Her Dr. Wright

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Good idea. I’m glad someone’s thinking straight in this place,’ Barry told her. He unlocked the door, flipped a light switch and illuminated the depressing scene. ‘Great! There’s a phone extension. I’ll call Nick from here.’

  Sarah started to say that the lines were out, but as Barry was already dialling she realised he must have heard a tone so the break had evidently been mended.

  She found the plastic sheet and hurried back outside, unfolding it with difficulty then realising she had nothing to weigh it down with once she spread it over him.

  But keeping him dry seemed important—if irrational—so she pushed it over him and tucked it under his feet as if it were a blanket, then drew it up over his head, pushing it in under his body and holding the top part down with her hand.

  It still flapped eerily in the gusting wind, and water dropped relentlessly from the brim of her hat onto the shiny white surface.

  Beneath the plastic, she could feel the body—already cold.

  Too cold for her to tell time of death?

  Once again, she doubted whether she’d be called on to do an autopsy, but preliminary findings like time of death could help Barry seek out the…perpetrator or murderer?

  Murderer, she decided, fear cramping her lungs as she imagined someone killing the policeman in her life.

  As to cause of death? While the man was toppling out in a weird slow-motion kind of action, she’d seen the hole, like a ragged tear, just above his right temple. She’d seen pictures of the star-shaped wounds in books and knew it suggested he’d been shot at point-blank range, though how an ex-policeman had let someone hold a gun to his head, she couldn’t understand.

  Barry came to stand behind her, then she heard a vehicle approaching and the big police four-wheel drive churned mud beneath its wheels as it trundled up towards the building for the second time in two days.

  Nick, his agility hampered by his wet weather gear, clambered out and came towards them.

  ‘Inside first,’ Barry told him, hustling the young policeman indoors.

  They returned with the stainless-steel operating table, wheeling it close then standing beside Sarah to study the situation.

  ‘It won’t collapse like the new ones will, so I’ll take the head end if you and Sarah can lift his legs,’ Barry suggested. ‘Are you sure you can manage, Sarah? I could get a wardsman to help.’

  ‘Let’s try it ourselves,’ Sarah said, her agitation growing as concern for the man faded and questions of who and why now ran rampant in her mind.

  Together they lifted the man, the plastic covering taking flight and flapping through the rain like a demented ghost.

  ‘Up a little more!’ Barry encouraged, and with a final heave they got him on the table.

  ‘He’s b-been shot!’ Nick stuttered, his face pale as he surveyed his second corpse in as many days.

  ‘I suppose we should have covered the head wound before we lifted him,’ Sarah murmured. ‘I guess we’ve made a mess of any evidence.’

  ‘I already did that when I opened the door and he tumbled out. What were we supposed to do? Put him back in when who knows what he’d have picked up on the ground?’

  ‘No. We’ve done the right thing,’ Sarah assured Barry, but she shivered as the full import of the man’s death struck home.

  Still in the wet rain gear, she shoved her hands into the pockets to try to stop them shaking.

  The fingers of her right hand struck a cold, hard object. She’d felt something bang against her legs as she’d run across the road earlier but hadn’t wanted to investigate someone else’s pockets.

  Now the shape of the object added to her chills. She drew it out and held it on the palm of her hand, showing it, blue-black and deadly, to Barry.

  ‘What the hell is that!’

  Sarah knew it was a rhetorical question, and Barry was already searching for a glove and an evidence bag, but Nick took it literally.

  ‘It’s a gun. The man’s been shot. Did you shoot him, Sarah?’

  Sarah felt a surge of laughter, which she suspected might be hysterical, welling up inside her.

  She let a small chuckle escape.

  ‘No, I didn’t, Nick, but as a policeman I’m sure you won’t take my word for it. We’re both strangers to the island. I might have known him on the mainland. He might have been my lover, and he jilted me!’

  Nick studied her as if he might be able to see her guilt, and she regretted her silly suggestion.

  Using gloved fingertips and picking it up by the barrel, Barry removed the gun from her hand and dropped it into a paper bag.

  ‘You shouldn’t joke about things like that,’ Nick told her, and Sarah smiled at him.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t,’ she assured him. ‘But anything’s possible, which is why you police always look at all angles of any case, not just at the obvious. I know darned well you’ll check out the gun’s registration, and not just accept my word it isn’t mine.’

  She turned to Barry.

  ‘I’m assuming you don’t want an autopsy, but what about time of death? Do you want an estimate?’

  He nodded at her, his face grey with tiredness and pinched with worry. With automatic preciseness he patted down the man’s pockets, retrieving a wallet from inside the jacket and a notebook and pen, a bit of twine and a near-empty packet of chewing gum from an outer pocket.

  He tucked them into an evidence bag but it was obvious his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘I should go and see Margo. I can’t have a baby and these murders happening at the same time! And I’ll have to notify people, homicide on the mainland, his family, do all of that.’

  ‘Give Nick the keys and let him stay here while you go to your wife. As for notifying people, Paul Page isn’t going to be any less dead in an hour or two—leave it until then. Could you ask Jane for a rectal thermometer, and get her to bring it out herself? It’s only fair she should know she’s got another body in her hospital.’

  Barry nodded, then he said, ‘Have you seen the gun before? Do you know who owns it?’

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘It’s not even my raincoat. Rowena lent it to me last night—she put it in the car. But the car was parked at the hospital, in the undercover area, on two separate occasions while I was in with Margo. The coat was in it but I didn’t need it until this morning, when I walked across to the hospital and left Rowena’s car for her to take to work.’

  She considered her movements.

  ‘I left the coat on the front veranda this morning. I guess anyone could have slipped something into the pocket either during the night or while it hung on the peg out there.’

  Sarah was shrugging out of the raincoat and Barry took it from her.

  ‘Whose coat is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think it would be too big for Rowena. Perhaps it was her husband Peter’s.’

  But Barry was already looking inside the coat. Given the uniformity of effective rainwear, most people put their names or some other identifying mark on the flap beneath the collar.

  ‘“David Wright”!’ Barry read out loud, and Sarah felt her face grow hot although her body was suddenly very cold and shivery.

  ‘David spent the night at Rowena’s house—we both stayed there.’

  She knew, as soon as she’d spoken, that it would have been better to keep her mouth shut, but the urge to defend her friend had overridden common sense.

  ‘All night? He didn’t leave the house? You can guarantee that?’

  Barry might be tired but his policeman’s instincts weren’t dulled.

  ‘No,’ Sarah admitted, ‘but he’d have to be a daft criminal to kill someone then hide the gun in his own raincoat pocket.’

  ‘Or smart enough to think we’d think that!’ Barry countered.

  ‘A double bluff! I’ve read about those!’ Nick said, so obviously intrigued by the ‘story’ element of the case he’d momentarily forgotten it was real—and someone was dead.

&n
bsp; ‘I’ll send Jane out,’ Barry said, ignoring Nick’s comment. He passed over the keys of the outbuilding to his colleague and walked away, his tall, solid figure made bulky yet somehow diminished by the muddy rain gear, his head bowed, no doubt contemplating the tasks ahead of him.

  Not to mention the imminent arrival of his first child.

  Jane appeared not long afterwards.

  ‘This is fun!’ she said gloomily. ‘I’ve been here ten years and never had a murder. Now you’ve got—’

  ‘Two in two days!’ Nick finished for her.

  His excitement was so obvious Sarah wanted to hit him, but hitting a policeman probably wasn’t a good idea so she took the thermometer from Jane, thanked her and set it down while she once again donned gown, apron and gloves.

  ‘I never did get you those wellies,’ Jane said. ‘Storm coming up and the hardware shop had sold out. Sorry about that.’

  ‘It’s OK, I’m not autopsying him.’ Sarah told her, then, as Jane left the room, she began a superficial examination.

  ‘Damn! I took the tape-recorder over to Rowena’s to write up my notes from yesterday. Can you take notes if I dictate to you?’

  Nick nodded and pulled out his notebook.

  ‘Date and time first, as you do when you’re taking your own notes,’ Sarah told him. ‘Then put this. “Lividity in the buttocks and underside of thighs, also the feet, suggest the deceased was killed where he sat and hadn’t been moved prior to his falling out of the vehicle.”’

  ‘He fell out? How?’ Nick asked.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ Sarah told him. ‘Have you got all that?’

  ‘Not quite,’ the young man muttered. ‘How do you spell the word you used?’

  ‘Lividity?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Sarah spelled it out for him, also explaining what it meant as she couldn’t expect such a young policeman to have had much experience of forensic work. She repeated the rest of the opening sentence.

  ‘The stiffness of the body suggests rigor is complete or almost complete,’ she added, thinking it might be days before the body could be transported off the island, by which time the classic stiffening could have passed completely.

  ‘Now I’m going to take a rectal temperature which means I’ll have to remove some clothes—’

  ‘Do I have to write this down?’ Nick asked.

  ‘No, not word for word everything I say, but we need records before we take off clothes. I know your camera was wrecked yesterday, but what about the Polaroid? Do you have more film for it? Or another camera we can use?’

  Nick appeared to be considering this request, frowning as though mentally checking some office stock cupboard.

  ‘I’m pretty sure there’s more film in the office,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  ‘No! You’d better not do that—not leaving me here with the body, especially after our visitor yesterday afternoon. They should have a camera at the hospital—I’ll pop over there. You know not to touch anything, don’t you?’

  He nodded, though the defensive gleam in his eyes told her he had every intention of taking a better look at the body the moment she left the building.

  He’s only young, she reminded herself as she dashed through the wind-swept rain to the main building.

  Where she found Barry, Rowena and David clustered on the back veranda, the tense looks on all three faces indicating that an argument was in progress.

  Rowena claimed her support first.

  ‘You tell him, Sarah! Tell him I spent the night with David. David’s got some misguided sense of loyalty or chivalry or something and is denying it!’

  David saw Sarah’s surprise, but before he could forestall her reply she’d turned to Barry.

  ‘I hope this isn’t official—that you’re not taking statements from these people with both of them together and no one taking notes.’

  She then rounded on David and Rowena.

  ‘And shouldn’t you two be at the surgery, tending patients, rather than standing here arguing about chivalry? Go, off you go! Barry can see you later.’

  ‘Margo wanted to see David so I drove him over,’ Rowena explained to Sarah. ‘The rain’s keeping most of the patients at home.’

  Sarah seemed satisfied, but David turned to Barry, wondering if he had been taking statements and what he’d made of Sarah’s high-handed behaviour if he had. Then Rowena touched his arm, sending a shiver of memory flashing along his nerves.

  But there were two bodies now—and though he had no proof Mary-Ellen was responsible for the detective’s death, and absolutely no clue as to why she’d have killed her sister—if indeed she had—it was more important than ever to distance himself from Rowena.

  A mishmash of dread and suspicion flashed through his mind so quickly that little time elapsed between her touch and his reaction, which was to step away—again—and then deliberately turn to Barry.

  ‘I take it my car as well as my house and property is now off-limits.’

  When Barry nodded affirmation of this, David ducked his head down deeper into the collar of the borrowed coat and said to Rowena, ‘I’m going to dash through the rain, rather than drive back.’

  He saw her flinch away from his coldness, and told himself it was good. The sooner she got the message the better.

  But she hadn’t got it at all, he realised later when, alone in the little building, he tackled her about her lie.

  She’d come into the consulting room to tell him Mr O’Brien hadn’t turned up, and the almost overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and kiss the breath out of her shocked him into harshness. Gripping the edge of his desk to keep his hands from temptation, he glared at the cause of this new complication.

  ‘What on earth made you tell Barry we’d spent the night together?’

  She stepped forward, though cautiously, as if she’d correctly read his anger.

  ‘The body was found in your car, and a gun in your raincoat pocket. I knew you hadn’t gone out. I’m a light sleeper and I’d have heard you, but I didn’t think Barry would believe me.’

  ‘And you think he’d believe you spent the night with me?’ David demanded, though it was a battle to maintain his rage with memories of lamplight from the hall flickering across her bare skin getting in the way.

  ‘Not if you keep flinching away every time I touch you!’ Rowena retorted. ‘Do I repulse you so much? Is your mind still so tangled up in your love for your dead wife you can’t bear to have another woman close?’

  The passion in the questions startled him, then he realised the words were filled with pain. With all his being he wanted to go to her, to hold her and comfort her—tell her how he felt.

  But he’d seen Rowena happy—after the kiss in the bedroom, before he’d slapped her down that time! And she glowed with it! Her eyes shone, and her skin took on a lustre like the sheen of expensive pearls. There was no way it could be hidden.

  Don’t even think about it, his mind warned his heart. Hurt her if you have to—if it will keep her from far worse harm. The kind of harm he instinctively believed Mary-Ellen could do!

  Then, because he couldn’t look her in the eye while he told a lie, he picked up some papers from his desk and fiddled with them.

  ‘I suppose that’s it,’ he said, hoping his voice wouldn’t crack as he betrayed the love she’d given so freely—the pleasure they’d shared. ‘You’ll just have to put last night’s behaviour down to shock and frustration, I guess. It’s been a long time for me, and you were there.’

  You were there! The phrase rang like a carillon in Rowena’s head, though the bells must have been out of tune for the noise was discordant enough to hurt her ears.

  ‘Glad I could be of service!’ she muttered at him, then remembered another meaning of the word and snapped, ‘Literally, I guess,’ before charging out of the room and slamming the door, hard, behind her.

  Back at the reception desk she huddled on her chair, folding her arms around
her body in an effort to warm herself. But the coldness was deep inside her and no amount of arm-rubbing was going to help, any more than a tablet would have eased the pain.

  The ringing of the phone startled her so much she stared at it for a moment, uncertain what to do.

  Maybe longer than a moment, for David appeared in his doorway, perhaps thinking she’d left the building and he’d have to answer it himself.

  ‘I thought the lines were down,’ she muttered as she picked it up.

  Nick Walters introduced himself, then said, ‘I don’t suppose you could give the doctor here—the lady doctor, Sarah—a hand again. I’m taking photos and taking notes, but she needs help to put things into bags and label them. Barry’s with Margo and Jane’s busy with both of them and Jane says the aides shouldn’t have to do it.’

  Rowena could hear frustration in his voice.

  She glanced up to where David still stood, grim-faced and pale, in the doorway.

  ‘Can you manage here without me?’

  He looked around the empty waiting room and gave a mocking laugh.

  ‘Probably for ever if this is how the islanders are going to react to hearing their doctor’s a murder suspect.’

  ‘It’s the weather, not the murder!’ Rowena retorted. ‘And stop feeling sorry for yourself. Do something positive. Get the paperwork you were going to dump on Sarah done.’

  She heard a squawking noise and realised she was still holding the receiver. In fact, she’d been waving it at David as she spoke. Now she lifted it to her ear again and promised Nick she’d be right over.

  ‘I should start charging them for my labour,’ she grumbled at David as she left, because grumbling at him was better than bursting into tears every time she considered what he’d said.

  She took her car but couldn’t drive close to the outbuilding as a barricade had been erected to stop all entry.

  ‘We’ve got crime-scene tape but Barry said it would only worry people if we put it up so I used the plastic barriers we keep to close the main street for the New Year party,’ Nick explained as she dashed through the rain and burst into the building.