Dead Folks' blues d-1

by Steven Womack

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You’ll get through this okay.”

  We strolled casually into the room. Standard practice at the funerals I’ve attended calls for the closest, most grieving, family member to guide each visitor up to the coffin to pay respects by remarking how natural the person looks in death. I genuinely hated that custom, mainly because nobody looks natural in death. They just look dead.

  Two other people were already in there now, standing close together a few feet away from the coffin. The woman was my height, within an inch or so, with striking black hair flowing down over squared shoulders. Even from behind, I could tell she was a looker. The guy standing next to her barely came to her chin: rumpled khaki suit, slightly dumpy around the waist, thinning curly mousy brown hair. Odd pair, these two, I thought. I sensed from their proximity that they weren’t strangers.

  Rachel led me around them to the open lid of the coffin. She stared down at Connie and let loose with a deep sigh, then squeezed my arm tightly.

  “God, I can’t believe it,” she said, sniffling and pulling me close. I put an arm around her and scrunched her shoulders. She stifled a sob, largely without success.

  “I’m so sorry, Rachel,” I said. And I was.

  She raised her head again and stiffened her neck, as if gathering strength for the next two days.

  “I know, Harry. I appreciate your being here. It means worlds to me.”

  She stepped back, turned from the coffin toward me. “I’m sorry it took this to get you back into my life,” she continued. “But I am glad you’re my friend again.”

  “I never wasn’t your friend, Rach. Things just happen the way they happen, that’s all.”

  She gazed at me for a long time, intently, seriously, a look that was as much troubled as saddened, as much afraid as grieved.

  “Maybe it’s not too late to get it right this time,” she said, almost a whisper.

  I was close to being embarrassed, standing here in front of Conrad Fletcher’s coffin, talking to his wife this way. Then, I thought, what the hell, he can’t hear us.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Maybe.”

  A throat cleared behind us. I suddenly remembered that we weren’t alone. I turned. The guy in the khaki suit was staring at us uncomfortably, the pale light mostly unflattering on his sallow complexion. The woman, though, was as elegant and as lovely as I’d guessed from a rearview shot. Her skin was smooth, flawless, her features sharp and beautifully defined. Her cheekbones would give Katharine Hepburn’s a run for their money.

  “Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, holding out a hand, “I’m Rachel Fletcher.”

  “I’m Al Zitin, Dr. Al Zitin. And this is Dr. Jane Collingswood. We were taking our surgical residencies under Dr. Fletcher. We’re so sorry about this.”

  Zitin and Collingswood, I thought. What a nice surprise.

  14

  This voice inside my head said: think fast, boy. Rachel obviously hadn’t met these two and couldn’t know that Jane Collingswood and Albert Zitin were firmly established in the ranks of Conrad haters. I knew she was about to introduce me to them, but as who? Did I want them to know I was an investigator? Did I not want them to know? I wish I’d read a few more books on this business.…

  “Thank you for coming,” Rachel said, extending her hand now to Jane Collingswood. “This has been a terrible shock to all of us. All of us who loved him, respected him.”

  I thought I detected a slight twitch in Al’s right eye. Dr. Jane, though, was beautifully sculptured ice.

  “This is Harry Denton,” Rachel said, pointing to me.

  “Hi,” I interrupted. “I’m an old family friend. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  We shook hands and made pleasantries for a moment. Then we all turned, as if choreographed, toward the coffin. It was a profoundly uncomfortable moment.

  “We just came by to pay our respects,” Al Zitin said. “We’ve got to get back to the hospital in a bit.”

  “Yes,” Jane Collingswood agreed. “I’m sorry we can’t stay too long.”

  “When is the service?” Zitin asked.

  “Tomorrow at three. I didn’t see any reason to delay. This has been bad enough for all of us without dragging it out.”

  Jane Collingswood looked at Rachel for a second, then said, “I think you’re being very brave. I don’t know how I’d hold up if I were in your shoes.”

  I did. Jane Collingswood could survive the sinking of the Titanic. Her eyes were deep, intelligent, determined. And, by the way, incredibly lovely.

  “Don’t let all this fool you,” Rachel said. “I’ve had my bad moments. But I know that Connie would have wanted me to hold up. He had such high standards, for himself and everyone else.”

  There went that twitch again in Zitin’s eye. “Yes, he certainly did. He was a tough taskmaster.”

  “But no tougher on anyone else than he was on himself,” Jane added.

  “We’ll all miss him,” Zitin concluded.

  “Yes, we’ll all miss him.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel said, taking both their hands in hers. “Connie’s work meant a lot to him. People meant a lot to him. He would have appreciated your coming by today.”

  Amidst Rachel’s incredible graciousness, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that people were starting to file into the visitation room in some number now. James Hughes, wearing a crumpled green sport coat over a white shirt that he might have slept in, wandered in with four other obvious medical students. I didn’t recognize any of the others.

  I turned my attention back to Rachel.

  “Thank you so much for coming by,” she said, finishing her speech.

  “We were glad to do it,” Jane Collingswood said, unwrapping her hand from Rachel’s and extending it toward me. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Denton.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, taking her hand. There was something solid, slightly cold, in her grip. Jane Collingswood was an unreadable woman, reserved, cards held close to her chest. Could she kill a man? I asked myself. “I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  Zitin extended his hand to me as well. I shook it. His palms were wet, his grip slightly unsure. “Maybe we’ll get to see you again, sometime,” he said.

  “I hope so.” Zitin didn’t impress me as the kind of guy who’d have the nerve to kill someone in cold blood. Then again, he’s a doctor. He’d know what he was doing.

  Rachel looked over Zitin’s shoulder at the crowd milling in, then disengaged herself politely to take care of her other guests. How do people get through these ordeals? I wondered. I watched Zitin and Collingswood as they meandered toward the door, pausing to speak to a couple of colleagues, shaking hands with a student, making more small talk. People shook their heads sadly, as if wondering how anything this horrible could disorder their safe professional world.

  I watched them until they left the room, then shifted through the crowd as quickly as possible and followed them. Their pace inside the room had been slow, respectful, dignified. But once they got out into the hallway, their heels clicked away like a mechanic’s ratchet. I picked up my pace to stay ten feet or so after them, then watched as they went through the double doors into the same back parking lot where I’d left my car.

  This was one of those times when I really had to wing it. I wanted to talk to them, to ask the kind of questions that would provide some indication of whether they might really be involved in this mess. But what questions? How could I feel them out without putting them so on guard they’d lock down completely?

  Damn, man, I’m going to have to take some lessons in this one of these days. But then I remembered something I learned a long time ago as a newspaper reporter, something that helped me get past the suspicions and distrust that people naturally seem to attribute to reporters: when all else fails, tell the truth.

  I shuffled up behind them just as Zitin was fumbling with the key to his 300Z. He crossed around in back of the car to t
he passenger’s door, then opened it and held it for Jane.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “you guys got a minute?”

  They turned to me. Jane, I noticed, was cool, subdued. Zitin flicked his eyes over to me, then back at her, then back and forth a few times. Nervous already.

  I walked up to the deep-blue sports car, wondering just what surgical residents make to afford this kind of wheels. Maybe he came from money, I thought.

  “Yes, Mr.…” she said, “Denton, was it?”

  “Yeah, Harry Denton.” I hesitated a moment, then plunged in. “What Mrs. Fletcher said in there is true. I’m an old family friend. I’ve known Rachel and Connie since we were undergraduates together. But I’m also a private investigator, and I’ve been retained by Rachel to look into Conrad’s death.”

  Okay, so I wasn’t being entirely truthful. I’d actually been retained by Rachel to get Connie out of trouble with his bookie. But all things being relative, this truth was close enough to the real truth, and would serve for now.

  Zitin flushed visibly. The doctor was about as smooth as a fourteen-year-old caught locked in a bathroom with last month’s Playboy. Jane narrowed her eyes and looked at me. I thought she was being somewhere between suspicious and sexy, then I realized the sun was coming over my shoulder and blinding her. I grinned on the inside, remembering what my father told me about his World War II flying days: always come at your enemy out of the sun.

  “Private investigator,” she commented. “I thought I’d heard your name before. You were the detective who found Dr. Fletcher’s body.”

  “Yeah, that’s more or less how it happened.”

  “I should think you’d be more worried about the police investigating you,” she said coolly.

  “Let’s just say I’ve had a talk or two with them.”

  “I’ll bet. And what do you want from us?”

  Zitin, I noticed, was nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I’m no expert on body language, but I know anxiety when I see it.

  “I’m trying to get a portrait of Dr. Fletcher’s relationships with his colleagues at the hospital, the med school. I understand that you and Dr. Fletcher didn’t necessarily get along that well. I just wondered if you’d be willing to tell me about it.”

  Zitin pursed his lips, seemingly irritated now, as if he had somewhere he needed to be and I was keeping him from getting there. Which was probably true.

  “Now’s not particularly convenient,” Jane said. “We both have commitments.”

  “Can I drop by the hospital sometime?”

  “We’re awfully busy there,” Zitin shot back.

  “I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “I don’t know-” he said.

  Jane interrupted him. “I suppose if we don’t talk to you, then you’re going to be suspicious of us. Right?”

  I smiled at her. “Probably.”

  “Then I’ll make time to talk to you. Check in at the switchboard. They’ll page me. That all right with you, Albert?”

  Zitin scowled, not wanting to have anything to do with this, but not wanting to buck her either. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  Jane Collingswood started to slide past the door Zitin held open for her. “There is one thing,” she said.

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  “Most of us came down here primarily to make sure he was really dead.”

  “Jane!” Zitin said. He practically tripped over himself helping her into the car. Then he scrambled to the driver’s side. He peeled out of the parking lot, jerking into traffic without stopping. I stood there in the hot sun, grinning.

  I could see why he was in love with her.

  Back inside the funeral home, James spotted me in the main hall.

  “I see you met Dr. Collingswood and Dr. Zitin,” he said, as we stood in a corner away from everyone else, kind of underneath the curving staircase.

  “Yeah, but they wouldn’t talk to me. We set up an appointment for later. So tell me, guy, how come you showed up here? You didn’t like Fletcher very much. Why pay respects?”

  James hung his head slightly, a lock of his long hair falling down on his forehead. “Most of us came here to make sure the guy’s really dead.”

  “You’re the second person to say that to me in the last five minutes. What’s the story here, babe? How come everybody hated the guy? Really.”

  James surveyed the room, making sure no one was close enough to hear.

  “Med school’s rough enough without being nailed just because some smart s.o.b. doesn’t like you.”

  “C’mon, James. Didn’t like you?”

  He bristled a little but kept a cool head. “I’m no dummy, Harry. And I work my butt off. What I’m not clever at is sucking up. And the only way to get anywhere with Fletcher was to suck up to him or, if you were the kind of woman he took a notion for, to hop in the sack with him.”

  “That’s a pretty rough accusation these days,” I said. “How come he hasn’t been brought up on sexual misconduct charges? Women don’t put up with that garbage like they used to.”

  “I don’t have any doubt that he would have someday, one way or another. In fact, a couple of women came forward, but they mysteriously wound up leaving school before anything could happen.

  “You see, Harry, he knew that for every med student, just surviving medical school’s the be-all and end-all. You know what you do when you flunk out of med school, Harry? You go to work as a pharmaceutical salesman, or you wind up running a place like this.…” He swept a small arc with his arms, taking in the surroundings.

  “Fletcher had a way of getting to you,” James continued. “He knew that most of us would do anything to stay in school. He was cutthroat, and he was politically powerful. I don’t know if he had pictures of the dean with a goat or what, but nobody crossed Fletcher. I hated the guy. I admit it. Rumor was that he was trying to bust Jane Collingswood out of her residency program. He had the hots for her, and he figured if she wouldn’t put out for him, then he’d drill her out of the program.”

  I had a hard time visualizing Jane Collingswood in the same thought with the term put out. High school cheerleaders put out. For women like Jane Collingswood, something much more elegant is required.

  “And Zitin’s obviously gaga for her,” I said.

  “Half the hospital is,” James said. “But I’m not sure Zitin’s got any further with her than the rest of us.”

  “And when Fletcher didn’t have any luck either,” I reflected.

  “He was going to ruin Jane’s life. Professionally speaking, anyway. Getting busted out of a residency program means you’re still a doctor. But you’re not likely to get anywhere with that on your record.”

  “What was that you were saying about doctors making a lot of money?”

  James smiled. “If they’re any good, they do.”

  “Enough money to kill for?”

  He shook his head. “Wake up and smell the coffee. In a heartbeat, Harry. In a heartbeat.”

  15

  I ducked out of the funeral parlor, cranked up the Ford, and drove out to the intersection of Division and 21st, near the law school, then out 21st until I found a parking spot in front of the Medical Arts Building. I had no idea when the shifts changed at the hospital, but there was something I wanted to chase down.

  While hanging around the funeral home, I replayed the night of Fletcher’s murder over and over again in my head. I was walking down a long hall, and I saw this nurse come out of a room. I can’t be sure, but I seem to remember it was the same room where I found Fletcher. But the lights were down low; it was late. I was tired, and my leg was bothering me. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and when you stand in the middle of a long hall peppered on both sides with identical pastel doors, they all blend into haze.

  Then it came to me, and I could have slapped myself for not figuring it out sooner. I would have, too, except that I’d already had a years�
� worth of slapping in the past couple of days.

  I remembered the nurse, and I remembered the maybe-two-second good look I got at her as she buttoned the top buttons on her uniform and nervously smoothed out the wrinkles. But what I mostly remembered was Marsha Helms, my buddy at the coroner’s office, telling me that Conrad Fletcher had managed to ride the hormonal roller coaster one last time before somebody whacked him. Not to put too indelicate an edge on it, Conrad didn’t strike me as the type to be in love with his right hand. So I figured somebody else had to be there. And I figured that nurse was my best bet.

  All I had to do now was find her.

  Time was a factor as well. I knew, from my newspaper days, that the one advantage I might have over the police was that dear Dr. Marsha had let me in on the autopsy results in advance. Ordinarily, the full report wouldn’t be given to the police until the toxicology tests were completed, and that took at least seventy-two hours. Which meant that for about the next twenty-four hours, I was the only one who knew that Conrad Fletcher’s last moments on this earth had been spent basking in a post-sexual glow. If I were going to make use of what I knew, I had to hustle.

  It was loads of fun being back in the hospital. My playback of Fletcher’s death night became even more vivid. I walked down the hall, past the information booth, to the elevators, then rode up to the fourth floor. Instinctively, my ankle began to throb, as if the mere return to Horror Hospital brought with it an aura of pain.

  I smiled once again at the irony of a doctor being murdered in his workplace. It was damn funny as long as you weren’t the doctor doing the dying. Hospitals are a good place to die, or so I’m told. As good a place as any, I guess.

  I stopped briefly at the nurses’ station, where the same woman who’d been there two nights ago still sat in front of the computer terminal, punching in numbers while the green glow of the screen danced in front of her. She didn’t turn around; it was still early enough that there were visitors around. There was nobody else behind the glass with her just then, so I turned and walked down the same hall I’d been in the other night. The hair on the back of my neck crinkled.