Murder at Monticello (22 page)

56

Dr. Larry Johnson, carrying his black Gladstone bag of medical gear, buoyantly swung into the post office. Tucker rushed up to greet him. Mrs. Murphy, splayed on the counter on her right side, tail slowly flicking back and forth, raised her head, then put it back down again.

“I think I know who the Monticello victim is.”

Mrs. Murphy sat up, alert. Harry and Miranda hurried around the counter.

Larry straightened his hand-tied bow tie before addressing his small but eager audience. “Now, ladies, I apologize for not telling you first, but that honor belonged to Sheriff Shaw, and you will, of course, understand why I had to place the next call to Mim Sanburne. She in turn called Warren and Ansley and the other major contributors. I also called Oliver Zeve, but the minute the political calls were accounted for, I zoomed over here.”

“We can't stand it. Tell!” Harry clapped her hands together.

“Thomas Walker, like any good medical man, kept a record of his patients. All I did was start at the beginning and read. In 1778 he set the leg of a five-year-old child, Braxton Fleming, the eighth child of Rebecca and Isaiah Fleming, who owned a large tract along the Rivanna River. The boy broke his leg wrestling with his older brother in a tree.” He laughed. “Don't kids do the damnedest things? In a tree! Well, anyway, Dr. Walker noted that it was a compound fracture and he doubted that it would heal in such a manner as to afford the patient full facility with the limb, as he put it. He duly noted the break was in the left femur. He also noted that the boy was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. That aroused my curiosity, and I called down to the Albemarle County Historical Society and asked for help. Those folks down there are just terrific—volunteer labor. I asked them if they'd comb their sources for any information about Braxton Fleming. Seems he trod the course a wellborn young fellow typically trod in those days. He was tutored in Richmond, but then instead of going to the College of William and Mary he enrolled in the College of New Jersey, as did Aaron Burr and James Madison. We know it as Princeton. The Flemings were intelligent. All the surviving sons completed their studies and entered the professions, but Braxton was the only one to go north of the Mason-Dixon line to study. He spent some time in Philadelphia after graduating and apparently evidenced some gift for painting. Well, it was as hard then as now to make a living in the arts, so finally Braxton slunk home. He tried his hand at farming and did enough to survive, but his heart wasn't in it. He married well but not happily and he turned to drink. He was reputed to have been the handsomest man in central Virginia.”

“What a story!” Mrs. Hogendobber exclaimed.

Larry held up his hands as if to squelch applause. “But we don't know why he was killed. We only know how, and we have a strong suspect.”

“Dr. J., does anyone know what happened to him? You know, some kind of mention about him not coming home or something?”

“Yes.” He tilted his head and stared at the ceiling. “His wife declared that he took a gallon of whiskey and set out for Kentucky to make his fortune. May 1803. No more was ever heard from Braxton Fleming.”

Harry whistled. “He's our man.”

Larry stroked Mrs. Murphy under her chin. She rewarded him with important purrs. “You know, Fair and I were talking the other day, and he was telling me about retroviruses in cats and horses. He also mentioned a feline respiratory infection that can pass from mother to child and may erupt ten years later. Feline leukemia is rampant too. Well, Mrs. Murphy, you look healthy enough and I'm glad of it. I hadn't realized life was so precarious for cats.”

“Thank you,”
the cat responded.

“Larry, you must let us know if you find out anything else. What a detective you are.” Praise from Mrs. Hogendobber was high praise indeed.

“Oh, heck, the folks down at the historical society did most of the work.”

He picked up his mail, blew them a kiss, and left, eager to return to Jim Craig's diaries.

57

Diseases, like rivers, course through human history. What might have happened if Pericles had survived the plague in fifth-century
B
.
C
. Athens, or if the Europeans nearly two thousand years later had discovered that the bubonic plague was transmitted to humans by rat fleas?

Mrs. Murphy's ancestors saved medieval Europe, only to be condemned in a later century as accessories to withcraft, then hunted and killed.

And what might have been Russia's fate had Alexei, the heir to the throne, not been born with hemophilia, a blood disease passed on by Queen Victoria's offspring?

One never realizes the blessings of health until they are snatched away.

Medical science, since opening up a cadaver to prove there was such a thing as a circulatory system, became better at identifying diseases. The various forms of cancer no longer were lumped together as a wasting disease but categorized and named as cancer of the colon, leukemia, skin cancer, and so forth.

The great breakthrough came in 1796, when Sir William Jenner created the vaccine for smallpox.

After that, human hygiene improved, preventative medicine improved, and many could look forward to reaching their fourscore and ten years. Yet some diseases resisted human efforts, cancer being the outstanding example.

As Larry read his deceased partner's diagnoses and prognoses late into each night, he felt like a young man again.

He was pleased to read that Dr. Craig gruffly wrote down, “Young pup's damned good,” and he was excited as he delved again into the 1940s cases he'd seen himself.

Vividly he recalled the autopsy they performed on Z. Calvin Coles, Samson's grandfather, in which the old man's liver was grotesquely enlarged and fragile as tissue paper.

When he prepared to write alcoholism on the death certificate as the cause of death, Jim stayed his hand.

“Larry, put down heart failure.”

“But that's not what killed him.”

“In the end we all die because our hearts stop beating. Write down alcoholism and you break his wife's heart and his children's too.

Through his mentor, Larry had learned how to diplomatically handle unsavory problems such as venereal disease. A physician had to report this to the state health department. This both Dr. Craig and Dr. Johnson did. The individual was to warn former sexual partners of his or her infectious state. Many people couldn't do it, so Dr. Craig performed the service. Larry specialized in scaring the hell out of the victims in the hope that they would repair their ways.

From Dr. Craig Larry learned how to tell a patient he was dying, a chore that tore him to pieces. But Dr. Craig always said, “Larry, people die as they live. You must speak to each one in his or her own language.” Over the years he marveled at the courage and dignity of seemingly ordinary people as they faced death.

Dr. Craig never aspired to being other than what he was, a small-town practitioner. He was much like a parish priest who loves his flock and harbors no ambition to become a bishop or cardinal.

As Larry read on, he was surprised to learn of the termination of a pregnancy for a young Sweet Briar College junior, Marilyn Urquhart. Dr. Craig wrote: “Given the nervous excitability of the patient, I fear having a child out of wedlock would unhinge this young woman.”

There were secrets Dr. Craig kept even from his young partner. It was part of the old man's character to protect a lady, no matter what.

The clock read two thirty-five
A
.
M
. Larry's head had begun to nod. He forced his eyes open to read just a bit more, and then they popped wide open.

March 3, 1948. Wesley Randolph came in today with his father. Colonel Randolph seems to be suffering from the habitual ailment of his clan. He hates needles. The son does also, but the old man shamed Wesley into getting blood pulled.

My suspicion, quite strong, is that the colonel has developed leukemia. I sent the blood to U.V.A. for analysis, requesting that they use the new electron microscope.

March 5, 1948. Dr. Harvey Fenton asked me to meet him at the U.V.A. Hospital. When I arrived he asked me of my relation to Colonel Randolph and his son. I replied that relations were cordial.

Dr. Fenton didn't say anything to my reply. He merely pointed to the electron microscope. A blood sample, underneath, showed an avalanche of white cells.

“Leukemia,” I said. “Colonel Randolph or Wesley?”

“No,” Fenton replied. He slid another sample under the microscope. “Look here.”

I did, and a peculiar shape of cell was prominent. “I'm not familiar with this cell deformation,” I said.

“We're learning to identify this. It's a hereditary blood disease called sickle cell anemia. The red blood cells lack normal hemoglobin. Instead, they contain hemoglobin S and the cells become deformed—they look like a sickle. Because of the awkward shape, the hemoglobin S blood cells can't flow like normal cells and they clog up capillaries and blood vessels. Those traffic jams are extremely painful to the sufferer.

“But there's a less serious condition in which red blood cells have half normal hemoglobin and half hemoglobin S. Someone with this condition has the sickle cell trait, but he won't develop the disease.

“However, if he marries someone else with the trait, their children stand a twenty-five percent chance of inheriting the disease. The risk is very high.

“We don't know why, but sickle cells occur among blacks. Occasionally, but rarely, someone of Greek, Arab, or Indian descent will display the trait. The whole thing is baffling.

“You know all those jokes about Negroes being either lazy or having hookworm?—well, in many cases we're realizing they had sickle cell anemia.”

I didn't know what to say, as I have observed since childhood that the white race delights in casting harsh judgments on the black race. So, I looked at the blood sample again.

“Did the Negro from whom you obtained this blood die?”

“The man this blood was drawn from is alive but failing from cancer. He has the trait but not the disease.” Dr. Fenton paused. “This is Colonel Randolph's blood sample.”

Stunned, I blurted out, “What about Wesley?”

“He's safe, but he carries the trait.”

As I drove back home I knew I'd have to tell Colonel Randolph and Wesley the truth. The happy portion of the news was that the colonel was in no immediate danger. The unhappy portion of the news is obvious. I wonder what Larry will make of this? I want to take him down to Dr. Fenton to see for himself.

Larry pushed the book away.

Jim Craig was murdered March 6, 1948. He never got to tell Larry anything.

Legs wobbly and eyes bleary from so much reading, Larry Johnson stood up from his desk. He put on his hat and his Sherlock Holmes coat, as he called it. He hadn't paced the streets of Crozet like this since he tried to walk off a broken heart when Mim Urquhart spurned him for Big Jim Sanburne back in 1950.

As the sun rose, Larry felt his first obligation was to Warren Randolph. He called. Ansley answered, then put Warren on the phone. All the Randolphs were early risers. Larry offered to drive over to see Warren, but Warren said he'd come over to Larry's later that morning. It was no inconvenience.

What was inconvenient was that Larry Johnson was shot at 7:44 Saturday morning.

58

Harry, Miranda, Mim, Fair, Susan, Ned, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker watched with mounting grief as their dear friend's body was rolled away under a sheet on a gurney. Deputy Cooper said Larry's maid, Charmalene, had found him at nine, when she came to work. He was lying in the front hall. He must have opened the door to let in the killer and taken a few steps toward the kitchen, when he was shot in the back. Probably the man never knew what hit him, but this was cold comfort to his friends. The maid said the coffee he'd made was fresh. He'd made more than usual, so maybe he expected company. He was probably awaiting the arrival of his killer, who then ransacked his office. Sheriff Shaw climbed in the back of the ambulance and they sped away.

Tucker, nose to the ground, picked up the scent easily enough, but the killer wore crepe-soled shoes which left such a distinct rubber smell that the dog couldn't catch a clear human signature. Unfortunately, the ambulance workers trudged over the footprints, for the killer, no fool, tiptoed on the sidewalk and put a foot down hard only in the driveway, probably when disembarking from the car.

“What have you got, Tucker?”
Mrs. Murphy, worried, asked.

“Not enough. Not enough.”

“A trace of cologne?”

“No, just this damned crepe-sole smell. And a wet smell—sand.”

The tiger bent her own nose to the task.
“Is anyone else doing construction work? There's always sand involved in construction.”

“Sand on a lot of driveways too.”

“Tucker, we've got to stick close to Mom. She's done enough research to get her in trouble. Whoever the killer is, he's losing it. Humans don't kill one another in broad daylight unless it's passion or war. This was cold-blooded.”

“And hasty,”
Tucker added, still straining to place the rubber smell. She decided then and there to hate crepe-soled shoes.

Fair Haristeen read Larry's notes on a piece of blue-lined white paper as Cynthia Cooper held the paper with tweezers.

“Can you make some sense of this, Fair? You're a medical man.”

“Yes, it's a kind of medical shorthand for sickle cell anemia.”

“Don't only African Americans get that?”

“Mostly blacks are affected, but I don't think there's a hundred percent correspondence. It passes from generation to generation.”

Cooper asked, “How many generations back?”

Fair shrugged, “That I can't tell you, Coop. I'm just a vet, remember.”

“Thanks, Fair.”

“Is there a nut case on the loose in Crozet?”

“That depends on how you define nut case, but it's safe to say that if the killer feels anyone is closing in on the truth, he's going to strike.”