of us at once,” Allan pointed out.
“You don’t think so?” Leadill replied, her tone incredulous.
Wren prayed silently for Pippi, finding some small comfort in knowing she’d be lovingly cared for by Deb and Charlie. She fixed her gaze on Allan. She loved him. She wished she’d told him so last night. She wished she’d taken more opportunities to talk to him about God and salvation. Allan looked at her then, as though he’d read her tortured thoughts. He appeared to be breathing hard in short, erratic spurts, as though each intake of air was painful.
Gorse took a disposable lighter from his pants pocket. He applied the flickering flame to a pile of papers stacked neatly on the corner of the desk before dropping the burning folder onto the pile. Then he reached for another folder.
Smoke filled the room as the flames crackled.
“What are you doing?” Sylvia shrieked. “You idiotic wretch! Stop it at once!” She let go of Wren’s arm to swat desperately at the burning papers.
With her arm still throbbing from Dr. Leadill’s cruel grip, Wren made a sweeping gesture that
scattered papers from the desk to the floor and sent others fluttering into the flames. Then she raised one foot and shoved it backwards into Sylvia Leadill’s knee.
The older woman grunted as she lost her balance and fell hard against the desk.
“Allan, run!” Wren screamed.
“I’m outta here,” Judith announced. Turning, she darted toward the open door of the library.
But Allan gripped the chair Wren had been sitting in just a short while ago and plowed forward. “Go, go, go, go!” he hollered.
Wren obeyed. She dashed forward to follow Judith out of the library.
Allan, with a determined shove of the sturdy chair, knocked Sylvia Leadill completely off her feet. As the doctor cried out in anger and pain, the revolver slipped from her hand. It skidded out of sight somewhere beneath the massive desk.
Gorse, as though in a trance, continued to light files on fire. The flames crackled and the acrid smell of smoke roiled through the room.
The two women in black, silent and slightly dazed, made only a feeble attempt to keep Wren, Judith, and Allan from leaving.
Allan slipped one arm around Wren’s waist, rushing her to the front door, which now stood wide open. “As soon as we get out of this house, we’ll call 911.”
Judith stood out in the middle of the circular drive next to her vehicle, talking on her cell phone. “I told them to send the cops and a fire truck,” she announced before turning away to make another call.
Allan gave the reporter a curt nod. Then he pulled Wren into his arms. Shivering, she leaned her forehead against his chest, feeling the comforting nubbiness of his wool sweater against her skin. “It’s over, Wren,” he said, whispering into her hair. “At least as far as we’re concerned. Time to go. Let’s return to campus.”
Wren raised her head to look at him, feeling almost dizzy with relief. Glancing over his shoulder toward the house, she could see that the front door stood wide open just as they’d left it.
Were Dr. Leadill and the other two women attempting to fight the fire on their own? Had Gorse come to his senses?
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