Ed Gorman - Wake Up Little Susie

All that time spent ducking the Judge’s rubber hands has trained me for such a moment. I moved my head, and his hand went right into the door. Which was when, small but determined Irishman that I am, I brought up my knee. Unimaginative but effective. I got him square too.

He turned around and leaned on his examining table and started groaning, probably the way his male patients did when he gave them prostate exams.

I opened the door. “Nurse, could we have a cup of coffee in here?”

“You sonofabitch,” he said.

She hurried in with the coffee. She looked at the way he was hunched over his examining table, the paper on it crinkling as his big hands bore down.

“My Lord, what happened?”

“I had to perform some minor surgery. He’s in recovery now.”

“Doctor?” she said.

He didn’t turn around and he didn’t speak.

“I think he’s still a little groggy from the anesthetic,” I said.

“Just get the hell out of here, Audrey!” he shouted over his shoulder.

“He isn’t quite himself,” I said, rolling my finger around my temple to indicate he was temporarily insane.

She made a ugly face at me and backed away.

This time, I closed the door. I started sipping the coffee she’d brought and then went to the back of the room and sat myself down where I could see his face.

“So tell me about Friday night.”

“Screw you.”

“You sleep with a lot of your patients, do you?”

“I don’t sleep with any of my patients.”

“You slept with Susan Squires.”

“That was different.”

“Oh?”

“I was in love with her.”

“That why you killed her?”

He looked at me as if he were just coming out of a deep trance. “Hey.”

“What?”

“I thought that coffee was for me.”

“Oops. I forgot.”

He was still wincing. “She always said you were a dipshit.”

“Who did?”

“Susan.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Every time we’d see you, she’d say, “What a little dipshit that guy is.””

And then I did believe it because it sounded right.

Some things sound right and some don’t, and this one did.

And I felt like hell. I’d thought we were friends, Susan and I. You can never be sure what people really think of you, I guess.

“That make you feel better?” I said.

“Damned right it did.”

“You’re a petty bastard.”

“Yeah, well, I’d rather be a petty bastard than a dipshit.”

“And they say the art of sophisticated conversation is dead.”

He didn’t say anything and then he said, “I was there but I didn’t kill her.”

“Why were you there?”

He went over and sat down. He didn’t say anything for a while. Hung his head. “We’d been seeing each other again.” He was still wincing.

“Squires know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And you were trying to get her to leave him?”

“Yeah. But she was pretty screwed up about the kid.”

I knew what he was going to say then.

“Ellie Chalmers.”

“She’s Susan’s kid?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. I delivered her.”

“You the father?”

“She wouldn’t tell me who the father was.

That’s why she left town. Everybody thought it was because she was trying to get out of the Squires thing.”

“Ellie doesn’t know.”

He shook his head. “Fayla was her mother as far as Ellie knew. But every once in a while the whole deception bit would get to Susan and she’d drive out to the acreage and park near there with her binoculars and just look at the kid doing chores. Can you believe that shit? I felt sorry for her. Hell, I loved her. I told her if we ever got married I’d figure out some way to get Ellie to live with us.”

“Chalmers knew this?”

“He knew she wasn’t his kid. But he pretended she was for Fayla’s sake.”

“What’d Fayla get out of it?”

“Fayla and Susan went to school together.

Fayla was the ugly duckling and Susan sort of adopted her. Fayla would do anything for Susan.

Fayla couldn’t have kids, so Ellie became her kid.”

His pain erupted again. He grimaced and pushed down on his groin. “You sonofabitch.”

“I don’t usually do stuff like that. But when a guy your size swings on me, I don’t have much choice.”

“I’m gonna punch your face in someday.”

“How come you didn’t tell me about Ellie the first time we talked?”

He did some more writhing. He was a pretty good writher. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with Susan’s death. But now, with David dead, I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I figured you should know. If you care about Ellie as much as you seem to, I assume you’ll be discreet about all this.”

I stood up. Drained my coffee cup. “You want me to get you a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t want jack shit from you.”

I sort of figured he’d respond that way.

On my way out, I asked Audrey to take one in.

“He still could’ve killed her,” I said.

“Dr. Jensen?”

“Uh-huh.”

I ducked just in time. Judge Whitney was shooting rubber bands again.

“Then why would he have told you about Ellie?”

“Show me he was being cooperative.”

“You don’t think Ellie has anything to do with the murders?”

“I’m not sure.”

We sat in her chambers. She wore a tailored blue suit with a stylish neck scarf.

Gauloise in one hand, brandy in the other. She was forced to set one of them down when she launched her rubber bands.

“Something’s bothering me,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. Just something gnawing at the back of my brain.”

“All that cheap beer you drink.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m a real drinker.”

“Brandy, on the other hand, clears the mind.

Gives you the most wonderful ability to concentrate.”

“You sound like a commercial.”

“I would be happy to endorse brandy. The right brands, of course.”

I stared out the window. “It’s something I know.”

“Something you know?”

“Something I learned in the course of my investigation. But as yet I haven’t seen its relevance. But it’s there. Waving at me.”

“Maybe it’s making an obscene gesture.”

She launched another rubber band. “Very good, McCain. I’ve never seen you duck under that way before. You’re getting good at this.”

“What the hell could it be?” I started up from my chair.

“Don’t start pacing. You drive me crazy.”

“I think better when I pace.”

“You’re too short to pace. When you get behind the couch, I lose sight of you.”

“Har-de-har-har.”

She sighed. “I’ll never understand what you see in Jackie Gleason,” she said. I had used one of Gleason’s signature lines. “He’s so working class.”

“He’s funny and sad at the same time,” I said. “And that’s not easy to be. That’s what makes him such a great comic actor.”

A knock.

“Yes?”

The beautiful Pamela Forrest came in.

She wore a white blouse and a moderately tight black knee-length skirt. Her impossibly golden hair looked like something from myth or fairy tale. But I couldn’t appreciate her this morning. Not with poor Mary in the hospital, not able to remember anything.

“You said to bring this in as soon as it came,” she said, as she reached the Judge’s desk. She set some papers down.

“Thank you, dear.”

Pamela nodded and withdrew. She watched me carefully as she left the room. She must have noticed that I wasn’t frenzied the way I usually was when she was around.

The Judge said, “Get out, McCain. I’m busy. I need to read these papers. Go home and pace or something.” She’d been scanning the legal brief that Pamela brought her. She looked up. “I’d like the case solved by dinnertime tonight. I’m having a judge from the sixth district in, and I’d like to brag a little about how I uncovered the murderer.”