by James A Ross
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“That’s all I know, Mom. I haven’t spoken to a doctor yet. I’ll come home when I’ve done that. With Joe, if they let him.”
“Call me as soon as you know.”
“It could be hours. I’ll catch up in the morning.”
“Call me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As he folded the phone, a short, round man in a doctor’s white lab coat approached carrying a clipboard and a stack of blue cardboard files. Tom noticed the sign on the wall showing a cell phone inside a circle with a line through it. He dropped the phone in his pocket. “Sorry”.
The doctor shook his head. “No. No. I’m looking for Sheriff Morgan’s brother. Nurse Mulvey said someone who might be him was wandering the halls.”
“Right. That’s me. How is he?”
“He’s spoken about you.”
“At least he’s talking. How is he?”
“No, no. Before.” The doctor tapped the stack of files in his arms. “Our sheriff is a frequent visitor to our small hospital. Nothing life threatening—contusions, lacerations, that sort of thing. He takes his job seriously.”
“Doctor.” Tom read the name tag pinned to the white coat. “Sayed. How is my brother? Is he all right?”
“He’s quite ill, I’m afraid.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
The physician moved his head from side to side, but kept his face forward. “Dehydration. Upper respiratory trauma. We’ll have to wait for lab results to determine what from.”
“Can I take him home?”
“No. He needs to remain on an I. V. for a while. We’ve stabilized his breathing. But without knowing what’s causing his symptoms, it would be dangerous to discharge him.”
Bonnie’s going to freak. “Could it be the flu or something?”
The doctor pressed his lips together, but didn’t answer. Tom could sense that the hesitation had nothing to do with giving serious thought to the suggestion of flu. “It could, yes. But I don’t think it is.”
“Why not?”
The doctor shrugged. “For one, the symptoms are too severe for someone as robust as our Sheriff.”
“And for another?”
The doctor shrugged again. “The lab results may tell us more.”
Tom suppressed a sudden surge of adrenaline—something he did not need more of now. “But that’s not what you tracked me down to tell me, is it?” He tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice and off his face.
Sayed seemed to hesitate.
“What has he got, doctor? Or what do you need from me to help you figure it out?”
“So very much like our Sheriff.”
“I’m sure you mean that well. Now tell me what he’s got, or what you need to know in order to find out. What you tracked me down to find out.”
Sayed seemed to make up his mind. “I listened to a recording of the paramedic’s transmission. And I understand from it that you and our sheriff spent the day in Manhattan, in a car and at the diner where he became ill.”
“Right. But I think he was already ill before we stopped to eat. He said in the car before we got there that he felt like crap.”
“Do you know where your brother was in the twenty-four hours prior to starting your day together?”
“Some of it: home in bed before we started, say from midnight last night until six this morning. Before that, his office and around town.”
“Do you know where, specifically?”
“No. There was a body recovered from the lake the day before yesterday. He’s been running around looking into that.”
“Running?” Sayed asked. “To where? Please, if you know.”
“I don’t. Other than the office we visited today. And the diner where he collapsed.”
“I see.” The muscles around the doctor’s mouth tightened.
“So it’s not the flu?”
“No. It’s not.”
“But you’ve got a theory that had you hustling the halls looking for an answer to the question of where your patient’s been in the last twenty four hours.”
Sayed shrugged.
“And you’re disappointed that I don’t know.”
Sayed offered a weak smile. “So very much alike.”
“So what is it?”
“Sorry?”
“Your theory.”
“The lab results…”
“May tell you nothing. You wouldn’t have tracked me down if the information you hoped I had wasn’t just as important—or more.”
“My, my.”
“So what’s your theory, doctor? What fits these symptoms you’ve either seen before or read about, that works or not depending on where my brother may have stuck his muddy boot in the last thirty six hours?”
The doctor put his hand to his chin, partially covering his mouth. His eyes met Tom’s. “His arm, I think.”
“What’s he got, Doc? And how did he get it?”
Sayed looked into Tom’s face. “I can’t yet tell you how, Mr. Morgan. But I believe that sometime in the last thirty-six hours your brother was exposed to some kind of chemical toxin.”
“Accidentally?”
The doctor tapped the stack of files in his arms. “Your brother’s job can be physically demanding. But unless it also involves experimentation with lethal compounds….”
“Let’s assume it doesn’t.”
“Then someone exposed him.”
“Exposed?”
“Poisoned.”
CHAPTER 16
Mary waited for the crunch of tire on gravel, the pop/whoosh of front door quietly opening, or the heart-jolting trill from the silent phone at the end of the couch. But the only sounds that broke her night-long vigil were the creaks and groans of an empty house, the hum of a dying fluorescent light and the rattle of a wind-teased chimney. Bonnie and the children were asleep when Tom called, and with this silly broken leg, she hadn’t been able to get up and let the poor woman know her husband was in the hospital. When she tried Tom’s cell phone, she got his voicemail. When she tried the hospital, she got the run around. Finally, as the sky began to lighten over the hill above the cabin and the nuthatches began to appear at the kitchen feeder, she pulled herself to the end of the couch, picked up the phone and called Herbert. He had a car. And if he wasn’t awake yet…well, he should be.
“They’re boys, Mary,” the sleepy voice soothed. “They get busy and they don’t think.”
She assumed her friend’s soothing voice and patient demeanor had more to do with living in the Coldwater Senior Center, a place where women outnumbered men six to one, than it had with his Southern upbringing. But it was wasted on her. “Fine. I’ll get a cab.”
“There’s no need, Mary. Just give me an hour.”
An hour? “It’s not the Senior Prom, Herbert. How’s your back?”
“Depends what you have in mind, Mary.”
“Don’t be fresh. Can you carry a suitcase?”
“Of course! Too much family?”
The hearty bravado might have charmed some, but she was in no mood. “Joe’s in the hospital.”
“Oh dear.” His voice lost the banter. “I’m sorry. Is it serious?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I called. He got sick at Trudy’s Diner last night. Tommy took him to the emergency room; but I haven’t heard from either of them since. She and the girls will be up soon. I was hoping you could drive me to the hospital so I can find out what’s going on.”
“Be right over. He won’t need a suitcase just yet. Pajamas and razor should be enough for a while.”
“The suitcase is for me, Herbert. If Joe’s sick, I can’t stay here.”
“I thought your daughter-in-law was there, and your other son, too.”
“She has children, Herbert, and now a sick husband. Tommy has to go back to work in a few days. I don’t want him doing double duty or thinking he has to stay longer.” And getting involved with that Pearce piece of work.
* * *
By the time Mary hobbled to the polished green sedan and arranged her plastered leg under its dash, it was more like an hour. Bonnie had looked frightened when Mary told her Joe was in the hospital. Bonnie hurried the children through a quick breakfast, saying she’d drop the girls at school and go on with Luke to the hospital.
Attempting to suppress her irritation at Herbert’s geriatric driving, Mary looked away from the gnarled fingers that gripped the steering wheel at precisely ten and two o’clock and at the watery blue eyes that scanned the rear and side view mirrors every fifteen seconds. The cream colored slacks held razor creases and the Hugo Boss blazer was spotless. Thick white hair streamed from a tanned forehead and small, groomed ears lay flat against a wide skull. Herbert Ball was a handsome old peacock. But he was infuriatingly precise in everything he did. Mary stared out the window as the lake shore houses drifted past at a soporific thirty miles an hour.
She briefly considered placing a flirtatious hand on Herbert’s bony thigh and asking him to speed it up. But then she wondered whether an eighty year old man who takes a full day’s rest before and after every excursion might overreact, now or later; and she decided that she didn’t need another complication right now.
A half hour later, the Buick rolled to a stop in front of Coldwater Hospital and Herbert wheeled her inside. At the end of a hallway lined with open doors and noisy family gatherings, they found Tom talking to a doctor in a white lab coat. “Where’s your brother, and what’s wrong with him?”
Tom planted an air-kiss on the top of her head. “Hello, Mother. Joe’s asleep. Bonnie and Luke are up in his room. Dr. Sayed here gave him something to knock him out. He was up all night.”
“Looks like you both were,” said Herbert.
Mary lifted her face to the man in the white coat. “What’s wrong with my son, Doctor?” She saw Tommy move his head slightly left and then right.
“Dehydration, arrhythmia, gastrointestinal distress. I was explaining to your son that we’re running tests to try and isolate the cause. I’ve already spoken with his wife.”
“I thought it was food poisoning,” said Mary.
“We haven’t ruled that out.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Do you think it’s something else?”
The doctor looked at Tom, who shrugged and nodded. “Food poisoning doesn’t usually last this long, Mrs. Morgan.”
Mary ran her fingers across the top of her scalp. “He was in here a month ago, throwing up and all the rest. He said he’d been exposed to some kind of weed killer.”
“Yes, I treated him then as well.”
“Could it be the same thing?”
The doctor lifted his shoulders. “There are gouges on his arms that I haven’t had a chance to discuss with him. But they’re clean and seem to be healing. I’m afraid we just have to wait for your son to stabilize and for the lab results to come back.”
“Hellers,” said Mary, turning to Tom. “Your brother said they put something on their marijuana plants now. You two were up there the other night, weren’t you?” She searched Tom’s face, and he looked away like he was ten years old again and she had asked him if he had brushed his teeth. “He took his gun, Tommy. You weren’t out for pizza.”
“We drove to the junkyard, Mom. Lots of rust. No crops.”
Dr. Sayed interrupted, “Could your brother have been exposed to an industrial chemical at this junkyard?”
“Actually, he went into the house next door, not the junk yard. He told me later that he was in the kitchen the whole time, talking with the owner.”
“He left you outside?” asked Mary.
“To watch his back.”
“This is more of that Billy Pearce business, isn’t it?”
“Joe getting sick?”
She waved the back of her hand and turned to the doctor. “When can I see my son?”
“He should be awake this evening.”
“I’ll take you home,” said Tom. “We can come back tonight.”
She looked at him closely. “You need to be in bed, too. Then helping your brother, not waiting on me.”
“How about your leg?”
“I’m taking it to my apartment.”
Tom looked at the man behind the wheelchair.
“Herbert’s driving me,” she added.
The old man showed a pair of gleaming dentures and passed an index finger alongside his nose.
“Okay,” said Tom. “Looks like you’re in good hands.”
She pressed her lips and stifled a retort.
“I was going to stop and see Father Gauss this evening,” said Tom. “If you want, I can come by the Center and pick you up after that?”
“Well, there’s some news there, too.”
“What?”
“Father Gauss has left. Mrs. Lynch says that he wasn’t at Novena last night, and that when she called the rectory to find out why, the housekeeper said he’d been transferred.”
“To where?”
Mary shrugged. “She didn’t say. And then that Pearce girl phoned again. If you don’t mind my saying so, that girl is the ‘r’ in relentless.”
“Was she looking for me?”
Mary frowned. “For your brother.”
CHAPTER 17
Tom collected the Coldwater patrol car from the parking lot in front of Trudy’s Diner, where the Cashin kid and his sidekick had surprisingly left it undamaged. Punks must be scared of you, brother. He drove toward town, feeling the breeze through the open windows dry the stale film of sweat on his arms and face and ripple the front of the pungent shirt he’d had on since yesterday morning.
The last and only time Tom had driven the Coldwater Sheriff’s patrol car, was the summer he got his driver’s license, when Mary had twice sent him to collect her husband passed out behind the wheel across the street from a house where he had no business being. Tom had no idea what was going on in his parents’ lives that summer, though it was obvious in hindsight that something had been. The vicissitudes of his own rocky romance pulled his attention elsewhere. Then as now.
Memories clamored for daylight, but he forced the shutters tight. The distraction of ancient mysteries was just that. He had to get back to New York soon and rescue his career, or give it up. Pissed was fast replacing confused, and worry was gaining on them both.
Sayed’s file on Joe’s prior hospital visits was as fat as a phone book. The doctor had made light of the broken fingers, facial lacerations and other occupational hazards of small town law enforcement. He had even dismissed two prior herbicidal poisonings that he and Joe had concluded were due to ripping up treated marijuana plants. But this was different, beginning with the severity of the symptoms. Tom had asked the doctor point-blank if his brother could end up with some kind of permanent impairment.
“He could die,” said Sayed bluntly. “A weaker man might have already.”
Tom didn’t believe that Joe was going to die. Though admittedly, that was a non-expert opinion. But he also knew that short of death, Joe would have to function in at least some limited capacity soon, or all hell was going to break loose. Shit happens fast when the teacher is out sick and the class learns the substitute is clueless.
Tom parked the patrol car in front of Our Lady of The Lake rectory and sat for a while watching a soft northwest breeze ripple the blue black water across the street. Father Gauss had made it clear he wasn’t going to violate a confidence—even if it might help lead to Billy’s killer. But other than finding Gauss and having another go, what was there to do until Joe was coherent enough to direct next steps? Tackle Frankie Heller and his stock car alibi? Mike Sharp and his phony Yankee game?
Tom left the car and walked to the rectory, whose three stories of weathered clapboards were unlikely to see fresh paint any time soon. The single pane windows were as old as the structure itself, swollen shut in the summer heat and rattling and porous in winter when the winds from the
north swept across the frozen lake. The paint-crusted button beside the door made a tinny hum when he pressed it. No one answered. He thumbed the bell again, tried the door handle and then pressed the unlocked door until it swung open.
“Mrs. Flynn! It’s Tom Morgan.”
A pear shaped figure, topped with braided white hair and scowl answered from the second floor landing. “Yes?”
“May I come in?”
“You’re already in.” said the housekeeper. “He’s not here; he’s gone away”
“Do you know where?”
“No,” she said, firmly. “But wait here; he left something for you.” She disappeared up the stairs and returned a few minutes later carrying a fat leather bound book, stamped along the spine in faded gold lettering with a single word: Ethics,. “He said you’d be around sooner or later, and to give it to you. At least I think he meant this one. He’s got a lot of books up there.”
“He didn’t take his books?”
“Only what fit in that old travel bag of his.”
Father Gauss had once remarked on the church’s abrupt and sometimes arbitrary personnel assignments. But this sudden disappearance felt more like a rent skip than a transfer.
Tom carried the book to the patrol car and propped it open on the steering wheel. A folded letter fell from its pages onto his lap.
‘Dear Tom,
I don’t know if you’ve read Spinoza’s Ethics. If not, it’s time you made the author’s acquaintance.
Despite what you may have been taught across the street, most modern thinkers don’t consider science, philosophy and theology to be fundamentally opposed. Plato claimed that man is a puppet pulled on strings by the gods, but that he has one string of his own that he can pull back on: Reason.
The ancient Greeks didn’t have what we would call a theology. But their philosophers understood that some things are not susceptible to knowledge through reason and that it was essential to understand the difference.
It seems to me that you’ve started down a very old path. Some who have gone before you have left useful markers for others to follow. The author of this book is one of the better ones.
By all means test your theology – if your education has left you any – with science and the other arts. If a theology can’t stand up to the scrutiny, chuck it. Though I encourage you to remain open to what science and logic cannot explain and to allow for the difference.
