Murders at Hollings General ddb-1

by Jerry Labriola

  David didn't need that and, after searching Nick's face, responded, "Well, I'm hungry and I need a drink."

  "Me, too," Nick said.

  David drove off without saying good-bye or bothering to ask Nick how long he had been parked there. It was unusual behavior but he had a gut feeling Nick preferred it that way, too. Ordinarily, David would have censured himself for leaving an associate so brusquely, but he held that Nick Medicore was no ordinary associate and that the last week was no ordinary time.

  On the way to Kathy's mother's house, he stewed in his Mercedes, ambivalent over feelings of being duped and of becoming quasi-competitive with Nick. Dismissing any dire consequences of a different outcome, he was disappointed he hadn't found a stranger there, an out-of-towner. Not a Spritz or a Foster, and certainly not a Medicore. What the episode did was reinforce what he had thought all along. It placed the killer closer to home, roaming the spots David knew. And it compelled him to wonder about Nick's nonchalance. Somehow, he had difficulty visualizing the Chief Detective taking the same precautions he had taken in approaching the Center. But no difficulty in imagining his driving straight to the spot where his car was parked.

  And another thing. Why did he blink his lights? Did he think the killer was coming down that hill? Or yours truly?

  Kathy greeted David at the door with, "You got held up?"

  "Not exactly," he said, removing his scarf and gloves and tossing them on the hall. table. They embraced and kissed, longer than he expected.

  Standing in the hall of plaster, wainscotting and high ceiling, he sketched what had transpired at the recycling center, leaving out his offense-as-a-defense maneuver.

  Kathy listened and proffered her opinion: "I think both of you were nuts. Men!"

  David made like he hadn't heard and said, "By the way-your boss?"

  "Nick? What about him?"

  "Did he come here well-recommended?"

  "Very. They hated to give him up, I understand. His wife's from these parts, her parents aren't well and that kind of thing. I guess she worked on him pretty good. We had the opening, as you know, and he relocated. Why?" Kathy's eyes narrowed speculatively. "You're not insinuating …?"

  "Who's insinuating?" He took Kathy's hand and led her into the living room.

  "Then why the question?"

  "Curious, that's all."

  But David had been aroused by more than curiosity. Perhaps our Chief Detective truly relishes my taking a lead role in the investigation for his own selfish-or devilish-purposes: to dilute professional input, maybe to screw things up. It's lame reasoning, and I'll concede he's a lame suspect, but right about now, nothing and no one's written off. He's either the killer and wants an amateur on the case-or he's not and is investigating as hard as I am.

  He refused dinner and stayed but ten minutes more, engaging in a round of unfocused converation with Mrs. Dupre before he left.

  For most of the trip home, a pair of bright lights filled David's rearview mirror. Their shape reminded him of a frog's eyes.

  Chapter 14

  The next day, Wednesday, David felt the sting of January winds in the hollow of Cannon Cemetery. Specks of snow floated and disappeared into the ground, belying the morning's sun and reflections off parking lot bumpers and antennas. He considered whether snow flurries and bright sun could combine for a rainbow, deduced not, but scanned the sky anyway. Bedecked in his double-breasted funereal suit, he strode from his car along a rigid path which curled among mounds of tombstones, flowers and flags, toward a yellow and white canopy set at path level and to the right. Within its shade, most of the folding chairs were unoccupied, and he recognized those seated-perhaps thirty-as the most seasoned doctors and nurses from crosstown Bowie Hospital. Alton and Nora Foster were the only others there to represent Hollings General.

  Earlier, David thought it hypocritical even to consider attending the church service for Dr. Everett Coughlin, but irreverence aside, reasoned it was necessary to check out the graveside gathering. Would the killer dare come? A surveillance mission, that's all.

  He queried how the nearby burial pit had been dug through hardened turf and noticed the front end of a hearse parked on its other side. A casket with blinding brass handles rested on a rig while a clergyman sat impassively on a front chair, flanked by four women, their sobs puncturing the silence. SOP, so far.

  David took a position behind and slightly above, having calculated the best vantage point for his purpose, leaning against a tree, his foot on a neighboring stump. He perused the scene ahead, gaze askance-he had forgotten his sunglasses-avoiding the glare from the casket handles and trimmings. At first, he thought little of a linear flash of light registering in his periphery, coming at him from halfway up the mountainside on the left like mirror signals he had seen in cowboy movies. But, weighing its location in dense underbrush, he had to confront the glare head-on, and he saw that it had changed shape-to a smaller, sharper ball of fire. David pushed off the stump, dropped to the ground and rolled behind the tree. He ended up on his back, as if for a judo stomach throw-only this time, he waved a Minx semiautomatic. Jesus Christ Almighty! A rifle! The specter of a bloody bullet wound similar to the one on the body now being prepared for interment tore through his mind. He listened for a shot. There was none. He got up and peered around the tree. The reflection had vanished. That was a rifle, goddamn it! The intended victim disappeared. So it disappeared.

  All ahead remained serene, as serene as David was alert for flight, not away but toward the mountainside. He backed up and, intending to twirl around, clutched his knee and hopped twice on his good leg. Reconsidering, he hobbled toward the parking lot, knowing that whoever yielded the weapon, reached his nest from a road on the other side of the mountain, the same one the hearse had traveled.

  David slid into his car, lifting his sore left leg with his hands. He sped off and, reaching a clump of trees at the turn to the far road, heard the poorly muffled roar of a two-stroke engine. Two strokes? He rounded the curve in time to observe a red motorcycle appear out of a swale, two hundred yards ahead. Just before a Sunoco Station, it left the road and knifed into the woods, up a trail David had often walked in earlier times. For a moment, he thought of taking the dirt road beyond the station. It was a road which led to High Rock Mountain at least a mile up its side, but he knew the parallel trail veered off halfway up and guessed the cycle had already reached that point.

  Instead, David stopped at the foot of the trail, got out of the car and looked over its roof into a narrow bend, empty but for thinning fumes. When he could no longer hear the cycle, he sat in the car and puzzled over what he had just beheld. Is that our man in the first place? On a motorcycle? It looked like a Honda or a Suzuki. Or even a Harley-Davidson. Who can tell at that distance? And another thought tumbled from the depths of his brain like a coin in a pay phone. When the cycle turned into the trail, the driver's face might have looked flat. Might have.

  David's watch registered noon and he couldn't recall ever imbibing at that hour, save for celebration toasts, but as he tooled along the backroads toward 10 Oak Lane, he savored the drink he would have. That could have been curtains, back there. At home, he changed into blazer and slacks and, in the kitchen, covered a glassful of ice with Canadian Club, leaving out the water. The liquor was gone before the ice began to melt. So was the pain in his knee. David fixed a ham and cheese and reviewed the images from Cannon Hollow. That rifle was aimed at me. If it was a rifle. But, what else would reflect up in those woods, a bird? So Buster's still trying, eh? Well, score another for the good guys.

  He had no proof but instinct led him to believe it was Bernie who aimed the gun at him, and Spritz who had arranged the recycling center hoax the night before. Instinct plus a flat face and a distinctively paced falsetto voice. Once again, David made a decision not to inform Kathy-or any of the police-about his latest escapade. He told himself he couldn't run to them with a blow-by-blow account of every daily-or as it seemed, hourly-event. Alone, rat
her, he would face what came his way, analyze as he saw fit, and react accordingly. Keep the competitive fire a black belt is used to: just two on the mat, then hold, throw or pin. Body drops, single wings, shoulder wheels, sweeping throws.

  Washing down the last of the sandwich with a swig of milk, he remained seated at the kitchen table to mull over his options. But first, a final clarification of his role as distinguished from the cops'. Nick and his pretense of noninvolvement, of hands-off. Come on, give me a break! Has anyone else been threatened? Under the gun? Maybe. But no one else is sharing. So I draw on the cops for logistic support only. Not backup. Not moral. It's the killer and me. Finis. That's my option.

  For the first time since Charlie Bugles was brutalized eight days before, David felt free to maneuver, to call his own shots. Who needs approval-tacit or otherwise-for every single move? He considered his being singled out by the killer justification enough to "go it alone," irrespective of a criminal investigative unit, or even of amateur sleuthing. If there's a lunatic out there, and he's messing with you, then you do what you have to do.

  Victor Spritz, Bernie Bugles and Alton Foster rattled around in his head. Other loose things, too: Sparky and his findings at the Tanarkle crime scene, Sparky and further information on the Japanese dagger, Sparky and the handwriting expert. Flowers for Robert. And, what came of those meetings among the medical staff, the Board of Trustees and the nurses' union?

  David left the kitchen and headed for his computer chair off the living room, the spot he cherished for definitive moments, for clarification when he was bemused. On the way, he went to the window to pull open the drapes, walking over a heat register in the floor. He heard the furnace kick in from the basement, smelled the rush of hot air which slapped his leg, and noticed the drapes stir. As he rotated in his chair, he understood why his senses were so on the qui vive-aroused as an equivalent contrast to what he believed was another sense: thought. In other less trying times, he had poked fun at himself over a secret deduction: you know when you're thinking, because you sense it. Therefore, it is a sense. And the other senses, when stimulated, would often combine as a flashpoint for annoyance, just as now. For he had more clear thinking to do. Thus, he sat for a minute, straining to brush aside all distractions and to focus on the loose ends at hand.

  David disposed of several easily: he identified the hospital meetings as out of his control, irrelevant to the tasks ahead, and not worthy of further thought; he phoned to have flowers sent to Robert; and he had no choice but to await the outcome of the APB's on Spritz and Bernie. That left Sparky and Foster. He would check with the criminalist before awaiting the forced entry at Foster's at five-thirty. That meant contacting Musco Diller.

  Musco Diller, a cabby who worked Hollings' seamy North Square District, was an old friend and world-class safecracker. David had used his services as a "freelance lock-picker," in such cases as 647 Vagrancy and 10–65 Missing Person. Never in 187 Murder, but he thought the cabby wouldn't mind. David, himself, could slip a credit card past a door latch with the best of them, but in many cases, that skill was too rudimentary.

  Musco had once done time for a string of second story capers and, now having gone straight, was part owner of the most popular cab company in the city. He had also spent time on the streets, done in by muscatel, his favorite. Hence, the sobriquet.

  David called the Red Checker Cab Company and, through its dispatcher, reached Musco Diller. They agreed to meet in the auxiliary doctors' parking lot at five-twenty-five.

  Next, David phoned Sparky to inquire about his findings from the Tanarkle death scene and received a "Not ready, yet" response. He asked about Sparky's friend, the handwriting expert, and was told she'd be out of town for the rest of the month. Lunch? The criminalist would skip it today. He was behind in his work.

  David said a quiet good-bye, but he was tempted to hurl the phone across the room; he recognized cock-and-bull answers when he heard them. It's obvious: Nick got to him. Certainly not Kathy. If the assumption is correct, then the goings-on of Chief Detective Medicore are getting stranger and stranger.

  It didn't take long for David to begin rummaging through his desk drawers and closet shelves, muttering, "Okay then, I do my own forensics and I say nothing to Kathy-and that does it, pure and simple. Plus, I put Sparky's handwriting expert on hold. Or maybe get my own. Be independent but, at all costs, be civil. I don't need anyone torpedoing my licensure." He searched for gadgets and other equipment he had accumulated over the years, and gathered them on the living room sofa. Some had been given to him as gifts.

  Stripped of police support, he had to institute drastic change. A given was that he could match anyone with his size and agility. Ditto, with firepower. But, not with the element of surprise. The killer has me there. It was like football's offensive and defensive lines on a rainy, slippery day: defense doesn't know the play in advance. It can only guess. Advantage: offense.

  To counterbalance the killer's advantage of surprise, David decided he would surround himself with investigative and defensive tools he might or might not use. He opened Friday and added an autofocus camera with telescopic lens, an ordinary Polaroid, a pair of 7/30 Beecher Mirage binoculars, a postage stamp-sized NT-1 Scoopman digital tape recorder, a flashlight, surgical gloves, plastic sheets, various micro bugs and extra cartridges for his Blackhawk.44 Magnum.

  In the course of his readings, he had come upon numerous articles dealing with "concealment capability for tight situations." Thus, behind Friday's retractable panel he stuffed a compact SIG-Sauer P226 pistol and a Gunsite folding tactical knife.

  Into a Campbell's Soup carton, David packed an evidence vacuum, a small crowbar and his pride and joy-a gift from Kathy-a Kevlar-lined raincoat that could stop a 9 mm. slug. He carried the carton to the garage and, placing it in the trunk of the Mercedes, nicked his finger on a snow shovel he kept there during winter months.

  As he wrapped the finger in a handkerchief, he wondered whether he'd spent the past hour expending nervous energy. He looked at the carton. Who in hell's going to use this stuff? He felt like a man dressed to the gills with no place to go.

  David ran through his list of suspects. Christ, it's longer everyday and that's another disadvantage, right there. All this gadgetry? Merely a symbolic remedy for someone in a pinch. Or, just plain stupidity. And David didn't suffer fools gladly, even himself. But he left the carton in the trunk and slammed the door shut.

  At five-thirty, Musco Diller beamed as David approached him, the beam he remembered Musco having whether he was down-and-out or not. He leaned his head out the window of his cab which was parked near the back fence of the auxilliary doctors' parking lot.

  "Dr. David, my boy," he said. "Diller at your service. Whatcha got this time?" He was David's vintage, yet usually greeted him that way.

  "Hi, old buddy, glad you could make it."

  Musco was a wiry African-American who was never without his black cap with a rainbow band and shiny visor. Several tickets sprouted from the band. He seemed made out of pipe cleaners, all arms and legs, constantly in motion. David understood one of his eyes was glass but he could never guess which one. He had a small grizzled mustache and, growing in the center of his chin was a matching tuft of hair which appeared to have been overlooked in shaving.

  David knew Musco's inquiry about the nature of a job was merely small talk. Way back, he had said, "Just show me what you want and give me a minute by myself. You don't ask how and I don't ask why. I don't want to know nothin'."

  They took the hospital's freight elevator to the fourth floor, its highest destination beneath the administrative wing, and climbed the remaining two floors to Foster's office, encountering no one on the way. In the corridor, David put Friday down and pointed to the administrator's front door with the index finger of his left hand and in the direction of the back door with the same finger of his right hand. He preferred the back one and led Musco around to it and said, "Here it is, do your open sesame thing," snapping his
finger against the large oak door before them. "I'll go check out front for a minute."

  David peeked around corners as he examined the corridors surrounding Foster's suite. He returned to find Musco dusting off his hands and a door fully opened.

  "What took you so long?" David asked with a wink. He added an offhand "Thanks." " He had seen Musco in action many times before. What he had never seen was tools, and he had never inquired about any.

  "Well, I'm off, " Musco said, "less you need more opening inside." He turned to leave.

  "No, I think we're all set." David peeled the only hundred dollar bill from a wad of twenties and fives he took from his pocket. He folded it in two. "Musco," he said. The cabbie pivoted and David inserted the bill in the band of his cap.

  "Thanks, my boy. You might need more opening-call-you hear?"

  "I hear and I might. You can find your way out?" "Of course," Musco answered as he disappeared around the corner.

  David took the flashlight out of Friday and entered the darkened office before turning it on. He felt calm but was certain his breathing bounced off the walls. The air smelled mustier than he expected for an office closed up for only half an hour. He remembered seeing Foster's single filing cabinet on many occasions, and, keeping the flashlight angled toward the floor, tiptoed straight to it, thinking he shouldn't have dismissed Musco without first determining whether the cabinet was locked. It wasn't.

  He pulled out the top drawer and flipped through its folders until he came upon a thick one labeled, "EMS Ambulance." He tucked the flashlight under his arm, freeing both hands to sift through legal documents, invoices and schedules. A stack of "Oversite Committee Minutes" was clipped to the back of the folder. The most recent set of minutes recorded the vote on Victor Spritz's renewal contract: Mr. Bugles and Drs. Coughlin and Tanarkle voted to terminate. Mr. Foster voted to renew.

  Behind the stack, he found an unsealed envelope. In it was a medical discharge summary from a private psychiatric hospital in Cartagena, Colombia. David knew enough Spanish to understand the diagnosis listed: Paranoid Schizophrenia. Discharge medication: Haloperidol. The dates of hospitalization were February 1996 to November 1996. The patient named was Victor Spritz.