Add a nursing home with a high death rate: normal for institutions that provided care of the terminally ill.
Add a middle-aged doctor married to a very young wife who, possibly, was finding her jollies elsewhere with, amongst others, a macho Indian cop and, maybe, a stepson younger than she.
Add a bedraggled covey of old, old men: Scoggins, Petersen, Al Coburn. Even Sam Livingston.
Add a staff of very young, whiz-kid researchers who might be long on talent and short on ethics.
Add a village that was a necropolis of fractured dreams. A village that seemed to be stumbling toward oblivion, that was not merely old but obsolete, showing its toothless mouth and sounding its creaks.
All these were notes in a player piano roll: holes punched in thin paper. And the discordant melody I heard was all about age, the enigma of age. I could understand Thorndecker’s passion to solve it. Compared to what he hoped to do, a walk on the moon was a stroll to the corner drugstore. I mean the man wanted it all.
One other factor crept into my merry-go-round brain … Maybe I was obsessed with youth and age, their mysteries and collisions. I had rejected Joan Powell for what I imagined was a good and logical reason: the difference in our years. But was that really a rational reaction, or had I demonstrated an inherited response I was not even aware of? Something in my cells, or genes, that forced me to discard that good woman? Something to do with the preservation of my species?
I didn’t, I decided, understand anything. All I knew was that right then, I wanted her, needed her. Loved her? Who said that?
I spent the late afternoon that way: stewing. It had been a yo-yo day: I was up, I was down, I was up, I was down. When it came time to shower and dress, preparing for the Reverend Peter Koukla’s “friendly get-together,” I had resolved to put in a token appearance, split as quickly as I reasonably could, and return to the sanctuary of Room 3-F with a jug of comfort provided by Sandy’s Liquors and Fine Wines.
So much for high hopes and good intentions …
Koukla had been right; his place was easy to find. Not only was the porch light on, but the front door was open and there were guests standing outside, drinks in hand, even though it was a sharp night. Cars were parked in Koukla’s driveway, and on both sides of the street. I took my place at the tail end of the line, about a block away, left coat and hat in my locked car, walked back to the party.
If he had organized that bash on short notice, the Reverend had done one hell of a job. I reckoned there were forty or fifty people milling about, drinking up a storm. But after I plunged into the throng, shaking hands and grinning like an idiot, I saw that most of the guests were researchers from the lab and off-duty staff from Crittenden Hall. In other words, Thorndecker had called out the troops.
Most of them were in civvies, but a few were wearing white trousers and short white jackets, as if they had just rushed over from nursing home or laboratory. I didn’t see Mary Thorndecker, but the rest of the clan was there. And Agatha Binder, Art Merchant, Dr. Kenneth Draper, and Ronnie Goodfellow, self-conscious in his uniform. There were others whose names I had forgotten but whose faces were vaguely familiar: the “best people” Goodfellow had introduced on my first morning in Coburn.
There was a punch bowl, and white wine was available. No hard booze. But the kids out on the porch were puffing away like mad, and even inside the house the smell of grass was sweet and thick. Include me out. I had tried pot twice, with Joan Powell, and each time, at the crucial moment, I fell asleep. I’d rather have a hangover.
It was all genial enough, everyone talking, laughing, mixing. No one leaned on me, and Koukla didn’t try to introduce me to everyone; just left me free to roam. I met some of the kid researchers and listened to their patter. The fact that I couldn’t understand their sentences didn’t bother me so much as the fact that I couldn’t understand their words. I had a hazy notion of what “endocrinology” meant, but when they moved down the dictionary to “endocytosis,” they lost me.
“Do you understand what they’re talking about?” I asked Julie Thorndecker.
“Not me,” she said, rewarding me with a throaty chuckle. “I leave all that to my husband. I prefer words of one syllable.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Four-letter words.” Then, when she froze, I added, “Like ‘love’ and ‘kiss’.” I laughed heartily, signifying it was all a big yock, and after awhile her lips smiled.
“Enjoying your stay in Coburn, Mr. Todd?” she asked me.
“Not really. Quiet place. Lonely place.”
“My, my,” she said mockingly. She put a hand on my arm again. She seemed to have a need to touch. “We’ll have to do something about that.”
She was wearing a pantsuit of black velvet. Stud earrings of small diamonds. The gold-link ankle bracelet. She looked smashing. But she could have made a grease monkey’s coveralls look chic.
In that crush, in the jabber of voices around us, it would have been possible to say the most outrageous things—make an assignation: “You do this to me, and I’ll do that to you.”—and no one would have heard. But actually we talked inconsequentialities: her horse, my car, her home, my job. All innocent enough.
Except that as we said nothing memorable, we were jammed up against each other by the mob. I could feel her heat. She made no effort to pull away. And while we yakked, our eyes were locked—and it was like being goosed with an icicle: painful, shivery, pleasurable, frightening, mind-blowing. The look in her eyes wasn’t flirty or seductive; it was elemental, primeval. It was raw sex, stripped of subterfuge. No game-player she. My scenario sounded better to me; I could understand how a man could kill for such a woman.
“There you are!” Dr. Thorndecker said, slipping an arm about his wife’s shoulders. “Entertaining our guest, are you? Splendid! Suppose we get a cup of that excellent punch?”
We worked our way over to the punch bowl. In the process, Julie Thorndecker moved away. If a signal had passed between the doctor and her, I hadn’t caught it.
“A lot of your people here tonight,” I mentioned, sampling a plastic cup of the punch and setting it carefully aside.
Later, thinking about it, I had only admiration for the way he used that offhand comment to lead into exactly what he wanted to say. I think if I had offered, “The price of soybeans in China is going up,” he could have done the same thing. The man was masterful.
“Oh yes,” he said, looking around, suddenly serious. “We should plan more social activities like this. These people work very hard; they not only deserve a break, they need it. It’s not the happiest place to work. I refer to the nursing home, of course, not the lab.”
“I can imagine,” I murmured, pouring myself a paper cup of the white wine. That was a little better.
“Can you?” he said. “I’m not sure anyone not intimately associated with such an institution can even guess the emotional stress involved. We try to remain objective, to refrain from becoming personally involved. But it’s impossible. We do become involved, intimately involved. Even with those we know have only a week, a month, a year to live. Some of them are such marvelous human beings.”
“Of course,” I said. “Maybe, when they accept their fate, know their days are numbered, maybe then they become superior human beings. More understanding. Kinder.”
“You think so?” he asked. His dark eyes came down from the ceiling to focus on me. “Maybe. Although I’m not certain any of us is capable of believing in our own mortality. One effect I have noted, though: the closer to death our patients grow, the more exaggerated their eccentricities become. That’s odd, isn’t it? A man who might have sung aloud occasionally, just sung for his own amusement with no one else present, begins to sing constantly as death approaches. A vain woman becomes vainer, spending all her waking hours making-up and doing her hair. Whatever weakness or whim they might have, intensifies as death approaches.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that is odd.”
“For instance …” he said, almost
dreamily.
No, not dreamily. But he was away from me, disconnected from his surroundings, off someplace I couldn’t reach. It was not just that he was lying; I knew he was. But, while lying, he had retreated deep within himself, to a secret dream. I was seeing another facet of this many-sided man. Now there was almost a stillness in him, a certainty. His stare turned inward, and he seemed to be listening to his own falsehoods, with approval. He was so sure, so sure that what he was doing was right, that the splendid end justified any sordid means.
“He came to us a few years ago,” he said, speaking in a steady voice, but so low that I had to bend close to hear him in that hubbub. Finally, he was almost whispering in my ear. “A man named Petersen. Chester K. Petersen. Pelvic cancer. Terminal. Inoperable. I talked to his personal physician. Petersen had always been a solitary. Almost a recluse. A wealthy man, unmarried, who had let his family ties dwindle. And as his illness worsened, his craving for solitude intensified. Meals were left outside his door. He refused to submit to medical examinations. He seemed anxious to end all human contact. It was as I told you: in the last stages, the eccentricity becomes a dreadful obsession. We’ve seen it—all of us who serve in this field—happen again and again.”
I knew it was a fairy tale, beautifully spun, but I had to hear it out. The man had me locked. I could not resist his certitude.
But in spite of my fascination with what he was saying, I have to tell you this: I was observing him. What I mean is that I was two people. I was a witness, spellbound by his resonant voice and intriguing story. I don’t deny it. But at the same time I was an investigator, searching. What I was looking for was evidence of what I had seen in our previous meetings: the weariness that concluded the first, those racking spasms of pain I had noted during our second interview.
On that night, at that moment, I saw no indication of either: no weariness, no pain.
What I did see were preternaturally bright eyes, that secretive expression, and movements, gestures, that were slowed and glazed. It hit me: this man was drugged. Somehow. On something. He was so drawled out, so spaced and deliberate. He was functioning; no doubt about that. And functioning efficiently. But he was gone. That’s the only way I can express it: he was gone. Off somewhere. Maybe he was dulling the weariness, the pain. I just didn’t know.
“What became of him?” I asked. “This Petersen?”
“He left a will,” Thorndecker said, smiling faintly. “Quite legal. Drawn by a local attorney. Signed and witnessed. In the event of his death, he desired to be buried late at night, or in the early morning hours. Between midnight and dawn. The wording of the will was quite specific. He was to be buried in the Crittenden cemetery. No religious service, no mourners, no funeral. With as little fuss as possible. He just didn’t want the world to note his passing.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Wasn’t it?” he nodded.
“And you respected his wishes?”
“Of course.”
“He died of cancer?”
“Well …” Thorndecker said, pulling gently at the lobe of one ear, “the immediate cause of death was congestive heart failure. But, of course, it was the cancer that brought it on.”
He looked at me narrowly, tilting his head to one side. He had me, and I knew it. Try to fight that diagnosis and that death certificate in a court of law, and see how far you’d get.
He must have glimpsed confusion and surrender in my eyes, for he suddenly slapped me on the shoulder.
“Good Heavens!” he cried. “Enough of this morbidity! Let’s enjoy this evening. Now I’ll leave you to your own devices, and let you meet and talk with some of these fine young people. I’m happy you could attend the Reverend Koukla’s party, Mr. Todd.”
I put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“Before you go,” I said, “I must tell you. Mrs. Cynthia Bingham asked me to give you her regards. Her love.”
The change in him was startling. He froze. His face congealed. Suddenly he was looking back, remembering. He was alone in that crowded room.
“Cynthia Bingham,” he repeated. I couldn’t hear him, but I saw his lips move.
His features became so suddenly tragic that I thought he might burst out weeping.
“Can we ever escape the past, Mr. Todd?” he asked me.
I mean he really asked me. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He was confounded, and wanted an answer.
“No, sir,” I told him. “I don’t think we can.”
He nodded sadly.
He disappeared into the crowd. What a great performance that had been. A bravura! The man had missed his calling; he should have been an actor, playing only Hamlet. Or Lear. He left me stunned, shaken, and almost convinced.
“Mr. Todd,” Dr. Kenneth Draper said, with his nervous smile, “enjoying the party?”
“Beginning to,” I said, pouring myself another cup of white wine. “I haven’t seen Mary Thorndecker this evening. Is she around?”
“Ah, regretfully no,” he said, wiping a palm across a forehead that as far as I could see was completely dry. “I understand she had a previous engagement.”
“Lovely young woman,” I said. “And talented. I liked her paintings.”
He came alive.
“Oh yes!” he said. “She does beautiful things. Beautiful! And she’s such a help to us.”
“A help?”
“In Crittenden Hall. She visits our guests, talks to them for hours, brings them flowers. Things of that sort. She’s very people-oriented.”
“People-oriented,” I repeated, nodding solemnly. “Well, I guess that’s better than being horse-oriented.”
He didn’t pick up on that at all, so I let it slide.
“By the way,” he said, looking about, searching for someone, “Dr. Thorndecker asked us to prepare a report for you. A precis of the research that’s been done to date on aging and its relationship to human cells.”
“Yes, he said he’d get something together for me.”
“Well, we’ve completed it. Mostly photocopies of papers and some original things we’ve been doing in the lab. Are you familiar with the term in vitro?”
“Means ‘In glass,’ doesn’t it?”
“Specifically, yes. Generally, it means under laboratory conditions. That is, in test tubes, dishes, flasks—whatever. In an artificial environment. As opposed to in vivo, which means in the body, in living tissue.”
“I understand.”
“Most of the papers you’ll receive report on experiments with mammalian cells in vitro.”
“But you have experimented on living tissue, haven’t you?” I said. “I saw your animals.”
Also, at that moment, I saw the sudden sweat on his forehead.
“Of course,” he said. “Rats, guinea pigs, chimps, dogs. It’s all there. My assistant has the package for you. Linda Cunningham. She’s around here somewhere.”
He looked about wildly.
“I’ll bump into her,” I soothed him. “And if we don’t get together, you can always drop the package off at the Coburn Inn.”
“I suppose so,” he said doubtfully, “but Dr. Thorndecker was most explicit about getting it to you tonight.”
I nodded, and wandered away. Geniuses might be great guys: fun to read about, fun to know. But I’m not sure I’d care to work for one.
“So glad you could make it, Mr. Todd,” the Reverend Peter Koukla said, clasping my hand in both of his. “You have a drink? Good. It’s a nice white wine, isn’t it?”
“Very nice.”
“Excuse me, please. I must see to the chow.”
I hadn’t heard food called “chow” since Boy Scout camp. Unless, I reflected idly, Koukla was referring to his dog—the kind with a black tongue.
I worked my way across the room to where Agatha Binder and Nurse Stella Beecham were standing stolidly, close together, backs against the wall. They looked like a bas relief in mahogany.
“Ladies,” I greeted them.
�
��Watch your language, buster,” Agatha Binder said, grinning. “So you made it, did you? Well, what would a party be without a guest of honor?”
“Is that what I am?” I asked, smiling with all my boyish charm at Nurse Beecham.
If looks could kill, I’d have been bundling with Chester K. Petersen.
“Mr. Todd!” Art Merchant caroled, twitching. “Nice to see you again. How is your investigation progressing?”
“Leaps and bounds,” I said, turning to him. “Tell me something, Mr. Merchant … Do you ever lend money on trailers?”
“Trailers?”
“Mobile homes.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well … it depends.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I moved away. I’m tall enough to see over heads. I saw Dr. Telford Thorndecker crowding his wife into a corner. He was all over her, not caring. His hands were on her shoulders, arms, stroking her hip, touching her hair. Once he put a finger to her lips. Once he leaned down to kiss her ear. Another role: Dr. Telford Thorndecker, sex fiend.
“They seem very happy,” I said to Constable Ronnie Goodfellow, who was watching the same scene. “Not drinking? Oh … on duty, are you?”
“Yes,” he said, staring at the Thorndeckers. “Just stopped in to say hello.”
“Something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said. “You’re not the only cop in town, are you?”
He turned those black eyes to look at me. Finally …
“Of course not,” he said. “We’ve got the county sheriff’s deputies and the state troopers.”
“No,” I said, “I mean here in Coburn. Are you the only constable?”
“No, sir,” he said. “Four constables. I work mostly nights.”
“Who’s top man?”
“Chief Constable? That’s Anson Merchant.”
“Merchant?” I said. “Related to Art Merchant, the banker?”
“Yes,” Ronnie Goodfellow said shortly, turning his eyes back to the Thorndeckers loving it up in the corner. “The chief is the mayor’s brother.”
“Are you Mr. Todd?” she asked breathlessly.
A plump, little butterball. A Kewpie doll. She was holding out a sealed manila envelope.
The Sixth Commandment Page 19