Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

Before he could answer, a siren blared behind them, and then whined down into silence. The flash of blue strobe lights danced erratically inside the Volvo’s interior. Lou glanced in the side-view mirror to see a plus-sized police officer exit his vehicle and snap open an umbrella. The policeman sauntered over to the driver’s side of the car and shone a powerful flashlight beam through the rain-spattered window onto Carolyn’s face.

“Oh, goodness,” Carolyn said, gripping the wheel once again.

Lou set a cautioning hand on her arm. “Roll down your window and let me do the talking,” he whispered. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

Carolyn did as he asked.

The officer, umbrella keeping them both dry, bent at the waist and poked his head inside the car. “Anybody hurt?” he asked. He spoke with a modest Southern drawl. His eyes, which Lou read as showing no threat, scanned the two of them with concern.

Carolyn immediately became more animated. “Oh, Gilbert. Thank goodness it’s you,” she said, talking without taking a breath. “This was all my fault. I … I was chasing down a car in front of us that had one broken taillight. I got so worried they were going to cause an accident, that I ended up having one myself.”

Lou gripped Carolyn’s arm. She nodded and stopped. He climbed out of the car, opened his umbrella, and still slightly favoring his leg, walked around to the officer. “Officer, my name is Lou Welcome. I’m an ER doc from Eisenhower Memorial, and a friend of Carolyn’s and … um … of John’s.”

“Gilbert Stone. Chief of police of Kings Ridge.” Stone took his hand and, maintaining steady eye contact, squeezed it with near bone-crushing force.

Cap Duncan, Lou’s mentor and owner of the Stick and Move, had once told him that any statement of superiority or control a man wanted to make should begin with the handshake. Lou wondered now if the husky lawman was trying to do just that. He gave thought to matching or besting the man’s grip, but set the notion aside in his dumb-moves file.

Stone shone his flashlight on Lou’s face, momentarily blinding him. “You sure you’re all right, son?” he asked.

“We’re both fine. Thanks.”

“Given what you do and where you do it, I’m inclined to trust you in that regard.”

“I appreciate that.”

Stone inspected the front end of the Volvo and what remained of the sign, and let out a high-pitched whistle, not so different from the sound his cruiser’s siren had made. Beneath the lawman’s wool-lined bomber jacket, Lou saw a tan shirt with a silver metal star pinned to the breast pocket, and a perfectly knotted black tie.

“Guess we got real lucky here,” Stone said, hoisting up his dark brown pants over an ample belly. “You say you’re a friend of Mrs. Meacham?”

“I am-was-friends with her husband as well.”

Stone’s thin lips folded into a crease that vanished inside his mouth. “Any ideas why he did what he did?”

“Well, no, except to say I can’t imagine him doing it.”

“But he did.”

“Yes, he did,” Lou echoed grimly.

He considered sharing details, right then and there, about the bizarre happenings in the ICU at DeLand Regional, and how they dovetailed with Carolyn Meacham’s odd behavior, but decided this wasn’t the time or place.

“It’s been a hell of a day.” Stone sighed, his eyes locked on Lou’s.

“Tough day, indeed,” Lou answered.

“You sure you’re in no need of medical attention, son?”

“No, thank you. I’m all right.”

Stone just nodded. “Okay. Like I said, I trust you. Now, then, you have something you want to tell me about the accident?” Stone continued his hard stare.

“This accident is all my fault,” Lou said. “I never should have let her drive. She’s in no condition, given what happened today, but she absolutely insisted. Said it would be best if she had something to focus on. I’d really hate to see her in trouble with the law after what she’s just been through.”

Stone’s grin was impenetrable. “So you’re saying it didn’t happen quite the way she said it did?”

By then, the two men had connected.

“What if I told you the wheels lost grip? Rain-slicked roads and all,” Lou said.

“Well, I’d be inclined to believe you. My doctor was Carl Franklin, one of the best we ever had. At the moment, I am having some mighty harsh feelings toward the man who killed him. But that doesn’t translate to the man’s wife. I didn’t know the Meachams that well, on account they haven’t lived in Kings Ridge very long. But what I did know of them, I had nothing against-even John’s history of trouble with the medical board a few years back.”

Lou tensed. This was no hayseed sheriff. For however many years he had been the man in Kings Ridge, Gilbert Stone was not merely rattling about the town, procuring coffee and doughnuts. He was in charge of it. He also hadn’t hesitated to mention Meacham’s history to what should have been, until now, a total stranger. Either Stone was indiscreet to a fault, or somewhere in the course of gathering information about his fiefdom, Dr. Lou Welcome’s name had bopped across his desk.

Lou warned himself to stay sharp.

“I wish I could explain why John did what he did,” he said.

“Me and you both, son,” Stone replied. “It sure don’t make no sense.”

“I’m glad you understand my concern for Carolyn.”

“Oh, I do, I surely do.”

“So just a ticket, then?”

Stone put his campaign hat back on. “Like I said, I’m sure Carolyn’s been through hell today. Let’s make sure her car drives fine, and I’ll send her off with a warning to be more careful on these slippery roads.”

“Wonderful.”

Stone hesitated a beat, then locked on to Lou’s eyes once again. “And I’m going to send you off with a warning as well,” he said.

“Me?”

“If you know something about my town, or the people in it such as Carolyn and John Meacham, or anyone on the staff of our hospital, and you choose to keep that information hidden from me, you won’t find me to be so easygoing.”

The president and First Family lived on the second and third floors of the White House-fifteen bedrooms and fifteen bathrooms, along with a sitting room, kitchen, dining room, and spectacular solarium. Darlene had done her best to make the master bedroom feel homey and familiar to her, but to no surprise, she had yet to completely succeed. At heart, she would always be a farmers’ daughter-a woman of down-to-earth taste in furnishings and art.

She and Martin slept in an 1820s four-poster tiger maple bed that she had chosen from notebooks of photographs that the Office of the Curator had provided to her. The rest of the room’s decor was more conventional and modern, although piece-by-piece she was changing it. Perhaps if they made it to a second term … at that moment, a big if.

Despite her well-intentioned efforts at bedtime meditation and yoga, Darlene still felt restless enough at times to accept some help from the vial of sleeping pills in her bedside table. Tonight, with continuous news coverage of the horrific events in Kings Ridge, Russ Evans’s sad visage embedded in her mind, her lingering anger over Martin’s decision to leave her solo at the Boys amp; Girls Club, and a full schedule facing her in the morning, she had little doubt there was an Ambien in her near future.

She was sitting upright in bed, rereading a paragraph from the current issue of Food Health. Finally, unable to advance past that page, she set the magazine aside and returned her attention to the eleven o’clock news, which was reporting on the latest developments in the Kings Ridge tragedy. Details of the crime and of Dr. John Meacham’s life were continuing to emerge, but there was still no clear explanation for what the man had done. A physician murdering patients and staff in his office. People remained in shock and desperate for answers.