Dying For Revenge (The Lady Doc Murders Book 1)

by Barbara Golder

  “I can’t,” I repeated for the hundredth time. “All I can think of is Tommy Berton and how he destroyed my life. It fills every minute I'm not actively thinking about something else. Believe me, I wish it didn’t.”

  “Jane, look at me,” Father Matt said. His face was serious, his voice gentle. “It doesn't have to. Tommy Berton killed your husband. You’re destroying your own life.”

  I put down the sandwich and wiped toast crumbs from my mouth with my napkin, the pain in my heart searing now and almost beyond endurance. I opened my mouth to reply, to tell him that I was doing no such thing, but the pain was too much.

  He continued. “I don’t think I have ever known a more strong-willed person than you, Jane, especially when it comes to people around you. You had the will to stop a handful of corporations from bilking people out of millions of dollars. You had the will to bring your husband’s killer to justice when the police said it couldn’t be done. You had the will to start a new life and a new career in a town where you knew no one, and that suits you about as well as a bicycle suits a fish. It’s time you used that will to start healing yourself. Forgive yourself, because you didn’t cause John’s death. Forgive Tommy, because you must. Forgive John for leaving you alone. Make the act of will, Jane, and the healing will follow. Will yourself past it. You’re running out of time.”

  I couldn’t respond to him, and he felt no need to say more. We just sat, drinking that awful coffee, he sharing my anguish and I taking small comfort in his concern even as I doubted his solution. At length, I drained my cup, left a twenty-dollar bill on the table for our meals, and walked with Father Matt into the bright light of a summer day.

  Our company and our silence lasted until we reached the intersection of Spruce Street, where he turned to go up the hill to the church to meet the vicar general as I continued on, as alone again, in fact as I was, in spirit.

  **********

  The walk up the hillside from the Telluride trail was longer than it looked, but worth it. The rifle broke down to fit in the simple, black backpack, indistinguishable from the ones that all of the tourists who hiked up and down the mountain carried. Reassembling the gun was easy in the cool shade of the trees, out of sight of everyone. When it was over, a few moments to break it down, put it away, then it would be a quick walk down the gentle trail back into Telluride, unremarked. In time to hear the dreadful news that there was another shooting. What a tragedy.

  The little glen had a perfect vantage, in the woods, away from the line of sight of the gondola — though if you looked hard it was visible. That was how the shooter had found it, riding up to Mountain Village with some tourists. Hidden behind some rocks but with a perfect clear view of that roof garden, close enough to town as the crow flew and with a serendipitous outcropping to steady the barrel. Not that it was needed. Eyes and hands might get older but the will, the precision never left. It was the will that counted in the end. Many people had the physical skill to be a good shot, but not the will. The will is what made the difference: the will to wait, the will to be steady, the will to take another creature's life. It would be a long shot but an easy one; all that was needed was to wait.

  This was the last one. It was time to put the anger away, the spleen vented, the pain at bay for a bit. Time to resume life again, life such as life was. Life that stretched ahead, gray and lifeless, empty of meaning since she was killed. Life was a shadow, a shell, no joy, no pleasure, nothing.

  It had built up month after month following her death until it had spilled out in murderous rage on the anniversary of her death, and it had surfaced again year after year since. In a way, it was the only time that life stirred inside, when one of those clean shots found its mark and someone else had to share the pain and not know why. It was all that made life worth living, worth getting up, putting on the coffee, working, even drawing the next breath. Only death made Bella seem alive again, or at least not so terribly and finally and stupidly gone. Only the faint sense of satisfaction that came from extracting payment for a life too soon gone made anything else bearable.

  This shot had to be right, because that woman doctor was determined to ferret out the reason for the deaths. She’d discovered the pattern, so carefully concealed — or was it the incursion of sloppiness that made it discoverable? No matter, get rid of the woman and the problem would be solved. Things would go quiet again; soon they all would have forgotten.

  The woman doctor had even been smart enough to figure out the ones that were so carefully arranged to look like accidents. She had to be stopped, because if not, she’d never let go, so great was the drive within her. She’d said something about a dead husband—that had to be the source of her stubbornness — and the shooter knew from experience that such personal pain created a persistence that would never, never end.

  It was a beautiful day, the air crisp and clean from the rain the day before, and the surrounding meadow smelled sweet with crushed grass and wildflowers. Like childhood summers so long ago, so far from this quiet canyon in western Colorado. A brown rabbit ran across the path, zigzagging from tuft to rock, finally disappearing into a hollow at the base of an aspen tree. The sky was the same as it had been then, blue and clear, dotted with clouds, but everything else was different, from the town, full of rich, lazy and spoiled children with no sense of place and no sense of responsibility, to the forest that surrounded it.

  Both were impermanent, the town made all of wood, not proper stone and brick, and these pale, fragile aspens that came down in the least wind, or in no wind at all, more like weeds than trees, not thick, strong oaks that stood for generations. No real businesses there, no honest work, only frivolous shops and restaurants serving people with nothing more to do than waste their time and their money in idleness and self-indulgence. The devil’s very workshop. What sort of place made its name and its living on skiing and biking and jeep tours and hang gliding and building enormous, expensive homes for rich people with no children to fill up the many bedrooms? A hundred years from now, and this place would be the same ghost town it was after the silver ran out and before the ski lifts and chamber of commerce. Nothing to show except excess, the kind of excess that killed souls. The kind that killed Bella.

  Down the mountain, in the valley, the door to the roof garden opened, and a tall figure crossed under the arbor to sit in the sun at the corner nearest the mountain, just as she did every sunny day at lunch. She was unaware of the rifle that swung up to come to rest on a ledge of rock, held by determined hands and pointed at her. Good. The shooter’s right hand stretched in anticipation, bringing the index finger slowly and purposefully toward the trigger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JUNE 19, LATE MORNING

  The morning dragged. I heard from all of the children, anxious for my state of mind, each probing gently. Adam, Zoe, and Luke called. Ben dropped by the office, anxious at having arisen to find me gone so early. Beth sent flowers, too much like me to risk talking. Seth sent a long email from Rome, including a Mass intention for his dad. Instead of making me feel better, their concern weighed even heavier on my heart. They deserved a mother who wasn’t a burden on their spirits, but hadn’t been dealt one. I worked through a stack of correspondence and long-neglected cases.

  On top was a handwritten letter postmarked in town. The script was textbook-perfect cursive, the mark of someone my age or better. Kids today all printed, the legacy of easy access to word processors. I slit it open, and a scented piece of stationery fell out. I scanned it quickly, astonishment and irritation growing. It was a letter from Marla Kincaid’s father.

  Thank you for taking care of my daughter, it read. She’s doing okay now and I’m staying here until she can come home with me. No matter what, it was good of you to get her to the hospital. We are hoping the baby will be okay.

  The letter trailed off as though the writer had run out of words, and it was signed with an abrupt Spencer Kincaid. I tossed it aside, having no desire to be reminded of yet another murdere
r angling to go free. After that were a dozen or so letters from lawyers soliciting assistance with various kinds of lawsuits, and a huge stack of reports from the various assistant medical examiners who took care of routine cases in the distant reaches of the Western slope. I had convinced the powers-that-be to construct a network of local pathologists who could be expected to handle uncomplicated cases, natural deaths, obvious accidents, while calling me in on more complicated matters.

  We’d spent nearly six months giving them a crash course in forensic pathology, but it was paying off. As pathology revenues fell, most of them were glad of a little extra income, and knowing that there was expert help a few hours away, most of them were paying more attention to the matters of life and death in their communities. Already one of them had discovered the smothering of an elderly man that would have been unremarked and unnoticed in years past, and the greedy nephew who killed him was marking time awaiting trial.

  Still, it meant that I had to review all the death reports from several counties, and I was a week behind. It took most of the morning to go through them, and I was glad of a break and a cup of coffee, hot this time. I poured it from the pot in the break room. I sat down at the table, where a newspaper lay open and folded on the table. I glanced at the date. A week ago. Surely my staff kept up better with the local news than that.

  The paper was opened to the letters page, where the ongoing controversy about the prairie dogs that had taken over the valley floor after the town had condemned and taken it over and removed the ecologically damaging valley cows raged on. About half of the town wanted to protect the rodents, who had turned the once luxuriant meadow into something resembling a minefield with their network of burrows. Others, objecting in equal parts to the unsightly mess the colony had made of the landscape and to the inconvenience their burrows meant for anyone or anything trying to negotiate the terrain, wanted to flood them out. I smiled at the predictable, unintended consequences that the reflexive ecologic preoccupation of the local citizenry inevitably produced.

  I flipped through the rest of the paper, enjoying a decent cup of hot coffee for a change as I caught up on local goings-on. There was a write-up on the coming art show at the New Sheridan, with a couple of photographs of some of the submissions. There was an update on proposed changes to the historical and architectural review standards. There was a screed from a local progressive politician, the only kind in Telluride, condemning the “corporate disease monopoly” and calling for mandatory, universal, socialized health care. There was a piece on the activities of the local kids enrolled in the town’s summer enrichment programs, including photos of them picking wildflowers—permitted only because they were instructed to pluck as many ox-eye daisies as possible given that the state had classified them as noxious weeds. Leave it to Telluride to take the joy out of a harmless childhood activity and turn it into just another opportunity for indoctrination.

  Father Matt was right. This town just didn’t suit me. I sighed and turned the page. Paul Kessler, dressed in his tunic, his cloak secured with a large silver pin, stared back at me from the page. I skimmed through it. It was one of those local-color profiles, a pleasant little homage, done in question and answer format.

  Q. What brought you to Telluride?

  A. The energy here is just so amazing. It’s even better than Sedona, I think, because we're closer to the heavens, higher up. The mountains focus it, and the valley channels it. It’s an amazing place to live.

  Q. How long have you been here?

  A. Five years. I came here from Chicago when I finished college. My old man wanted me to go to law school and join the family firm, but my grandfather left me enough money to live on, so I came out here to find my spiritual source. Big cities kill the soul…

  Most of the rest of it was an exposition of Paul Kessler’s hodgepodge philosophy, but my heart skipped a beat at the last line. Kessler was explaining the connection of his religious philosophy to the lunar cycle, and how he liked to plug into the great energy of the moon.

  …The best time is when there’s a full moon. I always go up Coronet Creek to the falls at night when there is a full moon. The moonlight off the water is spectacular, and it's the best place to meditate. I reconnect. I get to be part of the great Universal. It sets me right.

  There it was, in black and white. All of Telluride knew that Kessler would be going up Coronet Creek last Thursday night. And all of Telluride knew he was a trusty. I picked up the phone in the lounge to dial the downstairs office where Ben worked. I was surprised when Lucy picked up instead.

  “Ben’s on the roof,” she told me. “He works up there every day it’s nice.”

  Would I never get used to the eccentric work habits of this new generation? Visiting the garden had become a routine for him, a place of quiet beauty and refuge. Besides, my last-born had always chosen eccentric places to work, as often as not, sprawled on a floor or literally up a tree instead of sitting quietly at a desk. I liked the garden, too, as a respite from my office. I particularly welcomed it today, welcomed the chance to sort out my thoughts and emotions amid the flowers.

  The sun was bright and the day was warm. I stood for a moment in the shade of the trellis, allowing my eyes to adjust to the sunlight and watching a hummingbird dance among the fuchsias. The flowers were at their peak, pots of marigolds and lilies of the valley, hearts-ease and Dutchman’s breeches, bachelor's buttons and columbines, old-fashioned flowers that my mother had loved and that provided a riot of color against the dun-colored brick of the building. A pot of ivy spilled out of the top of a small fountain by my favorite chair, the water cool and inviting.

  One of the staff, all of whom who live in the apartments in the Center and use the rooftop in the evenings, had left a red plastic cup, and it rolled around the base of the fountain in the gentle breeze. I stooped to pick it up with a little irritation at the carelessness of the miscreant who left it and called to Ben. As I expected, he was draped crosswise over a lounge chair, computer in his lap, reflective sunglasses and a visor providing the requisite shade for him to see what he was doing. I called to him.

  “Ben!” He looked up, startled, and rearranged himself into a more conventional pose as I walked over. “Do me a favor and get copies of all the editions for the month of June for both of the papers in town. I might just have figured out how Kessler’s killer — and James Webster’s, and maybe the others — identified his victims. I might have found the link in the chain I needed to convince Patterson that I was right.”

  His reply had the familiar distracted quality that meant he was hot on the trail of some computer issue, and was only half-listening to what I had said. The fact that he was still peering at the screen confirmed it.

  “Sure thing, Mom. I’ll get right on it.”

  In a motherly routine born of long experience, I asked him, “Get right on what?”

  There was a pause. He’d surfaced and realized he had no idea what I had told him.

  “Uh...” he faltered.

  “The local papers. All of them, every day, from both newspapers, for the whole month of June. Come to think of it, for the last week of May, too.”

  “Okay. Sure. Do you need hard copies?”

  Now it was my turn. “Huh?”

  “The papers are both online. Do you need the hard copies, or can I find what you need on the internet?”

  “Doesn’t matter, I guess. Take a look at all our recent trusty deaths, and see whether the victims were written up in the paper in the week or so preceding their deaths.”

  I paused. He was still absorbed in the computer. I cleared my throat and he looked up again, smiling, quick to answer this time.

  “Sure thing, Mom. I’ll get right on it.”

  “Thanks, Babe,” I said, then added, “I love you.”

  As I leaned over to kiss his cheek, I was overcome with a sense of foreboding so palpable it made me shiver. I straightened and cast a look around the roof, then beyond the building to the mountainside and
its lacing of trails.

  The defining trait of a pathologist is to know when something is out of place. It’s how we can find the ten cells in a thousand that are cancer, it’s how we put the puzzles of life and death together. Something gnawed at me. Something was wrong, out of place, not right. A brief flash of brightness caught the corner of my eye as Ben stood to hug me. Instead of dissipating the dread, it intensified it. Ben paused in response to my tension.

  I saw the flash again, and it triggered something inside me. I squinted into the distance and saw a hiker; the flash was a reflection from his mirrored glasses. I relaxed a bit, having resolved that bit of inconsistency. The day was quiet in the noonday heat, the streets still emptier than usual. I took a deep breath and looked at my son and smiled.

  A moment later, in the distant, quiet center of my mind, where most of my thinking goes on without my knowing it, I froze with fear, the dread having returned with a focus. Ben, my Ben, my own last-born, was a trusty, too. Not a remainderman, but a trust fund baby. All my brood were, funds established in the aftermath of their father’s murder. Suddenly, I wanted him inside, safe, and secure.

  “Ben, I really need that information PDQ. Go on inside — I’ll get your computer for you. Now, Ben, please.”

  I needed time to think, to decide whether I was being overprotective or just plain crazy. I struggled to keep the tears out of my voice. First John. Then Adam’s near crash. Now this. I felt myself unraveling.

  Ben looked at me quizzically, but he was used to my outrageous motherly demands, and he must have seen something in my face that softened him and made him hug me again. He brushed my cheek with a kiss.

  “Love you too, Mom. See you downstairs — how about I make dinner tonight for you, special, just you and me?”