My first stop was at the residence of one Dr. E. Pike. It took a long time to get there. Mary’s Jeep was equipped with GPS and an impressive sound system. I didn’t listen to any of her CDs
or satellite radio though. When I plugged in the address, the screen brought up a map.
I like maps. A lot. And I can decipher them easily. They just make sense, unlike so many other things. I often think how hard it must have been to be a cartographer before the advent of satellite imagery.
The doctor lived toward the east end of town, close to the farms and fields where I’d first found my Buick. His place was in the middle of a big patch of nothing. No neighbors. It must have been nice.
A barbed-wire fence ran parallel to the road. The driveway was marked by a mailbox shaped like a fish, which made sense since a pike is a kind of freshwater predator. It’s also a medieval infantry weapon, but that might have scared away the couriers and the clientele. Better to just stick with the fish.
It was artfully made, in a dynamic pose like it was lunging for a lure, its open, upturned mouth serving as the letter receptacle.
The doctor’s house was set way back into his property. There was a metal gate anchored to a wooden fence post. It was open, so I drove right on up a small rise to the house itself. The house was big, built in a rambler style. It wasn’t barebones, but it wasn’t pretentious or gaudy either.
I was hungry, so I checked the console and the glove compartment for protein or candy bars, mixed nuts, trail mix, or mints. Even some gum would have helped, but there was nothing.
I would try and keep this doctor’s visit short and sweet.
Some quack sawbones can be long-winded, which he wasn’t. At first.
I knocked and waited and knocked again. I’ve been known to stand for several minutes at a door because people haven’t heard me knock. Maybe my gentle knocking is a subconscious gesture of respect. It’s definitely not for fear of breaking the door down, not just by knocking. I’m not that strong.
But I didn’t have several minutes to wait right then, so I pushed the glowing circle to the right of the handle with my knuckle. I heard the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which was a little ominous. It’s said to symbolize Fate knocking at the door, which incidentally, I wasn’t. I’m not that important.
The doctor came to the door anyway.
He opened it and just looked at me, not angrily, not bewilderedly. Just looked. His white hair and beard were trimmed neatly, and his eyes were bright blue and clear. Normally when someone answers the door, they say hello or yes like a question. How may I help you? and so forth. But the doctor just looked at me, waiting.
It was too late for trick-or-treaters and too early for Christmas carolers.
Still he said nothing, like he was neither surprised nor dismayed by my arrival and wouldn’t be at my disappearance either.
“Are you the doctor?” I asked.
“Are you feeling ill?” he asked like he already knew the answer.
“Just hungry.”
“Hunger is not a symptom, unless it’s significantly increased over a long period of time.”
“A few hours is all.”
He started to close the door. “Then I would recommend the restaurant.”
“I’m not begging for bread here. I can stand the hunger pangs a little while longer. And besides, the café is closed.”
He stopped with the door halfway through its range. “You’re the miscreant, aren’t you? The one who ran from the police?”
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“I was in the restaurant yesterday morning. I saw you. Won’t you come in?”
So I went in, wiping my boots on the welcome mat.
“I know why you’re here,” the doctor said.
I said nothing—better just to hear him out.
He continued in what I figured was a doctorly manner—clinically, precisely, his words based on facts.
“You want information. You’re helping Miss Agnes and presumably the police.”
He looked at me for either a confirmation or a denial.
I gave him neither—better to just hear him out.
“I was also in the restaurant in the evening, when you spoke to Miss Agnes. I am only surprised you didn’t come here sooner.”
He was not smug or all-knowing—a better doctor than most, probably. I wouldn’t know. I have never had to spend much time with medical practitioners. At least he was observant, which is probably a deciding factor between a good physician and a
bad one.
“That’s about the long and short of it,” I said. “And thanks for letting me inside.”
“I’m afraid where we’re going is not much warmer,” he said, leading me farther inside.
“Where’s that? Hell?”
He chuckled. He stopped in a spacious sitting room, gesturing at a large bookcase filled with volumes. He asked, “You’ve read
Dante, then?”
In Dante’s Inferno hell appears as a very cold place, as opposed to the burning lake of fire and brimstone people usually imagine.
He pulled a gold-leafed tome from the shelf.
“No,” I said. “Too dreary. I think reading should be fun.”
“You can read though?”
“A little.”
“My favorite is the second part of the Divine Comedy, Purgatorio. It discusses how sin is rooted in love; either excessive, deficient, or malicious love leads to evil. Tell me, son, what do you love?”
“A lot of things,” I said.
“Name one.”
“Boxing.”
“Right there, it could be construed that an excessive affinity for a sport leads to envy, of world champions, maybe. Or that malicious love leads to violence. It is a violent pastime, after all. Perhaps, even, it is indicative of a deficiency of love for your neighbor in that you can punch him continually until he is literally rendered unconscious. Dead, in some cases.”
His was exactly the kind of overly analytical rhetoric I tried to steer clear of.
But I was in his home, and it was not like he didn’t have a slight point. I didn’t mention to him that I have gone entire
bouts without landing a punch because I don’t like hurting people.
“I guess the solution is moderation in everything,” I said.
He nodded, replacing the book. “But I digress. Please, follow me.”
We left the sitting room, with its old comfortable furniture and hundreds of books. Walking down a wide hallway, we came to an office. There was a computer on a bow-front writing desk. A pair of wooden file cabinets flanked a swivel chair. The desk faced the door and was backed by a wide window. One side wall was bare, and one had a recessed handle. More of a pull, actually, like something you see on a drawer.
The doctor opened the wall with the handle. A hidden door. It swung slowly, heavily, revealing a stairwell.
If he had motioned for me to go first, I might have refused. I don’t watch horror movies. I think movies should be fun, and I don’t want garbage floating around in my mind. That is why nothing scares me, because I have no pollutants to conjure up demons behind every shadow. But I’ve seen the headlines from time to time, and it would not have been much of a stretch to imagine the doctor pushing me down the stairs and locking me in a dungeon to starve to death, which I was already well on my way to doing.
But he flipped a switch and started down the stairs. I followed, watching his hands in case he attempted to slice me with a scalpel he had up his sleeve. He didn’t.
It did get colder the deeper we went, much colder, like in a meat locker or walk-in freezer.
The staircase dog-legged once, and we came out onto a white-tiled floor. The doctor hit another switch, and fluorescent tubes buzzed to life with much flickering.
We were in a medical examiner’s lab. There were big lamps encased in stainless-steel circles over a stainless-steel table. There were stainless-steel scales for weighing things and a stainless-steel sink. There was a drain in the center of the room, a stainless-steel fridge, which seemed unnecessary, and a row of three large stainless-steel lockers. For corpses.
The doctor paused, looking at me. Maybe for effect, maybe to let my non-scientific, non-medical brain connect the dots.
I said nothing—better to just hear him out.
“The chief of police brought this one in himself.” He stepped over to the first cadaver drawer and pulled it open.
On the slab was a jumbled collection of charred-black bones.
The doctor went on. “Cluff is limited to volunteer firemen, you understand, as is Troy and much of the entire county. They don’t have many resources. They do the best they can, but the house fire was too far along when they arrived. There was no real point in trying too hard to extinguish it because there were no nearby buildings or trees that could have caught, so the police sent them away—”
“Is this normal?” I interrupted.
This time he said nothing, waiting to hear me out.
“To have a makeshift morgue in your basement?” I continued.
“What constitutes normality?” he retorted, not sharply but with a hint of superior wisdom, inviting me to a higher plateau like a college professor. Socratic. Not there to just answer questions but to enlighten the asker.
“Okay, is it usual?” I revised.
He shuffled his hands back and forth in a maybe-maybe-not gesture. “Perhaps not. But then again, why not? I’m not unaccustomed to mortality, and you certainly haven’t vomited yet. I’m old, and this work requires long, irregular hours. It’s better if it’s close by.”
That made some kind of sense.
The doctor continued. “And, of course, violent crimes are exceptionally uncommon here. Most cases are people passing away due to the effects of age, whereupon the funeral parlor in Troy prepares them for burial. I rarely use this lab, and I certainly couldn’t afford it were it not for Chief Strawn.”
“How’s that?”
“In addition to the funeral home, Troy also has the nearest hospital. I only pay house calls on occasion, for minor ailments. But some years ago Chief Strawn offered to keep me on retainer and paid to move the lab from the station to my home.”
Which also made sense. It was pretty generous of Strawn, but he seemed to have the budget surplus to spare.
Doctor Pike closed the drawer with the bones, and I was glad of it. I’m not bothered by guts and gore, but I wouldn’t want to eat and sleep so close to murder victims.
“Did you know her?” I asked. I didn’t want to reveal how much I knew, not yet—better to feign ignorance, play along.
The doctor’s eyes sharpened, and he looked at me like I was confused, which I definitely was.
He pulled open the bone drawer again. “These are not the bones of a woman.”