The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “What was she like before she escaped?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the interesting thing. She could carry on a conversation, but she was paranoid (the patients love to throw psychiatric labels around). She thought somebody was after her. She kept talking about somebody trying to kill her, got real uptight whenever the head nurse came around, once tried to brain her with a chair.”

  “Odd,” I said.

  “Had to be the authority thing, way I figure. She didn’t like Laurent, either, but she wasn’t violent with him. Just tried to avoid him.”

  “Psychiatrists have that effect on some people,” Katherine said drolly.

  “Did you ever get her to talk?” I asked.

  Sandy smiled. “Not until yesterday. Course, you have to understand I only had a couple of days. Miracles take time. This was just difficult.”

  “You’ll get a raise,” I promised. “As soon as the client pays us.”

  “’Bout what I figured,” she said. “Anyway, I kept trying to talk to her, like morning, noon, and night, at meals. It was kinda hard, of course, because they had me scheduled for some activities, too. I kept being scared they were going to use the shock machine on me, and then there would’ve been some bashed heads. But all they did was give me an intake interview with Laurent, which wasn’t anything. I’ve been through worse applying for jobs at hash houses. He wasn’t really interested. You could see it in his eyes: one more screwed-up little nigger gal. As long as the money’s green, color of the skin don’t count, but no special favors. I mumbled a few things to him about how there was gonna be a day of reckoning for all those chickens they killed for Popeye’s, and how God appeared to me and he had feathers, and he just wrote it all down and had them take me back to the dayroom.”

  Katherine and I were laughing now and Sandy was enjoying our reaction.

  “After that, my time was pretty much mine, except for a couple of times the nurse would come around and ask how I was coming, and I’d say fine.” She shifted on the sofa. “Anyhow, yesterday at lunch I was sitting next to Jenny and I was trying to get something out of her, why she was here, what had happened to her, and I kept using her sister’s name, and all of a sudden she turns and when I look into her eyes she’s as sane as you or me, and she says it, just the name, that’s all.”

  “The name?” I asked.

  Sandy nodded. “That’s right. She looked right at me and said, ‘Did Mary Juliette send you?’”

  “My God,” I muttered.

  “I know. Unfortunately, right then I realized one of the nurses was standing there looking over her shoulder. I hadn’t seen her come up, but I was sure she heard, so I did the best thing I could think of. By luck we were having chicken so I upset my plate and started screaming about cannibals. I hated to do that, I can’t tell you how much.”

  “I’ll get you some more,” I said.

  “No hurry. They took me away, stuck a pill in my mouth. I pretended to swallow it and calmed down, but I had the feeling they had their eye on me after that. I caught some of them whispering. I figured I might have to do something drastic. It was pure luck something happened so I figured I could maybe have a fighting chance.”

  She leaned toward us, knowing she had our complete attention.

  “Just before I called you, Micah, the head nurse got called out of the dayroom. It seemed real urgent, so I waited a second and then followed her. She was in a big hurry and didn’t lock the door into the hallway. Now, there’s a staff snack bar off to the side and there wasn’t anybody in it, but there is a telephone. I saw one of the buttons lit so I picked up and sure enough a second later the head nurse picked up. It was Laurent, calling from somewhere else. He told her there was a new patient coming at midnight, in an ambulance, and that it was important for everything to go right. Well, she sounded griped, said she got off at five, and they were predicting a hurricane, and she had to store up on supplies and they almost had an argument, because then he said she was being well paid. He told her the ambulance would be at the side door at midnight and he wanted everything taken care of.”

  “And that’s when you called me,” I said.

  “As soon as she hung up. I called quick, said my piece, and hung up, because anybody could’ve come into that room at any second. As it was, I didn’t quite make it back to the dayroom in time, because the head nurse caught me in the hall and wanted to know what I was doing. I played dumb, but I could tell she was suspicious. For the rest of the day I laid low, stared into space a lot, but I could feel their eyes on me.”

  “You’re lucky you made it,” Katherine said.

  “No lie,” Sandy agreed. “But they were all caught up in this new victim that was coming. They had a big meeting and had to move somebody out of a room, and everybody was complaining about having to do all this at the last minute, but the head nurse didn’t want to hear any of it. So I just laid low. I’d noticed something earlier: The main fuse box is in the snack bar, so when it was midnight and I saw them getting ready, I waited. When I saw lights outside and saw them come down the hallway with the stretcher I made my move. I’d jammed the lock on my door with some chewing gum, earlier, and I got out into the hall right after they passed. Then I went over to Jenny’s door and opened it. They don’t have anything complicated in the way of locks; I’ve seen better in parish jails. Anybody outside can open the door, see. So I got her up and dragged her down the hall with me. There was somebody at the desk but he was asleep.” Her lips twisted in a smile. “Well, he was asleep after I hit him, anyway. I got Jenny into the back of the ambulance without any trouble, but that was when they saw me.” She heaved a sigh. “Micah-man, I sure am glad you knew what to do.”

  “Anything to please,” I said. “It’s interesting the people that chased me belonged to Cox. It proves a tie-in, of course, with Dr. Laurent. But what the hell can Jenny have to do with it? I thought she was peripheral. But maybe Laurent’s the key.”

  Sandy shrugged. “He’s got a sweet setup. And he can handle all kinds of ticklish things. Where’s it safer to be than in a nuthouse?”

  Permutations of everything I’d learned in the last few days went tumbling through my head and I knew it was no use to try to make further sense of it tonight.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” I suggested. “Maybe it’ll be clear tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know about the second part,” Sandy said, “especially with a storm coming, but the first sounds like a fine idea. Who wants the first watch?”

  It was just after four when Sandy nudged me awake. I stared up into the blackness for a moment and then swung over to sit on the edge of the bed. Beside me, Katherine moved onto her side and I got up carefully, so as not to awaken her. I hadn’t undressed, except to take off my shirt, and for an instant I nursed the illusion that I’d just lain down a few minutes before.

  I got my .38 from the night table and stuck it into my belt and followed Sandy to the hall. She eased the bedroom door closed and started for the stairs.

  “I’ll sack out on the couch,” she said. “Coffee’s in the kitchen. So far, everything’s quiet.”

  “Good.” I went to the downstairs window and lifted an edge of curtain. Still dark, but everything seemed quiet enough. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself some coffee and took a seat in one of the chairs.

  So far nothing made sense. But there had to be sense someplace, because two people were dead. It was the manner of their deaths that kept bothering me.

  One, Julia Morvant, had died in a spectacular bombing that had killed over sixty other people and had left her body unidentifiable. Her roommate, the dull-witted Linda Marconi, had been kidnapped and then thrown from a car. Her almost casual death in the canal was as far removed from Julia’s gotterdammerung finale as anyone could imagine.

  A cadre of government agents who might or might not be completely legitimate had done everything they could to obliterate the evidence left by both girls at their apartment, and suddenly seemed to have an interest in kee
ping Julia’s younger sister in an isolation ward.

  Julia Morvant had presumably been killed over the drugs that had just been found in a bag in the swamp, and a madman named Rivas was stalking a congressman who had zeroed in on the drug cartel. The congressman was deafened and his wife disfigured by a bomb.

  But most of all it was a casual boast that Julia had made before her death. A reference to the play Julius Caesar. A speech that everyone learned in the eleventh grade. A speech that I somehow felt would show me something I hadn’t seen.

  Unfortunately, only she knew what she had meant, and the only link left was her sister.

  Was her sister insane or just smart enough to be faking it? Or had she been sane enough before someone put her away in a clinic run by an unscrupulous doctor?

  She’d escaped, and it was then that she’d contacted Julia, asking for help. Julia had called their father and gotten no assistance. Her next action had been to make an appointment with the man who ran the clinic, give him some fake symptoms, and have him write out a prescription for depression—all to help assess him and try to decide how easy it would be to free her sister. So far, so good.

  But then she had dropped the whole matter and gone to Jamaica, of all places, to steal money from a dope ring. Had she needed the dope to hire a person who could get Jenny out of the hospital? Not likely; she already had over a hundred thousand in her bank box.

  I got up and tiptoed back across the room, past Sandy’s sleeping form, up the stairs, and into the hallway. Jenny was asleep in Scott’s old room, and I hesitated a second outside the door, before pushing it slowly open.

  She lay motionless on the bed, so still that for a moment alarm trembled through me. Then the sheet rose slowly and fell and I knew she was all right.

  An examination by a physician would tell whether she was or had been a junkie, but my guess was no. At least, Sandy hadn’t seen any needle marks in the usual places when they’d put her to bed. She hadn’t seemed to be suffering withdrawal symptoms in the clinic, either, though they might have gotten her through it before Sandy entered.

  Her father had implied that she’d gone the same route as Julia. Did that mean Jenny had been a pro, as well? She looked peaceful, with her dark hair splayed out on the pillow, and I wondered if her father had ever stolen into her room to look down at her when she had been little.

  I turned to go, sad with the memory of the old man across the lake, and it was only when I reached the door that her voice spoke out of the darkness, freezing me in my tracks.

  “Don’t leave yet,” she said.

  20

  I turned back around slowly, closing the door. Her head had moved now and her dark eyes were on me.

  “Please,” she said. “I need help to get out of this place. I can’t take another beating.”

  I tried to absorb her words. Was she truly mad, or had she awakened from a dream that still clung to her consciousness, making it impossible to tell the dream from what was real?

  “Nobody’s going to beat you,” I said.

  “I don’t want to be beaten.” It was a little girl’s voice now, childish in its pleading and I thought once more of Will Folsom.

  “I’m not your father,” I said.

  “Of course not,” she said reprovingly. “You don’t even look like my father. Will you help me get out of here?”

  “I’ll help you,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. Where do you want to go?”

  Her voice hesitated and her head turned back to stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Just away. Where they can’t find me.”

  “They? Who is they?”

  “You know,” she declared tightly, then sat up slowly in the bed. “If you help me, I’ll treat you good. I’m good to men I like.”

  A pale slice of light from the street lamp splashed down across her torso and she slowly pulled the hospital gown up over her head until she was sitting naked in the bed.

  “Do you want to touch me?” she asked.

  Her breasts were firm globes, inviting in the milky light from the window, but it was something else that made me move to where she sat.

  At first I’d thought it was a shadow but as I got close to it I saw that it was what I’d suspected: An ugly scar, running from her right shoulder down her arm.

  “You can touch me now,” she said, “but we have to get out of here before you can do more. Unless …” Her hand reached for the buckle of my pants but I moved to the side, so I could see her back. It was a hatch-work of scars.

  “Who did this to you?” I asked.

  “I’ll never tell.” She giggled, then her voice fell serious. “You ask too many questions.”

  “Put your gown back on,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll get you to a doctor.”

  “No doctor …” she said, alarmed. “Please, no doctor …”

  The door opened then and Katherine stood looking over at us, still tying her bathrobe around her.

  “Is everything all right?”

  That was when the girl began to scream.

  It took us both by surprise and Katherine backed away.

  “It has to be me,” she said. “The white robe. I probably remind her of one of the nurses.”

  She retreated to the doorway and the screaming subsided, but only slightly. A second later Sandy was up the steps and into the room.

  “Let me handle it,” she said quickly. “I think I can quiet her. She knows me.”

  Katherine and I left gratefully.

  “My God,” Katherine said. “I had no idea.” She tried to laugh it off. “Usually I don’t have that effect on people.”

  “Like you say, it was probably the bathrobe and the fact that you’re a white woman.” I told her about my conversation with the girl. “She’s been beaten, but not in the last few weeks. The scars are pretty well healed.”

  “So it was right around the time she was put in the clinic.”

  “That’s how it looks.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said and wondered if any of the neighbors had heard the yelling. I checked the clock downstairs. Four-thirty. There were already occasional cars in the street outside and the sky was beginning to lighten. I knew there wouldn’t be any more sleep for the rest of the night.

  At seven I called John O’Rourke. His voice was sleep fogged and I knew he’d planned on at least another hour in bed.

  “I need your help,” I said simply.

  “Couldn’t you need it on Monday?” he groaned. “Haven’t you heard? We’re about to get blown away.

  “Sorry. Wouldn’t wait.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, I guess. She didn’t stay over, anyhow. I had Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon both all ready to roll, and champagne in the icebox. What’s wrong with the women today?”

  “Keep trying,” I said drily. “Look, I want to know my legal status.”

  When I’d finished explaining he groaned again. “Christ. Kidnapping, ADW on federal officers.” He thought for a second. “But, on the other hand, they seem to have been holding this woman against her will. As you know, in this state, an involuntary committal to a mental institution can only be done through the action of the coroner, and I have to wonder if the coroner knows what’s going on.”

  “It’s Jefferson Parish,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Everybody knew that money talked in Jefferson, even louder, some said, than in neighboring Orleans. “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  I told him.

  It was ten before he called back.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I called Mr. Folsom and he agreed—grudgingly, I have to admit—to let me act on his behalf. So I called the coroner in Jefferson Parish and he hasn’t got any record of an involuntary committal for Jennifer Ann Folsom, or any other Jennifer or Jenny that he can remember. He was pissed, too. I made him late to his niece’s wedding. He wanted to know what was going on.”

  “Good work,” I said, breathing relief. “I guess that takes the weight off of u
s.”

  “I guess so. It isn’t any crime I know of to free somebody that’s being illegally held.”

  “Welcome news,” I said, and thanked him again.

  The next person on my list was Mancuso. His wife sighed when she recognized my voice and I guessed I’d just spoiled another family day. But when he came on he told me not to worry.

  “Haven’t you looked at the weather channel? The winds in that storm are up to a hundred and fifty. So I think we’ll just stay in and tape windows.”

  I lifted an edge of the curtain and looked out. A thick fog hid cars and trees.

  “I’ve been through a little bit of a storm, myself,” I told him and explained what had happened.

  “Thank God Sandy’s okay,” he said. “I never was comfortable with the arrangement. But look, you must’ve decided to ruin my Sunday for something.”

  I told him about the pathologist’s call. “I think I know what was in the bag they found,” I said. “But I’d like confirmation.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “And I also need somebody to take Jenny someplace safe. Couldn’t we store her in the hospital at Mandeville for the time being?”

  He whistled. “You don’t want much. If the storm comes in this direction it’ll close the causeway.”

  “If you can come right now, you’ll make it there and back before the storm can move more than a few miles.”

  “Got it all figured out,” he muttered, but I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: That if Cox was onto us, he’d have to think long about trying to take her from a policeman, even outside the policeman’s jurisdiction.

  When I was done with Mancuso I called a man who owed me a favor and told him where I’d left my car.