Claws and Effect (23 page)

46

Rick walked into his office just as the dispatcher told him to pick up line one.

“Sheriff Shaw.”

“Hi, Sam Mahanes. I dropped back by the hospital after Tally's breakfast and we do have records for cleaning out the infusion pumps. Joe Cramer must have been confused.”

“Where are you now?”

“Home.”

“Can anyone working a computer terminal at the hospital pull up a maintenance file?”

“No. If people could do that they could also get into medical records, which are strictly confidential. The only people accessing the maintenance file would be myself. Well, Ruth, of course, Hank Brevard, and now Bobby Minifee.”

“What about the men working with Bobby? Someone like Booty Weyman. Wouldn't Bobby teach him to use the computer? Anybody responsible for equipment, for shipping, would have to access the records.”

“I'll double-check with Bobby on Monday. I'm not sure. I always assumed Hank gave marching orders and that was that.”

“Maybe he did but it would have made his life a lot easier if someone could work the computer, otherwise he'd have been bugged on his days off, on vacation.” Rick paused. “And Jordan Ivanic. As your second-in-command he would have the maintenance records or know how to get them.”

Sam airily dismissed Jordan. “He could, I suppose, if he felt it germane but Jordan shows little interest in those matters. He likes to focus on ‘above the line' as he calls it. He feels that maintenance, orderlies, janitorial, and even nurses are ‘below the line.'”

“Speaking of nurses, are you on good terms with Tussie Logan?”

“Yes. She's one of our best.” A questioning note filtered through Sam's even voice.

“H-m-m, why don't you meet me in your office in about an hour? Jordan will be on duty this weekend. We can all go over this together.”

“Sheriff, an oversight about infusion pumps seems small beer compared to the murders.”

“On the contrary, Sam, this may be the key.” He paused. “Anything not quite on the tracks at Crozet Hospital interests me right now. And one other little thing. Joe and Laura Cramer have examined the invoices. The billing numbers aren't their billing numbers. These invoices are bogus, Sam.” Rick could hear a sharp intake of breath.

“In an hour. Eight-fifteen.”

47

“Coop, are you going to spend the night?” Harry innocently asked.

“Yes.” Cynthia checked her watch. It had been losing time.

“Seven.” Harry answered without being asked.

“I'd much rather the damn thing gained time than lost it. Well, it only cost me forty dollars so I suppose I could afford another one. There's no sense wearing good watches on my job.” She reset her watch, to synchronize with Harry's: seven o'clock.

“Those Navy Seals watches are pretty neat. They glow in the dark.”

“So do people who live near nuclear reactors,” Coop joked.

“Ha ha.” Harry stuck out her tongue. “Wouldn't it be helpful if you could read the dial in the dark? What if you're creeping up on a suspect or you have to coordinate times, synchronize in the dark?”

“Your fervid imagination just runs riot.”

“You should live here.”
Pewter yawned.

“Coop, there's two of us. I've got a .38 pistol. You've got your service revolver.”

“Harry, where is this leading?”

“To Crozet Hospital.”

“What?!”

“Now hear me out. Three people are dead. My stitches still itch. Joe baited Sam, Bruce, and Jordan. Right?”

“Right.”

“What we're looking for has to be in that basement. Has to be.”

“Rick Shaw and I crawled over that basement with a fine-tooth comb. We studied the blueprints. We tapped the walls to see if any are hollow. I don't see how we could have missed anything.”

“The floor,”
Murphy practically screeched in frustration.

“Pussycat, do you have a tummy ache?” Harry swung her legs off the sofa but Murphy jumped on her lap to save her the trip to the chair.

“I am fine. I am better than fine. What you want is underneath your feet.”

“Yeah!”
Pewter joined the chorus.

“It's so obvious once you know,”
Tucker barked.

“Pipe down.” Harry covered her ears and they shut up.

“Something provoked them.”

“Human stupidity,”
Murphy growled.

“Maybe you need a tiny shot of Pepto-Bismol.”

“Never.”
Mrs. Murphy shot off Harry's lap so fast she left tiny claw marks in Harry's thigh.

“Ouch. Murphy, behave yourself.”

“You ought to listen to us.”
Tucker stared at her mother, her liquid brown eyes soulful.

“Here's my idea. We take our guns. We take a good flashlight and we go back down there together. I even think we should take Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. They can sense and smell things we can't. Coop, you know Rick won't let me or the kids down there and what we need is there. Has to be.”

“You're repeating yourself.”

“This is our only chance. It's nighttime. There won't be as many people around. The loading dock will be closed. We'll have to contend with whoever is on night duty, assuming we can find him. Come on. You're a trained officer of the law. You can handle any situation.”

It was the appeal to Cooper's vanity that wore down her defenses. “It's one thing if I gamble with my life, it's another if I gamble with yours.”

“What about mine?”
an insulted Pewter yowled.

“God, Pewter, you can't be hungry again.” Harry returned her attention to Cynthia Cooper. “You gamble every day you put your foot out of bed. Life is a gamble. I really want to get whoever killed Larry Johnson. I can't say I'm motivated by Hank's death or Tussie's, not that I wished them dead, but Larry was my doctor, my friend, and a good man. I'm doing this for him.”

Cooper thought a long time. “If I take you, will you shut up? As in never mention this to Rick?”

“Scout's honor.”

Another long pause. “All right.”

“Oh brother.”
Tucker hid her eyes behind her paws.

48

Harry drove her old blue truck around to the back of the hospital. Everyone in town knew that truck but it was less obvious than Coop's squad car. She parked next to the back door. Had Harry parked out in the open parking lot even though she was at the rear of the hospital, the truck would have been more noticeable.

Cynthia checked her watch. It was seven-fifteen.

Harry double-checked hers. “Seven-fifteen.”

The young officer checked her .357, which she wore in a shoulder holster. It was a heavy, long-barreled revolver. She favored long barrels since she felt they gave her more accuracy, not that she looked forward to shooting anyone.

Harry shoved her .38 into the top of her jeans.

“Mom, you ought to get a holster,”
Tucker advised.

“She ought to get a new brain. She has no business being here.”
Pewter, a grumbler by nature, was nonetheless correct.

“We'd better be on red alert. We can't turn her back.”
Murphy's tail puffed up, then relaxed. She had a bad feeling about this.

Coop opened the back door as the animals scampered in. Harry noiselessly stepped through and Coop shut the door without clicking the latch. They walked down toward the boiler room, stopped, and listened. Far away they could hear the rattle of the elevator cables; the doors would open and close but they heard no one step out. Then the cables rattled more.

The animals listened intently. They, too, heard no one.

The two women stepped inside the boiler room, the large boiler gurgling and spewing for the night was cold. Coop checked the pressure gauge. She had respect for these old units. The trick was keeping the pressure in the middle of the gauge, which looked like a fat thermometer.

“This place was supposed to be on the Underground Railroad. The first thing we checked when Hank was killed was whether the wall was hollow behind what had been the old fireplace. Nothing,” Cynthia whispered.

“You checked all the walls?”

“In every single room.”

“Follow me,”
Mrs. Murphy commanded.

“Yeah, come on,”
Tucker seconded her best friend.

As the animals pushed and prodded the two humans, Sam Mahanes pulled into his reserved parking space right next to Jordan Ivanic's car. It was seven twenty-five. If the two of them were to meet with Rick Shaw at eight-fifteen then he'd better prepare Jordan, who, he felt, was a ninny. While Rick asked them about the invoices, Ivanic was capable of babbling about an anesthesiologist who nearly lost a patient. Those things happened in hospitals and Sam was determined that everyone stay on track.

Down in the basement, after a combination of nips, yowls, and pleading, Harry and Coop at last followed Mrs. Murphy and Tucker. Pewter walked along, too, but in a foul mood. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker were showing off too much for her and the only reason she accompanied everyone tonight was that her curiosity got the best of her.

In the distance the animals and humans heard a siren. Someone was being rushed to the emergency room. In the country that usually meant a heart attack, a car accident, or a farm accident.

“In here!”
The tiger's tail stood straight up.

Harry reached for the light but Coop put her hand over Harry's. “No.” She clicked on the flashlight, half closing the door behind her.

The cartons, neatly stacked, offered no clue to the treasure below.

Tucker ran to the wall, stood on her hind legs, and pressed the stone. Although low to the ground and short, the corgi was powerfully built with heavy bones. The flagstone opened with a sliding sound and thump.

“I'll be damned,” Cooper swore under her breath as she flashed the light into the entrance.

In the distance the elevator chains rattled, the doors opened and closed.

The humans didn't hear but the animals did.

“Human. Human off the elevator.”
Pewter's fur stood straight up.

“Quick. Down the hatch!”
Mrs. Murphy hopped onto the ladder, her paws making a soft sound on the wood as she hurried down into the hiding room.

“Murphy!” Harry whispered loudly.

Pewter, no fool, followed suit. Tucker, never one for ladders, turned around and backed down with encouragement from the cats.

By now the humans could hear a distant footfall heading their way.

“Come on.” Harry grabbed the top of the ladder, swung herself around, and slid down, her feet on the outside.

Cooper reached down, giving Harry the flashlight, but as she turned around to climb down she knocked over a carton. It tumbled down. She grabbed it, putting it back up, then dropped down the ladder.

“How do we close this damn thing?” Harry realized she might have trapped everyone.

Mrs. Murphy pressed a round red button on the side of the ladder. The top slowly closed.

“Murphy,” Harry whispered.

“Hide. Get in the back here and hide behind the machines,”
the tiger advised.

As the animals ran to the back, the humans heard the heavy footsteps overhead. Whoever was up there was bigger than they were. They moved to the back, crouching down behind pumps stacked on a table.

Cynthia put her finger to her lips, pulled out her gun. Harry did the same. Then Coop cut the flashlight.

The flagstone slid open.

“Can you smell him?”
Mrs. Murphy asked Tucker.

“Too far away. All I can smell is this dank cellar.”

The light was turned on. The humans crouched lower. One foot touched the top rung of the ladder, then stopped.

“Hey.” Bobby Minifee's voice sounded loud and clear. “What are you doing?”

They heard a crack and a thud and then Bobby was tossed down the ladder. He landed heavily, blood pouring from his head. The flagstone closed overhead.

Pewter and Murphy ran to Bobby. Coop crept forward. Overhead they heard something heavy being pulled over the sliding trapdoor.

Harry, too, quietly moved forward. The two women bent over the crumpled young man. Harry took his pulse. Coop opened his eye.

“His pulse is strong,” Harry whispered.

Coop looked around for towels, an old shirt, anything. “We've got to wrap his head up. See if you can find anything.”

“Here.” She handed Coop a smock, unaware that it had been Tussie Logan's.

Coop tore it into strips, wrapping Bobby's head as best she could. “Let's get him off this cold floor.”

Harry cleared off a table and with effort they put him on top of it.

As the humans tended to Bobby, Mrs. Murphy considered their options.
“Coop and Mom are armed. That's cold comfort.”

“I'd rather have them armed than unarmed,”
Pewter sensibly replied.

“We'd better find a way out of here. For all we know, he's sitting up there trying to figure out how to kill us all.”

“There's something over the trapdoor but since it's a sliding door, we could try.”
Pewter didn't like the cold, damp hole.

“Try what? To open the door?”
Tucker asked.

“Yeah, press the button and see what happens.”
Pewter reached out with her paw.

“Pewter, no,”
Murphy ordered.
“You don't know what's sitting on the trapdoor. You don't know what will fall down. Hospitals have all kinds of stuff like sulfuric acid. Whatever he put up there he figured would either hold us or hurt us. He's a quick thinker. Remember Larry Johnson.”

“And he's merciless. Remember Hank Brevard and Tussie Logan,”
Tucker thoughtfully added.

“My hunch is, he'll come back. He doesn't know who's down here but he suspects something. And he has to come back to kill Bobby. He heard the carton drop. I know he did. He was moving up faster than the humans could hear.”
Mrs. Murphy's tail twitched back and forth. She was agitated.

“I don't fancy being a duck in a shooting gallery,”
Pewter wailed.

“Get a grip,”
Tucker growled.

“I'm as tough as you are. I'm expressing my feelings, that's all.”

“Express them once we're out of this mess.”
Mrs. Murphy prowled along the walls.
“Pewter, take that wall. Tucker, the back. Listen for anything. If this was part of the Underground Railroad then there has to be a tunnel off this room. They had to get the slaves out of here somehow.”

“Why couldn't they take them out in the middle of the night? Out the back door?”
Pewter did, however, go to the wall to listen.

“If everyone is still telling stories about the Underground Railroad, this place was closely watched. Since no one was ever caught, I believe they had tunnels or at least one tunnel.”
Murphy strained to hear anything in the walls.

“Hey.”
Pewter's green eyes glittered.
“Rats.”

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker trotted over, putting their ears to the wall. They could hear the claws click as the rats moved about; occasionally they'd catch a snippet of conversation.

“Now, how do we get in?”
Tucker sniffed the floor, moving along the wall.
“Nothing but mildew.”

“Pewter, you check the ceiling, I'll study the wall.”
Mrs. Murphy slowly walked along the wall.

“Why am I checking the ceiling?”
Pewter rankled at taking orders and she'd been taking too many, in her mind.

“Maybe the way they got out was to crawl between the ceiling and the floorboards upstairs.”

“Murphy,”
Tucker said,
“the rats sound lower than that.”

“We've got to try everything.”
Murphy walked the length of the wall, then returned, stopping at a large stone at the base.
“Tucker, Pewter, let's push. This might be it.”

They grunted and groaned, feeling the stone budge.

“Harry!”
Tucker barked.

Harry turned from Bobby to see her three friends pushing the stone. She walked over, knelt down, putting her own shoulder to the large stone. Sure enough it rolled in. “Coop!”

Cooper turned her flashlight into the small dark cavern and a narrow tunnel appeared, rats scurrying in all directions. One would have to walk hunched over but it could be done. “It
was
part of the Underground Railroad!”

“He's back!”
Tucker barked as she heard the heavy burden being slowly slid off the trapdoor.

“He knows we're here now,”
Murphy warned after Tucker barked.

Harry heard it, too. She ran back and cut the lights. “Let's go.” She ducked down and squeezed into the tunnel, crawling on all fours. Cooper followed as the animals ran past them. The two women rolled the stone back in place, then stood up, bending over to keep from bumping their heads.

“Bobby, we left Bobby.” Harry's face bled white.

“Harry, we'll have to leave him to God. Let's hope whoever this is comes after us first. He had to have heard Tucker.”

“Sorry,”
Tucker whimpered.

“No time for that,”
Mrs. Murphy crisply meowed.
“We've got to go wherever this leads and hope we make it.”
She shot ahead followed by Pewter, who was feeling claustrophobic.

The humans ran along as fast as they could, flashlight bobbling. Harry noticed scratchings along the wall. She reached for Cooper's hand, halting her for a moment. She took the flashlight, turning it on the wall. It read:
Bappy Crewes, age 26m 1853.
They ran along knowing that Bappy, buried in the wall, never found freedom. Right now they hoped that they would.

“He's rolling the stone.”
Tucker could hear behind them.

“Nip at their heels, Tucker. Make them go faster. We don't know what's at the end of this and it might take us a little time to figure it out.”

“Oh, great,”
Pewter moaned when Murphy said that.

“Your eyes are the best. Run ahead. Maybe you can figure it out,”
Tucker told the cats.

The two cats sped away as the light dimmed. The tunnel turned hard right. The rats cursed them. They skidded, turned right, then finally reached the end of the tunnel. They waited a moment while their eyes adjusted. They could see the flashlight shining on the wall where the tunnel turned right.

“We have to go up. There's no other way,”
Pewter observed.

“Oh, thank the Great Cat in the Sky.”
Murphy breathed a prayer. A ladder made from six-inch tree trunks lay on its side.
“Maybe we can make it.”

Harry and Cooper now turned right; they were running harder now because whoever was behind them was firing into the dark.

Harry saw the ladder since Murphy was helpfully sitting on it. The two women hoisted it up. Cooper turned to train her gun on the turn in the tunnel.