+ − < = > ÷
“ALL THE VALVES?” Seventy-two-year-old Robert Covey asked his cardiologist, who was sitting across from him. The name on the white jacket read Dr. Lansdowne in scripty stitching, but with her frosted blond hair in a Gwyneth Paltrow bun and sly red lipstick, he thought of her only as “Dr. Jenny.”
“That’s right.” She leaned forward. “And there’s more.”
For the next ten minutes she proceeded to give him the lowdown on the absurd medical extremes he’d have to endure to have a chance of seeing his seventy-third birthday.
Unfair, Covey thought. Goddamn unfair to’ve been singled out this way. His weight, on a six-foot-one frame, was around 180, had been all his life. He gave up smoking forty years ago. He’d taken weekend hikes every few months with Veronica until he lost her and then had joined a hiking club where he got even more exercise than he had with his wife, outdistancing the widows who’d try to keep up with him as they flirted relentlessly.
Dr. Jenny asked, “Are you married?”
“Widower.”
“Children?”
“I have a son.”
“He live nearby?”
“No, but we see a lot of each other.”
“Anybody else in the area?” she asked.
“Not really, no.”
The doctor regarded him carefully. “It’s tough, hearing everything I’ve told you today. And it’s going to get tougher. I’d like you to talk to somebody over at Westbrook Hospital. They have a social services department there just for heart patients. The Cardiac Support Center.”
“Shrink?”
“Counselor/nurses, they’re called.”
“They wear short skirts?”
“The men don’t,” the doctor said, deadpan.
“Touché. Well, thanks, but I don’t think that’s for me.”
“Take the number anyway. If nothing else, they’re somebody to talk to.”
She took out a card and set it on the desk. He noticed that she had perfect fingernails, opalescent pink, though they were very short—as befit someone who cracked open human chests on occasion.
He asked her a number of questions about the procedures and what he could expect, sizing up his odds. Initially she was reluctant to quantify his chances but she sensed finally that he could indeed handle the numbers and told him. “Sixty-forty against.”
“Is that optimistic or pessimistic?”
“Neither. It’s realistic.”
He liked that.
There were more tests that needed to be done, the doctor explained, before any procedures could be scheduled. “You can make the appointment with Janice.”
“Sooner rather than later?”
The doctor didn’t smile when she said, “That would be the wise choice.”
He rose. Then paused. “Does this mean I should stop having strenuous sex?”
Dr. Jenny blinked and a moment later they both laughed.
“Ain’t it grand being old? All the crap you can get away with.”
“Make that appointment, Mr. Covey.”
He walked toward the door. She joined him. He thought she was seeing him out but she held out her hand; he’d forgotten the card containing the name and number of the Cardiac Support Center at Westbrook Hospital.
“Can I blame my memory?”
“No way. You’re sharper than me.” The doctor winked and turned back to her desk.
He made the appointment with the receptionist and left the building. Outside, still clutching the card, he noticed a trash container on the sidewalk. He veered toward it and lifted the card like a Frisbee, about to sail the tiny rectangle into the pile of soda empties and limp newspapers. But then he paused.
Up the street he found a pay phone. Worth more than 50 million dollars, Robert Covey believed that cell phones were unnecessary luxuries. He set the card on the ledge, donned his reading glasses and began fishing in his leather change pouch for some coins.
+ − < = > ÷
DR. PETER DEHOEVEN was a tall blond man who spoke with an accent that Tal couldn’t quite place.
European—Scandinavian or German maybe. It was quite thick at times and that, coupled with his oddly barren office, suggested that he’d come to the United States recently. Not only was it far sparser than Dr. Anthony Sheldon’s but the walls featured not a single framed testament to his education and training.
It was early the next morning and Dehoeven was elaborating on the mission of his Cardiac Support Center. He told Tal that the CSC counselors helped seriously ill patients change their diets, create exercise regimens, understand the nature of heart disease, deal with depression and anxiety, find caregivers and counsel family members. They also helped with death and dying issues—funeral plans, insurance, wills. “We live to be older, yes?” Dehoeven explained, drifting in and out of his accent. “So we are having longer to experience our bodies’ failing than we used to. That means, yes, we must confront our mortality for a longer time, too. That is a difficult thing to do. So we need to help our patients prepare for the end of life.”
When the doctor was through explaining CSC’s mission Tal told him that he’d come about the Whitleys. “Were you surprised when they killed themselves?” Tal found his hand at his collar, absently adjusting his tie knot; the doctor’s hung down an irritating two inches from his buttoned collar.
“Surprised?” Dehoeven hesitated. Maybe the question confused him. “I didn’t think about being surprised or not. I didn’t know Sam personal, yes? So I can’t say—”
“You never met him?” Tal was surprised.
“Oh, we’re a very big organization. Our counselors work with the patients. Me?” He laughed sadly. “My life is budget and planning and building our new facility up the street. That is taking most of my time now. We’re greatly expanding, yes? But I will find out who was assigned to Sam and his wife.” He called his secretary for this information.
The counselor turned out to be Claire McCaffrey, who, Dehoeven explained, was both a registered nurse and a social worker/counselor. She’d been at the CSC for a little over a year. “She’s good. One of the new generation of counselors, experts in aging, yes? She has her degree in that.”
“I’d like to speak to her.”
Another hesitation. “I suppose this is all right. Can I ask why?”
Tal pulled a questionnaire out of his briefcase and showed it to the doctor. “I’m the department statistician. I track all the deaths in the county and collect information about them. Just routine.”
“Ah, routine, yes? And yet we get a personal visit.” He lifted an eyebrow in curiosity.
“Details have to be attended to.”
“Yes, of course.” Though he didn’t seem quite convinced that Tal’s presence here was completely innocuous.
He called the nurse. It seemed that Claire McCaffrey was about to leave to meet a new patient but she could wait fifteen or twenty minutes.
Dehoeven explained where her office was. Tal asked, “Just a couple more questions.”
“Yessir?”
“Do you prescribe Luminux here?”
“Yes, we do often.”
“Did Sam have a prescription? We couldn’t find a bottle at their house.”
He typed on his computer. “Yes. Our doctors wrote several prescriptions for him. He started on it a month ago.”
Tal then told Dehoeven how much drugs the Whitleys had in their blood. “What do you make of that?”
“Three times the usual dosage?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“They’d also been drinking a little. But I’m told the drug didn’t directly contribute to their death. Would you agree?”
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly. “It’s not dangerous. It makes you drowsy and giddy. That’s all.”
“Drowsy and giddy?” Tal asked. “Is that unusual?” The only drugs he’d taken recently were aspirin and an antiseasickness medicine, which didn’t work for him, as a disastrous afternoon date on a ti
ny sailboat on Long Island Sound had proven.
“No, not unusual. Luminux is our antianxiety and mood-control drug of choice here at the Center. It was just approved by the FDA. We were very glad to learn that, yes? Cardiac patients can take it without fear of aggravating their heart problems.”
“Who makes it?”
He pulled a thick book off his shelf and read through it. “Montrose Pharmaceuticals in Paramus, New Jersey.”
Tal wrote this down. “Doctor,” he asked, “did you have another patient here…Don Benson?”
“I’m not knowing the name but I know very little of the patients here, as I was saying to you, yes?” He nodded out the window through which they could hear the sound of construction—the new CSC facility that was taking all his time, Tal assumed. Dehoeven typed on the computer keyboard. “No, we are not having any patients named Benson.”
“In the past?”
“This is for the year, going back.” A nod at the screen. “Why is it you are asking?”
Tal tapped the questionnaire. “Statistics.” He put the paper away, rose and shook the doctor’s hand. He was directed to the nurse’s office, four doors up the hall from Dehoeven’s.
Claire McCaffrey was about his age, with wavy brunette hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had a freckled, pretty face—girl next door—but seemed haggard.
“You’re the one Dr. Dehoeven called about? Officer—?”
“Simms. But call me Tal.”
“I go by Mac,” she said. She extended her hand and a charm bracelet jangled on her right wrist as he gripped her strong fingers. He noticed a small gold ring in the shape of an ancient coin on her right hand. There was no jewelry at all on her left. “Mac,” he reflected. A Celtic theme today, recalling Margaret, Dr. Sheldon’s somber step dancer.
She motioned him to sit. Her office was spacious—a desk and a sitting area with a couch and two armchairs around a coffee table. It seemed more lived-in than her boss’s, he noted, comfortable. The decor was soothing—crystals, glass globes and reproductions of Native American artifacts, plants and fresh flowers, posters and paintings of seashores and deserts and forests.
“This is about Sam Whitley, right?” she asked in a troubled monotone.
“That’s right. And his wife.”
She nodded, distraught. “I was up all night about it. Oh, it’s so sad. I couldn’t believe it.” Her voice faded.
“I just have a few questions. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, go ahead.”
“Did you see them the day they died?” Tal asked.
“Yes, I did. We had our regular appointment.”
“What exactly did you do for them?”
“What we do with most patients. Making sure they’re on a heart-friendly diet, helping with insurance forms, making sure their medication’s working, arranging for help in doing heavy work around the house…Is there some problem? I mean, official problem?”
Looking into her troubled eyes, he chose not to use the excuse of the questionnaire as a front. “It was unusual, their deaths. They didn’t fit the standard profile of most suicides. Did they say anything that’d suggest they were thinking about killing themselves?”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly. “I would’ve intervened. Naturally.”
“But?” He sensed there was something more she wanted to say.
She looked down at her desk, organized some papers, closed a folder.
“It’s just…See there was one thing. I spent the last couple of days going over what they said to me, looking for clues. And I remember they said how much they’d enjoyed working with me.”
“That was odd?”
“It was the way they put it. It was the past tense, you know. Not ‘enjoy working with me.’ It was enjoyed working with me. It didn’t strike me as odd or anything at the time. But now we know…” A sigh. “I should’ve listened to what they were saying.”
Recrimination. Like the couples’ lawyers, like the doctors. Nurse McCaffrey would probably live with these deaths for a long, long time.
Perhaps forever…
“Did you know,” he asked, “they just bought a book about suicide? Making the Final Journey.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” she said, frowning.
Behind her desk Nurse McCaffrey—Mac—had a picture of an older couple with their arms around each other, two snapshots of big, goofy black Labs and one picture of her with the dogs. No snaps of boyfriends or husbands—or girlfriends. In Westbrook County, married or cohabitating couples comprised 74% of the adult population, widows 7%, widowers 2% and unmarried/divorced/noncohabitating were 17%. Of that latter category only 4% were between the ages of 28 and 35.
He and Mac had at least one thing in common; they were both members of the Four Percent Club.
She glanced at her watch and he focused on her again. “They were taking Luminux, right?”
She nodded. “It’s a good antianxiety drug. We make sure the patients have it available and take it if they have a panic attack or’re depressed.”
“Both Sam and his wife had as unusually large amount in their bloodstreams when they died.”
“Really?”
“We’re trying to find what happened to the prescription, the bottle. We couldn’t find it at their house.”
“They had it the other day, I know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. I don’t know how much they had left on the prescription. Maybe it was gone and they threw the bottle out.”
Raw data, Tal thought. Wondering what to make of these facts. Was he asking the right questions? Greg LaTour would know.
But LaTour was not here. The mathematician was on his own. He asked, “Did the Whitleys ever mention Don and Patsy Benson?”
“Benson?”
“In Greeley.”
“Well, no. I’ve never heard of them.”
Tal asked, “Had anybody else been to the house that day?”
“I don’t know. We were alone when I was there.”
“And you left when?”
“At four. A little before.”
“You sure of the time?”
“Yep. I know because I was listening to my favorite radio program in the car on my way home. The Opera Hour on NPR.” A sad laugh. “It was highlights from Madame Butterfly.”
“Isn’t that about the Japanese woman who…” His voice faded.
“Kills herself.” Mac looked up at a poster of the Grand Tetons, then one of the surf in Hawaii. “My whole life’s been devoted to prolonging people’s lives. This just shattered me, hearing about Sam and Liz.” She seemed close to tears then controlled herself. “I was talking to Dr. Dehoeven. He just came over here from Holland. They look at death differently over there. Euthanasia and suicide are a lot more acceptable…He heard about Sam and Liz, their deaths, and kind of shrugged. Like it wasn’t any big deal. But I can’t get them out of my mind.”
Silence for a moment. Then she blinked and looked at her watch again. “I’ve got a new patient to meet. But if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” She rose, then paused. “Are you…what are you exactly? A homicide detective?”
He laughed. “Actually, I’m a mathematician.”
“A—”
But before he could explain his curious pedigree his pager went off, a sound Tal was so unaccustomed to that he dropped his briefcase then knocked several files off the nurse’s desk as he bent to retrieve it. Thinking: Good job, Simms, way to impress a fellow member of the Westbrook County Four Percent Club.
+ − < = > ÷
“HE’S IN THERE and I couldn’t get him out. I’m spitting nails, boss.”
In a flash of panic Tal thought that Shellee, fuming as she pointed at his office, was referring to the sheriff himself, who’d descended from the top floor of the county building to fire Tal personally for the 2124 call.
But, no, she was referring to someone else.
Tal stepped inside and lifted an eyebr
ow to Greg LaTour. “Thought we had an appointment yester—”
“So where you been?” LaTour grumbled. “Sleepin’ in?” The huge man was finishing Tal’s cheese sandwich from yesterday, sending a cascade of bread crumbs everywhere.
And resting his boots on Tal’s desk.
It had been LaTour’s page that caught him with Mac McCaffrey. The message: “Office twenty minutes. Stat. LaTour.”
The slim cop looked unhappily at the scuff marks on the desktop.
LaTour noticed but ignored him. “Here’s the thing. I got the information on the wills. And, yeah, they were both changed—”
“Okay, that’s suspicious—”
“Lemme finish. No, it’s not suspicious. There weren’t any crazy housekeepers or some Moonie guru assholes like that controlling their minds. The Bensons didn’t have any kids so all they did was add a few charities and create a trust for some nieces and nephews—for college. A hundred thousand each. Small potatoes. The Whitley girl didn’t get diddly-squat from them.
“Now, them, the Whitleys, gave their daughter—bitch or not—a third of the estate in the first version of the will. She still gets the same in the new version but she also gets a little more so she can set up a Whitley family library.” LaTour looked up. “Now there’s gonna be a fucking fun place to spend Sunday afternoons…Then they added some new charities, too, and got rid of some other ones…Oh, and if you were going to ask, they were different charities from the ones in the Bensons’ will.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well, you should have. Always look for connections, Tal. That’s the key in homicide. Connections between facts.”
“Just like—”
“Don’t say fucking statistics.”
“Mathematics. Common denominators.”
“Whatever,” LaTour muttered. “So, the wills’re out as motives. Same with—”
Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories, Volume 3 Page 43