The Jezebel Remedy

by Martin Clark

  “What’s your sister’s number? I need to call her. Her cell or work number?”

  “It’s written in my notes, but I’ll have to find it. It’s definitely a part of my written history. Why won’t Mr. Stone speak with me?”

  “Sweetie,” Lisa said sadly, sympathetically, “he’s not here. He’s not in the office. He wants to speak with you. He’s worried about you. Remember how he’s been checking on you? Calling your sister every few days? He’s your partner.”

  “He’s spying on me too,” Downs wailed. “He wants my formulas. Formulae, actually. Is he in cahoots with Seth Garrison? But you already know that.”

  “No, Doctor,” Lisa assured him, her tone as gentle and comforting as she could make it. “You asked Joe to help you and he did. We’re your friends. Lettie assured you Joe was a good man, and he is. Joe and I absolutely believe that Benecorp is bad and that Seth Garrison is your enemy. We’re here to protect you.”

  “I’ve passed the safe minutes. It’s been too long. They’re locked on to me now. I can feel it. I’m logging this in the record. Writing it down. Remember, Mrs. Stone, there’s no escaping Seth Garrison. You can touch him whether he’s there or not. Goodbye.”

  Lisa said “Doctor? Doctor Downs? Doctor?” but she’d heard a click and realized he was gone, that she was talking to an empty line.

  She contacted Len Barrow’s office and had his secretary pull Joe from a divorce deposition, emphasized to her it was an emergency. Joe gave her Downs’s sister’s cell information from his TracFone and promised her he’d be there as soon as he finished, probably in another thirty minutes. Lisa immediately called the sister, a James Madison University librarian named Amy Shepard, and found her at her job.

  “Lisa Stone?” Shepard quizzed her. “Joe Stone’s wife? From Martinsville?”

  “Yes. We’re law partners as well. I’m calling about your brother, Dr. Downs.”

  “Okay,” Shepard said tersely. “I’m listening.”

  “I just spoke with him, and I’m extremely worried. He’s in bad shape, very confused and frightened.”

  “Let me give you a preface, Mrs. Stone, so you won’t think poorly of me. First, I’m assuming you really are Mrs. Stone. In Stevie’s world, you need a scorecard to keep track of all the players and their alleged motives and multiple identities. As best I can tell, Mr. Stone truly is an attorney and Stevie sought him out, not vice versa. He seems concerned regarding Stevie’s health. He calls periodically to check in, and he was kind enough to help return my van after Stevie stole it.”

  “So far, you’re completely accurate,” Lisa said.

  “You also need to understand that I love Stevie very much, and that he’s a genius. He earned a doctorate from UCLA when he was twenty. He was at the top of his class, and it came easy for him.”

  “I can tell he’s bright,” Lisa noted. “Eccentric, but extremely intelligent.”

  “Eccentric is charitable. Stevie has deep-seated and profound mental illnesses. I used the plural intentionally. He has been unstable for years and years, and we’ve done all we can for him. I’m his only sibling. But no matter the doctor, the medicine, the facility or the treatment, he always reverts to his old ways, and his sickness overwhelms him.”

  “I understand. It would have to be heartbreaking.”

  “So now that you have a sense of my perspective, do you know where he is? He’s been missing for two days. We’ve alerted the cops, but it’s not a priority for them. I need to locate him and have him committed until he stabilizes.”

  “Committed?” Lisa answered reflexively and immediately wished she hadn’t.

  “Yes, committed to a mental hospital. So they can treat his illness. Do you have a better idea?”

  “No. No ma’am, I don’t. Ten minutes ago, he was calling from the pastor’s office at the Harrisonburg Methodist Church. Your church, where you attend.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said formally. “I’ll send my husband and the police over there.”

  “Mrs. Shepard, may I ask you something?”

  “I suppose. I might not answer you, but go ahead.”

  “I understand your frustration with your brother and his circumstances, and from what I can discover, he’s been a regular in the court system, lost his job because he made wild accusations against other employees and has landed in several mental hospitals. But a few moments ago he told me he’d seen Seth Garrison at your house, and he sounded believable. Totally sincere.”

  “Stevie is obsessed with Benecorp and Garrison. Perhaps you’ve seen the various court orders resulting from Stevie’s bad acts directed at Benecorp. They’re probably deserved, in a literal sense. In a legal sense. But, Mrs. Stone, Seth Garrison is a monster. If you’re one of his minions posing as Lisa Stone, you can alert him and he can sue me for slander. He worked my brother like a beast of burden when he knew he was sick. God only knows how much money Stevie made him—that’s why Garrison always paid for his rehab and kept him at Benecorp. Not—”

  “So Garrison did pay for treatment?” Lisa interrupted.

  “Please let me finish,” Shepard said stiffly. “He doesn’t care about Stevie, and these days Stevie’s evidently connected to something important at Benecorp. Stevie has told me this, and I believe him.”

  “It’s true. He is. Sorry to butt in, but there’s no doubt about it.”

  “So Garrison has hired these awful people to bedevil my brother. Garrison knows—he absolutely knows—this will destroy Stevie, this following him and parking outside my house and the diabolical tricks they play on him.” Shepard was angry, bitter, inflamed. “But there’s nothing we can do about it, is there? My husband’s brother is a lawyer, and he couldn’t do a thing to protect Stevie. The police are no help, either. The thugs are within their rights to constantly lurk and linger on my street, especially given Stevie’s threats. To answer your question, I’m positive Seth Garrison has not been in my house. I’m also positive that our deceased mother is not advising Stevie, and I was unable to discern the ‘code’ in alleged communications from people—both living and dead—that my mentally ill brother found in posts on various websites.”

  “Will you let us know how it turns out for him?”

  “Thank you for your interest. I have to go; he’s probably already on the move.”

  —

  Lisa heard nothing for several days, and she tried to contact Amy Shepard on a Thursday, early in the morning. It was already hot and stuffy, the onerous summer heat stalled and languishing and shouldered up against the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Lisa was walking from their house to the Mercedes, and she thought of Downs and his sister, called Amy’s cell number and heard a voice-mail message. She left her information and asked Amy to please get in touch.

  Driving to town, Lisa came alongside a car on the four-lane, and a curly-haired lad, probably five or six years old, moonfaced and missing a tooth, watched her as she rode by his window, and she recognized him, had seen him a few days ago, the same boy, in the bulrushes by the small creek that meandered the public park, no shoes, no shirt, splashing the water, tumbling stones, kicking a mud bank, searching and hunting through the high grass, suddenly shrieking, “Crawfish! Crawfish! Crawfish!” and then, later, “Big lizard!” He’d explored the creek the whole time she was there, jogging after work, some fresh-air exercise once evening arrived and tempered the sun. A woman was driving him, and several other children as well, the brood in a bad-off, smoking blue Toyota, the rear bumper mangled and tied to the body with bungee cords. The boy waved at her, and she waved back, though they hadn’t spoken at the park, and she guessed he was probably waving at everyone on the highway, even strangers.

  Amy returned the call before Lisa reached the office, as she was turning onto Cleveland Avenue. “Stevie is dead,” Amy announced, the sentence cold and sterile. “I hope you’re all happy now. He hung himself in our basement yesterday. My twelve-year-old daughter found him. Nice, huh? He’d used a Magic Marker to cover my walls wi
th calculations and equations.”

  “Oh my god, Mrs. Shepard. I am so very sorry. So sorry. He was a sweet soul.”

  “He’s better off,” she said flatly. “I hate to say it, but…”

  “I completely understand my timing’s not good, but I have to ask if you think Garrison was involved in this. I’m sorry, but your brother and I have a common foe in Benecorp. Was this suspicious?”

  “We’d just located Stevie and were making arrangements for his treatment. Ironically, of course, Benecorp’s security vipers have known exactly where he was every second of every day. My husband was upstairs when Stevie did it; there was nobody else in the house except our children. So, Mrs. Stone, yes, Seth Garrison killed my brother, but he was clever enough to do it at a distance and with the blessing of your inept legal system. He murdered Stevie one surveillance shift at a time, little by little. Early on in their torment, we found a speaker concealed in his room, the better for him to hear voices. I’ll spare you a list of their other evils.”

  “Have you made arrangements? Will there be a service?”

  “Not for you or anyone else, no.”

  “I’m so, so sorry. I—”

  “Goodbye.” Shepard cut her off and ended their conversation.

  “I promise we’ll try to do right by him,” Lisa finished, alone in her car, the sentence almost sough at the end. She cried, not much, a tear from the corner of each eye, and her nose ran and her throat clogged with mucus, and she blotted the tears and parked and went to find Joe, didn’t correct her makeup, wiped her nose with a wad of tissue as she trudged across the street and traveled several blocks. She stood on the sidewalk in front of Reid Young’s law office, where—screw it—she lit a cigarette and smoked and occasionally dabbed her nose and eyes until she saw Joe through the plate glass, leaving, his briefcase at his side. She crushed the Marlboro Ultra Light with the toe of her shoe, twisted brown tobacco shreds—some burned black at the tips—from the paper and onto the rough concrete.

  “Hey,” Joe said as he pushed open the door. “I guess it’s not a positive sign that you’re waiting on the sidewalk next to Reid’s office.”

  She gave him the news, and he hugged her and then looked her in the eye and said it was sad and pitiful but not shocking, and he told her not to be upset. “Poor Downs. In a strange sort of way, I’ll miss him. He never really had a chance.”

  “Today, Joe, as soon as we can, we’re hiring our own security. Off-duty or retired cops we trust. I don’t care what it costs. We’d be stupid not to. Twenty-four-seven, Joe. You call Chris Lampkins and see if he’ll help us schedule it.”

  “Okay,” Joe said. “Though I’d like to think I can take care of us.”

  “Not when you’re sleeping.”

  “I’ll check with Chris.”

  “Such an evil thing to do,” Lisa said. “Downs was so vulnerable. Garrison couldn’t have cared less about being attacked—he just wanted Downs gone.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Pitiful,” she added, repeating Joe’s word.

  Joe switched hands with the briefcase. “From a selfish perspective, it’s fair to say our suit just became more complicated.” He sighed. “With Downs dead, the e-mail from Lettie to him is going to be an even worse chore to prove at trial. Damn.” He stared at the sidewalk. “Poor guy. Smart and crazy is an impossible combination. And Garrison knew exactly which buttons to push, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” she said.

  “You know,” Joe said grimly, “bad shit happens in threes. Probably two still to come.”

  Brownie Stone died the next morning, on July 1.

  A distressed, flustered, discombobulated, red-eyed Betty popped into Lisa’s office, pushing open the door without a knock or any warning, and she insisted—her small hands flapping—Lisa needed to hurry down the hall and check on Joe, and Lisa was alarmed and immediately understood that whatever had happened was bad, bleak. She’d slipped her shoes off while she was proofreading a mobile-home-park lease at her desk, and she bolted from the room with bare feet, felt the polished wood and carpets and fine grit on her soles as she rushed to Joe’s office. She was worried about a heart attack, a stroke, or some retaliation from Benecorp, or maybe word of her cheating had finally made it to her husband.

  Joe was sitting on the floor, beside the chamois pad. Brownie was laid across his lap, the dog’s mouth partially wrenched open and his lips drawn backward and locked in place. His tongue extended from a black corner and caught between his teeth so that—oddly—it was pointing upward, toward the ceiling, against gravity. Urine wet the very edge of his bed and had puddled on the oak floor. Joe was quiet. From her angle, the dog’s muzzle seemed absolutely white, fluorescent, washed out by the electrical lights. One of Brownie’s eyes was shut, the other mostly exposed, fixed and hollow, switched off, disconnected.

  “Oh, Joe,” was all she could muster, and she plopped down on the floor, right where she’d been standing, shoeless, despondent, crying, her knees pulled fast against her chest and encircled inside her arms.

  “Came from the clerk’s office…” Joe began but couldn’t finish. He took a breath, shook his head, swallowed several times. “And I found him…” His voice fractured on the last word, and he stopped again. “Dead on his pad. I was gone an hour, probably less.”

  Lisa wasn’t able to speak. Betty and their other secretary, Isabelle, filed in behind her, and Betty patted and squeezed Lisa’s shoulder.

  “He was rattling this morning,” Joe said. “Hard for him to breathe.” He wiped at his eye. “But it didn’t seem that urgent. Nothing new. I should’ve taken him to Dr. Withers.” Joe stood up and laid the dog on the pad, careful to keep the carcass away from the slight urine spot.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Stone,” Betty said. “He was a great dog. It won’t be the same here without him.”

  “I’m going to bring the Jeep around front and load him,” Joe declared. “I don’t want to parade him through the parking lot like this. He’ll have his dignity.”

  “Okay,” Lisa said softly.

  Joe left and returned and folded the chamois pad around Brownie, made a sling almost, and he carried the dog to the Jeep and placed him in the cargo area. Lisa walked behind them. Joe stepped to the side to make space, and she moved closer and put her hand on the dog’s head and rubbed down along his neck, stopped at his stomach, all the warmth and life missing. “Poor boy,” she said, still barefoot, still crying.

  Suzy Loomis was passing by, and she braked her car and pulled to the curb and lowered the window and asked if everything was okay. “Brownie just died,” Joe informed her, and she covered her mouth and her face sank. Almost everybody in Henry County knew how much the Stones loved their dog, and people later suggested his death was even worse than normal because they had no kids, almost as if they’d lost a child.

  Their neighbor Taylor volunteered his Kubota tractor with a frontend bucket, and Joe used it to dig a deep grave near the split oak, the spot where Brownie had originally gone to die. The grave was atop a slight knoll, above a lazy stretch of slope and a field, the view clear in every direction, and in the late fall and winter when the leaves were absent, you could make out the creek at the border of the property. Joe squared away the corners with a shovel and posthole digger, stood inside the pit he’d cut from the ground, thigh-deep, and shaped the grave, shaved it neat, tidy. Lisa sat and watched, Brownie in a quilt beside her, completely covered. The quilt was old, a hand-sewn patchwork they’d inherited from Joe’s Great-Aunt Macie, but it had two big, stubborn stains on it as well as a tattered corner, so they kept it stored in a chest, too valuable and too familial to discard, too soiled to spread at the foot of the guest room bed.

  Lisa didn’t want to see her dog’s pained mouth and vacant eyes again, so she kissed him goodbye through the cloth, and Joe stepped into the hole and rested him on the soil bottom. They buried his metal bowl with him. DOG was stenciled in black letters across the bowl, the D chipped and dinged. J
oe insisted on shoveling in the dirt by hand, scooped and tossed the mound of red clay from a plastic sheet until the opening was completely filled, the quilt’s blues, indigos, yellows and violets disappearing bit by bit. He did use the Kubota’s bucket to tamp the dirt, packed it flush with the rest of the earth, tight, secure, final. “We’ll find him a marker,” Joe said when he turned off the engine. “You’ll have to help me think what to inscribe. You’re better at that kind of thing than I am.”

  In the end, after a dismal July Fourth holiday, they settled on a small granite rectangle, ordered from the funeral home: BROWNIE STONE. FAITHFUL DOG.

  “Damn it,” Joe blurted. “Shit. I hate these infernal codes.” His neck was craned, his nose almost touching his computer’s screen. “The ‘gotcha’ puzzle they make you copy on Ticketmaster.” He was in his office, a Friday, 10:00 a.m., a week after they’d buried their dog, another dry, hot, prosaic Henry County morning, yards starting to brown, the heat loitering and obstinate, not relenting even at night.

  “It’s ‘captcha,’ Joe.” Lisa grinned. “It prevents wholesale buying and keeps the process honest.” She came around the desk to join him. “What’re you trying to order?”

  “This is a total clusterfuck. Worthless.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, reading the screen. “ZZ Top in Greensboro. You mentioned that. I definitely want to go. It should be fun.”

  “So is that an o, an a, or the number zero, and is it small or capital if it’s an o? Of course, that’s just the first little test. We still have to solve the hieroglyph at the end—looks like a giraffe’s hind leg.”