Rude Awakening (3 page)

I stopped my ruminating and got back to my report, with my last thought on Dalton, ‘I hope the boy gets laid.'

Charlie Smith liked his new job as police chief of Longbranch, Oklahoma. It beat the hell out of being a homicide detective on the Oklahoma City force. Oklahoma City might not be the biggest city in the country – hell, in the southwest – but it did have its fair share of killings, and although most of them were smoking-gun killings, Charlie didn't believe in misdemeanor murder like a lot of his fellow officers. In fact, Charlie decided to leave the big city force before he got jaded, which was something he saw a lot in his fellow detectives. He wanted to move somewhere where not only was murder a rare thing, but it was also an important thing; a thing that made people sit up and take notice, cry on their neighbor's shoulder and demand justice, no matter who was the victim or the perpetrator.

So he was glad he'd moved to Longbranch, and so were Beth, his wife, and their two girls, Courtney, age nine, and Isabel, age six. The girls loved their new schools and their new teachers – where there had been thirty-three to a class in Oklahoma City, here in Longbranch it was more like 20/1, odds very much in his girls' favor. And Beth, well, Beth just loved it. She'd joined the Methodist Church, something she hadn't been part of since she was a kid, and had just about talked him into at least going. Charlie thought he might talk to the pastor first; he had a few thousand questions on the subject before he let himself get too involved. But best of all, now they were talking about maybe having another kid: that boy Charlie'd been wanting. Well, practice makes perfect, he thought with a grin.

Charlie Smith had what his wife – and other women, truth be known – called a ‘shit-eating grin', or, to put it more delicately, a ‘cat-ate-the-canary' kind of smile. His teeth were a bit crooked, which somehow added to the charm started by his light brown, almost blond hair, shiny green eyes and tall, lanky, ‘I'm a cowboy' body and stride.

He pulled up to the pristine little three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car-garage house in the Meadowbrook Subdivision. White brick with gray-blue trim, the house had a wide, natural wood front door with beveled glass inlay. The little walkway up to the door had two blue pots with an abundance of pansies, and some ivy plants hanging from the little front porch. The yard, he'd noticed, had already been mowed and it wasn't even April yet. The hedges were trimmed, and the grass next to the driveway had a really nice, enviable one-and-a-half-inch straight edge. Somebody knew his fertilizer, Charlie thought.

He normally wouldn't be on a call like this himself, but his boys (and one woman – he wouldn't say girl, no way, no how) were spread pretty thin, and this looked like a pretty cut and dried accident, from the phone-in. He was wearing his uniform shirt over a pair of blue jeans, which he could do since he was the chief. He liked that perk a lot.

The ME's van was already there and the pretty front door was partially open. Charlie rapped on the wood and pushed the door open further, loudly calling out, ‘Chief of Police!'

‘Back here!' came an answer from a voice he recognized as Dr Rose Church, who his friend Sheriff Milt Kovak referred to as ‘the new ME', or Medical Examiner, but who Charlie just thought of as ‘the ME' because he'd never met the old one.

Charlie followed the voice back to the master bedroom. A large room, he noted, with a four-poster king-sized bed, big-ass dresser and mirror and a matching chest of drawers. There was even a lounge chair in a corner, just like he used to see in those old 1940s movies his mother liked to watch all the time. Something with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, something like that.

He could see Dr Church's rather large rump sticking out of the bathroom door, but the sobbing he heard coming from the bed stopped him short. The bedclothes were rumpled and a lady sat on the other side of the bed from where Charlie stood. She was facing the bathroom door. She was wearing nightclothes and a bathrobe, and her curly blonde hair was mussed.

‘Ma'am?' he said and the lady turned around. It was then that he saw the bathrobe was draped over one arm, which was in a cast and sling. She was a pretty lady, maybe late twenties, early thirties, with what looked to Charlie like natural blonde hair (he didn't see any roots so it had to be, he thought), big, wet blue eyes and one of those mouths that instantly give men dirty thoughts from just looking at.

‘Yes, Sir?' she said. He could tell right away that she was a local. There was just a way of talking in this county that pegged him as city-bred the moment he opened his mouth.

‘I'm so sorry about your loss.' Charlie went and sat down on the bed next to her, but as far away as the king-sized mattress would let him. ‘Is it OK if I ask you some questions?'

The young woman nodded her head and sniffed.

‘Your name is Carolina Holcomb?' he asked, and she nodded her head. ‘And the deceased is your husband, Kevin Holcomb?'

Her face crumpled up and a sob broke out of her mouth, but she managed to nod her head.

‘Can you tell me what happened here, Miz Holcomb?'

Carolina Holcomb nodded her head once again, took a deep breath and let it out. ‘I was in bed 'cause of my arm . . .' she said, indicating the sling. ‘I was on pain pills.'

‘Can I ask what happened to your arm?' Charlie asked.

‘I was in a car wreck yesterday with my girlfriend. We were going shopping.'

Charlie nodded. ‘And?'

‘You mean today? With Kevin?' she asked, her pretty face scrunching up again as the tears started up.

‘Yes, Ma'am. I'm so sorry to be bothering you about this right now, but I gotta.'

She sniffled and nodded her head. Charlie reached across her to a box of Kleenex on the bedside table, handing her one.

She took the offered tissue and thanked him, then sighed. ‘Anyway, I was taking a nap. These pain pills . . . You know?'

Charlie nodded in agreement.

‘When I woke up, I didn't see Kevin or hear him. He had the day off to look after me. So I called for him 'cause I was thirsty . . .' She gulped in air. ‘He didn't answer. And I had to go to the bathroom. The door was closed . . .'

She leaned against Charlie and began sobbing all over again.

Dr Church came out of the bathroom, and Charlie gently moved the girl off his shoulder and got up.

‘What‘ja got, Doc?' he asked.

She shook her head, then nodded for him to follow her back into the bathroom. As subdivision bathrooms go, it was pretty big, but it was still a stretch for Charlie, Dr Church, Dr Church's assistant and the prone body of Kevin Holcomb.

Dr Church nodded to a bottle of ammonia on top of the toilet and then to a bottle of bleach knocked over on the floor next to the toilet. ‘Looks like the poor bastard was trying to clean the bathroom.'

‘Well, it's something a man should never do,' Charlie agreed, ‘but I never thought of it as a capital offense.'

Dr Church didn't laugh. Charlie knew that it was one of the reasons Milt didn't like her much.

‘You mix ammonia and bleach together without proper ventilation and it turns into a lethal gas.' She pointed at the window. ‘He didn't even bother to open a window or turn on the vent in here. Not that that would do much good. Most of the vents they put in these houses just move the air around in a circle.'

‘No shit?' Charlie said, staring at the vent in the bathroom ceiling. He'd have to check into that when he got home.

‘So mixing that stuff killed him, huh?' Charlie asked.

‘Dead as a skunk in the middle of the road,' answered Dr Church.

Charlie looked at her, and one corner of her mouth moved a fraction upward. Damn, he thought, I think she made a joke!

‘So, you declaring this an accident?' he asked her.

Dr Church shrugged. ‘They don't have a spot on the form for stupidity,' she said. ‘Gonna have to call it an accident.'

Dalton tried lifting his head but it hurt too much. He opened his left eye and peered at his surroundings. There was a Dumpster – a dark blue Dumpster with a bunch of black garbage bags sticking out of it and more on the ground around it. Pavement. The ground was pavement. There were brick buildings. Two of them: one on one side of the pavement and one on the other. One was red brick and the other was kind of orange-colored. He made an executive decision: he was in an alley.

Dalton started to laugh but it hurt his head even more so he stopped. But still, an executive decision: that was pretty funny. He giggled. He tried lifting his head again and it didn't hurt quite as much. He rolled over onto his side, lifting himself up slightly on one elbow. Yes, he was definitely in an alley.

And he wasn't wearing pants.

The six months of preparation flew past. There was so much to do, especially when one was motivated, and Dr Emil – excuse me, just Emil Hawthorne (no more medical license, more's the pity) – was extremely motivated. Some of the favors owed to him took a little encouragement to get a return, but he got those returns. Nobody said no to Emil Hawthorne for long.

The man that awoke from the coma was a haggard, withered man. His hair and beard were gray, his muscle tone close to non-existent, his face wrinkled and, most unfortunate of all, his penis flaccid. But there were pills for that. All he needed from those favors owed was money. Lots of money. A hairdresser, a gym, a little Botox here and there and some Viagra, and all that was left was a trip to Barneys Co-op.

When one goes through the process of becoming a psychiatrist, one must go through psychotherapy as part of the training. It was noted by the eminent Dr Stanley Malvern that Emil Hawthorne appeared to lack the ability to accept responsibility for some of his actions. Dr Malvern diagnosed Emil Hawthorne with a personality disorder and recommended that he not be admitted into the psychiatric fellowship he was seeking to join.

Unfortunately, there was a small fire in Dr Malvern's office that month, burning all of his records and catching Dr Malvern there, too. Some said it was arson, although it was never proved. Firefighters rescued the doctor, but regrettably the smoke inhalation caused irrevocable brain damage. Dr Malvern's business partner, Dr Rebecca Hinson, did a rush diagnosis of Emil, and found him quite eligible for his fellowship. The fact that Dr Hinson was under emotional duress due to her secret affair with the now brain-damaged Dr Malvern had more than a little to do with Emil Hawthorne's admittance to the fellowship, which, in turn, led to his internship and thus to his medical degree.

This might have been the reason that Emil Hawthorne blamed only one person for his current situation. Dr Jean MacDonnell.

TWO

I
spent the rest of Friday
not
worrying about Dalton. He was a big boy – an excessively big boy, really – and I figured he could take care of himself, no matter what his mama thought. Mamas tend to underestimate their baby boys' abilities, especially when it comes to women. It's been my experience that mamas of boys tend not to trust their own sex. Of course, daddies of girls are the same way – except
they
usually come armed.

I spent the whole afternoon working on my presentation for the county commissioners on the Mitchem/Highway-5 future traffic light. Then I called my wife. Jean now only worked part-time at the hospital, where she was chief of the psychiatric unit. She was still the chief, but now she had a private practice, in another building, with a partner and a secretary. They'd gotten a loft-like office on the top floor of what used to be Hornscherf's Department Store, located on the square downtown. The bottom floor is now a bookstore/beauty parlor/dress shop, and the top floor houses the psychiatric offices of MacDonnell & Cursey.

The ‘Cursey' part of MacDonnell & Cursey was Anne Louise Cursey, MD – a real nice lady Jean had gone to school with back in Chicago. They ran into each other at that psychiatric convention we went to in Las Vegas that time. Since then they kept in touch, and when Anne Louise and her husband got a divorce a while back, she and Jean started talking about her moving to Oklahoma. Anne Louise's son was going off to Rice University in Houston, and it seemed like Longbranch was a heck of a lot closer to Houston than Chicago. And not quite so nasty in the winter.

So they'd set up everything and Anne Louise had moved down here about six months ago, ready to take on the Oklahoma psyche. She was an attractive woman, about Jean's age, with curly, steel gray hair, kinda short and plump, but with a bosom you'd notice a mile away. And I'm not just being a man here, OK? She's got a really gigantic bosom.

I never call Jean's private line unless it's after hours, since she could have someone in her office. Instead, I dialed the main number and got DeSandra Logan, the new secretary. ‘O'Donald and Curser,' she said on answering the phone.

‘It's MacDonnell and Cursey,' I said.

‘Hey, Sheriff,' DeSandra said. ‘You wanna speak to Miz O'Donald?'

‘Dr MacDonnell,' I corrected.

‘She's not in. Well, yes, she is, but she's with a customer,' DeSandra said.

‘A patient,' I said.

‘Uh huh,' DeSandra said. ‘You want me to take a message?'

‘Just tell her I called, please,' I answered, as exasperated as I usually feel whenever I speak to DeSandra, the new secretary.

‘And who should I say is calling?' DeSandra asked.

I sighed. I could hang up, but then Jean would never know I called. Best to play the game, which, to DeSandra, was no game at all, just horrible reality. ‘Her husband,' I said. ‘The sheriff.'