“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.”
“The rape?” I asked calmly.
“The damn bastard. Excuse me. But it still upsets me.”
“Understandably.”
“He later claimed he wasn’t doing anything inappropriate. Damn, he was such a liar. He denied everything. But I’d seen it. I knew exactly what he was doing. He was playing the role of the stepfather, and Rita was so terrified she didn’t move. She was frozen in the chair. He was in her
face, leaning over her, talking in a low voice. Sound carries inside the ballroom. I could hear everything. Rita was very mature, developed, for thirteen. Jim was asking her, ‘Is this what he did, Rita?’ He kept asking her that as he touched her. Fondled her, just as her stepfather had done, I suppose. I slipped out. He never knew I’d seen it until both Dr. Masterson and I confronted him minutes later.”
I was beginning to understand why Dr. Masterson had refused to discuss Jim Barnes with me, and possibly why pages of Al Hunt’s case file were absent. If something like this was ever made public, even though it had happened long ago, the hospital’s reputation would take it on the nose.
“And you were suspicious Jim Barnes had done this before?” I asked.
“Some of the early complaints would indicate he had,” Jeanie Wilson replied, her eyes flashing.
“Always females?”
“Not always.”
“You received complaints from male patients?”
“From one of the young men. Yes. But no one took it seriously at the time. He had sexual problems anyway, supposedly had been molested or something. The very type someone like Jim would fix on because who would believe anything the poor kid said?”
“Do you remember this patient’s name?”
“God.”
She frowned. “It was so long ago.”
She thought. “Frank … Frankie. That’s it. I remember some of the patients called him Frankie. I don’t recall his last name.”
“How old was he?” I could feel my heart beating.
“I don’t know. Seventeen, eighteen.”
“What do you remember about Frankie?” I asked. “It’s important. Very important.”
A timer went off, and she pushed back her chair to take the cake out of the oven. While she was up, she checked on her boys again. When she returned, she was frowning.
She said, “I vaguely remember he was on Backhall for a while, right after he was admitted. Then he was moved downstairs to the second-floor ward where the men are. I had him in occupational therapy.”