Death Trap (13 page)

“You can call it that, I guess. Everybody makes a mistake sometimes.”

“What are you driving at, Quillan? What do you want?”

“You know how talk goes around. Little town like this. I heard about some kind of committee. They want to talk to people. Maybe to you. You just say that everything was all right. We just asked you some questions. That’s all.”

“Is that young doctor on the committee?”

He looked at me blankly. “You mean Don Higel? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“He had some strong opinions.”

“He gets worked up. He doesn’t mean anything. He can’t do anything. You just say everything was all right if anybody asks you.”

“Did Score tell you to talk to me?”

“I’m just talking man to man. Everybody makes a mistake.”

“If anybody asks me, Quillan, I’ll tell them you’re right out of the dark ages, or the Hitler storm troopers. I’ll tell them you belong in a slaughterhouse killing steers with a sledge. I’ll tell them you’re a sorry excuse for a town cop, a sadist, a bully, and very probably a psychopath. And I’ll tell in detail how you worked me over at Score’s request. That satisfy you?”

He stared at me. He glanced down the street. There were no pedestrians nearby. He jacked his knee into my groin. I fell back against my car, doubling over, grabbing the door handle to stay on my feet.

“That’s for now,” he said. “And I’m going to see if I can find you some place after dark, you smart son of a bitch.” I heard the metal taps on his heels as he walked away. I managed to get the car door open. A woman pushing a carriage stared at me with disapproval. Drunk in the middle of the day. I fell in onto the seat, on the passenger side, too weak to reach the door. I was shuddering, and cold and sweaty. After a long time I was able to reach out and pull the car door shut. And a long time after that the pain had ebbed so that I could drive. I drove to the Inn. At the cost of considerable effort I was able to stand up straight enough to walk to my room without attracting attention. I rested on the bed, curled like a fetus, for nearly an hour. I undressed and took a hot shower. By the time I was dressed again, I felt almost normal.

Dr. Don Higel was able to see me at quarter of four, after a ten-minute wait.

He frowned for just a moment when I came in and then said, “Of course. You were in Score’s office last night.”

“Quillan was working me over when the girl came to the door on her hands and knees.”

“What for?”

“I’m unpopular. I upset the two of them. I’ve been looking into the Landy case.”

“That could make you unpopular. What seems to be your trouble? Quillan break anything?”

“Not yet. I want to ask you about one of your patients.”

“I can’t talk about my patients.”

“I realize that. I have no official standing. I liked what you said last night. I don’t know that it will do any harm to talk about this particular patient. You can make your own decision, of course. I hope you’ll want to talk. It may have a bearing on other things. Possibly an important bearing. Or I may be way off line. I don’t know. I think this woman is dying. If I’ve ever seen death walking around, she’s it.”

“I’ve got several who could qualify.”

“Mrs. Billy Mackin.”

He nodded. “Yes. Of course. Angela Mackin. Farm stock. Tough as shoe leather. But not tough enough to handle this.”

“She’s in the store today.”

Higel looked distressed. He got up from his desk, strolled to the window, fingered his preposterous mustache. “I don’t know where she finds the guts,” he said softly.

“Did you operate?” I asked.

“I assisted. Seivers did it. Good man. Too far gone, though. Took a look and closed her up.”

“Does her husband know?”

“Yes. He’s very upset about it. He blames himself. And well he might.”

“What do you mean?”

He sat down at his desk and shrugged. “Take a rational viewpoint. MacReedy—isn’t that what my nurse said?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. You have a wife. Strapping wench. Full of bounce. So she starts to slow down. Starts to lose weight. Can’t eat properly. Color gets bad. What do you do?”

“Take her to a doctor.”

“He stoked her with patent medicines. She was twenty-two pounds off her normal weight before I saw her.”

“Could you tell me if she was home last April?”

He looked at me for a long time and seemed about to refuse. I think I saw a glimmer of some sort of comprehension in his eyes. He rang for the nurse and asked her to bring him the case folder on Angela Mackin. When the nurse brought it in, she gave me a curious look. She was a big-bodied redhead who looked as if she had been scrubbed with a wire brush.

He looked at the folder and closed it. “Operated on her on March eighteenth. Recovery was slow, if you want to call it recovery. Anyway she wasn’t strong enough to come home until April twentieth. Frankly. I didn’t expect her to get out of bed again. Amazing resistance. Tough.”

“How much longer has she got?”

“She’s overdue, MacReedy. I think now it will come fast. A month, probably less.”

“Children?”

“One. It died in infancy.”

“Is he a patient too?”

“No.”

“But you know him?”

“Of course.”

“Any general or specific opinions about him?”

“None in particular. I think you’re asking too many questions.”

“I’ll change the subject. Do you think the town is about ready to get rid of Score and Quillan?”

“I certainly hope so. That affair last night was sickening. I had a report from the hospital an hour ago. The boy has regained consciousness. He confessed to beating the girl up, to kicking her. He said he didn’t mean to kill her. If the papers are smart, they’ll play up just how it all started. At a drive-in beer joint which the county cops should have kept in line. People are near the end of their patience. This may be the incident that does it. Turnbull is coming up for re-election. There’s open gambling in this county. There is a narcotics problem. It could be a clean county.”

“I won’t take up any more of your time. Thanks for answering the questions.”

“If they’re of any use to you, I’d like to know how it comes out.”

“If they are of any use, you’ll hear, Doctor.”

He hesitated, and then suddenly stuck his hand out. I took it. There was a boyish grin half masked by the bold raggedy mustache. It happens like that sometimes. It is the way you find a friend, a good one. And in all your life there can never be enough of them. I understood him, bold mustache and all. A young and competent doctor in a small town. He was too much man to restrict himself to the demands of his profession, arduous though they might be. He could not accept the obvious flaws in that environment. He could never help fighting for what he felt was right.

From the way he had talked of Mrs. Billy Mackin I knew he was not the sort of doctor who accepts each case as a textbook problem. His patients were human, and he was sensitized to humanity. He would never achieve callousness, no matter how long he practiced, no matter how gruff he became. Dedication is rare, and when you meet it you can see the marks it leaves.

“Quillan gave you that contusion?”

“Not that one.”

“You must be leading an interesting life, Mr. MacReedy.”

“Maybe I’ll get a chance to deal you in on some of the more interesting aspects, Doctor.”

“Turn me into one of my own patients?”

“I hope not.”

“There’s been a lot of filth swept under a lot of rugs in this town. I see more than my share. I’ll risk a laceration or two to throw back a couple of rugs. But don’t ask me to talk about my patients, MacReedy.”

“Hugh.”

“All right. And Don to you, Hugh. You’re digging into the Landy thing, you said. Isn’t Mrs. Billy Mackin far afield?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“They’re both murder. But different in degree.”

“Does talking about a dead patient violate ethics?”

“It might. I don’t know why the hell I’m fencing, though.”

“Remember Jane Ann’s back injury?”

He stared at me in surprise. “You
do
get around.” He sat down behind his desk. I sat down again. He loaded a pipe. It went appropriately and almost theatrically with his mustache. “Put me in a delicate position, that incident did, Hugh. I took over Dr. Kennedy’s practice when he retired. I lost some people, of course. They thought I was too young. But I hoped to make it up on new residents. I had no intention of taking over any of Dr. Farbon’s patients. I knew he was family doctor for the Paulsons. When Mr. Paulson phoned me and asked me to stop at the house I went to see Dr. Farbon. He filled me in. Paulson had been beating his daughter. She tried to wrench away and he hit her too high. With a piece of stove wood. Bruised the coccyx and tore some of the small muscles. Farbon knew he beat her, but he didn’t know how violently. He hadn’t had to treat her before. Paulson tried to lie about how it happened. When Farbon questioned the girl, he found out. He blew his top. He had delivered both those girls. You take an interest, you know. He blasted Paulson and Paulson ordered him out of the house. Though it’s an account that pays on the dot, Farbon was glad to lose it. He’s never liked Paulson. He told me to try to keep my mouth shut. I did. The girl was pretty bitter. The old man hadn’t broken her spirit. He was practically arrogant about it. He was sorry he hurt her; but sorry only because he missed, not because he was beating her with a hunk of wood you could have felled a horse with.”

“Would you call Paulson a psychopath, Don?”

“That’s a handy all-inclusive word for the layman. He’s a dour, humorless man, full of great pride, and very anxious to be a pillar of the community. I’d say he’s a hypocrite and a self-deluded sadist. He thought he was beating the girl for her own good. But I sense that it was a kind of release for him. He was beating an extension of himself, beating on the evil he sensed inside himself. His wife is spiritless, and the elder daughter won’t sneeze without written permission from him. The typical autocrat. He couldn’t break Jane Ann. In her own way she was as hard as he was. Maybe he toughened her into that hardness.”

“But you get along with him?”

“I get along fine. I am the bright young doctor, competent and polite.”

“Have any opinions about Nancy?”

“She’s fouled up. Standard in that household, I’d say. Emotionally repressed. Scared of life.”

I knew I had taken too much of his time. He walked me to the office door.

“Good hunting,” he said.

“Thanks, Don.”

“I know I don’t have to tell you that anything I’ve said—”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

The redheaded nurse-receptionist smiled at me as I left. She told one of the patients to go in. I stood outside the small building and tried to make neat tabulations of everything I had learned. I could not make out mental lists. My mind doesn’t work that way. I had met two good men. Higel and Sibley. But two good men were not enough to balance the scales against Quillan and Score.

The high school was not in session. I wanted to find a boy they called Rook. I hadn’t seen the ones in Quarto’s car distinctly, but I knew he was one of them. I cruised aimlessly until I saw a repair garage with some of the typical high school cars parked in the lot beside it. I parked and went in. Some of the kids were in there, working on a car.

“Can you fellows tell me where I can find a kid you call Rook?”

They looked at me with hostility. “He’s all cracked up, man. That was his girl got stomped last night.”

“I know that. What’s his full name?”

“Evans is the last name. I don’t know what the hell his first name is. It’s one of those farms on the left on the Warrentown road. The name is on the mail box. Maybe two-three miles out.”

I got to the farm at five. I parked beside the house. A big bald man in overalls came out of the barn and stared at me. He didn’t come to find out what I wanted. He waited for me to come to him.

“Is your name Evans?”

“You read it on the box.”

“Do you have a son the other kids call Rook?”

“Not in front of me, they don’t. His name is Austin, after his mother’s folks.”

“Could I talk to him?”

“Why should you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

He thought that over. “Are you a cop?”

“No. And I’m not from a newspaper. I talked to the Garson girl last night. I was trying to get some information from her. Your son might have that information. It’s personal, and it’s important to me.”

“A reporter was out here this morning. That Garson girl was trash. He wasn’t supposed to be seeing her. You can’t keep them chained up. Running around, drinking beer, laying with trash. What can you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know what I’m doing. That kid is staying home. He isn’t going any place. Not for a hell of a long time. That Smith was here sometimes. A bad kid. A mean kid, even if his people do have the bank. You look all right. His maw’s down the road. You go there to the kitchen door. Go up the back stairs. He’s in his room, moping and sniveling. First door on the left. Go talk to him if you want to.”

He turned back into the barn. The house was very still. The back stairs creaked. The door was closed. I knocked.

“Who is it?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Who is it?”

I turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked. The boy sat up on the bed. He wasn’t a bad-looking boy, rangy and freckled. His eyes were red.

“I seen you,” he said. “You were the one came looking for Ginny, then the cop car came and we lit out. Why did you turn her over to Smith, damn you?”

He looked at me indignantly. I turned a chair away from his desk and sat down and lit a cigarette. The pitch of the roof made the room an odd shape. There was a rag rug, quilted bed spread, battered maple furniture, pennants and pictures and traffic signs and rest room signs tacked to the flowered wallpaper.

“When I came along, Rook,” I said gently, “it looked to me like you’d already turned her over to Smith.”

He lay back on the pillow and looked at the ceiling, one long leg dangling, bare toes tapping the floor. “What can you do? She was crazy-acting. She did like she pleased. I knew her a long time. What can you do? Suppose I let it show what I felt like inside. Suppose I stop kidding around like I was. Suppose I want to make some kind of a big deal out of it. Then Smith bashes the hell out of me. She wanted to get in his car. Jeez, it wasn’t my idea.”