Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

Two things stopped me from deciding that I was full of shit and just letting my anxiety get the better of me; the first was something Dobbs had said on the way over here: “…this whole to-do was supposed to be handled by the book, but there ain’t been nothing about this has gone like it’s supposed to.”

The second thing was what I saw when I finally worked up enough nerve to test my theory and picked up the bowl: pieces of pills mixed in with the remaining glops of pudding.

Now what was I supposed to do?

First thing: put down the bowl.

The second thing was what I should have done in the first place—get the hell out of the room. I’d put in my CS time today, go home, and call my lawyer this evening. Whatever was going on here was out of my hands and none of my business.

Hell, yes, I felt bad for Miss Driscoll—you’d have to be a monster not to—but none of this was my responsibility. A lonely old lady offs herself and some city officials decide for whatever reason to cover it up. Fine. I was just here to transport her body so she could get some kind of decent burial. And like Dobbs had said, ultimately this wasn’t her , it was just something she used to walk around in. Wherever she was now (assuming there was a Wherever), she had better things to concern herself with.

“I see you’ve located the body,” said Dobbs from the doorway.

I looked over just in time to be half-blinded by the sudden flash of his camera.

“Oh, man , you ought to see the expression on your face. ” He started over, working his way around the tracks. “Take a gander.” He turned the camera’s display window toward me.

“All I can see right now are spots.”

“Oh, sorry about that. I couldn’t resist.”

If I was going to say anything about this, now was my chance. I pointed at the cluttered bedside table. “You notice anything odd?” Dobbs looked at the table. “She was a bit messy.” “Is that all?” He shrugged. “I dunno. What am I supposed to be seeing?” “Humor me. Take a good look at what’s on this table.”

Dobbs sighed, then leaned down to examine everything. He picked up the pudding bowl, stared at its contents, and made the Stroke Face again, so I knew he was concentrating. After several seconds, he said: “Gimme the clipboard.” I handed it over and he flipped through the official paperwork. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he whispered. “What?” He looked down at Miss Driscoll, then at me. “You first.” I shook my head. “Oh, no. No. Sorry but…no. I don’t want to get myself in any more trouble than I already am.” Dobbs stared at me, blinked, then nodded. “She died of natural causes like my ass chews gum.” “So…what do we do about it?”

Dobbs looked back at Miss Driscoll’s body, then rubbed his eyes. “Nothing, that’s what. We don’t do a goddamn thing about it. If the doc falsified the report, I’m guessing it’s because the mayor told him to.”

“But aren’t you curious to know why?”

“ Shit , yes—but I’m also…” He shook his head. “Look, we say anything about this to the doc or the mayor or anyone official, there’s going to be a lot of questions, then some kind of investigation, and all sorts of nasty shit for us to deal with. Maybe it don’t make any difference to you, you’re only here temporary, but me, I gotta think about my job , you understand? If a city employee makes any kind of an accusation against a city official, then they’d better have some goddamn proof or else they’re gonna be out on their unemployed ass in a hurry. You got any medical background? I sure as hell don’t. Who do you think people would believe, anyway—the County Coroner or a couple of schleps who drive the meat wagon?”

“You could take a picture of the table, we could show that to someone, and—”

“—and how would we prove that we didn’t just put all this stuff here to make it look like she offed herself? You know as well as I do that someone would think that.”

“We call the Columbus police department, get them to send over someone from their lab, they could—”

“Are you listening to yourself? First of all, that kind of call would have to come from the mayor, the sheriff, the chief of police, or the coroner. Second, even if you and me did call and somehow managed to get them to come, we’d have to sit here with the body until they arrived—and I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like babysitting a corpse for however long it’d take them to get here. And third , how do you suppose they’d react once they dusted this place and found our fingerprints—” He pointed to the pudding bowl. “—on what is probably the central piece of evidence?”

As soon as he pointed at the pudding bowl, something occurred to me. “Why is this stuff still here?”

“Say what?”

I nodded at everything on the bedside table. “If the doc and the mayor have decided to cover this up, at least on paper , then why not get rid of the evidence, as well? Why leave all of this stuff out in plain view and risk someone being able to figure it out?”

“They couldn’t be sure that somebody would , maybe?”

I shook my head. “No—c’mon, Fred. I figured it out. If it’d been you up here instead of me, you would’ve noticed something, too. It’s almost like…”

“Like what?”

I looked back up at him. “It’s like somebody wanted you and me to figure it out.”

“But why?”

I shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”

“There you go, then,” said Dobbs. “Maybe there’s something to what you’re saying, okay? Maybe . But if you’re right, if they did leave all this shit out hoping that we’d put two and two together, how’re they gonna know unless we say something? If we don’t do anything, if we don’t say anything, just come in here and haul her body away like we’re supposed to, then there’s no way anyone’ll ever know. As long as we keep this to ourselves, it’s fine.”

“We can’t just do nothing .”

“The hell we can’t! Listen to me, the next time we go on a call like this, you don’t touch nothing besides the front door, the gurney, and the body, got it? We find anything weird like this again and I invite you to take a look around, just hit me, okay? I’m not that far away from collecting my pension, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna have it fucked up for me by a CS temp! So from now on, you don’t touch nothing unless I say so.”

There wasn’t going to be a next time for me, so I nodded my head and muttered apologies.

Dobbs stared at me for a few more seconds, his features softening. “I don’t mean to yell at you, I’m sorry. But it’s a done deal at this point, all the paperwork’s been filed, and the best thing that you and me can do is just…what we came here to do.”

“I understand.”

“ Do you?”

“Yeah. She’s gone, nothing we do is going to change that, and I’d rather not be the one responsible for you losing your pension.”

He reached over and gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “There’s a good fellah. Me and you, we won’t talk about this again, right?” “Right.” “Or mention it to anybody else?” “Or mention it to anybody else.”

He looked around at the tracks and computer. “Still, you gotta wonder what the hell she was doing in here, all by herself, with this crap.” I pointed toward his digital camera. “Did you get enough pictures?” He nodded. “I pretty much got the whole place before I came in here. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me banging around out there.” “I was, uh…” I looked at Miss Driscoll’s bedside table. “…a little preoccupied.” “I heard that.” He looked at me and smiled. “C’mon. Let’s go clear a path so we can get the gurney in here.”