Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“Where will you go?”

“Back to California, I guess. I’d like to live in Los Angeles. Maybe I’ll deliver babies for movie stars.”

“Movie stars don’t have babies. They have agents.”

He laughed. For a moment, it was the old laugh, the momentary self-pleasure that came when he had just heard something that amused him and had hit upon an amusing response. He was about to speak, then closed his mouth and stared at the floor. He stopped laughing.

I said, “Have you been back to the office?”

“Just to close it up. I’m making arrangements for the movers.”

“When will you go?”

“Next week.”

“So soon?”

He shrugged. “I’m not eager to stay.”

“No,” I said, “I imagine you’re not.”

I SUPPOSE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED afterward was the result of my anger. It was already a rotten business, stinking rotten, and I should have left it alone. There was no need to continue anything. I could let it go and forget about it. Judith wanted to have a farewell party for Art; I told her no, that he wouldn’t like it, not really.

That made me angry, too.

On the third hospital day I bitched to Hammond until he finally agreed to discharge me. I guess the nurses had been complaining to him as well. So they let me go at 3:10 in the afternoon, and Judith brought me clothes and drove me home. On the way, I said, “Turn right at the next corner.”

“Why?”

“I have to make a stop.”

“John—”

“Come on, Judith. A quick stop.”

She frowned, but turned right at the corner. I directed her across Beacon Hill, to Angela Harding’s street. A police car was parked in front of her apartment. I got out and went up to the second floor. A cop stood outside the door.

“Dr. Berry, Mallory Lab,” I said in an official tone. “Have the blood samples been taken yet?”

The cop looked confused. “Blood samples?”

“Yes. The scrapings from the room. Dried samples. For twenty-six factor determinations. You know.”

He shook his head. He didn’t know.

“Dr. Lazare is worried about them,” I said. “Wanted me to check.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” the cop said. “There were some medical guys here yesterday. Those the ones?”

“No,” I said, “they were the dermatology people.”

“Uh. Oh. Well, you better check for yourself.” He opened the door for me. “Just don’t touch anything. They’re dusting.”

I entered the apartment. It was a shambles, furniture overturned, blood spattered on couches and tables. Three men were working on a glass, dusting powder onto it and blowing it off, then photographing the fingerprints. One looked up, “Help you?”

“Yes,” I said. “The chair—”

“Over there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the chair in the corner. “But don’t touch it.”

I went over and stared at the chair. It was not very heavy, a cheap wood kitchen chair, rather nondescript. But it was sturdily made. There was some blood on one leg.

I looked back at the three men. “You dusted this one yet?”

“Yeah. Funny thing. There’s hundreds of prints in this room. Dozens of people. It’s going to take us years to unravel it all. But there were two things we couldn’t get prints from. That chair and the doorknob to the outside door.”

“How’s that?”

The man shrugged. “Been wiped.”

“Wiped?”

“Yeah. Somebody cleaned up the chair and the doorknob. Anyhow, that’s the way it looks. Damned funny. Nothing else was wiped, not even the knife she used on her wrists.”

I nodded. “The blood boys been here yet?”

“Yeah. Came and went.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Can I make a call? I want to check back with the lab.”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

I went to the phone, picked it up, and dialed the weather bureau. When the voice came on, I said, “Give me Dr. Lazare.”

“—sunny and cool, with a high in the mid-fifties. Partly cloudly in late afternoon—”

“Fred? John Berry. I’m over at the room now.”

“—with fifty-percent chance of showers—”

“Yeah, they say the samples were taken. You sure you haven’t gotten them yet?”

“—tomorrow, fair and colder with a high in the forties—”

“Oh. I see. O.K. Good. Right. See you.”

“—wind from the east at fifteen miles per hour—”

I hung up and turned to the three men. “Thanks,” I said.

“Sure.”

Nobody paid any attention to me as I left. Nobody really cared. The men who were there were doing routine duty. They’d done things like this before, dozens of times. It was just routine.

I WAS IN A BAD MOOD MONDAY. I sat around for most of the morning drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and tasting a lousy sour taste in my mouth. I kept telling myself that I could drop it and nobody would care. It was over. I couldn’t help Art and I couldn’t undo anything. I could only make things worse.

Besides, none of this was Weston’s fault, not really. Even though I wanted to blame somebody, I couldn’t blame him. And he was an old man.

It as a waste of time. I drank coffee and told myself that, over and over. A waste of time.

I did it anyway.

Shortly before noon I drove over to the Mallory and walked into Weston’s office. He was going over some microscopic slides and dictating his findings into a small desk recorder. He stopped when I came in.

“Hello, John. What brings you over here?”

I said, “How do you feel?”

“Me?” He laughed. “I feel fine. How do you feel?” He nodded to the bandages on my head. “I heard what happened.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

I looked at his hands. They were under the table, in his lap. He had dropped them down as soon as I had come into the room.

I said, “Hurt much?”

“What?”

“Your hands.”

He gave me a puzzled look or tried to. It didn’t work. I nodded to his hands and he brought them out. Two fingers of his left hand were bandaged.

“Accident?”

“Yes. Clumsy of me. I was chopping an onion at home—helping out in the kitchen—and I cut myself. Just a superficial wound, but embarrassing. You’d think after all these years I’d know how to handle a knife.”

“You bandaged it yourself?”

“Yes. It was just a small cut.”

I sat down in the chair opposite his desk and lit a cigarette, aware that he was watching me carefully. I blew a stream of smoke out, toward the ceiling. He kept his face calm and blank; he was making it hard for me. But that was his right, I guess. I’d probably do the same.

“Was there something you wanted to see me about?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then Weston pushed his microscope to one side and turned off the recorder.

“Was it about the path diagnosis on Karen Randall? I’d heard you were concerned.”

“I was,” I said.

“Would you feel better if someone else looked them over? Sanderson?”

“Not now,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter now. Not legally, anyway.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

We stared at each other again, a long silence falling. I didn’t know how to bring it up, but the silence was killing me.

“The chair,” I said, “was wiped. Did you know that?”

For a moment, he frowned, and I thought he was going to play dumb. But he didn’t; instead, he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “She told me she’d wipe it.”

“And the doorknob.”

“Yes. And the doorknob.”

“When did you show up?”

He sighed. “It was late,” he said. “I had worked late at the labs and was on my way home. I stopped by Angela’s apartment to see how she was. I often did. Just stopped in. Looked in on her.”