Caddo Cold (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 7)

by George Wier

  “Because,” I said, “I spoke with him very briefly over the phone when Holt was first telling me that he’d had some terrible experience that gave him nightmares. I didn’t like the sound of his voice. Also I figured that he was key to getting access to Holt.”

  “He’s more than that,” Willett said. I realized both men were staring at me.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  Willett pushed his chair away from the table and made as if to stand. “The young doctor who poked us both with needles that day in 1960,” he said. “His name was Dr. Elliott Carr. He didn’t recognize me from before. Hell, I was just a kid then. But I’ll never forget him as long as I live.”

  “Oh my God,” Jessica said. “Mr. Gatlin’s doctor is one of the government’s men?”

  “If Willett says it’s so,” Dane said, “then I believe him. How about let’s go find him. I think I can find a few words to say to him as well.”

  “We were told that Holt was being transferred to Memorial Hospital in Houston,” I said.

  “What?” Dane asked. “No. I don’t believe that. All the military people around. All the helicopters and stuff flying over. They must have Mr. Gatlin. They must have him close by.”

  “I’m fresh out of ideas as to where to start,” Willett said.

  “They’re not here in Uncertain. It’s too small.”

  “Well they sure as hell aren’t on the lake,” Jessica said.

  Dane laughed. “You got that right.”

  “The beginning,” I said. “That’s where we start. The hospital in Marshall.”

  “Let’s go, dad,” Jessica said.

  *****

  Dane had a Ford F-250 pickup truck, one of the kind that has an extended cab on it. We put Jessica in the narrow back seat and Willett rode in the pickup bed. It was a short trip around the lake to Holt’s house, where we collected Willett’s pickup, and then to Willett’s house, where we collected my car, but only after Willett made a search of both vehicles. No GPS devices and no explosives.

  I drove my own car for a change with Jessica beside me, and Willett and Dane took Dane’s truck. We drove from Caddo Lake and Uncertain through Karnack and back to Marshall. All along the way I kept expecting to see army jeeps or trucks coming down the road towards us or army helicopters or jets in the sky. We saw none, though, which was fine by me.

  Over us the sky was a cloudless deep blue, as if it were summer. Sometimes it is not so easy to distinguish the seasons at a glance in Texas.

  We had only been in town one day, but it felt like a week. I was a world removed from my life in Austin, and that life seemed a bit too much like a dream at that moment.

  “What do you think Caddo Cold is, dad?” Jessica asked me.

  “Well,” I began, “I don’t know all that much about it. Biology was not my main subject, but I’ve picked up a few things here and there. I’ve got just a smidgen of understanding on bacteriology and immunology. Fancy words for germs and viruses and nasty things that ‘take’ or ‘don’t take’, as Willett would say. Mostly stuff from magazines and Robin Cook and Michael Crichton novels. I’ve never heard of any kind of bacteria or virus that instantly attacks a body and overwhelms the system so as to produce insanity within minutes. That one doesn’t make any sense to me.

  “What about Mr. Mahoney’s story? And Mr. Fitzbrough’s? And the helicopter? I thought I was going to freeze to death,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about all those things. I don’t know. They don’t all fit together.

  “You mean they don’t make sense,” Jessica said.

  “Yeah. They don’t make perfect sense. That’s what I’m always looking for, for some reason. Perfect sense.”

  “Dad, you do have to admit―these people are weird.”

  I laughed. “I’m glad you noticed.”

  “How could they have something like that in 1960s?” she asked. “They barely had TV!”

  “Hey! We had TV in the 1960s, for your information.”

  “Uh. Sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you sound old or anything.”

  “Good.”

  “But still, how could they have something like that back then?” she asked.

  “Well, I was born in the mid-sixties. Agent Orange was invented in the 1960s. Dr. Salk came up with the polio vaccine in the early 1950s, or thereabouts. There’s no telling what our people were working on in 1960.”

  “That gives me the chills, dad. I read The Stand.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Me too,” I said.

  “Remember what Mr. Mahoney said about being close to the source? And how it took his mom a day to die? I shouldn’t have been so rough on him.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “He was being a bit overly dramatic. You simply called him on it, is all.

  “I wonder how far all those houses on the south side of the lake are from the crash site. And I wonder which way the wind was blowing that day.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Good questions. Whatever it is, according to Holt, it made Molly Sue crazy.”

  “Who’s Molly Sue?”

  “Holt’s date that evening. The day the plane crashed.”

  “I wonder why they were out on the lake,” Jessica said, and turned to gaze out the window.

  “Probably just fishing.”

  *****

  “Dr. Carr isn’t here today,” Nurse Wilkinson told us. We had to go through the whole Nurse Babette thing one more time before talking to her.

  “Is he in Houston?” I asked.

  “Mr. Travis,” Nurse Wilkinson said, “I’m sure I don’t know where Dr. Carr is, and I’m sure that I wouldn’t tell you if I did know.”

  Dane nudged me.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “And young Miss. I wonder if I might talk with the good nurse alone for a moment?”

  “Sure,” I said. Willett and I exchanged a brief flick of the eyes.

  We waited outside the hospital for a long five minutes before Dane came out the automatic sliding glass door.

  “Well?” Willett asked.

  “Well what?” Dane said, and began walking toward the parking lot on a line with his pickup truck.

  “Did you find out where we can find Dr. Carr?” Willett asked.

  “Oh,” Dane said. “Yeah.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “There’s something else you’re not telling us.”

  Dane stopped and turned towards me for a moment. His face was flushed red.

  “I got a date, okay? Are you satisfied? Geez!”

  Willett laughed and I found myself joining in.

  Dane and Nurse Wilkinson? Who would have figured?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I found out something else as well,” Dane said as we stood beside his truck.

  “What’s that?” Willett asked.

  “Holt isn’t in Houston. The Houston story was the official line. Probably if we had gone there, we would have gotten some other line. But that’s the line Dr. Carr gave Linda―I mean, Nurse Wilkinson. But word got back to her through the ambulance driver, who is best friends with her son.”

  “Nurse Wilkinson has a son?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Dane said. “What’s so odd about that? She’s a widow. Also, she’s a fine woman, Bill.”

  “Okay,” I said. I supposed there was no accounting for affinity among the sexes. “So where’s Holt?”

  “She thinks he’s in Karnack. Also, she thinks that Dr. Carr is right at his side.”

  “Why does that not reassure me?” I said.

  *****

  We drove back to Karnack again, re-traversing the same roads. Once there, Willett stopped and gassed up at the town’s lone convenience store.

  I’d driven through Karnack twice before in the same day, but it was the first chance I’d had to put my feet on the ground in the small town. I got out and tasted the air.

  Karnack is little different from most small Texas towns. The population hovers somewhere between one
and two hundred souls judging by the size of the town and the amount of traffic on the roads in the early evening, or rather, the lack of traffic. I keep a road map in my glove box that has exact numbers that I can consult, but I rarely consult a maps unless I have to, relying upon my sense of direction and the fact that I had been down most of Texas’ myriad highways. Karnack sits at a crossroads south of Caddo Lake along State Highway 134, a two-lane blacktop highway going mostly from nowhere to nowhere else. Or at least, that was my take on it. For certain, though, I knew that Louisiana was ten miles to the east, and to the north, west and south lay all the rest of Texas, which to me is home.

  Willett got out of Dane’s pickup and came over to me.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he began, but stopped.

  “Well,” I said. “Spill it, Willett.”

  “We don’t know where Holt is in this town, except that he’s here.”

  “Where did the ambulance drop him off?” I asked.

  “Dane said that the nurse told him that the ambulance met another ambulance near the center of town and transferred Holt over. So, from that we get nada, you know.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So. Unless they took him somewhere else, there’s only one place in this town I know of that no one would come around to except Holt himself.”

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  “The theater,” Willett said. “It’s near the center of town. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Jessica and I will follow you guys,” I said. “Park a block away, at least, and we’ll walk to it. You got a key?”

  “Damn right I do,” Willett said.

  “Good.”

  *****

  We parked on the edge of Karnack and walked past a boarded-up store front, then an antique store that had an OPEN sign in the window but no cars parked out front, and on past a drug store with a lone Chrysler LeBaron idling at the curb.

  The theater had glass that had been painted dark blue from the inside, completely hiding the interior. Between a thin crack in the dull metal door frame and the facing I could discern a faint light.

  “Did you leave the light on in there the day Holt fell?” I asked.

  “No,” Willett said.

  “What about explosives?” Dane asked. “From what Willett tells me, somebody around here likes playing with plastic explosives. I don’t want to be within half a mile of this place when that door is opened.”

  “Neither do we,” Jessica agreed on our behalf. For a moment I felt as though she were becoming my spokesperson.

  “Alright,” Willett said. He put his keys back in his pocket and surprised the rest of us by knocking smartly on the glass.

  I heard the shuffle of footsteps from inside and I could discern an ever-so-faint shadow.

  A key turned in the lock from inside and rattled for a moment.

  The door opened.

  “Hello boys,” an old man with a thin smile said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Hello Dr. Carr,” I said. “Why were you expecting us?”

  The doctor had on light blue scrubs and peered out through steel-gray eyes. His hair was silver and his face was pocked with evidence of bad acne as a youth. His smile, though, was one of genuine amusement, as if he had gotten something right and was therefore rather satisfied about it.

  “Because you made it past the surprises that were left for you―”

  “You mean the explosives,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to know everything,” Willett said.

  “Won’t you gentlemen come it?”

  “Damn right we will,” Dane said. “Unless there’s someone waiting in there for us with a gun. We won’t take kindly to that.”

  “No firearms, I assure you.”

  The doctor held the door wide for us and we filed in.

  “How do, Miss,” Dr. Carr said to Jessica.

  “Why does everybody call me Miss or Little Miss?” she asked.

  The concession stand was divided in half with one part overturned against the far wall, as if someone―probably Willett―had been giving it an overhaul.

  “Where’s Holt?” Willett asked.

  “Follow me,” Dr. Carr said, and turned to walk towards the main house entrance. “Probably the last time this place saw this many people was at the premier of The Godfather.”

  He went through the open doorway and down the central aisle. Whole rows of old seats had been unbolted from the step-levels of concrete and moved to the walls to either side.

  There was a large tent made out of opaque plastic covering the orchestra pit. A lone light glowed dully from within and I could make out the vague shape of a hospital bed.

  “He doesn’t have Caddo Cold,” I said. “Why the tent?”

  “Oh, but he does have it,” Dr. Carr said. “He’s had it since the night Amy crashed.”

  “Who’s Amy?” Willett asked.

  Dr. Carr didn’t answer.

  “Can we go inside?” I asked.

  “I can’t see any harm. You’ve shaken hands with Holt in the past. If it was going to transfer then, it would have. And you, Mr. Mahoney. She never went into you. Nor you, Mr. Fitzbrough.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let us in, then.”

  *****

  She, Dr. Carr had said. Amy. But also ‘it’.

  I shivered as Dr. Carr unzipped the tent, stepped through and beckoned to us to follow. We were in a narrow chamber with yet another zippered layer between us and the main chamber.

  He closed the outer layer behind us, stepped between us and unzipped the final layer of plastic.

  I noted the slickness of it as we stepped through and recalled what both Willett and Dane had said about slick plastic or rubber.

  *****

  ‘

  “It’s cold in here,” Jessica said. I felt it as well. The air felt as though it was somewhere in the mid-forties. I could see my breath, faintly.

  “Holt?” I said.

  He was sitting upright on his hospital bed looking none the worse for wear.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Willett asked him.

  Holt regarded us with a dulled expression.

  “Are you alright?” I asked him.

  “I’m... okay,” he said. He had on the same thin hospital gown from that morning and nothing more. The casts were gone from his leg and arm. In their place were hose constriction bandages.

  “What gives?” I asked Dr. Carr.

  “Holt will be fine. His injuries have almost healed.”

  “That’s not possible,” Willett said. “You can’t take a fall like that, be as broken up as he was, go through surgery and then be sitting up in bed without a complaint within forty-eight hours.”

  “You’re right,” Dr. Carr said. He moved over beside Holt, put his hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him back down to his pillow and pulled his cover up. “Rest easy, Mr. Gatlin. We’ll have you out of here by tomorrow.”

  “Mighty fine,” Holt said and closed his eyes.

  I looked from Dr. Carr to Willett and then to Dane. Both Willett and Dane were in the same class as me at that moment: incredulous and a bit overwhelmed at the same time.

  “Are you gentlemen satisfied that Mr. Gatlin is alright?”

  “I’m not satisfied,” I said, “and won’t be until we get some answers.

  “Yes. I knew that. Let’s lock up and go next door to the Pharmacy. They have a fine soda fountain there and a place to sit down where we can watch the street. Holt will be fine.”

  “Willett,” I said. “You want to stay here with Holt? I don’t like the idea of letting him out of my sight again until all this is over.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Dr. Carr said. “Everything will be fine. Besides, Mr. Mahoney has just as much a right to hear what I have to say as anyone.”

  I looked from Dr. Carr to Willett, and then to Holt and felt the tension of the day leave me. Holt was safe, for the moment
.

  “Okay,” I said. And, of course, that was the precise moment when I should have insisted otherwise.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There is one hold-over from the ancient-of-days that can still be found, if one knows where to look. That’s the small town soda fountain in a drug store. A & B Druggists had a soda fountain, complete with a skinny girl in a green smock with a little paper cap on her head. The pharmacy had three employees in evidence when the five of us entered: the checkout counter lady, a young female pharmacist who looked the same age as my secretary back in Austin, and the soda-jerk girl, who filled a tall frosted glass with root beer for Dr. Carr and for Jessica, and three cups of coffee for Dane, Willett and myself.

  Outside the plate glass windows the shadows deepened. Night would be coming soon.

  We sat at a booth with red gold-speckled plastic seats. Dane was so large he had to pull up a chair from another table and he perched there, looking lost and out of place.

  “Dr. Carr,” I began, “you said something a few minutes ago that I can’t get out of my head and can’t make any sense of. You said ‘when Amy crashed’, then you said that if ‘it’ was going to transfer to one of us ‘it’ would have already done so, then you told Willett ‘she never went into you.’ Are you sure you haven’t gone off your medication or something?”

  Jessica punched my arm. “Good one, dad.”

  Dr. Carr held my gaze with sober and steady gray eyes.

  “I wish I was, Mr. Travis. I’ve been wishing that most of my life.”

  None of us spoke. We waited.

  When Dr. Carr began to talk a minute later he held our complete attention long after it was full night outside, and none of us dared interrupt him.

  *****

  “It. She. Amy.

  “I’ve never known a particular pronoun that fits the phenomena I’m about to disclose to you.