Dead Run

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  So, a well-equipped operating and examining room, for canine and feline patients.

  Heimrich went back to the room with the body in it, and through the other door.

  As he opened the door, a dog barked. Then another, louder dog barked. Then it seemed as if a dozen dogs barked, in mounting hysteria.

  There were, actually, only six dogs in what was clearly the hospital’s canine ward. They were of various breeds and sizes, and all, from a mammoth Newfoundland through a sizable golden retriever to a small smooth-haired fox terrier, making all the indignant noises they could manage. Indignant or, possibly, welcoming? Dogs expecting to be fed?

  Beyond the dog ward, separated from it by a partly closed door, a quieter room, with cages along the wall, and cats in the cages—cats who, for the most part, were curled asleep on pads. The cages were roomy; each had its toilet pan with litter in it. Like the pan Mite used when he didn’t want to go outdoors because it was cold outdoors. Or, of course, wet.

  Most of the eight cats in the feline ward sat up when Heimrich went into their room. Several of them mewed at him, in a friendly fashion, but one large black tom hissed. One that sat up was a smallish seal-point Siamese. Its posture and blue eyes were alert—too alert, he thought, for it to have just had surgery. There ought to be a relatively limp female along here somewhere. He looked in more cages.

  He found the slender Siamese queen in a glass box near the far end of the room. There was a plaque above the glass box. It read, “No smoking! Oxygen.” So. Postoperative patient in an intensive care ward, undergoing oxygen therapy.

  The patient, another seal point, lay on her side. She had a bandage around her middle. She appeared to be soundly asleep and breathing easily. She flicked one brown, pointed ear as Heimrich looked down at her. He opened another door at this end of the ward.

  The door opened on a narrow hallway, with a door at the end of and doors on either side. As Heimrich opened his door, the door at the far end of the hallway also opened. It was opened by a short, heavyset woman, probably somewhere in her sixties. Even from twenty feet away, she looked formidable. She was also wearing a man’s felt hat. She wore a pants suit of dark gray and what Merton Heimrich’s mother would have called “sensible” shoes.

  She paid no attention to Heimrich. She said, “Roger? Roger!” She had a formidable voice. When she was not immediately answered, she took a step into the hall—a step which could easily be called a stride. And once more, she commanded somebody named Roger.

  This time the door on the right side of the hall opened and a tall, rather gangling youth came through it. He had a book in one hand; he wore glasses. He had long blond hair, part of which dangled down his forehead. He pushed his hair back. He said, “Yes’m, Mrs. Cummins. Afraid I was reading.”

  “Jenny,” the stocky woman said. “Ready?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Cummins,” Roger said. “Only she was still out, last I looked. Doctor said you’d be coming for her.”

  “I have,” Mrs. Cummins said. “I’ll get her.”

  Her voice was still inflexible. She started toward Heimrich, still in the doorway. She did not seem to see him, except as something in the way. He got out of it, and she strode past him into the animal wards.

  “She likes to handle them herself, sir,” Roger King said. Heimrich said “Evidently” to what was evident.

  Mrs. Cummins was gone several minutes. Then she came back, a ventilated cat-carrying case in one hand. Heimrich again got out of her way. An indignant Siamese voice spoke from the black box.

  “She’s coming out of it, Mrs. Cummins,” Roger said.

  “Sounds like it,” Mrs. Cummins said. “Let’s hope she is, boy. That he didn’t bungle this one. Two hundred she’s bringing, tabby markings or not. He give her the shots?”

  “Yes’m. Said to tell you she’s all set and he’d like you to keep an eye on her for a couple of days before they take her off.”

  Mrs. Cummins said, “Huh,” and went out the door with the carrying case. She went across smoothly mowed lawn to a blue Volks, parked partly on the grass. The boy pushed his drooping hair back again and said “Whew,” more or less to himself. Then he said, “Sorry, sir. The doctor’s probably up at the house.”

  “No, Roger, I’m afraid he isn’t,” Heimrich said. “He’s still in the building. Only, he’s dead, son. I’m Michael’s father, Roger. Michael Faye. His stepfather, actually.”

  “Inspector Heimrich,” the boy said. “You say Dr. Barton’s dead, sir? Jeez!”

  “Yes, Roger. They didn’t tell you? Miss Arnold and Dr. Rorke, I mean. They went out this way a little while ago.”

  “No, nobody told me. I had my door closed, and maybe they didn’t know I was here. I generally come in the back way. I was early this evening. You mean that’s why you’re here, Inspector? Because Dr. Barton’s dead?”

  “I brought a sick dog over,” Heimrich said. “For the doctor to look at. It’s because Dr. Barton’s dead I’m still here. You work here, Roger?”

  “Nights this summer,” Roger said. “Sort of—oh, keep an eye on the animals. Go up and get the doctor at the house if—well, if I think one of them needs him. And feed them in the morning if the doctor’s late. And change the cats’ toilet pans. This time of year, the dogs can go out to the runs if they want to. I suppose I’m sort of a night watchman, sir. What happened to—I mean, what killed—the doctor?”

  “We don’t know yet, son. Possibly just heart failure. He seem all right to you when he spoke to you about Mrs. Cummins’s cat? And when was that, Roger?”

  “Six thirty, maybe. About then. Yes, he seemed just like always, I guess.”

  “That was after he had finished operating on the cat? Jenny? That’s the cat’s name, I take it. Pretty little cat.”

  “Mrs. Cummins is selling her, way I get it, sir. To some people who don’t want to show her. Otherwise they wouldn’t have her spayed, of course. Anyway, she was beginning to show tabby markings, so she’d be no good as a show cat. Mrs. Cummins has a cattery, you know.”

  Heimrich hadn’t known; he’d begun to assume.

  “Linwood, she calls it,” Roger said. “Siamese mostly, according to Dr. Barton. He treats them when they need it. They are all fancy cats, Dr. Barton told me. I don’t know much about the cat fancy, Inspector. What they call it. ‘The fancy.’”

  “More than I do,” Heimrich told him. “About six thirty Dr. Barton came out and told you Mrs. Cummins’s cat was ready for her to take home. He seemed to be all right then. Had you seen him earlier today?”

  Roger King had not. He had himself come on duty at six, a few minutes earlier than usual. Usually, Miss Arnold stopped by his door and told him she was going up to the house. That he was in charge. Tonight she had not.

  “Waiting for the doctor to finish operating, I suppose,” Heimrich said. “So she could tell him Mrs. Heimrich and I were bringing Colonel over.”

  Roger didn’t say, “Huh?” He merely looked it.

  “Colonel’s the dog,” Heimrich told him. “You can go back to your reading, son.”

  “Studying, really,” the boy said. “Marine biology, sir. What I’m going in for, I think.”

  He carried his book into his room. Heimrich walked the length of the hallway and looked out the door. The Bartons’ white house was about a hundred yards away. A big ash tree partly shaded it. There was no activity apparent in the house and no lights were on in it. Of course, dusk was only starting. Heimrich looked at his watch. Eight thirty. Make it eight thirty-two. Go up to the house and see how Mrs. Barton, newly widowed, was coming along? Not yet. Eventually, of course, if things developed so. Probably they wouldn’t; probably Adrian Barton had been the victim of cardiac arrest and only that; probably Heimrich had been precipitate in his call to the barracks. On the other hand, the lab squad from Troop K was not being precipitate at all. Neither was the police doctor, nor the others who attend homicides. Well, probably there was no homicide to attend. Probably he ought to collect his wife, a
nd their dog, and go home.

  Probably analysis of what remained in the hypodermic syringe carefully tissue-wrapped in his pocket would turn out to be what was left of insulin, 40 U.

  He closed the outside door, the back way out of the hospital and went back through the wards. The glass oxygen compartment was empty now; one of the caged cats was washing himself. No, herself. The black tom woke up long enough to hiss at Heimrich, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. The formerly alert seal-point Siamese lay with its creamy back to Heimrich and did not stir. In the canine ward, the dogs barked at him.

  In the waiting room, Colonel was sitting up. He turned his head and looked at Heimrich. His eyes seemed even sadder than usual, and Heimrich thought there was a question in them. What are we doing in this place, which smells of hospital and of other animals? That probably was the question. Heimrich did not try to answer.

  Susan, on the drab green sofa, was reading a small magazine. She put it down. “He seems to be much better,” Susan said. “Perhaps it was a false alarm. Maybe we could take him home.”

  Heimrich shook his head.

  “I called the barracks,” he said. “I’ll have to wait until the boys show up. Does he seem to be mobile?”

  “Enough to sit up, anyway,” Susan said. “About getting in the car, I don’t know. You mean, if he can, I should drive him home and—well, get out from underfoot?”

  It wasn’t the way he would have put it. Heimrich’s smile told her that.

  “It’ll be jammed up when they get here,” he said. “Cops all over the place. Bodies being lugged around. One body, anyway. And I’ll be hung up for a while. Not for too long, I hope. Probably a false alarm all around.”

  Susan stood and looked up at him. She looked for some seconds.

  “You don’t really believe it is, do you, dear?” she said. “I can tell, you know.”

  “Second sight, Susan?”

  “Not second, Merton. Not even second thousandth. I’ve been looking at you for quite a while, Merton. So—say I’ve learned to see through you. You think Dr. Barton was murdered.”

  “I don’t know, darling. But, well, I suppose I think he could have been. Without anything really to go on.”

  “I’ll see if Colonel is up to it,” Susan said. “Otherwise you can carry him again, I suppose. But he’ll have to get out on his own. He’s too big for me to lug out at the other end.”

  “Much too big,” Heimrich agreed. “If it comes to that, just leave him in the car. We’ll have to find another vet.”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “A live one.” She walked toward the door. She said, “Come on, old fellow.”

  Colonel stood up. He seemed, Heimrich thought, faintly surprised that he could. But when he followed Susan to the door and out of it, he moved reasonably well. And when Heimrich opened the Buick’s door, he hesitated only a minute. He did look around at Heimrich with what Heimrich thought was a “What, no help?” expression in his sad eyes. But he got into the car. He didn’t bound in, but he got in. Come to think of it, he hadn’t bounded in for some time. Colonel was getting to be an old, tired dog, past his bounding days.

  3

  After Susan had driven the Buick away, Heimrich stood and looked at the white house. There was still no activity in the house. On the side he faced, which was the west side, closed Venetian blinds obscured the windows. The last of the day’s sun rays glittered on the windows.

  There was a garage next to the south side of the house. The garage door was open, and there were two cars in the garage—a small black car and one much larger and also black. One of them Latham Rorke’s? Probably. Dr. Rorke would hardly have walked up from White Plains.

  Rorke and the pretty girl who was studying to be a veterinarian were certainly taking their time about it, it being telling a woman named Louise Barton that her husband was suddenly dead. Such things are not easy to tell, are best told gently. But how does one gentle such news, temper the harsh finality of such news? Heimrich himself had never found a way, although rather often the task had been his. Sorry, Mrs. Barton. Bad news, I’m afraid. The husband you were expecting home for dinner won’t be coming. He’s lying dead on the floor of his operating room. Not much good. What is good?

  Perhaps Carol and the young man who had driven up hoping to take her to dinner had decided to eat the dinner Louise Barton had prepared for her husband. And for Carol? Apparently Carol was living in the Barton house. For the summer, anyway. Before she went back to Ithaca and the study of animal ailments. Odd profession for a very pretty young woman to choose.

  Heimrich had taken a few steps toward the hospital when he heard a car coming up Barton Lane. The boys from the barracks, probably. Or the ambulance, complete with medical examiner, from Cold Harbor.

  The car was a very red Volks. It went to the house and stopped in front of it, and a woman got out. She was small and compact and, from her movements, middle-aged. Middle-aged and a little arthritic. But she moved quickly to the front door of the big white house and opened the door—without, so far as Heimrich could tell, ringing the doorbell. She went into the house. So, reinforcement for the bereaved.

  Heimrich went on to, and into, the small animal hospital.

  Nothing had changed there, except that Barton’s body presumably had stiffened further. And where the hell were Heimrich’s own reinforcements? If they hadn’t moved the Troop K barracks so far to the north, they would have arrived by now. And Cold Harbor was much closer. In a heat wave, everything slows down.

  He went through the animal wards. The dogs barked at him. The black cat was asleep and didn’t wake up to hiss. The door of Roger King’s room was closed and Roger was typing behind it. A diligent student, apparently. Or, for all Heimrich knew, a boy typing a love letter to a girl. A boy not much interested in sudden death.

  Heimrich opened the back door and stood in the doorway and looked at the white house. He was just in time. Carol Arnold and Rorke were just coming out the door. They were coming out merged, Rorke’s right arm firmly around the girl.

  Not, Heimrich was reasonably sure, to support her, or for purposes of consolation. Well, they were a handsome young couple and Rorke had driven some miles from White Plains on a hot, humid evening, in the hope that he might take her to dinner. And there had been sharpness, almost animosity, in his voice when he spoke of Adrian Barton. So. And Rorke was a doctor. And he had known, or very accurately guessed, where Rorke kept his stethoscope. Mmm.

  And Barton probably had died of cardiac arrest. Or, conceivably, in diabetic coma, whatever Ernest Chandler thought probable.

  Carol and Latham Rorke saw him standing in the doorway as they walked toward the hospital. For half the distance, Rorke kept his arm around the girl. Then, very slowly, he removed it. The lingering removal was like a caress.

  “Sorry we were so long, Inspector,” Carol said when they were only a few yards away. “We were waiting for Louise’s sister to come and be with her. It—it was an awful shock to Louise, of course. Lathe gave her a sedative, and we called her doctor and Mary.”

  Who was, presumably, the sister.

  “You did want to talk to me about it, didn’t you, Inspector? About what happened to Adrian. Because—well, you act as if you don’t think it was a natural death. Is that it?”

  “When an apparently healthy man dies suddenly, without medical attendance, we always wonder a little, Miss Arnold. It’s a matter of routine.”

  “Adrian wasn’t entirely healthy,” the girl said. “He had diabetes. Didn’t Lathe tell you that?”

  Rorke had. And Barton’s own doctor had confirmed it. And termed it mild. And, yes, Heimrich did want to have a few words with Miss Arnold about the events of the afternoon. For example—

  Heimrich did not get to his example. Cars arrived at the animal hospital. Tires scraped on gravel as wheels were braked. If Miss Arnold would wait for a while; probably not too considerable a while. Just until things became a little clearer. If she and Dr. Rorke wanted to go to dinner, i
t would be all right. As long as they were not too long about it.

  “Louise had dinner ready,” Carol said. “But—it didn’t seem right to eat there. With poor Louise—” Funeral baked meats, Heimrich thought. Although that wasn’t, of course, entirely accurate. But, he told them, he understood entirely.

  “Not the Bird and Bottle, I guess,” Rorke said. “Not a place to eat and run, exactly. The Tavern, Carol?”

  There was a restaurant in Cold Harbor called the Tavern. It wasn’t, by a long stretch, the Bird and Bottle, but it was near.

  “All right,” Carol said, and the two of them walked toward the white house and, presumably, the garage adjacent to it. After they had taken a few steps, Rorke put an arm about the girl again. She had changed out of her white uniform into a sleeveless pale green dress.

  Heimrich did not wait until they reached the garage. He went to the front door of the hospital to greet his reinforcements.

  They were numerous—Lieutenant Charles Forniss in one car and Corporal Purvis, in uniform, with him; the lab truck from the barracks; an ambulance from the Cold Harbor hospital. And, from the last car in line, a man with a black bag getting out. Forniss said, “Evening, M. L.” Purvis said, “Sir,” and saluted. Dr. James Marvin said, “Got a dead one, Inspector? Hot night for it.”

  Heimrich agreed he had a dead one and added that, from the police point of view, it might be a false alarm. Marvin said, “Huh? Not shot? Not knifed? No blunt instrument?”

  “Just suddenly dead,” Heimrich said. “The vet who runs this place, Doctor. Dr.—”