Mortal Remains

by Peter Clement

  He grinned, took it from her, and got out of the car. The cold tingled the top of his ears. “Some conglomerate built it about five years ago,” he said, leading the way up a wide set of freshly shoveled stone steps. He gestured to the dark line of thick forest on the perimeter of the property. “Liked the cheap real estate and low taxes, I guess. They mostly do work for insurance companies that underwrite employee health plans for a slew of head offices in New York City. The volume’s huge, and they ship a refrigerator truck worth of samples up here every night of the week. The lab provides state-of-the-art service that does everything from routine bloods to genetic workups for research groups. Even Saratoga General and hospitals in Albany contract out their more exotic testing to them. I’m told that all these things taken together bring in more than enough to pay the heating bills.”

  “No offense, but why do they bother with you?”

  He winked at her over his shoulder. “Because I know the manager. Come on and see science fiction in the sticks.”

  They approached a sliding glass panel that opened automatically and admitted them to a marbled reception area befitting any Park Avenue address. The click of their shoes on the floor echoed like castanets.

  “Hi, Doc,” said a spindly, white-haired security guard seated behind a polished curved console with a dozen video screens. He pressed a button that unlocked one of the six mahogany doors behind him with a loud click.

  They passed through into a long, white corridor.

  Minutes later they shook hands with Victor Feldt, a broad-faced, big-bellied man with a walrus mustache and a complexion that easily flushed. His cheeks glowed as he greeted Lucy. “Welcome to our lab, Dr. O’Connor. May I show you around?”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be any trouble-”

  “You don’t take the tour, you’ll hurt his feelings,” Mark interrupted. “Victor lives for the chance to show off his pride and joy to visitors, especially ones in the business.”

  Victor turned a shade more crimson. “Now that’s not true, Mark. I just thought she’d be interested.”

  “And I am, Mr. Feldt. Lead on. This facility looks amazing.”

  His cheeks got so red, Mark wondered if he shouldn’t take the man’s blood pressure. He’d been treating his hypertension for years, but Victor kept going off the pills whenever he got a new boyfriend because they affected his sex life. Not that that happened often, Victor being one of the few gay men in Hampton Junction.

  Let him have his fun talking shop with Lucy, Mark decided. The blood pressure could wait.

  He followed along behind, having received the tour several times during the facility’s first years of operation. Impressive as the layout was – room after room of spinning centrifuges, automated conveyers feeding trays of sample wells into multitask analyzers, chorus lines of pipettes dunking into specimens and sucking them up fifty at a time, then reams of tiny tubing carrying the fluids to more machines that would perform another fifty tests on each of them – it still accomplished nothing more than the basic job of any hospital lab. Break the human body down to a measure of its red cells, white counts, and biochemical ingredients – sodium, potassium, proteins, albumin, and so on. Except this outfit scaled itself to process ten times the load of any single health care institution.

  Mark watched Victor animatedly explain the details of the operation to an extent that went far beyond what Lucy could possibly want to know, a mark of his loneliness for intellectual company as much as his enthusiasm for his work. He’d arrived from New York when the lab opened, but gravitated away from Saratoga, unable to afford a place among the rich and famous, yet wary of the homophobia of Hampton Junction. So he’d settled on the no-man’s-land between the two, a pretty but isolated cabin by a lake not far from here, where his lifestyle wouldn’t raise eyebrows. When he wasn’t involved with anyone he substituted the Internet for companionship, and owned one of the most awesome computer setups Mark had ever seen in a private home. Victor approached Mark to be his doctor after several bad experiences with a few general practitioners in Saratoga. “Nothing overt, just that they were old farts and not at ease with handing the potential health problems of someone who’s gay,” he’d explained. “On the other hand, I hear nothing scares you.”

  They neared Victor’s pièce de résistance, the section where they did the DNA analyses. Located in an area behind glass windows that could only be accessed through an airlock, some of the machinery looked similar to the other equipment they’d seen, but many pieces were right out of Star Trek, and workers inside wore protective clothing.

  “Just like in making CDs, we keep a dust-free environment to reduce the risk of contaminating specimens,” Victor explained. “We have a dozen PCR machines, and three dozen electrophoresis units…”

  As Victor expounded on the technology of breaking down DNA and separating out specific genes for identification, Mark noticed a change since he’d last been corralled into a tour. There were far more people working in this unit than he remembered, and now it was after hours. “Business must be good as far as the DNA department goes,” he said jokingly, as they returned to the front entrance.

  “Booming,” replied Victor in complete earnestness. “We’re even testing for genes that don’t have a confirmed link to diseases yet, but may be a potential risk.”

  “Who wants that information?” Lucy asked.

  He shrugged. “The New York corporations that have contracts with us. Seems particularly to be the new wave in executive health plans. And, of course, research labs. But we figure the real up-and-coming market will be aging baby boomers who want to know if they’ve got the gene that killed Mom or Dad. Screening for the mutations linked to breast and ovarian cancer, colon cancer, Alzheimer’s – you name it. Real cutting-edge stuff…”

  Mark cringed as Victor talked. Unfortunately, his prediction had already begun to materialize. Recently a chain of stores better known for selling soaps and shampoos began to market an expensive screening test to detect genetic defects linked to breast and ovarian cancer, placing the devices on display alongside bath oils and bubble beads. And last month his patients started to bring in magazines normally associated with tips for beautiful homes and fine gardens that now carried ads urging readers to get genetically tuned in to what they should eat and drink by screening for disorders affected by diet. The trouble was, not everyone who has a genetic defect will go on to develop the disease they are at risk for, and at this stage of the game, no one could pick the winners from the losers. Rampant commercialization of the technology would lead to widespread, fruitless, and potentially harmful anxiety, while places like Nucleus Laboratories made a pile of money telling healthy Americans that they were sick. He and Victor had already had heated debates over the issue. But this was Victor’s moment in the sun with Lucy, so Mark held his peace.

  As she drove the car out of the driveway, Lucy asked, “Is Victor a friend?”

  “Actually, he’s a patient.”

  “Really? I took you for friends. But around you it’s hard to tell the difference.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You have a really nice way with patients. A lot of the people who were in your office today consider you both friend and physician.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “They told me so. It was neat to hear.”

  “Sometimes it makes the job harder.”

  “You mean staying objective-”

  “That’s difficult enough. What I’m talking about makes being friends impossible.”

  “Oh?”

  “People tell me almost everything that’s personal and private, as they do most doctors. But in a place like Hampton Junction, I end up knowing both who’s got the secrets and who the secrets are kept from.”

  “What?”

  “Just the other day I was sitting in my office with a woman who sees me regularly for stress and a nervous stomach. The reason for her problems – she’s afraid her husband is running around on her. We were in
terrupted by a phone call from a woman whom I’m treating for depression because the man she loves, that very same husband, won’t leave his wife. They don’t teach you how to manage that kind of situation in New York.”

  She gave an appreciative whistle. “Does it happen a lot?”

  “Often enough. You’ll probably go through a variation of it while you’re here. After all, you’re a fresh audience, so people will definitely let you in on the seamier sides of life in Hampton Junction.”

  She glanced sideways at him.

  “Relax,” he added. “It won’t be that bad.”

  She smiled, but drove without saying anything. A few minutes later, she asked, “Show me Kelly’s house?”

  “Her old family home? It’s long gone. Her parents sold off and moved back to New York after she disappeared.”

  “No. I meant where she lived with Chaz Braden.”

  “Sure. It’s not far from here.”

  She followed his instructions, heading in the direction of Saratoga Springs. After a few miles the thick forest gave way to a floodlit, rolling, snow-covered lawn surrounded by white fences adjacent to a lake. Ablaze with light and well back from the road stood a layered house with several wings emanating from a peaked center, the whole structure wrapped in a veranda. As a young boy passing by with his parents, it had always reminded him of a gilded bird trying to take flight. “Here it is. Rural chic of the pretend horsy set. Paddock style on the front yard, but nary a nag in sight.”

  She said nothing, but slowed as they passed the large wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance. In the parking lot at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, a dozen limousines glittered like a nest of black beetles.

  “That’s odd,” Mark said. “Old man Braden must be up for Thanksgiving this year. He usually doesn’t show until Christmas.”

  “He’s brought a lot of friends.”

  “When here, he’s always having parties. Not that I’m on his guest list. Was, when I was a kid. My father used to get invited. I think that was Kelly’s doing. I learned much later from my aunt that Mom hated going and thought the rest of them acted superior to Dad. But after my mother died, he and I continued to attend, ‘for Kelly’s sake’ I heard him say more than once. Crazy, their looking down on him. Dad was more doctor than both Bradens put together.”

  When they got back to Mark’s house, a shiny red Jeep almost identical to his own stood parked in the driveway. The keys and a note from his insurance company advising him that it was only a loaner until they settled his claim had been dropped through the mail slot in his front door. Ride ‘em cowboy, he thought, pocketing the keys.

  “Could I take a look at your father’s file on Kelly?” Lucy asked after supper.

  “Sure.” He got it out for her.

  Having leafed through the contents at the kitchen table, she came to the newspaper clippings on the Braden’s charitable works. “What are these doing here?”

  “I’ve no idea. My father kept them there. He also collected a pile of statistics on those two places, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what he was after.”

  “Could I see them as well?”

  Two hours later, papers spread out in front of her, on chairs, even over the countertops, she continued to pore over the data that had defeated him.

  “Any luck?” he asked, standing in the doorway watching her.

  “Oh?” she started, obviously surprised by his voice. “No, I mean I can’t see anything glaringly wrong.”

  “Well, I’m heading up to bed. It’ll be a big day tomorrow, everybody calling in to get tuned up for Thanksgiving.”

  “I’m going to work a while longer.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Mark.”

  Chapter 12

  Wednesday, November 21,

  10:07 A.M.

  The Midtown Arms, New York City

  “We only agreed to see you after checking your credentials, Dr. Garnet. I must admit, it appears you’ve had a very distinguished career,” Samantha McShane said. “Surprisingly so.”

  For a guy working in Buffalo, Earl added, the unspoken qualification having practically leapt off her pinched lips. She sat on a round-backed, antique chair of a kind he’d seen in photos of Queen Victoria. Looking over the ornately furnished room, he figured Samantha must have gotten the rest of the old girl’s movables as well. Walter McShane stood behind her, scowling, as still as a stuffed ornament. Clearly it was Samantha’s idea that Earl be tolerated here at all.

  “So what can we do to help you prove who murdered our Kelly?” she asked.

  “Mark Roper has already let me look over copies of the police records, so I don’t need anything there. I’m interested instead in what you learned from the private detectives you hired. Is there any chance we could look through their reports, maybe even talk to one of them? Do you know if they’re still alive?”

  Samantha looked up at Walter.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he muttered.

  “Perhaps you could forward whatever you come up with to Dr. Roper. I don’t plan to be in New York much longer-”

  “No!” Samantha said, sitting even more bolt upright than Earl would have thought possible. “That man has his own agenda in all this.”

  Walter left his perch and wandered over to a large bay window overlooking Central Park West and gazed out at the green space beyond, his jaw a study in tension.

  Earl focused on Samantha. “Why would you say that, Mrs. McShane? Dr. Mark Roper has demonstrated an ironclad objectivity in pursuing what happened to Kelly-”

  “Tell him, Walter,” Samantha said, swinging around to confront her husband’s back.

  “I don’t think it’s anybody’s business, Samantha.” He spoke without looking at her.

  “I want him to know, Walter.”

  He simply shrugged.

  She returned her gaze to Earl. “A mother feels these things so much more acutely, Dr. Garnet. I’m sure you understand this, as a medical man. The loss of a child is the worst possible pain…” Her eyes watered over, and tears careened down wrinkled cheeks that seemed parched as washed-out gullies. Pulling out a hanky from the sleeve of her dress, she dabbed at her face, all the time slipping glances over at Walter as if checking whether he was watching.

  He wasn’t.

  The waterworks stopped. “Would you like to see Kelly’s room?”

  Now the man pivoted to face her. “Really, Samantha-”

  “If he wishes to see it, Walter, he can.”

  “Yes, I would like to, Mrs. McShane.” Earl tried not to sound too eager, but the caustic exchange between the couple was not only unpleasant, it put a damper on what Samantha could say. If he maneuvered her out of Walter’s earshot, she might let something useful slip.

  “Come, Dr. Garnet” She got to her feet, then led him along a dingy hallway to a closed door. Opening it, she stepped inside.

  Earl followed, and had to stifle a gasp.

  Brightly lit and painted yellow, it still resembled a little girl’s room. Stuffed animals lined the bookshelves. A frilly gold-colored duvet covered the bed. Porcelain figurines of soulful-eyed children, kittens, and puppies filled a corner display case. But what most took Earl’s breath away were the photographs of Kelly and her mother. None of the images were unusual in themselves, but hung all together they overwhelmed him.

  To his right were pictures of a much younger Samantha holding her infant daughter, rows and rows of them. They progressed through the usual moments that parents capture – Kelly as a baby sucking a bottle, sitting with a hand of support at her back, eating with a spoon, toddling between Samantha’s legs. Then came Kelly the little girl – walking without support, running with a ball, posing in a party dress, diving off a dock, riding a tricycle. In these she wore the same goofy, self-conscious grin he’d sometimes seen in Brendan when he got in front of a camera. In others she seemed more sullen. The shots evolved into Kelly riding a two-wheeler, swinging a tennis racket, standing
on skis, and participating in the innumerable other activities of an older girl. In these photos she wore a frown more frequently, as if she preferred not having her picture taken at all.

  He stepped closer and noticed other details. In an inordinate number of them where Samantha appeared, the woman stood front and center, beaming a smile that commanded the viewer to pay attention in a way that thrust Kelly into the background.

  And in shot after shot, Kelly seemed to be eyeing her mother, not showing fear necessarily, but a sadness in her gaze and with her mouth taut with strain. In some, she even appeared to be leaning away from her.

  Prophetic, he thought.

  “You can see we were very close,” Samantha said from behind.

  He couldn’t believe she could be so oblivious to how Kelly’s expressions in the later pictures said the opposite.

  “Inseparable, in fact,” she continued. “It’s hard to tell from these, but she was a very sick child.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I hadn’t any idea what to do with her. She was forever complaining of stomach-aches and bowel problems. I took her to no end of doctors, but no one ever figured out what was wrong. And Walter couldn’t be there to help, his being away on business all the time. Not that I blame him for leaving her illness all on my shoulders. He had to take care of his firm, so I soldiered on alone, a full-time mother, of course. There was no paying strangers to take care of Kelly in this home, the way women do all the time with their children today.”

  He swallowed so as not to show how repugnant he found her performance. “What sort of illnesses did Kelly have?”

  “As I said, no one ever diagnosed her. The best attempt came from an old general surgeon in Saratoga who agreed to operate on her, twice. But even he couldn’t diagnose what was wrong. Do you have any idea what kind of ordeal that can be for a parent?”