The Blood Betrayal

by Don Donaldson

  “Where are we?” Beth said.

  “I live on the other side of this wall. I hope that isn’t a problem . . . I mean for you to stay in my home tonight. I just thought . . . If you stay anywhere else, they might find you.”

  Standing there in the light from a nearby street lamp, Beth studied his face for a moment, apparently trying to decide if she should trust him. Finally, she said, “It’s very kind of you to help me like this. How do we get in?”

  They were standing in the driveway of an empty, recently renovated Victorian cottage with a FOR SALE sign in the yard. The contractor who had redone the place had built a short fieldstone wall that extended from Carl’s garden wall across the driveway separating it from the cottage’s back yard. Carl pointed to the short wall. “We use that.”

  At the short wall, Carl climbed up first. “Give me your bag.”

  Beth handed it to him.

  “Anything breakable in there?”

  “No.”

  Carl threw it over the big wall. “Don’t worry, there’s a building just inside the fence. Your bag is now on its roof. Give me your hand.”

  Carl helped Beth onto the short wall, then he scrambled onto the top of the taller one. He pulled her up onto that wall and pointed on the other side at a long, gently sloping gray roof two feet down that ran from left to right about a yard away. “Can you jump that far?”

  “I think so.” Without hesitation, Beth proved what she’d said, landing as lightly as an autumn leaf.

  Impressed at her agility, Carl joined her and picked up her bag. Beth followed him to the left edge of the roof, where the old ladder Carl had used to climb up there was waiting.

  “Be careful as you go down,” Carl cautioned. “The wood in that thing is riddled with termite tunnels.”

  Beth made it most of the way down without a problem. But when she put her weight on the final rung, it gave way, sending her to the ground with a jolt.

  “You okay?” Carl asked.

  “More surprised than anything, even though you did warn me. Don’t try to carry my bag down, just toss it to me.”

  Carl did that and quickly joined her on the ground.

  The backyard of the firehouse was a jungle of bamboo with trails through it lit by small hanging electric lanterns at knee level. Carl led the way to a red oriental-style footbridge over a man-made stream that wandered out of the bamboo on the right and disappeared around a bamboo thicket on a peninsula to the left.

  “Did you make all this?” Beth asked.

  “It was here when I moved in.”

  “I love it. It feels like we’re in a different country.”

  They crossed the footbridge, followed the trail to the back porch, then went into the house, entering a long hallway with an extremely high ceiling covered in decorative tin sheeting.

  “It used to be a firehouse,” Carl said. “So it’s a bit other-worldly in here, too.”

  Carl led the way forward to an old wooden switchback stairway with ancient-looking newel posts anchoring a solid handrail and heavy balusters. In the corner at the turn was an old fire bell on an oak stand. As they went up the stairs, their feet fell naturally into smoothly curved depressions in the treads, worn there by countless footsteps over a hundred years of use.

  At the top of the stairs Carl showed Beth to the spare bedroom, which was furnished with a massive half-tester bed and matching furniture, including a large armoire.

  “It has its own bathroom over there,” Carl said, pointing to a tall wooden door with an oval top on the far side of the bed. “The fixtures in there are kind of dated, but it’s clean. I’ll leave you alone to get settled.” He put her bag on the floor. “I’ll be in the study two doors down on the left.”

  Carl then went to his study and headed directly for the computer to start something he’d been planning to do when Meggs interrupted him earlier. He logged onto the Internet, then entered Death Records Arkansas in the web search window.

  After a short interval the search results flicked onto the monitor. A quick perusal of the listings led him to the entry portal for the death database at the Arkansas department of vital records. Once Carl wrote a name down, he rarely forgot it. So he had no trouble remembering the name of Beth’s father. He entered James Roark in the search window, and hit the GO link.

  A few seconds later, entries for two James Roarks appeared. The first died in 1958 in Pine Bluff . . . Too long ago and the wrong location to be Beth’s father. The second Roark died in ’63 in Texarkana, also too long ago and the wrong place.

  So where was her father?

  Carl navigated back to the entry portal and typed in the name, Muriel Roark, Beth’s mother. Brow furrowed, he waited for the results. And there they were . . .

  No listings for that name.

  No listings? How could that be?

  Returning to the entry window, he tried George Corbin, the father of Beth’s husband. Again no listings. Elizabeth Corbin. No listings.

  What the hell?

  Wondering if the database was somehow flawed, Carl went back to the entry portal and typed Robert Martin in the search window. This brought up his father’s records . . . Died this year, in Little Rock. Exactly right.

  Seeing his father’s name on the screen made him think back to the funeral, which, because of the horrible injury his father suffered, was a closed casket affair. So Carl had never actually seen the body. That made it even harder to accept the fact his father was gone. Now, looking at his name in this impersonal record of those who were no longer on this earth, Carl wished he’d insisted they let him see his father one last time, no matter how disfigured the body.

  Carl sat for a moment, working his way out of the depths of remorse, then on impulse, he returned to the entry portal and entered the name, Arnold Hollenbeck, the doctor in the article he’d found in his father’s hematology book.

  And yes, that record too, was there.

  What was going on here? Could the database really be incomplete? Was it just random chance there were no death records for the four people Beth had said died of the flu in Artisan?

  Or . . .

  Pettit had said there had been no flu epidemic in the state as severe as Beth had described. And now he’d been unable to find any record of four deaths supposedly ascribed to that flu. The accumulating evidence appeared to be pointing in only one direction: Beth Corbin had made it all up.

  Chapter 11

  “HOPE I’M NOT disturbing you,” Beth said from the doorway to the study.

  “Not at all,” Carl replied, turning in his chair. “Come in and sit down. I want to discuss something with you.”

  Obviously puzzled, Beth came in and tentatively took a seat in one corner of the imitation leather sofa Carl had recently bought, instinctively shrinking against the big overstuffed armrest for protection. “What are we going to talk about?”

  “Things are just not adding up. First, a respected epidemiologist says there was no flu epidemic like the one you described to me. And just now, I checked the Arkansas death records for your parents and your husband, and there are no records of any of them.”

  Beth shot to her feet, her face registering what appeared to be genuine shock. “But there has to be.”

  Carl shrugged. “I entered a couple of other names of people who’ve died, and they were there. But not one of the four you mentioned was. Can you give me any other names?”

  Beth thought a moment, then said, “Harold Lamb. Try that one.” She came over to watch Carl run that name.

  A few seconds later, the results flicked onto the screen: NO MATCHES FOUND.

  Becoming more agitated, she said, “Try Michael Posner.”

  Carl entered that name. NO MATCHES FOUND.

  “I don’t understand,” Beth said. “All those people were cremated
after their deaths to destroy the flu bug that killed them. There’s a mausoleum in the Artisan cemetery with urns containing all their remains. Once a year we have a ceremony in remembrance of them. The whole town goes and Father Hanson has a little service.”

  Carl had to admit, if Beth was lying, she was extremely good at it, because she appeared genuinely upset and confused.

  She walked away from Carl in a pacing motion. Wringing her hands, she turned to face him. “There’s something wrong in Artisan. I’ve felt it for a long time. This, and what you said earlier about my husband not having the symptoms of meningitis, and Meggs not giving me any antibiotics is all just too much to ignore.” She looked imploringly at Carl. “I know I have no right to ask you this, but . . .” she hesitated.

  “What?” Carl prompted.

  “I have to know about my parents . . . what really happened to them.”

  That was a sentiment Carl could easily understand.

  “So would you help me?”

  “Help you? How?”

  “I want to get my parents’ remains out of Artisan and have them checked to see if they’re really in those urns.”

  Chapter 12

  CARL WAS SURPRISED by Beth’s request. It not only shot a big hole in his theory that she’d made up all the facts he couldn’t verify, it created a puzzling new set of things to think about.

  “Get them out of Artisan,” he echoed. “You mean just drive in and tell Hanson we’re taking them?”

  “I wouldn’t want to warn him of my intent. If he refused to let me have them, then they’d be harder to get. And he and Meggs probably wouldn’t let me leave once I returned.”

  Carl knew the amount of information obtainable by the analysis of cremains was quite limited. But there was one fact he believed could be learned, one which would either support or refute a significant possibility that had occurred to him when he was checking the death records. And it was a question he wanted answered.

  “They’re your parents’ remains. They belong to you. So we’ll get a court order for Hanson to release them, and we’ll deliver it with a police escort. They couldn’t force you to stay then.”

  Beth shook her head. “Everyone in town signed a paper giving up all rights to their parents’ remains in return for them being cared for by the town.”

  “Maybe the agreement isn’t binding. We could explore that with a lawyer.”

  “Again, I don’t want Hanson to know what we’re doing.”

  “It should be possible to carry out the legal groundwork without him knowing.”

  “None of us received a copy of the paperwork. We’d have to request one from Hanson.”

  “So then how are you going to get them?”

  “In the woods about a quarter of a mile from the gate, there’s a hole under the fence big enough for a person to crawl through. I saw it a few days ago when I was walking there thinking about leaving.”

  This suggestion was so far from any course Carl would have considered, he could hardly believe she was serious. “You want the two of us to go through that hole, make it on foot to the cemetery . . . Do they keep that mausoleum locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beth come on . . . even if we did make it undetected to the cemetery, how would we get in the mausoleum?”

  “The outside door is made of vertical iron bars. We could saw some of them out with a hacksaw. I think the inside door doesn’t lock.”

  Carl hardly knew this woman. And now she was asking him to go on a crazy quest that would at least involve breaking and entering. He shook his head. “Beth, this is way outside the parameters of who I am. I hike and do a little short distance rappelling from time to time, but I don’t climb mountains, I don’t bungee jump, or sky dive. I live a relatively safe life that still manages to bite me in the ass once in a while . . . pardon my language. So to do something like what you’re asking . . . Jesus . . .”

  “I understand.” She looked at the floor for a moment, then said, “If I did manage to get those urns, where would I take them to be analyzed?”

  “The County Forensic Center could probably do it. But what are you saying?”

  “I want those urns,” she replied, her eyes hardening. “And I’m going to get them.”

  “How?”

  “Are there any hardware stores open this late?”

  “Lowe’s is open. They have everything.”

  “Would you please call me a cab?”

  “What? You’re going to do this on your own? Now?”

  She shrugged. “What choice do I have?”

  “How are you going to get to Artisan and back?”

  “Won’t a cab take me?”

  “That’ll cost a fortune. And then what, you’ll have him wait while you sneak into town?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

  Carl wondered if this was a bluff. Was she just saying she’d go alone to get him to help? Or was she serious? Looking at her now, it seemed to Carl that since this conversation started she’d changed somehow, like cement setting. And he concluded she wasn’t bluffing.

  Damn it, he didn’t want to go back to Artisan. But at the same time, he felt a bond with this girl, as though they shared something beyond the hours they’d spent together since she’d stowed away in his car.

  It’s a sexual attraction, nothing more, conservative Carl said into his ear. Don’t think with your crotch.

  Medicine is as much an art as a science. Sometimes all the lab tests there are won’t provide an unequivocal diagnosis. Then the best physicians draw on gifts their less talented colleagues don’t possess. To a degree, they’re the same gifts that make great detectives. They’re the gifts many ordinary members of society like to believe don’t exist. Even as a fledgling doctor in his first year of residency, Carl had demonstrated an intuitive ability that transcended lab values and physical findings. So his brilliance often shamed his attendings by comparison. That side of him now rebutted conservative Carl’s warning.

  No, you’re wrong, intuitive Carl argued, drawing on his memory of Meggs’s name on that sheet of paper clipped to the Arnold Hollenbeck article. This is more than that. She’s not just some girl with a problem that doesn’t involve you. You are a part of this in some way that isn’t clear yet.

  Then, almost without having made a conscious decision, he heard himself say, “That fence around Artisan . . . is it patrolled in any way?”

  “No. They count on the electricity running through it to keep people out.”

  “What about the town itself? Is there a night security team keeping watch?”

  “We don’t have any crime, so we don’t need that.”

  Carl sighed. “All right, I’ll help you.”

  Chapter 13

  BEFORE LEAVING on the quest for the remains of Beth’s parents, Carl took a short walk around the environs in front of his home, looking for any sign Meggs and whoever had been with him were still in the area.

  “Are they out there?” Beth asked when he returned to the firehouse ten minutes later.

  “I didn’t see Meggs or his car. But since I never got a decent look at the person riding with him, I wouldn’t have recognized him if I saw him.”

  “So now what?”

  “If we’re going to do this, we’ll just have to believe they’re gone. But I have to do something before we leave.”

  Carl went to the phone and hit the button for the work number of Daniel O’Toole, his best friend. When the answering machine paused for him to record a message, he said, “Daniel, this is Carl. I’m about to leave for the little town of Artisan. I’ll be traveling with a woman named Beth Corbin. If I don’t call and let you know that we’re okay by noon tomorrow, call the state police and tell them where we went.”

  As Carl put the receiver down, Beth sai
d, “You think this trip is that dangerous?”

  “Who knows? It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to go up there without telling someone. He then opened the bottom right drawer of his desk and got the Browning automatic resting there.

  “Are we going to need that?”

  “I certainly hope not,” Carl said, checking the status of the weapon. Finding that it had a full magazine, he shoved the gun into a big inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Are you a good shot?” Beth asked.

  “Not really. My father left the gun to me when he died. I’m hoping the most we’ll need it for is a bluff.”

  Before leaving, Carl also grabbed his cell phone and jammed it in his pants pocket. Even though he knew he couldn’t get a signal around Artisan, it still seemed prudent to take it.

  A few minutes later the garage door on the firehouse rolled up, and Carl eased his Camry out onto the concrete apron, where he could check for oncoming traffic.

  After waiting for an old Chevy to crawl by in the near lane, Carl poured on the gas, angled across the centerline, and headed east, his head craning around to see if Meggs was going to pop out of some hidden corner and give chase.

  But the night and all its inhabitants ignored them.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” Beth said, looking behind them.

  “Seems like it.”

  AT A LOWE’S building supply three miles from Carl’s home, they picked up a cart and started looking for things they’d need to crack open the Artisan Mausoleum.

  “This place is incredible,” Beth said, looking around her. “At home, we have to buy almost everything out of catalogues. What do you think we’ll need?”

  “You said the outer door was iron, so I guess we should start with the hacksaw you suggested.” On the way to the tool section, Carl put two big waterproof flashlights and some extra batteries in their cart. At the tools, he added a small crowbar.

  “What does a hacksaw look like?” Beth asked.