Michael Palmer - Fatal

"Here," a man said from her right. "Let me get you a cup. Alcohol-free or supercharged?"

He was somewhere in his forties and good-looking in a broad-shouldered, straitlaced sort of way, with razor-cut sandy hair, a muscular build, and dark gray eyes that were too small for Nikki's taste. He was wearing a white dress shirt and a black string tie with a large turquoise stone mounted on the slide. His mountain twang sounded far less pronounced than that of the others she had met, and his manner and speech had her guessing that he was college educated.

"Oh, no alcohol, please," she said. "I've got a long drive ahead of me this afternoon."

"In that case, I must absolutely insist you stay away from the high-test stuff. For one thing, I think I know whose still it was brewed in, and for another, I'm chief of police here in Belinda. Bill Grimes."

He extended his hand and Nikki took it. His grip was confident.

"Nikki Solari. Pleased to meet you."

"That was a very moving reading you did."

"Kathy was a wonderful writer. Her words are important to a lot of folks."

"Kit told me you're a doctor."

"I'm a pathologist by trade, but a musician by passion. Kathy was in the process of transforming me from a violinist into a fiddle player."

"I was listening. She's done a fine job of that."

"Thanks. I'm not in her class, but then again, not many are."

"I didn't grow up in these parts, but I heard her daddy taught her music, and that since she was a child people flocked to wherever she was playing. Folks around here sort of took it personally when she left."

Nikki smiled at the notion.

"I can believe that," she said.

"Her death shocked us all. Dr. Solari, if the whole thing is still too raw for you to talk about, I certainly understand, but as a cop, and a friend of the family, I'm curious to know as much as I can about how it happened."

"Talking about things helps me deal with them — even if they're very painful things like this. And it's fine to call me Nikki."

"Bill for me. I get 'Chief so much it's like taken over as my name."

The policeman had an easy, reassuring manner. Carrying their drinks they left the crowd and walked over to a solitary bench, set alongside a massive willow. The sun was beginning its move to the west, and off in the distance, the lush hills seemed phosphorescent. Nikki had never been much of a visual artist, but if she were, the colors of West Virginia would be Nirvana.

"So you're a pathologist," Grimes said when they had settled down at either end of the bench.

"I work for the ME's office."

"Interesting. Our ME was here at the service, but he left a while ago. Tall, thin, sort of dignified guy wearin' a grayish suit."

"I'm afraid I haven't been noticing much of anything today," Nikki said.

"That's understandable. Well, he's a pathologist just like you. Doc Sawyer's his name — Hal Sawyer. Nice guy. Real smart, too — not just concerning medical things, either. About Kathy?"

"Well, her death was actually handled by our office. My boss, Josef Keller, the chief medical examiner for the state, did the post."

"He find anything out of the ordinary? Drugs? Alcohol?"

"Nothing like that. How much do you know about what was going on with Kathy before her accident?"

Grimes shook his head.

"All I know is that she was run over by a car."

"It was a truck. She ran out of a bar and into the street. The poor driver never even had the chance to hit his brakes."

"But you said she wasn't drinking."

"Her blood alcohol level was zero. Toxic screen — at least the preliminary panel we've gotten back so far — was totally negative. She was insane, Bill. Absolutely insane. She had been slipping into a horrible paranoia for months before she died. Thought there were people out to kill her. I kept trying to get her help, but the more I tried, the further she withdrew from me."

"Did you speak with her family?"

"I called them once, about four weeks before Kathy was killed, but they were just bewildered and also sounded angry at Kathy for having drifted away from them. They couldn't understand what they could do to help her if I was a doctor and I couldn't do anything."

"The Wilsons are good people," Grimes said, "but simple and very set in their ways. Kathy was their only kid. They never thought she should have left."

"I know."

"So that was it? She just went crazy?"

"Just about. As I said, she was convinced at the end that men were after her, trying to kill her. I think she was trying to get away from them when she died."

"Is it possible she was right?"

"Not that I could see."

"So the autopsy your boss did didn't show anything else?"

"Nothing we weren't already aware of. There was one other thing that was pretty unusual about her, though. Something I didn't see any reason to share with her parents. Over a number of months before she died, coinciding to some extent with the development of her madness, her face was becoming disfigured by these lumps — neurofibromas, we call them."

"Neu-ro-fi-bro-mas." Grimes said the word slowly, as if committing it to his vocabulary. "Cause?"

"Unknown, except maybe bad genetics or a mutation, that sort of thing. Possibly a virus. By any chance, did you ever see the movie The Elephant Maw?"

" 'Fraid not. But I think I know what you're talking about."

"Well, in its worst form, her condition would be like that. And it was getting there. She was pretty deformed at the end. No telling what she would have looked like had she lived."

Nikki glanced up at the sun and then checked her watch.

"You really plannin' on leaving today?" Grimes asked.

"I'm on call for my office tomorrow night, so I have to be back by then. I'm one of the world's least reliable nighttime drivers, so I plan on going as far as New York, then the rest of the way in the morning. I'd like to play just a little bit longer, though, before I take off. There are a couple of Kathy's pieces I'd like to try with the gang."

"I sure wish you could stay," Grimes said, with invitation in his voice and expression.

"Thanks for the thought," she said, not at all threatened by the police chief's tone, "but I'm locked into getting home." She stood. "Why don't you come in and let us play something for you. Do you have any favorites you haven't heard?"

"I'm not much of a bluegrass expert," Grimes replied, "although I do enjoy the music. Tell me something," he said, as he walked her back to the social hall, "why did you decide not to tell the Wilsons about Kathy's neu-ro-fi-bromas?"

"I didn't see any reason to tell them over the phone. Then after I met them in person here, I still wasn't sure I wanted to. Then they told me… Kit asked if Kathy's face had been battered in the accident. The poor dears had enough trouble getting their minds around her deranged mental state. It seemed cruel to tell them her face was deformed as well. Besides, the microscopic examination of her brain and the neurofibromas isn't done yet. If it shows anything to explain what happened, I plan to share that news with them. If it doesn't provide any explanation, I'll have to decide if it's worth telling them at all. As you know, Kathy's an only child, so there's no need to worry about some evil gene working its way through her family."

"If I were in your position, I don't think I'd mention it to the Wilsons, either," Grimes said. "Nothing to gain."

"Nothing to gain," Nikki echoed.

"Well," he said when they reached the social hall, "I'm sorry to have met you under these circumstances, but I'm certainly glad to have met you."

"Same here."

"Who knows? Maybe we'll see each other again."

"You never can tell. If I find myself headed back this way for any reason, I'll call you at the station."