by Lee Harris
“I believe there was, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. Do you have any other questions?”
“I’ve heard that some organs were donated.”
“Well, organ transplants were in their infancy thirty years ago. I think it was only the boy’s eyes, which were donated to an eye bank.”
“Do you have any idea whether the parents saw the boy’s body after he died?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. With the eyes removed, they may not have wanted to.”
“Do you think there was any way that someone might have switched that boy with a dead child?”
His handsome face clouded. “You mean the nurse found a different child dead in the Krassky boy’s bed?”
“Could that have been possible?”
“I don’t see how. She’d been with him for several hours. She knew what he looked like.”
“My goodness,” Mrs. Windham said, “this is certainly taking a morbid turn.”
“I’m just trying to consider every possibility,” I said. “Was there an autopsy, do you know?”
“My recollection is that the parents didn’t want one, and it wasn’t required since his death was explainable medically.”
“How certain are you that his eyes were actually removed?” I asked.
“Very certain. I’m the surgeon who removed them.”
14
That certainly seemed to end the possibility that Val had survived and been kidnapped, although for the life of me I could not imagine what motive anyone would have for “provoking” the death of a six-year-old. “So you know for sure that the eyes were removed, you’re pretty sure there was no autopsy, and you don’t know whether the parents ever saw the body of their son.”
“Right on all three counts.”
“Then that leaves the matter you said you would come back to, the person who was suspected—or rumored—to have ‘provoked’ the death of the child.”
“I don’t mean to use a pun, but I’m on very thin ice here,” the doctor said. “No charges were ever brought, and the police were never called in. There was scuttlebutt and one observable fact.”
“Which was?”
“The rumored person left the hospital and never returned.”
“I see.” I wrote in my notebook, feeling a prickle of excitement. “Will you tell me more?”
“It was a nurse’s aide. She’d been there for a while—I can’t really tell you how long. After awhile you start to recognize faces. I did most of my work during the day, but I was told she’d been working on that floor for a year, give or take.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Since I never knew her myself, it’s all secondhand. She was probably around thirty, a nurse’s aide, no complaints about her that I ever heard. Spoke with an accent.”
“One of the Spanish aides?” Evelyn said. “There are so many now from South America.”
“This was almost thirty years ago,” Dr. Windham said. “She wasn’t Spanish as far as I know. More like German is what I heard.”
“German,” I repeated. “Val told his wife his parents were German and had gone back to Germany.”
The doctor’s lips formed a small smile. “I leave it to you to make the connections. That’s out of my league. All I can tell you is what I know and what I heard.”
“Tell me, Doctor, if someone—whoever it was—had murdered that child, how could it have been done?”
“A number of ways,” he said easily. “Smother him. Turn off the oxygen and let him suffocate in the tent. He was on an IV; add poison to the drip. If he’d been diagnosed with pneumonia, no one would bother checking the solution. It would be assumed he died of heart failure, one of the consequences of pneumonia.”
As he spoke my stomach turned in what was surely not an episode of morning sickness. I felt a fierce protectiveness for the tiny thing inside me that was my child. How could anyone have done to a child any of the things the doctor had just described? “And a nurse or nurse’s aide would be aware of those methods?”
“As aware as I am.”
“I just can’t see a motive,” I said, thinking out loud.
“To be honest, I can’t either. Maybe Evelyn can enlighten us. Did your in-laws have a dispute with a nurse’s aide, or perhaps with the husband of a nurse’s aide?”
Evelyn looked completely at sea. “As far as I know they never knew a nurse’s aide personally in their lives. If the wife of one of Greg’s friends or business associates was a nurse’s aide, they never mentioned it. This all seems very surreal. I feel as though we’re talking about a science fiction movie.”
I felt the same way, but the fact that there was this suspicion concerning the death of the child Val Krassky made a connection with the missing adult Val Krassky somehow more likely. “Do you know how soon after the death of the child the aide left the hospital?”
“Not with any certainty, but fairly soon,” the doctor said. “Probably what fueled the speculation that she had something to do with the death.”
“Who would know?” I asked.
“It’s a long time ago, but I may know someone who can help.” He looked over at his wife. “You have that name, dear?”
Mrs. Windham took a slip of paper out of her skirt pocket and passed it to her husband.
“I did a little phoning around after Evelyn called yesterday. This is a very fine lady who was a nurse at the hospital for many years and is long retired. She’s in her eighties now, but there’s nothing wrong with her memory.” He smiled. “It’s probably better than mine.” He looked at the slip of paper, then passed it to me. “I spoke to her last night. She’ll tell you what she remembers.”
“I’m very grateful.”
“She’s about twenty miles from here. I can tell you how to get there.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“If you put two and two together and they come out to four, I’d appreciate a phone call.”
“I’ll see that you get one,” I said with the enthusiasm I was suddenly feeling. I had no idea where this new information was going to take me, but I had the strong feeling that for the first time since I had spoken to Carlotta back in February, something was starting to open up.
Evelyn Krassky was utterly enamored of the new developments and was anxious to accompany me to see Mrs. Jane Galotti, but I managed to dissuade her. She was a friend of the Windhams and had served as my introduction to them, but this was a separate lead and I was acting on Carlotta’s behalf. I didn’t think it was appropriate for her, or anyone else, to be part of my interview. She agreed, and we drove back to her house, where I picked up my car and headed off to Mrs. Galotti’s.
Dr. Windham had called before I left his house, and Mrs. Galotti had said this would be a fine time for me to drop by. The twenty miles took half an hour or more, since I kept off highways and drove on scenic roads, passing through several pretty towns with main streets full of charm and low buildings. Mrs. Galotti lived in an old house with a front porch and some beautiful trees shading her front windows. Her lawn was green and the trees were in full leaf, and I thought once again how much I loved this time of year. Added to that, the air had a clean smell, and the fresh foliage added to the scent.
I climbed the several steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. The woman who answered wore her gray hair pulled back in an old-fashioned bun, and her face crinkled into a warm smile when she saw me.
“Miss Bennett?”
“Yes.” I offered my hand. “Mrs. Galotti, I’m glad to meet you.”
“Come inside. I’ve got water boiling. I always like a nice cup of tea in the afternoon, and my daughter-in-law dropped off some brownies yesterday. You like brownies?”
“More than I should.”
“Well, that’s good. It shows a sweet disposition.”
More like a sweet tooth, I thought as I went into her kitchen with her, admiring the plants she had arranged in front of the open windows.
“It’s stil
l too cold at night to put them out, but I like them to breathe the good outside air. I like to breathe it myself,” she said with a laugh. “Make yourself comfortable. The tea’ll be ready in a minute. Dr. Windham said you wanted to talk about that little boy who died a long time ago. Isn’t the doctor a wonderful man?”
“He seemed very nice. He said you had a terrific memory.”
“Well, not as good as you’d like, I think. I can’t for the life of me put a name on that nurse’s aide, but I can tell you all about her.”
“That’s good enough. And maybe in a day or two it’ll come back to you.”
“Could be, could be.” I turned down the tea as she went to the stove and took the kettle off, then poured the boiling water into a cup with a tea bag in it and brought it to the table. “We’re lucky here, we’ve got gas. I hate those electric stoves that most people have. This is a good gas stove. Do you do much cooking?”
It was a question that always made me uncomfortable. “Some. I married a man who loves to cook, and he’s a lot better at it than I. But I’m learning. A friend taught me how to bake Christmas cookies,” I said, mentioning my crowning culinary achievement.
“Well, Christmas cookies will always keep you popular.” She set herself carefully in the chair next to mine, as though all the joints from the waist down caused a familiar and dreaded pain. I tried not to wince, feeling for her. Then she squeezed a piece of lemon into her tea and stirred it slowly. “Now, what would you like to know?”
“Dr. Windham said you were a nurse at the hospital he practiced in.”
“Forty-seven years. A lifetime career. Loved almost every minute of it.”
“Tell me what you know about the death of the little Krassky boy, and tell me how you know it.”
“That must have been about thirty years ago. I’ve been racking my brain since Dr. Windham called last night. Thirty years ago I was fifty-three and in very good shape, if I do say so myself. I was a day nurse on the children’s floor, had been for many years. I knew every nurse and every aide who worked days, and I knew the night people because nurses going off duty gave report on the patients and conditions to those coming on. In those days, giving report was very important. Nowadays they run in ten minutes before shift change. It’s not the same. I’d get there before eight in the morning, and I worked till four in the afternoon. This woman, whatever her name was, always waited till the morning shift came on before leaving, I’ll say that for her. She wasn’t one to skip out early. So I got to know her well enough to say, ‘Good morning, and how are you today?’ ”
“Do you know how long she worked at the hospital?”
“Well, she wasn’t new when she left. I must have seen her for the best part of a year.”
“Can you guess how old she was?”
“A lot younger than me. She must’ve been thirty, thirty-five, something like that.”
“You remember what she looked like?”
“Dark hair. Maybe just a little plump. I shouldn’t talk. I got that way myself, even with all the running I did.”
“Do you know if she had a family?”
“She wore a wedding ring. I remember that especially because she wore it on her right hand, and I asked her once about it. She told me that was the way they did it in Germany.”
“I see. Did she ever mention a husband or children?”
“I’m not sure about that. Could be she did, could be she didn’t. We weren’t what you would call friends.”
“Is there anything you remember about her besides her looks and her wedding ring?”
“Her accent. Her English was pretty good, but she talked with a heavy accent.”
“And you think it was a German accent.”
“I think so. It wasn’t Italian, I’ll tell you that.” She laughed.
“Now I’d like to know about the little boy, Val Krassky. Were you there when his parents brought him in?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I was working on the floor that day. I can’t tell you exactly what time he came to the hospital, but it had to be before four. I assume they took him to emergency, and then he was admitted and brought upstairs to pediatrics. That’s the first I saw him.”
“Was his doctor with him?” I asked.
“Dr. Fowler? What a saint that man was. He would do anything for a child, bless his heart. He was there. I saw him with my own eyes.”
“And the parents?”
“They came up to the room a little later. Nice people, scared to death, but how could you blame them? Poor little thing was so sick.”
“Did you go into his room?”
“Yes, I did, at least once before I went off duty. I talked to the parents, I checked the oxygen tent. Everything seemed to be going very well.”
“He was breathing all right?”
“He improved pretty quick, that’s what I remember. Once they get that antibiotic in them and that good pure oxygen, it starts to work. His breathing was better, but he looked pale. He was a sick little boy.”
“Were the parents there when you went off duty?”
“I’m sure they were. They didn’t want to leave, even when Dr. Fowler told them it was safe to go.”
“Mrs. Galotti, I hear a lot nowadays about parents spending the night in a child’s hospital room. Was that sort of thing done in your hospital?”
“Don’t forget, dear, we’re talking almost thirty years ago. They do a lot of things today they didn’t do then. Now they have special arrangements, rooms with an extra bed for a mother to sleep in. It was a lot more unusual thirty years ago. They could have done it if it had been necessary, but what I heard, Dr. Fowler told them to go home, and if he said so, then it was the right thing. The boy was doing better, and sitting up all night in a chair doesn’t make for a good night.”
“So you think they went home because Dr. Fowler told them to.”
“I know it,” Jane Galotti said.
“How do you know?”
“Everyone said so later. And he called a private nurse for them, and as soon as she got there, the parents left.”
“The private nurse, did you know her?”
“Oh, yes. She’d worked in our hospital for years. You get to know them after awhile. She was one of the best. You get to know who’s good and who’s not so good. Some of them are lazy, some of them sleep all night and the patient has to yell to get them up if they want a glass of water. But she was good, took her work seriously. I would have hired her in a minute myself. Pity you can’t talk to her about that night, but she died years ago.”
“Did you talk to her after that night?”
“Oh, I talked to her all right, ran into her in the store a couple of days later. She was a wreck. We sat and had a cup of coffee, and she told me the whole thing. Later, she wouldn’t say a word to anyone because of the lawyers.”
“What did she say?”
“The boy was doing fine. She said she’d gone to the hospital as soon as Dr. Fowler called. She put in extra time that night, got there long before midnight and promised to stay till eight in the morning. The child was sleeping like an angel, breathing nice and regular, everything was fine. Hazel, that’s her name,” Mrs. Galotti said, pleased to remember it. “Hazel took a lunch break around three in the morning. She let the nurse at the nurses’ station know she was going, and she went down to the cafeteria. She hadn’t known she’d be working that night or she would have brought her own lunch, but since it was spur-of-the-moment, she had to go down and buy some.” She seemed at pains to explain the woman’s absence.
“I understand,” I said, just to let her know she had my sympathy.
“And then she came back, and the poor little thing was dead.”
“Did she see that immediately?”
“Right away. She walked in and started checking up on him. He was just gone.”
“What did it look like to her?” I asked.
“Looked like his little heart just gave out. It happens sometimes with pneumonia. It wasn’
t the first time for him. He’d been sick before.”
“What made anyone think he hadn’t died a natural death?”
“Well, it could have been natural,” Mrs. Galotti said. “I’m not saying it wasn’t. But he’d been improving, his temperature was down, his breathing was pretty normal by that time. You could tell when you saw Dr. Fowler that he was a wreck over this. He wouldn’t say anything, of course. He was a very discreet man. But it troubled him that that little boy died. The parents were beside themselves. They blamed the hospital, and they blamed poor Hazel. It wasn’t Hazel’s fault, I can tell you that. And the hospital did what it was supposed to,” she said loyally.
“Why did a rumor get started in the first place that he hadn’t died a natural death?” I asked.
“Well, maybe it was because the parents couldn’t believe that he could die after he seemed to be improving. Maybe the hospital was just looking for a scapegoat, you know, someone to blame it on, so the hospital and the doctor would be cleared.”
“But they never blamed it on anyone,” I reminded her. “There was no case. It never came to court.”
“You’re right,” she said, her head bobbing as she thought it over. “But the woman with the accent, she never came back.”
“She never came back to work at the hospital?”
“Not that I heard. She was off the next night, the night after the little boy died. And she was off the night after that. So there was nothing funny there. But then she called in sick the night she was supposed to come back.”
“So she was gone three days in a row.”
“That’s right. And then she just never came back.”
“Did she call and quit?”
“If she did, I never heard about it. I heard she just plain never came back.” She leaned toward me and said in a lower voice, “And I heard something else. I heard she never cashed her paycheck. I heard the post office sent it back.”
“So she didn’t wait to be paid,” I said.
“Didn’t wait for anything. Let me tell you, there was a lot of talk when she didn’t show up for work and didn’t pick up her check. They sent someone out to her house, and the landlord said she’d moved out.”
