by Harry Kraus
“Talk to me,” I pleaded.
His eyes darted around. He couldn’t talk to me here. “Later!”
I stood my ground. “Now.”
He shook his head. “My patient,” he said, looking back towards the operating room.
“Later never comes for us,” I said. “Talk to me, Henry.” I put my hands on my hips. “Do I need to talk to Chris Black about my suspicions?”
He sighed. “No,” he whispered. “I’m taking care of this, OK? You need to trust me, Wendi. Do not talk to Chris about this.”
“Honey, what’s going on? Let me help you.” I waited. “You expect me to shut my eyes to this?”
“No. Everything is the way it’s meant to be,” he said. “Of course I knew you’d look at the scene.” He seemed to hesitate. “We’ll talk tonight.”
I glared at my husband and spoke with a quiet urgency. “You shouldn’t even be working. After what you’ve been through this week, you could take a little time — ”
The door to room three popped open behind him. A nurse in green scrubs spoke sharply. “Dr. Stratford, Dr. Newton needs you. The pressure’s down.”
Henry glanced over his shoulder. I could read the conflict in his eyes. He took one look back at me, and raised his voice. “I’ll explain everything.” He turned and walked towards the OR. “Tonight, Wendi,” he said.
Our eyes met for a moment before he disappeared into the operating room, but in that second, I understood. Henry winked. He intended for me to know something that he was hiding from the police.
But what? What message was he sending me?
He knew I couldn’t walk away from this. He knew me. We had talked through accident scenarios a hundred times in the past. He seemed as fascinated with the subtleties of my work as he was with his own. And now Henry was setting something up for my eyes only.
As frustrated as I was with everything, a part of me felt buoyed by Henry’s subtle communication. He trusted me to understand where he thought others would look with uninitiated eyes and see nothing.
I walked back to his office, pondering his statement. Everything is the way it’s meant to be.
Once in the haven of Henry’s office, I closed the door and sat at his desk, trying to get into the mind of the man I married. I wiggled deeper into his leather swivel chair and closed my eyes, attempting to probe the surgeon’s mind. What is Henry doing?
The ambiance of the office did little to stimulate new understanding. I knew Henry to be meticulous, thorough to a fault, and forever interested in the patient’s well-being. Today, I’d understood a little more about the testosterone swagger that bled from the exhaust of his Triumph. But this week had brought more revelation than just a new appreciation for his love of two-wheeled travel. Something else was going on beneath my husband’s skin. Perhaps Henry was as capable as I in the mastery of false appearances.
I looked over his ego wall, the diplomas, awards, and pictures that defined him. What was I missing? Henry the surgeon, the professor, I understood. I studied a little photograph on his desk, Henry and I together at the Wintergreen Ski Lodge. Our heads were tilted towards each other, my blonde hair falling on his shoulder. He had a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face.
Without warning, my eyes were tearing, and my soul bubbling with fresh emotion. Yes, I’ d been arm candy to Henry, but he really loved me, didn’t he? I sniffed. Is it possible that I’ve misjudged him?Was he having an affair? Were his subtle clues leading me to find out what he couldn’t find the strength to confess outright?
I thought about my own wayward heart. If Henry was having an affair, how could I point a finger of accusation? Perhaps I’d driven him to it by my own lack of love.
I ran my finger over the top of the picture frame and sniffed. Henry had his idiosyncrasies, but didn’t we all? And apparently, Henry still trusted me enough to be playing a subtle game. In a funny sort of way, I felt warmed by our last communication. I looked at a second picture on his desk. It was one I shot. Henry in a leather jacket, sitting on his Triumph Rocket III. I sniffed and smiled. That’s my tiger.
I decided to write him a note.
“I left you the Triumph. It’s in the parking lot, level two. I’m taking your Mercedes. It’s a long story. We’ll talk tonight, won’t we, Henry?” I hesitated, then wrote “I love you” and signed my name.
I opened his desk drawer looking for his keys. I knew that Henry was a creature of extreme habit and that he always kept his keys in the same small drawer divider in the front right. I grabbed the keys as my eyes fell on the edge of a folder barely visible beneath a stack of papers. The name on the folder’s edge made me shiver:
Anders.
Rene pushed open the door to her mother’s room. John Aldridge looked up from the Bible in his lap.
“Hi, Daddy. Hi, Mom,” she said, touching her shoulder.
“Rene, what’s wrong?”
“Wendi.” She hesitated. “She’s in some kind of trouble with the law.”
John leaned forward. “The law?”
“Two police officers were at the house this morning. They were asking about Cindy Swanson and Yolanda Pate. It’s like they have suspicions that Wendi had something to do with their deaths. Later when I was driving her car, the police stopped me again, looking for her.”
“I talked with an officer who was watching the house earlier this morning. Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. She’s out looking for evidence that can clear her.”
Her father nodded. “That’s our Wendi. Always trying to find a way to clear her guilt.” He sighed. “And the running makes her look even more guilty.”
“Guilt?”
Ruth pushed her chair around to face her daughter. “She can’t forgive herself.”
Rene tilted her head in a question.
Her father explained. “She feels responsible for putting her mother in that chair.”
“You know that?”
“Of course.”
“Then you knew about her baby?”
John nodded. “Not at the time.” He took Ruth’s hand. Rene watched as her parents’ eyes met. “Mother told me later.”
“But why didn’t you tell Wendi?”
“It’s not for me to tell.” He paused. “Wendi needs to confront this herself.”
“She thinks you’ll judge her.”
He shook his head. “She only hears half the message.”
Rene understood. “Judgment.” She looked at her parents. “What’s the other half?”
Her mother spoke the word that warmed Rene’s soul: “Forgiveness.” Then she asked, “Have you tried calling her?”
“All day. I think her phone is off. She took off on Henry’s motorcycle. She thought the police would be looking for her car.”
“That’s crazy,” Ruth said. “That bike’s too big for her.”
Rene shrugged. “I’m beginning to understand that Wendi is willing to do just about anything to protect her reputation.”
Ruth frowned. “Go after her, John.”
“Where would I go?”
Rene folded her arms across her chest and looked out the window down the hill towards the lake. “Wendi wouldn’t say where she was going. She didn’t want me to be in a place of having to lie to cover for her.”
“So what do we do?” Ruth asked her husband.
“What I should’ve done all along with Wendi — put it into God’s hands and trust him.”
Rene nodded and bowed her head in response. If only Wendi believed that.
She hardly knew how to pray. In her mind, she formulated words from her heart. Show her, Father. Help her to believe in your love.
I opened the folder and placed it on the top of Henry’s desk. At first glance, the contents seemed mundane. Closer inspection quickened my heart. Copies of prescriptions, hundreds of them, all for the drug Oxycontin, were arranged by date. I leafed through the contents. Why would Henry make copies of prescriptions? And why so many for one drug?
Why is the folder titled “Anders”?
I thought back to my breakfast chat with Henry the previous morning. When I’d brought up Anders’ name, Henry blanched. The image of my iceman dropping his butter knife played over in my mind. “Anders is a druggie. A dealer. If he’s covering something up, and you expose him, he seems the type to seek revenge.” I remembered the fear that flashed across my husband’s face. “Stay away from him.”
I paged through the paper, searching for anything that might clue me in. Two names stood out. Henry had written prescriptions for Linda Anders on four occasions, each time dispensing another fifty tablets of the drug. I recognized only one other name: Lanny Bedford. His name had been on the prescription for Oxycontin that was on my bedside stand the night Yolanda Pate died. It was another puzzle piece from my crazy week that I didn’t understand and Henry hadn’t been able to explain away.
I shoved the folder back into the top drawer and grabbed Henry’s Mercedes keys. I checked my watch. Five o’clock. I had just enough time to take a look around the Anderses’ place in Ruckersville and get back to make supper for Henry.
Despite my husband’s warnings, I drove north on 29, determined to unravel the connection of Anders to the mystery swirling around me. I needed to examine Anders’ truck and the grille. I needed to understand why Anders’ name was on a folder in my husband’s desk. Anders is a drug dealer. Henry wrote hundreds of narcotics prescriptions and keeps them in a folder labeled “Anders.” The next logical connection tightened a knot in my stomach. Was Henry helping Anders get drugs?
That made no sense. The Henry I married would never participate in something like this. Or would he?
Thirty minutes later, I passed the Anderses’ small ranch homestead twice, moving slowly down the winding country road wondering about the best approach. I really only wanted to look at the truck again, and maybe take a look around the garage to see where Jesse might have stashed away the protective grille. Unfortunately, the house stood on a little knoll, so approaching on foot or by car was out unless I wanted to be spotted right away.
The Anderses’ place was just past a small Exxon station that housed a convenience store. I decided to park there and cut across a field to the edge of their property, then approach from the edge of the woods. At least there I’d have a better chance of reaching the truck to take a few new pictures before I aroused any suspicions. I thought about going straight to the front door and knocking, but figured if Jesse was really hiding something, I’d have a better chance of getting information by coming in under the radar, so to speak.
I remembered the dogs just as I reached the edge of the property. It looked like a one-hundred-meter dash to the back of the house. The truck cab was in the driveway. I made it halfway to the free-standing garage behind the house when I was joined by a large Doberman Pinscher. I froze, standing still as the dog growled, sniffed my outstretched hand, and then rolled over to let me scratch his brown belly. From that spot on, he seemed content to walk along with me until I reached the garage and he was distracted by a rabbit. I studied the house. There were lights on and the faint sounds of a familiar country music band drifting towards me.
Hoping Jesse Anders was occupied, I decided to look at the truck first and get a few new photographs. I began by inspecting the front end. I ran my hand along the creased fender and frowned. Chris Black was right. The fender had been scrubbed clean. There was no sign of blue paint, not even the dime-size chip I’d seen before. I took pictures from ten angles and glanced toward the house. So far, so good.
Emboldened by the lack of any interference, I decided to test my theory about the way Anders had set up the accident by seeing whether the vehicle would coast if I could get it into neutral with the emergency brake off. I opened the driver’s door and slipped in. I knocked the gearshift into neutral and released the parking brake. The vehicle edged forward towards the edge of the driveway and the sloping field beyond. I jerked back up on the handbrake to arrest the movement. That didn’t prove anything to me except that the vehicle could have run away if the brake hadn’t been set, something I think Anders should have noticed right away if he always parked the cab in the same place.
I looked around the inside of the cab. There was an empty Burger King cup on the floor and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. In the glove box, I found something more interesting. Behind a pair of mirror sunglasses were two pharmacy pill bottles. I read the labels slowly. Both were Oxycontin. Prescriptions to a Mary B. Smith and a Brent Somers. And both written by my husband.
I closed my hand around one of the bottles and shoved it into my camera bag and threw the other one back into the glove box. I didn’t like this at all. I slipped from the truck and tried to close the door quietly. Inside I was fuming. I thought about the narcotics in my possession. Henry is going to answer all my questions tonight. What is he going to say about this?
I turned my attention to the garage, moving quickly, with a glance over my shoulder towards the house. I tried the door handle. Locked. I rubbed a smudge from the window with my hand and squinted through the glass into the darkness.
I sighed, seeing only my own face in reflection. I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust and shifted to cup my hands around my eyes to block out the light. As I lifted my hands, I caught sight of a man reflected in the window. He wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt and held a pipe lifted above his head like a man about to swing an axe.
I gasped and felt a sharp pain in the back of my head as everything went black.
CHAPTER 27
After his case, Henry retreated to his office and locked the door. He opened the lowest drawer of his filing cabinet and retrieved a small box. Inside were ten vials of Fentanyl, a powerful narcotic, enough to keep an addict like Anders happy for a long time.
From the pocket of his white coat, Henry lifted another vial, tilting it upside down so that he could access it from the bottom. He plunged the tip of a needle and withdrew three milliliters of the clear fluid. Then, he carefully distributed the fluid into the vials of narcotic.
That ought to be just enough.
He placed the box in his briefcase and hung up his white coat. That’s when he saw the note. He stared at the paper. I left you the Triumph. It’s in the parking lot, level two. I’m taking your Mercedes. It’s a long story. We’ ll talk tonight, won’t we, Henry? I love you. Wendi.
He folded the paper into perfect quarters and slid it into his shirt pocket, picked up his briefcase, and headed for the freedom of his Triumph, wondering if he was man enough to follow through with his plan.
I awoke slowly, inventorying my body parts. I opened my eyes. Where am I? I explored a painful goose egg on the top of my head and looked around. It appeared I’d been placed in a small bedroom. Tan ceiling with a water spot from an old leak. Worn curtains. I put my hands to my side. I’d been placed on a bed. I started to rise up when my neck sent out a screaming pain message. “Ugh.”
“Well, look who’s waking up.” The voice was female and came from the foot of the bed.
I struggled up on one elbow and squinted towards a woman. She appeared midthirties, perhaps my age. She sat in a wheelchair holding my camera bag in her lap. She turned over the picture ID badge I had attached to the handle. It was something I’d had made to identify me as an accident reconstructionist. She reached forward and dropped the bag on the foot of the bed. “You were blonde, huh?”
I rubbed the back of my head. “Where am I?”
“Maybe you should let me ask the questions. What are you, some sort of photographer?”
I strained to focus. “Some sort. I do accident investigation.” I paused. “What happened to me?”
“Let’s just say you were caught trespassing.”
I started to remember. I’d come to the Anderses’ house to see how Jesse might be connected to Yolanda’s and Cindy�
�s deaths.
The lady in the chair huffed. “My husband’s such a fool. He thought he knew all about you.”
A man came in behind her and pointed a handgun at me. “I told you to tell me when she came to.”
“She just woke up.” The woman backed up her wheelchair by using a small joystick. “How rude of me,” she said. “I haven’t even made introductions. Mrs. Henry Stratford, I’m Linda Anders.” She pointed to her husband. “And this is Jesse, my husband.”
“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Maybe you should tell me why you were snooping around!”
“I was asked by your insurance agent to investigate your truck accident.”
Jesse smirked. “And I suppose your investigation included helping yourself to my medications.”
I followed his eyes to the top of a nearby dresser to the bottle of Oxycontin I’d placed in my camera bag. My mind raced ahead trying to connect with a rational thought. “I — I saw my husband’s name on the bottles.” I struggled to a sitting position.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” the lady said.
“So I’ll leave. Pardon me for the intrusion.” I started to stand, but immediately felt dizzy.
Jesse shoved me back onto the bed. “Not so fast.”
The sound of an engine revving in the driveway caught the Anderses’ attention. I recognized it immediately as the sound of Henry’s Triumph motorcycle.
Linda backed her wheelchair to the window and lifted the curtain. I caught a glimpse of the cycle just as my husband dismounted.
“Henry!” I said.
Jesse cursed. “What’s he doing here?” He pointed the gun at me. “Did you tell him you were going to be here?”
I shook my head. “No!”
“Give me the gun.” Linda held up her hand towards Jesse. It wasn’t a request.
He sighed and handed it to her.
“Go see what he wants,” she ordered. “I’ll stay with snoopy here and make sure she doesn’t make a sound.” She glared at me. “Not a peep, you understand? We have nothing to lose by killing you.” I watched as she sneered at her husband. “You told me she was already dead.”