by Lynn Morris
Officer Goodin and Shiloh did a thorough search of the house. The master bedchamber had both men’s and women’s clothing in it, but it had a curiously abandoned air, as if the couple had moved and simply left their things. The bed was unmade, but there was a layer of dust on the mussed bedclothes and the pillows. It had not been slept in for many days, they thought.
The clothing was a mystery too. There were no shoes, but there was a man’s perfectly good dress shirt thrown on the floor. A trunk held two dresses and some small clothes that looked hardly worn. The other bedroom had a small bed, stripped of linens, and it definitely looked unused, as it didn’t even have curtains. The fourth floor and the attic had no furniture at all. They obviously had not been used.
They returned to the parlor empty-handed. The baby was asleep, wrapped in clean linens. Solange’s grimy face had been washed, and she was meekly sitting in Dev’s lap, allowing him to comb her hair. Her hair was filthy, and behind her back Shiloh observed Dev pull the comb through her hair, then peruse the comb closely for a moment. He looked up at Shiloh and shook his head imperceptibly. No lice.
He was talking in the same soothing manner that Shiloh had used, telling her about his baby brother and how sick he had been when he was small. “And so you see, you and I are very much alike,” he said quietly. “I had to take care of my brother, and even though I am a grown man, and a doctor, it was very hard for me to learn. You take care of your sister, and you have done very well, but it must have been hard.” He kept combing, and the little girl began to look sleepy.
“It was hard sometimes when Maman was sick,” she murmured. “But Lisette is a very good baby, and she hardly ever gets sick like your brother. What is your brother’s name?”
“Dart,” Dev answered. “Dart Dunleavy Buchanan.”
“Is Dunleavy his mother’s name? Like my name is Solange Fortier, which is my mother’s name? I don’t have my father’s name.”
“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Dev said. “You’re a very smart little girl.”
Shiloh was translating in a very low voice into Officer Goodin’s ear. The officer said to Dev, “If you think it won’t upset her too much, ask her about her mother and father. If she knows where they are.”
Dev kept combing her hair, and her thin little body kept relaxing, the tension in her face and neck and shoulders and hands visibly lessening. “Why is it, Solange, that you don’t have Dr. Pettijohn’s name?”
She stiffened abruptly, and her face took on the wary hunted animal look again. Hastily Dev said, “It’s all right, Solange. No one is angry at you. No one is going to hurt you. We are going to help you, but we also want to talk to Dr. Pettijohn, that’s all.”
“He’s not my father,” she said stiffly.
“I see,” Dev said gravely. “Do you happen to know where he is?”
She shook her head vehemently.
Dev combed in silence until she had calmed down again. He asked quietly, “Do you know where your mother is, Solange? We will help her too, you know, if we can find her.”
She frowned and sighed, a sound much too tragic and burdened for a six-year-old. “I don’t know where she is now. She left yesterday to sell her clothes. She didn’t come back.”
In a careless tone Dev said in English, “She doesn’t know where Dr. Pettijohn is, and she says her mother left yesterday to sell her clothes and didn’t—”
He stopped, for Officer Goodin had stiffened, and his indrawn breath was so ragged that it startled Dev. Solange cringed, for she was still a little afraid of the policeman. Goodin rasped, “Sell her clothes? Her mother was selling her clothes? Ask her what she had on her, what she was carrying, if she took anything with her when she went to sell her clothes.”
Neither Dev nor Shiloh understood the policeman’s sudden intense manner, since Officer Goodin had only told Cheney the entire story of the woman in the morgue. But Dev knew that his questions were important, so he immediately patted the startled girl’s shoulder and said, “My friend is a policeman, and they ask so many questions. But he’s a very nice man. He even has a little girl who’s just about Lisette’s age. Her name is Dinah.”
“He-he does?” Solange breathed. This seemed to reassure her, so she allowed Dev to resume combing her hair. “What did he say?”
“He asked about your mother,” Dev answered, “and would like very much to find her. That’s a policeman’s job sometimes, you know, to find people who need help. So he was wondering if you might be able to tell us anything to help us find her. Could you say what she was wearing and how she took her clothes? In a bundle, wrapped in paper, or perhaps in a box or a trunk?”
Solange began to explain about Manon’s arrangements and told Dev what she was wearing when she left. She finished with, “And she took my doll Susannah too, for good fortune and love, she said.”
Dev related this to Shiloh and Officer Goodin and was downcast as he watched the policeman’s face. His craggy features softened with sorrow and pity, and Dev knew then. He stopped combing Solange’s hair and very gently set her down on the floor, then turned her to face him. He held her hands and looked into her fearful eyes. “We’re going to go now, Solange,” he said firmly but kindly. “You and Lisette are coming with us. We will take care of you.”
She searched his face, and Dev could see that she suspected what he already knew. Her eyes dropped, and she whispered, “I think that would be a good thing, monsieur. We will come.”
Twenty-seven
These Small Hours of Night
After Dev left on his mysterious mission, Cheney was obliged to work so quickly and make so many difficult decisions that she had very little time to consider the implications of what had happened in the cubicle with Officer Jamison and Alfie the Pocket and of what Dev had said. By the time she had arranged for restocking the hospital’s supplies and drugs from the office and had adjusted the interns’ scheduled duties to account for Dev’s absence, it was already midnight. She was at the nurses’ station starting some emergency patient files when Dr. Cleve Batson came striding through the emergency doors. His face was pale and seemed thinner than when Cheney had seen him a week ago, but he didn’t look deathly ill.
“Hello. Before you say anything, I am pronouncing myself cured of the plague,” he declared as he reached the desk and bent over it to speak very emphatically. “I have slept the clock around, and now I am up, the wraith, haunting the halls of the hospital, looking for my severed head. No, no, I forgot. I’m looking for work. Need a hand, ma’am?”
Cheney laughed. “Are you really all right, Cleve?”
“Yes, ma’am! I know I look like week-old porridge, but I feel better than I look. And listen—ahhhhhh—no rales, no stridor, no frogs. Okay?”
Cheney smiled at him. He was so boyish, so endearing, that it was very difficult to deny him anything. “No coughing, no sneezing,” she ordered with mock severity. “You’ll be confined to quarters again if you disobey.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then I am very glad to see you, Doctor, and I hope you are indeed cured, because you are going to have to work.”
Cheney updated him on the rather odd situation concerning the supplies and Dev’s sudden insistence that he go find Dr. Pettijohn. Cleve asked no questions; he merely went to work. By one o’clock Cheney realized that things had calmed down enough, and that Cleve indeed was well enough, that she could let him work the rest of the late shift.
She went for a short walk around the hospital grounds. The snow had stopped falling, and though it was very cold, the night was so still and quiet that Cheney found it restful and refreshing. Of course she was burning with curiosity about Dr. Pettijohn, the laudanum, and Dev’s abrupt departure with Officer Goodin, and her husband, for Shiloh had sent John with a message that he was accompanying Dev and that Sean and Shannon were at the stables.
Cheney knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until the men returned, so she decided that if she had the energy and could concentrate clearly e
nough, she would autopsy the woman Officer Goodin had brought in that morning. As she walked, she worked to clear her mind of the feverish stew of speculation the last few hours had induced. She looked up at the heavens, praying a little, relishing these small hours of night when the Lord often seemed nearer than during the distractions of a busy day.
After her walk she went to Roe’s. The lanterns inside and out still shone brightly, which meant that James and John were still there. Sure enough, when she came in, they were playing checkers by the stove. At their feet Sean and Shannon looked up with sleepy curiosity and then came alive. They were not wiggly, eager sort of dogs. They were slow and deliberate and dignified, even as puppies, so they got up and plodded to meet her, blinking and yawning. Sean bumped his head against her knees and Shannon leaned against her legs, their favorite greetings for the people they loved.
She petted both of them as she greeted the boys. “No, please, don’t get up and interrupt your game. I just came by to get the dogs. You two aren’t staying up baby-sitting them, are you?”
“No, Dr. Duvall,” James answered. “Mr. Irons-Winslow told us we could take them to the office any time. We just decided we wanted to wait up for them, for we know Balaam and the policemen’s horses will need warming up and brushing down when they get back. You can leave Sean and Shannon with us if you like.”
“No, I’m going to be working down in the laboratory, so I think I’ll take them with me,” she said, smiling. “Give them a change of scenery. When the men return, will you tell my husband and Dr. Buchanan where we are?”
“Sure, Dr. Duvall,” James answered.
John rose and went to the post of the door of the first stall. “Here’s their mufflers, Dr. Duvall. I expect you’ll be wanting them to wear them. It’s likely cold down in that old cellar.” He sounded vaguely reproachful. Cheney found it amusing that people fell so in love with those two dogs that they took all sorts of liberties with advice and reproofs.
“Thank you, John. It is cold down in the lab, but I’ll try to make them as comfortable as I can.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sounding unconvinced. He wound Shannon’s pink muffler around her neck and then Sean’s plaid one around his. Of course, they both had on their handmade matching booties, and Shannon had her two pink bows at the base of her enormous ears. The two looked up at Cheney as though very pleased with themselves.
“Silly dogs,” she murmured affectionately.
She turned to go, but James called out, “Here, Dr. Duvall, we made them some chew toys. You’d better take a couple of them. Wouldn’t want them chewing on anything down in your laboratory or—” he elbowed his younger brother in the ribs—“or anything in the morgue, especially!”
“Stop it, James. They wouldn’t,” John said uneasily.
James and John had taken narrow lengths of leather, tightly braided them, and formed them into shapes like great bones. Then they had soaked them in water and put them by the stove to dry and harden.
Obediently Cheney took them. “Thank you, James, John. It was very kind of you to make them toys.”
“Kinda had to,” James said with amusement. “They were starting in on the workbench, and we figured they’d have the stables eaten up in a week or so. Not to mention that at your office—”
Now John elbowed his brother and said loudly, “They’re just like babies, aren’t they? Teething and all. Well, bye, Dr. Duvall! We’ll be sure and give Dr. Buchanan and Mr. Irons-Winslow your message!”
“Good-bye,” Cheney said with amusement, hoping that whatever had happened at the office did not involve any personal injuries.
Since Cheney had the dogs with her, she went down the outside steps that went to the cellar entrance. The dogs followed her, their noses raised high, sniffing curiously. Cheney had not yet brought them into the lab, and she hoped they wouldn’t be bothered by the strong medicinal smells or made nervous by the morgue. She had learned that Sean and Shannon were sensitive dogs, alert to Cheney’s and Shiloh’s moods, to the atmosphere in a room, to tone of voice. Certainly Cheney had no silly superstitions or fears concerning dead bodies, but she did know that dogs had a phenomenal sense of smell and the scent of the dead might upset them. As she came in and turned up several of the gaslights, she watched Sean and Shannon carefully.
They split up, as if by plan, Sean taking the far end of the laboratory, walking down the long row of cabinets and shelves, sniffing ponderously, looking up at the darkened windows, eyeing some of the jars and boxes with suspicion.
Shannon, meanwhile, sniffed all around the walls of the morgue, her head down to the joint where the walls met the floor. Finally she came to the door and sniffed fast and lightly, as dogs will when they are eager. She lifted her head, looked up at the door as if she were looking for something, and started to wag her tail.
Watching her, Cheney giggled. “Shannon, try not to be so sensitive and high-strung.” Shannon turned her head to look at Cheney reproachfully, and her long red tongue got caught hanging out the side of her mouth, which made Cheney laugh even harder. “Silly old puppies,” she said softly.
Both of them kept nosing around the lab area while Cheney stored her coat and gloves and started preparing the dissection instruments. Sketes had made the dogs a feather mattress, a cushion made of flannel and stuffed with goose down, that Cheney laid in front of the stove. They found this and started investigating it, their tails going like lopsided metronomes, at Sketes’s scent, Cheney figured. They loved Sketes as if she were their long-lost mother, though she kept up a continual monotone of rebuke when she was with them.
Satisfied that the dogs were going to be just fine, Cheney went in the morgue, rolled out the body, and went to work. An autopsy, particularly if it was requested by the police for purposes of investigation into cause of death, was a painstakingly slow process, made even more so because Cheney believed that the autopsy notes should be made at the time of the autopsy, not afterward, to ensure the highest degree of correctness and detail.
As generally happened when Cheney was utterly absorbed in something, she became oblivious to her environment. She could be making complex notes in a patient file, for instance, and not hear someone speak to her. She could look up from a book to think of something, stare into space, and not see a person walk past. And she had found in the past months that when she worked too long without moving, sometimes her legs and feet would half freeze and swell up so much that she could barely walk when she finally got up to do so. As she went to work now, Cheney made a promise to herself that she would stop every so often and walk around to keep the blood flowing in her legs.
She tested the rigor mortis of her victim—which had passed—and recorded the fact. Then she shaved the woman’s head where the injury was located, made a careful drawing, and wrote a meticulous description. By then she realized that her feet were freezing, so she put down her pen and notes, stretched, and walked in circles around the dissection table, also working her head around in circles to loosen the already tight muscles of her neck.
Abruptly she stopped and looked around the cavernous room. “Sean? Shannon?” she called, a little shocked at how tense she sounded. The dogs were nowhere in sight.
They haven’t disappeared, you idiot, Cheney chided herself. But I’d better find them. They don’t need to go up the stairs. The thought of Shannon strolling into Henry Norton’s cubicle with her pink bows on those ridiculous ears and her little pink booties made Cheney giggle as she lit a lantern and turned it up high. “Sean, Shannon, you bad children, where are you?” she called, rounding the corner of the morgue.
She distinctly heard a whine, not of distress or warning, but just in recognition that she had called them. It came from the farthest end of the cellar, down at the other end of the rows of storage shelves. Cheney briskly went to the end of the rows, stopped and lifted the lantern and peered down each row. At the third she saw a light blur far down. “Shannon? Is that you?” she scolded, moving toward the dog. “What do you
think you’re doing, standing there in the dark like some—”
She had come near enough to make out the dog. Shannon turned and looked at her as she approached, and Cheney saw that her big sad-clown face looked uncharacteristically intent. The dog swiveled her head back around front quickly.
As Cheney neared the dog, she could see a shadow moving beyond Shannon. The shadow of a man, sliding back and forth as if he were at a dead end. Then Cheney saw, beyond the shadow, another blur. Sean was there. The two dogs had the man cornered.
Irish wolfhounds are not at all aggressive with humans. They are called gentle giants because of their sweet dispositions. Neither Sean nor Shannon was growling, and when Shannon had turned, Cheney could see that she was wary of the man, but not agitated.
All of this went through Cheney’s mind in just a few seconds as she stood still and silent, her lantern raised high and throwing a glare that lit her face starkly. She understood that the man could see her much better than she could see him. “H-hello?” she said weakly. Quickly she cleared her throat and managed to sound less afraid and more confident. “Who are you? What are you doing down here?”
The shadow stopped his odd dodge-and-pace and stood still.
Cheney didn’t move, her heart in her throat.
The man marched forward confidently. As he walked past Shannon, giving her the widest berth possible, and came into the light, Cheney saw it was Dr. Marcus Pettijohn, a set look of rather forced amusement with a touch of impatience on his face. He began in a loud brazen voice, “There you are, Dr. Duvall! I was not at all sure about these dogs, so I just tried to get by—”
He saw her face, stopped, and his features hardened with sudden comprehension. His eyes narrowed to bare slits. He took another step toward her.
Cheney backed up a step, suddenly feeling fearful. He knew; he had seen from her face that he wasn’t going to be able to brazen it out. He looked desperate but set. And dangerous.