Nothing Is Negotiable

by Mark Bentsen

  He stepped inside the front door and stopped to let a waitress with a tray of dirty plates and empty beer bottles cross in front of him.

  Luke surveyed the crowded room through a haze of cigarette smoke. The front part of the building was a café where about twenty tables were covered with red-checkered tablecloths. Over on one side were half a dozen booths and on the other side of the room were four busy pool tables. Along the back wall was a long crowded bar. Just left of the bar was a swinging door with a faded sign that said Cover Charge $5.00.

  He pushed through the crowd and wedged himself between two cowboys at the bar. He ordered a beer and took in the rowdy atmosphere. It was obvious that most of the drinkers at the bar had been here for some time. Loud laughter and an occasional whoop could be heard above the rumble of the crowd. It seemed like a typical small-town bar where everyone seemed to know each other.

  The bartender set a beer down in front of Luke and as he reached back for his wallet, he caught the familiar scent of gardenias. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Mitzi walking toward the ladies room.

  He dropped a five on the bar and kept an eye on the bathroom door. A few minutes later she emerged and strutted back through the crowd. As she walked past him he grabbed her by the arm. Turning, she recognized him immediately and said, “Hey baby, you made it,” then swung her arms around his neck, once again smearing him with her latest splash of Jungle Gardenia. When she stepped away, she grabbed his hand and started dragging him with her. “I’m sitting down at the other end of the bar.”

  At the end of the bar Mitzi reclaimed her seat and Luke pulled up a stool beside hers. She summoned the bartender and said, “Johnny, give me a Crown and Seven?”

  “I’m glad you came out,” she said then leaned a little closer and tried to focus on the scrapes on his forehead. Luke could tell she’d already had too much to drink. “What happened to your head?”

  “Oh, I ran into a wall,” he said, not wanting to get into it.

  She didn’t seem to be concerned about it and swirled her new drink with her finger then licked it off. “So, how did it go with Marinel?”

  He took a swig of his beer. “She remembered seeing Bonnie and me at the clinic.”

  “I thought she would,” she said as she sipped on her drink.

  “She told me Dr. Duncan has an apartment that’s connected to the clinic. Did you know that?”

  “Hell, yes.” She said, slurring her words. “I could have told you that. I know everything about that place.”

  “I understand he keeps it locked and he’s the only one with a key.”

  “That’s bull shit,” Mitzi gave him a crooked grin and shook her head. “One night Rita and I were working late and needed to get some old files that were stored in there. We looked around in his office until we found it.”

  “He keeps it hidden somewhere?”

  “It’s in his filing cabinet under K. It’s got a big tag on it that says, ‘Apartment’,” she scoffed. “Like it took a brain surgeon to figure that one out.”

  “I’d really like to see that apartment.”

  “Why? Do you think Dr. Duncan’s hiding your wife in there?”

  “No, but Marinel told me she saw some guys carrying a rug out the back door. Dr. Duncan said she was wrong. I’d really like to check it out.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s been in there lately,” Mitzi said.

  “That’s what Dr. Duncan said, but Bonnie was last seen at the clinic and I found some stuff in the alley that was in her purse. And there was some grass closed in the door that goes to the apartment like the door had been opened recently. Seeing the inside of that apartment would help me put the pieces together. It won’t take ten minutes.”

  “I can’t do that. If Dr. Duncan knew I let you in there, he’d fire me.”

  He knew he could break through her resolve. “How would he ever know? Like you said, you’re the office manager—you can come and go when you want to, right?”

  “Yeah, but...” She looked at him and blinked, trying to focus. She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know about going into his apartment.”

  Luke grabbed his billfold and took out a hundred-dollar bill. He held it below the bar where she could see it. “Luke, I can’t.”

  She watched as he pulled out another crisp hundred and held it with the first one. She raised her stare from the bills to Luke. The corners of her intoxicated lips turned up. “I said no.”

  He took the last bill from his wallet and held it with the others. “It’s all I have.” His eyes moved from her bloodshot eyes to the bills, and counted them, one by one, then looked back at her. Her eyes went to the bills and stayed there. “I really want to see that apartment.”

  Mitzi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Slowly her eyelids opened and she looked passed Luke and panned the crowd, which was oblivious to them.

  She quickly pulled the bills from his hand and hid them in her purse. “You cannot tell anyone I let you in there,” she said adamantly.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  She tipped up her glass and guzzled the rest of her drink. “Let’s go get this over with before I change my mind.”

  “I’m ready,” he said, pushing back his beer bottle.

  He walked behind her as they made their way to the door. She was inebriated, but he decided she could make the two-mile drive without a problem. He figured she was an experienced drunk and had probably made the drive a hundred times before, much drunker than she was now.

  The streets of downtown were deserted and Luke followed her to the alley behind the clinic where they parked next to the building. It was dark except for a small sodium vapor light that illuminated the back door of the clinic. She unlocked the door and they slipped inside where Mitzi punched a series of numbers on a keypad on the wall and the flashing red light turned to a steady green.

  “Okay, the alarms off,” she said, “C’mon.” She hit the light switch and the hallway lit up. They went down to the first door on the left. “This is Dr. Duncan’s office.” She twisted the handle, but it didn’t open. She rattled it back and forth but it still didn’t budge. “Well, crap. He locked his office.”

  She looked back at Luke and shrugged her shoulders.

  Luke’s heart sank. Three hundred bucks down the drain.

  Then Mitzi burst out laughing and pulled a key chain out of her purse. She rattled it in front of him and said, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ve got the key.”

  Luke sighed and shook his head while she opened the door, still giggling.

  She turned on the light and walked over to a filing cabinet in the corner. A second later she pulled out a single gold key and walked over to the door on the adjacent wall and unlocked it. They stepped inside and she flipped a switch that turned on two lamps that sat on end tables on either side of a saddle-brown leather sofa.

  They were in the living room. Adjacent to the sofa was a recliner; both were arranged around a coffee table in the middle of the room. There was an old television in a cabinet against the wall and a closed door just to the left of it. Visualizing the layout, Luke imagined the door opened onto the alley.

  Behind him, against the wall, a dozen cardboard boxes were stacked neatly on the dark brown tiled floor. Next to them were a couple of old filing cabinets, an old desk, some office chairs, and some pieces of medical equipment he couldn’t identify. He could see Dr. Duncan wasn’t kidding when he said the apartment’s primary function was that of a storeroom.

  Just beyond the living room he saw a small kitchen on one side and adjacent to it was an open door where he could see the foot of a bed.

  “Here it is,” Mitzi said.

  Luke walked ahead of her into the room. Mitzi followed him as he made his way to the bedroom. The room was small with only a queen-sized bed, a night table and a tall dresser. It was nice; no junk had been dumped in here. Beyond the bedroom was a small bathroom.

  They went back to the living room where Mitzi went over and drop
ped into the recliner.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Give me a few minutes to look around,” he said.

  “Go ahead, but not too long,” she said as she pushed back on the chair and a footrest popped up in front of her. “I don’t want anyone to come by and see my car, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Mitzi had already closed her eyes. Luke hoped she’d go to sleep; that would give him more time.

  The first thing he noticed was a layer of dust on the framed photos and glass shelves by the TV which meant the apartment probably wasn’t cleaned on a regular basis. But it was the rugs that he came to see and the best he could tell, there were only two. One was a runner, at least twelve feet long and a couple of feet wide. It was behind the sofa and stretched from the office door toward the bedroom. It was beige with a colorful pattern stitched into it.

  The other one was under the coffee table and they matched. It was about eight feet square. Both looked new, the colors still bright. He squatted down and lifted one corner. The floor was shinier underneath it. He ran his finger along the floor and came up with a layer of dust. Gently, he lifted one side of the table a few inches and noticed the carpet was crushed flat where the table leg rested. There was no doubt this rug had been here for some time.

  He stood and wiped the dust off of his hands as he looked around for an area where a rug might be missing. But here in the living room there wasn’t room for another one. He strolled through the other rooms but came to the same conclusion. There didn’t seem to be an area where a rug was missing, especially one that would take two people to carry. He went back to the living room with the conclusion that Marinel did not see a rug carried out of this apartment.

  But what she could have seen puzzled him. He glanced around one more time, but saw no reason to stay here any longer. As he leaned over to wake up Mitzi, something started pounding on the door in the clinic that opened onto the alley.

  Bam, Bam, Bam!

  Mitzi’s eyes popped open like a Jack in the Box and she saw Luke’s face in front of her. She was on the verge of panic so Luke quickly put his hand over her mouth. She started to fight, but quit when she recognized Luke, he pulled his hand away.

  Bam, Bam, Bam!

  “Shit,” she whispered as she looked from side to side and struggled to get out of the recliner. She got up quietly and rushed to the office door, then turned to him. “Get back in the bedroom and stay there.” She went to Dr. Duncan’s office, closing the door behind her.

  Bam, Bam, Bam!

  Luke sneaked over to the closed door and listened.

  He could hear Mitzi ask who was outside. A second later he heard her tell whoever it was to wait a minute and she’d open the door. He hurried back to the bedroom and waited.

  A few seconds later he heard Mitzi laughing and a man’s voice. It sounded like they knew each other. There were sounds of conversation and a minute later he heard the door close.

  Luke sat on the side of the bed, relieved. The clatter of her high heels came his way and he remained still until she opened the bedroom door.

  “We got lucky,” she said as she crossed her arms and leaned on the door jam.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was Kenneth, an old friend. I told him I was showing my new boyfriend where I worked. He was cool with that. Said he wouldn’t mention it to anyone. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  As Luke stood, Mitzi leaned down and smoothed the bedspread where he had been sitting. “That’s odd,” she said.

  “What’s odd?” Luke followed her gaze back to the bed.

  “Doctor Duncan has a handmade Indian blanket that is always on this bed. It was a gift from Mrs. Aponi, an old Indian lady here in town. It’s beautiful. I tried to buy it from him but he wouldn’t sell it because every time she comes to see him, she always wants to see it. And, it’s always on the foot of the bed.”

  Luke looked back at the bed and all he saw was a cranberry bedspread with an intricate pattern. He considered this missing blanket. Could Marinel have seen two men carrying a blanket?

  He ran his hand over the red bedspread and a thought hit him. He pulled back the top of the spread near the pillows.

  “What are you doing?” Mitzi asked.

  The underside of the spread was lined with white fabric. Without answering her, he pulled it back further. It looked normal so he pulled it back more, and more, until he got to the bottom, where he found what he was looking for. There were two red stains, each about the size of a quarter, soaked through to the cream-colored sheets. Cautiously, he touched it with the tip of his finger. It was mostly crusty, but a little sticky in the middle. He flipped it back over; the red stains disappeared on the red pattern. Red on red, they were impossible to see.

  “Look,” he said with the red stains in view.

  She leaned over. “What is that?”

  “It looks like dried blood to me.” He knelt down to the floor, and with his face at ground level, he used the reflection of the light across the room to look for stains. “Here too,” he said, pointing to two other droplets in front of the bed. Now knowing what to look for, he went back through the living room and into the doctor’s office, pointing at more dark red spots. In front of the desk were two armchairs and in front of the one on the left he found a red smear the size of a credit card. It looked like someone had tried to wipe up a small puddle of blood.

  “It looks like a trail of blood, from here all the way back to the bed,” Luke said. He followed the dried red spots back into the apartment and to the bed. He checked the runner behind the sofa and added, “But there’s none on the carpet. Either the person who was bleeding was avoiding the carpet runner. Or maybe being carried.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’ve got to let the RCMP know about this.”

  In a panic she said, “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone I let you in here.”

  “Don’t worry, by law I’m not obligated to tell them how I got this information,” Luke said. He had no idea what the law was, actually, but he didn’t want Mitzi to panic. He wanted to keep her out of this, but he’d do anything he had to in order to find Bonnie.

  She reset the alarm and they went out to the alley where she made Luke promise, one more time, that he wouldn’t tell anyone. He did and watched her drive away, now much more sober than she’d been when they got there half an hour earlier.

  He started the Jeep and at the corner tried to decide what to do next. It was close to midnight and from previous experience he knew no one would be at the RCMP office at this hour. Neither Paul nor Ernest would come out unless it was an emergency. He knew they wouldn’t do anything tonight. He would get some sleep and contact Paul first thing in the morning and tell him about this new evidence. They’d have to keep the case open. It was obvious that something was going on at the clinic.

  He turned right and headed for the bunkhouse.

  Chapter 24

  Luke held his hand under the faucet in the shower waiting for the water to heat up, but it didn’t. Naked, he walked into the kitchen where he found the water heater. The pilot light was out. Using a book of matches lying beside it, he lit the unit, but at the same time decided there wasn’t time to let the water heat up.

  The first thing he learned was that tap water in Canada was nothing like it was in Texas. There was no doubt in his mind that the water he was standing under was being delivered directly from a glacier.

  It was one of the fastest showers he’d ever taken, and when he was fully dressed he was still shivering.

  He found his backpack with the rest of the hiking gear and threw in a travel guide for Alberta, binoculars, maps, a hunting knife, a notepad and pens. When he pulled open the front door to leave, the dogs greeted him, tails wagging.

  “Sorry boy,” he said as he walked past Buddy who followed him with a stick in his mouth. “No time today.”

  When he cranked
up the Jeep, the bright lights on the dashboard came to life telling him it was six-thirty. Elvis watched from the porch as he pulled away from the bunkhouse and Buddy ran alongside until he reached the highway.

  The streets in Cardston were deserted as he drove through town to the RCMP office. There he found the same officer he’d met a few days earlier.

  “Paul’s in Calgary this morning,” he said, rocking back and forth in a squeaky desk chair while he stirred his coffee. “And Ernest won’t get here until about eight.”

  Luke had forgotten that Paul was going to Calgary to interview the bus driver. Dealing with Ernest was not going to be pleasant. Ernest will probably go ballistic when I refuse to tell him how I got into the apartment, Luke thought.

  “I’m going to the diner to eat, but I’ll be back at eight,” Luke said as he walked back toward the door. “If Ernest comes in, tell him where I am, okay?”

  “Yes sir, I will.”

  The diner had just opened and a small group of men who looked like farmers sat at a long table in the middle of the dining room. When he entered, they glanced over and gave him that ‘who are you?’ look.

  He ordered coffee and was going through a menu when Sonny stepped in the front door.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “No, have a seat.”

  Sonny pulled out a cigarette. “You mind?”

  Luke did, but said, “No.”

  “I didn’t know you came to work this early,” Luke stated.

  “I don’t, but I’ve got to get some stuff done because I’m leaving town today,” Sonny said. He rubbed his eyes. “How are things going? Any news?”

  Luke filled him in on his conversation last night with Ernest and Paul.

  “So, what are you going to do?” Sonny asked.

  “I’ve found something at the clinic that’s pretty interesting.”

  “The clinic? What do you mean?”