The Doctor Dines in Prague (14 page)

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Authors: Robin Hathaway

BOOK: The Doctor Dines in Prague
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T
he Main Office of the zoo was dusty and overheated. Mrs. Doyle insisted on accompanying Horatio into the supervisor's office. She told Marie to sit in one of the metal chairs lining the wall. Marie obeyed, sitting quietly, eyes downcast, her small hands clasped in her lap. All the light and life had gone out of her face. Her features were waxen and still. Mrs. Doyle was reminded of a documentary film she had once seen of Jewish prisoners in Germany, awaiting their fate.
That's ridiculous. This is America!
“Marie!” she said.
The child looked up
“Everything's going to be all right.” Mrs. Doyle made the AOK sign.
Marie looked away as if she didn't understand. She had been lied to by grown-ups before. Not her parents—others: teachers, her friends' parents … the super.
The supervisor asked the security guard to explain what happened. He did, eagerly laying all the blame on Horatio.
“That's not true!” Mrs. Doyle broke in.
“Quiet, please. You'll have your turn.” The supervisor silenced her.
When Horatio was called on and asked for his side of the story,
the boy spoke in a voice so low, Mrs. Doyle could barely hear him. The supervisor scribbled a few notes, then beckoned to Marie. She slid off her chair and came up to the desk.
“Can you tell me what happened just now at the picnic ground?” he asked
Marie spouted her story in rapid Czech. Under the stress of the moment, she had forgotten all her newly acquired English. The man frowned.
“Marie, sweetheart, speak English,” Mrs. Doyle pleaded.
The child looked at her dumbly.
“You may sit down,” the man said, not unkindly.
Uncomprehending, Marie remained standing until Mrs. Doyle gently led her back to her chair.
When it was Mrs. Doyle's turn to give her version, the supervisor dismissed it as hearsay evidence. She hadn't been there. She was merely repeating what the two children had told her. The supervisor then advised Horatio of his rights and told him he could make one phone call. The boy looked frantically around. Mrs. Doyle handed him a slip of paper on which she had written the number of the Police Administration Building, and Detective Rafferty's extension.
 
Rafferty was tidying up a routine assault-and-battery case when his phone rang. “Homicide. Rafferty speaking.”
“It's Rat,” a young male voice whispered.
“Rat? Speak up. Is this a crank call?”
Silence.
Rafferty was about to hang up when the voice of a woman, obviously at the end of her rope, replaced the boy's. “Detective Rafferty, this is Kathleen Doyle—”
“Oh, hi, Doyle. What's up?”
“Horatio is being held by a security guard here at the zoo, for assaulting a man with a yo-yo … .”
“Whoa. Start again.”
“That's what happened. But the man he assaulted tried to kidnap Marie, Dr. Fenimore's little cousin, and—”
“Okay, okay.” He stopped her in midsentence. “Put the security guard on.”
There was a pause. Rafferty could hear raised voices in the background. Finally a sulky male voice came on the line. “Robinson here.”
“Robinson. This is Detective Rafferty, Philadelphia Homicide. I want you to release Horatio Lopez, under my recognizance.”
“But he—”
“Now!”
Silence.
“And, Robinson?”
“Yes sir?”
“Detain the injured party until I get there.”
“On what grounds?”
“Attempted kidnapping.”
“But …”
“I'll be right over.” Rafferty slammed down the receiver, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, and headed for the elevator. He was thrilled to be doing some real police work for a change.
J
ennifer stood looking down at the grate. It wasn't very big. About two feet by one and a half feet. Just big enough for a workman to slip through to repair a wire or fix a pipe.
“Meow.”
The cat slid past Jennifer's ankle and sniffed at the grate. The bars were set too close together for even the smallest cat to squeeze through. Apparently that was the cat's intention. It rubbed its head against the grate and whined again.
If only I had some tools,
thought Jennifer.
A crowbar and a sledgehammer would be nice. A trifle noisy, but …
Bending down, she grabbed one of the bars and tentatively tugged on it. It shifted slightly. She set her purse on the ground and grabbed the bar with both hands. The grate rose an inch.
The cat, who had been watching her, turned its head toward the end of the alley. Its eyes shone bright amber. Jennifer turned to see the headlights of a car bearing down on them. She pressed herself flat against the fence. “Scat,” she hissed, but might have saved her breath; the cat had already vanished. The car rolled past, missing Jennifer by inches. She waited until the taillights disappeared down the alley before tackling the grate again. This time, correctly gauging
her strength against its weight, she shoved it to one side. Peering down into the dark cavity, she wished she had a flashlight. Wait. She did: the one attached to her key ring. While she rummaged in her purse, the cat reappeared. Without pause, it leapt into the open hole. Jennifer wished she could see how far the cat had gone, but her tiny flashlight beam was too weak to penetrate the darkness.
Two small marbles of light appeared. The cat was looking up to see if Jennifer would follow and its eyes were caught in her faint beam. Jennifer gauged the depth at about four feet. Without thinking, she jumped. The bottom was cement and stung her feet. Again the cat disappeared. But in which direction?
Jennifer reached out and touched a cool metal bar. Raising her hand, she touched another. A ladder was attached to the wall. How convenient. If necessary, she could make her escape. Uh-oh. What if another car came? Its wheel would get stuck in that hole. She had to replace the grate. She climbed the ladder and dragged the grate over the opening. And none too soon. A brilliant light illuminated the hole, as another car rolled over her. The light was accompanied by a loud thump. Jennifer had not replaced the grate carefully enough and the car had rocked it. But in that split second, while the hole had been lit up, she had glimpsed a passageway to her right. That must have been where the cat had gone. Yes, she heard it whining from that direction. She followed the sound. A slender bar of light gleamed at the end of the passage. The whining stopped.
“Schlecte Katze!”
a female voice cried, and the light vanished.
Bad cat!
—Jennifer had understood that. The words were not Czech, but German. And she had taken two years of German in college.
W
hen Fenimore emerged from the tower a crowd was gathered at the end of the bridge—looking over the wall. He ran toward it.
“A man fell from the tower!” he cried in Czech, the language again coming easily to him in a crisis. He began to strip, preparing to jump in the water. Spotting a patrol boat nearby, Fenimore scrambled, in his underwear, onto the wall and began waving frantically. When the boat was near enough for the crew to hear, Fenimore called out, “Someone's drowning.” As he spoke, Redik bobbed to the surface. Floating facedown, he lay still, making no effort to struggle or swim.
The captain of the patrol boat shouted an order and the boat drew neatly alongside Redik. It took three men to pull him aboard. Fenimore and the crowd watched in silence as the men took turns applying artificial respiration. Under the third man's ministrations, Redik stirred. A cheer went up from the crowd. Shivering in his undershorts, Fenimore watched them carry Redik into the cabin. Only then did he begin to put his clothes back on. He was reaching for the tote bag that contained the crown, when a voice behind him said, “You're under arrest.”
 
 
Fenimore sat in the dank cell, watching a cockroach scuttle across the floor. He had not slept all night. His anxiety for his friends and for his cousins (not to mention the accommodations) had kept him awake. As the first gray light of dawn filtered through his cell window, it was hard not to feel depressed. His outlook was bleak. He was the only other person who had been in the tower when Redik fell. In a very real sense, he had caused the accident. And to top it off, he had been in possession of the stolen goods: the royal crown of Emperor Charles IV, no less. He shook his head.
Again he was reminded of Tomas Tuk, the towerkeeper. His accident had resembled Redik's—except Tuk was a much older man and had not survived the plunge. Fenimore shuddered. If Redik had been older and not as physically fit, Fenimore might be up for manslaughter—or even murder. When he got out of here, he resolved, he would look up Tuk's family and find out what had really happened to him.
A door clanged and he heard footsteps coming down the stone corridor.
This dungeon was probably built in the Middle Ages,
he thought morosely. All the Old World charms of ancient Prague had suddenly dimmed. He yearned to be in a spanking-new mall in the heart of Kansas.
The cockroach reappeared and, to Fenimore's eye, it had assumed the proportions of that insect in Kafka's famous story,
The Metamorphosis
.
W
hen Rafferty entered the overheated office at the zoo, he was shocked by the appearance of his friends. Horatio, usually lounging casually with a lazy stare, sat rigidly upright, eyes wide, like an animal caught in the headlights' glare. Mrs. Doyle, always calm and tidy, was coming apart at the seams. Her neat bun had unraveled behind her ears, her coat was rumpled, and one shoelace was untied. The little girl sitting between them, pale and mute, reminded Rafferty of refugee children from Bosnia he had seen on the TV news.
As soon as they saw Rafferty, the boy and the nurse were transformed. Horatio's frozen look relaxed into his natural cool gaze. The worry lines around Mrs. Doyle's mouth melted into a broad smile. Marie was the only one who remained unchanged. She had never met Rafferty. To her, he was just another policeman, to be avoided and feared.
“What a happy party!” Rafferty clapped his hands. “All that's missing are the refreshments.” He raised his already resonant voice. “Robinson?” The man he had spoken to on the phone poked his head out of his office. “How about bringing these fine people some coffee and Cokes, some pretzels and doughnuts? They're famished.”
Robinson eyed him sullenly.
“I passed a couple of vending machines on my way in here. It won't take you a minute.”
The supervisor called over his shoulder to his assistant, repeating Rafferty's request. A few minutes later his friends were sipping and munching contentedly, and looking very much revived. Little by little the story was retold.
The so-called victim was brought from the first-aid station, a piece of plaster decorating his scalp where Horatio's yo-yo had found its mark. He was uncommunicative, until Rafferty asked to see his immigration papers. Upon discovering that they had expired six months ago, the man became much more cooperative. He was suddenly eager to place the blame for his attempted kidnapping on foreign agents in the Czech Republic.
He admitted that he had been hired to snatch Marie and hold her until further notice. For this service, he was to receive $1,000. Unfortunately, he didn't know the names of his employers, only their e-mail addresses. And when Rafferty tried to contact them, his e-mail was returned with the cryptic message: DOMAIN UNKNOWN. He would get his more-accomplished FBI buddies to work on tracing them, but that would take time. There was no need to inconvenience his friends any longer, he decided. He extricated a release form from Robinson for Horatio, filled it out, and sent his friends home.
On his way out, Horatio remembered his yo-yo.
“Sorry, scout,” Rafferty apologized, “you'll have to let that go. A small price to pay for your freedom, right?”
Horatio nodded, although he thought it was a high price.
Instead of returning home immediately, Mrs. Doyle decided to treat her two charges to dinner at the Silk City Diner. You would have thought she had suggested the Four Seasons. She didn't tell them she had chosen that diner because it was the only one in the city that she knew had a liquor license. After her experiences that day, she felt the least she deserved was a cold beer. After the waitress had recorded two Cokes for Horatio and Marie, Mrs. Doyle ordered a Budweiser.
Horatio looked up. “Make that two Buds.”
Mrs. Doyle glared at him. “That'll be
one
Bud,” she said firmly.
“Bud? What'sa Bud?” Marie looked up from placing a quarter in the jukebox, her mastery of English having magically returned.
The waitress left, looking flustered.

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