Authors: JM Gulvin
‘But how come he did?’ Isaac looked sideways at him. ‘Turn out like this, I mean. I don’t get it. I don’t understand it at all.’ Lifting a palm he let it fall. ‘When we were kids he wasn’t like that. He … Me and him … What the hell am I going on about that for? We’re all grown up now. We’re not kids anymore.’
‘Like I said,’ Quarrie looked squarely at him, ‘don’t be beating up on yourself. It ain’t going to do any good.’
Finishing his beer Isaac poured another half-glass. He toyed with it. He seemed to study the amber liquid. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. My mom and all – did you come up with anything on where she might be? I know what I said before, but now we got this going on I wouldn’t mind talking to her, if she’ll talk to me.’
Seeing him onto the train Quarrie went back to his car. Behind the wheel he picked up the radio and put a call in to the state police to see if there was any news on the missing orderly. They told him they had nothing so far, but mentioned a newspaper vendor who’d been found locked in his news stand with a fractured skull.
Quarrie left the station and headed south. Something was bugging him, and he took the back roads to Funston and Logansport before crossing into Texas where the Sabine River formed the neck of the lake. From there it was a short hop to Joaquin and he was into the woods again.
He drove with darkness swallowing the trees. He drove with the heel of his hand on top of the wheel and all manner of thoughts picking at him. No wind tonight, no rain. Above the trees a crescent moon cast a little light as he made the dirt road and narrow causeway. Beyond the iron gates the grounds took shape and the main building loomed just ahead. Coming to a halt thirty feet from the steps he shut off the engine. It wasn’t cold tonight, but as he climbed out of the car a shiver worked his bones just the same. For a moment he stared at the grisly facade where scorch marks tainted the rotting wood. He considered the bank of darkness where the doors had been. He considered the pillars, the broken glass and vertical bars that split them like piano keys. He looked up to where the roof was all but gone and from there to the second-floor windows.
Opening the trunk of his car he rooted around for his flashlight, a heavy-duty triple cell he had picked up at the mercantile in Wichita Falls. When he switched it on the beam reached all the
way to the trees and he worked it across the far wall, thinking about Pablo’s cabin. That old Mexican. Like Pious had said, wrong place at the wrong time; it felt like a kick in the gut. The worst thing about this job was the plight of those that inadvertently got in the way. Nothing to say to their relatives: no reason, no explanation; nothing that could begin to assuage their pain.
He kept thinking about what that old man had said about Sonora and how he used to drive a fluorspar truck from Coahuila to Oklahoma City. Why it should bother him so much he could not say, but an image of his face seemed to cloy like that skull from the Red River.
Jaw a little tight now, he eased the pistol from his right-hand holster and checked the cartridges. Closing the loading gate he spun the chamber all the way around then cocked the gun and slowly lowered the hammer. A few of his contemporaries were using automatics these days, but he’d had magazines jam on him and that didn’t happen with a single-action. Gun back in its holster, he started for the doors. The second time he had done this, only with no wind blowing the isolation seemed strangely more intense. He thought about what Isaac had said about his brother having been in the house with a gun in his hand, a gun he’d used on his father. Pausing on the steps Quarrie looked up at those windows again, wondering what could have prompted him to do that.
Inside the lobby he felt the hairs gather on the nape of his neck. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen in his life and it was a fact not a whole lot bothered him. Years ago his Uncle Frank had told him to trust nothing that he could not see, and he’d made a practise of only ever being cautious of the living. That said, it was eerie as hell out here, and he was conscious of an almost sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach.
He climbed the stairs, keeping close to the wall with the boards being so weak in the middle. Moving slowly he worked the flashlight from the steps at his feet to the landing above where the
plaster was missing from the walls. Passing beyond the fire doors he was in the corridor again. A narrow tunnel of darkness only breached when he swung the light from one wall to the other.
Almost subconsciously he counted the doorways until he came to the fifth. The walls inside that room were covered with images of stick-like children that lived and died by the beam from his flashlight. Sweeping the light from the walls to the floor he studied the boards closest to the far wall. It had been raining hard the other night, the ground muddy underfoot, and just as he had seen the mark of those boots in the caretaker’s cabin, he saw them under that second-floor window.
*
Mr Palmer picked Isaac up from the railroad station in Paris, Texas, and gave him a ride home. Quarrie had made the call after Isaac got on the train.
The depth of the night spread across the flattened landscape as the two of them drove the county road. Mr Palmer chewed with his window cracked so he could expel tobacco juice every now and then. Hunched against the passenger window, Isaac sat with his arms folded.
‘So, I saw you the other day,’ Palmer said at length. ‘And that Ranger seemed kind of worried when he spoke to me on the telephone. Is everything OK?’
Staring through the windshield Isaac seemed intent on the weakness of the pickup’s headlights.
‘Figure this whole business been a real shock to you. I read in the newspaper how the coroner decided your daddy took that gun to hisself.’
Isaac did not say anything.
‘Hard on anybody, that kind of thing. My heart goes out to you.’
Isaac closed his eyes.
‘You got any idea why he’d want to do that? I never really met the man, but they say he was a decent feller.’
‘Mr Palmer, my dad didn’t shoot himself.’
Palmer stopped chewing and tossed a glance the width of the cab. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean the coroner’s got it wrong.’
‘You sure?’
‘Positive. I told the sheriff’s department but they didn’t want to listen, and they made their report now anyway. But this isn’t their deal anymore so it doesn’t matter.’
‘The Rangers took over then, did they?’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘And they take no account of the coroner?’
‘No, they don’t. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m beat already, and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not talk about it.’
Palmer took him as far as the mailbox at the head of the road leading up to the driveway. ‘Listen, son,’ he said. ‘I’m your nearest neighbor, and it might be a couple of miles but I got a telephone, so holler if there’s anything you need.’
From the side of the road Isaac watched him go. With clouds beginning to mass overhead he walked the dirt to where gravel took over. The early hours, his connection from Texarkana had been the last train out, and the fatigue almost made him totter. Under the glare of the security lights he fumbled in his pockets for keys, the whole yard illuminated in an alien glow. Inside the house he worked his shoulders into his neck and in the living room he put a match to the fire.
The gas caught and he sat down cross-legged in front of the flames where they licked at the stack of fake logs. Tunic unbuttoned, he stripped the tie from his collar and wrapped it around his fist. For a long time he sat like that and then his gaze drifted to the coffee table on the other side of the room and the couch where it was back in its proper place.
Finally he got to his feet. Downstairs he stood in the open doorway to his father’s study and looked at the desk and the chair before his gaze wandered to the shelf where he had left the key. It was no longer there.
He checked the other shelves but could not see it. He checked the drawers in his father’s desk. Upstairs he stood in the kitchen and considered the work surfaces, cupboards and closets. Back in the living room he looked all along the mantelpiece and the window ledge. Dropping to one knee, he checked underneath the green felt table where an alcove had been fashioned to hold spare decks of cards. He walked around the back of the bar area and looked there too, but he could find no trace of the key.
Heading for the basement stairs once more he paused at his father’s bedroom. The door was ajar and, as he considered the gap between the edge and the jamb, he was frowning deeply. From the doorway he took in the neatly made bed, the nightstand with the white-faced alarm clock that had long since stopped, and the chair in the corner where some of his father’s clothes were still folded as if he had only just laid them out. His gaze shifted to the closet where again the door wasn’t shut properly.
He trailed fingers over the rack of shirts and jackets, the old uniform wrapped in cellophane. On the floor were his father’s shoes and work boots and next to them was a discarded sweater. Isaac cocked an eyebrow at the sweater and at the pile of clothes on the chair. Then he scooped up the sweater. He stared. A metal box, long and thin like a safety-deposit box, he worked a hand over the nape of his neck and his palm came away a little clammy.
He carried the box through to the living room and laid it down on the card table. Eyes sharp suddenly, he headed back down the basement stairs. Opening the panel in the study he went through to the storm shelter. The lid of the first aid kit was closed and when he opened it and the tray dropped forward, he saw the key back in the polythene bag. For a few moments he stood and stared. Then
he took the key from the bag and went back upstairs.
The key fit the lock and inside the box he found a stack of official-looking papers, including his father’s discharge order from the Army and a handful of bank statements that were stapled together. Underneath those were the deeds to the house. Laying them to one side he saw an address book. Slim and black, it was bound in leather and he flicked through the pages where a few names had been written in his father’s scrawling hand. At the letter S one of the pages had been torn out, the edge at the binder ragged. Isaac looked closely at the page beneath: an indentation, though it was only slight, and he could not quite make out the pen strokes. Setting the little book aside he rifled through the rest of the box and at the bottom he found some insurance documents and some more letters he had written to his dad, only those were still in their envelopes. Then he found something else. A single document, a piece of parchment, he stared at it with his mouth open.
He was shaking. He was trembling, gaze flitting from that sheet of paper to the metal box and from the box to the address book where the page was missing. On his feet he grabbed both the book and the document. In the kitchen he picked up the telephone and hunted down the business card Quarrie had given him. Hands still shaking he dialled the number and was connected to Ranger Headquarters in Austin.
‘This is Isaac Bowen from Fannin County,’ he said to the woman on the end of the line. ‘I need you to get a message to Sergeant Quarrie. Tell him I know what’s going on. Tell him I know what happened. Tell him I know what happened with Ishmael.’
Quarrie spent the night in a motel. He didn’t get much sleep, and when he did doze off his dreams were plagued by images of stick-like children. It was barely 6 a.m. when he called his son at home, and Eunice answered in a voice that was thick with sleep.
‘It’s me, Eunice,’ Quarrie said. ‘Sorry to wake you, it’s early still I reckon.’
‘Time I was up, John Q; got to be getting James ready for school.’
‘Can I talk to him? Is he awake?’
‘If he’s not he will be. Just hold on a sec and I’ll fetch him.’
Sitting on the edge of the bed Quarrie tapped stiff fingers against the crown of his hat. He waited a couple of minutes and then his son’s voice yawned in his ear.
‘Hey, kiddo. Sounds like I woke you up.’
‘Good job you did, Dad. I’ve got to get ready for school.’
‘So Eunice said. So what’s going on over there? What’s up?’
‘Not much. I guess me and Pious are still looking at the newspapers.’
‘Getting what you need then, are you?’
‘Yes, sir. There was a bunch of names we found, people who never made it out of that train wreck.’ James sounded a little plaintive. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘I can’t stop thinking about how it must’ve been, coming up on a bridge like that nobody knew was out. I mean, they get on that train thinking they were going someplace, meeting family or something like that, but the ones in the paper they never got to where it was they were going. I keep thinking about them other folks waiting on them to show up and how it must’ve been when someone told them the train wrecked.’
‘Whoa,’ his father said gently. ‘Are you OK, son? I don’t think I ever you heard you like this. Sounds like it’s really gotten to you.’
He heard James sniff. ‘That’s what Miss Munro said. At school yesterday she said how it can get you like that when it’s regular folk you’re discovering about. But I like it, Dad. I mean history. I like trying to find stuff out. I really enjoy it.’
‘Do you? Well, that’s great: maybe you can do something with that?’
‘At school you mean?’
‘Sure. If you put together a good project then maybe Miss Munro will decide history is what you’re best at.’
‘That’d be good,’ James said, ‘because I sure ain’t any good at math.’
‘Your mom was pretty good. It’s a pity you take after me.’
‘So you were no good then neither?’
‘Couldn’t get my head around her, son; no matter what I tried. Don’t worry about it. From the way you’re talking I get the impression this project is going to be real good and Miss Munro is going to see James Quarrie in a whole different light altogether.’
‘I hope so,’ James said. ‘I’ll show you the stuff we got as soon as you get home.’
‘I’ll look forward to that, bud. I’m sorry it was so short the last time. No sooner was I there I was gone.’
‘So where are you at right now?’
‘Shreveport, Louisiana. Give me a day or so and I’ll be home.’
When he got back to Bellevue Quarrie found a couple of uniformed patrolmen from the state police talking to the staff about the missing orderly. They had been to his house but found no trace of him and his car had already been towed. One of them was the young guy who had discovered the Chevrolet stolen from the Baptist mission cottage. Taking him to one side Quarrie asked him if they had come up with anything.
‘Not much so far,’ the trooper admitted. ‘It seems this orderly
was pretty new, had only been renting his apartment for a couple of months.’
‘What about Nancy McClain? I swung by her place last night but she’d quit the building.’
The trooper nodded. ‘We spoke to the manager and he said something about her son showing up to see her – soldier from Vietnam?’
‘That wasn’t her son,’ Quarrie told him. ‘That was just a ruse to get into the apartment.’
The trooper nodded. ‘Well sir, nobody here has heard from her, at least they haven’t this morning.’
Quarrie took the elevator up to Dr Beale’s floor where he found Alice Barker in her office working away at her typewriter, and she looked up in surprise.
‘Sergeant,’ she said. ‘We weren’t expecting you back, not with the state police being camped out like they are.’
Quarrie echoed her smile. ‘Yes mam, I guess that’s what it must feel like. But we have to find Mr Briers so their questions have to be asked.’
She offered him a cup of coffee and he took a seat on her couch.
‘Your first name’s Alice, right?’ Do you mind if I call you Alice?’
A little color bruised her cheeks. ‘No, I don’t mind. That would be fine.’
‘People call me John Q. Not just John so much as John Q. I reckon it was the same with my dad.’
Alice passed him a cup of coffee then poured one for herself and sat down behind her desk. ‘So what brings you back then? Yesterday you reminded me how you have no jurisdiction here in Louisiana.’
‘That’s a fact.’ He smiled at her again. ‘But there’s something I need you to do.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘What’s that?’
‘I need you to show me the women’s wing.’
Cup halfway to her mouth, Alice gawped at him over the rim. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she said. ‘The women’s wing?’
‘There’s something I have to see, Alice; something I need to find out.’
Alice seemed to think about that. Setting her cup down on the desk she glanced towards Dr Beale’s door.
‘I need you to do this,’ Quarrie insisted. ‘It’s real important.’
Pushing back her chair Alice got to her feet. Hesitating for a moment she unlocked the door to Dr Beale’s office. At his desk she opened the top drawer and withdrew a set of keys. ‘I really should not be in here,’ she said. ‘And I certainly should not be handling his keys.’
‘He’s not around,’ Quarrie reminded her. ‘It’s all right. He’s not going to find out.’
Closing the drawer she palmed the keys but still looked hesitant. ‘I’m not sure I have the authority. I’m just a secretary, and I know if Dr Beale found out I’d probably lose my job.’
‘No.’ Quarrie took her free hand and held it. ‘You wouldn’t. I’d explain it to him, Alice, and given the circumstances I’m sure he would understand.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘You’ve never met Dr Beale, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t.’ Quarrie smiled. ‘So tell me about him. What’s he like?’
Before she answered Alice took a moment to glance around the office. Nodding to the couch she said that Beale liked to lie on his back, stare at the ceiling and think.
‘Think about what?’ Quarrie asked her. ‘The different cases he’s working?’
She nodded. ‘I suppose. He’s a pioneer, always trying to push the boundaries, always trying to stay ahead. He takes ideas under consideration that other doctors shy away from, and for the last few years he’s been working on trying to prove a theory that nobody else accepts. I’ve asked him what that is, but he just tells me to wait till I read his book.’
‘He’s writing a book?’ Quarrie said.
‘He plans to once he’s proven his case, once he can show his contemporaries that whatever it is he’s working on actually exists. His thesis he calls it, his opus; something that will put him right at the top of his profession. Anyway,’ she flapped a hand, ‘he’s very ambitious. I’ve had conversations with Nancy about it and I know that some of his passion – his zeal, she called it – used to bother her back in Texas.’
‘Nancy McClain you’re talking about?
‘That’s right. She came up here to the office the morning Charlie Briers didn’t show up and I know she had things on her mind.’
‘What kind of things, Alice?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you, but it looked like there were things she needed to talk about.’
‘With Dr Beale you mean?’
Alice made a face. ‘I don’t know. I guess so; although I got the impression she would’ve quite liked to talk to me. I can’t tell you for certain because she never actually got around to saying anything.’ With a shake of her head she pressed a hand to her breast. ‘There I go running my mouth again. What on earth must you think?’
Back in her office, she stared at the set of keys where she still cupped them in her palm.
‘I really don’t know about this,’ she said. ‘What about the other staff?’
‘What about them?’ Quarrie’s tone was reassuring. ‘They know the police have been asking questions.’ Producing the star in a wheel from his pocket, he fastened it to his jacket. ‘They’ll just figure me for another one.’
Still Alice looked doubtful.
‘You were talking about Nancy,’ he reminded her gently. ‘How you thought there were things she wanted to say?’
Placing the keys on her desk Alice nodded. ‘Nancy and Mr
Briers – they worked at Trinity of course, but after the fire Dr Beale made sure they were given jobs here.’
‘Why them in particular?’
Alice shrugged. ‘I don’t know. There were cases that only they dealt with and I suppose he wanted the continuity.’
‘What cases, Alice?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose it was Miss Annie mostly.’ She gave a nervous little laugh. ‘A woman in her fifties, skinny little thing, she’s been here since the fire. She was kept in isolation at first, though these past few weeks she’s been allowed outside, but only under strict supervision. She’s not allowed to mix with the other women and Mr Briers used to watch her closely.’ Looking up at him then she gestured. ‘Miss Annie’s a special case, one that the three of them worked on together: Dr Beale, the nurse and that orderly. They used to come up to his office. Sometimes it would be just Nancy, sometimes just Briers and sometimes it would be the two of them.’
Brows knit, she looked a little puzzled. ‘They’d have meetings with Dr Beale – a lot of meetings, and especially just recently. I always found that odd because when he wasn’t with patients Dr Beale was so busy with his tapes he tried to avoid meetings as much as possible.’
‘Tapes?’ Quarrie said. ‘What tapes, Alice?’
‘The reels he made when he was researching: the notes for his book. He usually had me type stuff up but not those tapes, those he keeps locked in the safe.’ She colored at the neck once more. ‘Would you listen to me – blabbermouth. I really shouldn’t be telling you this.’
Again Quarrie took her hand. He was smiling, his eyes kindly. ‘Alice, right now Briers is missing and Nancy McClain has vacated her apartment. If Dr Beale were here I’d be asking him why she might’ve done that. You can’t give me the answer to that question, but everything you can tell me has a bearing on what’s happening.
If it wasn’t me asking, it would be a Louisiana cop.’
‘Even so, ‘I—’
‘Miss Annie,’ he said. ‘Why is she a special case?’
‘I don’t know.’ Alice shook her head. ‘All I can tell you is that she tried to murder her husband. She stabbed him three times and it was a miracle he survived. Twenty-five years ago Miss Annie was deemed mentally unfit for trial. She was certified and committed to Trinity Hospital.’
Head to one side Quarrie studied her. ‘Alice,’ he said, ‘does the name Mary-Beth Gavin mean anything to you?’
‘Of course,’ Alice said. ‘I never met her, but when Dr Beale was dividing his time between here and Texas, I spoke to her sometimes on the phone.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Just business stuff. She ran the office down there, in charge of the paperwork; you know, the hospital records and everything.’
Quarrie nodded. ‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’
Alice’s eyes clouded a little. ‘It was just before the fire. She phoned here wanting Dr Beale urgently and she sounded pretty worked up.’
‘Why? What was bothering her?’
Alice shook her head. ‘I can’t say. She never told me.’
‘But she spoke to Dr Beale?’
She nodded.
‘And afterwards?’
‘He told me there was an emergency and he had to go down there right away.’
Together they rode the elevator to the ground floor. There they passed through two locked doors into the women’s common room where the patients were sitting out. Some of the older women were knitting and Quarrie was reminded of what Pablo had said.
Another pair of locked doors and they were deep in the heart of the building. Quarrie could sense Alice’s nervousness and got the
feeling it was not just that she was breaking hospital rules that was worrying her. When they came to the next set of doors she peered through the glass panel and told him this was as far as she would go.
‘The nurse is on her break so if you’re going to do this it has to be now.’
She unlocked the door and Quarrie passed into a narrow corridor that seemed to burn with the scent of disinfectant. Linoleum tiles on the floor and fluorescent strips flickering above his head, yet for all its light and modernity this hallway reminded him of Trinity.
Slowly he paced the corridor. Room after room, the doors staggered down both sides so no patient could see into any other. He could hear something, a woman’s voice, it was thin and nasal; singing, someone was singing a song though the words were muffled and all he could make out was the tone. Macabre that sound: he was conscious of sweat where it crept on his scalp.
Finally he came to a door on his right; weighted and wooden, it was punctured by a panel of wired glass. When he looked inside he stared. Every inch of wall space was covered by scribblings of the same stick-children he had witnessed in that room at the burned-down hospital.
Miss Annie was sitting on the bed. Bug-eyed and hair scant, she looked up from where she was singing to the porcelain doll she nursed at her naked breast.