Eleven in the morning and Westermann was a little disheartened to see a smattering of prostitutes out in this neighborhood of run-down shops and workers’ tenements. They seemed deflated, leaning against walls, smoking or chatting listlessly, not working the pedestrians. This time of day, anyone looking for a trick would have to come to them.
He found Vesterhue’s business address, a storefront clinic called Wilhelm Health Center; Wilhelm because of the street it was on. Also on the block: a butcher’s, a Christian reading room, a barbershop, Madame Pristina’s Palm Reading and Fortune Gazing, and a place called Dreiburg’s—chintz in the window under a maroon valance. Half sheets of paper littered the sidewalk, as if someone had thrown them up into a wind and let them lie where they fell. He read one: “Your Mayor Is Asleep at the Switch, No to Communism, Yes to Truffant.”
Earlier, Westermann had pared down the investigation team to just Grip, Morphy, and himself, releasing the others to work on ongoing cases or new ones that came in. No eyebrows rose. Even with a second girl murdered, investigations into dead prostitutes simply didn’t merit much attention. Five or six—then you had something worthy of a real delegation of manpower. He’d reminded Grip and Morphy of the Chief’s admonition to play it subtle. They’d nodded and given at least a show of getting it.
The coroner’s report had come back on the second girl: still no identification; near certainty that she carried the same disease as Lenore; cause of death—asphyxiation by strangling. Different from Lenore. Lenore had drowned; her lungs had been full of water.
Westermann wondered what this meant. Was this second girl dead before she reached the river? Why would she be left in the same spot as Lenore? Westermann chewed on his lip while he walked, thinking this over.
Pushing Lenore into the current.
No turning back.
All eight chairs in the waiting area at Wilhelm Health Center were filled. An old guy in an expensive but ancient suit coughed phlegm into a white handkerchief he kept over his mouth, even during the brief periods when he was not hacking. Two mothers—clean, young, blissed-out expressions—had three young children between them, sitting in chairs, playing with tin army men. An elderly couple sat holding hands, watching with inscrutable expressions as the kids battled.
Westermann nodded to the two mothers, who smiled demurely back. A heavy woman with her hair piled up on her head and bifocals perched on the end of her nose sat behind a desk, eyeing Westermann.
Westermann flashed the woman his badge. “I’d like to see Dr. Vesterhue, when he has a moment.”
The woman barked a short, sardonic laugh. “You, me, those two women over there, Dr. Phillipi, others who came yesterday; we’d all like to see Dr. Vesterhue.”
“Pardon?”
“Dr. Vesterhue didn’t show up for his hours today. Or yesterday, or the day before. Dr. Phillipi’s trying to pick up the slack, but he can’t do it himself. We sent some patients down to City Hospital, mostly the working girls.” As an aside, she said, “Dr. Phillipi doesn’t like to see them.”
“You tried to get in touch with Dr. Vesterhue at home?”
“Of course. You think we wouldn’t? Nobody there. No word to us that he was sick or anything like that.”
“This happen before?”
“No.”
“You worried about him?”
She shrugged, not seeming very concerned. “Be nice to have him show up” was all she could manage.
Westermann sighed, taking a look around the room again as he gathered his thoughts. Again, the two mothers caught his eye and smiled. He nodded a little.
“Listen. I know Dr. Phillipi must be extremely busy, with Dr. Vesterhue not here, but I need five or ten minutes with him, and quickly. Like after his current patient. Also, I need records for Mavis Talley and a woman named Lenore; I don’t know her last name.”
The woman looked back at him with undisguised exasperation. “Really, I hardly think …”
Westermann put his hands on her desk and leaned over so that he was near her ear. He whispered, “We are conducting a murder investigation. We can argue about this in front of your patients, but I don’t think that does anyone any good, do you? Ten minutes, tops, with the doctor. You pull a couple of files, maybe have to do a little searching for one of them. You want to make a big deal of this?”
The woman reddened considerably, though it was unclear whether she was angry, embarrassed, or chastened. Without another word, she stood and disappeared through the door behind her. Westermann turned from the desk to look at the magazines spread across the waiting-room coffee table. Reader’s Digest. Life. And a number of anticommunist rags: “Is This America’s Future?” A woman shielding her two apple-cheeked boys from sinister-looking men in gray suits, her face contorted in horror. Westermann was bending to pick it up when the woman returned.
“Dr. Phillipi will see you,” she said curtly.
Westermann straightened and followed her back down a short hallway with four doors, three of them open. They passed one on the right, file shelves to the ceiling, and then on to the next room on the right opposite the closed door. The woman stood aside for Westermann to enter, then left without a word. Westermann studied a wall chart, a person in profile, the organs detailed along with the muscles in the arms and legs. Westermann pegged the figure as a man, though it had no genitalia. There was a rap on the door and Westermann turned to face a small, trim man with sunken eyes and wide mouth, maybe in his fifties.
“Lieutenant Westermann?”
“Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice, Dr. Phillipi.”
He nodded, hanging in the doorway. His graying hair was disheveled; he looked stressed.
“Could we talk in private?” Westermann asked, nodding at the open door.
Phillipi gave an annoyed shrug, but stepped in, closing the door behind him. Strange.
“I understand that your partner’s been missing a few days.”
“My partner?” Phillipi asked, confused.
“Dr. Vesterhue.”
Phillipi puzzled on this for a moment. “I’m not sure I’d describe him as my partner. But, yes, he hasn’t been here for three days. Damned inconsiderate to be honest, leaving me to deal with his patients.”
“Aren’t you concerned that something might have happened to him?”
“Concerned?” he said, as though it hadn’t occurred to him. “I suppose. Has something happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Westermann said, squinting at Phillipi, trying to get a grip on his reaction. “We have some questions for him about a couple of his patients.”
Phillipi spoke with venom. “I see. Are they whores or people from that church?”
“Excuse me?”
Phillipi took a breath. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t called for. Lieutenant, I’m sorry if I seem callous. Dr. Vesterhue and I share rent on this property and split Mrs. Lansing’s salary. Beyond that, we are not partners. We have very different clienteles and, I dare say, different philosophies of care. Vesterhue mostly sees people from that church in the Hollows.”
“The Church of Last Days?”
“Yes, that one,” Phillipi said with distaste. “Those people and also prostitutes. Do you know how unsettling it can be for my patients—they’re mostly elderly, some younger but chronically ill—how unsettling it can be to share a waiting room with prostitutes and cultists?”
“Cultists?”
“I’m sorry. Again, maybe too strong. They are devout Christians, I suppose, but their manner … I think there might be a couple of them out in the waiting room right now.”
“I saw them.”
“A strange bunch, I can assure you.”
“So, Dr. Vesterhue …,” Westermann prompted.
“I don’t know what I can tell you, Lieutenant. He hasn’t been here in three days. No notice to me. Mrs. Lansing went by his apartment, but no one was home.”
“No one answered?”
“That’s right. No one answered.”
“So, he could have been home.”
“And not answering the door?”
“I see,” Phillipi said. “Mrs. Lansing can give you his address.”
Mrs. Lansing did have his address, but not much else. She slid a thin folder, Mavis Talley’s, across her desk to Westermann, who noted the expression on her face: something close to pleased with herself. The folder was empty, save for a sheet of paper stapled to the inside with an address, date of birth, and vitals; except for the date of birth, he already had that information.
“Nothing for a Lenore?”
Mrs. Lansing was working through some papers on her desk. She didn’t look up when she answered. “Not that I found.”
“Someone took out the contents of this folder?”
She looked up at him, exasperation in her eyes. “Dr. Vesterhue, he kept some of the files to himself. I insisted that he leave at least that information for my sake, but he kept some of his patients’ files—the real files—with him.”
“That normal? Does Dr. Phillipi do that?”
Still absorbed in her work. “Normal? No, it’s not normal. Neither’s Dr. Vesterhue.”