The Fifth Vial
Page 14
No matter what the pain, though, it did not measure up to the emotional ache at the prospect of having to sit with a mother and father and tell them that their son was dead. Not wanting to upset Lonnie Durkin’s family for too long, but also unwilling simply to show up unannounced at Little Farm, Ben called from the airport in Pocatello. Lonnie’s mother, Karen, did not press him to say over the phone that her son was dead, but it was clear to Ben that in her heart, she knew. They set a time when he would meet with her and her husband, and she gave him directions to their farm. Then, after a brief stop in Soda Springs to compose himself, take a few Motrin, register at the Hooper Springs bed-and-breakfast, and pass some time joylessly viewing the impressive geyser at Hooper Springs Park, Ben turned onto Route 34 and drove north to the hamlet of Conda.
Sleepy, peaceful, and very small, Conda reminded him eerily of Curtisville, Florida, home of Schyler Gaines and his gas station. He tried to imagine the massive Adventurer, with Vincent at the wheel and Connie perched on the thronelike passenger seat, gliding through the town like a hungry great white on a reef, searching for Pugsley Hill Road and the man whose cells, they somehow knew, were a near-perfect match for those of a person twenty-five hundred miles away.
Karen Durkin’s directions brought Ben onto a long, dry dirt road that knifed through a vast tableland of grain fields. He wondered where, in the flatness, Pugsley Hill could possibly be. After nearly two miles, the fields gave way to corrals, stables, and some horses. Beyond the corrals was a large, rust-red barn, and across from that a prim, white two-story home, perched on a modest rise. A wooden sign arching over the drive announced it to be Little Farm.
Karen Durkin and her husband, Ray, were waiting anxiously on their narrow front porch. Both were in their fifties, but might have been a decade older. Their faces were weathered and honest, and spoke of years of hard work in an often harsh and unpredictable profession. Ray’s handshake was firm and his hands callused, but the soft sadness in his eyes was inestimable.
“Lonnie’s dead?” he asked before they had even entered the house.
Ben nodded.
“I’m truly sorry,” he managed.
Karen led them into a bright, homey kitchen, with print curtains and a worn, round oak table that was almost certainly handmade. He paused by the door to scratch the family dog behind the ear.
“That’s Joshua,” Karen said.
“A black-and-white pit bull,” Ben replied. “He’s just beautiful.”
“Thanks. He’s our second one. Just turned four. Woody, our first one, lived to be sixteen. Lonnie named them both. Totally gentle and totally loyal. Maybe if Joshua had been with Lonnie that day—”
She stopped speaking and dabbed at her tears with a tissue.
Off to one corner of the kitchen was a built-in desk, and on it were several framed photos of a young boy, and one of a young man. All of them, Ben felt fairly certain, were of Lonnie.
“He was always a very good boy,” Karen said, after she had placed mugs of coffee and a platter of brownies on the table. “They said the cord was around his neck in the womb, and he didn’t get enough oxygen to his brain, so he wasn’t much in school. But he loved animals and all the people who work on the farm loved him.”
Ben flashed on Madame Sonja’s explanation for making two sets of drawings. One was clearly the Lonnie depicted in his photographs. Was the other the man he might have become? He wondered that as he went through the details of Lonnie’s death. There seemed no need to expose them to the coroner’s photos and Madame Sonja’s renderings unless, of course, they asked to see them.
“Here are the numbers of the police in Fort Pierce and Dr. Woyczek, the medical examiner. They’ll tell you whether or not you will have to identify him in person, or whether you can send down something with his fingerprints on it and possibly some dental records. The state police here should be able to help you deal with them, and whatever mortician you choose should be able to help you out, too—especially in making arrangements to bring Lonnie’s body back.”
“I told you, Karen,” Ray said stonily. “I told you he was dead.”
“I’m just glad he didn’t suffer none,” his wife replied. “Mr. Callahan, I think we both want to know everything you can tell us about how our son ended up in Florida, and who might have done this to him.”
“I think I know why, in a general sense, and even how, but as for who, and why specifically Lonnie, well, believe it or not, you might help me answer that question.”
Over the next hour, with very little interruption from the Durkins, Ben recounted his involvement from the first meeting with Alice Gustafson through his decision to visit Conda and personally deliver the sad news of Lonnie’s death.
“So that’s how you got them black eyes,” Ray, clearly impressed, said when he had finished.
“It was kind of you not to ask before. Believe it or not, I still think I got the best of him.”
“You haven’t told us why these people chose our Lonnie,” Karen said.
“That’s because I don’t know. I can tell you this much—it makes no sense that they would have come all the way up here for Lonnie unless they already knew his tissue type.”
“But how would they get that?”
“There’s only one way—through a blood test.”
“Except he never had that sort of test.”
“Has he had any blood test at all?”
The Durkins exchanged inquiring looks.
“Two years ago,” Karen said suddenly.
“When he had those dizzy spells,” Ray added. “Dr. Christiansen ordered them.”
“Do you think he would speak with me?” Ben asked.
“She,” Karen said. “Dr. Christiansen is a lady doctor. I would think so—especially if I come into Soda Springs with you.”
“Can we call her today?”
“I don’t see why not. She’s a very nice doctor.”
“Even I go to her,” Ray said proudly.
“Hopefully, after I speak with her, she’ll agree to see you without us. I don’t mind driving down to Soda Springs if I have to, but with what you’ve told us today, we have quite a bit to do.”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry for being so inconsiderate.”
“Nonsense. You’re a fine man. There’s nothing you can do about what’s happened except to get to the bottom of things, and that’s what you’re doing.”
Ben sat quietly for a time, looking at the woman and her husband—trying to comprehend their inestimable emptiness. Could there possibly be anything worse than the loss of one’s child? In that moment, studying their strained, worn faces, he sensed something else as well—something that he now acknowledged had been percolating within him over the weeks since he first met Alice Gustafson. He cared. He cared about this couple, now without their son for the rest of their lives. He cared about a frightened, confused, ridiculed motel housekeeper in Maine, whom he had never met. He cared about bringing some sort of justice to a remorseless killer, who was responsible, at least partly, for so much pain and suffering.
“So, is there a hospital in Soda Springs?” he asked finally.
“Caribou Memorial Hospital. It isn’t very big, but folks say it’s a terrific place. Thankfully, we haven’t any need for it. What I mean is—”
In spite of herself, Karen Durkin began to cry.
Ben sat quietly, sipping absently at his coffee, swallowing against the fullness in his throat. He had always thought he’d be a father—two or three times over, in fact. Since the breakup of his marriage, and his gradual descent into ennui and detachment, he hadn’t cared much about the time that was slipping past. Now, despite the anguish of his hosts, he found himself wondering what it might be like to have kids.
“I’m staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Soda Springs,” he said. “Why don’t I go there now and we can talk about things tomorrow?”
“No, no,” Karen said, regaining her composure. “I’m okay. Let’s call Dr. Christiansen now.”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“No twasn’t,” Ray cut in. “That new lab had just opened right by the pharmacy. I took him there myself.”
“New lab?”
“That’s right. Brand-new building. It opened maybe six months, maybe a year before we went there. I can’t remember its name.”
“I don’t think I ever knew it,” Karen said. “Let me call Dr. Christiansen to see if she’ll meet with you, Ben. She’s gonna be very sad about Lonnie. Even though he never had to see her all that much, he was one of her favorites.”
She made the call from a phone on the built-in desk while Ray and Ben sat in silence, both staring down at their coffee.
“No problem, Ben,” Karen announced when she had finished. “The doctor will see you in her office at ten tomorrow morning. That’ll give you time for a good breakfast, and maybe to see the geyser in Hooper Springs Park.”
“I’ll do that,” Ben said, rising and shaking their hands.
He turned, patted Joshua, and was reaching for the door when Karen said, “Oh, by the way, it’s the Whitestone Laboratory.”
“Pardon?”
“The lab where Lonnie had his blood drawn, it’s called the Whitestone Laboratory. I think it may be part of a chain.”
“Only the largest chain in the world,” Ben said.
Thirteen
Can you see, except with the eye?
—PLATO, The Republic, Book I
There was blood everywhere—splattered across a roadway, exploding from the ground, flowing down his own face. Ben seldom remembered dreams, but he awoke at four thirty in the morning knowing that his fitful night of sleep at the Hooper Springs bed-and-breakfast had been full of very violent ones—a string of macabre scenarios held together by a blood-drenched Winnebago. Sometimes, he was driving, other times it was Vincent, the wrestler-sized denizen of the now-extinct Laurel Way garage. Twice during the night Ben woke up in a panic from something in his nightmare, then quickly forgot what it was. Both times, he used the small bathroom and returned to bed, only to immediately become immersed once more in the dream and the blood and the terror.
Finally, he willed the images to be over, turned on the bedside lamp, and propped an old Travis McGee paperback on his chest, trying to make some sense of the lurid dream. When he felt himself drifting off again, he took a long shower and left the bed-and-breakfast for a walk around the still-sleeping town.
How big? he wondered, as he wandered past the sleeping shops and paused briefly by the Soda Springs Apothecary. Assuming that the Winnebago Adventurer was the means by which unwilling donors were brought to anxiously awaiting recipients, how big was the scope of the business?
Just a few more steps brought him to the front of the modest red-brick building that housed the Whitestone Laboratory. In Chicago, it seemed that there was a Whitestone lab on almost every corner. Some of them, like the one he had gone to a few years ago, were no more than phlebotomy centers—blood-drawing offices. The vials of blood were then brought by courier to an area lab where most of the tests were run. The Whitestone lab in Chicago, where he had had his blood taken, was a storefront not five blocks from his office. He remembered Dr. Banks remarking on the speed, efficiency, and dependability of the lab, and also the militarylike precision with which they had transitioned from a small, little-known operation to, perhaps, the number one clinical laboratory in the world.
Soda Springs, according to the sign west of town, had a population of just more than thirty-three hundred. Apparently that was more than enough for Whitestone. At the moment, the room beyond the plate-glass street-side window was dark, but peering inside, Ben could make out a warm waiting area with several large plants. A police cruiser rolled up the street and slowed enough for the lone occupant to check him over, then smile and wave, before driving on. Ben wondered if someone might have called in about the odd-looking stranger making his way up Main Street through the gloom, in no particular hurry. Welcome to small-town America.
With several hours still to kill before his appointment, he wandered back to his bed-and-breakfast, had a better-than-average breakfast of poached eggs and homemade corned beef hash, and then checked in with his office answering machine.
“Mr. Callahan,” a man’s deep voice said. “I have been referred to you by Judge Caleb Johnson, who says you’re the best detective in the city….”
If Johnson knows who I am, Ben thought, then he’s a far better detective than I am.
The voice went on to say that his was a case of possible spousal infidelity, and that there would be millions of dollars hinging on the results of Ben’s discreet investigation. Whatever Ben’s usual rate, he would triple it in exchange for having this matter be made his top priority.
Triple. Ben did some quick mental math and realized that even if the stalk-and-gawk case resolved quicker than usual, and he suspected that it might not, he would be able to make up several times over for the Organ Guard check he had already nearly spent, or the money he had turned down in the Katherine de Souci case. Triple. The rich bass voice was a ladder out of the deep red hole he was in. Ben hummed a chorus of Prine’s “Fish and Whistle.”
Father forgive us for what we must do…
For the immediate future, there would be no wolf at his door.
What goes around comes around, he thought, smiling. Bad or good, what goes around comes around.
Dr. Marilyn Christiansen, an osteopathic general practitioner, was a kindly woman in her mid-forties, practicing out of an old Victorian house on the east edge of the town. The antithesis of the always rushed and harried Dr. Banks, she was bereft at learning of the death of Lonnie Durkin, and stunned at the notion of his being used as an unwilling bone marrow donor.
“This is very sad,” she said. “He was the Durkins’ only child. Is there any other possible explanation for what happened to him?” she asked.
“Not according to the medical examiner in Florida. The holes of a bone marrow aspiration were present in the bone in each hip.”
“How bizarre. Well, I didn’t see Lonnie in the office very much. He was seldom sick. But I certainly knew him. Most everyone in the town did. Very sweet boy. I say boy even though he was in his twenties because, as you probably know—”
“I do know,” Ben said, sparing her the explanation. “His parents told me you saw him for dizziness.”
“Two years ago. Even though I never suspected anything serious, I ordered a routine laboratory panel. The results all came back normal, and his dizziness simply went away. Some sort of virus, I guess.”
“The tests were done at Whitestone?”
“Yes. I could have used the hospital lab, but I’ve found that Whitestone is just a bit, well, more efficient.”
“Do you know the director of the lab?”
“Shirley Murphy. I don’t know her well. Single woman with a teenage child—a girl.”
“Do you feel comfortable calling her to see if she could meet with me today?”
“Of course, but I suspect you won’t have any problem getting in to see her.”
“How do you know?”
Christiansen hesitated, smiling enigmatically.
“I see that you don’t wear a wedding ring,” she said finally.
“Divorced.”
“Well, as I said, Shirley is single, and she’s educated, and Soda Springs is, well, pretty much of a small, family-oriented town.”
Ben had never been very intuitive or aware when it came to women, but even he could tell that Shirley Murphy was coming on to him. She was an attractive enough woman, about his age, with streaked hair, large breasts, and full hips. However, whether it was the introductory phone call that Marilyn Christiansen made to her, or the way she actually came to work every day, Shirley was wearing some sort of highly aromatic perfume in addition to a great deal of makeup, neither of which he ever found pleasing in an
y way. Still, as long as she might be of help to him, there was no way he was going to rain on her fantasies.
The real question was how much information to share with her. If she knew anything about what had happened to Lonnie Durkin, or mentioned Ben’s visit to someone who did, he would have made a mistake as grave as trying to open the RV door. It was time for some creative flirting, and some creative lying, neither of which he was particularly skilled at. Gratefully, Dr. Christiansen had agreed not to mention his real profession.
“I don’t think we needed to concoct too elaborate a story around who you are, Mr. Callahan,” she had said when she finished her call to the lab. “It didn’t seem like Shirley heard too much beyond the words ‘single’ and ‘good-looking.’ I told her that you came in because of some blurred vision after your auto accident, and mentioned you were interested in the Whitestone lab. How’d I do?”
Murphy’s office was tidy and businesslike, with framed French Impressionist prints on the wall, along with some diplomas and two awards for being a Whitestone Laboratories Regional Employee of the Month. The volumes filling the small bookcase didn’t look as if they had seen much use.
As the doctor had predicted, Shirley was much more interested in the teller than in the tale.
“I own a small company that does HLA—you know, human leukocyte antigen—typing for transplants,” Ben had said, watching her closely for any reaction. “Whitestone is on the verge of buying us out, but keeping me on as director. They want to move our headquarters from Chicago, and one of the places they’re considering is Pocatello. Another, from what they told me, is Soda Springs. Something about a smaller town having more employee loyalty and longevity.”