Cyanide Wells (25 page)

“Yes.”

“Does doctor-patient confidentiality extend beyond death?”

“It does.”

“Even if the death is a homicide, and the victim’s medical condition might have bearing on the reason he died?”

“What is this leading up to, Carly?”

“All right. Ronnie and Deke were close friends of Ard and me, as you probably know. A group of us—a dozen or so—celebrated various holidays together, usually at their place. Yet for at least seven months before they were killed, none of us saw Deke and seldom saw Ronnie. They didn’t schedule the customary events and were frequently out of town—tending to a sick uncle of Deke’s, they claimed. But in retrospect, I remember that Deke had no family.”

Arlene set down her tea and folded her hands, waiting.

Carly went on, “I suspect the reason they broke off contact was because Deke had AIDS. He was a proud man—vain, too. He wouldn’t have wanted his friends to watch him waste away from the disease, so he withdrew from us at the time when he needed us most—perhaps went out of town for treatment.”

“If that was true, then we should respect his wish for privacy.”

“I would, except I think there’s a connection between Deke’s medical condition and the murders. I’m not sure what it is, but I strongly feel it exists.”

“Mere intuition is a flimsy reason for you to ask me to violate my ethics.”

“Would you be violating your ethics if you helped me uncover the real reason they were killed?” She leaned forward, fixing an earnest gaze on the doctor. “Recently I’ve learned things that indicate the murders were more than the act of a deranged individual working alone. People manipulated Mack Travis—powerful people. And tonight I remembered something significant.”

Arlene cocked her head and raised her eyebrows.

“After Ard found Ronnie’s and Deke’s bodies, she called me, hysterical. When I got to their house, I went to their bedroom to confirm what she’d told me. There was a good deal of blood; it had sprayed on the sheets, the headboard, and a night-stand—the one on the side of the bed where Deke lay. And the pattern on that nightstand was odd. To me, it looked as if four pill bottles and a paperback book had been set there. But they must’ve been moved after Ronnie and Deke were shot.”

“Why? And by whom?”

“I don’t know why. Probably they were moved by Mack Travis. But I do know Travis was there under someone else’s orders.”

“Whose?”

“It’s better if I don’t say.”

The doctor pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I’ve lived in Cyanide Wells my whole life, except for college and my medical training. I’ve observed the transitions and shifts of power. We have our good people, our worthless people, and our ruthless people. The lines are fairly well drawn, so you don’t have to name names.”

Carly waited as Arlene considered.

“Very well,” she said, “I’ll confirm what you’ve already figured out. Deke was dying of AIDS. After the initial diagnosis he failed at an accelerated rate. I sent him to a specialist in San Francisco, but there was little he could do for him; it was as if Deke had made up his mind not to fight. He would most likely have been dead by Christmas.”

“So it was medicine bottles that made the pattern on the nightstand.”

“Yes. The paperback book was probably an inspirational volume that I give to terminal patients. The last time I saw Deke, he told me he cherished it and read from it every day.”

“So the presence of it and the medicines would have indicated he had AIDS?”

“Most likely.”

Carly paused, full of fresh grief for her friend. “How did Ronnie handle Deke’s illness?”

“Admirably. He was a rock, even when I had to tell him his own blood test was HIV-positive.”

Oh, Ronnie
…“When was that?”

“July twenty-second, shortly before they were killed.”

July twenty-second. Wednesday afternoon.

“
This is so nice. I wish it could go on forever.”

Ronnie had said that to her as they sat drinking wine in the backyard garden of Aram’s Cafe. But he hadn’t been talking about the moment, as she’d assumed. He’d been talking about his life. And Deke’s.

“Carly?”

“I’m sorry. I was just…missing them.”

“I miss them, too. Miss all the patients I’ve lost. I’ve dealt with death my whole career, but I’ve never been able to inure myself to it.” Arlene looked away for a moment, then said briskly, “Now, is there anything else you need to know?”

“One thing: Why wasn’t AIDS mentioned in the autopsy reports?”

“There was no need to mention it; it had no bearing on the way they died. And the county medical examiner is a dear friend of mine.”

“You asked him to suppress information?”

“It was a mutual decision. I warned him of their condition so he would take extra precautions while performing the autopsies. He, in turn, urged the investigating officers and EMTs to be tested yearly—just routine, he told them, since the victims were homosexual. So far, none has come up HIV-positive.”

“What if they hadn’t bothered to be tested?”

“Then he and I would have gone to the authorities and divulged everything. Doctor-patient confidentiality is sacred to us, but nothing is more sacred than protecting innocent lives.”

“So why did Mack Travis think he needed to conceal Deke’s illness?”

Carly looked at Matt and shrugged, lowered her head, and stared at her crossed ankles. They were in her office at the
Spectrum
, where he’d been waiting for her while she talked with Dr. Hazlewood. She was sitting in the center of her desk, he in her chair with his feet propped up in front of her.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t tell you before, but on my hike to Ronnie and Deke’s house I got lost. In a pine forest. I tried to call you on my cell phone.”

“And what did you expect me to do?”

“That’s what I wondered after you didn’t answer.”

“Well, if I had answered, I’d’ve done something.”

“Like?”

“Send out a carrier pigeon with a map. Set the Talbot house on fire to guide you. Steal the sheriff’s department helicopter and fly low over all the pine trees in the county, bellowing for you on a bullhorn.”

She looked up, smiling. “You know, Matt, you almost make me wish I was hetero.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I said
almost.
”

“Just as well. I’m not sure this simple boy from Minnesota could handle becoming romantically involved with his exwife’s former lover.”

“Probably not, but I doubt there’s anything simple about you.”

“You, either. Maybe that’s why we’re friends.”

Friends.

It wasn’t a word—or a concept—she took lightly. But they had become just that.

“Maybe,” she said. “We both know what it’s like to be outcasts. We both know how it feels to be unfairly attacked. And”—she raised her hand dramatically—“we have both suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous Ardis.”

He rolled his eyes, took his feet off the desk, and stood. “That declaration tells me you need at least twelve hours’ sleep.”

“I do, but where? I’m too damned tired to slink through the countryside to my back door. And if you deliver me to the front, that damn Shawn Stengel—”

“I know a place in Talbot’s Mills where there’s a lumpy sofa. I might even trade you my bed for it.”

Matthew Lindstrom

Friday, May 17, 2002

A
t ten in the morning Carly was still asleep in Matt’s room. He stole in for some clothes, showered and dressed, left her a note on the kitchen table, and departed quietly, heading for Cyanide Wells and the
Spectrum.

Shortly before he was discharged from the hospital the previous afternoon, he’d received a call from the paper’s production manager, asking somewhat wistfully if he’d be able to develop the film he’d shot on Tuesday in time for next week’s issue. Matt felt he ought to fulfill his obligations to the paper while Carly was unable to fulfill hers, so he told the manager he’d have the photos on his desk this afternoon.

The newsroom was empty when he arrived, but Brandi Webster sat at the reception desk, glaring at her computer screen. Her usually perky features were drawn, her voice curiously flat as she expressed dismay over his accident and asked how he was mending.

“I’m not too bad, if I don’t make any sudden moves. At least I’m not muddleheaded anymore.”

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t any worse. What kind of a person does a thing like that, anyway? The sheriff’s people have been working overtime to find them. They were in here yesterday asking a lot of questions.”

“Oh? About?”

“Stuff like how well do we know you and do you have any enemies. Nobody could tell them much, since you just started.” She turned back to her computer. “This damn thing’s so slow. I wish I had a better one.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Updating the subscriber lists, and I’m way behind. I haven’t gotten much done this week, and neither has anybody else, because Carly hasn’t been around. We all complain when she is, because she can be such a bitch, but her bitchiness kind of puts an edge on that energizes us. What’s with her, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Brandi.” He made a hasty exit before she could ask him anything else.

In the darkroom he wound film onto the spool for developing and, after a few minutes, found himself enjoying the quiet, dim atmosphere under the glow of the safelight. As he busied himself with the exacting processes of drying, enlarging, shading, and printing, he realized how wrong he’d been to give up photography. Although it wasn’t a viable way to make a living in Port Regis, it could again be a pleasurable pursuit, maybe even a sideline. When he went back, he’d set up a darkroom.

The pictures of the overturned hopper truck, its load of artichokes spilling down the slope at the Talbot’s Mills off-ramp, appeared ordinary at first, but when he examined them more closely, he saw a man and a woman who had pulled up their sweatshirts to form baskets and were filling them with the bounty. He made another print, emphasizing the enterprising couple. His portrait of Cyanide Wells’s most senior citizen—101-year-old Elsa Turner, who still tended a vegetable garden, canned, and had recently published a first volume of poetry—had turned out well, speaking of vital old age and indomitable spirit. When all the prints were out of the dryer and on the production manager’s desk, Matt found himself reluctant to put the darkroom in order and leave.

Well, what about his personal films, the ones he’d taken in order to vindicate himself? He dug the canisters out of his camera bag and set to work.

Ardis and Natalie arriving after grocery shopping. The images created an ache under his breastbone. Ardis—once his Gwen—so lovely in spite of the years’ passage. Sunlight caught in the wind-tangled strands of her hair; love glowed in her eyes as she smiled down at the little girl. And Natalie: laughing, innocent, trusting. A child taking pleasure in something as small as Ardis’s hand on her shoulder as they crossed the footbridge.

For a moment thoughts of what might have been had he and Gwen had a child threatened to take hold of him. Then reality pushed them aside.

The pictures that he’d taken the next morning of the property and its surroundings were pedestrian—mere documentation. The SUV in the parking area, its license plate, the mailbox, footbridge, trees to either side.

But what was that?

He picked up a loup, peered at the contact sheet. Took it outside the darkroom and examined it under the neon light. Went back inside and put the negative in the enlarger. Studied the image again.

A man was standing in the trees to the left of the footbridge. No, not standing—he was walking toward it. A slender man with dark, curly hair.

He went back into the darkroom, positioned the negative, and enlarged it. The man’s features were dappled by sunlight but recognizable from the publicity still Matt had seen at Wild Parrots.

Chase Lewis, about to pay a call on the woman who had left him and taken his child.

“I don’t understand.” Carly was sitting on Sam’s sofa, a mug of coffee clutched in both hands. Matt noticed that she’d appropriated one of his T-shirts.

Although he knew she wasn’t fully functional—she’d gotten up only half an hour before he returned—he had little patience with her. “Look at the print.” He waved the eight-by-ten at her. “Look at the man in the trees by your footbridge.”

“I see him. Are you sure it’s Chase Lewis?”

“Positive. I took this shot on the morning of Thursday, the ninth, around ten-thirty. Ardis was home; her SUV was there. Lewis paid her a visit the day before she staged her disappearance.”

Carly frowned at the photographs. “But why didn’t she tell me he’d been there? That night all she said was that she thought someone was watching her and had been in the house.”

“She didn’t tell you, because she didn’t want you to find out she’d married him and stolen his child. My guess is, she was setting you up to take her disappearance seriously.”

Carly’s fingers gripped the mug harder, and coffee sloshed onto her bare thighs. Matt took the mug from her and set it on the table.

“Scenario,” he said. “Gar Payne calls Lewis, tells him where to find Ardis and Natalie. First Lewis writes to her; that scrap of paper that you found in the fireplace—‘…mine and I got the right…’—was what was left of the letter. Then, when he doesn’t get a reply, he drives up to Cyanide Wells and goes to the house, demands his daughter. What would Ardis have done?”

“She wouldn’t have argued with him. He’d been violent with her before. And she knew she was in an indefensible position. Lewis could’ve gone to the sheriff’s department, had her arrested for kidnapping. But she wouldn’t have agreed to let him have Nat.”

“So what alternative did she have?”

“I think she probably agreed to bring Nat to him, set a date and a time. Sent him to the motel in Westport, since she couldn’t chance them being seen together here, and staged the disappearance, including the backpack in the well. She thought I’d report it, and Lewis would be afraid he’d be blamed and go back where he came from. Then, after a while she’d surface and reclaim her life.”