“Al Hunt?” She looked bewildered.
“Do you remember him?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“And you say you’ve worked at Valhalla twelve years?”
“Eleven and a half, actually.”
“Al Hunt was a patient there eleven years ago, as I’ve already said.”
“The name isn’t familiar …”
“He committed suicide last week,” I said.
Now she was very bewildered.
“I talked to him shortly before his death, Mrs. Wilson. His social worker died in a motor vehicle accident nine years ago. Jim Barnes. I need to ask you about him.”
A flush was creeping up her neck. “Are you thinking his suicide was related, had something to do with Jim?”
It was a question impossible to answer. “Apparently, Jim Barnes was fired from Valhalla just hours before his death,” I went on. “Your name — or at least your maiden name — is listed on the medical examiner’s report, Mrs. Wilson.”
“There was– Well, there was some question,” she stammered. “You know, whether it was a suicide or an accident. I was questioned. A doctor, coroner, I don’t remember. But some man called me.”
“Dr. Brown?”
“I don’t remember his name,” she said.
“Why did he want to talk to you, Mrs. Wilson?”
“I suppose because I was one of the last people to see Jim alive. I guess the doctor called the front desk, and Betty referred him to me.”
“Betty?”
“She was the receptionist back then.”
“I need you to tell me everything you can remember about Jim Barnes’s being fired,” I said as she got up to check on the cake.
When she returned, she was a little more composed. She no longer looked unnerved. Instead, she looked angry.
She said, “Maybe it’s not right to say bad things about the dead, Dr. Scarpetta, but Jim was not a nice person. He was a very big problem at Valhalla, and he should have been fired long before he was.”
“Exactly how was he a problem?”
“Patients say a lot of things. They’re often not very, well, credible. It’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t. Dr. Masterson, other therapists, would get complaints from time to time, but nothing could be proven until there was a witnessed event one morning, the morning of that day. The day Jim was fired and had the accident.”
“This event was something you witnessed?” I asked.
“Yes.” She stared off across the kitchen, her mouth firmly set.
“What happened?”
“I was walking through the lobby, on my way to see Dr. Masterson about something, when Betty called out to me. She was working the front desk, the switchboard, like I said – Tommy, Clay, now you keep it down in there!”
The shrieking in the other room only got louder, television channels switching like mad.
Mrs. Wilson got up wearily to see about her sons. I heard muffled smacks of hand against bottoms, after which the channel stayed put. Cartoon characters were shooting each other with what sounded like machine guns.
“Where was I?” she asked, returning to the kitchen table.
“You were talking about Betty,” I reminded her.
“Oh, yes. She motioned me over and said Jim’s mother was on the line, long distance, and it seemed important. I never did know what it was about, the call. But Betty asked if I could find Jim. He was in psychodrama, which is held in the ballroom. You know, Valhalla has a ballroom we use for various functions. The Saturday night dances, parties. There’s a stage, an orchestra stage. From when Valhalla was a hotel. I slipped into the back, and when I saw what was going on, I couldn’t believe it.”
Jeanie Wilson’s eyes were bright with anger. She started fidgeting with the edge of a place mat. “I just stood there and watched. Jim’s back was to me, and he was up on the stage with, I don’t know, five or six patients. They were in chairs turned in such a way that they couldn’t see what he was doing with this one patient. A young girl. Her name was Rita. Rita was maybe thirteen. Rita had been raped by her stepfather. She never talked, was functionally mute. Jim was forcing her to reenact it.”