Geoff Burns was on her statement before she had time to draw breath. “When you say you got mad, Debba, do you mean you attacked the doctor?”
“Of course not.”
“You shouted at him? Threatened him in some way?”
“No. I got mad. I told him I thought between the two of us, he was the one who needed help, not me. Then I told him he should either give me the flashlight or escort me back to the road, because I was going home.”
“What did he do then, Deborah?” Russ leaned forward slightly. This would be the meat of it.
“I turned to go, and I took a few steps, and he must have tried to follow me, because I heard him kind of yell-you know, that noise people make when they’re falling on ice?”
He nodded. Oh yeah, he knew that noise.
“When I turned back toward him, he was laid out in front of one of the stones. I grabbed his flashlight and I could see that he had whacked himself pretty hard, he was bleeding and all.” She glanced over at Burns, as if to check if she could use the word blood.
“What did you do?”
“I helped him up the trail, back to where we had parked the cars. I took a better look at his gash, and I offered to drive him into town, but he turned me down.” She spread her hands in appeal. “How was I to know? He was the doctor, not me. Besides, if you’re a parent, you see plenty of head cuts over the years. They always bleed like crazy, but they don’t amount to anything.”
“So what happened next?”
“I watched him get into his car and turn it on. It was running, I saw the exhaust. Then I took off. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“Where did you drive to, once you left?”
“I needed gas, so I drove over to the Quik-Fill that’s by the Kmart. I was seriously shaken up by the weird stuff that had happened. I didn’t want to go straight home. So I went to Clare’s house.”
“Why Reverend Fergusson?”
Debba tilted her head, twisting another strand of hair around her finger. “She had told me, when we… during that thing at the clinic”-she glanced over at Burns, checking to see if she was on dangerous ground-“that I should come talk to her anytime. I thought… I had a lot of stuff in my head, and I thought she could help me sort it out and make sense of things.”
Russ nodded. “When you say that’s the last you saw of Dr. Rouse, do you mean alive? Have you seen his body at any time after you left him Friday?”
“Ugh. No.”
“Have you seen him alive any time after you left him Friday?”
“I told you, no.”
Burns tapped the table. “Don’t badger my client, Chief Van Alstyne.”
Russ ignored him. “You say after you reached the trailhead, you took a closer look at Dr. Rouse’s injury. How did you do that? With his flashlight?”
“Yeah. He sat in my car and I turned on the lights and took a look. He had a handkerchief, a real cloth one, and he kept it pressed against his cut.”
Crap. “How long was he in your car?”
“A few minutes, maybe. He seemed really exhausted. That’s when I tried to get him to let me take him home, or to the hospital or something.”
This was not what he wanted to hear. Rouse taking a breather in the car was totally plausible. There wasn’t any other sign of him in the car-no indication that she had stuffed him in the trunk or laid him out in the backseat. If Lyle and Kevin didn’t find anything in her house, there was no way they were going to connect Clow with Rouse’s disappearance. The DA wouldn’t even bother with their paperwork-it would go straight into the circular file. “What time was it when you left Dr. Rouse?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe seven-thirty or so?”
“And it took you an hour to get gas and reach Reverend Fergusson’s house?”
“I guess. I wasn’t in any hurry.”
“Did you make any other stops?”
“Nope.”
“What time did Dr. Rouse contact you?”
“It was after dinner, so… between six and six-thirty.”
“Which?”
She looked at Burns before answering. “Closer to six, I guess.”
Burns placed both hands on the table. “I think that just about covers it, don’t you, Chief?” He stood up. “Ms. Clow has covered all the events of that night in which she played any part. She’s been nothing but cooperative, both today and during the night Dr. Rouse disappeared. I trust there won’t be any need for further questioning.”
Debba glanced at Russ, then at Burns, checking to see if she really could just get up and leave.
“I’m sure Debba here understands that we need to do everything that we can to find Allan Rouse,” Russ said.
Burns hooked a hand under Debba’s arm and levered her out of her seat. “Then I suggest, Chief, that you stop hounding my client, get off your butts, and start tracking the man down.”
Chapter 27
THEN
Tuesday, March 29, 1955
Allan checked the address on the mailbox against the one scrawled on the paper in his hand. This was it? This cruddy little house on Ferry Street was where his last hope for med school lived? If he didn’t know that Dr. Farnsworth had no sense of humor, he’d think the old guy had been jerking him around. But he was the one who had set up this meeting between Allan and the founder of the new clinic. There must be more to Mrs. Jane Ketchem than met the eye. Allan looked at the peeling green paint on the door of the tiny barn and the front room’s sun-bleached curtains, whose barely discernible pattern was distorted through the ripples in the window glass. There certainly couldn’t be less.
He took the granite block steps in one stride and knocked on the door. It jerked open, startling him so he nearly tumbled backward off the top step. The woman standing there stared at him. “You must be Allan Rouse,” she said.
He recovered his balance. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m Mrs. Ketchem. You’re late.”
He saw she was buttoned into a navy coat, with a knit hat tied beneath her chin. Oh, Christ, had he blown it without ever getting a chance to present his case? “I’m sorry,” he began, “I was-”
“I’m due to volunteer at the clinic. You can walk with me.” She reached behind her and snatched a purse and gloves from a hall stand. He jumped out of her way as she swung out the door, shutting and locking it in one efficient movement. She tugged on her gloves and narrowed her eyes as she gave him the once-over. “Is that all you’re wearing?”
“Uh…” he gestured toward his mom’s Chevrolet. “My coat’s in the car. Can I drive you?”
“I’d rather walk. It keeps your joints young.” She nodded toward the car. “Well? Better get it if you’re coming along. It’s raw out today.”
Allan stumbled down the steps and loped across her bath mat-sized lawn. He retrieved his coat, a long, heavy thing that had been his brother Elliot’s, and slipped into it while following Mrs. Ketchem down the sidewalk. Evidently, she didn’t wait for stragglers. He fell into step beside her, and studied her in quick glimpses that could be passed off as checking out the ways home owners had tried to individualize this row of identical houses. If Mrs. Ketchem’s joints were young, they were the only part; she was gaunt and rawboned, with deep grooves running from her nose to her chin and tomahawk-slashed creases radiating out from her eyes.
“Dr. Farnsworth tells me that you want to become a doctor.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Why?”
Because I’ve always been the smartest one in my class and I don’t want my brains to shrivel up behind a desk. Because I don’t ever want my fate to be decided by some faceless, cigar-puffing board in Cincinnati. Because I don’t want to work for thirty years with nothing to show for it but a paid-up mortgage on a house nobody wants to buy. Because I want respect, and money, and to travel on jet planes to places where no one has ever heard of Millers Kill.
None of which was what financial-aid boards and admissions officers wanted to hear. “Be
cause I want to use my gifts-my facility with science, my curiosity, my empathy-to help people. Not in a lab, but hands on. One-on-one.”
“Have you thought about alternate careers? Medicine should be a calling, you know, not something you pursue because you can’t think of anything better.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, ma’am. Since I was a kid. I was the one who was always collecting hurt pets and trying to treat them.”
“But you don’t want to be a vet?”
He risked a grin. “People don’t bite you.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.” The reached the corner and crossed the street, to where the new cemetery lay behind a squared-off granite wall. That was another thing he wanted to put behind him, a place where something “new” had been built a hundred years ago.
“Tell me why it is you’re looking for funding,” Mrs. Ketchem said as they rounded the corner onto Burgoyne Street.
“My folks can’t afford to send me,” he said. It was embarrassing, but at this point, he had rehearsed the details on so many applications and forms that it was almost as if he were talking about some other Allan Rouse. “I’m going to Albany on a scholarship, and working for my room and board. I’ve applied for scholarships and loans for medical school, but I haven’t been able to pull together nearly enough money to cover all the expenses. Plus, they only go through school. I’d be left looking for money to live on all over again when it was time for my residency.”
“Couldn’t you work while going to school?”
“Not if I wanted to learn anything.” He looked at her, willing her to understand. “Medical schools only accept the best of the best. You have to be there, giving one hundred percent every day, if you hope to keep up. I don’t want to just keep up. I want to excel.”
She cocked a graying eyebrow. “Why not sign on with the military? They’ll pay for everything. One year of service for each year of schooling, isn’t it?”
His fingers closed around the edges of Elliot’s coat. “I had an older brother who was in the marines. He died in Korea three years ago. It would just kill my parents if another of us joined up.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. They reached the corner of Pine Street, and she paused, the toes of her shoes hanging off the edge of the curb, while a dump truck chuffed past. “It’s hard to lose a child. Real hard. I can understand your parents’ point of view.” She stepped across the street and he followed, dodging the mucky gutters still wet with melted snow and the earliest spring rains. “Your parents used to live here, didn’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am. I graduated from Millers Kill High.” He tilted his head back to look at the sky, heavy with scudding gray clouds. “My dad worked at the mill until it closed down. They moved to Johnstown a couple years ago.”
“This town’s been going through some hard times. I don’t mind telling you, that’s one of the reasons I told Dr. Farnsworth I’d be willing to speak to you. I gave them the building for the clinic-practically had to ram it down their throats-and I gave them my in-laws’ farm that had come to me, so there’d be money to support the thing. But I can’t make the aldermen pony up enough money so’s to keep a steady doctor around. If it weren’t for the hospital staff doing volunteer shifts, we’d have to close it down.”
She fell silent. Should he leap into the gap? Tell her he was dying to come back to town as Dr. Rouse and take care of her clinic? She looked as if she was thinking about something. Maybe he ought to just keep his mouth shut.
They reached Elm Street. “Down this way,” she said. She continued on, saying nothing, as they strode down Elm. He loved this street, loved the deep, wide lawns and the shiny new cars he could see peeping from inside old carriage houses or parked beneath porte cocheres. The enormous elms that had astonished him as a boy were all dead now, and the immature saplings that had taken their place looked imbalanced against the three-and four-story houses. Still, this place had the same certainty that he had seen in a few of the kids at SUNY Albany, the ones who never had to stop and think about whether they could afford a pizza pie or walk back from an evening out because a taxi was too expensive. The certainty he wanted for himself. He wondered if any of the homes here belonged to doctors.
“Did Dr. Farnsworth tell you what I was thinking of?” Mrs. Ketchem’s voice snapped him back to attention, and his gut jerked, as if she had seen the thoughts inside his head and could tell he was no lily-pure altruist. “All expenses paid, room, board, tuition, books, what have you. During the school year and for three years of residency, which is what he tells me it takes to make a man into a doctor fit to look after the needs of a town.”
“Yes, ma’am. He and I talked about it after I got in touch with him.”
“And a year serving as the clinic’s full-time physician for each year of support. Same as with the military, although I can promise you you won’t get shot at here.”
They turned down a short two-house street and emerged onto Barkley Avenue. “There it is,” she said, pointing with her chin. He followed her gaze two houses down and saw… a house. It resembled several other houses on Barkley and Elm Streets, tall, narrow, made of brick and fancy wood trim. He had known Mrs. Ketchem donated her in-laws’ house to get the clinic started, but somehow, he had drawn a mental picture of something more… modern. Something that looked more like a medical facility and less like a place where someone’s rich grandmother lived. “It looks great,” he said.
“It’s pretty plain inside. I sold all the furniture and whatnots that my brother-in-law and his family didn’t want to keep. Used that money to fit out the waiting room and the offices. Got some local doctors to help out with medical equipment and stuff for the examination rooms, and what I couldn’t wrangle, the town bought cheap off the hospital when they did their renovation two years back.”
She escorted him up the walk. “Up there’s the only change I made that didn’t go directly into treating the patients.” She pointed to the granite lintel above the etched-glass-and-oak door. THE JONATHON KETCHEM CLINIC.
He was still digesting the news about their flea-market approach to equipping the place. “That was your husband? Jonathon Ketchem?”
“Yes.” The hard edges of her face softened. “This is his monument. I never did put one up in the cemetery. Some folks talked about that, you know. Said it just went to prove how cheap I was. But this…” She nodded approvingly. “No one in town has as big a memorial stone as this.”
He wished he knew the dividing line between being an eccentric and being a fruitcake.
“Well, let’s not hang around. Come on in,” she said, all business again. He opened the door for her and they went inside into a narrow front hall. He lunged for the interior door and managed to jerk it open a second before her hand fell on the doorknob.
Straight ahead of him was a staircase, sweeping up to a second-floor landing. The stained-glass windows and the gleaming woodwork looked as if they ought to be in a church, but the noise would certainly have been out of place. He pulled his eyes away from the stairs’ perfection and saw what was making all the hubbub. To his right, in what would have been the drawing room, at least a dozen people were sitting in sturdy wooden chairs that he swore must have come from the high school. One woman with a baby perched on her hip was trying to chase down a bratty little kid without actually breaking into a run and grabbing him. “You come right here this minute, Russell!” she hissed. Two old men who had evidently turned off their hearing aids were having a loud discussion about the benefits of red wheat versus winter clover. A teenage girl sitting next to an older woman kept popping her gum until the woman shrieked, “Will you stop that!”
Thumbtacked onto the walls behind them were simpleminded posters extolling the benefits of vaccinations, dental hygiene, and eating the five food groups every day. The only thing missing was the magic-bullet ad: Use a condom, prevent the clap. A wide wooden desk blocked most of the squared-off archway that would once have divided the front room from the family parlor
, separating the two areas into waiting room and office. An old lady of the sweet and little variety manned the desk, a blue-and-white-striped apron over her street clothes.
“This way,” Mrs. Ketchem said, and he followed her down the hall, past the parlor lined with metal filing cabinets, and into a small room just the right size to have been a butler’s pantry. “This is the doctor’s office,” she said. It had no personal touches, no family photographs or diplomas on the wall. The desk and chair were cheap metal castoffs that looked like Army-Navy surplus. The single window, behind the desk, was half covered with an old-fashioned green roller shade, complete with thick silk cord and pull.
The enormity of what it would mean, seven years of his life in this place, broke over him like a massive wave. He would be thirty-five years old before he was released from his self-imposed bondage. One-fifth of his life would be spent coming here every day, walking past those idiot posters, saying hello to a succession of little old ladies in striped aprons, seeing patients with ingrown toenails and conjunctivitis and the flu.
He closed his hand tightly over the edge of one of the shelves that ran along each side of the office. Pantry shelves, he realized, once used for the family china and pots and pans. Now they were filled with anatomy books, medical texts, journals in grosgrain boxes. The books. Filled with things he wanted to know. He breathed in again, forced himself to relax, to look around with apparent approval. There were medical students who earned out their educations serving in big-city ghettos, or in Appalachian hamlets where all their patients had bare feet and married their cousins. Compared to that, coming back to Millers Kill would be a cakewalk.
“It’s great,” he said. “I admire what you’ve done here.”
Out Of The Deep I Cry Page 24
