“Thanks, Mabel.”
“Can I say something?”
“Since when do you ask permission?”
“This new job—are you sure you haven’t taken on too much?”
“Why?”
“Well, frankly, you’ve got circles under your eyes so dark they look like tar pits.”
“I haven’t been sleeping all that well in my new house. I’m not used to the peace and quiet after my little apartment.”
“Those cons, or whatever they’re called in these politically correct days, are they giving you problems?”
“Not the way you mean.”
“Then how?”
Eleanor would dearly have loved to dump all her feelings about Steve onto Mabel’s shoulders, but she knew darned well what Mabel would say and she didn’t want to hear it. Everybody said the same thing. Everybody’s advice was probably right-on. So why couldn’t she accept it? “It’s a long story, Mabel. I can’t really talk about it. I’m handling it.”
She took the folders and walked through the door back to the examining rooms before Mabel had a chance to reply, but she did catch a decided “humph” as the door shut behind her.
The dogs began to bark again the moment they spotted her walking up to the cow enclosure. As soon as tomorrow some of them would be well enough to be exercised in the parking lot and paddocks behind the clinic. Could they be trusted? Did they have any idea how to walk on a leash?
She sat cross-legged in front of their cages and talked quietly to them until they settled down. Several of them seemed downright cheerful, and grinned at her. Maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea to send them to the prison for rehabilitation. She’d have to work out the details. They wouldn’t be able to share quarters with the men; there wasn’t enough room in the dormitory. But there was plenty of room in the barn to construct kennels, even large kennels with runs, and if they were found to be trustworthy and trainable, they could accompany the men on their duties.
They might harass the stock, which wouldn’t be acceptable. But if they were still puppies under a year old, or even a little older, their minds might not have been irreparably harmed.
She longed to open the cage of the brindle female, but she knew Mac would kill her if he wasn’t with her, so she had to be satisfied with scratching the dog’s one remaining ear through the wire mesh. “Did you have a name, I wonder? Probably something sweet like Killer. We’ll have to fix that.”
She checked the other patients, gave the pony another shot of Butezalodine for pain, narrowly avoided having a chunk removed from her forearm by his incredibly fast teeth and finally went to Sarah’s office to read the charts.
Tonight, when she didn’t want time to think, there were no emergencies and only a few cases of sniffles among the dogs and cats brought in by their owner. She tried to concentrate on reading up on the diseases of beef cattle, but the words ran together.
She had to make up her own mind about Steve, and to do that, she needed more facts. Why had a jury convicted him? And why only of voluntary manslaughter?
She remembered that the lawyer listed on his case file was Leslie Vickers. She didn’t know the man, but she knew his reputation. He seldom lost a case. Very high priced, high profile. His services must have cost Steve a great deal of money.
She looked up his office number in the telephone book and called, leaving a message on his answering machine for him to call her. Would he? When she was dealing with the aftermath of Jerry’s death, she’d found getting in touch with her lawyer next to impossible. She ended by mentioning that she was calling about Steve Chadwick. That could work for or against her.
If he didn’t call back, how could she find out more?
What about Steve’s family? If, as the file said, they still lived in the area, then perhaps they’d talk to her. He said nobody ever came to visit him. Did that mean that, they too, thought he was guilty?
She looked up as Mabel walked into the office and stood on the other side of the desk with her hands planted on her ample hips.
“Hey,” Eleanor said. “Who’s minding the store?”
“Up front? Nobody at the moment. I left a note on the registration desk that says ‘Buzz if you need assistance.’ So either we talk here and leave the desk unattended, or you come up front with me and talk there. Your choice.”
Eleanor sighed in exasperation. “How about you go back to work and we don’t talk anywhere?”
“Mind my own business, you mean? Uh-uh. Anything that affects the doctors in this practice is my business.”
“Don’t mother-hen me, Mabel, I’m a grown woman. And I’m fine.”
“You’re acting like Juliet just before she took the poison. Now come up front with me. You have two minutes to decide or I come right back here.” Without waiting to see whether Eleanor would follow, Mabel turned around and walked out of the office.
Two minutes. Sarah’s office combined the familiar scents of disinfectant, clean wood shavings and just the slightest hint of manure. The equipment that Sarah had fought Mark Scott so hard to get lined the walls, waiting to be taken out to calls or used on their large patients. For Eleanor this office had become her refuge, her den, her nest. She felt safe here, certain of her skills, sure that she could do the job asked of her.
She did not allow emotion to color her professional decisions. Pity she couldn’t say the same about her private life.
Without the support of this clinic, these doctors, this staff, she’d still be a grieving widow in her studio apartment watching daytime television, eating take-out pizza when she remembered to eat at all and sleeping eighteen hours a day.
She’d been so certain she was back at full strength. How wrong could one person be?
Eleanor told herself she deserved a pleasant uncomplicated life. She’d had about all the emotional upheaval one person should have to endure.
She and Jerry had thought they were going to work side by side in their practice in Franklin, treating the suburban horses and pets. They’d been together since veterinary school. She knew people who said they could never work with their spouses, but she and Jerry had loved every minute of it.
Until the cancer. Even now she couldn’t bear to think of her beautiful, funny, big handsome husband wasting away while she had to treat him like a baby. She knew how much he hated it.
Not as much as she did. She knew she was supposed to go from anger to acceptance, but she’d never made it that far.
And after Jerry’s death, her world kept collapsing until there was simply nothing left.
Eleanor had nothing left either by that time—emotionally or physically. If not for Rick Hazard and Mac Thorn, who came up to Franklin to buy some of the equipment at the bankruptcy sale, she might well be homeless now.
But Rick, ever the organizer, had simply dragged her up and away to Memphis, pressured her to work part-time at night in one of the local emergency clinics, and harassed and cajoled her until she could go a whole afternoon without bursting into tears.
But thanks to Creature Comfort and Rick Hazard, professionally at least, she was back at full strength. However, there weren’t any reserves. She didn’t know how to deal with the deluge of feelings she had for Steve.
The intercom buzzed. “You have thirty seconds. And we still have no clients, so we can talk in private.”
“Coming, Mother.”
She stopped in the staff conference room, picked up a couple of diet sodas out of the machine and carried them up front. She slid her rear onto the second bar stool behind the high reception counter and handed a can to Mabel.
“I think I’m going to quit.”
“The clinic?” Mabel sounded horrified.
“The prison.”
“You’ll lose your new cottage. You haven’t even had a housewarming yet.”
“Everybody is going to say I told you so.”
“The work’s too much?”
“Not the work. The people, the rules, the atmosphere. You know what cognitive d
issonance is?”
“Isn’t that where you know what you’re supposed to be seeing and hearing isn’t what’s really going on, but you’re not certain you can trust yourself?”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself. The thing is, I like the members of my team, except for Sweet Daddy, and even he makes me laugh sometimes.”
“Sweet Daddy?”
“Most of them have nicknames. The only person I’ve met I truly dislike and am scared to death of is a certain CO.”
“What’s that?”
“Corrections Officer. Guard. One of them is a sadistic monster named Mike Newman who beats up prisoners who can’t fight back and has come pretty close to stalking me.”
“So report him.”
“I have. My word against his, and he’s been there far longer and has a lot more seniority. After the first day, managed to get him off my team, but I think that was more his choice than because the warden believed me.”
“You want to quit because of a guard? I don’t believe you. There’s more to it than that. I heard you even want to bring a couple of those guys over here on work release a couple of days a week. I probably wouldn’t feel any more comfortable around them than you do.”
“I made a big mistake, Mabel. I wasn’t going to read their prison files so I wouldn’t know what they were in prison for. But my curiosity got the better of me.”
“Sounds like simple self-protection to me.”
“Maybe. But I found out things I don’t want to know about what they did to wind up in jail. One man in particular. I can’t believe he did what they say he did.”
“Uh-huh. And what does this guy look like?”
“He’s just a man, all right?”
“Whoa! Did I ever touch a nerve!” Mabel looked at her through narrowed eyes.
Eleanor knew she was blushing. She also knew she was stammering. “He’s…he’s fairly attractive.”
“Do not get involved with a prisoner. I read the advice columns just like you do—these guys prey on unattached women, get them to send money to them, romance them, write them poetry. A couple of years ago one guy even convinced his lawyer—his lawyer,—to help him in a prison escape. Now she’s in prison, too.”
Eleanor dropped her eyes. “He swears he’s innocent.”
“I’ll bet he does.”
“But what if he is innocent? What if I believe him? What do I do then?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“There’s got to be some way to find out for myself.”
“A prosecution team and a jury thought he was guilty. It’s over and done with.”
“But people do investigate, don’t they? I see you here behind the registration desk reading all these true-crime books when there aren’t any clients. Where do those reporters come up with their facts? The police do make mistakes. Look at all the rapists that were wrongly convicted.”
“Good grief! Don’t tell me he was convicted of rape?”
“Certainly not.” She couldn’t bear to tell Mabel that his crime was even worse. “Just tell me. How do I find out the facts for myself?”
“I thought you said you’d read his file.”
“The prison file. That just tells me what he was convicted of, how long he has to serve before he can be paroled, and what kind of a prisoner he’s been—solitary, detention for breaking rules, things like that. It assumes he’s guilty. I need to make up my own mind.”
“Well, I suppose you could go down to the courthouse and request a copy of the arrest reports. They’re a matter of public record. I think they charge a small fee for copying.”
“That will still only give me one side—the side of the people who arrested him.”
“So talk to his lawyer.”
“Right. Like Leslie Vickers is going to talk to me in any sort of depth.”
Mabel took a deep breath. “There is one way you can find out.”
“Tell me. Why are you so hesitant?”
“Because it’s expensive. You can request a copy of the trial transcript. It costs two or three hundred dollars and can run to seven or eight hundred pages—more, if it’s a high-profile case.”
“How do I request one?” Eleanor felt a rising tide of excitement. At least with a transcript she’d see what the jury saw—the evidence that made them believe he was guilty. Then she could see if she agreed with their decision.
What she’d do about Steve after that she had no idea, but it was better than wringing her hands and worrying. Even in vet school her professors had said she was decisive, quick to make a diagnosis. That could have caused problems if she’d just shot off her mouth, but she always garnered all the facts first.
Maybe it was time for the old Eleanor to reassert herself once and for all, whatever the consequences. Her heart would mend a lot more quickly now than it would if she allowed herself to fall in love with Steve, then was forced to agree that he was a murderer.
“Do those true-crime books of yours really tell you how much a transcript costs?” Eleanor asked.
“That I know firsthand. I have a nephew who got busted for dealing drugs. The family chipped in and bought a transcript in case there was something his public defender missed.”
“And did he?”
“She. No, it was pretty much open-and-shut. The idiot was guilty. He’s out now and straight, but he nearly broke his mother’s heart.”
“Oh.” Eleanor’s shoulders slumped. Suddenly the enthusiasm she’d felt drained away and left her exhausted again.
Mabel leaned over and rubbed her shoulder. “Honey, don’t quit your new job over this. No man’s worth it. Why not get rid of him, instead? Get him assigned to some other team?”
Eleanor’s stomach lurched. Send him away? Miss seeing him even at a distance? Eleanor dropped her head into her arms on the desk. “I thought this job would be exciting, that I might actually make a difference. Now I don’t think I’ve got the strength or the stamina to cope. I wanted a quiet simple life without complications, without aggravation, without…”
“Without love?”
She raised her head. “I loved Jerry, and his death wore me out.”
“You can’t possibly love this guy. You’ve known him a week. You’ve never even been alone with him.” Mabel looked at her with suspicion. “You haven’t, have you?”
“Not the way you mean. And no, I don’t love him. Or at least I don’t think I do. But it’s there all right, the same feeling in the gut I got every time I looked at Jerry’s big blue eyes or heard his laugh or watched him walk into a room. Except Jerry was fun. Steve Chadwick is not fun. He’s sad and angry. He scares me and he attracts me and, God help me, Mabel, I want him so badly I can taste it.”
“Honey.” Mabel covered Eleanor’s hand with hers. “You need to get laid, but not by some jailbird.”
Eleanor began to laugh. At least it started out as laughter, but after a moment she couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying. And she couldn’t stop.
“How about you let me and Ernest T. in on the joke?” Mr. Bass strode into the clinic with Ernest T., the Great Dane, padding along behind him with his head low. “We could use a laugh.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHILE THE MEN WERE WORKING to increase the height and strength of the fence that Eleanor hoped would keep the buffalo in their pasture, Eleanor strolled over to Big. When she touched his arm, he jumped and stammered, “Ma’am, Doc, am I doing it wrong?”
“Not at all, Big. I just need to talk to you a few minutes.” The day had dawned gray with a hint of the kind of cold fog that chilled worse than a driving rain. Now that the sun was fully up, however, it promised to be another perfect Indian-summer day. “Come on, let’s go sit in my truck.”
Selma shook her head. “Against the rules.”
“Even with you watching? It’s okay, Selma, Big and I need a few minutes. I promise he won’t drive off in my truck, will you, Big?” She grinned at him, and after a moment of confusion, he smiled shyly back.
> “Don’t know as I’d fit in your truck, Doc. Not with you in it, too.”
Eleanor drove a big 350 with an extended cab, but looking at it and at Big, she considered that he might be right. In any case, there’d be no way he could be comfortable. “So let’s go sit under the pine trees. That against the rules, Selma?”
“Nope. Better take one of the tarpaulins or you’ll come back with a wet rear end.”
As they strolled over to the clump of pines that grew beside the front pasture, Eleanor asked, “You really ought to wear a baseball cap, Big. I’m surprised as fair as you are, you don’t burn to a crisp.”
Big ran his palm across the stubble of his white-blond hair and grinned at her. “Must be that touch of Cherokee blood my mama used to talk about.”
“How on earth do you manage to sleep in the dormitory? Do you have a longer bed?”
“No ma’am. I scrunch up. I been doing it most of my life.”
Eleanor tossed the tarpaulin out onto the pine straw, sat cross-legged and invited Big to sit. He sank onto his haunches with surprising grace for such a large man.
“I done something wrong, ma’am?”
“Not at all. That’s not why I wanted to talk to you. I know I said when we started working together that I didn’t want to know what any of you did before you came here, but then I felt obliged to change my mind.”
Big hunched his huge shoulders and moaned softly, “Oh, Lordy.”
“There are some things in the works that made it imperative—things that might be good for you. But I really have to hear your side of the story. Don’t worry about sounding bad. Just tell me the plain truth.”
Big sighed. His huge chest rose and fell as though his lungs were an industrial-strength bellows. He wouldn’t look at Eleanor. Instead, his frightened eyes sought the men by the fence.
“Please, Big. Tell me what happened. Trust me. I won’t betray you.”
For a long moment he still didn’t speak, and when he did, his voice was barely above a whisper.
The Payback Man Page 12
