by Bill Hopkins
I’d mostly say a year to five years, unless you find a bone marrow donor. There are procedures now that make this marrow business almost as easy as donating blood. Your lifespan may be possible for indefinite then. There is also the experimental gene therapy that turns your own blood cells into the little assassins who hunt down and destroy the cancer cells.”
“What a bunch of crap.”
If Al Serafi was offended, he gave no indication. “There are many social agencies to help in these matters.” He handed Rosswell a pamphlet. “You perhaps must talk with someone.”
“Social agencies?” That sounded like a place to get social diseases. Talk with someone? Who could Rosswell talk to? He had no lover, no wife, no child, no brother, no sister, no father, and no mother. Who was his closest relative? He couldn’t remember. How about a friend? He couldn’t imagine discussing something like his impending death with Frizz. That friendship was professional, not personal. Judges in small towns don’t make friends easily. Everyone always wants something from you, especially free legal advice. That made him standoffish.
Rosswell faced a stark fact that cold winter’s day: He was alone in the world.
He said, “I pay tax dollars to a bureaucrat who will help me feel good about dying?” The paper under his butt scrunched and crackled with his movements, growing more agitated by the second. “I don’t need a social worker. I don’t need a bureaucrat.”
“Bureaucrat?” The physician sounded puzzled.
“Hell, Dr. Akim, I’m a bureaucrat. I wouldn’t want to talk to me if I were dying of some nasty disease.”
“It is Hakim Al Serafi.”
Rosswell studied the name tag again. “Sorry.” He teetered on more confusion. “I’m trying to put all this together.”
“You are not limited to bureaucrats. Do you have some religious counselor you can talk with?”
“Religious counselor?”
“You can talk with some religious counselor to help you understand that your pathway may take you to death.”
“Pathway? I don’t have any religious people in my life. Maybe I need some.” Scooting around on the cold examining table hurt even though he was clothed. “Where did you go to medical school?”
Al Serafi withdrew a stethoscope from his coat and hung it around his neck. “St. Bartholomew’s and Royal London School of Medicine & Dentistry.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Judge Carew, my credentials have nothing to do with your prognosis.”
Rosswell warmed to the man. The guy didn’t have the bull crap aura most doctors did. Most physicians expected their patients to fawn on every word that fell from their mouths without question. Even in court, when a medical doctor testified, Rosswell sensed an underlying superiority that most physicians assumed over laypeople.
“Dr. Al Serafi, I’m trying to put your diagnosis into a box so I can examine it.”
“That is understandable.”
“Will you be here if I need to talk with you?”
“I’m on loan from St. Mark’s in Cape Girardeau.” He slipped the tiny eyeglasses into a shirt pocket. “They have not enough hands here, but I am only temporary. I go back to Cape soon.”
“Telling people news like this is hard.”
Al Serafi’s cellphone beeped. “Not as hard as getting it.” Without removing his eyes from Rosswell, he reached down and cut off his phone.
Rosswell was the same person he’d been when he walked in the clinic, although now the powerful words of doom had been spoken, sealing his fate. Until that second, he’d not noticed the strong smell of rubbing alcohol in the room. Even that can set off a drunk like me. From his pocket, he drew a couple of Rolaids, hoping the chalky mint taste would distract his cravings. The taste didn’t alleviate anything.
“Doctor Al Serafi, I refuse to give in to the monster living in my body. I’m going to kill it. I want to start chemo or whatever you need me to do immediately.”
“I like your attitude.”
Feliciana had kept her black hair cut short. Nonetheless, Rosswell had loved running his fingers through the tight curls on her head. That action had aroused him, and it often made her moan with pleasure.
Now, no more Feliciana to comfort him.
It was time to leave, go home, and search the attic for Malachi, the teddy bear he’d slept with until he was ten years old.
But that day he didn’t go home to the attic. Instead he dragged himself to the sheriff’s station, searching for Frizz. He wasn’t there. Tina was there.
“What’s wrong?” she said the instant she saw him.
Rosswell told her. Later that night she invited herself to share his bed.
Waiting for Tina now, Rosswell rummaged in the pantry. Behind a ten-pound bag of grits, he discovered a bottle of booze he’d stashed there months ago. Scotch. His favorite kind of liquor. He fetched it down and rested it, still swathed in a brown paper bag, on the Benchwright dining table. There the elixir waited, sitting on a table that resembled an Industrial Revolution worktable that had set him back a thousand bucks. If Rosswell gave in and the doctor found out, Al Serafi would scold him for drinking. Tough crap. It was his body, not Al Serafi’s.
Rosswell pulled a heavy chair out from the table and sat. He hunkered there, unmoving, staring at the bottle for a long time, the booze just out of reach. He clicked on an antique-style radio to provide companionship. He had a decision to make. A decision about the bottle.
A newscaster on the radio rattled on.
“. . . United Nations sent a strongly worded letter advising . . .”
“. . . prices stabilized after plunging . . .”
“. . . largest contract ever for a first baseman . . .”
Maybe one more shot of booze for old-time’s sake. Or maybe a couple. Maybe the whole bottle. Maybe he should get drunk as a jackass on Sunday, then explain to Tina that he was an alcoholic and would always remain an alcoholic. She needed to search for someone better. He’d cuddle up with his bottle and remain blissfully unconscious until he died. No teddy bear needed.
“What a load of crap!” Had he said that aloud? Yes, he had. He slapped himself for self-induced stupidity. Suffering from leukemia? Check. Alcoholic? Check. That didn’t relieve him of responsibility. The pity party blew up, and he steered himself toward what he needed to be doing— solving a murder.
He cut off the radio and began talking to himself. Talking to himself, he’d learned, helped him solve problems. Rosswell stared at the distressed wooden floor. Walking to the kitchen island, he rubbed his hand over the bluish-gray granite of the island, noting that the depth of the shiny top seemed to change when he changed position. When the angle of his eyes changed, the light reflected a different color in the granite, giving the illusion of depth.
He reasoned with himself. “There was a murder. Two people. One woman. One man.”
Rubbing the tabletop with his hands soon coated it with a glistening sheen of palm sweat. He folded his hands together and made a steeple with his forefingers. He placed the steeple on his lips and gazed again, almost in a hypnotic trance, at the floor.
The odor of Pine Sol and Comet permeated the air in his tidy house. His gaze rose to a six-foot sword mounted on the kitchen wall. What better place for a cutting instrument than in the kitchen? Its blade shone from the reflected light of the buzzing fluorescent light.
“There are no witnesses. I don’t know if the murderer was a man or a woman. I don’t know if there was more than one murderer.”
The cross guard of the sword held a curlicue snake on each side. A pommel in the shape of a monster’s head topped the grip, decorated with the scales of justice. Below the cross guard, the sword’s blade gleamed, sharp and deadly.
He paced around the table, nearly tripping over a chair, forcing himself to understand that maybe he knew more about the murder than his conscious mind allowed him to know. After all, he was first on the scene after the killer left.
“What was at that place before the flood?�
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He closed his eyes. He stepped through the recollection of the crime scene with excruciating slowness. Bloated bodies. Rocks. Dirt. Trees. River. He got his camera and reviewed the photos on it.
“What am I not seeing?”
Rosswell returned to the table and sat. He stared beyond the bottle to a black and white print of an ancient Scottish battle scene on the wall until the picture became unfocused.
His thoughts ambled to the sword. For the last seven years, he’d tried to convince himself that it was a centuries old relic from his Scots ancestors. In truth, it was a replica he’d bought in a junk store for $169.47, after haggling the toothless woman who owned the place down from two hundred dollars.
“The murderer killed two people and laid them side by side. Why?”
His heartbeat slowed, his breathing slowed, and his vision blurred even more.
“Side by side. They lay side by side. Arms, legs, head, torso. What position, exactly, were they lying in?”
His mind hovered in a meditative state.
“What did I look at that I did not see?”
He recited the mantra several more times.
His cellphone chirped an irritating three-tone chime. A text message. “Crap,” he said, the spell broken by the electronic interference.
Only Tina, Frizz, and Neal were privy to the cell number. No one else, not even Ollie, had the number. This late at night, there had to be some emergency. He’d probably have to issue a search warrant. Or maybe Tina wasn’t coming over. Wouldn’t she call instead of texting?
He stared at his