The Hounds and the Fury (21 page)

“I’d never do that,” Jason joked back.

Sister stuck her head in the trailer tack room. “Need a belt? Say bourbon and branch?”

“When it’s over.” Ronnie grimaced as Jason wiggled the coat off his left arm.

Sister stayed outside, holding a flask carrying Woodford Reserve mixed with 25 percent pure water.

Ronnie unbuttoned his shirt with one hand. What hurt was having Jason pull over his head the silk and cashmere long-sleeved undershirt he wore on the nasty cold days. Tears ran down his eyes. The cold hit his lean naked torso, and he shivered.

“All right, Ronnie.” Jason felt the collarbone. “Not my specialty, but it’s a poor doctor who can’t set a bone.”

Walter joined Sister at the tack room door. Val worked on Ronnie’s nice mare. She didn’t want to see the bone being set. People in pain upset her, made her feel helpless.

“Ronnie, with those abs you ought to be a cover boy.” Sister made light of the situation.

“Right.” He gritted his teeth as Jason put his right hand on one side of the break, left on the other, then snapped the bones back.

“Oh, shit,” Ronnie blurted out. He nearly crumpled.

Jason put his hand under Ronnie’s elbow, helping him to lean on the raised section in the tack room, the nose of the trailer.

Walter stepped in. “May I?”

“Sure,” said Ronnie, lips white.

Walter lightly ran his fingers over the collarbone. “Good job, Jason.”

“What’d you expect?” Jason smiled. “Ronnie, as you probably know, it doesn’t do much good to set a collarbone. Keep it in a sling. That’s the best advice I can give.”

“He’s broken that left collarbone twice before.” Sister handed up the flask. “First time was at our hunter pace when he was twelve.”

“You didn’t give me bourbon and branch then.” Ronnie’s color was returning.

“I would have if your mother hadn’t been hovering.” She noticed his shiver. “Boy, you aren’t going to get that pullover back on. I don’t have anything I can give you.”

“I have an old flannel shirt in my bag,” Walter said. “Better than nothing. It’ll be six weeks before you can get a sweater on.”

“Three,” Ronnie resolutely replied.

Jason pulled a Montblanc ballpoint pen out of his coat pocket. He produced a prescription pad, for he’d first gone to his own trailer and changed coats, picking up the pad, too. “I’m giving you a prescription for 800 Motrin. Take one in the morning. One at night. It’ll help.”

“Thanks.” Ronnie took the small white paper.

“Nice pen.” Sister admired the Montblanc.

“If you use the best equipment you have fewer problems.” He stepped out so Walter could come up to help Ronnie on with the shirt. “Walter, you want to tie him up?”

“That doesn’t sound right.” Walter reached for Ronnie’s stock.

Despite the short notice, Cindy Chandler had put together a breakfast. People brought in dishes. Most wanted hot coffee or tea more than anything else at that moment.

As Sister walked to the farmhouse, a little jewel, she had her own epiphany.

So did Ben Sidell when he called back the number displayed on his cell phone. Lyle Aziz was jubilant that the results had come in so quickly on Angel Crump.

“Her death certificate said heart attack. Her heart stopped beating all right, Ben. She was loaded with scopolamine.”

CHAPTER 28

F
ollowing hounds on horseback is an early-morning activity. On weekdays people clean their horses, clean themselves, and report to work. In hunt country, many employees use flexible schedules not only for parents but for foxhunters, deer hunters, fishermen. The ways of the place might be altered by modern life but not utterly transformed.

Ben kept Nonni with Betty and Bobby Franklin. He enjoyed tending to his sturdy mare, no beauty basket but honest and wise. Three years ago the sheriff had known nothing about foxhunting. Now he couldn’t imagine life without it, nor could he imagine a day without Nonni. It was a love match.

He changed clothes in the tack room, his uniform crisp, then drove to the hospital. The snow, falling heavily now, worked its magic on the countryside. The brown patches were turning white; tree branches were outlined by a silver-white line on top.

Margaret DuCharme met him in her office.

“Please sit down, Sheriff.”

“Call me Ben.”

“This is an official visit, right?”

“It is.” He sat in the high-tech aluminum chair, the back and bottom a mesh that looked hard but wasn’t.

Margaret walked out from behind her desk and sat opposite him on a duplicate chair.

Noticing his wiggle in the seat, she inquired, “I hope that’s not uncomfortable.”

“No. It’s actually very comfortable.” He noted the décor of her office. “Funny, I would have thought you’d be, uh, I’m not very good at styles and periods, but, you know, traditional.”

She smiled. “Paradise takes care of that. It’s so traditional it’s falling down.” She indicated a slender Italian desk lamp, the dome over the halogen bulb a deep green. “I’m crazy about Italian design.”

“Sleek.” He crossed one leg over the other. “I hope you can help me.”

“Am I under suspicion?” She folded her hands together, leaning slightly forward.

“Technically, yes. Realistically, no. If you were a killer, you’d never be stupid enough to leave the evidence in your vehicle.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, her symmetrical features relaxing. “What can I do to help?”

“How easy is it for a doctor, a nurse, or even an orderly to steal controlled substances?”

She exhaled deeply. “In theory, it’s difficult. Medicines that need to be refrigerated are in locked refrigerators. Those which can be stored at room temperature are in steel cases, locked. Years ago they used wooden cases, but a desperate junkie could pry or smash them open.”

“Do you think things like morphine, say, are taken?”

“Not morphine so much. The drugs of choice are cocaine and OxyContin. Prozac, Valium, mood elevators have a street value, but the real prizes are coke and OxyContin. As you know, all hospitals have some pure cocaine as well as morphine for extreme pain.”

“Steroids?”

She shook her head. “It’s much easier to buy those on the black market than to fool around with the hospital supply, which isn’t that large.”

“Has anyone been caught recently?”

“You would know.”

“Only if the hospital prosecuted. It’s in the administration’s self-interest to let them go quietly, just as it’s in a bank’s self-interest to write off an embezzler. Prosecute; it makes the papers, and the public loses confidence. I may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”

Her eyes leveled on his. “True.”

“So, have drugs been stolen?”

“I don’t know, but common sense tells me, yes.” She smiled. “There’s no wall that can keep out a lover or a cat. If a staff person is hooked on Percodan, they’ll find a way. The higher up they are on the food chain, the more ways they can cover the theft—sometimes for years.”

“Do you think there are doctors who are addicts?”

“Yes. It’s not that uncommon. Do I know who they are? No.”

“What about you?”

“No. I got through my residency drinking enough coffee to float a battleship.” She smiled. “That’s another thing: most doctors drink far too much coffee. The OB/GYNs have the worst of it because babies always seem to appear at three in the morning.” She smiled again.

“They do, don’t they?” His face felt particularly hot. “Another question. Were Iffy and your Uncle Alfred close friends? Do you think it was a passionate relationship?”

She rubbed her chin, an odd gesture that somehow seemed very feminine. “There was a connection there, but I don’t know how deep. It’s not the kind of thing Uncle Al would tell me.”

“An affair? Maybe when Iffy was more attractive, less bitter. Sometimes people can become friends afterwards. Most times not, I guess.” He kept the questioning conversational.

“Iffy?” She pondered this. “I doubt it.”

“Do you know much about your uncle’s business activities?”

Struggling, she swallowed. “He fiddles with stocks. He keeps a few fighting cocks. I stay out of it.” She quickly added, “He seems to be doing better this last year than years prior.”

Ben didn’t press it. “How’s your business?” He smiled broadly.

“Good. People will always tear up their knees.” She laughed.

“Tell me about the drug scopolamine.”

“Commercially it’s called transderm scope. In therapeutic dose, 0.3 to 0.6 milligrams, it’s often used to combat motion sickness. Usually a patient wears a small patch behind the ear.”

“How long does it take to work?”

“Two hours. So if you’re seasick and your cruise leaves the dock at noon, you’d put the patch on at ten.”

“Does it have other uses?”

“Arthritis. Then it’s usually in a cream. And it may be used in combination with other drugs—atropine, for example.” She paused. “I don’t have much use for it. My work generally is on ligaments and muscles. But people have such different chemistries. There may be a patient who responds better to scopolamine for chronic pain than another drug. Why?”

“An autopsy report has crossed my desk. The corpse had extremely high levels of scopolamine.”

She tapped her finger on the chair arm. “It can kill you.”

“How—I mean how could you administer it, and what would be the symptoms?”

“Mix a lethal dose and put it on a patch. Patches come four in a package. Any physician could easily mix up a dose. It’s not difficult at all.”

“Any other way?”

“Sure, put it in a cream. Depending on how quickly you wanted it to work, you’d alter the dose, obviously. But it will kill you in twenty-four hours if that dose is over the line.”

“Let’s say I’ve mixed up cream, arthritis cream. It’s full of scopolamine. What happens to the victim?”

“Depending on their age, current health, they’ll become confused, then sleepy. They can’t keep their eyes open. The heart will beat arrhythmically. Death.”

“Looks like a heart attack.”

“Yes.”

“If the victim were quite old, the heart failure probably wouldn’t arouse suspicion?”

“Probably not. Most elderly people have heart problems. The pump shows signs of wear and tear.”

“Anything else about scopolamine?”

“If you pulled up the victim’s eyelids, the pupils would be dilated, the opposite of narcotics, where they are pinpoints.”

“So a really clever killer could tell the victim to wear a patch, then pull it off before the corpse is examined?”

“Could.”

“Is Walter a good cardiologist?”

“Yes.”

“If he pronounced—is that the right word?” She nodded, so Ben continued. “If he pronounced a patient dead would he know they’d been killed with scopolamine?”

“No. I wouldn’t either, especially if the patient had a heart condition. There are no outstanding signs. You’d only know by autopsy. The technical term for the manner of death is supraventricular tachycardia. You’d have to see the heart. Now, any of us could have that type of heart attack, but the scopolamine will blow out the heart that way. The tissues, the blood work would tell the tale. It’s an ingenious way to kill someone.”

“Yes, it is. Someone would need to be a doctor, pharmacist, nurse.”

“Or a very bright chemistry major.” She folded her hands together.

“This is a different line, but it may have some bearing on Iffy’s case. How easy would it be for a doctor to falsify insurance claims?”

Margaret’s eyes, light hazel, opened wide. “All too easy, Sheriff.”

“And temptation is high?”

She folded her hands together. “People don’t realize what it costs to be a doctor. Oh, they know those years after college are expensive, but they don’t think about the costs once you are on your own. Salaries. Office space. Hospital privileges. Constantly updating your computers and software. The courses you must continue to take throughout your life to keep your certification. And the real killer is insurance.”

“It raises by specialty?”

“Well, there’s no cheap insurance. Mine is thirty-six thousand a year.”

He exhaled in sympathy. “No competition to lower rates?”

“Not really.”

“So there is incentive to cheat?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Create problems that don’t exist. For instance, I treat you for a bruised patella, kneecap. You’re fine. I fill out the paperwork. The insurance company sends me a percent of my fee.”

“I’d have to be in on it. You need my signature on the form.”

“I suppose patient signatures could be forged, but it’s cleaner if we’re in it together.”

“I see. Is it possible to fake an operation?”

“It is, but then everyone in that operating room has to be in on it. It’s easier to do this for in-office procedures.” She focused her lustrous eyes on his. “Iffy?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.” He couldn’t help telling her.

She sat back up, putting her right forefinger to her temple. “I hate Jason Woods. If this is true, I hope you can make it stick.”

“Like I said, I don’t know. I shouldn’t have told you. It’s not professional.” He stammered for a moment. “I find it difficult to refuse you.”

“Then I’d better ask for something big.” She smiled broadly.

Heart pounding, he blurted out, “May I take you to dinner Saturday?”

“How about Sunday? College games are Saturday. There’s bound to be at least one torn ACL.”

“Sunday it is.”

He left the hospital far happier than anyone going into it. After stopping by headquarters and assigning another officer to direct traffic at a particularly obnoxious intersection, he drove out to Roughneck Farm, where Sister awaited him.

Rapping on the mud room door, he heard, “Come in.”

“There you are.” She took his coat, hanging it on a peg as Raleigh and Rooster sniffed him.

“What a day today. And hey, what a big field for Thursday.”

“Was good.” She’d made sandwiches, which she put on the table. “You probably didn’t eat enough at the breakfast.”

“Actually, I didn’t. Usually I make a pig of myself, but I was trapped between Ronnie, Walter, and Jason all telling war stories. You’re always feeding me.” He inhaled the rich coffee aroma. “You make the best coffee.”

“Thank you.” She poured him a cup, sat down, and picked up her sandwich so he’d pick up his. “I rarely eat at the breakfasts. For one thing, I can’t eat standing up. I mean, I can, but I don’t like it. For another thing, I usually don’t reach the table.”

“Must be hell to be popular.”

“I suffer.” She laughed.

They ate, chitchatting about the drop between the two ponds where Ronnie had broken his collarbone, the swirling wind currents down in the ravine, and the footing that alternated between hard ground and packed snow.

“Weatherman says three inches.” Ben dabbed his mouth with the napkin.

Golly, on a kitchen chair, head above the table, watched every move.
“I’ll accept a votive offering, given that I denned a fox.”

“No fair. You get to sit on the chair,”
Rooster complained.

“You get enough treats. In fact, Rooster, diet time.”

“Nasty—you can be so nasty.”
Rooster put his head on his paws as he lay by Sister’s feet.

Raleigh, silent, sat on her other side. If he looked noble and patient, she might weaken.

“Here.” Sister tore a bit of ham for Golly, then gave some to the dogs. Raleigh’s ploy had worked.

“I’m closing in, Sister. If I make one wrong move, I’m going to lose our killer.”

“Yes. He’s highly intelligent. I suspect most killers aren’t.”

“Actually, most people in jail, men and women, are what’s called low-normals. Some are borderline retarded. A few truly are evil, but most of them can’t control their impulses. No sense of delayed gratification on any front.”

“Pity. We can’t afford the cost of incarcerating them, but we can’t afford them on the streets, either.”

“They’ll do it again.” He accepted a brownie. “That’s not what some people want to hear, but that’s the way it is. And always was.”

“I suppose so, but our killer doesn’t fall into that category.”

“When did you figure it out?”

“It’s been building. I had a vague feeling once we found Iffy. He never figured on a coyote. He’s not country.” She paused. “Today, we started on a bobcat. Think of Iffy. She’s your bobcat. Legitimate game and guilty as sin. Naturally we’d follow the scent.”

“Yes.” He realized he was holding the coffee cup to his lips but hadn’t drunk some, as he was intently listening.

“Then down in the thickest part of the covert, our true quarry crossed the line of the bobcat. Some second-year entry didn’t come right to the horn when Shaker swung the pack onto the fox. Betty pushed them back, and we had all on and a terrific finish. Our killer is the fox. We’ve got to swing onto his line. We can’t let him go to ground. He’s fooled us by using a bobcat to divert our attention.”

“I don’t have enough to convict him.” He appreciated her insight. “Do you think we can turn our fox?”

Occasionally a whipper-in will turn a fox. This takes a smart whipper-in because one can turn the fox back into the hounds, a dreadful thing to do. Usually, a fox should be turned if it, too, is heading for a major highway or if it is running out of the country. Betty Franklin could do it. The trick is to turn the fox at an angle, but not back to hounds. Then the whipper-in has to stay on the outside of the fox until the danger has passed. It’s extremely difficult to do because the fox isn’t trained to obey, whereas the hound is.