by Olive Balla
“Yessir,” Larry said. “He poured a couple quarts of liquid candle wax down your chimney and threw in a match. It’s a trick I taught him. I’m kind of surprised he remembered it. Lucky for you I fell asleep in my hiding place or I’d have been at home in my own bed. Sad to say, you’d be history.”
His hiding place?
“But why would Mel want to kill me? I don’t even know him.”
“I guess Bellamy told him to. Or maybe he just took a notion. Mel has been known to take some pretty serious notions.” Larry rubbed his chin, a thoughtful look on his face. “But it needed some figuring for him to set that fire, and Mel isn’t too strong on figuring.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” Frankie moved her arms up and down against the restraints on her wrists, rattling them. “Would you please unbuckle these? I must be a mess, and I’d like to clean up.”
“All in good time.”
“Please, Larry. I really need to go to the bathroom.” Frankie struggled to stay calm. Every cell in her body shrieked that time was running out.
The young man seemed unperturbed. He combed his fingers through Frankie’s hair. “Your hair’s so pretty.” He pointed to the scrap of ribbon on his arm. “I wear this everywhere. You recognize it?”
Frankie started to shake her head, but thought better of it. Every action, every word had to be chosen with care. “It makes a nice bracelet for you.”
“It’s not much to look at now, not good enough for you to wear in your hair again.” A strange look came over Larry’s face. “But I’ll never take it off, no matter what.”
Before Frankie could respond to that, someone shoved the door open. The hollow metallic sound as it ricocheted off the wall set her head pounding with renewed vigor. She closed her eyes and reopened them as Mel strode into the room.
Mel’s nose was covered with flesh-colored bandaging, and his nostrils bulged with packed white gauze. Without even so much as a glance at Frankie, he strode over to Larry.
“Where’ve you been?” Mel said. If it hadn’t been for the dark look in his eyes, the voice would have sounded almost comedic as it worked its way through the packing in his nose. “You said you’d come back to the farm.”
“I got busy with other things.”
“Bellamy thinks you skipped out. You know what he’ll do if he finds you here?”
“He won’t. I checked his schedule and he’s in surgery.”
“Are you coming back?”
“No, Mel, I’m not coming back.”
“Then what’re you doing here?”
“I came for her.” Larry motioned toward Frankie.
“You can’t take her.”
“You don’t want to try and stop me. You know what he’ll do to her.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mel grinned. His eyes moved to Frankie’s midriff, a portion of which lay uncovered by her shortened tee shirt. He rubbed his disfigured little finger. “But she can’t go. She knows enough to make bad trouble for all of us. Besides, she’s a freak. Hey, maybe there’s other freaky parts. I mean, maybe she has two belly buttons—or three tits.” He giggled, the sound like something out of a B rated horror movie.
Larry put a hand on Mel’s shoulder and gave it a little shove. “Come on, man. Don’t talk like that in front of her.”
Mel kept his eyes glued to Frankie’s midriff. “Maybe you know something I don’t, what with watching her undress and all.”
“I said shut up.” Larry shoved Mel again, harder. As Mel stumbled backward, Larry turned toward Frankie and began unbuckling the strap at her right wrist.
“She’s not leaving.” Mel reached for Larry’s arm and tried to spin him around.
Larry gripped the hand clamped on his arm and twisted the other man’s fingers until he let out a howl. “What’s gotten into you?” The look on Larry’s face was one of incredulity.
“You and me’ve been friends a long time,” Mel said. “It’s always been just us, you watching out for me and me watching out for you.”
Larry shook his head. “One thing we’ve never been is friends. I let you hang around ’cause you had nowhere else to go. But you’re a slob and you got no people skills. I’m moving on.”
“This ain’t you talking, it’s her. She’s got you hippertized.”
Mel jerked his fingers free of Larry’s hold and the two grappled. They moved around the room in a macabre dance, each one struggling to gain control of the other. Flailing arms knocked a tray of surgical instruments off the counter. Metal rained down on linoleum tiles, the clatter adding to the charged atmosphere. A flying elbow knocked over a black examination lamp. Its high power light bulb exploded against the floor with a pop, and tiny shards of razor-sharp glass skittered across the room. A knee bumped into a cabinet door. Boots thumped and rubber-soled shoes squeaked as they slid across the floor.
Then as suddenly as it had begun, the fight ended. The sounds of blows, grunts and cursing ended with a final thud as something soft and heavy fell to the floor.
Mel lay on his side next to the cabinet, his face turned toward Frankie. A pool of blood oozed from his head onto the floor beneath it. Bloody hair and pieces of flesh smeared the protruding corner of the Formica-topped counter above him.
A look of stunned surprise on his face, Larry stared down at the dying man. “Dammit. Dammit-all Mel. Now look what you made me do.”
Mel’s eyes were riveted on Frankie’s. The hatred reflected there made her blood run cold.
She watched his light dim, and then wink out. The smells of feces and urine filled the room.
Frankie’s stomach convulsed. She turned her head toward the wall and vomited.
Larry pulled a handful of paper towels from the holder and dampened them under the faucet. Gently, he wiped the vomit from Frankie’s face and clothes. When he’d cleaned her up to his evident satisfaction, he turned his attention to Mel’s body. He studied the scene for several seconds, seemed to reach some resolution, and without another glance at Frankie, left the room.
Within a few minutes, he returned with a canvas laundry hamper. He reached inside it and retrieved what appeared to be a box of dark green lawn and leaf bags, along with a roll of gray duct tape. He pulled two plastic bags from the box, and slid one inside the other. He folded Mel’s body into a fetal position, then rolled and slid the corpse until he finally managed to get it completely inside the plastic bags. He twisted the tops, taped them closed, and wrapped duct tape around the bundle several times.
While Larry’s attention was diverted from her, Frankie contorted her hand inside the loosened leather binding, bending her wrist at a nearly impossible angle until it felt it would break. If she could just pull her fingers a little further back…
Larry squatted next to Mel’s body, secured a grip on the corpse’s elbows and knees and struggled to lift the bundle into the laundry hamper. When the plastic bags began to tear, he laid the laundry hamper over on its side and rolled the body into it before lifting the whole thing onto its wheels. With what appeared to be a look of satisfaction on his face, he opened the door and pushed the hamper into the hall. The door closed quietly behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Nick turned on the pickup’s radio to crowd out the images he’d begun envisioning after his chat with Ted. Although tempted to turn on his lights and siren and kick his speed into the stratosphere, he kept to the limit. A tic started up in his left eyelid, the flesh jerking in sync with the rhythm of the music pounding into his cab.
Maybe Pritney would be able to find something helpful. The more Nick had dug into the workings of the Cottonwood Hospital and the attached convalescent center, the more worried he had become.
Although there was nothing he could put his finger on, something about the setup felt wrong. On the surface, the locally owned inpatient facility subscribed to an altruistic approach to medical care. Very low income individuals and vagrants received topnotch care. The costs not covered by Medicare or Medicaid were often paid for by funds f
rom a foundation set up by several local philanthropists.
The hospital specialized in geriatric and terminal illnesses. Through its body, organ, bone, and tissue donation and retrieval programs, patients unable to pay for various high cost, life changing surgeries could now access them.
But it seemed to Nick that an inordinate number of the patients were dying. Added to that was the much higher than average number of lawsuits, ranging from simple patient negligence to wrongful death.
Nick had called the state medical examiner’s office. Unable to make direct contact with the person who held that position, he’d left an extended message and requested a return call. If he didn’t hear back soon, he’d pay the M.E. a personal visit. But first he had to find Frankie.
He pulled into Lola Bridger’s driveway, turned off his engine and stepped out of his pickup.
“Frankie told me she’d stay in touch,” Lola said to Nick as he stood on her front porch. “I offered her and Collette a room, but she said it wouldn’t be safe for me if she stayed here.”
“Have you heard from her?” Nick said.
“No. She was going to stay at a motel until she could find someplace to lease while her house is being rebuilt. I haven’t heard from her since she left just after noon yesterday. And I’m a little worried, especially after what she said about someone coming after her. I called the police, but they can’t do anything until she’s been missing longer.”
Nick frowned. “She called me yesterday. But I was out of range, and now she’s not answering her cell. Do you have a phone book I could borrow?”
“Sure do. You come on in and sit down, I’ll get it.”
Nick followed Lola into her living room. He sat for a few seconds before his twitching nerves took complete control of his body and he jumped up. He paced back and forth in front of the sofa.
The phone call he’d received from the state medical examiner’s office a few minutes ago had disturbed him. The family of an elderly man was suing the hospital’s director and main surgeon Dr. Bellamy for malpractice and wrongful death. The family members insisted their father’s health was fine two days prior to a needless kidney removal, the complications from which resulted in his untimely death.
The lawsuit was not for the removal of the healthy organ. In fact, Nick was surprised to learn it was not illegal to wrongfully remove a healthy organ or to amputate a healthy limb. About twenty percent of all appendectomies performed by even the best surgeons would be on healthy tissue. Any more than twenty percent indicated excessive caution on the part of the surgeon, while less than twenty percent meant not enough.
According to the M.E.’s office, a nurse had called claiming to have firsthand knowledge of illegal activities. An investigation into the hospital was pending. And now Frankie had vanished.
Nick’s body sizzled with the need for action. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on his thigh.
When Lola returned, she carried a stack of various white and yellow-paged phone books. She placed them on the coffee table and pulled a phone from somewhere inside her bra.
Nick sat on the sofa and opened an Albuquerque phone book. “I’ll start with the A’s. Why don’t you begin with the last entry and work your way forward. Hopefully, by the time we meet in the middle of the list, we’ll have found the motel where she’s staying.”
The two bent their heads over the phone books, and began making calls.
****
The noise from the room known as the lockup drew Hector’s attention away from his work. More out of curiosity than anything else, he walked up the hall toward the sounds of struggle. But by the time he neared the area, the uproar had already died down.
As the lockup door began to open, Hector dropped down on one knee behind an old metal desk awaiting a trip to the dump. He knew all too well the atrocities that sometimes took place in this part of the hospital, and had no intention of bringing trouble down upon his own head by making his presence known. At least, not until he found out what was going on.
When Larry stepped through the door, Hector smiled in relief, glad to see his friend alive and well. Especially since rumor had it that Bellamy either had him killed, or he’d fled the country.
Hector knew Larry had done some bad things. But he also knew only too well how a man could get caught up in things beyond his control.
Larry had always treated the cutters with respect. He often stopped by to drink a soda and talk about sports or his latest money making idea. He even occasionally pitched in to help when the cutters got swamped.
So when Larry pushed a bulging laundry hamper out into the hall and closed the door behind him, Hector stepped out of his hiding place.
“¿Qué pasa, Ese?”
Larry spun around, his arms instinctively assuming a combative posture. Hector took a step back at the look on his friend’s face.
“What’s going on?” Hector lowered his voice to a whisper. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Larry pointed toward the laundry hamper. “They don’t make trouble any worse than I got. Mel and me had a tussle, now he’s dead, and I got to get rid of him.” Larry described what had happened.
“An accident, amigo. You got nothing to worry about. Besides, the world is a better place without El Dedo.”
“Yeah, but I was with him when he did something bad. I’ll go to prison for sure if the police find out about it and connect me with him.”
Hector patted Larry’s shoulder with one hand while he reached for the hamper with the other. “Let me take care of him for you.”
Larry gripped the hamper tighter. “I can’t let you get mixed up in this stuff, you having a family and all. If the police find out what you been doing, you could go to jail too. Then who’d take care of your little girl?”
Hector gently disconnected Larry’s hand from the laundry cart. “It would be a gift for you to allow me to dispose of this cochino. But what are you going to do?”
“I’m leaving town tonight, I got me a girl and we’re going to get married.”
“Congratulations, my friend. I wish you years of happiness.” A beatific smile on his face, Hector pushed the hamper with its grisly contents toward the cutting room.
****
When Larry returned to the lockup he was pushing a wheeled bucket of water from which jutted the wooden handle of a mop. He grinned shyly at Frankie and set to work mopping the floor.
After he’d scoured the Formica counter top, he replaced the scattered instruments. Then he pulled a can of aerosol room deodorizer out of a metal storage cabinet, aimed the nozzle into the air, and sprayed. The sweet fragrance of apples and cinnamon co-mingled with the stench of feces, urine, and vomit.
Frankie’s stomach heaved, and she retched again.
****
Deputy Judy Pritney sat at her desk and stared out the window of the sheriff’s office. Her right leg bounced up and down on the ball of her foot like a piston in an eighteen-wheeler going ninety miles per hour.
She pulled a pencil from among several kept in a wire mesh holder atop her desk and tapped it on the flat wood surface while chewing on her already-raw bottom lip. She studied her reflection in the polished surface of the thermal, stainless steel coffee mug her grandma had given her for Christmas a couple of years ago. The distorted, fun-house face glared back at her.
“What are you looking at?” she said to her image.
How had she managed to get herself so deep into this horrible mess? Stupidity, that’s how. But then, no one had ever accused her of being the brightest bulb in the neon sign of life.
Pritney scowled again at her reflection. Even after three years of working together in close proximity, Nick had never once looked at her the way he looked at Frankie O’Neil the first time he saw her.
Did he not know how she felt about him? He was such a good detective, how could he not have figured that out? She took such pains with her makeup and hairdo. She’d even taken to wearing perfume, and that was saying something. But N
ick never even noticed.
Although Pritney didn’t have the delicate beauty of Frankie O’Neil, she’d always had her share of men panting after her. Always had them staring at her round, muscular ass and drooling.
But not Nick. No, he’d been blinded by that bouncy little church-organist bimbo, while Pritney had hated her on sight. It was more than her beauty, although that would have been sufficient reason. It was something about the way she dealt with the shit-sandwich life had handed her. Pritney would have railed against the heavens, cursed at the police and threatened lawsuits. She’d have taken to the streets, guns a-blazing.
But Perky-tits appeared to have taken all the crap in stride. She’d gritted her teeth and dug in her heels. And that had impressed the hell out of Nick.
Pritney couldn’t accuse her partner of any loss of professionalism and courtesy in his dealings with the O’Neil woman. Just the opposite. His behavior had always been completely appropriate. Everyone who knew him respected him.
He’d never made even one pass at Pritney. And that was the problem. No matter what she did, he’d always treated her like she was just one of the guys.
It was obvious to anyone in the room that Nick had loved that stuck up little O’Neil witch from the minute he first saw her in the Eagle Nest Café. It had shown in his eyes. Never mind that, as far as he knew, the little bitch might be a mass murderer.
But she wasn’t a mass murderer, was she? No, not her. Miss Priss had probably never even jaywalked.
What would Nick think of his partner if he found out what she’d been up to? He’d hate her, that’s what. He’d hate her and then arrest her. And rightly so.
Deputy Pritney sighed. She sat for several minutes, motionless, unseeing. Then she opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pen and notepad. For the next forty-five minutes she wrote.
When the letter was done to her satisfaction, she went through all the drawers in her desk. She removed her belongings, and put everything into the cloth tote bag she’d used to transport homemade bread to the office—another attempt to get Nick’s attention.