“I’ve read a lot about World War Two, and what he said rang a bell. The Germans did put troops behind our lines in the Battle of the Bulge, dressed in American uniforms. And he was right-once word got out, the real American troops started inventing cultural quizzes, designed to trip up any foreigners. One American general almost got killed because he didn’t know anything about baseball. What did Bernie mean about seeing spies around here, though?”
“That was probably you people,” she answered. “All those interviews this afternoon-men in uniforms he’s not familiar with. We lead a very structured, protected life here-it doesn’t take much to set someone like Bernie off.”
“But we didn’t go into that ward,” Willy countered.
She looked surprised. “It’s not locked. We’re not that kind of facility. We might restrain a resident now and then but only temporarily, to see them over a hump. If they ever got really bad, we’d have to ship them out, like I was telling Rolly. The rest of the time, they can move around the building. We keep a closer eye on them than on the others, but that’s all. I’m sure Bernie saw you and took you for German spies.”
“You said he talks about fifty years ago-does that mean he just keeps refighting the same battle over and over? Wouldn’t that tend to make him violent?”
“Oh no,” she answered emphatically. “I shouldn’t have put it that way. He talks about all sorts of things, not just the war-his daughter, animals, the weather-but it’s all disjointed, like a scrambled recording. What I meant is that the further back in time he gets, the clearer he sounds. It’s still pretty confusing, because he really has no short-term memory at all-he doesn’t remember any of us from day to day-so he tells the same stories again and again, thinking they’re new. He actually doesn’t talk about the war much at all-usually only when he’s upset, like after a nightmare. The war’s the source of his troubles, so he tends to avoid it. That’s why this thing you just saw was such a surprise. I’ve never seen him do anything like it before. It’s almost like something hit a switch inside him.”
“If he’s free to wander around, couldn’t he’ve taken a whack at the old lady?” Willy asked.
Sue Pasco looked horrified, a credit to Willy’s subtle approach. “But he barely touched Rolly. Just because he lost his temper doesn’t make him a killer.”
“He couldn’t’ve done it anyhow,” I said. “He has a cast on his right hand.”
“And that happened two weeks ago,” Pasco volunteered, slightly mollified. “He slipped and fell… Besides, like I said, we keep a pretty close eye on them-room checks every hour on the hour, in fact. That orderly that was talking to him? That’s Harry. He’s like the den mother up here, and at night he keeps a tight rein.”
She paused reflectively. “Something must’ve set him off. It could’ve been something you folks did without realizing it-the uniforms, the guns you wear… I don’t know. And he probably can’t tell us.”
Given what Bernie might have seen, I wasn’t willing to write him off so quickly. And with as many cases as we were handling, I also didn’t want to miss the opportunity to wrap up at least one of them.
“Could be we just need to find the right way to ask him.”
20
Willy Kunkle and I watched Nurse Pasco walk back down the hallway to resume her ten o’clock rounds.
“I think there was a reason Bernie flipped out,” I told him. “His timing’s too coincidental to ignore-acting out a strangulation exactly twenty-four hours after the real thing. Let’s have a chat with Harry.”
We found the orderly folding sheets in an oversized linen closet, his enormous frame making the room look cramped. “Harry?” I interrupted him. “We were never formally introduced. I’m Joe Gunther, this is Willy Kunkle, from the PD.”
Harry smiled. “Yeah-nice move with Bernie.” He pointed at Willy. “I saw you this afternoon when I was coming on.”
That surprised me. “When’s your shift?”
“Four to midnight. We got different hours from the nurses. We overlap so the residents don’t get a new crew all at once. Some of them are sensitive to that. That was sad about Mrs. Sawyer.”
Willy struggled to keep the incredulity from his voice. “You liked her?”
Harry finished folding the sheet in his hands and placed it on a shelf with a doting gentleness. “Sure. People thought she was a little rude, but you had to know how to talk to her. She didn’t mean most of that stuff personally.”
“What’s Bernie like?” I asked.
The broad smile returned. “He’s great. You start asking him about the old days, and he’s full of information. Too bad about the war, though-it’s like a black cloud he can’t get away from. You know anything about the Battle of the Bulge?”
“Enough,” Willy said curtly. “How do the others get along with him? Like Mrs. Sawyer?” Harry looked momentarily stumped. “I don’t think she knew him. They sort of kept different hours,” he added slyly.
“Meaning what?”
“Bernie’s a night owl-we call them ‘sundowners,’ or ‘wanderers.’ That’s pretty typical of PTSDers-their internal clock gets screwed up. Nights’re when the bad dreams come, so they try not to go to sleep.”
“I thought Nurse Pasco said the people in this ward were encouraged not to wander,” I said. “That they were checked every hour.”
“We check ’em,” Harry admitted. “But they know the schedule as well as we do, so they pull a fast one once in a while. Bernie’s big on that. He’ll put his pillow and a blanket under the sheets to make it look like he’s asleep-just like a kid. I never told anybody about it-didn’t want to get him in trouble.”
“And where’s he go?” I asked cautiously.
“Around,” came the guileless answer. “I see him hiding in the hallways sometimes, in the dark. I pretend not to see him. He’s just a harmless old guy who wants to be alone.”
“Harry,” Kunkle asked in a surprisingly gentle voice. “How was Bernie acting when you came on this afternoon?”
“I saw him before that. As soon as I heard about the murder on the radio, I came in to check up on them this morning. Like I said, they’re real sensitive, and I wanted to see how they were doing. Bernie was in tough shape. He was going on about Krauts and spies and people dying-more than I ever heard before. He reminisces a lot, you know? But not about the bad times. This morning, he was really wound up. They finally gave him something to make him sleep.”
“You think he saw something last night?” I asked. “Like maybe who killed Mrs. Sawyer?”
Harry looked shaken. “Wow-and him of all people… Sure, could be.”
“How’s he doing now?” I asked.
“Not too good. Talking to himself. He’s very tense.”
“Not a good time to talk?”
Harry shrugged. “You can try if you want to, but I couldn’t get anything out of him, and he usually talks to me most. Right now, he’s holding both ends of the conversation, like he was reading all the parts in a play. He did that once before, after he saw two people fighting outside the window-in the street. I couldn’t get to him at all.”
“Does he have any family in the area?” Willy asked. “Pasco said he had a wife and daughter.”
“No. His wife died years ago, and his daughter, Louise, lives in Florida. She’s only visited once. He loves her a bunch, though-or at least the memory of her. The best talks we have are about her. He’s sort of put her in a time capsule.”
Harry leaned against the shelves and placed his hand up to his cheek in an oddly child-like gesture. “That was one of the saddest things I ever saw-the one time Louise came to visit. It was years ago-and he was pretty new here-and all he did was talk to her about herself. But he didn’t know who she was, you know what I’m saying? He was talking to a middle-aged woman about her own ghost. She couldn’t stop crying, and she never came back.”