by Mike Stewart
Our waiter appeared and spoke quietly. “They’re ready for you on the sporting clays range, Dr. Adderson.”
“Thank you, Simon.” She turned back to me. “Are you ready?”
“Sure.”
We exited through double glass doors at the rear of the dining room, crossed a stone veranda, and descended a wide fan of stone steps.
Parked on a small asphalt path, a golf cart waited with our shotguns already stowed vertically in a gun rack that took the place of the usual golf-bag stand on the back.
Dr. Adderson nodded at my Beretta. “Is that your Silver Pigeon?”
“Yeah. I checked it when I got here.”
She shook her head. “That’s a good gun, but you’re going to miss some clays shooting a twenty-gauge.”
As we climbed into the cart, I said, “I’m going to miss some clays anyhow. I’ve only done this once before.”
“Aren’t you interested in winning, Mr. McInnes?”
“Right now, I’m interested in finding out what happened to Kate Baneberry.”
She gave me a look.
I smiled. “I’m used to the gun, and I put in a couple of Briley extended skeet tubes to open up the choke and cover as much sky as possible. I’ll be fine.”
Dr. Adderson returned my smile. “I had a feeling.”
She stepped on the accelerator and we started off with a jerk. The cart path wound around the side of the clubhouse and cut through a hundred yards of old-growth hardwoods before we came to the first station. Two carts were ahead of us. On the wooden stand, a CPA type who looked like his mother had dressed him with one of everything from L.L. Bean was blasting away at spinning orange targets.
“It’ll be a few minutes.” Dr. Adderson turned to me. “There are ten stands. Before you shoot, the trapper will release ‘show birds’ so you can see where they’ll be going. All this varies, but generally you’ll have two clays released in different directions. You shoot singles first, then two report pairs, which means the second clay is released when you shoot at the first one. Then you’ll get two true pairs. Shoot the one farthest away first.”
I looked at her.
“You got that?”
“I’ll figure it out.” Now the CPA’s partner—a little round guy with yellow glasses and a bald head—stepped up onto the stand. “You’re pretty serious about shooting, aren’t you?”
Dr. Adderson nodded.
That was enough small talk. “What happened to Kate Baneberry after dinner that night?”
The doctor stepped out of the cart and fished what looked like stereo headphones out of a canvas-and-leather bag. She tossed them to me and pulled another set out for herself. As she hooked the hearing protectors around her neck, Dr. Adderson said, “What happened appeared to be a weakened heart.”
“From the food poisoning?”
“No. The food poisoning may have been the triggering mechanism. But the organic susceptibility—the arrhythmia that may have resulted in cardiac arrest—may have been a time bomb waiting to happen.”
The CPA and his bald buddy pulled away, and two women stepped out of the cart in front of us. “You said on Monday that her death didn’t make sense. Now you say it could’ve been her heart. And you’re using an awful lot of ‘may-haves.’ ”
Dr. Adderson didn’t comment. She looked off into the distance and worked the muscles at the points of her jaw.
Okay. I tried a different tack. “You were Mrs. Baneberry’s physician. I assume she had yearly physicals.”
The doctor put on a pair of amber shooting glasses and looked at me. “She did, and no abnormality was ever detected. Unfortunately, though, patients often don’t tell their doctors about heart palpitations, which could indicate a history of arrhythmia. And unless the patient tells the doctor about them, or she’s so scared of the doctor’s office that her heart starts fluttering, there’s really not much way to know the problem exists. And, if that’s what happened in this case—if that’s what happened to Mrs. Baneberry—the stresses of salmonella poisoning could have brought on arrhythmia and cardiac arrest.”
“Couldn’t you tell from the autopsy?”
Dr. Adderson hesitated before answering. “The autopsy showed that she died of cardiac arrest. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
She was holding back, and I was getting a little frustrated. “Okay,” I asked, “then was there something else that could’ve accounted for the sudden heart attack?”
The doctor’s eyes were trained on the woman shot-gunner ahead of us. “If Kate had been under an unusual level of stress, that could have been a contributing factor. But she didn’t mention anything.”
The second woman was shooting now. It would be our turn in another minute or two. “Well, if you don’t know what happened, what did you want to tell me about ‘the progression of her illness’?”
“I’ve already told you.”
I looked at her.
She dropped her eyes to the leaf-covered ground. “I’m going out on a limb here.”
The trapper called out. “Dr. Adderson! Your party is up.”
She didn’t move. “I think it’s possible that some outside substance was introduced into Kate’s system after she entered the hospital. And—if that happened—I don’t think it was a doctor or nurse or any other hospital employee who introduced that substance.”
“What are you talking about? What kind of ‘substance’?”
She lifted her Krieghoff twelve-gauge out of the cart rack and propped ten thousand dollars’ worth of shotgun on her hip. “Tom, do you remember a few years back there was a serial killer the newspapers called the ‘Black Angel of Death’?”
“Is that that nurse who killed a bunch of intensive-care patients at different hospitals?”
“Yes. But I’m not talking about him being a nurse.”
The trapper called again. “Dr. Adderson!”
She turned and, with the timber of, for example, a doctor addressing a nurse, said, “Just a moment!” Then, in a softer tone, she added, “Please.”
I decided it was time to cut through the bullshit. “Are you telling me that you think Kate Baneberry’s husband killed her?”
Dr. Laurel Adderson emptied a box of shells into the pocket of her vest and turned toward the first station. “No. I’m just telling you that … I don’t know, that I think something happened. A patient with no history of arrhythmia dropped dead from heart failure. And she didn’t die while she was under real stress from the salmonella poisoning. She dropped dead at a time when she should have been—and was—getting better. Her husband was there. My people weren’t. If they had been, none of us would be talking about lawsuits now.” She stopped walking but didn’t turn around. “But—let me make this very clear—I am not, generally or specifically, accusing anyone of anything. As a lawyer, you should understand that.”
And, as a lawyer, I understood precisely what the doctor was telling me.
By four that afternoon, Dr. Adderson had thoroughly whipped my ass and my ego on the clays range, which only confirmed my earlier impression that she was an extraordinarily competent woman, on many levels. The stations had been automated, with little remote-control devices locked inside military ammo boxes that were mounted on posts at each stop. Dr. Adderson had driven the cart; she had allowed me to shoot either first or second, depending on how I felt; and she had shown me how to launch clays with the remotes. I was a little surprised when she handed the remote to me when it was her turn. I half expected her to launch the clays with one hand and shoot with the other.
Still driving the electric cart, the doctor dropped me at my Jeep, waited for me to load my Beretta and shells into the back, and then pulled away with an invitation to “come back anytime.”
She was enjoying my discomfort, while I obviously wasn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t like losing to a woman. I’m even more politically incorrect than that. It’s losing to anyone that I can’t stand.
I dragged my wounded pride into the Jeep and drove
away through the increasingly chilly December afternoon. As I passed the guardhouse, I raised my index finger in the universal Southern-driver’s salute. The guard smiled and nodded.
Winter solstice was only three weeks away, and daylight was already fading as I turned onto the county highway and began debating whether to drive into Mobile, whether to put in an appearance at the office. The road had dried out from the previous day’s deluge, and I pushed the speedometer to seventy-five on the lonely stretch of highway. The engine warmed. The heater clicked on and sprayed hot air across my feet.
I suddenly felt exhausted. I would go in to work tomorrow, or maybe I wouldn’t, or … something. I couldn’t remember what I thought I would do. My thoughts lost focus and substance and swirled together like ribbons of smoke in a warm summer breeze. White fences along the roadside blurred and doubled and crossed in front of my headlights. I slammed on the brakes as a horrible diving pitch racked the Jeep. The undercarriage jumped and spasmed and jumped again, as if rolling over a series of logs and gullies.
And while this was happening, while the Jeep roared and plunged and buckled, I began to fall through a black tube. Velvet walls spun by an inch from my nose, and a cacophony of creaking, slamming metal dissolved into the whispered rush of wind through trees.
And I was gone.
Six
My brain had grown thumbs—thick, coarse digits that fumbled thoughts and jabbed at my temples with each heartbeat. The tang of copper and salt mixed with saliva on my tongue. I spat blood and opened my eyes. Pale, odorless smoke hung inside the Jeep, and I was jarred into full consciousness by a pure and primitive terror of burning.
I grabbed the door release and yanked, but the metal was buckled shut. And I seemed to be stuck. Stop and think. I shoved at a flaccid air bag in my lap and found the seatbelt release. Somehow, my knees were up on the seat. I gripped the bottom of the driver’s-side window and shot through the shattered opening.
Hard ground slammed into my right shoulder. Sharp bits of rock tore at my knees and palms as I rolled and scrambled on all fours to get away from the smoking Jeep. I found my feet and sprinted twenty yards before spinning around to look for the fire that wasn’t there.
All I saw was the white-trash coat of arms—a demolished vehicle on a field of grass. The Jeep’s front end had smashed through one side of a concrete horse trough and then collapsed against the other side. The front wheels sat inside the trough. The grille had been hammered to within two feet of the windshield, and the arched hood stood like a crumpled pup tent between them.
I breathed deeply to clear my head, and something hissed deep inside the mangled heap.
Powder-gray shards of concrete speckled the ground. I glanced up at the evening sky and then scanned the empty horse pasture for … someone or something. I didn’t quite know who or what. Heavy clouds had moved off to the east now, and a late-harvest moon cast the empty pasture and surrounding trees in stark, silver-print contrasts.
Suddenly the night seemed far too quiet.
“Tom! Tom!” A woman’s voice cut through the night.
And, for some reason, I didn’t want to answer. Then I saw the feminine form of Dr. Laurel Adderson scrambling across a grassy knoll, running toward the Jeep. I yelled, “Don’t.”
She turned my way. “Tom?”
“Don’t go near it. There’s smoke. The gas tank could blow.”
Dr. Adderson was already hurrying toward me. “Are you hurt?”
I rolled my shoulders and flexed my back the way you do to check for injury after taking a bad hit in sports. And that’s what it felt like—like a musclebound linebacker high on monkey juice and attitude had blindsided me. “I’m all right. Just banged up some.”
She was in front of me now, putting her hands on me, holding her face close to mine, stepping inside my personal space the way doctors do. She held my head in her hands and pulled my eyelids open with her thumbs. “Are you seeing double? Any blurring?”
I shook my head. It made me uncomfortable for her to stand so close, but her soft, capable hands felt good on my face.
“Can you walk?”
I stepped back. “Yeah, I can walk. I’m fine.”
She looked unconvinced but nodded her head. “Air bags. Just a few years ago, no one would have walked away from that.” She motioned toward the smashed Jeep with her chin. “Come on. We need to get you to the hospital.” She saw me looking at the still-smoking Jeep. “It’s not on fire, Tom. That’s talc. Everybody thinks their engine’s burning when the bag deploys. It’s packed in talcum powder so the folds of plastic won’t stick together.”
I looked at her.
She took my hand. “It’s okay. Now come on.”
We climbed a hill, and the doctor’s Mercedes came into view. Its high beams pointed in the direction of the Jeep, but the pasture dropped down from the highway, so the halogen beams shot over the top of my wrecked vehicle and highlighted a line of treetops across the pasture.
Smashed bits of white fencing littered the ground. We crossed a drainage ditch and climbed up onto the blacktop, and my new brain-thumbs began to thump again at my temples. Dr. Adderson opened the passenger door for me.
I stopped to look at her. “How’d you find me?”
“Get in the car. We can talk on the way.”
I stood where I was. “You can’t see the Jeep from the road.”
Dr. Adderson’s eyebrows arched. “Are you …” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I saw where you crashed through the fence.” She pointed. “Look.”
I turned and looked at the demolished length of fence. And, even in the moonlight, the Jeep’s tire tracks—parallel strips of churned black earth—stood out against a roadside carpet of pale winter grass. I nodded and stepped inside the car. She walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Dr. Adderson dropped the idling Mercedes into drive, punched a button on the steering column to turn on her flashers, and swerved onto the highway.
I examined her profile in the soft glow from the instrument panel. “I want a tox-screen.”
She knitted her eyebrows and glanced over at me. “Mind if I ask why?”
“Because either I’ve got a brain tumor all of a sudden or somebody drugged me.”
The doctor paused. “When was the last time you ate or drank something?”
“Lunch.”
“That was four or five hours ago.” She cocked her head to the side and, once again, glanced over at me. “Doesn’t really seem to make sense, does it, Tom?”
A gas station bathed in fluorescent light came over the hill as we entered Daphne’s outskirts, and Dr. Adderson turned toward the hospital.
I thought back to the black tube with velvet walls, to the rushing wind that enveloped me even before I crashed. “Just do the tox-screen. Okay?”
At the hospital where Kate Baneberry died, the same doctor who had treated her turned me over to a lab technician with instructions to draw blood and do a complete lab workup. Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Adderson returned and led me to a hospital room, where she placed a clear plastic mask over my nose and mouth.
“You’ve had carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s what I suspected. CO binds to red blood cells and displaces oxygen. You passed out because there weren’t enough unaffected cells left to carry sufficient oxygen to your brain. Crashing, by the way, may have saved your life. When the windows broke, fresh air flowed into the car. That’s why you woke up.” She pointed at the mask. “This is just oxygen. We’re going to basically flood your system with oxygen to help you throw off the carbon monoxide.”
Through the plastic, I mumbled, “How long do I have to stay here?”
“I’d rather you stayed the night.”
I shook my head no.
She rolled her eyes. “Give it an hour or so.”
“Doctor, I know a heater can sometimes push an exhaust leak inside the car, but I didn’t know it could put somebody under that fast.” It felt goofy trying to talk though t
he plastic shield. “I hadn’t gone more than five miles, and the heater had only been on a couple of minutes.”
Dr. Adderson shrugged. “Can I call someone for you?”
She was avoiding my question, but doctors tend to do that anyhow. “I guess my secretary, Kelly. But I hate to bother her just for a ride home.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take you home. I just think it’s a good idea to have someone who can call and check on you. You’re going to feel pretty lousy in the morning.”
I gave her Kelly’s number, and the doctor left me alone to snort oxygen.
Lingering cloud cover had thickened, blacking out the full moon and the bright streaks of stars that had jeweled the sky earlier in the night. Trees spun by in shades of black. Dr. Adderson watched the road. She didn’t speak. She concentrated on maneuvering over miles of country blacktop.
When we pulled into my driveway around 8:30, I spotted Kelly’s little ragtop parked by the front walk. I turned to Dr. Adderson. “You didn’t tell her to come over tonight, did you?”
“No. Of course not.”
As the doctor’s Mercedes rolled to a stop, Kelly swung her car door open and popped out. On the other side, my investigator, Joey, unfolded out of the tiny sports car like a giant on stilts exiting a clown car at the circus.
Dr. Adderson had the normal reaction to my giant friend. “Who’s that?”
I smiled. Joey stands about six-foot-six. He has white-blond hair and piercing gray eyes, and women tend to be favorably impressed. “He’s a friend of mine. Big, isn’t he?”
All she said was, “Good Lord.”
Outside the car, I made quick introductions. The doctor told me to stay home and rest the next day, and she pretty much ordered Kelly and Joey to check on me periodically; then she climbed back into her car and drove away.
