by Archer Mayor
He bumped her with his hip. “I love it. You dun good.”
The front door opened and Beverly’s daughter stepped into the sunshine, a smile on her face. She crossed over to them and gushed, “This is awesome, Mom. Were you serious about my using it sometimes?”
“Yeah, Mom,” he mimicked her. “Were ya? Huh, huh?”
She laughed and pushed him away, pointing at them both. “You two are impossible. Of course I was.”
“Cool.” Rachel exclaimed. “I can’t wait to throw some parties here. It would be like Risky Business.”
Beverly gazed at the house, sighing, “What a horrible child. Where did I go wrong?” She wandered off toward the right, her attention caught by some detail.
“Have you already moved to Brattleboro?” Joe asked the girl. “And I meant to compliment you on your warehouse shots. They were terrific. I know Katz didn’t benefit directly, since they didn’t run in the Reformer, but I hope he’s giving you high marks for making him look good by proxy.”
Rachel beamed. “Oh. Thanks. You made those possible. I would’ve been screwed without your being there. And you’re right: Katz was really impressed I got in.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “Ah, the immortal Stanley Katz. I was telling your mom how I thought his was a name I’d never hear again. How is he as a boss?”
“I like him,” she said. “He’s old school and grumpy, but like a TV sitcom. He’s also got a memory like nobody I know and a neat way of making sure you asked all the right questions. I think he’s cool.”
“So, back to my first question: You’re an official Brattleboro resident now? I should’ve offered to help you move.”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “All the junk I own fit into my backseat. Took me fifteen minutes to settle in. I found an apartment over Main Street. Fourth-floor walk-up. I’m right across from the bagel shop. When I shower, I can see Wantastiquet Mountain out my bathroom window.”
He knew almost exactly where she was describing—what he and his colleagues would call a dump.
“Nifty,” he said. “I’ll have to come visit.”
“You probably will,” she said brightly. “I’m pretty sure at least one of my neighbors is dealing drugs. He’s nice, though.”
“Swell,” he said, at once admiring her broad-mindedness and taking note of her neighbor’s approximate address.
* * *
A dozen or so miles from Beverly’s future second home, Willy Kunkle slowly became conscious of a small orchestra of muted electronic noises and hushed voices.
He remained utterly still, assembling the functional pieces of his brain like a rake gathering leaves, until he felt collected enough to glance through barely opened eyelids. It seemed like he was doing this a lot lately.
The acoustic ceiling tiles did the trick, jogging his memory enough to revive a images of doctors, nurses, IVs, the short journey down a hallway to an operating room.
He closed his eyes again, at least having recognized where he was, if not the overall state of the immediate world. He could almost feel the presence of foreign substances in his bloodstream, hard at work at their assigned tasks, but at the same time making him even more aware of his vulnerability.
That, unsurprisingly, triggered his ever-present paranoia, along with an upsurge of anxiety. What had they done to him? Had it worked? What if it hadn’t, and he was now a cripple on the verge of unemployment and substance addiction—because that was going to be the next stop. He knew that as a stone-cold fact. That he’d avoided slipping back into the bottle, via the pills he’d already started taking, was a miracle. Doing so in the face of this operation’s failure would be all but impossible.
He knew himself that much at least.
But there was something else in all this panicky thinking. Something missing. Something of substance and meaning that had pulled him to safety the first time.
He smiled, which gave him away.
“Willy,” he heard. “You awake?”
He opened his eyes wide this time, to take in Sam’s face, hovering above him once more. “Yeah,” he said, barely feeling his lips.
She kissed him, long and gently. “Yeah, yourself.”
“Guess what?” he slurred, startled by his own discovery—coming like an announcement via an intercom in his head.
“What?”
“No pain.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean? They sliced you open.”
“No, not that,” he said, his smile broadening to where he looked like a vaudeville drunk. “That’s nothing. The other one. The two-twenty line into my head. It’s gone.”
“It’s better? It worked?”
“Not better. Gone,” he repeated. “Like they hit a switch.”
Another face came into view next to Sam’s.
Willy smiled. “Hey, Doc.”
Abigail Sumner’s expression barely responded in kind, although her voice, when she spoke, more than compensated. “Did I overhear a happy customer?”
“You did. I can’t believe it’s gone, like that.” He tried snapping his fingers, but he had a blood oximeter attached to one of them. “Well, you get it.”
“As I said, nerves’ll work like that sometimes,” she repeated from earlier, her eyes drifting across his left shoulder—as much as was visible under the dressing. She also scrutinized his lower arm for circulation, color, and warmth.
“I hope you’re experiencing some pain, nevertheless,” she said. “If you’re not, we have a serious problem.”
“No,” he reassured her, his voice sounding slightly clearer. “It hurts, all right. But it’s localized. Like it should be. That makes sense.”
“How long will it last?” Sam asked.
Sumner straightened, satisfied. “You’ll probably never find out from him,” she said, as if Willy were in another room. “His tolerance is high and his willingness to give you feedback nonexistent.” She glanced at Sam. “But I doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t know. As I said when we first met, he’ll take a few days flushing out the medications we gave him. Then he’ll be up and about, bound and in a sling. After that, he’ll quickly become a pain in the neck as he denies that it takes six weeks or so for his particular clavicle to knit. But mark my words: The more he screws around, the longer that process will take.” She returned her gaze to her patient. “Just so you both understand.”
She shook Sam’s hand and patted Willy on his right wrist. “Unless all hell breaks loose, I’ll see you then, in six weeks. Good luck.”
And she was gone.
“Cold fish,” Sam said under her voice, giving him a repeat kiss.
He reached up and stroked her hair, smiling. “I like her.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Beverly adjusted her plastic face shield, thinking back to when autopsies were done with little protection beyond a rubber apron. She didn’t argue with the protocols involving multiple layers, double-gloving, face and eye protection, and even booties. But she did miss the sense of ease she’d once enjoyed, wearing far less. Another price of progress.
“Top of the day to you, Todd,” she greeted her diener. “Would you like to make the introductions this morning?”
Todd, similarly adorned, had been in the procedure room for a while already, preparing their first case. Also present was their law enforcement liaison, who for the moment was back in a far corner, filling out something on his portable computer, his fingerprint kit open on the counter beside him. That was it at the moment. The usual gaggle of med students was not in attendance, probable victims of an ever-changing class schedule.
“Good morning, Doctor,” Todd said, his words muffled by his mask. “Today, we have William Larabee, aged forty-eight.” Todd paused to retrieve the report that had been sent electronically from their regional investigator. “He comes to us from Upper Valley Surgical Specialists, where he was a patient for only a few hours.”
Beverly took her eyes off the naked man on her table to cast Todd an inquiring gl
ance. “Upper Valley Surgical Specialists? Did he die prior to surgery? He doesn’t have a mark on him.”
“Yeah. That’s explained in the narrative. It was a mutual aid kind of thing. A little murky, but it seems with the best of motives. Mr. Larabee was found in his motel room, sick as a dog, after a couple of days during which they honored his Do Not Disturb sign, meaning that when they brought him in, he’d become unresponsive. Despite not having an emergency room, per se, UVSS was nearby, and the next hospital’s ER was suffering a temporary power outage, so they stepped up. So much for good intentions.”
Beverly frowned to herself and surveyed the body. “Reading between the lines,” she said, “I’m guessing no known medical history, local physician, next of kin, and probably no meds in the room, since that would be far too helpful. Is that about right?”
“That is exactly right,” Todd concurred, still scanning the report. “The local cops and our investigator are scrambling as we speak, but so far, nothing.”
“What did the scene tell us?” Beverly asked. “Any blood, anything in the toilet or sink, stained clothing? A cell phone, perhaps?”
“Yes, on the phone, which is where they’re putting most of their efforts, along with his credit card. We got his name from his Maryland driver’s license, so that’s another lead.”
This was not unheard of. It wasn’t even rare. Cases arrived fairly often with little more than a wristband and most of the open slots on the report form labeled “pending.”
She studied what she’d been given, therefore, without prejudice or foreknowledge, as had often been the case in school, where the provenance of cadavers had also been occasionally murky.
“All right,” she began, at once writing points down as she went and speaking aloud in order to use Todd as a sounding board, much as a pilot does her copilot. “We have a one-hundred-and-seventy-pound white male, approximately five feet ten inches in length. He has about a three-day stubble, and appears to be of average fitness and proportions. Upon first glance, he doesn’t seem to have any gross abnormalities or disabilities, nor any signs of trauma.”
Together, they rolled him over to examine his back and buttocks. “Similarly,” Beverly continued, “the posterior appears equally unremarkable, with lividity fixed and appropriate given the circumstances.”
Beverly walked around her patient after returning him to the supine position, taking in and cataloging his features. “Two small observations: There are some minor purpura of the lower legs and petechia of both conjunctivae, consistent with sepsis, but no hemorrhaging from any natural orifices.”
She put her hands on Mr. Larabee at last and started pushing him about, in order to access some of his more remote nooks and crannies, talking all the while as Todd assisted. In the meantime, the state trooper had quietly set to work taking photographs and lifting fingerprints.
Finally, she picked up her scalpel and repeated the procedure Joe had watched her perform on Teri Parker days earlier, ending with the removal of the man’s sternum with the aid of a pair of adapted brush cutters.
With the lungs and liver now lying in full view, Todd knew enough to comment, “Well, he sure as hell ain’t your cut-and-dried heart attack victim. That looks bad.”
Beverly removed the lungs, weighed them, palpated them, and moved them to her cutting table to look inside.
“Definitely hemorrhagic and edematous. No frank blood, but very frothy and blood-tinged.”
“Still sepsis?” Todd asked.
“Could be,” she said, slicing some more. “The spleen is soft and bloody, which would fit. We’re absolutely ordering slides on Mr. Larabee, though. I have no idea what’s going on.”
The liver was next, which she declared soft, somewhat necrotic, and etched with reticular hemorrhaging. The kidneys, sections of the bowel, and the brain all eventually showed signs of swelling and bleeding.
An hour later, Beverly stretched her back, stepped away to allow Todd to wrap things up, and asked, “Not that they had a reason to, but did UVSS do a GI workup?”
“Nope. And blood cultures were ordered but aren’t completed, for obvious reasons. Fast-and-dirty analysis revealed he had an elevated white count, which supports sepsis, but from what, they had no clue. His coagulation labs were also off.”
“What did he do for a living?” Beverly asked. “He’s got good teeth and nails, well-cut hair. Seems like a man who took care of himself—definitely not our usual type of customer.”
Todd was shaking his head. “Details at eleven, Doc. Sorry.”
Beverly sighed. “That’s fine, Todd. We’ll get it sorted out. Let’s start by getting those samples packaged up. I’ll tell the state epidemiologist to expect them and contact UVSS’s attending and medical director, just to see if there was anything that didn’t make it into our investigator’s field report.”
She checked her watch. “Good. Early enough to actually get something rolling. I hate it when these things occur late in the day.”
She crossed the room and opened the biowaste container prior to removing her gloves, mask, and gown. “Thomas?” she inquired of the trooper.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t usually bother you with things like this, but if you could tell whatever department is handling the investigation concerning Mr. Larabee that I would greatly appreciate any extra effort they can apply. I don’t want any avoidable delays on this.”
The trooper, although new to the liaison post, was both used to her formal syntax and aware of her having high expectations of everyone around her. Or else.
“You got it, Dr. Hillstrom,” he said quickly, crossing to his computer to look up the appropriate phone number.
Beverly looked at the floor to hide her smile. Her amusement, however, was directed solely at his response. Otherwise, she wasn’t the least bit entertained by what might have killed the late Mr. Larabee. Unlike most people, she didn’t like mysteries.
* * *
“Talk about déjà vu all over again,” Joe commented, looking at Willy’s bulky shoulder dressing.
Willy reached up and self-consciously touched the bandaging, also recalling when he’d first incurred this injury years ago and was facing an uncertain future.
“You drop by to gloat, now that I’m down?”
Joe let out a snort, having anticipated as much. “Yup. That’s me. All about the gloating. You know me well.”
Sam, on the other hand, did all she could not to rap Willy on the forehead with her knuckles. She did, however, growl, “Jesus,” under her breath.
Joe breezed past it. “Actually,” he told them, looking at the door, “I thought I’d ruin your goldbricking by having a spontaneous team meeting.”
Like clockwork, although actually running five minutes late, Lester Spinney entered the private room.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Perfect timing,” Joe reassured him. “Willy was about to complain of being bored.”
Lester addressed his bedridden colleague with characteristic empathy. “Hey, partner. Did it work? Did they get the pain?”
To Willy’s credit, or perhaps responding to his long-awaited relief, he answered openly and genuinely. “Totally. I haven’t felt this good since before that son of a bitch shot me in the first place.”
“When do you get out?” Lester asked.
“Not for at least a week,” came a female voice from behind them. “Maybe more, considering how ornery this one is.”
All four of them turned as Sue Spinney joined them, addressed her husband with a quick kiss, and stationed herself beside Willy in order to take his vitals.
“He’s got an unstable clavicle and a ginormous wound that needs monitoring. Plus, we still have him on painkillers and meds. He may look fine to you people, since you’ve gotten so used to him, but I’m here to tell you that medically, he’s at death’s door and one step shy of the loony bin.”
Willy laughed. “Jeez. With that style, you should ask to work with Joe’s girlfriend.”
“Speaking of girlfriends,” Sam asked Sue, “is Victoria around today? We wanted to thank her for getting the ball rolling, or helping you get it rolling.”
Sue looked up briefly from what she was doing. “Oh, sure. She was really pleased the way things turned out. Actually, she’s fighting a stomach bug or something. Took a sick day.” Sue hung her stethoscope back around her neck and stepped back. “I’ll let her know, though. Okay, that ought to do it. You’ll live for another few hours, until the arsenic kicks in. See ya, everybody.”
She patted Les on the butt as she walked out, closing the door behind her.
“And they say American health care ain’t what it should be,” Willy said, shifting slightly in his bed and wincing.
Joe sat on the windowsill as Sam took the edge of the bed and Lester the one guest chair. As with so many Vermont hospitals and clinics, the scenery out the window was of trees and distant hills instead of the usual urban clutter—a definite plus for positive patient outcomes, in Joe’s prejudiced view.
“We got some strange doings with what we’re juggling,” he began. “And the stranger they get, the more I was thinking we were overdue for a spitballing session.” He eyed the reason they were meeting here. “Willy, all horseshit aside, are you up for this? I want you back sooner rather than later, so I don’t want to mess things up by pushing too hard now.”
Willy took him seriously. “I’m good, boss. I do take a lot of naps, but right now, I’m okay.”
“Thank you,” Joe said. “All right. This started straight up and narrow: one dead girl, one quickly confessed killer. It’s been going sideways ever since. Any arguments that the supposed killer ain’t what he says he is?”
No one said anything.
“Good. That makes the first fork in the road a split between who really did kill Teri Parker and why is Mick Durocher taking the rap?”
“And did he even know her?” Willy added.
“Right,” Joe agreed. “We have footage of him dumping her body, but no one we’ve found can tell us they were ever alive in the same room at the same time. In addition, I heard from Mick’s daughter, his neighbor, and just lately his jailer in Rutland, that he may be about to die of cancer.”