The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer

by Rick Boyer

  Keegan had blond hair clipped short, with clear blue eyes. The whites of the eyes were bluish, too. His neck was bull-thick but not fat; you could see his Adam's apple and jawline clearly. Mr. Keegan was stocky and very strong and fit. There was no nonsense about him.

  "Dr. Adams," he asked, "what's your opinion of Andrew Cunningham's death?"

  "I'm curious about it," I said, shifting nervously on the couch.

  "Curious and disturbed. Mary and I are both medical people, and it seems a little strange that he would die of a seizure after he had taken his daily medication. My son Jack says Andy told him he'd been on the medication for some time, so the dosage was stabilized. He'd had no seizures, even minor ones, for as long as Jack knew him. If he'd forgotten his meds, there might have been a problem. But from examining the pill case we found on his dresser, he seems to have finished Friday's dose before going to bed. So all I can come up with at this point is what I've been saying all along: a fatal heart attack precipitated by a seizure seems extremely unlikely. Even more unlikely since Jack was in the next bed and heard no disturbances during the night."

  Paul Keegan nodded slowly at this, staring at the oval rag rug on the floor. He cleared his throat tentatively.

  "You say that it's clear the Cunningham boy took his medication Friday night. Did anyone actually see him take the pills?"

  "No, because Andy went upstairs before we did. But we surmise he took the daily dose from examining the pill case."

  I then briefly explained the weekly dosage case while Keegan nodded slowly.

  "I think you've made a reasonable assumption here, Doctor. But nobody actually saw him swallow the pills. Therefore, it's possible that he could have discarded the medication, or taken other medication."

  "Possible, I suppose, but not likely," I answered.

  "I, uh, share your views on this, Doctor. I mean the part about it being curious. That's why I've got to proceed one step at a time, and why I'd like to speak with your son when he returns. I got a phone call early this morning from the state forensic laboratory in Boston. Apparently you called their office yesterday evening?"

  "Right. I had a few theories and wanted them checked out."

  "Uh-huh. Well, I don't have much information yet because they're not finished up there, or they weren't when I left Hyannis. But so far they've found one curious thing. The concentrations of the anticonvulsant compound—the, uh, the two drugs . . ."

  "Dilantin and phenobarbital," said Mary.

  "Uh, right. Well, the concentrations of those were low. So low, in fact, that the M.E. doubts the boy took his medications on Friday. That's why I wanted to know if anybody saw him swallow them."

  Mary and I looked at each other for a second, not saying anything. Then I looked back at Paul Keegan, whose clear, piercing blue eyes were boring into mine.

  "Well, then that could explain it," said Mary. "No meds—a seizure follows."

  Keegan frowned at her.

  "Excuse me, Mrs. Adams, your husband tells me you're a medical person as well?"

  "I'm a registered nurse. Actually, the work I'm in, I see more of this kind of thing than my husband does."

  "What kind of thing?"

  "Seizures and such things."

  "And you don't see them, Doctor?"

  "No. I'm an oral surgeon; I specialize in surgery of the lower face and jaw."

  "I see. Mrs. Adams, you agree that the death is curious?"

  "Well, I did, until just now. But now we seem to have a scenario that makes some sense. Maybe Joe was right: the boy was sick, forgot his meds, had a convulsion, and died. Sic transit gloria mundi. Case closed."

  "Sic what?" asked Keegan, a bewildered look on his face. "It's an old Italian expression," she answered, heading back to the stove to turn it down. "Excuse me a second."

  Keegan, still bewildered, stared back at me. I told him I did not agree with my wife that the case was closed. Not by a long shot. I asked him if he had any ideas.

  "I sure don't know. You're the doctor."

  "Uh-huh. Well, I've had some thoughts on this. Some bad thoughts. I suspected, for one, that a cardiac arrest didn't fit with the circumstances. Now that we know he didn't take the . . ."

  I was staring off into space. I guess some time went by.

  "Dr. Adams?"

  "Huh?"

  "Is something wrong?"

  "I was just thinking of something. He didn't take the meds. No. But he probably took the capsules . . ."

  Keegan sat patiently, waiting for further explanation. Mary came over to my side. I asked Keegan when he'd last heard from the lab.

  "Early this morning. Around nine-thirty."

  "And all you got was a negative on the meds. Okay. He should have more shortly. Mary, what are you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking that Joe said he would stop by the office at Ten Ten before returning here. So when he comes back here for lunch, he should know a lot more. I think I'll call his office and leave a message for him."

  "Who's Joe?" asked Keegan.

  "My brother, Joe Brindelli."

  "Joe Brindelli. I know a Joe Brindelli. But he's—”

  "You got it," she said. "A detective lieutenant just like you."

  "And you're his younger sister. I can see it in your face and mouth. jesus! Why don't people tell me these things?"

  "Older sister, but thanks anyway. Listen, if you want, when Joe gets back here later, I'll have him give you a call. You want to leave me a number?"

  "I'll leave two. Home and office. Both are in Hyannis; I'm only a half-hour away. Now, mind if we go down to the beach and talk with your son a minute?”

  They left by the back door and clumped down the wooden stairway to the beach, their coats blowing out like capes in the wind.

  Mary and I put on our slickers and walked out onto the deck in the blowing rain. We saw, far up the beach, Paul Keegan and Officer Klewski approach the big guy in the yellow slicker.

  "So what do you think, Charlie?"

  "I don't know. Suicide? I'd say no; Andy seemed way too upbeat for that. Choosing between Harvard and Hopkins . . . He had everything going for him. But when he came back to the cottage after making that phone call, he seemed real down. In fact, it's the most amazing change in a person I've ever seen."

  "Who did he call?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "Who knows? He never told Jack. He said he was calling Woods Hole. If I had to guess, I'd say it was his new-found love: the Henderson girl."

  Mary crinkled up her nose.

  "I don't know, Charlie. I mean, the relationship was new, and Andy seemed to have both feet firmly on the ground. I sensed he was very goal-oriented. Didn't you? I don't think he'd go off the deep end over a girl. I just don't think it fits."

  "So far, nothing in this sad story is fitting very well."

  We looked up and saw Detective Keegan and Jack shaking hands. Then Jack, who'd obviously been skunked at fishing, began to pack up his gear.

  We heard the front door slam. Then the back door opened and Joe came out on the deck to join us. He was early. We pointed at the distant three figures who were now trudging back to the cottage, leaning forward into the strong wind.

  "Who are those guys?"

  "One is David Klewski, the local cop you met yesterday. The other guy is your counterpart for Barnstable County. Name is Keegan."

  "Yeah, I know Paul Keegan. A hardass. Former marine captain. So he's here already, huh?"

  The policemen were helping Jack carry the fishing gear. Joe, Mary, and I went back inside, where Mary adjusted the heat under the kettle. I added the potatoes. Joe poured a mug of coffee, but so far he hadn't said much. Something was bugging him; his mood had noticeably soured since his departure earlier in the day.

  "S'matter Joey, cat got your tongue?" asked Mary.

  Joe sighed and eased down into a chair at the kitchen table. He looked down at his big, hairy, brown hands as he rubbed them over the Formica table top.

  "After I finished up at h
ome, I went over to Ten Ten Commonwealth. You know, to check in with Kevin. So . . . So I'm in the office with Kev and who comes in but Major Mahaffey. He tells me that the M.E. has found something interesting about young Mr. Cunningham. And he tells me that it was Dr. Charles Adams, no less, who suggested certain lines of investigation regarding the corpse."

  We waited for Joe to continue.

  "Yeah, well?" said Mary softly, peering into the iron pot.

  "And so what happened was, before I leave the building, the M.E. himself comes over to Ten Ten on his way to the D.A.'s office. So I'm standing there talking to this guy not even two hours ago. Like you two, he was thinking the cardiac arrest was curious. Even suspicious. And your phone call to the forensic lab gave them some hints, Doc, and sent them snooping again. So they went back and did more tests. And as a result, they found something else in the kid's system. They found it just before I showed up there. Another drug, along with the Dilantin."

  Joe took out a pocket notebook, flipped through the pages, and read a single word.

  "Digoxin."

  I froze, staring down at the potatoes in the kettle. Those tan spherical shapes were beginning to move and bump around in the hot water like billiard balls in a three-dimensional game of pool. My vague hunch had been confirmed.

  "Digoxin?" said Mary. "What the hell was digoxin doing there? He wasn't on that. Why, that would be the very worst—"

  "Yep," said her brother. "That's what the M.E. told me: it would be the very worst thing for the kid to take. His parents confirmed he wasn't on it. What was it doing there? I'll tell you what it was doing: it was reacting with the Dilantin and phenobarbital. Reacting lethally, fatally, with the medication. Was what it was doing."

  "I don't get it," said Mary. "How did it get there?"

  Joe tapped his fingers on the counter top. "Somebody put it there, presumably by tampering with the capsules. The state M.E. told me that somebody—somebody familiar with medicine and drugs—tampered with the Cunningham boy's capsules, inserted a heavy dose of digoxin in place of the usual dose of medication."

  He looked up from his notebook and wiped his hand across his stubbled chin. "That ain't all, either."

  "There was another drug in there, too, wasn't there?"

  "Yeah, Doc. Yeah, there was. And it was a drug you told them to look for—

  He flipped the pages of the tiny book, looking for the name. "Lasix. That right? Lasix?”

  I nodded. "That's right. I guessed a diuretic from what Jack told me earlier. Andy was urinating almost constantly Friday. That means, actually, that the Lasix was introduced in Thursday's meds . . . so it would take effect on Friday and deplete the boy's serum potassium."

  "Well, you got it right on the button, Doc. Because according to the M.E., switching the drugs in this fashion—substituting this Lasix and digoxin in place of the Dilantin and phenobarb downers—would cause an inevitable cardiac arrest. Which is what the kid died of; it's been confirmed. So kiddies—he looked up at us with a wide, forced, fake smile. "So kiddies, so much for the 'natural death' we'd hoped for."

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  "Diabolical," I whispered. "Thursday's dose of Lasix must have been mixed with the usual drugs, so Andy wouldn't know the difference. He'd just urinate a lot and feel a little sick to the stomach, which is exactly what happened. And it would set him up for the digoxin the following night. Wham. A one-two punch. Holy Christ."

  "So what did the M.E. do, Joey? Did he file for homicide with the district attorney?"

  He nodded.

  "Yep. And now I got to tell you this: the prime suspect in this homicide, as of right now, is none other than John Brindelli Adams."

  "Joey!" Mary shouted.

  "Bullshit!" I yelled at him. But his face didn't change.

  The front door opened and slammed shut. Jack, dripping wet, walked into the kitchen. The rain had matted down his blond hair and darkened it. The two policemen stood right behind him on either side. Jack's face clouded over when he looked at us.

  "Hey, what's up, anyway? Why are you all staring at me?"

  FIVE

  "HAS ANYONE ELSE been in the house this weekend?" asked Paul Keegan, pencil poised over notebook. He leaned back in his chair near the fireplace. Officer Klewski stood behind him, while Joe, Mary, Jack, and I sat on the couch and in chairs facing Keegan. The interviews were continuing inside now, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that we were the collective object of the investigation, with Jack as its focal point. It didn't feel good. Not good at all. Keegan was a pro; his questions followed clear lines of logic and syllogistic argument. His rational methodology was inexorable, and a little frightening.

  "No, just us," said Mary in a monotone. "Joey wasn't even here until after Andy died. He came down here yesterday afternoon, then returned today when you saw him."

  Keegan leaned forward over the pill case and the big brown bottle of medication sitting on a sheet of clean paper on a corner of the coffee table. The bottle of meds had been found in Andy's duffel bag—his back-up supply of the important medicine. The contents, and instructions, were typed on the label. Keegan had removed them from the guest bedroom earlier, during his initial cursory examination of the room, and brought them downstairs with a pair of kitchen tongs. Now he prodded them with a pencil, using the eraser end to scoot them around on the clean paper.

  "So then, whose prints could we expect to find on these items?"he asked.

  "Who knows, Paul?" said Joe. The annoyance showed in his voice, even though I was sure he was trying to hide it. "Hell, Jack says there are three roommates in the house, and the medication was in the bathroom. There were parties there, too, with a lot of young people coming and going. You figure it out."

  Keegan looked up at Joe as if to say something, but didn't. He looked at Jack.

  "Your prints would be on here, wouldn't they, Jack? I'm not accusing you; I'm just asking, so if we find them we won't be surprised and jump to any conclusions."

  "Sure, you'd find my fingerprints on the bottle, anyway, since I touched it a lot of times. So did Tom."

  "Tom being?"

  "Tom McDonnough, our roommate. He's another student working in Woods Hole. He works for the National Marine Fisheries Service."

  Keegan held down the pill case with the pencil and flipped up the last little door on its top with the clicker end of a ball-point pen. He looked inside at Saturday's medication.

  "Okay, so we're missing one capsule, which you, Dr. Adams, took out and examined in order to identify it. That capsule is here," he said, pointing to a lone capsule sitting on the paper. "Now I know that your prints will be all over that; the soft gelatin of capsules takes prints better than anything. Jack, you say that Andy took his medications each night, all at once?"

  "Right. He'd take all three pills around nine or ten, usually about an hour before he went to bed. If he had to stay up late for a project, he'd take maybe one after dinner, then the other two later."

  "But he didn't take them one at a time, during the day?"

  "No. He said they slowed him down too much. They're downers."

  "But what it says here on the label," said Keegan, peering at the side of the big brown bottle, which was a third full of the capsules, "is 'Take one capsule three times a day.' It doesn't say to take three capsules once a day."

  "I know, but that's the way Andy took them; trust me."

  Keegan looked up at him across the coffee table.

  "No, I won't trust you. It's my job to distrust everybody."

  Joe rolled his eyes up and drummed on the couch arm with his fingers. He was right; Keegan was a hardass.

  "Now, you had dinner during the storm, in the dark, and then Andy went upstairs to make a phone call. What time was that?"

  "Between eight and eight-thirty," I said. "He came back downstairs looking sad, or disappointed. Then he and Jack played chess for a while, and then, around nine, he put on his raincoat and left."

  "He left th
e cottage around nine?" Keegan asked. He was writing every detail down in his notebook.

  "Yes, and didn't get back till eleven. He was out in that storm walking around for two hours. We were worried about him."

  "So he left soon after the phone call. Maybe then the phone call was to set up a meeting. Do you think that's possible?"

  "No, I don't think—began Jack.

  "Wait!" Mary said. "When he left, he wanted to go alone. Remember Jackie, you said you'd go along, but he refused?"

  "Uh-huh. He said he wanted to be alone. Dad and I figured maybe he'd had a fight with Alice and he—"

  "Who's Alice?" Keegan asked, and we told him. Nothing was said, however, about Jack and Andy's rivalry over her affections. I was glad of this, and sensed that Mary was, too. It was as if the Adams family formed an immediate, unspoken alliance to protect Jack.

  "We can check the phone company's records and find out where the call went," said Keegan, tapping his open notebook with his pen. "That should tell us something, since it appears that the call and the nocturnal walk could be connected. Do any of you have an idea about who he went to meet, assuming it was a meeting that took place?"

  We thought for a while and drew a blank.

  "How about this Henderson girl?" he asked.

  "Woods Hole's pretty far away," I said. "Of course, he was gone almost two hours. Jack, who else?"

  Jack shook his head.

  "And now for the big one," continued Keegan. "Since it seems more and more as if we're looking at a homicide here: who would want to kill Andy Cunningham?"

  Head shakes all around, and then Mary brought up the name of Lionel Hartzell, the professor who was Andy's supervisor, and who, Andy was convinced, was nuts. Keegan wrote his name down, then asked us why Andy thought this.

  "Actually, I think Andy made too big a deal of it," said Jack. "I mean, it's true he's difficult at times. A real perfectionist. But then, most good research scientists are. And Andy had his difficult side, too. He was the kind of guy who'd tell you just what he thought. He couldn't stand dumb people, or people who moved too slow for him. It was natural that they wouldn't get along that well. I mean, here's old man Hartzell, who wants to go step by step, being super careful all the way. And then there's Andy, always wanting to hurry it up. But no, Mr. Keegan, I don't think Hartzell would kill him."