The Secret Lives of Dentists

by W. A. Winter

  Hickman shakes his head. “She didn’t tell me anything,” he says quietly.

  Arne waits a moment, and then asks, “How did Teresa get along with her sister? And with Bud Montgomery?”

  For the first time in the past couple of hours, Hickman manages a laugh. A small, bitter laugh.

  “Grace was jealous of Terry, how pretty and popular she was,” he says. “Terry, I think, felt sorry for Grace, especially after she married Bud and put on more weight.”

  “Do you think Terry slept with Bud?”

  Hickman closes his eyes again.

  Very softly he says, “I wouldn’t be surprised. Terry wasn’t very choosy. She knew a lot of guys before we got married, and I guess she knew a lot of guys afterward, especially while I’ve been away. When she was sad, which was often, she counted on sex to make herself feel better.”

  Anderson can’t get the conversation out of his mind as he drives through the late-night streets after making sure Hickman was safely tucked into his room for the night. He has assigned a patrolman to sit outside the soldier’s door, just in case Oscar Rystrom or some other bottom-feeder from the papers manages to find out where he’s staying or, for some reason, he decides to take a powder. Hickman will no doubt sleep soundly tonight, maybe feeling sorry for himself and for the child, but not sleepless with grief for his round-heeled wife. Still, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions.

  Anderson isn’t sure how he’ll sleep tonight. He’s going to have the bed to himself because Lily is spending a couple of nights at her mother’s house. Tomorrow morning, after checking on Hickman, he will pick up Mel Curry, go back to see Grace, and get her to tell them more about Rose, though, after Hickman’s comments about his wife’s activities, they have good reason to consider the other possibilities. He will ask Grace what he did not ask Harold Hickman this evening: Is Harold Hickman Junior the soldier’s child?

  The thought of Mel Curry sets something else off inside him, something unrelated to the Hickmans, and he turns right at Thirty-eighth Street and heads west a few blocks to Columbus. Cruising south now on Columbus, he drives past a neat, stuccoed duplex and cranes his neck to look up at the second-floor windows. A light is on behind the curtains, so he makes a U-turn at the end of the block and doubles back, more slowly than on the first pass.

  He parks across the street under a leafless elm, cracks a window, and lights a cigarette. He’s not certain what he expects to see in the Currys’ bedroom window tonight, but decides then and there to send Mel to Grand Forks for Teresa Hickman’s funeral.

  The driver has given his usual haunts a wide berth since Teresa Hickman’s murder, avoiding especially the Palace, the Whoop-Tee-Doo Club, and other locations on and around Nicollet Avenue between downtown and Franklin.

  He’s stayed clear of Lake of the Isles, too, especially the east side, spending more time in other parts of town, such as Powderhorn Park and Lake Nokomis and the U of M campus. Another couple of months and there’ll be plenty to see, especially at the Big Beach of Nokomis, but for now there’s nothing going on and nobody’s likely to notice him on the prowl. For the time being, on the east side of town, he’ll be just another faceless schmo driving a canary-colored cab.

  He follows the Hickman case in the papers: the arrest of the dentist, the dentist’s hiring of a big-shot lawyer, then the lawyer getting the dentist out on bail. If the cops are still looking at other suspects, the papers don’t know about it or have agreed not to say anything that might queer the investigation.

  On Wednesday, not quite a week since the murder, the Tribune runs an interview with the lawyer, Dante DeShields. What the hell kind of name is that anyway? the driver wonders. Probably another Jew, the way they stick together. The photo that accompanies the interview shows DeShields standing in front of a desk the size of an aircraft carrier on the tenth floor of the Foshay Tower. The lawyer looks awfully short, almost midget-short, with a large head wreathed in curly gray-black hair. His dark eyes bulge below heavy black eyebrows. There’s a bulbous nose and jug ears poking out of the thick hair. He has a five-o’clock shadow every bit as prominent as Richard Nixon’s. And he looks as though he’d like nothing better than to rip a guy’s lungs out.

  The Tribune’s headline runs big and black across the top of the front page.

  LAWYER: DENTIST CAN’T GET FAIR TRIAL HERE

  “Although no date has been set for the trial of a Minneapolis dentist accused of murdering a pregnant North Dakota woman, Dr. H. David Rose’s lawyer says a fair trial in the Mill City is unlikely due to ‘systemic anti-Semitism’ that has drawn nationwide attention since before the war,” staff writer George Appel writes in his opening paragraph. “According to defense attorney Dante DeShields, empaneling an unbiased local jury for his client, who is Jewish, will be ‘virtually impossible.’”

  The driver is sitting in his car in one of the parking areas along the West River Road, this morning’s paper propped against the cab’s steering wheel. After dark, the site is popular among amorous teens, who pack the space as though they’re at a drive-in movie, the cars often rocking on their suspensions within minutes of their arrival. In broad daylight, he has the space to himself.

  Appel notes that though Rose has not yet been indicted in the strangulation death of serviceman’s wife Teresa Hickman, DeShields, “according to unnamed courthouse sources, seems to be setting the stage for a change-of-venue request or an appeal if the dentist is eventually convicted.”

  DeShields says Rose, while conceding that Mrs. Hickman was his patient the night of the murder, has not confessed to the crime. “Police sources say Rose admitted driving the victim around town after her appointment and discussing her pregnancy. According to detectives, the woman, whose husband is on active duty in West Germany, believed Rose was the father of her unborn baby.” At some point during the drive, Appel’s sources told him, Rose “suffered what he described as a ‘blackout,’ and when he ‘woke up’ the woman was no longer in the car. Rose told police he had no idea what happened to her.” The allegations appeared earlier in both the Star and Tribune. What’s new is DeShields’s pre-emptive strike.

  Appel’s story concludes, “Hiawatha County Attorney Homer Scofield, who is expected to convene a grand jury later this week, calls Rose’s story ‘not credible’ and DeShields’s suggestion of a biased jury pool ‘insulting to the good citizens of this city. Counsel should be ashamed.’”

  The driver carefully excises the story with a single-edge razor blade he keeps in the glove compartment, neatly folds the rest of the paper, and stuffs it into one of the trash bins on the edge of the parking lot. He’s no expert, but he reads the papers and listens to the news and knows that the Teresa Hickman case will be a hot topic for weeks, maybe months, through the trial and beyond.

  He recalls the comment he’s heard several times over the years, something to the effect that, in high-profile murder cases, the victim is all but forgotten amid the legal wrangling and the focus is on the accused. That may be true, he muses, but he won’t lose sight of the victim in this case. He knew her, after all. He’s seen and talked to her. He’s seen her up close. In the flesh.

  He sees her now, in his mind’s eye, moving back and forth behind the Greek’s counter, in and out of the kitchen, her perfect ass in perpetual motion, usually within reach of the Greek’s gimpy kid. He can see her walking along the street in front of the Whoop-Tee-Doo Club, the sidewalk trash whistling and catcalling and grabbing at her as she passes, dying to get a feel for what’s under the winter coat. Then he sees her disappearing through the doors that lead upstairs to the dentist’s office.

  The next time he sees the girl she is sitting with the dentist in the black Packard along the east side of Lake of the Isles. It’s much later, closer to midnight. What he sees now is much clearer—the couple arguing in the Packard’s front seat, then the girl exiting the car and striding up Euclid Place, away from the lake and the car. This time, however, the driver doesn’t leave the lake and head back towa
rd Hennepin Avenue. He pulls out and around the Packard and follows the girl past the other cars parked along the boulevard. Turning onto Euclid Place, he spots her a quarter of a block away, her blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders and her winter coat turning from black to dark green as she passes under a streetlamp.

  He switches on the cab’s roof light and creeps along behind and then alongside the girl. He leans across the front seat and cranks down the passenger-side window. The girl, not five feet away now, stops, turns, and looks his way. He can see her smile.

  CHAPTER 6

  Teresa Hickman’s funeral was scheduled for eleven o’clock on the morning of April 15, on the outskirts of Grand Forks, one week after her murder and two days after her body was released by Hiawatha County authorities to her husband. Without a word to anybody in either her family or his, Private Harold Hickman made arrangements for her service to be conducted at His Will Baptist Church, where they were married, and interred in the cemetery out back.

  Arne Anderson, alluding to the widower’s arrangements, said to Mel Curry, “Well, at least he’ll know who’s she with.” Mel laughed, though Arne didn’t mean it as a joke.

  Arne decided that Curry and Hessburg will be the eyes and ears of the Minneapolis Police Department at the funeral. They will drive to Grand Forks Thursday afternoon, set up shop at a local hotel, and attend the services Friday morning. They will speak to Teresa Hickman’s father and any other family members and acquaintances they can connect with, most importantly the boyfriends and sundry admirers who may feel compelled, or be persuaded, to articulate their obsessions. Arne tapped Hessburg rather than Lakeland, Riemenschneider, or any of the other more senior squad members because Sid, his relative youth notwithstanding, has shown an ease and self-confidence talking to people in stressful situations. Of course, Mel’s good at talking to people, too, though that’s not why Arne sent him away.

  Miles Mckenzie assigned Robert Gardner to attend the rites on behalf of the United Press’s Minneapolis bureau. All four of the Twin Cities dailies as well as the UP’s archrival, the Associated Press, will be represented by senior reporters and feature writers. Mckenzie figures a small-town funeral will be a simple enough event to cover, even for his least-experienced staffer; the bureau chief and his senior reporters will be better utilized digging up dirt closer to home. In any event, Mckenzie will rewrite everything that Robert files from Grand Forks.

  Robert has spent the past couple of days talking to employees of the Whoop-Tee-Doo Club and Palace Luncheonette as well as to Rose’s neighbors in his building, learning nothing new about either the dentist or his practice. With Sergeant Anderson’s permission, Milt Hickok pored over the doctor’s practice records from the past two years, surprised by Rose’s sloppy bookkeeping, but likewise learning nothing important.

  “North Dakota might be our best chance for a scoop, kid,” Mckenzie told Robert, clapping him on the shoulder, “all those horny bachelor uncles and sex-crazed farm boys—find out what they have to say about Teresa and her crowd.”

  Robert is put off by the idea of digging up dirt on the girl, but understands that dirt is often a component of a journalist’s job. He decides, however, that he’s going to do something grander, nobler. He’s going to write the “definitive portrait” of a small-town girl who journeys to the big city looking for work and excitement, only to wind up pregnant, dead, and debased. (The phrase definitive portrait glows like a neon sign behind his eyes.) It’s exactly the kind of riveting cautionary tale that he read and reread in the U of M’s journalism school library, rich in human emotion and provocative detail, and has since dreamed of writing himself. He hasn’t told anybody about the idea, least of all Mckenzie. Better, Robert figures, to simply drop the finished story, a fait accompli, on the boss’s desk when he’s finished.

  On Thursday morning, after receiving Mckenzie’s marching orders, Robert jogs downstairs and calls Pam Brantley from a pay phone on Third Street. He figures that this is a good time to call because Karl is almost sure to be dead to the world in the couple’s bedroom and Pam hasn’t left for lunch or whatever the hell she does during the day.

  Pam picks up on the first ring, and he quickly tells her about his assignment. “This will be my first major feature,” he says, hoping he doesn’t come across as pompous and self-important—that is, like his dad. “I’ll be up against the guys from the big papers and the Associated Press, but I’m pretty sure I’m up to it.”

  “That’s great, Bobby,” she says in not much more than a whisper. She sounds uninterested or distracted.

  “Is something wrong?” he says. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

  But instead of answering him, she says, “I’ve got to go—why don’t you call when you get back.” And hangs up.

  What was that about, he wonders, standing on the busy street, the phone still pressed to his ear, its dial tone competing with the thrum and rumble of downtown traffic. Maybe Karl was stirring. Or maybe she has another guest, though he’s pretty sure it wouldn’t be another man this time of day. Maybe her mom or sister is visiting from Rochester.

  Then a more depressing thought occurs to him: Pam is angry about their last meeting, when he told her he saw the dead woman along the tracks. Their tryst ended unpleasantly that night, Pam clearly bothered by his revelation that not only had he discovered the body, he hadn’t called the police or told his boss—someone in authority. Robert left her apartment angry, not floating on the postcoital cloud their lovemaking usually placed him on.

  Pam knows nothing about the rules of responsible journalism and wouldn’t care less if she did. Robert, now unkindly, doubts whether a woman who so enthusiastically violates her wedding vows would worry much about either professional ethics or civic duty. If anything, he was, at least until that moment, reasonably sure that she would think about what he told her and be happy he’d kept his discovery—and their relationship—a secret.

  He thinks about calling her back, and then rejects the idea.

  “Fuck it,” he says out loud, startling a pair of elderly women who happen to be shuffling past on the sidewalk. “Fuck her.” He immediately feels ashamed of himself, not yet accustomed to spouting obscenities in public.

  But, as he heads back to the office, he realizes that the emotion he’s feeling most acutely right now is neither anger nor shame. It’s hurt.

  Like many young journalists, Robert begins to write his story before he sets foot on the story site or speaks to his first source. Fortunately, the four-hour train ride from Minneapolis to Grand Forks, crossing endless dun-colored fields awaiting spring planting, is conducive to daydreaming. An hour shy of the Red River, Robert decides he likes this lede:

  As a teenager growing up in tiny Dollar, North Dakota, pretty Teresa Marie Kubicek was little known beyond the town’s borders. As a twenty-one-year-old murder victim returning home from the big city for burial, she is a tragic celebrity. The image of the murder victim’s waxen corpse lying in the weeds beside the streetcar track hovers behind the words.

  And, like many journalists young and old, Robert is surprised when hardly anybody or anything is quite the way he’s pictured it.

  His Will Baptist Church, for one thing, is not in Grand Forks, but sits by itself on the edge of a potato field three miles southwest of town. Imagining a quaint whitewashed building with lancet windows, peaked roof, and soaring steeple, Robert sees instead, when he and his travel mates in a rented car round a bend on a two-lane county road, a squat brick building with small, square windows and no steeple at all. Its only visible religious symbol is the small cross atop a white sign in the scrubby front yard welcoming ALL VISITORS and advertising the church’s Sunday and midweek services. From the gravel parking lot on the side of the building, Robert can see a small cemetery, its markers visible beyond a rusty iron fence.

  Another surprise: the large number of cars and pickup trucks already filling the lot and parked bumper-to-bumper on both shoulders of the county road that runs in front of
the church. Men, women, and a handful of children stand in the parking lot and on the yellow lawn, the church itself, according to one local, already full to its modest capacity. Several dozen folding chairs have been set up in the basement, where speakers will broadcast the words and music from upstairs. A couple of sheriff’s deputies in blue caps and fur-collared jackets are stationed outside the church’s front doors, where a Chrysler hearse and two black Cadillac limousines are parked. A man with an orange hairpiece and officious manner informs the crowd that only family and “personal friends” have been allowed inside for the service.

  It’s a bright, cool day, and standing in the elements is not intolerable, but the locals make no attempt to disguise their disdain for the out-of-towners, especially the journalists, easily identified by their notebooks and cameras and shiny suits. The journalists huddle on the edge of the parking lot, cupping cigarettes in their hands and glancing at their watches. Among them, George Appel and Oscar Rystrom from the Minneapolis dailies, and Martin Rice from the Associated Press. Robert is surprised to see Mel Curry, the Minneapolis detective, standing behind Rice.

  At five minutes to eleven, six men of varying age and posture line up behind the hearse and wait for the undertaker’s men to slide the taffy-colored coffin out of the vehicle’s rear door and carry it up the low concrete stoop and into the church. A reporter from the Grand Forks Herald helpfully identifies the principals following the coffin and pallbearers, pronouncing the names sotto voce as family, neighbors, and “personal friends” shuffle inside.

  “Grace Kubicek Montgomery and her husband,” the hometown newspaperman says.

  “Teresa’s father, Walter Kubicek, accompanied, I’m pretty sure, by his sisters.

  “Connie Canfield, a school chum of Terry’s.

  “Kenneth Landa, reportedly the favorite among Terry’s boyfriends.”

  None of these individuals looks like any of the characters that Robert Gardner imagined.