Mortal Remains

by Peter Clement

  Chapter 11

  That same day, Tuesday, November 20, 1:15 P.M.

  Hampton Junction

  “I read your transcript today,” Mark said to Lucy, as they shared a late lunch of soup and salad at his kitchen table. “No wonder you handled yourself so well with my patients.”

  She chuckled, with her mouth full of lettuce. “My past was no secret, if you’d read your mail lately. That’s quite a pile on your desk.”

  “It’s a bad habit of mine, avoiding mail. All I seem to get is forms, bills, and professional questionnaires. I hate paper-maze stuff.”

  “Join the paperless society and use e-mail.”

  “I did. That gave me even more junk to deal with, so I canceled it.”

  “I’m surprised. You being way out here yet not wired-”

  “Oh, I’m on the net and have necessary passwords that let me access labs and X-ray departments to get test results.” He knew he sounded defensive, but he didn’t want this sophisticated, world-traveled lady to think he was a hick.

  “It’s just that I never met anybody in America who doesn’t have e-mail,” she said.

  He grinned and held out his arm. “Want to touch me to see if I’m real?”

  She laughed, skewering what looked like half a head of Romaine with her fork and toasting him with it.

  “Tell me about where you were stationed with Médecins du Globe,” he said, figuring he’d mangled the pronunciation.

  Her smile vanished. “I’m afraid it was the grand misery tour, from Papua New Guinea tribal wars to refugee camps in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Albania.”

  There was hardness in her voice that told him she didn’t want to talk about it. “I can only imagine what you’ve seen,” he said, after casting about for something to say. It sounded lame.

  She remained quiet for a few seconds, then asked, “You were never tempted to join? Obviously you have a taste for challenge, working out here.”

  “No, never tempted.”

  “Why? Most of the time we’re not getting shot at, if that’s what you mean. Much of the work is a lot like this morning. Sick people come in, tell you what’s the matter, and you treat them. Except we deal out of tents and the backs of trucks.”

  He noticed how she talked about the work as if it were ongoing for her. As for her making it sound routine, “Yeah, right,” he said. “You guys are awesome. It sure explains how you seemed so comfortable handling my patients. This practice must seem like child’s play compared to what you’re used to.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched upward like a pair of mischievous quotation marks. “Well, we did have distractions in the field that you don’t, like local warlords to keep happy, and creepy crawlies in our sleeping bags, which I can definitely say I do not miss.”

  “Don’t sell the Adirondacks short in the creepy crawlies department.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was in medical school I did a rotation through an ER in Lake Placid. A hiker came in with puncture marks on his leg claiming a rattler bit him.”

  “I thought there weren’t any poisonous snakes in upstate New York.”

  “That’s exactly what they told the hiker in ER. Wouldn’t give him antivenom.”

  “So what did he do?”

  Mark’s grin widened. “Went back to the trail where the damn thing attacked him, found it, and killed it with a tire iron. He returned to the hospital and threw it on the desk of the triage nurse. He got the shot.”

  Lucy started to laugh. “No!”

  “Saw it with my own eyes. It was even in the journals. Apparently the rattler escaped from a reptile zoo nearby. Taught me to always believe the patient.” He glanced at his watch and pushed away from the table. “We’ve got to get moving. House calls.”

  Lucy followed Mark’s directions along an unplowed back road. A brilliant sky provided the perfect blue to contrast with the fresh snow, the sun cast a glitter over everything, and the mountainous contours in the distance seductively beckoned him to ski their curves.

  “You know what I love about the first winter storm?” Lucy said as she navigated the coiling road much faster than Mark would have liked.

  “What?” He began to keep a wary eye on the ditch, as if that would protect them any.

  “Overnight it smooths away all the boundaries, curbs, sidewalks, roads – the things that tell us where to go or what lines to stay between – and makes a place seem all so open, as if for once we can go any which way we want and ignore the rules.”

  “Really.” Pressed against the passenger door as she slithered through yet another turn, he wondered if she meant it literally. “How come you dropped out from all the excitement of Médecins du Globe to take a residency in family medicine?” Perhaps if he got her talking, she’d slow down.

  “There are only so many nights a person can sleep on the ground worried about bullets and bugs. I was due to come home.”

  “Where’s that now?”

  “New York. I can’t get enough of the city.”

  Like all the other women he knew. “So how did you like McGill?”

  “Ah, Montréal,” she said, leaving out the t and pronouncing the city’s name the French way. The ease with which she slipped into the accent suggested a facility with the language rather than affectation. “Wonderful.”

  “I take it you speak French?”

  They weaved through an S that should have qualified them for the Grand Prix circuit, and a smile created tiny creases around her eyes.

  He had to admit she was a superb driver.

  “Raised with it,” she said. “My mother was French.”

  “But O’Connor is Irish.”

  “That’s Dad. He worked for a petrochemical company when he met Mom during a posting in Montréal. Fire meeting fire, those two. For my brothers and me, it was like living between two opera stars – passion personified.”

  “You grew up in Montreal?”

  “First years of my life only. Dad led us all over the world, including the Middle East. I guess that’s where I inherited my wanderlust. But enough about me. Tell me your story, Dr. Mark Roper, starting with what the hell happened to you last night. I presume it’s got something to do with why you don’t have wheels today.”

  Should he confide the events of the last few weeks to her? Part of the curriculum he promised residents included exposure to the world of a country coroner, so why not? After all, it would be no different than trusting her with medically confidential material in his files. “You read about the body of Chaz Braden’s wife being found near here?”

  “Who at NYCH hasn’t? I also saw your name in the paper, and Dan’s too, come to think of it, in connection with the investigation.” Her eyes widened. “Does that case have to do with last night?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He began to relate the events that had unfolded since he and Dan discovered the remains at the bottom of Trout Lake. As the story progressed and he recounted his childhood impressions of Kelly, Lucy’s expression grew somber. When he described what he’d found in his father’s medical files, quoting parts of the letter by memory, she shook her head.

  “That ill-starred woman,” she said. “To sound so happy – yet be on the brink of her death. Do you have any idea who the man was?”

  “No,” he answered, a little too quickly, and moved on to describe how Chaz Braden had been a suspect at the time of the disappearance, then cleared by the police. He also filled her in on the file Everett had given him. He left out a lot, too, said nothing about Chaz’s or anyone else’s behavior at the funeral, and, when recounting the previous night’s shooting, made no mention of who he suspected had been the man with the rifle. After all, she was a resident in the hospital where Braden worked. Whatever he thought of the creep, he had no right to share his suspicions. They could blight any future teacher-resident relationship she might be obliged to have with Chaz as part of her program.

  When he’d finished, she gaped at him in amazement. “You think
he killed her, then tried to kill you because you’re onto him?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “But you feel it was him, don’t you?”

  So much for pulling off the persona of being an unbiased investigator. He’d have to be more careful to distance himself from whatever he said about the case to her, but she felt so much more a colleague than a protégé. Still, he held to propriety. “No comment, Dr. O’Connor, and you don’t talk about this conversation with your friends back in New York, understand?”

  “Of course not.” She sounded annoyed with him for even thinking such a thing.

  “Sorry, but this is a murder investigation, and I want it done by the book, so nobody can scream ‘foul.’ ”

  “I understand entirely.” Her tone said the opposite.

  God, he hated when women did that, got all frosty and reasonable, while making it clear they thought he was full of crap.

  They drove a few miles without saying anything, the easy ambiance they’d first established replaced by awkward silence.

  Why should he feel so bad? It wasn’t as if he’d overreacted.

  A few more miles went by.

  Okay, maybe he overreacted a little bit. She must have felt he was putting her in her place, or something silly like that.

  But he definitely didn’t have anything to apologize for.

  Not a damn thing.

  Nothing.

  “Sorry, Lucy, for speaking so sharply. After last night, this case has me on edge.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize. You’re absolutely within your rights, protecting the integrity of an inquiry.”

  Like hell she thought that. “No, I apologize.”

  It still didn’t feel right between them. The only way to make amends was to go on taking her into his confidence. “Now let me tell you the rest of what you need to know, then I’d like to hear your ideas.” He continued the story, describing the morbidity-mortality reports in Kelly’s file, the fact that someone had broken into his house after the funeral, apparently to go through them, and what happened to Bessie McDonald two weeks ago. “I’ve recruited one of Kelly’s former classmates to go over the woman’s files. Her coma seemed a little too convenient for my liking.”

  Lucy continued to drive without speaking, but obviously lost in thought. The chill had vanished and Mark started to relax, finding her speed didn’t bother him as much. It wasn’t reckless, and he’d often driven faster. He just resisted relinquishing control to someone else behind the wheel.

  “I really would like to work on this with you while I’m here,” she said after a few minutes, “if you’ll accept my help.”

  “No question of it. Your rotation is meant to let you experience all aspects of being a rural physician, and this business is part of my job.”

  She glanced over at him. “Solving Kelly McShane’s murder has to mean a lot more to you than just being part of your job. From the way you described knowing her, she must have been very important to you as a child.”

  The velvet quiet of her voice surprised him more than what she’d said. “Yes. She certainly was special.”

  “Your telling about her, what she’d been like, really got to me. I couldn’t help thinking…”

  “She reminded you of yourself, maybe? Young, ambitious, ready to take on the world?” He’d said it without thinking, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth, he felt presumptuous at finishing a thought for her.

  Lucy flushed. “I was thinking how close we were in age. She was just three years younger than me when it happened.”

  A few minutes later they pulled into an unplowed driveway beside single-story bungalow not much bigger than a single-car garage. White smoke drifted out a rusted stovepipe protruding through a tar paper roof. The wood siding had once been painted lime green, but not recently. What few flecks of color remained appeared about to blow off, and the surface beneath had weathered to a nice gray.

  “Who are we seeing here?” Lucy asked, getting out of the car.

  “Mary Thomson and her sister Betty. Mary’s got terminal breast CA, but refuses hospitalization.” He grabbed his black bag from the backseat and trudged through an unbroken half foot of snow toward the front entrance. “With Betty’s help, I’m keeping Mary at home as long as I can.” He rapped sharply on a new-looking white door with a large windowpane covered by a curtain on the inside. “Betty, it’s Dr. Roper.”

  Introductions having been made, he and Lucy entered the bedroom. He removed the dressings from under Mary Thomson’s right arm and exposed a glistening black cavity the diameter of a walnut where the tumor had eaten through the skin of her axilla. Thousands of tiny, scarlet metastases extended to the middle of her chest, rendering it red as a boiled lobster, and from biceps to wrist her arm was swollen the size of a thigh. Where her breast had been, the tissue lay stretched and scarred, some of it cratered like a lunar surface. Everywhere he touched felt hard as wood, and a cloying aroma of decay hovered over it all.

  “Now you don’t be shy, dear,” Mary said to Lucy, flashing an overly white smile of false teeth that seemed too big for her gray, gaunt face. “Take a good look, and ask me anything you like.” Lying flat for the examination, she had been sitting propped up against a bank of pillows to greet them when they arrived. Just the simple act of getting upright, he knew, exhausted her, but it remained her way of welcoming visitors to her home, and she always made the effort. “Arm swelled up like that after radiation to the nodes under my arm,” she continued. “Blocked the lymph ducts. At least that’s how Dr. Mark here explained it to me.”

  Lucy smiled down at her and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “How’s your pain?” she said, with the same softness Mark had heard in the car. She gently slid her hand over Mary’s inflamed skin, carefully palpating every inch of the way.

  Cuts right to the heart of the matter, Mark thought. With cancer, pain management mattered most, and too many doctors sucked at it.

  Mary looked over to him. “Can I tell her, Doc?”

  He adjusted an IV line attached to Mary’s left arm. At the other end of it stood a small, square machine winking fluorescent green numbers at them. An electrical wire connected it to a button by her hand, completing the circle. “Go ahead,” he said. “We can trust her.”

  “Dr. Mark and I are breaking the law,” she whispered, giving a conspiratorial grin. “Every time I push this,” she added, pointing to the button.

  “Mary’s the best teacher you’ll find when it comes to home care and using morphine on demand,” he said. “It’s not so much illegal as controversial outside a hospital, and the law’s a little gray on the matter. Of course, we keep mum about it, so as not to become a test case.”

  “But I’m no junkie. Don’t use much more now than I did when Dr. Mark first got this contraption for me.”

  “What you are, Mary, is a very brave woman,” Lucy said.

  Mary gave a faint laugh. “My sister Betty out there, she’s the brave one, putting up with me like this. Not many let their kin pass on at home these days.”

  “Mary, I noticed there were no tracks in the snow today,” Mark said. “Didn’t one of the social workers pass by? I specifically told them to see if you and Betty needed anything every morning.”

  “Oh, I said not to bother, since you’d be here. They got far more needy folks than us to worry about.”

  After they’d had Betty’s tea and were back outside, climbing into her car, Lucy asked, “How long?”

  “A month, maybe more. I doubt she’ll last till the end of your rotation.”

  As they picked up speed on the highway, Lucy’s cellular started to ring in her purse, which she’d propped on the console between their seats. One hand on the wheel, she fumbled for it, managing to spill the contents at his feet.

  “Merde!” he heard her mutter as he retrieved the phone from amongst the debris. Dan’s number flashed beside the caller identification icon.

  “I found your cellular,” the sheriff announced as
soon as Mark answered. “One of my men stepped on it under the snow.”

  “Terrific. You got any more useful information?”

  “The shot came from behind on the passenger side, then out your front window, just as you thought. We’ll never find the bullet.”

  “Shit!”

  “It gets worse. After I left your place last night I swung around to the office to pick up my camera and flash. Went out to the wreck to try and get shots of boot impressions in the snow, but the wind had already blown them in.”

  “Hey, I told you you shouldn’t-”

  “I made some phone calls, and here’s the interesting part. The staff at the Braden estate insist Chaz is in New York.”

  “But that’s the sort of crap they would say.”

  “I also called his office in New York, and was told he’s home with the flu.”

  “Again, figures.”

  “I then call him at home and am told Dr. Chaz Braden is so sick he’s in bed.”

  “Wall-to-wall alibis.”

  “But she’ll see if he’ll take the phone.”

  “Oh?”

  “On the line he comes, and, sounding gravelly voiced, tells me the same story. I said I was sorry to bother him. He said it was no trouble. I told him we’d had a problem yesterday evening with drunken hunters taking potshots at passing vehicles and described what happened to you. He replied, ‘That’s terrible,’ then asked why I was calling him. ‘Just wanted to check if you were having similar problems near your place,’ I answered. He explained that since he had been ill and left for New York sometime after three in the afternoon, he couldn’t say what happened around his place last night. I thanked him, and we hung up.”

  “So what’s so interesting? It’s exactly what I’d expect from the son of a bitch.”

  “Oh yeah? That mean-mouthed bastard hasn’t been so cordial to me since the first day he came round after I took office. Even then he made it clear that he saw me as small-time, that he was big-city, and that meant I should stay out of his way. Yet here I am calling his big-city self to check on his whereabouts, and he’s polite as can be. What’s a country boy to think?”