Murder Comes by Mail

by A. H. Gabhart

“I think three days is routine. After that, the psychologist or whoever can keep them longer if the person still seems to be at risk.” Michael remembered the phone message from a Dr. Colson. He could be the doctor treating the jumper. “Most of the time the person has sobered up by then or is back on his medication and they send him or her out to start the cycle all over again.”

  “You think our Jack was drunk or on something then?” Hank was scribbling again.

  “I didn’t say that. From all outward appearances he was sober as a judge.”

  Hank looked up from his notebook and grinned. “That doesn’t mean much in this county. Judge Routt probably has pockets for his bottles inside his robes.”

  Michael acted as if he didn’t hear him as they passed the Laundromat. Inside, Janet Ericson with her toddler twins in tow was loading washers. She looked up and waved. The boys looked up and waved too.

  “Maybe I should stop and take some pictures.” Hank stuffed his notebook back in his pocket and lifted the camera around his neck. “Babies sell papers almost as good as heroes in Hidden Springs.”

  “No doubt better. Go ahead and grab a photo op while you can.” Michael waved at the boys through the window. “They’re getting their grins ready for you.”

  Hank hesitated, but then dropped the camera back against his chest. “I’ve got about a hundred pictures of those kids. People will think I’m their uncle or something if I publish any more. Besides, cute as they are, they’re not the hot story today. The jumper is.”

  “But I don’t know anything else to tell you. In fact, from the sounds of it, you know more about our jumper than I do.” Michael waved at the twins again and kept walking.

  “I am the reporter.” Hank hurried along after him.

  “So what do you know that I should know?” Michael glanced at him.

  Hank grinned. “Guess you’ll have to wait for the paper like everybody else.”

  “It’s a long time till next Wednesday.”

  “One week. Seven days. One hundred sixty-eight hours, give or take a few.”

  “It’ll be old news by then.” Michael shrugged. Hank might know something. More likely he was trying to fish for more information from Michael. That wasn’t going to work. Michael didn’t know anything to tell him.

  “Yeah, enjoy your spot in the sun, Mike.” Hank fell into step beside him. “You’ll probably look handsome on television. Just remember not to smile too much. You end up looking like a used car salesman or a politician when you smile too much while the cameras are rolling.”

  “Or a newspaper editor,” Michael said. “Did you get paid for the pictures?”

  “I’m not in the business for my health.”

  “Glad to hear it. At least Rebecca Ann will get her braces.”

  Hank laughed and swatted Michael on the shoulder. “Life is good, Mike. Life is good.”

  “I guess our jumper didn’t think so.”

  “The story’s bigger than him now. He’ll have to go along for the ride and ’fess up to whatever his problem might be. Maybe it’ll turn out that he’s got some kind of terminal illness.” Suddenly Hank looked uneasy. “You don’t think he had anything catching, do you?”

  “If I find out, I’ll be sure to let you know.” Michael left him in front of the newspaper offices and went on down the street past Roxie Rockwell’s insurance office and Reece Sheridan’s office, where Reece was probably inside snoozing at his desk. He crossed the street in front of Paul’s Billiard Hall to go back to the courthouse.

  It really didn’t matter what the jumper’s problem was, but Hank’s questions had awakened Michael’s curiosity. If Hank did know more about the jumper than he was telling, Michael didn’t want to wait and read it in the paper next week. Maybe instead of just calling, he’d drive over to Eagleton and talk to that Dr. Colson if it turned out he was treating the jumper. As usual, not much was happening in Hidden Springs, and odds were, no reporters would be looking for him in Eagleton.

  6

  Dr. Colson couldn’t make time to see Michael until one thirty. So it turned out the Channel 22 news reporter found Hidden Springs before Michael made it out of town. Kim Barbour bounced across the courthouse yard like a puppy let off its leash. When Michael refused to do the interview on the bridge, tears popped up in her wide brown eyes, but after a couple of quick blinks, she settled for the courthouse steps.

  The cameraman, who looked as if he’d been shooting on location more years than the pretty young reporter could claim living, listened impassively as she explained in depth the type of shot she wanted. When she rushed into the courthouse to find a mirror to check her hair and makeup, he shuffled over to Michael.

  “The kid’s been in the business three months and she’s telling me about shadows.” The man blew out a weary breath and shifted his gaze from the courthouse door to Michael. “You and me both know the truth is, this little doll was hired for her big brown eyes and cleavage, but she fantasizes it was her brains. Anyway, be a pal, and just go along with her so we can get this done with as few tears as possible.”

  Michael was all for that, and the tears that tumbled out during the interview had little to do with him. The girl reporter kept stumbling over her own questions even though she had them carefully written on cards. By the third retake, the questions were getting old. What had he thought when he saw the man on the bridge? Had he been concerned about his own safety? Did he know what had brought the man to such a desperate step? How did it feel knowing another human being was still alive because of his quick actions?

  Michael tried to remember Hank’s advice and not smile too much as he repeated his answers. He’d just wanted to help. He’d never been in any danger. No, he didn’t know the man, had never seen him before, but people had all kinds of problems, etc., etc.

  Attracted by the Channel 22 van, a few townsfolk clustered around them, ready to smile and wave if the camera happened to turn their way. Hank bounced here and there snapping shots with his own camera, mostly of the pretty young reporter. A couple of times he caught Michael’s eye and flashed him an idiot smile.

  When Kim Barbour was finally satisfied with the shoot, she turned toward the onlookers with a dazzling smile and told them the segment would air at six. Then she followed the cameraman to the van and headed for the bridge. They were still there when Michael passed over it on his way to Eagleton a half hour later. The cameraman looked like he might be laughing as he gave Michael a little salute when he drove by. Kim Barbour, on the other hand, planted her hands on her hips and glared at Michael as if she’d like to give an eyewitness account of him jumping off the bridge.

  Of course, he could have gone to the bridge to let her get her location shot. He just hadn’t wanted to.

  Everybody was making way too much of the whole episode. Besides this Kim, he’d already talked to two other reporters on the phone. Same questions. Same half-baked answers. Same mountain out of a molehill. The poor guy probably would have climbed back over the rail, crawled into his car, and disappeared if Michael hadn’t happened along with his busload of silver-haired ladies.

  At the Eagleton Hospital, Michael waited by the elevators for the doctor to come down from the restricted fourth floor, but the elevator doors were still closed when the doctor appeared behind him.

  Dr. Colson was a few inches shorter than Michael and what Aunt Lindy would call wiry. He led the way back down the hall to the stairs. Great exercise, he told Michael as he took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. He didn’t wear a doctor’s coat, but wore crisply pressed black pants and a white shirt with a Daffy Duck tie. His hospital identification tag was clipped to a belt loop.

  He ushered Michael into an empty patient room. “We won’t be disturbed here.” The doctor waved Michael to the only chair and perched on the edge of the stripped bed. “Housekeeping likes to give the ghost time to move on before they redo a room when a patient dies, and this poor soul took leave of his life early this morning.”

  Michael resiste
d the impulse to take a quick look around and kept his eyes on the doctor. That peculiar hospital odor of medicines, antiseptics, and sickness soaked into his head and brought back the weeks he’d spent in the hospital after the car accident that killed his parents and almost killed him when he was a teenager. The scent was imprinted in his memory. Still, there seemed to be something a little different about the smell here. Maybe ghosts had an odor. Or if not ghosts, then death.

  The doctor stared at the far corner of the room, as though pinning his imagined ghost there with his eyes. “This one surprised the nurses. Male, thirty-five, no history of heart problems, a routine appendectomy. They kept him for observation last night. It appears they didn’t observe well enough.”

  “Hard for his family,” Michael murmured.

  “Yes. So young to die.” Dr. Colson shook his head. “But death can come at any age. Young or old. Actually, you look to be about his age, Deputy Keane. What? Thirty, thirty-one?”

  “Somewhere around that.” Michael didn’t see any reason to tell the man his age.

  “Then if you need your appendix out, you might be wise to go to Baptist General on the other side of town.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Dr. Colson got off the bed, opened the drawer in the bedside table, and pulled out a book. “Well, look at this.” He held the book around for Michael to see the title. Teasing Secrets from the Dead. “A book by a forensics doctor. I’ve sometimes considered getting into the forensics field. Ferret out why the criminally insane do the things they do. Has to be fascinating work, don’t you think?”

  “For some perhaps.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic, Deputy.” The doctor gave a short laugh before he stared back down at the book in his hands. “But it does seem an odd book to find in a recently deceased patient’s room. Makes you wonder what secrets his own death might reveal.”

  “I suppose an autopsy can answer that.” Michael reminded himself that the doctor was a psychologist. It was his job to figure out what made people tick, but Michael hadn’t come for a lesson in psychology. He’d come to find out more about the jumper.

  Still holding the book, the doctor sat back down on the edge of the bed in almost precisely the same spot as before. “Death is funny, isn’t it? Most of us run from it and it chases after us with a vengeance in spite of all we do to elude it. And then some people run toward it and can’t seem to catch it no matter how hard they try.”

  “You mean like our Jack Smith.”

  “Smith?” The doctor looked up from the book with a puzzled frown.

  “The jumper. He told me Smith, but I think he used Jackson here at the hospital.”

  “Jack Jackson, yes. Not a very likely name, although I suppose there are Jack Jacksons as well as Jack Smiths born into this world.”

  “Is Mr. Jackson still a patient here?”

  “Yes, we’ll keep him a few more days. Then reevaluate his case.”

  “Have you found out anything about him? Family? Friends? Job?”

  “I can’t give out that information. Patient confidentiality and all that, but I can tell you his condition is stable. He shows every indication of a complete recovery physically. Mentally remains to be seen.”

  “Good to know the knock on the head when he fell on the road didn’t do any permanent damage,” Michael said.

  “Yes, that is fortunate. Concussions can be deadly.” The plastic-covered mattress crackled as the doctor shifted his position to stare straight at Michael. “Of course, deadly was what the man wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “So it seemed yesterday. People often change their minds, however, after a near brush with death.”

  “Indeed.” The doctor smiled.

  Michael didn’t smile back. The clatter of a rolling tray out in the hallway was muted by the closed door. A door Michael was ready to go back through to find fresh air and sunshine outside the hospital. But first he’d ask his questions. “Why did you contact me regarding your patient, Doctor? If you can’t talk about his case.”

  “I attempt to find every means possible to help my patients. I thought perhaps our Mr. Jackson or Smith, whichever it may be, said something to you on the bridge that might be useful in his treatment, but I certainly didn’t expect you to make the trip here.” Dr. Colson’s tone of voice made the last a question.

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Jackson. Tie up some loose ends.”

  “Oh no, I’m afraid that won’t be possible. He’s under suicide watch, and not in any mental state to deal with details, although I’m not sure what loose ends Mr. Jackson could have in your town.” Again the questioning tone without the direct question.

  Michael refused to be intimidated. “There are some unanswered questions.”

  “There are always questions without answers, Deputy.” Dr. Colson’s smile was back.

  “It’s my job to find answers.”

  “And it’s my job to discover the right questions for those answers.” Finally the doctor asked a direct question. “Did our Mr. Jackson reveal anything to you in his moments of distress on the bridge that might give some clue to his mental state?” The doctor looked down at the book in his hand and slowly stroked the slick cover before he opened it carefully to where a page was dog-eared.

  The light above the hospital bed glinted off the small patch of scalp showing through the doctor’s carefully arranged hair as he gave every appearance of reading the open book while he waited for Michael to answer.

  Michael wasn’t sure what kind of game the doctor was playing with him, but whatever it was, Michael had no interest in taking part. He’d come for information about the jumper. Nothing more, and if what he knew could help with the man’s treatment, he had no reason to withhold it from the doctor. “Actually, I had the feeling the man didn’t really want to jump. That if we hadn’t happened along, he would have eventually climbed back over the railing, gotten into his car, and driven away.”

  “But the paramedics said he did try to jump, and that you jerked him back from the brink at the last second.” The doctor looked up from the book.

  “That was later. Once we came on the scene, it was as if we had called his bluff and he had to go through with it. Perhaps to save face.”

  “Kill himself to save face?” The doctor looked like he barely kept from laughing. “I think you should leave the psychoanalyzing to professionals.”

  “You asked what I thought and I told you.”

  “Fair enough. But are you saying he jumped because he had an audience?” The doctor raised his eyebrows a little.

  “Actually he was about ready to give it up and climb back over the railing when something pushed him back the other way.”

  “Something pushed him,” the doctor repeated as if he were taking mental notes. “What might that have been?”

  “You may think it’s strange.”

  Again the humoring smile. “My business is connecting the strange with reality.”

  “It was just circumstance that put us on the scene. I was driving a busload of church ladies to a play in Eagleton. I told them to stay on the bus, but two of these women love to take pictures. They must have thought a man about to jump off a bridge was their photo op of a lifetime. They weren’t about to pass it up.”

  “They took pictures?”

  “As fast as they could click the camera buttons on their phones.”

  “I’d like to see those photos.” Dr. Colson showed his first real interest. “Seeing Mr. Jackson’s face while he was considering suicide might reveal something about his emotions at his moment of greatest despair.”

  “I can check with them, but they weren’t really close enough to get much detail. However, the editor of our local paper showed up at the bridge too. He took some pictures.”

  “Yes, I called the Gazette an hour or so ago after Mr. Jackson revealed a reporter was on the scene. Mr. Leland was kind enough to send me copies.” The doctor smiled briefly. “The photos put you in a very favorable light, I
must say.”

  “I was lucky our man was sort of teetering or I’d have never gotten him back over the railing.”

  “So you think he was wavering even then?”

  “I think he lacked the courage to jump and wanted someone to push him. At least he told me I would wish I pushed him. That I’d be sorry I saved him.” As soon as he spoke the words, Michael wished them back. He needed to let it go, forget what the man had said instead of dwelling on it.

  Dr. Colson gave Michael his full attention. “Why do you think he said that?”

  “I don’t know, Doctor. Maybe that’s something your examination can reveal. It sounded like he felt guilty about something he’d been doing.”

  “What do you think that might be?”

  “I have no idea.” Michael shrugged a little. “But he obviously had problems. Maybe an addiction of some sort.”

  “Addiction? Interesting.” Dr. Colson tapped his chin as though that helped him think. “What addiction would you guess?”

  The doctor didn’t blink as he stared intently at Michael, who suddenly felt like an uncooperative witness or maybe one so bent on helping in an investigation that he was making things up. He forced himself to sit still and meet the doctor’s eyes. “Who knows? Some kind of demon pushed him toward the edge of that bridge.”

  The doctor wouldn’t let him back away from his words. “We all have our demons. I daresay even you have your share.”

  All at once, the hospital smell crept out of the corners, dark memories firmly embedded in the odor. Michael tried to keep his face blank, but it was obvious Dr. Colson sensed Michael’s unease.

  Michael spoke up before the doctor had time to offer him a counseling session. “None that have me climbing over bridge railings. The fact is, if Mr. Jackson is involved in something which might endanger others, you have an obligation to report that activity to the police.”

  “Absolutely,” Dr. Colson conceded. “What activity do you suspect?”

  “I don’t suspect anything. Simply doing a routine follow-up here.” Michael wasn’t sure if speaking to a psychologist was routine after keeping somebody from committing suicide, but it sounded more professional than saying he was checking out a premonition.