Bryson City Secrets: Even More Tales of a Small-Town Doctor in the Smoky Mountains (2 page)

Prologue

I
had just arrived home after a particularly difficult Friday at work where nothing seemed to go right. I was looking forward to a quiet evening with Barb, my soul mate and spouse of twenty-nine years, and I didn't like to bring home any negative emotional baggage to the woman I had known since our kindergarten days and had married when we were both twenty-one.

I had learned over the years of my career as a family physician to “dump” while traveling home from the office or hospital each evening any anger, frustration, and irritation that had collected during the day. I always wanted to arrive home with a good attitude when I began an evening with my family — which at this point in our family life meant Barb. We had been in the empty nest for two years and were enjoying every moment.

While working together to prepare the evening meal, we talked about the day. Even though I had left behind the day's frustration, I knew it was important to Barb that I share what had happened — and I enjoyed hearing about her day. These times together gave us the opportunity to debrief. It was a habit we developed when she put me through medical school in New Orleans more than twenty-five years before.

While we were doing the dishes that night, the phone rang. Barb pushed on the speakerphone with a soapy finger. “Hello,” she cheerfully greeted the caller.

“Mom?” I heard the voice of our twenty-four-year-old daughter, Kate.

“Hi, honey.” I could hear the smile in Barb's voice. Her winsome and positive attitude usually won her instant friendship with strangers.

Kate's voice, however, was somber and heavy. It didn't have the light and merry cadence she had inherited from her mother and usually displayed. “Mom, I need to tell both you and Dad something before I lose my courage, so can you get Dad on the line?”

Barb's voice became serious and concerned. “Are you OK, honey?”

I was immediately on the alert. Kate was an intern at the White House in Washington, D.C. The semester before graduating from Samford University in 2002 with a bachelor of arts degree in English, she had been selected to serve in the speech-writing office for the president of the United States. For a young woman with cerebral palsy — one who was never supposed to walk or talk — she did both very well.

Because she lived in Washington, D.C., we were concerned about her safety and were always delighted to hear from her. But when I heard Kate's voice and my wife's concerned question, I turned to face the phone.

“I'm fine physically. Just get Dad on the line!” I immediately looked at Barb with alarm. Kate's voice sounded so desperate — it had an almost snappish quality. My eyes met Barb's, and I walked over to her. I spoke toward the phone so Kate could hear me. “Hi, honey. I'm here. Mom's got you on speakerphone. What's up?”

There was a
very
pregnant pause — which indicated to me that Kate was upset about something. As I waited, I could hear her sniffle. Then she answered softly. “Three weeks ago, I had a horrible thought . . .”

Barb and I slowly sat down at the table in our breakfast nook, with its marvelous view of the Colorado Front Range and of Pike's Peak softening in the cool evening's twilight. As I dried my hands, I said, “Tell me about it, precious.”

Kate paused again. “. . . about Mickey Thompson.”

I felt my heart skip a beat. I always tried to keep Mickey as far from my mind as possible — for just about every time I did think of him, I was overcome with emotion.

Almost uncontrollably, my memories rushed back in time, to eighteen years earlier when we still lived in Bryson City. How could something so far in our past still cause so much pain? I wondered, as I felt my heart pounding in my chest.

I took a deep breath. “Tell us about it, Katel.” Katel was one of my nicknames for Kate. It came from seeing “Kate L.” on a label on her backpack
the first day she went to school.

I reached out and took Barb's hand.

As Kate continued, I could feel a cold clammy sadness penetrating into the deep recesses of my soul. Barb squeezed my hand as her eyes filled with tears.

Kate burst into fresh tears. “Daddy, tell me it's just a bad dream. Tell me it didn't happen,” she pleaded. “Can you have nightmares during the day?” Kate implored.

My mind went blank. My hands were trembling.

Yes, I thought to myself, you can have a nightmare during the day.

And another one had just begun for the Larimores.

part one

chapter one

BLOODY MESS

H
ey, Walt.”

I recognized Rick's voice on the other end of the line. Rick Pyer-itz and I were both family physicians and had practiced together for four years. Before moving to Bryson City in 1981, we had been family medicine residents together at Duke University Medical Center.

“What's up?” I asked him.

“I need some help, partner. I'm over in the ER sewing up a woman who stabbed herself several times. When the EMTs brought her in, she was hysterical, so I had to sedate her pretty heavily. Anyway, Don and Billy said she apparently murdered her husband in their home and then tried to do herself in. Since I'm going to be here awhile, would you be willing to go to the crime scene and do the medical examiner's report?”

My heart began to beat a bit more quickly, as it always did when I received a call from the emergency room or a summons to the scene of a crime, and I suspected that the suspense of the unknown — of the surprises one might find waiting — would keep on giving me a sense of nervousness and trepidation every time a call came. Nevertheless, I tried to sound cool, calm, and collected. It's a skill doctors are taught early in their training. “Be glad to help, Rick. Where's the house?”

“It's up a hollow just off Deep Creek. Don and Billy are taking the ambulance back over there. They say you can follow them.”

“Let me throw on some scrubs. Five minutes?”

“I'll have them wait in their unit at the end of your driveway.”

“Sounds good, Rick.”

I hung up the phone and walked to our bedroom to put on my scrubs. I smiled as I looked at the bedroom furniture I had given to Barb, my wife, for our tenth wedding anniversary over a year earlier. Right out of medical school in Durham, North Carolina, we had moved to this quaint little house in this charming village with our then nearly three-year-old daughter, Kate. Bryson City is the county seat of Swain County, in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains. The county is spread over 550 square miles, yet in 1985 it only had about 8,000 residents. Less than a thousand people lived in the town. The population was small because the federal government owned 86 percent of the land — and much of it was wilderness.

Since pathology-trained coroners lived only in the larger towns, the non-pathologist doctors in the rural areas often became certified as coroners. We were not expected to do autopsies — only pathologists were trained to perform these — but we were expected to perform all of the non-autopsy responsibilities required of a medical examiner.

Having obtained my training as a coroner while still in training at Duke, I knew the basics of determining the time and suspected cause of death, gathering medical evidence, and filling out the copious triplicate forms required by the state authorities. Not long after receiving the fancy certificate of competence from the state of North Carolina, I was required to put my new forensic skills to work. Through the subsequent years as a medical examiner, the work had become more routine, but never boring.

After putting on my scrubs, I left our house, which was located across the street from the Swain County General Hospital, and jumped into our aging Toyota Corolla. Billy was in the driver's seat of the ambulance as I pulled up to the end of the driveway. He smiled and waved as he gunned the accelerator and disappeared behind the hospital and down the backside of Hospital Hill.

I had no idea what awaited me at the murder scene, and I tried not to think about it as I followed the Swain County ambulance.

Because medical examiners were required to gather medical evidence for all deaths that occurred outside the hospital, during my first four years in practice I was called on as a coroner in dozens of cases. Nevertheless, I still found my stomach in knots whenever I approached the scene of a crime or unexpected death.

After observing the scene, determining the cause of death was usually straightforward, at least from a medical perspective. But every instance continued to remind me of the finality of death, helping me realize again that death almost always comes unexpectedly, without warning or opportunity for preparation. An even more troublesome aspect of my work as an ME, at least when exploring a murder scene, is that it was an unnerving reminder of people's inhumanity to people — of the intrinsic evil that can potentially bubble out of any person's heart, even in an idyllic town I had come to love and call home.

I followed the ambulance up the narrow dirt road into a small mountain hollow. It was a typical winter day in the Smok-ies — gray, overcast, damp, dreary, and cold. Most who visit the Smokies in the spring and fall revel in its temperate and lush glory. But most aren't aware of how stiflingly hot and steamy the summers can be — and virtually none know how dismal a Smoky Mountain winter can be. This day would prove to be far more dismal than most.

As we reached the end of the road, I saw several sheriff vehicles in a small field in front of a diminutive white farmhouse surrounded with bright yellow crime scene tape. After parking and hopping out of the cab, Billy walked over and extended his hand. “Howdy, Doc.”

“Greetings, Billy.”

As Don walked up from behind the ambulance I nodded at him. “It's a mess in thar, Doc,” Don explained.

“What happened?”

“On first look, it seems the woman stabbed her husband. She used a big ole butcher knife. Pretty much got him straight in the heart, at least judgin' from all the blood on his chest and the floor. Then she turned the knife on herself.”

“Cut her wrists?” I asked, assuming a common method of suicide.

“Nope,” Billy responded. “First she cut her arm a couple of times, and then she tried to stab herself in the chest a couple a times. When we got here, she was out like a light. Don't know if she fainted or was in shock. But her vitals were good. We got her stabilized and then transferred her up to the hospital.”

We began to walk to the house. “Was she awake?”

“Not at first,” Don explained. “I got the bleeding stopped with compression dressings. Her heart and lungs seemed fine, so I think her chest wounds are superficial. I got an IV started, and then we put her in the unit, and Billy aimed our nose toward the hospital. Once we were underway, I used some smelling salts on her, and she woke up real quick like.”

“Were you able to talk to her?”

“Nope. She was hysterical — absolutely hysterical. Seemed real scared and tried to fight me. I had to restrain her for the entire trip to the hospital. Then when we got there, Dr. Pyeritz had to give her a real strong IV sedative to calm her down. When we left the ER, she was deep asleep, and he was sewin' her up.”

“Just doesn't make sense to me,” I commented.

“What doesn't?” asked Billy, as we ducked under the crime scene tape.

“Folks usually don't stab their chest to commit suicide. Did she leave a note?”

“Don't know, Doc. We just stabilized
her and transported her as soon as we could.”

We walked up the steps to the porch as the sheriff walked out the front door to greet me. “It's a strange one, Doc,” he said as we shook hands. “The neighbor man told one of our deputies that this here family had the ideal marriage. Good churchgoin' folks. Never a cross word, at least publicly. But you never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you?”

“What've you put together so far, Sheriff?”

“Apparently the woman was gettin' dinner ready. Her husband came in the back door, and they musta had a bit of a scuffle. There's some broke plates on the floor, and the kitchen table was pushed over a bit. Anyway, she got him in the chest with a big knife she was usin' to cut vegetables. Looks like he died on the spot. Then she tried to stab herself. Had cuts on her forearm and her chest. Her left hand was all bloody. The butcher knife was by her side, even though she was fainted out on the floor. That's where we found her — still out cold.”