Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

Thank God, he thought, looking around the room, unable to see anything missing. The adjacent examining room also seemed undisturbed. The drug cabinet, he thought, and ran to the back room, where he’d installed a medium-sized safe to store a supply of narcotics – codeine, percodan, and morphine – along with other controlled medications such as tranquilizers.

He found it intact.

Nor had there been any obvious attempt to tamper with it.

So what could an intruder have been after if it wasn’t computer equipment or drugs?

A third possibility crept to mind as insidiously as a chill. What if anything of interest was still here because the thief hadn’t finished robbing him?

He went very still.

The house itself didn’t creak tonight since the wind was light. He heard nothing else.

Had the person escaped?

Either the kitchen’s back door or the basement door could have been forced? Or one of the ground-floor windows could have been broken.

He pulled out his cellular and called Dan. He’d just left him at the White House, having already picked up the boxes of birth records.

“Someone’s been in my house,” he whispered as soon as the sheriff answered.

“Mark?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, is anything missing?”

“Not that I can tell in my office or living room. I haven’t checked the rest.”

“Why are you whispering – Jesus Christ! Is the person still there?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m on my way. Get out of there, Mark! Wait in your Jeep with the doors locked. Better still, drive to a neighbor’s.” He hung up.

Good idea.

Except it would take Dan at least ten minutes to get here. That might let whoever it was get away, free to try again.

Tiptoeing back into his examining room, he looked around for a weapon. He kept hammers and axes in the basement. All he could think of to defend himself with was his largest syringe and needle.

So armed, he crept out of his office and silently made his way to the kitchen. Peeking through the swing door, he saw nothing.

He stepped through.

Nobody.

He made his way to the stairs and started up to the second floor, trying not to recall old black-and-white movies where the killer lurked in the dark at the top of the landing. He raised his needle, holding it out in front of him at arm’s length.

No one jumped him.

One by one he checked the bedrooms.

Empty.

That left one other possibility.

At the same time he heard the distant wail of Dan’s siren.

He quickly descended to the first floor, ran back into the kitchen, and threw open the door to the basement. Figuring Dan would be here any moment, he went on the offensive.

Flipping up the switch, he flooded the darkness below with light, and yelled, “Okay, you! The cops are at the door, and I’m armed. Identify yourself now!”

The only sound was Dan’s siren getting closer.

“Do you hear that? Now give up and come out.”

Still no response.

Emboldened, he started down into the single big room. Within seconds he’d checked out the few nooks and crannies where someone could hide.

Not a soul.

Beginning to wonder if he’d been mistaken about an intruder, he turned to go back upstairs.

And saw the coat he’d laid across the bottom of the basement door over a week ago.

It lay pushed to one side, the way it would have been if someone had come in, and, it being dark, not realized it was there. He walked over and tried the door. It was locked, but the mechanism had to be a half century old and could have been easily picked, then locked again on the way out.

He stood there wondering what his uninvited visitor might have wanted and found himself staring at a wall of boxes – his father’s old files.

Oh, shit, he thought, quickly crossing over to check. They appeared just as he’d left them, but with a queasy feeling he pulled open the one containing the original records on Kelly. Chaz Braden could have overheard his conversation with Earl Garnet at the reception about having found old files on her. Had he thought it might contain something incriminating and tried to steal it?

Almost to his surprise he located the folder exactly where he’d left it. He flipped through the contents to verify nothing had been taken. The record of Kelly’s first visit as a little girl – check; Kelly’s letter – check; notations of psychological counseling – check; two dig toxicity case reviews – check; newspaper articles – check. Nothing missing.

Crazy idea anyway, he chided himself. It would have been too obvious a move, even for a klutz like Chaz.

He was returning the folder to its slot when he thought, Wait a minute . He’d kept the contents in the same chronological order he’d found them. Done it out of habit. Doctors always kept the contents in each section of a file, from clinical notes through consults and special entries to test results, in the sequence they were received. It made it easier to review and follow a case that way. His father would have done things the same. It was no accident Kelly’s letter had followed after the entries for psychological counseling, because that would have been the order his father received it. And after photocopying the file Mark had put it back in that same place. Yet just now he’d found it in front of the entries for psychological counseling.

Someone had definitely gone through Kelly’s file.

Dan sipped at his coffee. “You’re sure nothing’s missing?”

“Nothing.” Mark downed his tea in a gulp and refilled the cup from a blue pot big enough for ten. Seated at the kitchen table, he grew impatient with Dan. “He checked to see what information I had on her.”

“But I can’t just accuse Chaz Braden of looking at your files because you think one piece of paper was out of order.”

“I know it was out of order, Dan. I’m meticulous about not mixing up the pages of a medical file. Of course Chaz did it. Who else would care?”

“I don’t know. But if someone busted in here, he did the neatest job of breaking and entering I’ve ever seen.”

“He came in here. That coat on the basement floor didn’t move itself.”

“But the locks haven’t a mark on them. No forced windows. Not so much as a missing pane of glass. If you weren’t obsessive about your papers, we’d have never suspected anyone was here. I doubt Chaz Braden has those kinds of skills.”

Mark’s stomach muscles tightened. “Maybe he hired somebody. Besides, anyone could have picked that basement lock.”

“It would take a real expert not to leave at least a scratch or two. And how would Chaz even know you had Kelly’s old medical file?”

“He must have overheard me telling Earl Garnet.”

Dan sighed and took another sip from the mug with the caption SLOWLY APPROACHING FORTY written on the side. Mark always reserved it for his visits. “If you made better coffee,” he said, pulling a sour face and pushing out of his chair, “I’d stick around. As it stands, I figure the ghost who broke in here is long gone. But I do suggest you get a better lock on the basement door.”

He thanked Dan for coming and saw him to the door. As for his assertion the intruder was long gone, that could be, but Mark dug out his old baseball bat from the basement and put it in the front closet, just in case.

He laid out the contents of Kelly’s file on his kitchen table sheet by sheet, like a deck of cards in a game of solitaire. Then he went over and over them. He still couldn’t see any patterns or sequences by which he could connect one to the other.

Only guesses.

Such as the reason his father saw Kelly for therapy. The logical assumption – she’d been working through her problems with Chaz, or maybe even her unresolved issues with her parents. But why five years? Most support therapy interventions went on for twelve months, sometimes twenty-four, unlike psychoanalysis, in which the progress got measured in decades.