Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  “Show me.”

  He grimaced a bit, like he wished he hadn’t said anything. But he dutifully picked up the report and flipped to the third page.

  “Down toward the bottom,” he said, pointing. “There’s a photograph of it, too. Although I wouldn’t recommend you look at all those pictures. They’re kind of, well…”

  “I understand. This says the print is from a Vibram sole?”

  “A partial, from the heel. Yes, ma’am.”

  “So, like a hiking boot?”

  “Or some kind of work boot. Those would be your possibilities.”

  “Is that normally what the EMTs wear?”

  Captain Saunders shrugged.

  “At that hour of the day I’m guessing they throw on whatever’s handy. The call came in around six a.m., I believe. I’ll get those copies for you. That’s the one for the press room that you’re looking at, by the way. Fair warning, we’ll probably release it around seven this evening. Might want to keep the phone off the hook tonight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And could we also see the photos?” Henry asked. “Or at least the one of the boot print.”

  “They’re digitized. I’ll pull it up for you on my desktop.” He looked down at the floor, shuffling his feet. “Just the one, if you like. To minimize your, uh, your exposure.”

  “Yes,” Anna said quickly. “Thank you.”

  “Just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll escort you back to my desk.”

  He left like he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  As Henry expected, the crime scene report made for gruesome reading. There were explanations of patterns of splattered blood on the bed, the ceiling, and the wall. There was a vivid description of Willard’s face when he was found on the porch that mentioned numerous red speckles and traces of something darker and more gruesome. Anna stared at the wording for about ten seconds before abruptly setting the page aside.

  On the next page, someone had mapped out Willard’s movements after the shootings, based on his bloody footprints, and also on the dew, dirt, and blood that ended up on his trousers and bare feet. Anna shook her head and set it aside, but Henry picked up the page.

  Accompanying the text was a drawing of Willard’s entire journey, all the way out to the highway sign and back. It put Henry out there again on the dewy shoulder in the stillness before dawn, and he again wondered what idea or motivation must have sent Willard on his single-minded errand.

  Of further interest to Henry was the investigator’s conclusion that Willard hadn’t simply curled up on the porch when he returned home. The trail of footprints showed that he had instead walked back to his parents’ bedroom, as if to check on his mother and father. He’d stopped by the bed and then turned around, bypassing his own room to go out to the front porch, where he left the door open and fell asleep.

  When they were done, Anna flipped the pages back to the mention of the partial boot print. The print was made with her mother’s blood, meaning that whoever made it had either been in the bedroom or had stepped on one of Willard’s tracks.

  “If it was a first responder, why weren’t there more of them?” Anna said. “It’s almost like somebody was being real careful not to leave a trace and then made one false step right before he left the house.”

  “It was pointed toward the door?”

  She nodded.

  “And it was the only one,” she said. “From the heel. Like somebody was walking on clean tiptoes and lost his balance.”

  “I can see where a first responder might do that, trying to not contaminate the scene.”

  “Okay. But if he was that careful, wouldn’t he have put on those plastic overshoes they use?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not familiar with their procedures in this county. Maybe you should ask a real detective.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  For the first time she sounded a bit disappointed in him, and he was surprised by how much it bothered him.

  “Let me do the asking,” he said. “Earn my keep.”

  “Fine. Let’s go see the photo. Then we can read the medical examiner’s report.”

  They tracked down Captain Saunders, who cleared his throat and turned to his keyboard.

  “Maybe you should stand over there until I find the right one.”

  Anna nodded stoically.

  He clicked around for a few seconds, his mouth in a tight line. The brightness of the screen flashed in his eyes as he scrolled from image to image.

  “Here we go. I’ll get out of your way. Click on print if you want a copy. When you’re done, just X-out in the upper right corner.”

  He retreated to the coffeemaker as Anna settled into his chair. Henry watched from over her shoulder.

  The photo took up most of the screen. It was a heel print, just as advertised, with the waffle pattern you’d expect from a Vibram sole. By the time the photo had been snapped the blood had already turned brown. Anna clicked for a copy, and they heard the printer hum to life across the room.

  She hit a keystroke by mistake, and before Henry could stop her she’d advanced to the next photo, a garish shot of her parents sprawled in the bed, shot to pieces like in a gangland movie, blood spattered across the sheets and headboard. Her father’s head was practically exploded, and her mother’s eyes were bulging half out of their sockets. Anna froze, mouth open, a strangled gasp trapped in her throat. Henry leaned in, took the mouse in his hand, and clicked. The image disappeared. Left in its place was a scattering of icons across Captain Saunders’s wallpaper, a photo of him proudly holding aloft a two-foot rockfish in the back of a fishing boat.

  Anna exhaled loudly. Henry touched her right shoulder.

  “I’ll get the printout.”

  She drank some water to calm down, and then announced that she was ready to read the medical examiner’s report.

  “We could wait. Since they’re making copies, I mean.”

  “No. Let’s get it over with.”

  She skimmed it, while Henry read over her shoulder. It wasn’t as if there had been any doubt about the cause of death, but at least there were no photos. She didn’t slow down until reaching the results of the tests for toxins, narcotics, and pharmaceuticals.

  “What the hell? This says Willard was taking an antidepressant.”

  “Which one?”

  “Zolexa.”

  “Is that new?”

  “New to me. I’m surprised Mom never mentioned it. I didn’t know he had any issues like that. Or not lately.”

  “He did earlier?”

  “In puberty. The whole hormonal mess everybody goes through, except worse for him, for obvious reasons. That doctor I mentioned, she prescribed something for a while, but I don’t think they were happy with it. Later he stopped altogether.”

  “But you said they’d stopped seeing that doctor.”

  “They did. Ages ago. I finally remembered her name the other day. Sandra Patel, over in Easton.”

  “Maybe they went back. That’s a half-hour drive. We could be there by three.”

  “Anything to get all this stuff off my mind.”

  They collected their copies, thanked Captain Saunders, and left.

  25

  Dr. Sandra Patel had one of those bright, cheery offices that looked like it had been decorated by Fisher-Price, with bold primary colors and big windows for plenty of sunlight. There was a play area in the corner with a Lego table where a boy, five or six, was building something. Henry watched in fascination as the boy spent several minutes putting blocks together and then gleefully ripping them apart, as if torn by competing urges to create and destroy.

  They’d stopped at the Shoat house on the way over, to look for pill bottles with Willard’s name on them and any other sign of recent prescriptions. Nothing. They looked up
Zolexa online and found the usual bold claims of success in treating depression, but also some alarming side effects. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, sometimes it was a disaster.

  The young receptionist reacted to their mention of Willard’s name with a gasp, quickly suppressed. She then called Dr. Patel on the in-house line for a hushed consultation that ended with her asking Anna and Henry to have a seat. Henry half expected her to call the cops. She kept a careful watch on them, as if they might try to kidnap the boy at the Lego table.

  The boy’s mom, at least, remained oblivious, so absorbed in a Highlights magazine that she didn’t even notice when they were summoned to the doctor ahead of her son. The receptionist led them down a hallway with the solemn air of a funeral director.

  Dr. Patel rose from behind her desk to greet them. She was a thin woman in her late fifties, slightly stooped, with brooding brown eyes that projected calm and concern. Her black hair was pulled back tightly in a bun.

  “Thanks for seeing us without an appointment,” Anna said. “This is Henry Mattick, a friend who’s helping me look into things. About Willard, I mean.”

  “I was so upset when I heard about him. And your poor parents, of course. I have followed the case closely. I even thought about getting in touch, but decided that you needed your privacy. But it was so unlike him, or unlike the Willard I used to know. He was never a violent boy. Never.”

  “You sound like you haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Oh, not for years. But we kept his file. Until last month, of course, when his new doctor took over. Although even then I never spoke directly to your mother or father, much less Willard himself.”

  “His new doctor?”

  “Have you not seen him? Has he not participated in, well, any of the diagnosis after the fact?”

  “I wasn’t aware there was a new doctor. And if he’s been in touch with the police, they haven’t mentioned it.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry to hear this.” She looked a little flustered.

  “Do you have his name?”

  “Dr. Wallace Ridgely, in Cambridge. I’ll get his information for you. I wish I would have known, I could have saved you the trip.”

  She picked up the phone.

  “Yes, Andrea. Could you please bring me the paperwork on the transfer of Willard Shoat’s records? Thank you.”

  The receptionist must have pulled the materials earlier, because she entered seconds later with a slim manila folder for Dr. Patel, who opened it on her desk.

  “Here is Dr. Ridgely’s letterhead, with his address and phone number. And here is the fax I received from your parents, requesting that I send the records to Dr. Ridgely.”

  Anna eyed the fax carefully.

  “Are those their signatures?” Henry asked in a low voice.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Would you like me to phone Dr. Ridgely for you? I’d be happy to make an introduction. I am so sorry you weren’t aware of this.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dr. Patel punched in the number.

  “Yes, please. This is Dr. Sandra Patel from Easton, calling on behalf of Anna Shoat, the sister of one of Dr. Ridgely’s patients, Willard Shoat. Would it be possible to speak with him?”

  She frowned as she listened. Then she slowly spelled out Willard’s first and last name and waited a few seconds longer.

  “Excuse me? None? There must be some mistake. May I please speak directly with Dr. Ridgely? Dr. Sandra Patel in Easton…Yes, I’ll wait.”

  She frowned again and held the receiver aside.

  “This is very odd. She says they have no record of your brother as a patient. But I transferred his file as requested, so they must have something, even if there was never an actual consultation.”

  “And you said this was about a month ago?”

  “As you can see for yourself.” She nodded toward the consent form, dated in early July. “I suppose they could have switched doctors again, but I doubt your parents would have acted so rashly.”

  She perked up as a voice came back on the line.

  “Yes, Dr. Ridgely. Thank you for taking my call.” She pushed a button to put the conversation on speaker. “I’m calling on the matter of Willard Shoat.”

  Ridgely’s voice crackled loudly into the room.

  “Shoat? You mean the fellow who murdered his parents, that whole bizarre thing over in Poston?”

  Dr. Patel winced and shook her head in embarrassment.

  “Yes. But I’m here with Willard’s sister, who wishes to inquire about his recent medical history.”

  “Didn’t Donna tell you we have no record of him? He’s never been a patient of ours. Believe me, I’d have remembered.”

  “But surely you received his file? Your office contacted me in July, and had them delivered by courier.”

  “I assure you, Dr. Patel, we don’t have even a scrap of paper with his name on it. Nor have I ever requested any.”

  “But I have your own letter, here in front of me. Dated in July.”

  “With my signature?”

  “Yes, and under your letterhead.”

  “Could you fax me a copy of that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Henry and Anna exchanged glances.

  “And you said the file was delivered to my office?”

  “By courier, yes. Your own, as I recall, because the charges were prepaid.”

  “FedEx?”

  “UPS, I think. Yes, because here is the copy of the invoice.” She held it up from the file folder. “And I remember it fairly clearly, because this happens quite seldom in my practice.”

  “Our courier account is with FedEx, so I’m not sure who would have made that request, but I can say with absolute confidence that it was no one from this office.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Entirely. But do fax me that letter, because I’d like to get to the bottom of this.”

  “As would I, Dr. Ridgely. I’ll send it straightaway.”

  “Thank you. Good luck tracking this down.”

  Dr. Patel looked ashen as she hung up the phone.

  “You said you remember it clearly, this courier’s visit?” Henry asked.

  “Fairly well, yes. As I said, it’s an infrequent occurrence. And even though it had been years since I had seen Willard, he made quite an impression on me. I often wondered what sort of young man he had become.”

  “And this was in July?”

  “Yes. Here is the receipt.”

  “This delivery man,” he said, “was he white, black, Hispanic?”

  She squinted in concentration.

  “An older white guy. He was wearing the standard uniform.” She raised a finger in the air. “And a beard, he had a beard.”

  “What color was the beard?”

  “I don’t remember. Dark, that’s all.”

  “Salt-and-pepper?” Anna asked.

  Dr. Patel shrugged.

  “It could have been, but I can’t say for sure.”

  “This file of my brother’s, what was in it?”

  “Everything. The entire record of his treatment. He was my patient for six years, until he was seventeen.”

  “Would it have included records of any prescriptions?”

  “Of course.”

  “Including Zolexa?”

  The doctor frowned.

  “I had almost forgotten that period, because it was so brief. But, yes, he did take Zolexa for a while. We discontinued it fairly quickly after there was, well, an episode.”

  “An episode?”

  “Fairly dramatic, I’m afraid. The effect on him. He was somewhat depressed at the time. So we gave it a try. Zolexa evened out his disposition, but it also made him very compliant, very suggestive. Too much so for h
is own good, as it happened. Some boys at his school, they were very quick to take advantage. They had him doing all sorts of things that he would not have done otherwise. Jumping from the top of a jungle gym, for one, and Willard was no daredevil.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “The worst of it was that he shoved a poor girl right off her bicycle, simply on their say-so. She had to be taken in for an X-ray of her arm, but fortunately there was no fracture. I don’t remember all the particulars, but everything would have been in the file.”

  “The file that’s now missing,” Henry said, which cast a pall over the room until Anna broke the silence.

  “Would the effects of Zolexa still be the same for him as an adult?”

  “There is no way of knowing for sure, of course. His hormonal balance would obviously be altered. But given his previous reaction, I certainly would never recommend prescribing it for him at any time, especially when there are so many alternatives. Why? Do you think he may have taken some?”

  “It showed up in his bloodstream in the tests by the medical examiner, from the night he killed Mom and Dad.”

  Dr. Patel’s mouth made a small, horrified “O.” She raised her hands to her face and sighed.

  “I’m very distressed to hear this. All of this. Someone did him a great disservice.”

  “Yes,” Anna said. “That’s what we think as well.”

  She turned toward Henry with a look of grim resolve, and nodded toward the door.

  26

  They piled into Henry’s car with renewed determination, but still no clues on Merle’s whereabouts.

  “Should we tell the police?” Anna asked.

  “Tell them what? That some day laborer whose name might be Merle drugged your brother and made him do it? They’d laugh us out the door. Politely, of course, since they seem to like you.”

  “You know, until a few minutes ago I was almost ready to throw in the towel. I mean, so what if some friend of my Mom’s saw them hunting off in the woods? Even if that was Merle, the moment he heard his hunting buddy had just blown away his parents—and with his trusty deer rifle, no less—if that’s me, then I’m heading for the hills. But this shit with the medical file and the Zolexa?”