The Doctor's Wife (57 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Brundage
“I’m sure you’ve all seen the papers about Dr. Knowles. It seems that somewhere in the midst of all our careful planning a mistake occurred.” It’s how he talks, she realizes, putting everyone at ease before he uses the knife. Scowling, he condemns her with his suspicion. “You gave him the drug, Lydia. It was morphine, yes? That alone was supposed to kill him.”
It was morphine, yes, a lethal dose of it, but it hadn’t gone into Michael Knowles. Knowles had gotten a mild sedative. The tainted morphine had gone into Walter Ooms. “Yes, Reverend,” she lies, and the memory of that awful night vividly returns.
“Even if the morphine didn’t kill him, it’s unlikely that he would have survived the crash,” Sawyer says, blotting his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Now look, folks. If there’s somebody in this room who got emotional over this, I pray they’ll let me know. And we can fix what went wrong and go on.”
Lydia feels his heavy hand on her shoulder. Nobody moves, and the wind makes the old barn howl.
“He was dead when we left him there,” Marshall Sawyer says with grave certainty. Sawyer is a burly man with a beard in a white collared shirt and trousers. One week ago, he had rolled up those sleeves and pounded his respectable fists into Michael Knowles’s face.
“Alive or dead, somebody took him. And left another man in his place.” Reverend Tim slams his fists down on the table. “Who has betrayed me? Who in this room has deceived me?”
Lydia concentrates on keeping perfectly still, the way she would when she’d sit for one of Simon’s paintings. Reverend Tim walks the uneven floor with his crooked leg. “I try so hard to walk in the light of Jesus. He throws us obstacles. Terrible tragedies.” He shakes his head. “I will find this person, sooner or later. Jesus has a way of whispering in my ear. And if any of you suspect someone, it’s your duty to tell me what you know. Other than that, there’s very little I can do but wait and pray for a revelation.”
They leave the barn in silence. It has begun to snow, and inside the car the white flakes collect on the cold glass. Lydia feels as though she is inside an hourglass, the sand spilling out so quickly that, before long, there will be no time left. Sitting next to him, her stomach in knots, she does what she knows she has to do. “It may have been Sawyer,” she tells him.
Reverend Tim’s eyes widen with surprise.
“That night he left his coat in my car. I tried to return it to him the next morning. His wife told me he’d never come home.”
Reverend Tim chews on his tongue, shaking his head, his eyes bright with tears. “He’s my friend,” he says, incredulous, “my best friend. But why?”
“Why don’t you ask him.”
73
TAKING CELINA’S ADVICE, Annie puts herself to bed and doesn’t wake up till the next afternoon. The phone is ringing; it’s Henry. “Hi, Mom. It’s Thanksgiving.”
“Hey, Hen. Have you had your turkey yet?”
“It’s still cooking. Wait, Rosie wants to talk to you.”
Annie can hear the two of them squabbling:
Don’t grab, Rosie!
“Mom? It’s me, Rosie. Guess what?”
Don’t grab, Rosie!
“Mom? It’s me, Rosie. Guess what?”
Henry grabbed the phone back. “Snowflake puked all over Grandma’s new carpeting!”
“No!”
“It’s okay,” Rosie came back on. “Grandma got it all off.”
“Thank
God!”
Another call comes through on call waiting. “Rosie, I have to go. Give everyone a kiss for me.” She clicks onto the new line. “Hello?”
God!”
Another call comes through on call waiting. “Rosie, I have to go. Give everyone a kiss for me.” She clicks onto the new line. “Hello?”
“You got a paper there?” It’s Bascombe.
“I think so. Hold on.” She retrieves the paper from the front porch. “Okay?”
“That gun of your husband’s. The one registered to Marshall Sawyer?”
“Yes?”
“Turn to the obituaries.”
“Hang on.” Annie flips anxiously to the obituaries. In the third row down she sees Sawyer’s name, dead from a morphine overdose, an apparent suicide. Survived by a wife and daughter.
“Sound familiar?”
“Yes. A little too familiar.”
“The wake’s tomorrow. I’d like you to go. You may see somebody you recognize.”
“Okay. What time?”
“I’ll be over at two o’clock. Wear something black.”
Manning’s Funeral Home is on the corner of St. James and Delaware Avenue, a big white house with three columns in front. The parking lot is packed. Bascombe parks in a tow-away zone and shoves his Official Police Business sticker up on the windshield. “Put this on.” He hands her a black hat with a short black veil attached.
“You want me to wear this?”
“Yeah. It’s my aunt Lucille’s. Go ahead.”
Annie puts on the hat with the veil and her dark sunglasses.
“Hey, you look good like that.”
“Yeah, right.”
Bascombe opens her door and helps her out and escorts her as if they’re an old married couple. The chapel is crowded, standing room only. Mourners shuffle past the open casket. “He must’ve been a hell of a Christian,” Bascombe whispers to her as they approach the coffin. “Look where it got him.” Sawyer is laid out in splendor, wearing an expensive black suit. His hands are crossed on his chest, a gold ring on his pinky finger. Just beyond the coffin, his wife and daughter receive mourners, their eyes swollen with grief. Annie notices the gold necklace around the daughter’s neck.
Theresa.
“You recognize him?” Bascombe asks.
Theresa.
“You recognize him?” Bascombe asks.
“Never seen him before.”
“He’s one of them. That group.”
A chill rushes through her.
“Look around. See if anyone looks familiar.”
Behind her dark glasses, Annie furtively searches the large room. To her surprise she sees Joe Rank slouched in a distant corner next to his wife, who holds a swaddled infant. Annie can tell by some of the white shoes that many of the people have come from work at the hospital. Just as they are about to walk out, a familiar face grabs Annie’s eye. “Now, what is she doing here?”
“Who?”
“That woman right there. Lydia Haas.”
“You know her?”
“She’s the wife of one of my colleagues.”
“Strange people. We’ve been over there from time to time, their house on the lake. Back in the days when he was a big shot. Used to have wild parties. Drugs. We had to get an ambulance once. For the wife. A real nut job. She was all cut up on her legs. All these crosses in blood, you know, crucifixes. Turns out she did it to herself.” He shakes his head. “Sick.”
Annie’s heart turns dully. “I don’t know him very well,” she hears herself say. “I used to see him at the pool.”
“Uh-huh. Well, it appears that Marshall Sawyer knew her. And I have a feeling I know why.”
Annie looks at him. “She’s one of them, isn’t she?”
“I suspect she is. And I intend to find out.”
Why hadn’t Simon told her, she wonders now. He must have known. Bascombe drives her home through the snow, the sky a pearly violet. The snowflakes are fat and slow. He drops her off and waits while she unlocks the door and steps inside. Waving good-bye, she watches the detective’s car pull down the long driveway, out of sight.
A thud on the back porch makes her freeze. Her legs go weak. She stands very still, her ears animal keen, and holds her breath. Soundlessly, she moves into the dark powder room at the back of the house. It’s still snowing and there’s a wind, the trees bobbing and swaying, obstructing her view of the backyard. Long shadows shift on the snow, but that’s not a shadow, it’s a person.
There’s somebody out there, someone running toward the woods.
There’s somebody out there, someone running toward the woods.
Annie grabs her keys and runs outside to the car, starts the engine, twists on her high beams and drives off the driveway onto the snow, around to the back, roaring over the bumpy field, her headlights bounding after a fleeing jackrabbit, coming up suddenly on the back of the intruder, wiry and agile as a panther in black pants, a black hooded windbreaker, a black wool face mask, nearing the edge of the woods, where the trees stand in solemn unity. Annie’s foot hits the floor and she drives as far as she possibly can, coming up against a wall of branches. Leaping out of the car, she scrambles into the woods. The runner trips, enabling Annie to catch up—uncertain and terrified of what she will do when she does. Annie grabs the runner, realizing that it’s a woman, and gropes for the mask, tearing it off. She recognizes the girl from the wake. It’s the dead man’s daughter, Theresa Sawyer.
74
AFTER THE WAKE, Reverend Tim comes up to her and ushers her away from the mourners. “I have some information for you,” he tells her. “It’s about the Knowles woman.”
“What about her?”
“I hear she’s expecting.”
“What?”
“One of our members is on the inside at the clinic. She happened to see Knowles’s name on a urine sample. Of course, we don’t know who the father is.”
Lydia stands there, feeling the wind on her shoulders. Someone is laughing inside her head, someone is teasing her.
Annie and Simon sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.
Annie and Simon sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.
Reverend Tim touches her arm. “I thought you should know.”
75
“I’M SORRY I RAN like that,” Theresa tells Annie, drinking tea at her kitchen table. “I just don’t know who to trust anymore. I saw your car. I didn’t know it was you. I got scared.”
“You can trust me,” Annie says.
Theresa has brought her an envelope filled with newspaper clippings. “I’ve been keeping these just in case,” she explains, spreading them out on the kitchen table like a crude collage. “I knew him sort of, your husband. I just wanted to help if I could. My folks don’t believe in it. They’re part of a group run by our minister. They were very angry at him.”
“So you gave him the gun.”
“A whole lot of good it did.”
“I’m sure he appreciated it.”
“They killed my father.” She looks down at her hands. “I feel like it’s my fault.”
“No, that’s not true. You had nothing to do with it.”
Theresa nods her head gratefully.
“You’ve done a very impressive job of organizing these,” Annie tells her, looking over the articles, many of which pertain to the renovation of the building on South Pearl Street that houses the clinic.
“It used to be a crack house,” Theresa says. “I used to run by there sometimes; it was nasty.”
Early photographs show the building at its worst, boarded up and swarming with graffiti. Once Celina occupied it, a transformation occurred. Other articles reported on the opening of the clinic, detailing the services it proposed to offer, and the ribbon-cutting ceremonies, where Susan Todd, the sassy head of Planned Parenthood, wielded the scissors. To Annie’s surprise, she finds the article she had written about late-term abortion. It was the article, she recalls, that Joe Rank had alluded to that night at the Spaulls’ party. Her name, she notices, has been circled in red pen, next to which someone has clarified in the same red ink
the doctor’s wife.
Other articles focus on the protestors. A large photo shows the protestors making a human chain in front of the clinic. Even in the grayish blur of the newsprint their rage comes through. Annie opens the junk drawer in the kitchen and gets her magnifying glass. “Maybe you could help me with this,” she suggests. “Why don’t you circle all the people you recognize from your minister’s group.”
the doctor’s wife.
Other articles focus on the protestors. A large photo shows the protestors making a human chain in front of the clinic. Even in the grayish blur of the newsprint their rage comes through. Annie opens the junk drawer in the kitchen and gets her magnifying glass. “Maybe you could help me with this,” she suggests. “Why don’t you circle all the people you recognize from your minister’s group.”
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