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Gilbert began working second shift—4:00 P.M. to midnight. Despite her prior reputation as the “angel of death,” Gilbert’s colleagues considered her now a permanent member of what had become in her absence one of the tightest-knit groups in the hospital.
    At twenty-four, Gilbert had been miraculously transformed from the angel of death into June Cleaver, it seemed, simply by giving birth. Married to a local man who was adored by her coworkers, she was seen now as nothing more than an impassive housewife, leading a mundane life in Northampton like the rest of them.
    She was a bit on the chunky side now, her dirty blond hair cut conservatively about halfway down her back, usually propped up in a pink or purple bow. She relished the role of being perceived as the idyllic mother, and dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl: knee-high skirts, bulky sweaters, loose jeans.
    â€œShe was attractive in a motherly type of way,” a former colleague recalled. “She was happy and loved her job.”
    As time went on, Gilbert and her coworkers began having cookouts and went over to one another’s homes for dinner parties. They took Gilbert’s boat out on the Connecticut River. Gilbert threw baby showers for her pregnant colleagues. They met for lunch. They went out to the area clubs on their nights off. Gilbert’s favorite band was the Cowboy Junkies, and she would drag many of her coworkers to their shows.
    Everything was in place for an amiable life in suburbia.
    But Gilbert never talked about her formative years: how her ex-boyfriends—and even her own father—had claimed she was nothing but “a manipulative, vindictive individual” who had spent her entire dating life harassing men, “making false rape allegations and damaging personal property when the relationships began to sour.” Or that she was antisocial and narcissistic. Nor did anyone know she had threatened suicide on several occasions and even tried to stab Glenn. To her colleagues and friends, Gilbert was a caring nurse fulfilling the role of a soccer mom.
    Then came the subtle signs when no one could deny that something was wrong.
    One year, on Valentine’s Day, while manning the phones at the nurse’s station, Gilbert came running down the hallway screaming, “I just got a call from a guy who said he put on bomb on the ward.”
    Renee Walsh was working that night. A bomb? . . . What? she thought. It didn’t make any sense to Walsh.
    Who, she wondered, would go through the trouble of putting a bomb—of all places—on the second floor of a VA hospital?
    â€œNo kidding. I just took the call,” Gilbert said when Walsh approached her.
    â€œOkay, Kristen. Calm down,” Walsh said. “I’ll get David and have him call the police.”
    David Rejniak was the charge nurse that night. He was ultimately responsible for giving out orders if anything had gone wrong.
    Soon the ward was inundated with police who, after looking in every corner of the ward, found nothing.
    After the police left and things got back to normal, Renee Walsh was sitting at the nurse’s station when she heard Gilbert, who had gone down the hall and around the corner near the janitor’s closet for some reason, in a loud whisper, say, “David . . . David . . . oh, David,” as if she were playing peek-a-boo. “I think you ought to come down here. There’s something in the closet I think you need to see.”
    Curious, Walsh then got up and walked toward Gilbert’s voice. Rejniak was just coming back up the hallway after speaking with Gilbert.
    â€œWhat is it, David?” Walsh asked.
    â€œKristen says she found a ‘suspicious-looking’ box in the closet.”
    â€œA box?”
    â€œYup. It’s weird; it has a swastika on it.”
    A box with a Nazis symbol on it? Walsh thought. So she went down to see for herself.
    Sure enough, it was a harmless-looking Kleenex