Doug Allyn: v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“Morning, Doc,” Stan said, leading the way into the house toward the winding staircase. “Sorry to drag you out like this, but I’ve got a bit of a situation here.”

“What’s happened?”

“Mrs. Crane’s mother called nine-one-one about three A.M., said her daughter’d passed away, then started mumbling. When the EMT techs got here they found the mother sitting by the bed. The dog was on the bed, guarding the body. The old lady seemed to be pretty much in a fog.”

“She’s on quite a bit of medication,” David said.

“Anyway, Mrs. Crane was dead, probably had been for an hour or so. The bedclothing was disarranged a little, as though she’d thrashed around some at the end. And as the technician was checking over the body, he noticed the respirator was unplugged.”

“The respirator?”

“Right. Apparently she could only breathe without it for short periods. I guess she was in pretty bad shape. Thing is, the machine’s quite close to the wall, and there’s other equipment near it. The mother said she hadn’t touched it, and the tech thought it was unlikely it could have been unplugged by accident. It looked odd to him, so he called me.”

“And you called me? What the hell for?”

“I’m coming to that. By the time I got here, the husband had showed up—”

“What do you mean, showed up?”

“Came upstairs. He said he was asleep, but the EMT guys had been there half an hour at that point, and hadn’t been particularly quiet.”

“Maybe Crane’s a heavy sleeper.”

“Maybe. He said he’d had a few scotches before he turned in and I believe him. He smelled like a brewery. On the other hand, he was wearing street clothes. I ask you, if you had a sick wife and heard noises in the night, would you bother to get dressed? Anyway, when the tech tells Crane the respirator was unplugged, he goes ballistic. He says the dog must have pulled it out, that he’d been prowling around back there before. And there are some marks on the plug that coulda been made by a dog. So I called you.”

“To look at a plug?”

“Dave, what I got here is a dead woman who probably would have passed away naturally in a month or two anyway. Maybe a few things don’t quite add up about it, but that’s not unusual. Death is a messy business sometimes. I’ve got no real reason to doubt the husband’s story, I just want to be sure. If the marks on the plug look like toothmarks to you, we can all go home.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” Ted Crane bellowed. He was blocking the head of the stairway in his stocking feet. His shirttail was half out of his dark dress slacks. He was weaving and his face was flushed. “This is his fault!”

“Mr. Crane—” Stan began.

“He knew that damned dog had a birth defect! If he’d done the right thing and put it down before my wife got so attached to it—” Crane lunged at David, swinging wildly at his head. Stan grabbed his arm but the force of Crane’s rush carried all three men down in a heap, struggling dangerously at the top of the stairs.

“Damn it, Crane, get hold of yourself!” Stan roared, twisting Ted’s arm behind his back and hauling him to his feet.

“Let go of me, you bastard! This is my house!”

“This is a crime scene until I say otherwise!” Stan said, forcing Crane against the wall. “Now you settle down or I’ll cuff you and lock you in the back of my patrol car. Are you all right, Doc?”

“I’ll live,” David said, getting to his feet, more shaken than he cared to admit. He touched his cheek with his fingertips. They came away bloody. Terrific.

“You’ve got a nick on your cheek.”

“It’s nothing,” David said. “Crane’s cufflink grazed me, that’s all. Mr. Crane, I’m terribly sorry about your wife, and I know this must be an awful time for you. So why don’t you let me take care of my business and I’ll get out of here.”

“You’d better take that dog with you,” Crane snarled over his shoulder. “You get it out of here or I’ll kill it! I swear I will!”

Stan marched Crane over to a chair and parked him in it, none too gently. David left them in the hall and stepped into Inga’s room. A burly, uniformed medical tech was standing just inside the door, his arms folded. Inga’s mother was sitting beside the bed in her robe and slippers. One of her hands was beneath the sheet that covered Inga’s body and David guessed she was still holding her daughter’s hand. He touched the elderly woman’s shoulder. She glanced up at him without a hint of recognition, then looked away.

David eased cautiously around the bed, knelt beside the respirator, and picked up the plug. Tooth marks. He’d seen them a thousand times on everything from fine furniture to briar pipes. Puppies test their strength against the world by grabbing and tugging on things. Or they just chew things up for the sheer joyful hell of it. There were several other cords plugged into the multiple socket, for the other medical equipment and her bedside lamp. They’d been chewed as well. He examined the respirator plug closely to be sure, but there was little doubt. Damn it. Sometimes it seemed like the Almighty had an almighty warped sense of humor...

He rose slowly, dusting off his hands.

“What do you think?” the medic asked. The tech was a heavyset man with a beer-barrel build and a dark stubble of beard. He looked tired, probably nearing the end of his shift.

“I’d say her husband is right. There are toothmarks on that plug,” David said, gazing down at the shrouded body. “How did she... die?”

“Heart failure, I think, triggered by anoxia. Actually, in her condition that mask was barely adequate to keep her going anyway. Her doctor wanted to hospitalize her weeks ago to have a ventilator tube inserted. She refused.”

“Can’t say I blame her for that,” David said. “It can be a pretty uncomfortable situation.”

“True blue,” the medic agreed, “and it’s not like it would have cured her. It would only have prolonged her dyin’ a bit. Maybe it’s best this way. If she woke up at all, she was probably too groggy to realize what had happened.”

“I hope so,” David said. “She was quite a lady.”

“Well?” Stan Wolinski said from the doorway.

“They... certainly look like tooth marks to me,” David said. “Proper depth, proper spacing. Maybe a lab could tell you more.”

“Do you think a lab’s necessary?”

“No,” David said. “They’re tooth marks all right.”

“Anything wrong, Doc? You look a little bummed.”

“Just upset,” David said. “The lady was a friend of mine.”

“In that case, considering Crane just decked you, I’ll assume your opinion’s as close to objective as I’m likely to get. Thanks for coming down.”

“I’ll send you a bill,” David said. “Where’s Hector?”

“Hec — oh, the dog, you mean?”

“We shut it up in the next bedroom,” the medical tech volunteered. “He wouldn’t let us near her.”

“You gonna take him with you, Doc?” Stan asked.

“I think I’d better, under the circumstances, don’t you?” David said. “There’s been enough trouble here for one night.” He collected Hector from the adjoining bedroom. Ted Crane was still in the hallway chair where Stan had left him, sitting with his head in his hands. He didn’t look up as David passed.

David put Hector in the back of his Jeep. He clipped a lead to the pup’s collar, but it wasn’t really necessary. Hector made no move to escape. He seemed dazed and disoriented, barely aware of his surroundings. And David knew exactly how he felt.

During the course of the day, David tried to feed Hector several times. He’d seen Inga do it, cradling the pup lovingly in her arms, slipping the feeding tube into the corner of his mouth to bypass the schism in his palate. Hector had seemed to enjoy every moment of it. Why not? It was the only way he’d ever been fed by the only mother he’d ever known. When David tried it, though, the pup snapped out of his apathy long enough to snarl at him and spit the tube out. An hour later David’s second attempt failed as well. He decided to have his assistant, Bettina, try the next one. Perhaps a woman’s touch...