A Dash of Murder (15 page)

Aunt Maggie’s voice cut through the night. I felt panic rising up inside me. I
tried the walkie-talkie again.

“Howard? Stanley? Ruby?” I shouted into the walkie-talkie. “If anyone out there can hear me, Maggie is in trouble. We are at the dead tunnel.” Only weak static returned my call. I clipped the walkie-talkie to my belt and held my breath. Hopefully the bats had gone out for the evening. If not, I would have to run through them. I pulled open the door, half expecting the mob of bats to be still waiting there, ready to pounce. I waited for the assault, for the hundreds of little wings, feet and tiny teeth on my face and in my hair. I was greeted instead with a black, cold stillne
ss. The bats seemed to be gone.

Like so much of my life, here I was alone again with an extremely dark expanse in front of me. I don’t know why I kept getting myself in this situation. Clearly I was no good at it. The most important thing here was not my fear, it was Maggie. My dear, dear Maggie. Was she hurt? Was she in trouble? Did she fall and break a hip? Fear
or no fear, I had to find her.

“Aunt Maggie? Are you down there?” Down there, at the end of all this darkness, this concrete tunnel with no windows. I felt as if I was being swallowed up. I was going down this giant con
crete conduit straight to hell.

“Aunt Maggie? Can you hear me?”

It was quiet now. No footsteps, no screams, just me and my fears. I knew I had to move forward, no matter what. I remembered I had a cell phone in my pocket and pulled it out to call my dad and as many people that I could think representing law enforcement in this town. I flipped open the comforting light of the phone to find I had no bars. I took a step forward. This time I couldn’t shrink back. I couldn’t call my dad.
I couldn’t even choose not to.

“Aunt Maggie, I’m coming,” I yelled and took off running down the pitch-black tube. There would not be one more body in this dead tunnel. My feet slapped on the cement as I began to see a faint light. I was running fast now as I yelled out her name. I was the bullet soaring down the chamber. I was moving at such speed, I was knocked back by the sudden impa
ct of a face staring into mine.

It looked red and somehow disfigured, with eye
s too bright staring out at me.

It was the face of Dr. MacPhee.

“Dr. Mac!” I fell into his arms. I was relieved to see him but was unsure
as to why he looked so strange.

“Thank God you’re here.” I ran through my words gasping for breath. “I thin
k my Aunt Maggie’s in trouble.”

“I think she is, too.” His answer was strangely calm. He tightened his grip on my arms and propelled me through the door and onto the floor of the morgue. As I went down, I felt something hard and cushy all at the same time. From the moan I heard, I knew I had jus
t landed on Aunt Maggie.

“Unbelievable, you people. You just h
ad to pursue this, didn’t you?”

“Dr. Mac?”

“Dr. Mac?” He mocked me using a falsetto. “Oh, Dr. Mac can’t you help my dear old Auntie? She wants to do this half-assed ghost hunt in the old hospital. Oh, Mac, yo
u’ve always been there for me.”

Aunt Maggie stirred beside me. I could see a gash on her head. There was a battery-powered lantern glowing on the far side of the room. The beige ceramic tiles that lined the wall shone in the glow of it. I could imagine many years ago this being a clean and glistening place instead of the dusty bat-filled haven it had become. There was a hole in the roof where the bats had made their entrances and exits over the years. In the corner of the room, there was a square metal box rusted with age. It reminded me of the pizza oven down at Dominic’s Flying Pizza in town. There was one door that hung precariously on what was left of a hinge. It had to weigh fifty pounds, judging by the thickness of the metal. Inside was what looked like a concrete mass with what I was sure was a skeletal hand and arm sticking out of it. It was as if the skeleton were reaching out toward anyone walking by. When I looked back at Dr. Mac, I could see he was holding a Colt 45 automatic and pointing it right at us. Being the daughter of a policeman, I instantly recognized the pist
ol with the black, boxy shape.

“People in this God-forsaken town are way too nosy. Bunch of whiners,” Dr. Mac continued his high falsetto as he mimicked his patients. “Help me doctor, I can’t pay you. Help me doctor, my husband left me.” He walked over to the metal box with the
bony hand reaching towards him.

“This little gal here was a whiner. Let me formally introduce you to Mrs. Vickie MacPhee, my first wife. She hailed from the great state of Mississippi. She was dirt poor, white trash, came from a town called Farley’s Ditch. That’s right, a town named after a ditch. She came from the kind of people nobody takes notice of or particularly cares about. Did you know that after I killed her, not a soul, not a single solitary person came looking for her? Not one. She’s a throwaway, so I threw her. You see, I was an orderly out here at the hospital. Back then I called myself Roy.”

“I was fresh out of the service and always looking for an angle to get out of being the poor country bumpkin that I was. I thought I had hit pay dirt when I found a young lady on the hospital ward with the last name DuPont. As in the DuPont family of enormous wealth? Everyone knew the DuPonts were loaded, and here I had found one lonely, quite unattractive DuPont looking for her knight in shining armor. Sadly, it seemed her family didn’t have much to do with Miss Vickie, so I swooped in to rescue her. I courted her for one week and then announced I was so hopelessly in love I wanted to marry her. My, my, but she was taken aback. Who would have thought here she was confronting death, and she gets a marriage proposal? Back then, I was afraid I would spoil everything if I asked her just exactly what her bank balance was. It was a life lesson, you could say. It wasn’t until after I married her that I found out she was just another disgustingly poor person like myself.”

“And then, miracle of miracles she got cured. Cured! She couldn’t even afford to pay her own hospital bill. I moved her into my apartment and continued working out at the hospital until it closed. I hated her. I hated everything about her. After the hospital, I got a job out at the local country club where I met my present wife, Lillian. Her maiden name was Lillian Chambers. Doesn’t that just drip with money? This time I checked her out and found out her daddy was one of the richest men in Pecan Bayou. Luckily, her daddy didn’t return the favor and check me out in reverse. I told her that I was a struggling college student between scholarships and that above all else I w
anted to go to medical school.”

“My only problem was I had to do something with Vickie here. It was so easy, you wouldn’t believe it. Her energy level never truly returned after her illness, so I told her that she had to have a daily hot toddy with a dash of liquid vitamin stirred in. Actually, she only needed one. The one I filled with cyanide. Did you know she smiled at me as I handed her that steaming cup of poison? Trusting until the end, dumb bitch. After she died, I brought her out here to the cooler in the morgue. The tuberculosis hospital didn’t keep bodies for long, maybe a day or two, but then they sent them off elsewhere. They kept them in this here cooling unit. I put a lock on the door and got the hell out of here. I always meant to come back, but to tell the truth, it all unnerved me a bit. Every cadaver I operated on in medical school made me think of her, decomposing and stinking out here. I couldn’t make myself come back, no matter how hard I tried. I just hoped that someday they would bulldoze the building and her with it. I filed for a divorce on the grounds of abandonment, and then a
year later I married Lillian.”

“Her daddy wasn’t that keen on me until he knew I was a potential doctor for his sacred family tree. That old fool not only let me marry his daughter, b
ut he paid for medical school.”

Dr. Mac walked over to the square box containing the body of his wife encased in the crumbling concrete. “It sealed up so tightly, even with the electricity not running. I felt sure someone would find her, year after year after year, but strangely no one did. It really was as if she was an invisible person. Frankly, there were times when I actually forgot about her being out here. No one came looking for her, and no one ever found her body. No one, t
hat is, until Oliver Canfield.”

I looked over at Aunt Maggie, whose eyes were now open. She didn’t stir but sat quietly, listening to the unraveling of the many years
of deceit.

“What a piece of work that one was,” Dr. Mac continued. “He was nosing around out here and actually pried off the door to the cooler. When what to his wondering eyes should appear,” he shook his head to emphasize each word, “but my dear ol’ Vickie here. Surprise!” He jumped at me as if he were a crazed birthday clown. “I’ll say one thing for that Canfield guy – he was clever, very clever. He just wasn’t as clever as I was. This is a man’s game, and he was a mere boy. He thought he had one up on me because he took the wedding band off her finger. Inside was inscribed Love, Roy. I don’t go by that name anymore. It’s a country-s
ounding name, don’t you think?”

I nodded dumbly.

“Yes. You see, here I go by Dr. William R. MacPhee. It sounds much better, doesn’t it? It seems Canfield had done title searches on several pieces of property here in town, and from that he picked up on my middle name. He took that ring from her bony finger and put it on his fat little finger. I don’t know how he got it on there. I had to use oil from the gun to pull it off of him. Of course, he was dead by then, so he didn’t struggle much. He asked to meet me, right here in this hospital. But I guess you know that part because you found hi
m!” He laughed at his own joke.

“He knew I killed her, but that was when I was a young fellow. I mean, look at me. I’m an old man who delivers babies and puts casts on little leaguers. What a sweet old guy I turned out to be! I simply walked through the woods from the hospital while the nurses thought I was taking a short nap. They wouldn’t dare disturb me, dear old Dr. Mac. I hid the gun in my belt, under my jacket. I told Canfield to meet me in Room 227, knowing about the hole in the wall. We used to joke that was the real employee’s lounge. We could hide out there and avoid changing bedpans and helping all the coughing, weak people stretching out their hands to us. They were disgusting, always
retching up bile.” He grimaced.

“So Canfield walks up to me, spouting all of this rubbish about how he knows I killed my wife but I could pay him a million dollars and he’d forget all about it. I just couldn’t let that happen, you see. I had created this perfect life and had put Vickie way, way behind me. He was quite surprised when I pulled my Colt out of my jacket. I shot him, and then the son of a bitch laughed at me. He tells me that I’ll never get her out. He encased her in concrete. It was his guarantee she would stay right here. I shot him again and stuffed him in the wall, and even though I hated the thought, I ran down to the morgue and found my Vickie settled into a bed of concret
e. Canfield had outsmarted me.”

“Were you the one who set the fire
at Canfield’s office?” I asked.

“You are way too nosy. Just like the rest of this town. You see, Canfield might have left some sort of connection to me at his office. I was about to start a fire, but then I saw you sneaking up the stairs. If you had found something, then you would have to be taken care of, as well. I hit you with some outlandish-looking cowboy statue and was getting ready to hit you again when I saw someone else coming up the stairs. I stepped back and hid behind a filing cabinet while Mr. Fitzpatrick dragged you out through the fire. I barely made it out myself, but luckily the two of you never looked back
as I ran out of the building.”

“So Fitzpatr
ick had nothing to do with it?”

“No, my dear. He seemed to be there to
look after you, not hurt you.”

I felt warmed by that, though still wonderi
ng if he had been following me.

“I knew I couldn’t return here because of the guard your father posted. Tonight, I knew you would come into this room, so I decided one last time to try and dig out Vickie. I had made some headw
ay until your aunt showed up. “

MacPhee looked at his handgun lovingly. He caressed the top. “I used this old gun in Vietnam, and now it continues to protect and serve. And now it will do its job for me again.”

He glanced down at Maggie, and
his face took on a wicked grin.

“Ahh, the ghost of the Johnson TB Hospital … ahhhh!” He swirled around with his arms out, imitating an exceedingly bad ghost. He turned first one way and then the next. It was on the second turn that I stuck my foot out and tripped him. He fell backwards but kept hold of the gun, shooting one bullet into the ceiling. I went over and grabbed the cooler door and with all my strength attempted to clobber Dr. Mac on the head with it. As it came down I heard the thundering noise of another bullet, this time aimed right at me. I shut my eyes and put all of my strength into swinging that door. I heard something shoot past my ear as we both landed on the ground in a sort of grotesque human sandwich. Dr. Mac
groaned and then became still.

The door the to the morgue burst open, and Howard came in, trying to threaten a killer with his flashlight. My father came in behind him, gun drawn and shouting. I had
never been so happy to see him.