Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

Between his fingers he could see the spacious room where he’d once believed he could be happy with her. Everything was decorated in beige, cream, and gold – the chairs, sofas, tables, lamps, even the walls and chandeliers – befitting a gilded lifestyle. Except it only reminded him of stale marzipan – ornate on the outside, hard and crumbly within.

His father sat down beside him. “Why, Chaz?” His tone of voice was surprisingly quiet, almost tender.

Good question. It had all been an impulse born of booze, lack of sleep, and being powerless to regain control over his life. “I’d gone off the wagon, had a few drinks, and listened in on the tap your men put on his phone. I heard Roper call that old busybody Nell and invite himself out there to ask her a bunch of questions about us. I lost it. It’s bad enough at work, but now, with him stirring up shit here…” He couldn’t explain the rage inside him. It was as if for that one moment Mark Roper had seemed responsible for all the innuendo, all the accusations of the last few weeks, and the temptation of taking a shot at the bastard, making it look like a hunter’s stray bullet, proved too hard to resist. Then seeing him take off into the bush, tail between his legs, it felt so damn good to have the upper hand, he couldn’t help but go after him. “ Pow! Pow! Pow! All the way home. It would have been fantastic, having him in my sights, driving him like a scared rabbit. And I would have, too, if that other hunter hadn’t been there.”

“Thank God he was,” his father said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. He stood up from the couch and, running a hand through his steely hair, started to pace. “Chaz, once you take over the family affairs after I’m gone, you’ll run things your own way, with the help of your mother if she’s still here. But there’s one practice of mine I advise you to adopt.”

Chaz groaned inwardly and sank back into the sofa, sending the contents of his skull into yet another death spiral. He couldn’t endure one of his father’s when-I-kick-the-bucket talks just now. And he couldn’t stand to hear him nonchalantly mention “mother,” the woman who had exiled herself to a permanent around-the-world cruise years ago rather than risk losing her share of the many family business interests in a messy divorce.

“Did you ever wonder why I only choose security people who are ex-military?”

“Because they’re trained to kill bad guys with a flick of their eyelashes?”

“Besides the obvious.”

Chaz said nothing, knowing his immediate role was to shut up and learn.

His father stopped by the fireplace, picked up a poker, and used it to stoke a bed of coals beneath a smoking log. “I find men whose particular skills were in special operations, the kind that involve entering premises by stealth and obtaining information with no one the wiser that they’ve even been there. That’s how we can keep abreast of potential problems like Dr. Mark Roper – with subtlety and finesse, not bullets and car crashes. Am I understood?”

Chaz just nodded, and sent the looping in his head to new levels.

“Did anyone see you come in just now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Now the first thing we do is get you back to New York. My chauffeur will drive you there tonight. No stops, and you come into your apartment through the garage so as to avoid the doorman. Tomorrow you make a big deal about having had the flu and returning to the city. My driver will say whatever we tell him, so we’ll fudge the time you left. Make it earlier, and he’ll attest you were well past Albany at the time in question.”

He nodded again.

“Before you go, have a look at these photos. Tell me what you think.” He threw a stack of large prints on the coffee table between them.

Chaz, still cradling his head with one hand, focused on the first image. He found himself looking at a medical record for Kelly dated July 1951. “How’d you get these?”

“Subtlety and finesse, remember?”

Chaz rubbed his eyes and strained to read the writing in the photo. “So she had cramps as a kid,” he said when he finished, “and her mother interfered then as she does now. What good does it do us to have this?”

“Keep going.”

He looked at the next set of pictures. Again he wasn’t impressed. “Cam Roper spent years talking with her. We knew that. He’s the bastard who put ideas of medical school in her head.”

“Oh, I think our Kelly had a mind of her own.” He reached over and handed the next photo to Chaz personally.

Chaz started when he recognized her familiar handwriting. The sight of it catapulted him back to the early years when she wrote him every few days about their plans, the wedding, the life they’d have together, and a bittersweet ache for squandered chances gripped his stomach. But as he read further, a fury as consuming and fresh as if he’d intercepted the letter the day it was written enveloped his chest and squeezed. “That bitch. That betraying, lying bitch…” Speechless with anger, he rose to his feet and let the photo fall from his hand. He’d loved her, wasted his life over her, his whole goddamned life, and it just kept getting worse.

His father walked behind him and gave his shoulders a squeeze, then started to massage them with his surgeon’s fingers, strong and penetrating. It felt good. “Easy, son. I know seeing this must hurt. But surely you had your suspicions.”

The roiling in Chaz’s stomach grew worse.

“The good news is it may finally be your way to get clear of her.”

“Nothing will ever do that, not after all this time.”

“It will if we can give the police her lover.”

The effects of whiskey and exhaustion left him slow to react. “You mean give the letter to the police?”

His father broke off the massage, exasperated. “Of course not. How the hell would I explain where we got it? No, we first find out who this man was, then hand him over. They get a new suspect, and you’re in the clear.”

His brain emerged from its misery. My, God! he thought, seeing the glimmer of a way out.

“Don’t you have any idea who it might have been?” his father asked.

Chaz felt an old resentment rekindle itself – no, the right word was jealousy. Jealousy over anyone she had befriended and seemed to have fun with. Not that he suspected an affair back then. He hated how her moving close to others meant she drew away from him. But now he could find the bastard who’d been screwing her and stick him with her murder. The idea lit a fire in him.

So which one had cuckolded him?

A guy in her class? Or one of the residents two years ahead of her. Hell, it might even have been a colleague of his, sharing consults with him during the day and banging her at night.

Someone outside the hospital?

Someone not even a doctor?

He ground his frustration between a fist and a palm. “We’ll never figure it out!”

“If we keep track of Mark Roper’s conversations we will.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He knows about this letter,” his father said, walking over and retrieving the copy from the floor. “That means he’ll be looking for the man as well. We listen in, and sooner or later he may end up talking to or about the guy. Then either he turns him in, or we do it for him.”

Chaz’s hopes stirred again. “That sounds as if it just might work.”

“I also want you to see the rest of these.” His father handed him the remainder of the photos from the file.

“What are M and M reports doing here?”

“I thought you’d tell me. Aren’t those your initials signing off the resident and student orders?”

Chaz had to hold the snaps just right to see the writing. “Yeah, but what have they got to do with Kelly?”