Her eyes flared in anger. “You expect there to be? I saw and I told, and it got me gone. I questioned Dr. Archer's motives but nobody was listening. Now, I don't care to talk 'bout it no more. Now, if you will, please, just go.”
“ I can't do that,” Jessica fired back. “Please, what you say to me could save another's life.”
The elderly woman's eyes had been held by Jessica's gaze, but now they went to her trembling hands. Jessica reached across and covered her hands with her own. “I know it's difficult.”
“ He… the little boy…” she began tentatively, her lip quivering, “was gettin' better when he… he got into some mischief. Climbed out of bed night before… got to wanderin' the halls, you know. God… good God…” She sniffled and fought back more tears. “I… I wasn't believing a word the boy said. He looked like one of my own when they was little, sweet thing, and I just thought he was having a nightmare, you know, or maybe he was full of a devilish imagination… I don't know.”
“ What did the boy tell you?”
“ Told me”-she gasped for air-”told me he saw one of the doctors, and the man was cuttin' out a woman's heart and… and that he was eating the heart.”
Jessica drew in her own breath now, surprised by this, having expected something else. “Did he say where he had seen this?”
“ Somewhere in the basement. He was running when I caught him. Ran frightened into my arms.”
“ Basement in a hospital,” she muttered. It added up to the morgue in her mind.
“ Boy said, this doctor had blood all over his face, like a hungry dog. Said he saw the boy scramblin' outta there.”
“ And the boy was hysterical?”
“ Screamin' this mad tale? Yeah, he was hysterical.”
“ And you gave him sedatives? Valium?”
“ I didn't put nothing into that boy,” she said Firmly.
“ The reports say otherwise.”
“ The reports are full of lies.”
“ What steps did you take, then?”
She looked off as if to do so helped her think. “I called for help. Called the boy's doctor, who, over the phone, prescribed sedatives.”
“ Then you administered the sedative?”
“ I did, on doctor's orders.”
“ A Dr. Grisham?”
“ Yeah, Grisham… later threw me to the wolves to protect one of his own.”
“ Then what? Did Grisham come down?”
She shook her head in slow, thoughtful motion, saying, “No. Said to get the resident intern to look in on the boy.”
“ Archer?”
“ I protested but didn't do no good.”
“ Archer was the intern on duty that night?”
“ Yes'm.”
“ Where did you locate him?”
“ Rang the intern quarters. He was sleeping in there.”
“ And he came in and another drug was prescribed over and above the Valium?”
“ Pentobarbital over Valium in an eleven-year-old child, yes'm.” Her head was held high now, giving her a haughty and angry appearance. “It was wrong and I told Dr. Archer it was wrong and he told me to shut up.”
Jessica knew that pentobarbital was routinely used about hospitals everywhere for a litany of ailments. Primarily given before a patient's surgery to stave off nervous insomnia, it was also used to control seizures, and little Rodney Bishop was in the hospital for an epileptic seizure and resulting inju-ries.
“ Did you try to physically stop Dr. Archer?”
“ We argued and I telephoned Dr. Grisham, who ordered Dr. Archer to the phone, but by then the damned fool had killed Rodney.”
The use of the boy's name brought a new welt of tears to assail the woman.
“ And the boy never regained consciousness?”
“ Went into coma and there was no bringing him back after his heart seized up.”
“ Did you ever tell anyone about the boy's story of the doctor in the basement?”
“ I tried… I truly did. But it was dismissed 'long with me. What does an ol' woman like me know 'bout anything? That was the attitude of them doctors. Felt so awful for that boy's people. Terrible thing… just terrible…”
“ And then you were set up?”
“ Like Alice in Wonderland in the Queen's court. Hospital was fearful of a major lawsuit. I was coerced, threatened, cajoled, pleaded with and begged, and finally they just plain scared hell out of me. They were going to take my pension, everything I worked for all my life. They left me no choice but to resign. I put it from my mind so long ago, and now here you are.”
“ I'm investigating some irregularities regarding Dr. Archer.”
“ Irregularities?”
“ Of a more recent vintage.”
Mrs. Hankersen took a deep breath, eyes blinking and said, “Think of it, the FBI, coming to me for information on that man. Saw a picture of him in the papers just the other day. Wanted to burn the thing and stomp on it, but I just put it out with the rest of the trash.”
“ Do you think that what occurred back in 1965 at St. Stephen's Hospital was an accident, Mrs. Hankersen?”
“ I got two ways to go with that.”
“ Oh?”
“ If the boy's story of a ghoul in the morgue was true, and I have never seen a more frightened child in my life, then it was no accident. If the boy was just fibbing or night maring, then the overdose was likely an accident in judgment.”
“ You've given it a lot of thought over the years, haven't you?”
“ When I rang the interns' quarters where they're on call twenty-four hours, I got no answer for four, maybe five rings. That place was like a closet with a few bunk beds and nobody could sleep through a ringing phone, and when Dr. Archer did come on, he was breathing real heavy, like he'd been running. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but yeah, I've had lots of time to think about it since.”
She left Mrs. Hankersen soon after, but not before asking her to be prepared to one day repeat her story in a court of law. Mrs. Hankersen said she would not dare do so.
Then she wanted to know what Archer had done that had the FBI after him. Jessica had to decline giving her any information on a “pending” case, but she assured her that one day Dr. Archer would pay for his sins.
“ That much I already know,” Mrs. Hankersen had finished in the doorway.
Outside and all the way back downtown she remained silent, Lou Pierce obviously curious, staring over from time to time and asking if she was okay.
She assured him with little cliches of custom.
She was fighting a war within her the whole time, however, and Lou was not fooled. How could she bring to light any of the Hankersen story? It was hardly the kind of compelling evidence that men were indicted on. All she had were a handful of questionable hospital statements and the word of a lone nurse to contradict the records. No D.A.'s office in the land would touch such circumstantial evidence in an attempt to topple a man of Archer's growing reputation and position.
As for going to Alan Rychman with this, she feared that he was coming to imagine her a suspicious bitch by nature, and spiteful where Archer was concerned. But suppose Archer was in the morgue taking a bizarre necrophiliac's desire out over the body of a woman he'd helped autopsy that day? Suppose the now dead Rodney Bishop had seen his vile performance? Suppose Archer had murdered the boy in retaliation, out of fear and panic?
