“If I wasn’t so angry with him, I’d feel sorry for Sheriff Carroll.”
“When we were kids the sheriff was called Pete, I think because his father’s name was Pete. After he died, Mrs. Carroll insisted that her son be called A. B. Basically, he’s a good, decent man, who loves his job as sheriff. When he was growing up, his mother was constantly telling him that he was fat and dumb. For the first time in his life he’s looked up to. He goes along with Doc Herman because he needs that little bit of respect.”
“That’s a heck of a reason for not doing his duty. There’s no excuse for refusing to give a murdered girl justice, even if she was what some of the people here considered a tramp. She was a human being.”
“I know, and I’m shocked and disappointed in Pete.”
• • •
Wearing a light coat because it was a chilly, cloudy day, Kathleen walked down the street toward the courthouse. She reached under the lapel of her coat and felt for her grandma’s long wicked hatpin she had put there this morning. From now on she was going to have something handy with which to defend herself.
She entered a high-ceilinged courthouse. It was so quiet that she wondered if she were the only person in the building. The heels of her shoes made tapping sounds as she walked down the long corridor to the records department. Three desks occupied the middle of the office, filing cabinets lined the walls. A man wearing a visor sat at one of the desks. He made no attempt to get up.
“Hello,” Kathleen said pleasantly. “I’m Kathleen Dolan from the
Gazette
and—”
“I know who ya are.”
“Well, then, I’ll get directly to the point. I want to look at the birth records.”
“What for?” He pushed back his chair and stood. It was probably as much exercise as he’d had all day. The saying, wide as he is tall, came to Kathleen’s mind.
“Are they public records or not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Are they public records or not?” Kathleen repeated.
“Yes, but we can’t have just anybody coming in off the street prowling through the records.” The man’s eyes shifted between Kathleen and the door as if he expected someone to come in.
“I understand that.” Kathleen was still trying to be pleasant. “But if you know who I am, you know that I’m from the
Gazette
.”
“It don’t make any difference where you’re
from
.”
“Oh, I thought it did. If you’re telling me that I can’t see the birth records, I’ll just run along, see Judge Fimbres, and get a court order.”
“What year do you want?” he asked grudgingly.
“All of them,” she said with a pleasant smile.
“There’s the files.” He jerked his head toward three tall files next to the window.
“Are they cross-referenced?”
He walked to a cabinet and flung open a door. Ledgers were stacked on the shelves in alphabetical order.
“Thank you. On which shelf are the birth records?”
“Third.”
“Thank you again. You can go on with your work; you’ve been very helpful.”
Kathleen took off her coat and draped it over the back of a chair. After the records clerk moved away, she took out the ledger marked “D” and quickly found DeBerry. Judith DeBerry was born September 30, 1923, to Martha and Donald DeBerry, Fort Worth, Texas. Attending physician, Darrell Herman, M.D. Kathleen jotted the information down on her notepad, closed the ledger, and placed it back on the shelf.
Without looking at the clerk, who was watching her every move, she went to the file cabinets where she found the birth certificates filed by the year. In the 1923 file, she found the DeBerry birth certificate. She quickly thumbed through the documents and discovered that Dr. Herman had delivered twenty-two babies that year, ten of them to out-of-town parents.
More curious than ever now, she quickly wrote down the date of birth, parents’ last name, and the place they were from. After she finished with the 1923 file, she went to the 1938 file. So far this year he had delivered thirty babies, sixteen of them had out-of-town parents. The latest birth was last week. The parents were from Tulsa.
An hour later, fingers cramping, feet hurting, Kathleen closed the file. She had listed the last ten years of births in Tillison County. After putting her notebook in her purse, she slipped on her coat.
“Thank you,” she said to the man at the desk, and received only a grunt in reply.
As she was going out the door she saw the deputy hurrying down the hallway. She had heard the low murmur of the record clerk’s voice, and now it occurred to her that he had called the sheriff’s office.
“Well, hello, pretty little lady. Imagine seeing you here.” The deputy had a nervous grin on his face. He stood in front of her.
“I’m sure you’re surprised.”
Kathleen stepped around him and walked down the corridor toward the door. He kept pace with her and when they reached the door, he put his arm out as if to open it. Instead he held it closed.
“What’s the hurry?”
“All right, buster. Let’s just stop waltzing around. The clerk called you. Why? I was looking at public records. What are you going to do about it? Put me in jail?”
“Maybe. It’s against the law to steal public records.”
“Are you saying that’s what I did?”
“Melvin saw you put them in your purse.”
“He couldn’t have because I didn’t.”
“I’ll have a look for myself.”
“No, you won’t!”
“Are you resisting arrest?”
“Damn right.” She lifted her hand as if to adjust her coat and pulled the hatpin out of the lapel.
“This can be settled right quick. Give me the handbag.” When he reached for it, she viciously jabbed the hatpin in the back of his hand.
“Yeow!” he yelled, and drew his fist back to hit her.
“Hit me, and I’ll shove this hatpin all the way to your gizzard.”
“What’s going on here?” Judge Fimbres had come out of his office and was walking rapidly toward them.
“Look what she did to me, Judge.” The deputy held out his hand. Blood was welling from the wound made by the pin. “I was just opening the door for her.”
“Judge, he’s accusing me of taking public records. I’ll be glad to show you what’s in my handbag, but not in front of him!”
“Did you see her take something, Thatcher?”
“Melvin called. He said she put some records in that bag.”
“Come into my office, Miss Dolan.” The deputy followed them back down the hall. “Stay outside, Thatcher.”
“You know my name,” Kathleen said when the door was closed.
“Barker Fleming spoke of you. Now let’s see what you have in the handbag and get this mess straightened out.”
Kathleen put the hatpin back in the lapel of her coat, opened her purse, and dumped the notebook, pencils, compact, lipstick, comb, and several bobby pins onto the desk. From a compartment on the side of the purse, she brought out her coin purse, car keys, and a small folder with the pictures of her grandparents. She extended the empty handbag to the judge. He shook his head. She turned the pockets in her coat inside out.
“Why did Deputy Thatcher think you had taken something?”
“The record clerk called him.” Kathleen began putting things back in her bag. “I came to look at the birth records. We had an inquiry from a girl looking for her mother, and I wanted to see if the mother’s maiden name was on the girl’s birth certificate.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.” She looked steadily at him. “I wrote it down on a pad and put it in my purse. I poked the deputy with the hatpin when he attempted to grab it.”
The judge chuckled and shook his head. When he opened the door, the deputy was standing close to it.
“Did we talk loud enough, Thatcher?” Judge Fimbres asked drily.
“Huh? Look at my hand. I ought to arrest her for attacking an officer.” Blood showed through the handkerchief he had wrapped around his hand.
“It’s what you get for grabbing a young lady’s breast, Thatcher. You should know better.”
Kathleen’s eyes shot to the judge, then to the gaping deputy.
“Her . . . brr . . . brr—” the startled man couldn’t get the word out. “She’s a liar.”
“You can file charges, but I warn you when the case comes to my court you will be the one to pay the court cost.”
“You believe her over me?”
“You have a reputation of being less than respectful to ladies, Thatcher. We both know that.” The judge held open the door for Kathleen. “I’m sorry, my dear, that you received such despicable treatment in our courthouse. I’ll speak to Sheriff Carroll. Deputy Thatcher should be relieved from duty if such conduct continues.”
“Thank you, Judge Fimbres.”
Kathleen managed to keep the smile off her face until she reached the sidewalk.
• • •
“I like that Judge Fimbres.”
Kathleen had just finished telling Adelaide what had occurred at the courthouse.
“Forevermore! That beats all. That jackass was going to take your notebook.” Adelaide’s eyes brightened in response to her anger.
“Well, he didn’t get it.” Kathleen flopped the shorthand book down on her desk. “I can’t believe how many babies have been born right here in Tillison County, and since 1925. Doc Herman delivered most all of them.”
“Of course he delivered them. He’s the only doctor in the county. A few babies are delivered by midwives.”
“I found a few of those. There is something else interesting here. Hazel told me that a little over a year ago, Clara came home pregnant. Her baby was stillborn, which is no surprise considering how she lives. There wasn’t a birth certificate in the file with Clara Ramsey’s name on it. Even if the child was stillborn, it was born.”
“I remember when that happened. She left town right after that.”
“My grandmother used to say, ‘There’s something rotten in Denmark.’ She meant cheese. I’m referring to that clinic.”
• • •
In the middle of the afternoon Kathleen looked up from the chart on her desk to see Doc Herman standing in front of the window looking at the pictures she had put on the bulletin board. He was wearing a gray overcoat. A gray felt hat sat on his head at a jaunty angle. When he came into the office, she kept her head bent over her desk and continued to write dates on the chart until he spoke.
“Do you like stirring up folks, Miss Dolan?”
Kathleen looked up and smiled. “Why, hello, Dr. Herman.” She pointedly slid a sheet of paper over the chart on her desk to cover the figures she was working on. “What do you mean by stirring up folks?”
“I think you know what I mean. You don’t appear to be thickheaded.”
Kathleen laughed. “Thank you.”
She began to feel good about this encounter. Her cheerfulness irritated him. A frown covered his foxlike features. He stared at her, thinking that his silence would intimidate her. She stared back, not allowing her gaze to waver.
“Is there something you wanted? Have you reconsidered writing a column for us on the history of Rawlings? In Liberal we had an older man who wrote a column for the
Press.
His column was full of little anecdotes of long-ago Liberal. A column about the olden days in Rawlings by you, Doctor, would be very popular.”
It was evident that the doctor was having a hard time hiding his anger. His lips were a tight line; his eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared.
“Young lady, I suggest you get in touch with the paper in Liberal and see if you can get your job back.”
“Why would I want to do that? This town is jumping with news. It’s a reporter’s heaven. Saturday was the rodeo. A big success, by the way. That night my tire was slashed right on Main Street. Can you imagine that? Yesterday a murdered girl was found in a ditch along a rural road. There is more news in this town in a week than in six months in Liberal.”
“Where is Adelaide?”
“I think that she and Paul are in the rooms above. The day after paper day is usually slow. It gives them some time to be together,” she added in a conspiratorial tone.
The doctor looked at her for a long moment, then turned and walked out the door. Kathleen knew that she had made an enemy, a powerful enemy. But if what she suspected was true, the man was an unscrupulous, money-grabber who took advantage of desperate people. The thing that troubled her was how was she going to prove it.
• • •
“Kathleen!” Adelaide exclaimed after being told about the doctor’s visit. “He must be madder than a wet hen.”
“I don’t care how mad he is. There is something here in these records that stinks to high heaven. I need someone with know-how to help me ferret this out.” Kathleen tapped her pencil on the desk, then suddenly got to her feet. “I think we should keep Judy here, out of sight, until we find out what’s going on. She could be part of this. If she’s out on the street asking questions, something could happen to her.”