Four Furlongs

by C. K. Crigger

  And maybe it was. Who could know for certain if no one looked into it?

  Regardless, Neva deserved ... needed ... to say good-bye despite bad dreams.

  I gave in. “All right. If you’re sure. When do you want to go?”

  Her face slackened with a release of tension. “After supper. Granddad always goes off to play poker with some other men, and my mother just disappears. I don’t know where. She doesn’t usually come back until late.”

  Interesting information. I wondered if it would be of some use. “All right,” I said again. I doubted if Uncle Monk would be home until late, either, as the fair gates didn’t close until eight, so I would be free as a cricket. “Where did they take his ... take Robbie?”

  One of the smaller, less expensive mortuaries, I expected, if the family truly couldn’t manage a more elaborate funeral.

  “The city morgue,” Neva said. She touched one of the blooms in front of her with a gentle forefinger. The petals dropped, leaving the center bald.

  “The city morgue,” I repeated. My heart thudded. Gratton had told me about the place, about the gruesome doings that went on there. I didn’t actually want to see it for myself.

  8

  When my father died, I, like Neva, had ignored the advice about remembering our loved ones as they were. I’d seen his body before the undertaker got to him and, although the memory still made my breath catch, in a perverse sort of way I was glad. He’d looked quiet, at peace, even though he hadn’t, as some folks tried to tell me, appeared as though he were asleep. In plain truth, he looked dead. I’ve always thought it made acceptance of his loss easier—or at least faster.

  Now, although my mind said supporting Neva’s expedition was harebrained in the extreme, I’d agreed to meet her on the corner outside the police station at seven o’clock. I knew the morgue occupied a room in the station basement. And, since I’d really rather nobody saw me there, accessing it without being seen made me a bit nervous.

  We had one thing in our favor. At this time of the day the place should be as deserted as it ever got. Except for the dead, of course.

  The evening, clear enough to see all they way to Mica Peak, with stars and a rising quarter moon shining overhead, was warm for late September. I wore a sweater and needed a coat. I’d left Nimble sleeping on my bed at home, and found myself wishing for the comfort of her presence as I waited for Neva.

  Having arrived before Neva, I bounced on my toes in an effort to stay warm. Thankfully, after only a few moments, I spotted her hurrying along the sidewalk in the oddly hunched stance she assumed. She wore the same trousers and shirt as this afternoon, although the shirt’s sleeves were rolled down over her arms. A small defense against the almost-frosty night. Or was she covering up new bruises?

  “There you are,” I said as she approached. “I wondered if you’d actually show up.”

  And if she hadn’t, I knew she had an excuse. Even in the poor light the hand-shaped mark on her cheek glowed red. Judging by the hand’s size, I guessed she’d somehow displeased her mother.

  “Sorry.” Her voice sounded an octave lower than usual, as if she’d been crying—or screaming. “Have you been waiting long?” She avoided looking me in the eye.

  “No, no. You’re fine. We agreed to meet after dark.” I gestured at the sky where a tiny streak of pink light lingered. “And we’re not quite there yet.”

  Isn’t it true some people think ten minutes late is right on time?

  “Oh. It seemed like it took forever for me to get here. Your uncle came. He talked to me. I don’t think he believed anything I said.”

  “No?” That didn’t sound like my uncle.

  She shook her head. “And my mother slapped me for talking out of turn.”

  I’d be willing to bet Neva hadn’t said enough.

  The girl’s teeth chattered, although I don’t think it was from the cold. If the run-in with her mother was not to blame, I suspected she might be rethinking her decision to view her brother.

  “We can call this off, you know,” I said. “We don’t have to go in.”

  Neva was nothing if not steadfast. “We’re here now, and I want to see Robbie.”

  I confess I didn’t, but I’d promised. Rash of me, and a little late to go back on my word when we stood on the morgue’s doorstep.

  Considering Gratton and Monk’s reluctance to include me in any dealings with the police department, I made the decision to be ultra circumspect. “Before we go barging in, let me scout the area. It would probably be best if no one spots us.”

  She looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Why? I don’t care whether they do or whether they don’t.” She paused. “Unless they try to prevent me from seeing Robbie.”

  “They might try. You’re so young.”

  Her eyes were huge in her drawn face. “I’m not so young,” she said, and in this moment, I could believe it.

  I asked her to stand beside a horse and buggy tied at the hitching rack and act as though waiting for someone. She could see my wave indicating when the coast was clear from there. Scampering up the entry steps, I peered into the station lobby.

  I’d heard seven was a sort of dead hour in the police department, which had been part of my plan. It struck at a time after supper, but before men had gotten too liquored up and the patrolmen busied themselves bringing in drunks. My uncle thought I didn’t—or shouldn’t—know about such things. Gratton was a bit more forthcoming. And a very good thing, too.

  I spied the blue-clad back of the desk officer as he headed off down the corridor toward the rear of the building. The cells were there, as well as the latrine, which I hoped was his destination. If so, Neva and I had a couple minutes to gain our objective.

  The basement entrance was located a few steps to the right of the station door. Once in the main room, I glanced around. Coast clear, I waved Neva inside. With her eyes wide and her face pale, she looked guilty as sin. Together, we dashed for the stairway.

  Halfway down the stone steps, a stench rose to greet us. I gagged. Neva’s throat worked and she seemed to have trouble swallowing.

  “What is that awful smell?” she whispered.

  I shook my head. I suspected it was the odor of death, a combination of feces, blood, and rot. I didn’t know how to explain the source to her. I didn’t like to think of it myself.

  “Try to ignore the stink,” I said. “You’ll get used to it.” Or so Gratton had once told me.

  Her cold little hand reached for mine and gripped hard. We crept the final five treads to the bottom, reaching a rough cement hallway—a very dark hallway—with four doors opening off it. One, I knew, was a cell reserved for those accused of the most heinous crimes, who, reluctant to confess, were brought to reconsider. Helpfully, one of the doors bore a sign saying “coroner’s office.” One, opened by mistake, led to a collection of musty mops and buckets and assorted supplies. It seemed obvious we wanted the last room.

  Well, not wanted, exactly.

  About the time Neva finished squeezing all the blood from my fingers, we heard footsteps pounding overhead and, in a bit of a panic, we ducked inside.

  The door closed with a soft snick behind us. I reached for the chain dangling overhead and gave it a yank, tripping the electric light. Slowly, the bulb warmed. The light grew.

  The morgue’s chill raised goosebumps on my arms. I have no idea how such an icy temperature was accomplished, except for it being an underground facility. Perhaps the ice deliveryman made more than weekly visits.

  A table of the kind one would expect to find in a hospital stood in the middle of the room. On it lay the body of an old man covered to the neck by a bloodstained sheet. A foul-smelling drain lay directly below. A stone sink sat in the middle of a metal counter with bottles and tubes, syringes and knives, neatly arranged on either side. A microscope reserved pride of place.

  I glanced at Neva. Her dead-white face appeared frozen, and when she spoke, her lips barely moved.

  “Where
’s Robbie?” she asked, as if I should know. Her eyes flicked to the old man and as quickly away.

  The memory of a drawing I’d seen in the Spokesman-Review a while back floated to the fore. The subject had been this very room. The reporter had been lauding its modernity.

  “Here, I think.” I trod heavily, my feet feeling as if each weighed a ton, to where handles stuck out the front of what appeared to be large dresser drawers.

  I pulled the nearest and the drawer slid out on silent runners.

  Empty.

  Pushing it closed, I yanked on the second.

  Success.

  My indrawn breath must’ve warned Neva because, her dark eyes seeming as large as bread plates and her feet dragging, she came to join me.

  Even without Neva’s choked sob I knew this was Robbie because the slight young man lying there wore riding silks sewn from some tawdry green and purple fabrics. He’d been a handsome boy, but Robbie’s face, washed now in a gray pallor, bore the evidence of his lethal injuries. A wound the exact size and shape of a horse’s hoof dented one side of his skull. Blood and pinkish brain matter oozed from the injury. So far, no one had bothered to clean him up. His eyes, once as dark as his sister’s, opened a mere slit. Enough to see they bore the awful milky glaze of the dead. His face, so young he barely had a trace of peach fuzz on his chin, was otherwise unmarked, a small mercy.

  Tears ran down Neva’s cheeks and dripped to the floor. I put my arm around her waist. “Do you want me to leave you alone while you say good-bye?” I asked.

  She looked helplessly at me, shook her head no, then nodded. Poor girl.

  “I’ll be right over here,” I said and went to stand by the sink, far enough to give her some privacy, but near enough, I hoped, to catch her if she fainted. Proximity to the sink seemed a good plan for myself as well, in case my supper came up as it threatened to do.

  Trying not to overhear her actual words, I was aware of her talking to him. She said something about Mercury. Something about their grandfather and their mother. How she missed him. That she loved him.

  I felt like a voyeur and looked away. A clipboard lying farther along the counter caught my attention. I inched along until I was able to read the attached document. It was the coroner’s report on the old man lying on the table, one Otto Pearson by name. Age sixty-two. Deceased on September 10th, 1896. The date of his death seemed to explain the potency of the smell.

  I was more interested in the document clipped behind the current work in progress. The one on Robert Duchene O’Dell, age sixteen, date of death, yesterday. There’d been no autopsy. The document was a simple, uncontested death certificate. Cause of death: accidental, kicked by horse.

  So. Neva had been right. No mention of murder. And no real surprise. Nevertheless, it made any investigation more difficult.

  “Miss Bohannon?”

  Neva’s soft call finally reached me and I realized it wasn’t the first time she’d spoken.

  Laying the clipboard back in the exact position I’d found it, I turned to her. “Are you ready to go?”

  She chewed viciously on her chapped lips. “Will you come look at something? If you can, please.” Her right hand rested on the boy’s chest as though trying to feel a beating heart.

  “Look at something?” I repeated.

  Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Yes. On Robbie.”

  “Ahh—” I really wanted to say no. But, I reminded myself, her brother was not the first dead body I’d been close to, not even the only one with awful injuries, and anyway, the dead can do us no harm.

  My head knew as much, even if my heart didn’t.

  I took in a breath of tainted air and rejoined her. “What is it?”

  Her hands shook as she tilted up her brother’s chin. “See this? What do you think it means? Why—”

  She must’ve put her head on his chest. Otherwise, I don’t see how she could’ve found it—it being the welt across the underside of his throat.

  I leaned closer. Not a welt as though he’d been hanged, but more like he’d run into a thin, whippy object. Or it had run into him. The skin was broken and had seeped blood in spots. What’s more, from where I stood now, I could see his neck lay at an unnatural angle. I wondered if Neva had noticed.

  Apparently the coroner wasn’t the most observant of fellows either because considering the manner of his death, Robbie’s injury should’ve raised questions in his mind. Unless he was paid to be blind as well as incurious.

  I met her eyes and answered her question with one of my own. “What do you think happened?”

  She wasn’t crying now, although she looked shocked. And angry. “Have you ever seen somebody who’s been whipped, Miss Bohannon? You know, where a quirt is used? Well, this looks just like those welts do.” Her voice, a little hysterical, grew louder. “Another horse and rider were in the wreck, too, you know. A horse was killed. The rider, the horse’s jockey, was Billy Banks. He’s ... he’s like a sneaky coyote. He hated Robbie ’cause Robbie always beat him. He’d do it. He’d hurt Robbie if somebody paid him. He did. I know he did.”

  Her dark eyes glittered. “Billy, all he got was a broken arm.” Her voice lowered. “I wish it had been his neck.”

  I thought a moment, trying to visualize the scene. Neva’s description made as much sense as anything else. The mark on Robbie’s throat was an odd one, for certain. I couldn’t see how being trampled by a horse could cause such an injury.

  And yet, what could I do?

  Taking a final look, I straightened and went back to the counter where the clipboard sat. I dug in my pocketbook until I found a blank scrap of paper. Using a wayward stub of pencil, I wrote a small note and put it under the clamp.

  Neva watched over my shoulder. “What are you writing?”

  “Read for yourself.”

  “Check laceration on Robert O’Dell’s throat,” she read out loud. “Speculate. Report on status of victim’s neck. Neck?” She frowned, fresh worry on her face. “What do you mean?”

  I blew out a breath. “I hope it means the coroner is an honest man with a lively sense of curiosity. One that will cause him to delve deeper into Robbie’s death. And then report his findings to the police, who will, I trust, see Billy Banks gets his comeuppance.”

  “My mother says—” Neva stopped. “Will any of this do any good?”

  “I don’t know. We can only try.”

  She looked at my note again. “You didn’t sign this.”

  The comment drew a snort from me. “No. I most certainly didn’t.” Shudders! If Monk or Grat, or even worse, Lars, knew I’d been here, I’d be in the soup yet again.

  “Your note ...” Neva hesitated. “It doesn’t mean you’ll stop investigating, does it?”

  “If the police take over, I won’t have to.”

  As though on cue, the heavy tread of footsteps resounded on the floor outside. They stopped at the morgue door. I tossed the clipboard back on the counter and stepped away. Then, before Neva or I had time to do more than exchange a wide-eyed look—panic-stricken on her part, less so, I’m almost certain, on mine—the door crashed open. A tall man in blue stood there, his baton held in a defensive position. The officer from the desk lurked in his shadow.

  “See,” the desk officer said triumphantly. “Told you I seen light under the door and heard someone down here. I knew it wasn’t the doc. He went home an hour ago.”

  “Well, well, if it isn’t Miss China Bohannon,” Lars Hansen said, fulfilling a third of my fears. “If somebody’d given me a half dozen guesses, I’d probably have got it in two, three at the most. What are you doing here? And who is this?”

  His severe gaze fell on poor Neva, who seemed to shrivel under his glare. “Leading this young lady into trouble, are you?” He shook his baton at me. “What’s Monk going to say?”

  9

  “But Uncle Monk,” I said, “the girl, Neva O’Dell, asked for my help and she looked so desperate I hated to say no.”

  My un
cle snorted. “Try your puny excuses on somebody else, China. You didn’t want to tell her no.”

  “Oh, but really, that isn’t how it happened at all.” My words tumbled over each other as I rushed through my denial yet again. The conversation had become repetitious. We’d already been over it twice.

  We sat across from each other at the scarred oak kitchen table in the apartment a floor above the office. Monk was in the process of buying the building and since I’d arrived and begun keeping the books and running the office—which included billing and the handling of expenses—the bank payments were now up to date.

  Did I get any credit for this? Not much. Just a notation on a sign outside with the words Miss China Bohannon, Office Manager in small—very small—print beneath Monk and Grat’s names.

  My uncle shook his head. He knows me very well considering I’ve only lived here with him since June. I daresay we’ve packed a lot of living into these few months, more than most families see in a dozen years, if ever. He says I’m no mystery; I’m just as headstrong and impulsive as my mother—his sister—was. I take it for a compliment.

  Still, no matter how many times or ways I repeated how I got involved, he wouldn’t be convinced.

  Monk brushed crumbs from his mustache. He’d enjoyed a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, while I nibbled on a piece of slightly burned toast. My appetite failed as I steeled myself to sit through more of his lecture on deportment, responsibility, procedure, sneaking behind his and Gratton’s backs, and just about every other fault one can conjecture. He did have a tendency to go on and on.

  The lowering part? He was correct when he said I hadn’t wanted to tell Neva I wouldn’t take her case. My curiosity had been whetted from the moment I learned of the young jockey’s death, and after Neva’s and my discoveries last night, I wasn’t about to let it go. As a matter of fact, although I pretended attentiveness to my uncle’s diatribe, I was actually wondering if the coroner had read my note. And if he had read it, had he acted on the information?