Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

“Oh, don’t apologize. You’re absolutely within your rights, protecting the integrity of an inquiry.”

Like hell she thought that. “No, I apologize.”

It still didn’t feel right between them. The only way to make amends was to go on taking her into his confidence. “Now let me tell you the rest of what you need to know, then I’d like to hear your ideas.” He continued the story, describing the morbidity-mortality reports in Kelly’s file, the fact that someone had broken into his house after the funeral, apparently to go through them, and what happened to Bessie McDonald two weeks ago. “I’ve recruited one of Kelly’s former classmates to go over the woman’s files. Her coma seemed a little too convenient for my liking.”

Lucy continued to drive without speaking, but obviously lost in thought. The chill had vanished and Mark started to relax, finding her speed didn’t bother him as much. It wasn’t reckless, and he’d often driven faster. He just resisted relinquishing control to someone else behind the wheel.

“I really would like to work on this with you while I’m here,” she said after a few minutes, “if you’ll accept my help.”

“No question of it. Your rotation is meant to let you experience all aspects of being a rural physician, and this business is part of my job.”

She glanced over at him. “Solving Kelly McShane’s murder has to mean a lot more to you than just being part of your job. From the way you described knowing her, she must have been very important to you as a child.”

The velvet quiet of her voice surprised him more than what she’d said. “Yes. She certainly was special.”

“Your telling about her, what she’d been like, really got to me. I couldn’t help thinking…”

“She reminded you of yourself, maybe? Young, ambitious, ready to take on the world?” He’d said it without thinking, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth, he felt presumptuous at finishing a thought for her.

Lucy flushed. “I was thinking how close we were in age. She was just three years younger than me when it happened.”

A few minutes later they pulled into an unplowed driveway beside single-story bungalow not much bigger than a single-car garage. White smoke drifted out a rusted stovepipe protruding through a tar paper roof. The wood siding had once been painted lime green, but not recently. What few flecks of color remained appeared about to blow off, and the surface beneath had weathered to a nice gray.

“Who are we seeing here?” Lucy asked, getting out of the car.

“Mary Thomson and her sister Betty. Mary’s got terminal breast CA, but refuses hospitalization.” He grabbed his black bag from the backseat and trudged through an unbroken half foot of snow toward the front entrance. “With Betty’s help, I’m keeping Mary at home as long as I can.” He rapped sharply on a new-looking white door with a large windowpane covered by a curtain on the inside. “Betty, it’s Dr. Roper.”

Introductions having been made, he and Lucy entered the bedroom. He removed the dressings from under Mary Thomson’s right arm and exposed a glistening black cavity the diameter of a walnut where the tumor had eaten through the skin of her axilla. Thousands of tiny, scarlet metastases extended to the middle of her chest, rendering it red as a boiled lobster, and from biceps to wrist her arm was swollen the size of a thigh. Where her breast had been, the tissue lay stretched and scarred, some of it cratered like a lunar surface. Everywhere he touched felt hard as wood, and a cloying aroma of decay hovered over it all.

“Now you don’t be shy, dear,” Mary said to Lucy, flashing an overly white smile of false teeth that seemed too big for her gray, gaunt face. “Take a good look, and ask me anything you like.” Lying flat for the examination, she had been sitting propped up against a bank of pillows to greet them when they arrived. Just the simple act of getting upright, he knew, exhausted her, but it remained her way of welcoming visitors to her home, and she always made the effort. “Arm swelled up like that after radiation to the nodes under my arm,” she continued. “Blocked the lymph ducts. At least that’s how Dr. Mark here explained it to me.”

Lucy smiled down at her and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “How’s your pain?” she said, with the same softness Mark had heard in the car. She gently slid her hand over Mary’s inflamed skin, carefully palpating every inch of the way.

Cuts right to the heart of the matter, Mark thought. With cancer, pain management mattered most, and too many doctors sucked at it.

Mary looked over to him. “Can I tell her, Doc?”

He adjusted an IV line attached to Mary’s left arm. At the other end of it stood a small, square machine winking fluorescent green numbers at them. An electrical wire connected it to a button by her hand, completing the circle. “Go ahead,” he said. “We can trust her.”

“Dr. Mark and I are breaking the law,” she whispered, giving a conspiratorial grin. “Every time I push this,” she added, pointing to the button.

“Mary’s the best teacher you’ll find when it comes to home care and using morphine on demand,” he said. “It’s not so much illegal as controversial outside a hospital, and the law’s a little gray on the matter. Of course, we keep mum about it, so as not to become a test case.”

“But I’m no junkie. Don’t use much more now than I did when Dr. Mark first got this contraption for me.”

“What you are, Mary, is a very brave woman,” Lucy said.

Mary gave a faint laugh. “My sister Betty out there, she’s the brave one, putting up with me like this. Not many let their kin pass on at home these days.”

“Mary, I noticed there were no tracks in the snow today,” Mark said. “Didn’t one of the social workers pass by? I specifically told them to see if you and Betty needed anything every morning.”

“Oh, I said not to bother, since you’d be here. They got far more needy folks than us to worry about.”

After they’d had Betty’s tea and were back outside, climbing into her car, Lucy asked, “How long?”

“A month, maybe more. I doubt she’ll last till the end of your rotation.”

As they picked up speed on the highway, Lucy’s cellular started to ring in her purse, which she’d propped on the console between their seats. One hand on the wheel, she fumbled for it, managing to spill the contents at his feet.

“Merde!” he heard her mutter as he retrieved the phone from amongst the debris. Dan’s number flashed beside the caller identification icon.

“I found your cellular,” the sheriff announced as soon as Mark answered. “One of my men stepped on it under the snow.”

“Terrific. You got any more useful information?”

“The shot came from behind on the passenger side, then out your front window, just as you thought. We’ll never find the bullet.”

“Shit!”

“It gets worse. After I left your place last night I swung around to the office to pick up my camera and flash. Went out to the wreck to try and get shots of boot impressions in the snow, but the wind had already blown them in.”

“Hey, I told you you shouldn’t-”

“I made some phone calls, and here’s the interesting part. The staff at the Braden estate insist Chaz is in New York.”

“But that’s the sort of crap they would say.”

“I also called his office in New York, and was told he’s home with the flu.”

“Again, figures.”

“I then call him at home and am told Dr. Chaz Braden is so sick he’s in bed.”

“Wall-to-wall alibis.”

“But she’ll see if he’ll take the phone.”

“Oh?”

“On the line he comes, and, sounding gravelly voiced, tells me the same story. I said I was sorry to bother him. He said it was no trouble. I told him we’d had a problem yesterday evening with drunken hunters taking potshots at passing vehicles and described what happened to you. He replied, ‘That’s terrible,’ then asked why I was calling him. ‘Just wanted to check if you were having similar problems near your place,’ I answered. He explained that since he had been ill and left for New York sometime after three in the afternoon, he couldn’t say what happened around his place last night. I thanked him, and we hung up.”