“A son,” I observed.
“We’ll have to track him down.” Provost opened the desk drawers one by one. The center drawer was filled with the usual assortment of office supplies: pens, boxes of staples, paper clips. And two glucose testers of the type used by diabetics, still in the pharmaceutical packaging.
“What’re those?” Provost asked. “They look familiar.”
“You’ve probably seen these advertised on television,” I said. “Or perhaps someone you know is a diabetic?”
“Not that I know of.” Provost picked up one of the packages and turned it over. “So Coughlin was a diabetic. Might be another reason why the poor guy was depressed.”
“Possibly.” I turned to the filing cabinet, which held files in alphabetical order, by patient name. I immediately went to the Ms. And there it was, McClellan, Faraway. “Ha!” I said. “We are partially in luck, at least.”
Provost peered over my shoulder. “You find a note?”
“There will be no note,” I said firmly. “No. This, I hope, will give me some insight into what transpired at Earlsdown last year.”
“Have anything to do with Coughlin’s death?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Then give me that. It’s evidence.”
I held the file out of Provost’s reach. “This is a patient file. It concerns the health of a horse. You are prepared to wade through thickets of veterinary terminology in the hope of discovering a clue?”
“No.”
“Then I will wade through it for you. If there’s anything relevant to the case, I will let you know immediately. I am, after all, a duly deputized member of this team, am I not? Although I do not yet have a shield.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Which brings me to a small matter of the honorarium,” I said. “We haven’t yet had an opportunity to discuss it.”
“You mean you want to get paid to stick your nose into county business?” Provost seemed somewhat exercised.
“You do pay consultants, do you not?”
“Jeez!” Provost rubbed his scalp, which, I was pleased to see, was almost as bare as my own. “All right, yeah, why not. I’ll talk to the mayor.”
“And you’ll be sure to send the appropriate ID through the . . .” I broke off. Provost’s complexion was becoming choleric.
“Don’t push it, McKenzie. And give me that file.”
“The chickens,” I said, “may well need daily doses of antibiotic. Would you care to learn how to dose a chicken?”
“No.” He glared at me. “We had chickens when I was a kid. I hate chickens.”
“It’s all in the handling,” I observed. “A professional rarely gets pecked.”
He smiled to himself. “Oh yeah? Keep the damn file. Keep all of the damn files. Just let me know when you’re handling those chickens. I’d like to see it.”
I didn’t tell him that the CDC was more than likely to send someone to pick up the chickens. Either that, or order them dispatched to chicken heaven.
“Very well, then.” I laid the Faraway file on the top of the filing cabinet.
We worked at our respective tasks in silence for some minutes. “Well,” I said, frustrated, “I see nothing to do with the chickens. Not even a contact number. At home, you know, we are in the process of computerizing our patient files. Are you finding anything in the way of a computer?”
“Nope. But there’s evidence he had one. There’s a printer cable, an extra battery for a laptop, a peripheral for a disk drive . . .” Provost looked under the desk, pulled all the drawers out again, then slammed them shut. “Nope. No computer.”
“I find that highly significant,” I said.
Provost shot me a look. “You do, do you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Unless it turns up in the truck, or something. You about through here? I want to finish taking those pictures.”
“I’ll take a moment to see if I can find any information on the mare and the cow.”
Provost clattered downstairs. I thumbed rapidly through the manila file folders. Coughlin had had quite a few clients, I was glad to see. There was a file for Gernsback, Hugo, and I pulled it. It contained the usual: X-rays, records of vaccinations, a current Coggins. A casual scan revealed nothing more unusual than a note on the Coggins form: in red ink, a downward pointing arrow, which seemed relevant to nothing.
Except that a quick scan of similar patient records revealed that same arrow on almost all of the Coggins exams. Curious.
I found the pregnant mare’s records listed under Coughlin, Sunny. There was an arrow on her Coggins, too. But she was Coughlin’s event horse, evidently. The heifer appeared to belong to Liversedge, Britney. Liversedge Longhorns was famous, locally, for show cattle. That was one issue that could be resolved expeditiously. I would call them about the heifer as soon as I returned home.
I tucked the Hugo, Sunny, and Faraway files under my arm and went back outside. Joe had arrived with the trailer as reinforcements for me. Reinforcements for Provost had arrived in the form of two uniformed patrolmen. Provost leaned against his cruiser, writing furiously in his steno pad. The patrolmen stood at semi-attention, evidently waiting for him to finish. He looked up as I approached. “We’re going to do a search before you haul all the stock out.” He closed the book, crossed his arms, and looked at me. “You said earlier that you noticed a couple of things when you walked through the barns. What things?”
I beckoned. “Come with me.”
They did. All of them, including Lincoln and a much-subdued Juno. I led them through the barn, which was small and tidy enough, but in need of fresh lumber and a bulldozer to grade the floor even. The barn itself was about thirty-six by thirty-six, with an overhead door facing the drive, and two man doors on either side at the rear. A dirt aisle ran down the middle, with two open pens on either side. The cow and the horse occupied two of the four pens. The heifer shifted quietly as we passed by. The mare, Sunny, stood with her head down, dozing peacefully. The hay I had given earlier hadn’t been eaten, although she had drunk half of her water. I paused for a moment, noting the shape of her swollen belly.
“The odd thing is the horse?” one of the young patrolman asked.
“No,” I replied. “But if she isn’t eating, she may be close to delivering the foal.” I slid the door open and stepped into the pen. There was something very good about the thought that a new life might come out of this tragedy. I checked her teats, which were swollen, but not milky. “Another day or two, perhaps. But it would be as well to move her as quickly as possible.”
“We’re ready to move,” Provost said pointedly. “Now what did you want to show me, doc?”
I gave Sunny a pat on the neck and came out of the stall. “The chickens are in an isolation building to the rear of the barn. You see that fire door?” A steel door was set in the middle of the back wall. A Level One Biohazard sign warned intruders off. “The door leads to an antechamber.” I walked to the door and opened it. “And the necessary gear to enter is right here.” I looked over my shoulder. Joe was behind me, but the assorted constabulary was not. “There’s no danger,” I said impatiently. “This is for the chickens’ sake, not ours.”
Provost hesitated, then motioned his confederates ahead. He peered over my shoulder. “How do you know?”
I nodded at the gear hanging from a peg on the wall. “Because this is just a clean coverall and a gauze mask. There are paper booties to slip over your shoes. It’s so you don’t bring contaminants in, not to keep containments from escaping out. There are three tiers of wire cages inside. Probably twenty-four chickens—I didn’t count.” I closed the door behind me and stepped back into the barn. “It’s what is behind the isolation shed that piqued my interest.”
Provost shifted uneasily. “There’s something behind it?”
“A larger shed.” I went through the man door on the east side and turned right. “The isolation shed butts flat up agai
nst the barn and runs its entire width, as you see.” I began to pace off the length of the isolation shed. The others followed me like imprinted ducklings. “But the interior depth is about twenty feet. The exterior width . . .” I paused at the end. The rear of the shed faced a welter of rusted automobile parts, an exhausted washer, and a lumpy pile of smooth wire.
“. . . Is more than forty feet,” Provost said, who had been pacing along behind me.
“Exactly.”
We all turned and surveyed the shed. It was a steel building, about twenty feet high with a metal roof. Ventilation soffits were placed at regular intervals under the eaves. There was one door, a fire door that faced the pile of junk in the brush. “What do you notice about the soffits?” I asked instructively.
“They’re made of a fine mesh,” Joe said. “Soffits are usually made of aluminum slats. And there’s a lot of them for a building that size.” He shrugged modestly at my approving look. “I work construction in the summers.”
“Precisely. And what may that mean?”
“Well, you’d want that much ventilation if you had a problem with condensation,” Joe said. Enlightenment dawned. “Jeez, doc. He has animals in there?”
“Excellent deductive reasoning, Joe. And yes, I believe there’s an animal in there.”
“Hang on a minute,” Provost said. “What kind of animals? Why would he lock them up?”
“How should I know?” I asked irritably. “We have to go in to discover that.” I stepped carefully around the snow mat in front of the fire door and rattled the handle. “There is a door from the inside, but it’s locked as well.” I stepped back and gestured at the patrolmen. “Open it.”
“Open it?” Provost repeated.
“If there is an animal in there, it undoubtedly needs to be fed.”
Provost hesitated. “But if it’s locked up like that . . .”
“For heaven’s sake, man! What can you possibly be afraid of?”
“Be reasonable, doc. This guy was into all kinds of weird experiments . . .”
“Research in avian flu is hardly weird.”
“. . . and god knows what’s in there.” He eyed the lock. “And this is a bugger of a lock. We’d have to break the door down. What if whatever’s in there escapes?”
I pointed to the path beneath our feet. “It snowed this morning. Note the footprints. Somebody has already been in and out this door this morning.”
“Those are your footprints.”
“They are not,” I said indignantly. “Those footprints are quite small. I stepped to the side, the first time I was here, and again a few moments ago. They are not my footprints. For all I know, they may be the footprints of the murderer.”
“A guy with size-seven feet,” Joe said, peering over my shoulder. “Or a woman.”
Provost rubbed his chin. “Take a picture, Frank.”
The older patrolman had been carrying the digital camera. He took a picture. Then he measured the footprints and wrote the results down in the ubiquitous steno pad.
“Now get the door open,” I said.
Provost’s scowl was impressive. “Are you sure about this? We get a lot of memos from the Feds about terrorist crap and that.”
“Quite sure.” I looked up at the eaves. The mesh in the soffits alone was enough to convince me that nothing wildly contagious lurked there. Coughlin may have been depressed, but he was not a fool. “You must have a battering ram of some sort, Provost.”
“Not so’s you notice,” Provost admitted.
“We could ram it with the cruiser,” Frank the camera cop suggested.
“I’d sooner ram you with the cruiser,” Provost said with a look of disgust. “Jesus. Ram the door with the cruiser.”
“What about the keys?” Joe said.
“The keys?” I said.
“In Dr. Coughlin’s pickup truck? Wouldn’t he have a key to this on his key ring?”
He did.
There was an animal inside. And she was dying.
Provost was first inside. “Oh, hell,” he said. “I hate these cases. I hate them.”
“And what kind of case would that be?” I snapped.
The mare was in a wire-enclosed pen. She was in the last stages of starvation. Every rib was visible. The bones of hip and stifle protruded like doorknobs. Her belly and legs were swollen through ventral edema. She lifted her head a trifle as we came in, and dropped it down again, indifferent to all but her own internal voices.
“Abuse cases, that’s what,” Provost snapped back. “Where you going, Frank?”
“Outside,” the unfortunate man muttered. His face was green. “Just give me a minute, okay?”
“This isn’t an abuse case,” I said as I approached the stall. “Or rather, not a typical abuse case.” I glanced around. Both patrolmen had gone. “Tell Frank to close the door behind him.”
“What is it, then?” Provost demanded.
I went into the stall. “Curious,” I said.
“What the hell are you on about? Curious!” Both Provost and Joe were at my side. Madeline says that often the first human response to tragedy is to walk away. I believe that one may take the measure of a man this way.
“Coughlin had spent money here, and nowhere else.” I indicated the automatic waterer, the rubber mats on the concrete floor. I squatted down. The bedding wasn’t fresh, but there was little manure and less urine. Her digestive system was close to shutting down.
Joe squatted next to me. “Is there anything I can do, sir?”
“My bag, please. It’s in the rear of the Bronco.”
“Right.” He left without further comment.
Provost stroked the poor beast’s neck. “You say it isn’t abuse.”
“She’s a test subject,” I said shortly. “You see the IV apparatus there?” A rack with saline bags was fixed to the stall wall. “And the hypodermic needles and collection vials on the shelf near the door?”
“God,” Provost said. “It’s enough to make you join those folks that picket the animal labs.”
“She’s on a morphine solution, at least. Or was until this morning. She’s been disconnected, and now, I’m afraid, she is suffering. Ah. There you are my boy. Thank you.” Joe returned as silently as he had left. He carried my aluminum case into the stall and set it down. “We’ll take her vital signs first,” I said. “And draw at least forty ccs of blood. I’ll handle it after that. Make it quick as you can, my boy.”
“You think you can save her?” Provost asked. “McKenzie, something funny’s going on here.”
I didn’t feel like responding to this, so I didn’t. Joe was very quick. He took her temperature, her respiration, and noted the capillary refill time. He peered into her eyes and her mouth, checked the rectum, and drew the necessary blood samples. Then he sighed, quietly. “Shall we get her out of the stall first, sir?”
I shook my head. “Let them tear the damn place down if they have to get her out.”
“Okay by me.”
“What’s going on?” Provost demanded.
“We’re doing what we can to ease her,” I said shortly. I turned to Joe. “I need twenty ccs of morphine sulfate.” He prepared the syringe. I took it.
“They put me on morphine once,” Provost said. “Busted a couple of ribs. Don’t remember much about it, but I can tell you, I didn’t feel a thing. She’ll feel a little better after the shot, won’t she?”
“You might want to stand outside,” I said.
“Oh. Sure.” He took up a post by the open door. “Let me know if I can give you a hand.”
It’s never easy, even when the need is as clear as a chime at twilight. I always put my hand over their eyes. I’m not sure why. Joe stood at her near side, his hand on her halter.
I injected her in the left carotid. She sagged to her knees, sighed deeply, and fell. The newer drugs are fast. And she was so weak.
“Hey,” Provost said.
Joe smoothed her eyes closed. I placed the blood samples
in my case and picked it up.
“You put her down!” Madeline would have been able to sort out the emotions in his voice. I was not.
“We put her down,” Joe agreed. The two of us walked to the door.
“Goddammit.” Provost trudged after us. “She was evidence.”
“Possibly,” I admitted. I turned to face him. “Provost? You’re going to have to find Coughlin’s laptop. And while you’re at it, you might notify the FBI.”
Fourteen
THE episode with the mare upset me, I admit. I wanted to see my wife. At four o’clock, I found her standing in the middle of the vegetable aisle at Wegman’s in front of the peppers.
She greeted me with sigh of relief. “Austin, I’ve been so worried about you!”
Neither of us is prone to public displays of affection, so I merely said, “Are you planning on purchasing the peppers?”
She picked up a scarlet pepper and held it in her hand. “They’re just beautiful, aren’t they? I was just thinking how those greens and yellows and reds would look piled up in the blue bowl in the kitchen.” She put the pepper back in its place and gazed at me searchingly. “So, poor old Jerry Coughlin’s dead?”
“Yes. Provost believes it to be a suicide. It is not. It is murder.”
“Oh, Austin. You’re certain?”
“I am. This person has to be stopped, Madeline.”
“You’re right. What are you going to . . . ouch!”
The “ouch” was due to Lila Gernsback, who had snuck up on the two of us and given Madeline a friendly pinch on the arm. At least, I surmised the intent was friendly; Madeline looked momentarily as if she wanted to hit Lila over the head with a milk bottle.
“How’re you, Lila?” she said, rubbing her arm.
“You remember Phillip Sullivan?” she said abruptly. Lila wasted little time on social niceties. And she was excited. Her cheeks were pinker than usual, and her eyes were sparkling.
“Of course we do,” Madeline said a little impatiently. “What about him?”
“He’s back.”
“He’s back?” Madeline cast me a look of dismay. “He doesn’t want to buy Hugo, does he?”
The Case of the Roasted Onion Page 19