Suture Self

by Mary Daheim

  Judith heaved a big sigh. “Yes, I know he does. I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet.”

  “It’s about time,” Renie said, still testy. “Your problem, coz, is that you hate making decisions, you can’t stand rocking the boat, you’re absolutely terrified of change. Go ahead, make out that family tree, and fill in all of Joe’s family. His brothers, his parents, the whole damned clan.”

  “I never knew his mother,” Judith said, as if her early death might give some excuse for abandoning the project.

  “Do it,” Renie barked. “I’ll help.”

  Before Judith could respond, a burly, uniformed man in his late fifties poked his head in the door. “Mrs. Jones?” he said in a gravelly voice.

  “Here,” said Renie, raising her left hand. “You’re Torchy Magee?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the security guard responded as another, much younger man in a patrolman’s uniform followed him into the room. “This is Johnny Boxx, that’s with two xx’s, right, Johnny?”

  “Right,” replied the young officer with a tight little smile.

  “He’s fairly new to the force,” Magee said, swaggering a bit as he nodded at Judith and approached Renie’s bed. “Me, I was a cop for over twenty-five years before I retired a while back. Arson, vice, larceny, assault—I did it all, and have the scars to show for it.” He chuckled and gave Johnny Boxx a hearty slap on the back. “Yessir, see this?” He pointed to a long, thin scar on his right cheek. “Attacked by a knife there.” Magee rolled up his left sleeve to reveal another scar. “Shotgun, just below the elbow. Hurt like hell. I was wounded three times, here, in the shoulder, and just above my ear. Got a plate in my head to prove it.”

  “My,” Renie said, keeping a straight face, though Judith could tell it was an effort, “you’ve had some bad luck.”

  “Just doing my job,” Magee responded. “That’s not all, either. I got my nickname, Torchy, when I was in arson. Look, no eyebrows.”

  Sure enough, Magee’s forehead stretched from his eyes to the bald spot on top of his head. “What happened?” Judith asked.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Torchy Magee responded with a chuckle and a wink, “when you’re investigating an arson case, you should make sure the fire is out first.” He chuckled some more, a grating sound, then turned to Renie. “Okay, little lady, let’s hear all about what you saw from this third-story window.”

  “‘Little lady’?” Renie curled her lip.

  “Well…” Torchy shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.” He rested one foot on Renie’s bed frame. “So what’d you see?”

  “I was standing by the window,” Renie began, eyeing Torchy’s foot with annoyance, “when I saw Mr. Kirby leave through the front entrance.”

  Officer Boxx held up a hand. “How did you know it was Mr. Kirby?”

  “I’d just met him,” Renie replied. “He was wearing a trench coat, he had a beard, it wasn’t that hard to identify him three floors up.”

  “Sounds right to me,” Torchy said. “Go on, Mrs. J.”

  “Mrs. Jones,” Renie said with emphasis. “Anyway, he’d just started toward the parking lot when a beige car, a mid-sized sedan, came from out of nowhere and struck Mr. Kirby down.”

  “Heh, heh.” Torchy chuckled. “Now, Mrs.…Jones, a car can’t come out of nowhere. Which direction?”

  Renie looked exasperated. “I was watching Mr. Kirby. You know damned well a car can come from three directions out there—the parking lot, the main drive into the hospital, and the ambulance and staff area off to the right of the main entrance. That is, my right, from my point of view, through my window.”

  Torchy’s expression had grown serious. “Through this window.”

  “Yes.” Renie’s patience appeared to be wearing thin.

  “Tell us about the car,” Officer Boxx inquired. “It was a beige medium-sized sedan. Any idea how old or what make?”

  “Very clean,” Renie answered, “so I thought it was fairly new. It was shaped like so many cars these days, especially the Japanese imports. Bill and I have a Toyota, about the same color as the car I saw. In fact, our car looks like every other car these days. Sometimes I get mixed up in a parking lot and try to get into the wrong one. My husband and I call our Toyota Cammy. Except Bill says Cammy is a boy. I don’t agree. Cammy’s a girl.”

  “Can’t you tell by looking underneath?” Torchy laughed aloud at his joke.

  “I never thought of that,” Renie said with a straight face and a flashing eye.

  “License plate,” Boxx put in. “Did you get any kind of look?”

  “Ah…” Renie bit her lip. “I didn’t notice.”

  The young policeman frowned. “Do you remember if it had in-state plates?”

  Her eyes half closed, Renie seemed to be concentrating. “Yes, I think so. I can see it from the rear as it headed toward the parking lot. I’m a very visual person.”

  “Huh?” said Torchy.

  “I’m a designer, an artist by trade,” Renie explained. “I see more than most people do, but sometimes I don’t realize it until later.”

  “But you didn’t see any letters or numbers,” the policeman prompted.

  “No.” Renie looked chagrined.

  “So this car went where after hitting Mr. Kirby?” Torchy inquired.

  “Toward the parking lot,” Renie replied. “You can’t see much of the lot because of those evergreen trees and shrubs. Anyway, I was riveted on Mr. Kirby.”

  “How is he?” Judith broke in.

  “Kirby?” Torchy turned around. “Broken leg, bruises and so forth. Kid stuff.” The security guard touched his head, presumably where he’d been shot. “He’ll live.”

  “That’s more than his wife did,” Renie declared. “She never got out of this place alive.”

  “Now, now,” Torchy said in a soothing tone. “That was a different matter.”

  “How different?” Judith asked.

  “Well,” Torchy began, then paused and scratched his bald spot, “she had an operation. And then…well, maybe she was taking some stuff on the side. You know.” He winked again.

  “Actually,” Renie said, “we don’t know. Mr. Kirby doesn’t think his wife was taking ‘stuff on the side.’ Have you talked to him, Security Officer Magee?”

  Torchy gave a little jump. “Me? Why, sure. That’s my job. But what do husbands know about what wives do when they’re not with the old man?” He winked a third time. “Or the other way around, for that matter. Besides, she was an actress. You know what those theater people are like.”

  Renie held up a hand. “If you wink again, I’ll have to kill you. Yes, I know something about theater people. But the real question is, what do you know about the untimely deaths of three well-known local residents in this very hospital? Isn’t that your business?”

  Johnny Boxx had strolled to the door, maybe, Judith thought, in an effort to disassociate himself from Torchy Magee. “If you think of anything else,” Boxx said to Renie in a courteous voice, “let us know.” It was clear he meant the police, not security.

  “I will,” Renie promised.

  Torchy lingered after Officer Boxx went out into the hall. “Let me know first,” he said to Renie, his jocular manner evaporating.

  “Sure,” Renie said, her brown eyes wide with innocence.

  Judith pushed herself up on the pillows. “Drugs, huh?” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “Fremont and Somosa both, I heard. And Bob Randall committed suicide. How horrible.”

  Torchy’s close-set gray eyes narrowed. “Where’d you hear all that?”

  Judith shrugged. “Hospital scuttlebutt. You know how people like to gossip.”

  The security man, who had been midway to the door, stopped at the foot of Judith’s bed. “Don’t pay attention to what you hear. Of course,” he went on, lightly caressing the iron bedstead rail, “sometimes truth has a way of getting out.” Once again, Torchy winked.

  “That’s so,” Judith said, smirking a bit and ignoring Ren
ie, who was making threatening gestures at Torchy with her cheese knife. “It’s hard to imagine why Bob Randall would kill himself. It’s even harder to imagine how he did it.” She gave a little shudder, which wasn’t entirely feigned.

  Torchy frowned. “I’m not sure I know yet. That is, I couldn’t say if I did, of course. That’d be telling tales out of school.” Torchy gave the bedstead a quick slap. “Gotta go. No rest for the wicked.”

  The security man left. The cousins stared at each other.

  “What do you think?” Renie inquired.

  “I think,” Judith said slowly as her eyelids began to droop, “that no matter how Bob Randall died, it wasn’t suicide. I’m willing to bet that it was…”

  She fell asleep before she could finish the sentence.

  SIX

  JOE AND BILL arrived shortly after three o’clock. Both had already heard about Bob Randall’s sudden death. Joe was wild; Bill was thoughtful.

  “I don’t get it,” Joe raged, pacing up and down the small room. “There’s nowhere you can go in this entire world and not run into a dead body. If I shot myself right now with my trusty thirty-eight, and you entered a cloistered nunnery tomorrow, the first thing you’d find is the Mother Superior’s corpse, carved up like a damned chicken!”

  “Joe,” Judith pleaded, “you know I was apprehensive even before…”

  “Post-op anxiety, depression, fear—it could play out that way,” Bill was saying quietly to Renie, “but I doubt it. On the other hand…”

  “I’ll have you moved,” Joe said, suddenly stopping between the cousins’ beds. “To some rehab place; I think there’s one connected to our HMO…”

  “…Bob Randall may have been overcome with family difficulties,” Bill continued. “Maybe, when he signed that release before surgery, he envisioned his own mortality and…”

  “No, what am I thinking of?” Joe said, catching himself. “There’d still be a damned body somewhere. It’s hopeless, it’s beyond comprehension, it’s…”

  “…given his other problems, Randall felt his life was unbearable.” Bill turned his palms up in a helpless gesture.

  Judith turned toward Bill. “What did you say? About Bob Randall’s family problems?”

  Bill gave Judith a vaguely apologetic look. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. You see, I’ve been treating Margie Randall for some time.”

  “What?” Both cousins shrieked at Bill.

  “Good God almighty!” Joe exclaimed under his breath and fell into Judith’s visitor’s chair.

  “You never mentioned Bob Randall’s wife as a patient,” Renie said in an accusing tone.

  “Of course not,” Bill replied calmly. “I don’t disclose my patients’ identities to you unless it’s someone you’ve never heard of and the name is meaningless. In fact, I often make up the names.”

  “Patient confidentiality,” Renie scoffed. “How come you didn’t speak to Margie Randall in the waiting room yesterday morning?”

  “Because it would have frightened and embarrassed her,” Bill said. “Besides, I don’t think she saw me. Which is understandable. Part of her problem is that she’s completely locked into herself.”

  “So what awful problems—other than Margie—did Bob Randall have with his family?” Judith asked, trying to ignore Joe’s angry glare.

  Bill sighed. “Honestly, I shouldn’t say. But we may be involved in a homicide here, and eventually, the media will get hold of all the details. Besides, Margie canceled her last two appointments and may not still consider me her psychologist; I can allow that the two Randall children are deeply troubled. In fact, they’re a big, fat mess.”

  “That’s clinical enough,” Renie said, her annoyance fading. “How so?”

  As was his wont, Bill took his time to answer. “Really, I can’t betray a patient’s trust. Nancy, the daughter, and Bob Jr., the son, both have what you might consider life-threatening problems. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “You’re no fun,” Renie said. “I want a divorce.”

  “You can’t have one,” Bill responded. “But I can assure you that life on the home front wasn’t all highlight reels. Bob might have had good reasons to do himself in.”

  “No such luck,” Joe said glumly with a dirty look at his wife. “I’ll bet my old classic MG that he got himself killed. I should be so lucky to have my charming bride run into a plain old suicide.”

  Judith felt too tired to carry the fight any further. “Knock it off, Joe, please.” She gave him her most winsome look. “Be reasonable. I had to have this surgery, Good Cheer is the only hospital in town that does it, I’m incapacitated, and it’s not—and never has been—my fault that I keep running into dead people. I’m just an ordinary wife, mother, and innkeeper.”

  “You’d run into fewer dead people if you were a coroner,” Joe muttered. “Okay, okay, your usual logic has made a slight impression. For now. Here,” he said, reaching down to the shopping bag he’d placed on the floor. “I got you some books and magazines.”

  Bill, meanwhile, had given Renie another Falstaff’s grocery bag. A veteran of his wife’s foraging, he stepped back as wrappers ripped, paper flew, and liquid spilled from an unknown source. Renie removed sandwiches, peeled carrots, sliced cantaloupe, potato chips, two packages of cookies, a box of graham crackers, and more Pepsi, the beverage she claimed inspired her graphic designs.

  “Great,” Renie enthused, opening one of the sandwiches, which was on a small baguette. “Lunch was inedible.” She leaned toward Judith. “Ham or chicken?”

  “I’m not that hungry,” Judith admitted.

  Joe was concerned, so Judith reluctantly related her experience in trying to stand up. “I’ve got to do it again this afternoon. I don’t suppose you could stick around until they make me try it?”

  Joe grimaced. “I can’t, Jude-girl. I’m really sorry. I have to get back on this homeless homicide investigation. I finished the background this morning. Now I’m going to check out the sites where the bodies were found. Both of the murders occurred in the same area, not far from here, under the freeway.”

  Judith knew the area that Joe was talking about. Many homeless people tucked their whole world beneath the city’s major north-south arteries. It wasn’t as aesthetic as the local parks, but citizens and police alike were less apt to hassle them. Still, their ragtag little neighborhoods were occasionally sent packing, a caravan of bundles, bags, and grocery carts. And people. The thought made Judith sad.

  But she wasn’t naïve. “Be careful, Joe. I don’t like this assignment any more than you like me encountering murder.” She paused, a fond expression on her face. “Joe, we have to talk.” Judith paused and swallowed hard. “About Mike. He wants a family tree made up for little Mac’s preschool.”

  “Oh?” Joe’s face was blank.

  Judith nodded. “He called just a while ago. I told him I’d do it.”

  “Preschool?” The word seemed to strike Joe as an afterthought. “Good God, the kid’s only a baby. He’s still wetting his pants.”

  “They teach them to stop in preschool,” Judith responded with a glance for Renie and Bill, who suddenly, discreetly, seemed to be absorbed in their own conversation. “Mac’s not going to enter until the fall. He’ll be two this summer. Anyway, that’s not the point. Don’t you want Mike to know the truth? The last time we discussed this seriously, you seemed crushed because I wasn’t ready to tell him.”

  Joe sighed and scratched at his thinning red hair. “It almost seems like it’s too late.”

  “What do you mean, too late?” Judith was taken aback. “Mike’s over thirty, he’s matured, he ought to know because you and he have never had that father-son intimacy. You’ve been buddies, period.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Joe said, ducking his head. “He’s a grown man. He doesn’t need a father.”

  “Oh, Joe!” Judith put her hands over her mouth and stared wide-eyed at her husband. “I was still in my teens when my dad died, and I m
iss him every day. Your father lived much longer, until you were—what?—almost forty. How can you say such a thing?”

  “Because,” Joe said slowly, “I wasn’t there for Mike when he needed a real father. When Dan died, Mike was about the same age as you were when your dad passed away. I missed out on all those years. And I still marvel at how well Mike turned out. Maybe I owe Dan something, too.”

  Judith bit her lip. “You can’t do this to me. Not after all the agony I’ve been through and the guilt and the—”

  Joe cut Judith off with a wave of his hand. “Stop. This isn’t the time for a family crisis. You need to concentrate on getting well. Let me think it over.” He stood up. “I don’t know why the hell a preschooler needs a family tree. He’d be better off if I built him a tree house.”

  “Do it,” Judith said, forcing a small smile. “That’s what grandpas do. If you weren’t around for Mike, you’re here for Mac.”

  “Right.” Joe’s shoulders slumped. “Got to go. Hey, Bill—let’s hit the pavement.”

  Bill, who had been plucking food particles from Renie’s sling and other parts of her person, stood up. “Okay.” He turned back to Renie. “Joe picked me up at the Toyota place downtown. I left Cammy there to have new windshield wipers put on, just in case it snows.” Bill bent down to kiss his wife on the one spot on her face that wasn’t covered with mayonnaise, butter, or bread crumbs.

  The husbands, who seemed to exit at a rather brisk pace, hadn’t been gone for more than five minutes when Judith glimpsed a patient being rolled down the hall.

  “Who’s that?” Renie asked, following her cousin’s gaze.

  Judith didn’t answer right away, listening to see if she could hear anyone speak. “I couldn’t see, but I wonder if it’s Addison Kirby. I’m almost sure they took whoever it was into Bob Randall’s private room.”

  “How can they?” Renie demanded. “Isn’t that what you’d call a crime scene?”

  “Not as far as the hospital officials are concerned,” Judith said with a frown. “I don’t get it. Nurse Appleby told us that the county has jurisdiction in a sudden hospital death. So why haven’t we seen the sheriff and his men prowling around? The only real cop who showed up was Johnny Boxx, who looks as if he hasn’t sprouted a beard yet.”