“Hmph.” It was more of a grunt than a word. “You can go see fer yerself,” he said. “The place is out about three miles from town. Take County Road 12 east.”
I thanked him and left, wondering whether it was really worth the trip. I had no reason to disbelieve the old man. Something told me the current Philips’s would live in modern places with lots of angles and skylights. My thoughts reverted back to the stories I’d seen in the old newspapers as I started my car and headed toward County Road 12.
The old adobe was so rundown that I drove by it twice before realizing it was the house I’d seen in the pictures. The upper story sagged, like an old woman bent by osteoporosis, her aged shoulders unable to bear the roof’s weight any longer. The traditional territorial blue paint around the window and door frames had chipped away, leaving weathered gray wood with only tiny flecks of the blue intact. A wood balcony had once been attached to the front, outside an upper story door. It drooped, only a couple of the wooden rungs still in place. The weight of a pigeon could possibly dislodge the whole thing.
In the yard, wild native plants had taken over where rock-bordered flower beds must have once been cultivated. A dozen or so stalks of hollyhock held their pink and fuchsia heads high. They dotted the yard randomly, the obvious product of flora left to its own devices. Two crumbling adobe pillars flanked the driveway entrance. From one of them hung a weathered sign: C. Sisneros, Artist. I couldn’t’ see any indication that the article was still in residence.
Some of the multi-paned windows were shattered, leaving the entire place looking sad and abandoned. Had Sisneros been the one to take the old homestead from the Phillips brothers? Or had that happened at some previous time in history? My brain struggled to put it all together.
Somehow I had to figure out exactly what was going on. I knew that somehow the two doctors were involved in the startling number of miscarriages in the small town, but how were they doing it? I thought of the third doctor in the practice, Brent Fisher. Sally had told me that he was new in town. He might not be so tightly wrapped up in old history. I headed back to town.
I stopped at a pay phone beside a gas station. Chris answered the phone at the clinic. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize my voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, making my voice as nasal as possible, “which doctors are on duty this afternoon?”
“Well,” she hesitated. “Doctor Evan Phillips is here now but he’s leaving at noon. Doctor Fisher will be in this afternoon. Can I make an appointment for you?”
“I’ll call back,” I said, hanging up before she had time to question further.
I drove toward the clinic, windows down against the warm day. Across the street and down perhaps a half block was a drive-in burger place. I parked where I could watch the clinic’s parking lot and ordered a fresh lemonade through the crackly speaker beside my window. A carhop brought the drink. I stared at the cars across the street.
Within fifteen minutes, a dark blue sports car rushed into the clinic lot, chirping to a stop beside the building. Brent Fisher got out, unfolding his long legs and straightening his tie as he stood up. He pulled a briefcase from the car with one hand and smoothed his hair with the other. I watched him walk toward the front door.
He disappeared inside and I checked my watch. Twelve o’clock exactly. Within ten minutes, while I slowly sipped my lemonade, Dr. Phillips emerged from the clinic. He strode purposefully toward a dark Suburban, got in and started it without hesitation. I started my car as soon as he passed the drive-in without looking my way.
“Chris, I need t talk to Doctor Fisher. Real quick? Before his first patient comes in?”
“Well . . . I . . .”
“His office is right back here, isn’t it?” I pushed through the double doors.
“Wait a second,” she protested, “I better page him.” She was picking up the phone but I walked on in.
Doctor Fisher stood in his office with one arm in his jacket sleeve, the other out, holding the phone to his ear. He’d obviously been in the process of taking off the coat to change into a lab jacket when Chris paged him. I walked into the office and closed the door behind me before he quite figured out what was happening.
“It’s . . . uh, okay, Chris. No, don’t bother.” He slowly replaced the receiver. “What do you want?”
“Please,” I said, my voice non-threatening. “I just need to ask some questions and I think you’re the only one I can talk to.”
“This isn’t medical, is it?” he queried. His eyes narrowed as he slipped the jacket off and hung it on the coat rack in the corner.
“You’re the one who broke into the clinic the other night, aren’t you?”
“Well, I never got in,” I rushed to say. “It really was a dumb thing to do and I should have just come and asked some questions first.”
“So you want me to put in the good word and tell them you didn’t really mean it so they won’t press charges?” His look told me not to even consider it.
“No, I guess I have to answer for that one myself. I wanted to ask you about something else. Look, I’m really putting myself on the line here, trusting that you won’t run straight to either Doctor Phillips with this.”
“Sit down,” he said, his forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. He had already taken his seat behind the desk.
I briefly filled him in on the miscarriage statistics I’d read. I mentioned the town history I’d read in the old newspapers.
“Phillipsburg? I’d never heard that before,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “this could be pretty far-fetched, but I just have a gut feeling that somehow the Phillips family is tied into this. But think about it—the family lost its control in this town because of Hispanics. Their father probably drilled hatred into them. Now they’re systematically wiping out the Hispanic population of this town. I mean, these women are their patients. Imagine the degree of control they exert here.”
His look was frankly skeptical. “I think you’re pretty far off base,” he said. “I just cannot imagine either of the doctors being involved in something like this. You actually think they are causing women to lose their babies?”
“Well?”
“Without the women being the least bit suspicious? Miss Parker, I really do think you need a better grasp on reality. Look, I’ve got patients waiting.”
He stood, indicating that the conversation was over. Pulling his white lab coat on, he ushered me out of the office with a firm hand on my back. I headed toward the double doors leading to the lobby, while he walked to one of the examination rooms and pulled a patient chart from a rack beside the door. From another exam room I heard Chris’s voice assuring someone that the doctor would be there shortly. I made a snap decision.
A linen closet opened onto an adjacent hallway and I ducked into it, seconds before Chris passed by on her way back to her desk. Knowing they were both temporarily occupied I felt around on the wall for a light switch.
The tiny room was lined with shelves, neatly filled with cloth drapes and gowns and precisely labeled boxes of cotton balls, tongue depressors, and other medical supplies. In one corner of the floor sat a large canvas bag with drawstring top, about one-quarter full of used linens ready to be sent to the laundry. I dumped the contents and stashed them on an empty shelf, saving the canvas bag as a hiding place should I need one.
What on earth was I doing here? I should be going to Steve Bradley with my suspicions and let him do the followup. But somehow I knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t really believe a crime had been committed, much less did he have any interest in pinning it on the town’s two most prominent citizens. I would have to come up with some evidence before he’d believe me.
And the only I could think of to do that was to get a peek at the patient files. I pulled the canvas laundry bag near the door and switched off the light. I stepped into the bag, dropping my purse into the bottom of it and pulling the bag up as high as I could. It came nearly to my waist. If I crouched d
own, I thought it could be pulled up high enough to cover me. I prayed that I could make myself resemble rags.
I sat down, the loose bag draped around my lower half, my ears trained to the door for sounds. There was a steady stream of traffic up and down the main hall: patients coming and going, usually led by Chris, sometimes by Fisher himself. I was beginning to relax in my little hiding place, even dozed off for awhile. I awoke with a start, remembering my Jeep parked outside.
Chapter 28
My plan, loosely, was to wait in my hiding place until closing time, then search the clinic at my leisure after everyone had left. But once Chris and the doctor were ready to go, wouldn’t they realize that there was still a car outside? Even if they didn’t immediately connect it to me, they would surely question its presence.
My fuzzy sleep-coated brain tried to think back to noon. I remembered driving over and parking. I had left the Jeep near the edge of the parking area, purposely as far from the doctor’s sharp blue sports car as possible. There was a chance, maybe a small one, that they would assume my vehicle was parked at the business next door. Meanwhile, the large lemonade had worked its way through my system and I desperately needed to pee.
I groped around in my purse and found my keychain with the tiny flashlight attached. Pushed the button and got a dime-sized circle of light, enough to read my watch by. Four o’clock. My legs ached so badly I wasn’t sure they would ever function correctly again. I debated about trying to stand up, wondered if there were any urine specimen bottles in the room. Pictured myself trying to accomplish the act and decided I could hold it.
I stood in place for a couple of minutes, letting the circulation return to my legs. A voice just outside the door shocked me into action.
“We have more swabs here in the closet, Doctor,” Chris’s voice said.
I ducked down, pulling the laundry bag over myself.
The doorknob rattled. A sliver of light from the hall sliced across the darkness.
“Oh, did you find more? Okay.” The door closed.
My heart stopped slamming against my ribs and my breathing returned about five minutes later. What is it they say about surveillance work? Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. I leaned against the wall again for support.
Time dragged by and I checked my watch again. Fifteen minutes had passed. My mind began to wander aimlessly, like a child lost in the desert. Thoughts bounced around in my skull. Rusty. At Mary’s. Drake. Home again? Ron. Did he know where I’d come? My ankles cramped. I flexed them. I dozed again.
Voices drifted from the hall, sharpening and waning in the ebb and flow of traffic between the examining rooms. Occasional words came through but it was mostly a haze of noise, up and down in intensity. At some point, I became aware that the noise had faded. The whir of the air conditioning provided background, nothing more. My ears strained to catch other sounds. Five minutes passes with nothing. My bladder contracted painfully. I found my small flashlight again and checked the time. Ten after six.
My knees crackled in protest as I stood. I pressed my ear to the door, listening for any sound. Nothing.
My heart rate picked up speed as I stepped from my protective sack. The doorknob turned silently in my hand, the door easing open just a crack. The fluorescent overhead lights in the hall were off with only a nightlight glowing orangely at the end. I edged the door open a little farther. The doors to the examining rooms stood open, gray oblongs that let late afternoon light, muffled by closed mini-blinds, into the hall. I realized I’d been holding my breath.
I stepped into the open gray space, edging my way along the hall to the double doors. A look through the small round windows in them revealed that the reception area was empty. Chris’s desk was neat and clear. A small night lamp glowed on an end table. I tiptoed back down the hall toward Fisher’s office. It, too, was dark and empty. I used a restroom, risking the noise of flushing.
Now what?
I glanced into each of the rooms, looking for the files before I remembered that they were behind Chris’s reception desk. The cabinets themselves were modern looking things, smooth across the front, built directly into the walls. Recessed grooves formed the handles and none of them had anything so crass as a label on the outside. I guessed at which to try.
The first drawer I pulled out yielded names in the A’s. I paused a minute to think again what I was looking for. Cynthia Martinez. I moved to the middle of the wall. It took two more tries, but the Martinez’s finally came up. How did Chris deal with this unlabelled system all day?
Cynthia’s file contained a wealth of information, but it was all in doctor-scritch. I could pick out a word here and there but nothing that made any sense. Was bad handwriting a required course in medical school? I slipped the file back into its spot. Tried to think.
Laura Armijo. She’d had two miscarriages, she told me. Back to the A’s. Pulling out the top drawer, I realized that I’d missed it again. The drawer appeared to be business files rather than patient’s. Curiosity made me linger there.
Bank statements. That might be interesting reading. Paid invoices. Suppliers. Travel.
I reached for the Paid Invoice. Much can be learned about people and their activities by the way they spend their money. I spread the file on the open drawer. Flipped through mundane stuff from medical supply houses, the linen service, the phone company. Two phone calls to France last month. Interesting. No overseas calls the month before or, as I continued backward through the file, in the previous six months.
A credit card bill from seven months ago showed a charge for plane tickets and a two-night hotel stay in Paris back in December. The week before Christmas. An odd time to take a European vacation. And who on earth flew to Paris for two days and came right home? I closed the folder and slowly replaced it. My brain spun into gear as I figured out what I was looking for.
I closed the file drawers and rushed back down the hall to Evan Phillips’s office. He would only keep this little secret in a place where Chris wouldn’t accidentally find it.
His room was darker than the rest, the windows covered with heavy drapes. It was still light outside, although the sun had dropped low in the sky. A massive desk dominated the room, the high-backed executive chair behind it cocked at an angle, like the occupant had just stood up. A couple of patient files were neatly place on one corner. A leather trimmed desk pad sat precisely centered, with a matching pen holder and other desk accessories placed neatly around its perimeter. Obviously, the man’s personal habits were much neater than his handwriting.
Two upholstered chairs stood in front of the desk, places where patients probably sat awaiting either good or bad news. The pictures on the walls were tastefully done Southwestern landscapes featuring adobe houses and lots of chamisa. I saw no file or storage cabinets. In the dim room I decided to risk a lamp.
The desk must be the place. I walked around it to access the drawers. The first two opened to reveal a few file folders. One lower drawer had a bottle of scotch hidden at the back. An upper drawer was jammed full of prescription drug samples, the kind the drug companies give out by the handfuls. I began to pull the little sample packets out, placing them on the desk.
The names on the packages were all unfamiliar to me, multi-syllabled medi-speak. I placed them in little groupings with matching packages together. At the very back of the drawer I found what I was looking for.
They weren’t labeled. That would be far too dangerous. The small white aspirin-like tablets were loose in a plastic bag. I only recognized them for what they were because I’d seen an article in Newsweek within the past month. RU 486. The abortion pill.
Phillips must have been smuggling them in from France for at least three or four years. Goose bumps sprouted on the back of my neck.
“What the hell are you doing!” Evan Phillips filled the doorway, clenched fists raised against the doorjamb on either side, as if he were holding it up. His eyes bored into me.
My breath sucked in, ref
using to escape. I lowered the plastic bag, dropping it back into the open drawer.
“Well?” he demanded. “I asked what you think you’re doing.”
“I . . .uh .. . “ I couldn’t think of a single plausible reason I could give for my being here.
His eyes dropped to the desk for the first time, taking in the open drawer and scattered drug packages. I glanced at them, tempted to straighten the mess I’d made.
Click.
I knew that sound. He released the safety and pointed the semi-automatic straight at me.
“Now, Miss Parker, if you can’t provide me with an extremely reasonable explanation of what you’re doing in my office, I’m going to have to call the police.”
Oh, please do. I didn’t want Bradley to have to arrest me again, but anything was preferable to having my brains blown out. I searched for some means of defense. My purse and Ron’s gun were neatly sacked in the linen closet.
“Well?”
Stall for time, Charlie. “Genocide, Dr. Phillips.”
He feigned an incredulous look.
“As horrible as it sounds, you had figured out a way to rid this town of its Hispanic population. Only thing is, you chose a really slow way of going about it.” I mentally groped for a way to get to my gun. “What were you planning to do? Not allow any more Hispanic babies to be born, but what about those who already live here? Were you planning to start murdering them outright soon?”
He squirmed a little. “You don’t have any proof of that.”
“These pills should do it,” I said, raising the plastic bag. “Tell me, how did you get the women to take these?”
He lowered the gun slightly. It was probably getting heavy. “A patient will do just about anything her doctor tells her to. Those pills look almost exactly like aspirin, acetaminophen, any number of mild painkillers.”
Cynthia Martinez had told her co-workers she’d had a headache the morning of her final doctor’s appointment.
“But the abortion drug has to be administered in several doses,” I said.
Small Towns Can Be Murder Page 18