Charnel House (12 page)

The banister post was missing its statuette. The bear-lady had gone
.

Outside the hospital, the vermin crew from the sanitation department were trying to scare the gray birds off with blank gunshots. I recognized one of them, Innocenti, and I went across to ask him how they were getting on.

Innocenti jerked a disgusted thumb at the serried ranks of silent birds still perched on the rooftops, undisturbed by the crackling racket of gunfire.

“I never seen birds like 'em. They just sits there. You shout and they sits. You yell and they sits. We sent Henriques up on the roof with a clapper, and what do they do, sits. Maybe they're hard of hearing. Maybe they don't give a damn. They sits, and they don't even shits.”

“Have you found out what they are?” I asked him.

Innocenti shrugged. “Pigeons, ravens, ducks, who knows from birds? I ain't no ornithologist.”

“Maybe they have some special characteristic.”

“Sure. They're so fuckin' bone idle they won't even fly away.”

“No, but maybe they're a special type of bird.”

Innocenti was unimpressed. “Listen, Mr. Hyatt, they could be fuckin' ostriches for all I care. All I know is that I have to get 'em off the roof, and
until
I get 'em off the roof, I have to stay here and miss my dinner. Do you know what's for dinner?”

I gave him a friendly wave of my hand and walked across to the hospital entrance.

“Osso bucco!”
he yelled after me. “That's what's for dinner!”

I went into the hospital and walked straight across the Italian-tile foyer to the elevators. The elegant stainless-steel clock on the wall said seven o'clock. It was four hours now since I'd telephoned Dr. Jarvis from the booth on the corner of Mission and Pilarcitos. Four hours since the ambulance crew had arrived to collect Seymour Wallis's distended body under a green blanket that any casual bystander could have seen was bulging grossly, bulging far too much for a natural corpse. Four hours since Dr. Jarvis and Dr. Crane had been carrying out a detailed post mortem.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor, and walked along the corridor to James Jarvis's office. I let myself in, and raided his desk for his gin bottle and his icebox for his tonic. Then I sat back and took a stiff, refreshing drink, and by Saint Anthony and Saint Theresa, I needed it.

I'd been trying all afternoon to locate Jane. I'd called every mutual friend and acquaintance I could think of, until I'd finally run out of dimes and energy. I'd revivified myself on a McDonald's cheeseburger and a cup of black coffee, and then made my way up to Elmwood. I felt helpless, lost, frustrated, and frightened.

I was just pouring my second gin-and-tonic when Dr. Jarvis came in, and flung his coat across his chair.

“Hi,” he said, a little tersely.

I lifted my glass. “I made myself at home. I hope you don't mind.”

“Why should I? Fix me one while you're at it,” he asked.

I clunked ice into another glass. “Did you finish Wallis's postmortem?” I asked.

He sat down heavily, and rubbed his face with his hand. “Oh, sure, we finished the postmortem.”

“And?”

He looked up through his fingers, his eyes were red with fatigue and concentration. “You really want to know? You really want to get involved in this thing? You don't have to, you know. You're only a sanitation officer.”

“Well, maybe I am, but I'm involved already. Come on, Jim, Dan Machin and Bryan Corder were friends of mine. And now Seymour Wallis. I feel responsible.”

Dr. Jarvis reached in his pocket for his cigarettes. He lit one unsteadily, and then tossed the pack across to me. I left it lying there. Before I sat back and relaxed, I wanted to know what was going on.

He sighed, and looked up at the ceiling, as if there was a kind of teleprompt up there that might give him a clue what to say. “We tried every possibility. I mean, everything. But that bodily distension was caused by one factor, and one factor only, and no matter what we hypothesized, we always came back to the same conclusion.”

I sipped gin. I didn't interrupt. He was going to tell me, no matter what.

“I guess the cause of death will officially go down as blood disorder. That's a kind of a white lie, but it's also completely true. Seymour Wallis
was
suffering from a severe blood disorder. His blood wasn't lacking in red corpuscles, and it didn't show any signs of disease or anemia. But the simple fact was that he had too much of it.”

“Too
much
of it?”

He nodded. “The normal human being has nine pints of blood circulating through his body. We emptied the blood from Seymour Wallis's body and measured it. His arteries and veins and capillaries were swollen because he had twenty-two pints of blood in him.”

I could hardly believe it.
“Twenty-two pints?”

Dr. Jarvis blew out smoke. “I know it sounds crazy, but that's the way it is. Believe me, if I thought I could sweep this whole business under the rug, I'd empty that extra blood down the sink.”

He sat there for a while, staring at his untidy desk. I guessed that with all the weird ramifications of Seymour Wallis and his malevolent house, that he hadn't had much time for his paperwork.

“Have the police been around?” I asked.

“They've been informed.”

“And what did they say?”

“They're waiting for the postmortem. The trouble is, I don't know what to tell them.”

I finished my drink. “Why not? Just tell them he died of natural causes.”

Dr. Jarvis grunted sardonically. “Natural causes? With nearly three gallons of blood in him? And, anyway, it's worse than that.”

“Worse?”

He didn't look my way, but I could tell how confused and anxious he was. “We analyzed the blood, of course, and put it through the centrifuge. Dr. Crane is one of the finest pathologists in the business. At least, he gets paid as if he is. He says that without a shadow of a doubt, the blood that we found inside Seymour Wallis was not human.”

There was a pause. Dr. Jarvis lit another cigarette from the butt of the first.

“There isn't any question that all twenty-two pints were the blood of some species of dog. Whatever happened to Seymour Wallis, the blood that he died with wasn't his own.”

FOUR

Jane called. She was sorry she hadn't been around at lunchtime and she hoped I hadn't been anxious. I glanced across at Dr. Jarvis and said, “Anxious? Do you know what's happened?”

“I saw it on television. Seymour Wallis died.”

“Well, it's worse than that. He died with more blood in his system than Sam Peckinpah gets through in a whole movie. Twenty-two pints. And what's more, Jim here says the blood wasn't even his own. They analyzed it and it turned out to be some kind of dog's blood.”

“You're kidding.”

“Jane, if you think I'm in a mood for kidding—”

“I didn't mean that,” she said quickly. “What I meant was, it all ties in.”

“Ties in? Ties in with what?”

“That's what I've been trying to tell you,” she said. “I went out at lunchtime to Sausalito. You know all that Indian stuff I was telling you about? Well, I have friends out at Sausalito who know quite a few Indians, and they're all into Indian culture. They'd heard about this demon they call the First One to Use Words for Force, and they think I ought to go up to Round Valley and talk to one of the medicine men.”

I sighed and said nothing. Jane asked, “John? Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” I said. “I heard you.”

“But you don't think it's a good idea?”

“Just wait a moment.”

I put my hand over the receiver and said to Jim Jarvis, “Jane is convinced that everything that's been happening round at Seymour Wallis's house has been connected with some Red Indian legend. Now she wants to talk to some medicine man upstate. What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe it's a good idea. Any theory is better than no theory.”

I took my hand off the phone. “Okay, Jane. Dr. Jarvis says let's try it.”

“You couldn't have stopped me anyway,” she answered tartly.

“Jane,” I said, irritated, “I spent the whole damned afternoon trying to find out where you were. We've had two people injured and one man dead. Right now, the least advisable thing for any of us to do is to go wandering off on our own.”

“I didn't know you cared,” retorted Jane.

“You know damned well I do.”

“Well, if you care that much, you'd better come to Round Valley with me. I'm borrowing Bill Thorogood's car.”

I put down the phone. At least it was Saturday tomorrow, and I wouldn't have to keep on inventing excuses for my boss; Douglas P. Sharp. I said to Dr. Jarvis, “It looks like I've roped myself in. I just hope it's worthwhile.”

He crushed out his second cigarette and shrugged. “There are times when you come up against things in medicine that make you feel excited. Real challenges, like difficult cases of poisoning, or unusual compound fractures. At times like that, you feel everything about being a doctor is worthwhile. The hospital politics, the squabbles over financial allocations, the whole bit.”

He looked up, and added, “There are other times, though, like now, when you just don't understand what the hell is happening, and you're powerless. I can spend the rest of the day
schlepping
around from Dan Machin to Bryan Corder to Seymour Wallis, and I won't be able to do a damned thing to help any of them.”

He reached for the cigarettes. “In other words, John, go on up to Round Valley and consider yourself lucky that you're doing
something
. Because I can't.”

I looked at him for a while. “I didn't know doctors got down in the dumps. I thought that only happened on television.”

He coughed. “And
I
thought that what's happening right now only happened in nightmares.”

Saturday morning was clean and clear and we sped across the Golden Gate with the ocean sparkling beneath us, the sun flickering through the bridge's wires and uprights in a bright stroboscopic blur. Jane sat back in her seat, dressed in a red silk blouse and white Levis, with huge sunglasses perched on her nose and a red scarf around her hair. Bill Thorogood was lucky enough to own a white Jaguar XJ 12, and profligate enough to lend it out, so I sat behind the wheel and pretended I was some minor movie star on a day trip to someplace private and expensive, instead of a sanitation official on a one-hundred-and-sixty-mile flog up to Round Valley.

We burned up 101 through Marin and Sonoma Counties, through Cloverdale, Preston, and Hopland, and we stopped at Ukiah for lunch, with the sun high and brassy up in the sky and the wind blowing off Lake Mendocino. Sitting on a low breezeblock wall outside a roadside diner, we ate chiliburgers and watched as a father tried to cram his five kids into the back of his station wagon, along with fishing tackle, inflatable rafts, and pup tents. Every time he managed to get all of the gear inside, one of the kids would climb out, and then he'd have to get around to the back of the wagon again and rearrange everything.

“The futility of life,” remarked Jane. “As fast as you do something, it gets itself undone again.”

“I don't think that life's futile.”

Jane swallowed Coca-Cola from the can. “You don't think that someone's using us as playthings? Like now?”

“I don't know. I think it's more serious than that. But I believe we have to try to fight it, whatever it is.”

She reached over and touched my hand. “That's what I like about you, John. You're always ready to fight.”

We climbed back in the car and I drove it out of the parking lot with a squeal of tires. Then we headed north again, speeding on 101 until we reached Longvale, then turning off into the hills to Dos Rios and the Eel River, and up into Round Valley Reservation.

The medicine man we had arranged to see was George Thousand Names. All that Jane knew about him was that he was one of the oldest and most respected of southwestern medicine men, and that he spent more time in San Francisco and Los Angeles than he did upstate, working for Indian investment corporations and protecting Indian rights. Right now, though, he was back home at Round Valley with his family, and anybody that wanted to consult him had to make the trek.

The Jaguar bounced slowly across the grass and rutted tracks that led up the valley between tall pines and undulating hills to George Thousand Names' home. He kept himself apart from most of the trailers and houses where the Round Valley Indians lived, up on a woodsy ridge overlooking the Eel River. As we made our way up the bumpy trail, his chalet-style house gradually came into view, a split-level architect-designed home with a balcony and wide sliding windows.

“Some tepee,” remarked Jane.

I stopped the Jaguar at the foot of the wooden stairs that led up to the house. Then I climbed out and squinted against the sun, looking for any signs of life. I blew the car horn a couple of times, and then one of the sliding windows opened and a small man in a plaid shirt and well-pressed slacks came out on to the balcony.

“Excuse me,” I called. “Are you Mr. Thousand Names?”

“I'm George Thousand Names. Who are you?”

“John Hyatt. And this is Jane Torresino. Ms. Torresino made an appointment with you?”

“I'm not a dentist,” said George Thousand Names. “You don't have to make appointments. But I remember. Come on up.”

We climbed the stairs that led up to the balcony, and George Thousand Names came up and shook hands. Up here, he looked even smaller, a delicate and diminutive old man with a face as creased and crinkled as a cabbage leaf. He stood very straight, though, and he had an inner dignity about him that immediately made me feel he was someone extremely special. Around his neck hung amulets and necklaces that looked ancient and potent and mysterious, but he wore them as naturally as if they were nothing more than decoration. On his wrist was a Cartier wristwatch, solid gold, with a tiger's-eye face.