by An Anthology
He gave a shake of the head with a tired smile attached. “I can’t discuss my patients with you. But even if I could—” He stopped himself. “Cady Clark. That name sounds familiar.”
“So she was a patient.”
He shook his head. “No, I think I recognize the name from something I heard recently on the news.”
I nodded and told him about the bank robbery and the motel shooting.
“Oh. That’s terrible.” His face got busy with thought. “But why would you think she was one of my patients?”
I told him about the phone records.
The barest shadow of a glint formed in his eyes. He’d just realized or decided something. His face got busy again, made a stab at inscrutable, and finally settled on mild puzzlement. “All right,” he said finally, “so she may have called here. I still don’t remember the name.”
“Really? Even though she made dozens of phone calls to your office, even to your home?”
He cogitated. “Sorry.”
“Uh-huh.” I reached in my jacket for a copy of the Polaroid Sinclair had taken of Cady at the motel. I tossed it onto the desk. “Maybe this will refresh your memory.”
He picked up the photo and his face changed to what seemed like genuine surprise. “Yes. I know her.”
“So, she was a patient?”
“Yes.” He looked up. “Her name is Amanda Hitchcock.”
“Huh. What can you tell me about her?”
His face changed again. He said, “Not much. Of course, I can’t divulge the medical reasons for her office visits, and other than that…” He stopped and looked at the photo again. “So she’s wanted in a homicide investigation?”
I said she was, then added that she’d apparently been using her sister’s name when she’d seen him as a patient.
“I see. Would knowing something about her medical history help your investigation?”
“It might.” I paused then gave him a level stare. “Did the two of you have a private or personal thing going?”
He met my stare. “No,” he said and stood up.
“Then why the phone calls to your home?”
“Some patients are very… needy Look, I’ve had a long day and could use a cup of coffee. Would you like some?”
I looked over at the window. Thick drops splattered against the glass then merged and turned to flat waves, pulled downward by gravity. I felt pulled down by gravity myself.
“Sure,” I said, with a yawn. “I take mine black.”
“Fine. And I take mine with a splash of Irish whiskey.”
“I like your way better. Especially on a rainy night.”
He smiled again, went to a filing cabinet, got out a folder, opened it, placed it on the desk, and said, “The coffee machine’s in the other room.” Then he left me alone.
I looked at the file, as he’d wanted me to, and found that Amanda Hitchcock had had three appointments with the good doctor: one for a pregnancy exam, one for an abortion, and a final one for a tubal ligation. All three took place within three month’s time.
I had just settled back in my chair when Atkinson returned with our high-octane coffee. He handed me my cup, sat down at the desk, and looked at me.
He seemed to be waiting for me to take a sip, so I did.
“Nice,” I said, feeling relaxed by the whiskey.
“Yes, it is nice.”
He sipped from his cup, which had a logo on it that said, “First, Do No Harm.” I liked that. I took another sip of coffee. The second one made me feel a little sleepy.
Sleepy? I’d had a hard day, but not hard enough to want to curl up and take a nap right there in the man’s office.
I looked down at my cup, then up at Atkinson.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked.
“I think you put too mush wh’skey in my drink.”
“No,” he said, as if from far away, “I simply gave you a mild sedative to help you relax.”
The cup slipped from my hand as I tried to stand up. “But I don‘ wanna relax.” I sat back down—or my body did.
“Here’s the thing,” he said sadly. “I did have an affair with Amanda. I couldn’t help myself. You’ve seen what she looks like. And a man like me?” His eyes filled with desperation. “I mean, I lost my mind! I love my wife and I was going crazy over this situation with Amanda, but she’s a—a very difficult girl.” His hands trembled as he took a sip of coffee. “She had such sexual control over me that I—I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything but wait to see her or—or hear from her every day.”
I nodded dumbly.
“This went on for—I don’t know—about three weeks, maybe more, maybe less. It was like an addiction.” Another sip from trembling hands. “Then one night she tells me she needs money for eye surgery. Apparently when she injured her cheek and got that scar she also detached the retina.”
I struggled to keep my eyes and ears open.
“I’m not a rich man, Mr. Field! I have a small practice in a small town in a rural state. I explained this to her and she became furious. She threatened to tell my wife about us. She even threatened to kill Susanne if I didn’t—”
A door opened behind me and I got a whiff of citrus and oak moss. Cady Clark came around where I sat, parked one lovely hip on the edge of the desk, and stared at me. She was wearing her usual Levi’s and V-neck sweater, this one a royal blue, and she looked both beautiful and dangerous. Over her shoulder she said, “That’s enough, Robert.”
The doctor nodded and put his head in his hands.
“Did you give him enough to kill him?” she asked, without emotion and without taking her eyes off me.
“No,” he sighed. “Just to knock him out. I’m a doctor, remember? You’ll have to do the rest yourself.”
“Then why is he still awake?” Her mouth was petulant, like a spoiled child’s.
Atkinson lifted his head. “He has too much strength of mind, I guess. More than I do, anyway.”
“Don‘ sell you’se’f short, doc,” I said. “You went to med’cal school, right?”
“Yes.” He looked me square in the eye.
“That takes some kin‘ willpow’r.”
“That’s true.” A tear of hope sprang up in his eye.
Cady’s face flushed red with anger. “Stop it!” she commanded. “You two stop talking to each other!”
“Sorry,” said Atkinson. Then he stood up tiredly, turned around, and did something we couldn’t see.
Cady kept her eyes on me but said to him, “Now what are you doing?”
“You want him to pass out quicker, don’t you?”
“Good,” she said, smiling and in control. “That’s good.”
“So,” I muttered into my chest. “Gonna kill me too?”
“Too? Who says I ever killed anyone, Jack?”
“You kil’t Bruno. You tried kill Earl.”
She shushed me. “That was a matter of necessity.”
Atkinson came up behind her; his face set now. “Yes,” he said. “And so is this.” Before she could turn, he wrapped his left arm around her neck and held a sterile gauze pad to her nose with his right. She struggled, then her head went limp, her eyes turned up, showing the whites, and her legs no longer held. The good doctor let her fall gently to the floor. “You’ve become a liability, sweetheart,” he told her inert form sadly.
“So?” I said.
He drew his gaze upward. “What?”
“You said she’s a li’bility, but you’re d’ctor, right?”
“Yeah, so?” His eyes were dead, his face flat.
“So, don‘ you have li’bility insur’nce?”
“That’s funny,” he said tonelessly.
I thought it was. I must have. I started to laugh. But somewhere in the middle of laughing I fell asleep.
I woke up to the smell of gasoline and vulcanized rubber, and the sound of tires rolling swiftly on pavement. I opened my eyes but could see only darkness. I wa
s lying on my side and felt myself being bounced around inside an enclosed space. I was still a little groggy so it took me a moment to realize I was in the trunk of a moving car. The rain was pelting against the roof in hard, staccato bursts, like machine gun fire. It took awhile longer to figure out that I was bound hand and foot with what felt like dental floss (probably surgical sutures) and that my arms were twisted painfully behind my back. I also felt a burning pain coming from my forehead. I’d probably hit it on Atkinson’s desk as I fell.
I thought of what Cady had said when she’d wanted me to tie up Earl—“tight but not too tight”—and hoped Atkinson had followed the same dictum with me. I tested the flex in my wrist bindings and felt enough give to try a little yoga maneuver. I moved around, found I had a bit of space to do so, and got the impression that I was in the trunk of a luxury car. Then, with a lot of grunting and straining and a little tearing of my shoulder ligaments, I got my hands under my feet, then in front of me. My wrists were searing with pain from where the ligatures dug into my flesh, but at least I now had my hands where I could do things with them.
I didn’t know what kind of plans Atkinson had for the rest of my evening, but was disinclined to cooperate with them, whatever they were, so I felt around for something to cut the sutures with. There had to be some sort of sharp edge inside the trunk—a broken weld, a cracked section of the steel reinforcing that hadn’t been riveted tight enough, the edge of the spare tire holder. I couldn’t find anything.
I thought of my keys, but it’s easier to rub your wrists against something solid than it is to try to rub a set of keys against the bindings while your wrists are tied. But thinking of the keys made me think of the lock, which I hadn’t felt around for yet. I did and my fingers found a good spot where the casing was attached to the back part of the lid. It wasn’t much, just a sharp lip of metal, but I began pulling the sutures against it over and over, grunting and sweating.
The car kept moving and I was periodically thrown one way or another as the driver occasionally took a curve too fast. Each time it happened I added another bruise to my collection but immediately got back to work on my wrist binding.
I finally freed my hands and as soon as I did the car stopped, just stopped dead. I was worried that they’d somehow found out that I’d gotten free and were going to come back and retie me, or worse. Over the rain, which sounded pleasant now that we were no longer moving, I heard some doors open and shut, footsteps, muffled voices arguing, then doors again, another car started, there was a pause, and we started moving again, fast.
Then faster.
Then faster and faster and faster.
We were really flying when the car swerved hard as hell to the left, slamming me against the right wall. There was a wet skrish of tires slipping on rainy concrete. I buttressed my arms and legs on all sides of the trunk. Then came the impact of the crash, which shook me like a penny in a shake can, despite my bracing. Then, when that was over, there was a moment of utter nothingness. Things went into slow motion; with no sensation except the whine of the engine, the slow, dull spatter of rain on the roof of the trunk, and a sickly feeling of being in an elevator that’s falling a bit too fast. Then gradually came the sound of swiftly moving water, a lot of water. The sound got nearer and nearer as we fell farther.
We hit the river, which bounced me hard against the roof of the trunk, popped it open, and threw me again, sideways, head first against a sharp edge of the metal molding.
It was dark where we were—out in the middle of the river—but nowhere near as dark as it had been inside the trunk. Above me I saw the outline of a bridge, with a steel railing smashed and twisted outward. I felt warm blood coursing down my forehead mixed with the cold sting of rain on my face and hands. The smells of gasoline and rubber were mixed with the sudden, musky fish/algae smell of river water.
The car was rocking and bobbing. We were sinking, but we were also being carried along by the current. I grabbed the back edge of the trunk to push myself over the side and into the river when the explosion came—a sharp, hard, sick-making concussion, every cell in your body being stunned repeatedly by multiple G-force waves, thrusting you in all directions at once. Then came the smell of gasoline flames mixed with the stench of burning flesh (not mine, thankfully), and more heat than I’d ever known. The impact threw me high into the air and the searing blaze of the explosion was instantly replaced by freezing cold as I was plunged deep, deep underwater and was caught in the river’s current.
I tried swimming but my ankles were still bound with the sutures and my arms were dead, too numb to move. I flailed around for a while, trying to find the surface, to get some air into my lungs, but I was frozen, paralyzed, helpless.
I let the current carry me and I fell asleep again.
The next thing I remember was the trooper’s face— framed by his dark, shiny rain hood—as he leaned over me dripping water on my face and saying something I couldn’t make out.
“What?” I said. “Ears… ringing…”
He repeated whatever it was he’d said, louder.
I still couldn’t hear him and said so.
Finally he screamed, “Are you all right, sir?”
I nodded, looked around. I was on my back among some rocks and gravel at a bend in the river, a couple hundred yards downstream from the bridge, where black figures now strode purposefully, arms waving, between the flares and flashing colored lights of parked cruisers. On the river, near the half-submerged wreck, a police boat hovered, its spotlight stabbing vainly at the dark gloss of moving water.
“C-c-cold,” I said to the trooper. “Head h-h-hurts.”
“I’ve got someone bringing down a blanket and some hot coffee,” he screamed. “Just hang in, sir.”
“Ok-k-kay. C-c-call Dr. Cutter.”
“Who?” he yelled, his lips bent to my ear.
“State Medic-cal Examin-n-ner,” I explained.
“She’s probably on her way, sir,” he shouted. “We think there are a couple bodies out there in the car.”
“Serves them right. They can’t drive worth sh-sh-sh…”
“What do you want me to tell Dr. Cutter?”
“Tell her it’s Jack. I’m Jack. My name is Jack.”
“Okay, Jack; you got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Tell her I want my mommy.”
“Say again? You want your money?”
I didn’t repeat it; I’d run low on vivacity. Besides, just having uttered the words was comfort enough. I knew that Jamie would come soon and take care of me. So I smiled, closed my eyes, and went back to sleep again.
I spent three days at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor due to a mild concussion and a not-so-mild case of hypothermia. No bones were broken, unless you count a tiny radiating skull fracture where I’d banged my head hard, twice. The injury caused some minor intracranial bleeding, so I was stuck in bed until the doctors could see if it stopped on its own (with the help of steroids) or if they had to operate.
While I was undergoing CT scans, the murder case went on without me. So did life at the kennel, though my foster son, Leon, a black teenager from Harlem, and my kennel manager Farrell Woods, a reformed pot dealer, took care of things.
Jamie came when she could, which was several times a day and for long hours at night, when she also brought Frankie and Hooch. They’re licensed therapy dogs so they’re used to hospital visits and were happy to see me, though they wanted to jump up onto the bed. Jamie, between holding my hand and acting worried, told me what she and the state police were able to figure out about the case.
The car was a Cadillac Eldorado, registered to Robert Atkinson. Only one body was found, a young woman’s. She was in the passenger seat and had been badly burned in the explosion. Still, Jamie was able to determine that she was in her early twenties, with the same basic body type as Cady Clark, and that she’d had an abortion and a tubal ligation.
A suicide message was found on the computer in Atkinson’s office
. It read: “Jack Field knows the truth, now we all have to die.” The incident was tagged as a murder/suicide, with me added on as an attempted murder.
“If the message wasn’t signed,” I told Jamie, “it may not be authentic. What time did the crash take place?”
“Around one in the morning.”
“Wow. And I got to his office about five. That’s eight hours. I’m lucky it took so long for him to get his courage up or the stuff he put in my coffee wouldn’t have worn off.”
“I know. You barely made it out alive as it is.”