Viper's Nest

by Shirley Raye Redmond

  There had to be thousands of patients over the years. Where were their medical files? The institution’s annual reports? The staff’s administrative notes? Wren had been so surprised by Sylvia Leadill’s unexpected appearance and her offer to share files with Allan that neither had come out and asked what sort of information she was promising access to.

  To her surprise, Ichabod Gorse arrived on campus shortly after two o’clock, carrying two plastic bins with lids. He placed them on the corner of her desk, saying, “Dr. Sylvia Leadill asked me to bring these to Professor Partner. She said he is expecting them.” The tall thin man—frowning slightly—stared at her. Did he disapprove of the doctor offering to share her files with Allan? Or was he simply miffed because he’d been asked to fill the role of errand boy? Maybe he was annoyed that she and Allan had gone back down into the food tunnels.

  “Thank you for bringing these in,” she said. “I know Allan appreciates Dr. Leadill’s generous cooperation.” Wren lifted the lids of both bins to see if Dr. Leadill had placed Allan’s camera on top of the files. She hadn’t.

  “Did you and Dr. Leadill used to work together?”

  “For many years,” Gorse admitted. Then without looking at her directly, Gorse changed the subject. “I understand you and the professor found human remains after all.” He spoke in a disapproving manner, as though the discovery had somehow been their fault.

  “The police intended to explore the tunnels anyway, and Allan asked to go with them. It’s all part of the research for his book.”

  “They’ve been out there all weekend,” Gorse said with a deeper frown. “They haven’t found anything else—nothing of significance anyway. They won’t. The infant’s remains, that was an anomaly. We may never know what happened. I’ve been told the demolition has been postponed too.” He sighed and took an agitated swipe at his thinning hair. “The phones are ringing off the hook. Reporters and curiosity seekers are swarming the grounds. It’s been an administrative nightmare.”

  “So what years did you work under Dr. Leadill?” she asked, hoping to glean some helpful information.

  Gorse ignored the question. “She was brilliant and quite wasted as an administrator, in my opinion.”

  “Is she a psychiatrist?” Wren asked.

  “No, a surgeon,” Gorse told her, his mouth set in a grim line. “A doctor totally dedicated to her work. She never married, you know. The asylum and the patients were her family, her life. Sylvia was tireless. It was a shame she was forced to retire, but they wanted to replace her with someone younger—someone with a business degree and not a medical background at all.” He grunted his disapproval.

  His admiration for Dr. Leadill was clear. Perhaps he resented everything that had happened because it would reflect poorly on Leadill and her time as administrator, particularly as the infant’s small body had obviously been hidden in the food tunnel on her watch.

  “By the way, I met a man you may have known when you worked on the hospital staff,” Wren said. “He’s quite elderly. He’s living in a nursing home now, but he used to be a patient at the asylum. His name is Freddy Grizzard. Do you remember him?”

  Gorse studied her for a moment with an intense gaze. A muscle twitched in his cheek and his eyes widened slightly. “No, I can’t say I do. The name is unfamiliar.” He shrugged dismissively. “There were thousands of patients who came and went through those doors while I was on staff. I can hardly be expected to remember all of them—or even most of them. How ridiculous!”

  “Of course not. I just mentioned it on the chance you might remember him, that’s all.” She had the distinct impression Gorse had recognized the name.

  Gorse avoided making eye contact with her as he reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and retrieved Allan’s digital camera. “Sylvia said to give this to the professor too. She picked it up off his desk by mistake.” Gorse seemed embarrassed.

  So Sylvia Leadill had snatched Allan’s camera.

  Wren just didn’t know why.

  8

  “Allan, come look at this.” Wren’s voice was shrill with the excitement of discovery.

  Her face glowed with an eagerness Allan found appealing. He felt a stirring inside, the sort he hadn’t experienced in quite some time. He allowed his gaze to linger longer than he should have on her full, parted lips.

  “What is it?”

  Wren had opened one of the boxes from Dr. Leadill. Inside there was a stack of file folders, faded with age, some notebooks, an appointment calendar with the spiral edging partially unraveled, and a small metal box labeled INFIRMARY. Wren had opened this and now held several index cards in her hand.

  “Here’s proof!” she declared, eyes wide with delight.

  “Proof of what?”

  Wren handed him one of the cards. As she did so, her arm brushed against his. He felt the softness of her flesh through her sweater. Or had he only imagined it? With an effort, Allan forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  “Your mother and Freddy Grizzard were in the asylum infirmary at the same time. Maybe they knew each other. They may have met briefly and spoken to one another. See?” Wren handed him a dog-eared index card.

  Allan read the faded handwritten notes scribbled upon it. There was his mother’s full name and the dates she’d been admitted into the infirmary following her near-fatal fall from the staircase. Grizzard was mentioned as well but only by his last name. Apparently, he had been treated for a burn on his arm.

  “It doesn’t say Fred Grizzard,” he observed.

  Wren gave him an incredulous stare. “The name Grizzard is hardly a common one. Who else could it be?”

  “Remember, Wren, there were thousands of patients in the asylum.” Handing her the card, he picked up one of the bulging files from the desk. As he quickly glanced through the contents, he noted lists of patients who’d died at the asylum, with notations by each name indicating that they had either been buried on hospital grounds or family members had claimed their bodies. It was obvious, even with only a quick perusal, that his mother had been one of the few lucky ones who had been buried by her family.

  He scanned another series of lists stating the sorts of illnesses and accidents treated in the infirmary, everything from broken bones and whooping cough to physical complications caused by spina bifida and tuberculosis. One man had been kicked in the head by a mule. He apparently had survived the injury, but never regained his full mental faculties.

  “So why do you think Dr. Leadill really loaned you these files?” Wren asked, slipping the index card back into the box.

  “To help me with the research for my book,” he replied, giving her a sidelong look.

  “Do you really think so? I don’t.”

  “Then why do you think she offered to let me look through them?” Allan asked.

  “Well, she said she wanted to be acknowledged in your book, but it can’t be that simple.”

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “Because she wants to read the manuscript before you send it to your editor,” Wren reminded him. “She must have a reason for wanting to do so. She must be afraid of what you’ll write.”

  “I have no intention of letting her read the entire manuscript,” he admitted.

  Wren frowned.

  “I’ll let her look at any chapters that might mention the asylum here, but those will be few and far between. If Dr. Leadill doesn’t like it, that’s just too bad. I’ll remind her I’m writing a biography of Miss Dix, not a history of the Jacksonville Insane Asylum.”

  “But that’s what’s so odd about her offer, don’t you think?” Wren removed the lid from the second box of files. “Look at this stuff—all personal notes, according to Dr. Leadill. But is it even legal for her to have these in her possession? Shouldn’t she have passed them on to the incoming superintendent when she retired? And why did she keep personal notes in the first place?”

  “Maybe she had planned to write a book one day about her experiences there and
never got around to it.”

  “In that case, she would certainly have had more notes than what she has stored in these,” Wren pointed out.

  “That’s true.” He usually filled at least half a dozen containers with notes, maps and other resources, and computer files stored on multiple flash drives.

  “And another thing, I don’t believe she took your camera by mistake either,” Wren said. “I can’t help but wonder why. The old building has been vacant for years. What did she think you were going to photograph? That woman is hiding something…or wants something to remain hidden. I’m sure of it.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but I think she gave you these files”—Wren made a sweeping gesture with her hand—“to distract you from your research. She’s given you information about your mother and her time as a patient at the hospital hoping that will keep you preoccupied.”

  “That would mean Dr. Leadill is not afraid I might make some…er…unpleasant discoveries about my mother’s death.”

  “I hadn’t considered that. So let’s assume everything your father told you about your mother’s illness was true, that your fears about her death were childish and uninformed ones. Dr. Leadill isn’t worried that you’ll discover anything illegal or immoral as far as your mother is concerned, because there isn’t anything to discover. That means your mother couldn’t have been pushed from the stairs as you believed.”

  “Hmmm, possibly. Or maybe she was pushed, and Dr. Leadill wants me find out who did it and why. If she’s trying to distract us from finding any other horrors in the transportation tunnels, it’s too late. The police are involved now. And as you’ll recall, she did offer me the chance to look at her files before we discovered the infant’s remains.”

  Wren sighed. “I know she’s up to something. Dr. Leadill reminds me of a magician using misdirection to keep the attention of her audience focused on one thing while she’s up to something else. I can’t help thinking it might have something to do with Peter.”

  “That may take a lot of digging to come up with the connection—if there is one.”

  “I know.” Wren frowned slightly

  He regarded her with pensive consideration. Was it really possible that all of these separate incidents could be tied together—her husband’s accident, the anonymous note, the unexplained shooting, the old man’s rambling about bodies at the insane asylum? Wren was organized and methodical. That was one reason she made such a good research assistant. In Wren’s world, everything had to make sense, even if she could explain it only with a naïve, “it’s God’s will.”

  But Allan wasn’t certain everything in life could be tied up so neatly. Random things happened for which there were no reasonable explanation—like his mother becoming mentally ill and throwing herself over a stair railing. How could a seemingly normal person suddenly lose all vestiges of normality?

  “I don’t expect you to pay me for any time I might spend looking for a connection,” Wren said. “When I’m doing my own personal research, you shouldn’t have to pay me for that.”

  “Why not?” Allan said with a half smile. He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “I am paying you to sort through these notes and files anyway. So why not make a pile with anything that might pertain to my mother and another pile for information that might be pertinent to the book. If you find anything that you suspect might lead to a connection with your husband’s death, you can start a pile for that, too.”

  “There are a lot of loose ends, aren’t there? Maybe we’re on a wild goose chase.”

  Wren sounded weary, and Allan felt a stab of regret as he took note of how her spirits seemed deflated. He’d been enjoying her enthusiasm on what he’d begun to think of as their project. Determined to boost her morale, he rolled his chair across the room and positioned it next to hers. “C’mon. Let’s get started on some of this. We may find that your hunch is right after all, that these files contain nothing of interest and nothing pertinent about my mother. If that’s the case, I’ll have a word with her; you can be sure of that.”

  Wren glanced at her watch. “I can’t. I need to go. My sister-in-law will probably present me with a grocery bill if she has to keep feeding Pippi supper every evening.”

  “How much can one little girl eat?” Allan asked with a grin.

  Her brown eyes sparkled with humor. “You’d be surprised.” As her gaze swiveled toward the door, the smile slipped. She grabbed his wrist so hard Allan could feel her clenched fingers quivering.

  A bolt of fear shot through him. “What is it?” He searched her pale profile.

  The room was so quiet he could hear only their anxious, stilted breathing.

  Wren pointed a shaky finger at the door. She opened her mouth, but said nothing.

  The knob turned slowly. Was someone standing outside the door listening to their conversation? If so, why? Surely it wasn’t the janitor or the department secretary? They’d have knocked and come right in. The door wasn’t locked.

  Gently prying lose from Wren’s grasp, Allan rose and sprinted to the door. He pulled it open with a jerk.

  Wren gave a startled gasp.

  ~*~

  Wren’s heart pounded as she stared at the woman who stood upon the threshold. Today, she hadn’t donned the familiar red blazer. Instead, she wore one of those off-white, hefty fisherman sweaters and a pair of jeans with leather slouch boots. Her thick, dark hair was swept back away from her stern face in a high ponytail. Up close, she looked older than Wren had first supposed. The woman’s dark eyes flickered from Allan’s frowning face to Wren’s and then back again.

  “Listening at doors?” Allan asked. “That’s a nasty habit. Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “My name is Judith Uravich. I want to speak with you, Professor Partner.”

  “About what?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it while I’m standing out here in the corridor.” She glanced over her shoulder.

  Allan glanced at Wren as though seeking her permission to invite the woman in. Cautious but also curious, Wren shrugged a shoulder. She gripped the edge of her desk with one hand. She noted Allan’s tense posture and the wary expression in his eyes. She realized she wasn’t the only one braced for trouble.

  “You’re the woman at the restaurant who was following us,” Wren said.

  “I was following him,” she admitted, thrusting her chin in Allan’s direction.

  “Why?” Allan asked.

  “I’m a reporter. I want to talk to you about the old mental hospital that’s slated for demolition.”

  Allan shook his head emphatically. “No, I’ve said all I’m going to say. I’ve been plagued by reporters. You’re too late. I can’t help you.”

  “Professor, you don’t get it. I’m here to help you.”

  “Really?” Allan perched himself on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. “Everyone is certainly trying to be helpful to me these days, in as far as my new book is concerned.” He tilted his head in Wren’s direction. “I have a research assistant. I don’t need your help. Thanks for the offer.” His dismissive attitude seemed to take the reporter by surprise.

  She fixed Wren with a penetrating stare. “Well then, has your research assistant uncovered any pertinent information about the illegal baby farm that operated temporarily out of the asylum—right under the noses of the administrators?”

  “A baby farm?” Allan unfolded his arms and exchanged a glance with Wren.

  “I didn’t think so.” Judith smiled smugly.

  “Have a seat, Miss Uravich.” Allan indicated the empty chair beside his desk.

  “No thanks,” Judith replied. “I don’t intend to stay long. There are other people I need to see today, and things I’ve got to get done. But I’d like to show you something on the grounds of the state hospital before they begin the demolition.”

  “We’ve already been out there—twice, as a matter of fact,” Allan informed her.

&nb
sp; “Did you tour the women’s annex?” Judith asked, shifting her purse on her shoulder. “The one added on to the original building in the 1940s?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Judith gave them a smug look.

  Wren’s irritation swirled, but she said nothing.

  “As the annex was not part of the original institution built in Dorothea Dix’s lifetime, I don’t see how it would be pertinent to my research,” Allan told her. “But I am intrigued about what you said regarding a baby farm.”

  “That’s the reason why I want to show you the annex,” Judith insisted. “The expectant mothers lived in the annex. Their babies were sold from there. It’s just one more way that the mentally ill have been taken advantage of in this country. I thought you’d be interested. Frankly, I thought you’d know something about the matter.”

  “This is unbelievable! Who would knowingly buy an infant born to a mentally ill woman?” Wren asked, casting a quick sidelong glance in Allan’s direction. “The prospective parents would surely have had concerns about the baby’s health.”

  “That’s just it, the buyers didn’t know where the babies were coming from,” Judith insisted. “At least, I don’t think they did. You have to realize all the details were kept rather hush-hush.”

  Allan straightened. “Look, Miss Uravich, why don’t you tell me what you’ve found out and who your sources are, and I’ll see if I can get the comptroller to loan me the keys to the annex.” He looked at Wren. “Gorse won’t like this. Neither will Reed and Torres.”

  Before Wren could respond, Judith gave a short, derisive laugh. “That won’t be necessary. We won’t need a key to get in. I’ve been inside already, and believe me when I say you’ll want to see the place for yourself.”

  “What are you getting out of this?” Allan’s tone was suspicious.

  “I’m hoping you’ll let me glance through any files you may have obtained from the hospital administration to aid you in your research for the Dix biography,” she told him. “They weren’t willing to cooperate with me—not when they found out what I’m working on.”