The Long Count (5 page)

From his third-floor office Dr Beale could see the checkered barrier at the main gates where a young man in military uniform climbed into the back of the hospital Jeep. Below the window some of the male patients not confined to their cells were tending the lawns and flower beds under the watchful eye of an orderly.

From where he stood Beale was party to both sides of the ten-foot wall that separated the men from the women and he cast his eye across the grounds then looked back at the Jeep once more. At his desk he picked up a fountain pen and scribbled a couple of notes on a fold-over yellow pad, then screwed the top back on the pen and considered the telephone as if he was waiting for it to ring. After a moment he got to his feet and went back to the window. This time he concentrated on the far side of the wall where some of the female patients were gathered.

On his desk the phone rang and for a moment Beale seemed to study the little red light where it flashed at the base.

‘Yes, Alice?’ he said as he picked up. ‘What is it?’

‘Dr Beale, there’s a man downstairs to see you. He’s says his name is Isaac Bowen.’

The doctor seemed to hesitate. ‘All right,’ he said carefully. ‘Have one of the orderlies bring him up.’

He waited now, standing behind the desk with a little perspiration marking his brow and his eyes wrinkled at the corners. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and orderly Briers came in wearing a short, white housecoat and green T-shirt: a big man, he was balding and heavyset with tufts of gray hair lifting from the neck of his T-shirt.

‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘Isaac Bowen is here to see you.’ He stepped to one side and the young man in uniform came in. Still the orderly hovered, but Beale was intent on his visitor. Blue-gray eyes, his hair slicked back from his forehead, the dress uniform he was wearing looked a little care worn but it was neatly pressed and there was shine to the toes of his shoes. For a moment Beale studied him and the young man looked back with neither of them saying anything, then Beale indicated for Briers to close the door.

When he was gone the young man approached the desk. ‘Thank you for seeing me, sir,’ he said. ‘My name is Isaac Bowen and I’m looking for my brother. I think he might be a patient here.’

Beale indicated an empty chair across the desk. ‘Take a seat, Mr Bowen. You look as if you’ve come a long way.’

‘I have, sir. From Vietnam.’ Wearily Isaac sat down. ‘My final tour. That’s three now and I guess they figure I’m done.’ Spreading a palm he gestured. ‘Did Ishmael tell you about me? My brother, sir, Ishmael Bowen. He doesn’t know I’m back yet. I wanted to surprise him before I go home to my dad.’

‘I see,’ Beale said.

‘Dad doesn’t know how I’m done over there yet. I was going to surprise him but only after I visited with Ish. The fact is our ship docked in San Francisco and the army flew me to Houston. I spoke to my dad on the phone he told me Ish had been moved to a place called Trinity. I never got to see him the last time – he was still in the hospital in Houston – and I didn’t know about this other one, not till I spoke to Dad.’ His eyes were pinched, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘I had no idea there’d been a fire. I went down there and found the hospital in the woods like Dad said, but it was deserted, all burned up. I spoke to the caretaker, an old Mexican guy who told me the whole place went up and everyone had to be evacuated.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s pretty much how it was.’ Beale looked a little tentative. ‘It was six weeks ago now. The fire took hold very quickly though nobody seems to know what set it off.’

‘What happened to the patients?’ Isaac asked. ‘The caretaker said they were moved to other hospitals. He told me some of them came here and I ought to talk to you. He said that if Ish wasn’t here you’d be able to tell me where they sent him.’ He looked up, a hopeful expression on his face. ‘Is he here, sir? I’d really like to see him.’

Beale seemed to think about that. Picking up his pen he made another note then replaced the pen on the desk. ‘Your last tour, you say? You’re home for good now then, are you?’

Isaac nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Home for good, though if truth be told I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.’ He let a little air escape his cheeks. ‘I guess it’s always like that for someone who knows they’re going home. They tell you ahead of time and it’s all you can think about and yet you’re still out on patrol.’ Hunching a little forward in the seat he gestured. ‘Everybody tells it the same. As the time gets close you just get more and more nervous. It’s on your mind, how if you step in the wrong place or duck the wrong way …’ He broke off for a second then he said, ‘That last fire-fight … Just after they said I was coming home we were on the march – six hundred of us on the road about sixty miles north of Saigon. I kept telling myself it would be all right, how my number wasn’t up and I was going to stay lucky. But then we came to this clearing and there they were there, waiting where we couldn’t see them. Hidden in the sawgrass, they let go with everything they had, and all I could think about was avoiding bullets, leave alone firing back.’

‘Sawgrass?’ the doctor said.

Isaac nodded. ‘Thick as a wheat field, reaches right to your waist.’ Again he looked at the floor. ‘I was walking the point, the tree line just ahead, and we could see nothing for all that grass. I guess they let go with heavy machine guns, ripped into us like you wouldn’t believe. Thirty-one dead and a hundred and twenty-three wounded. We killed a hundred and seventy Vietcong, dug in real deep and waiting for back-up, and finally they sent in air support. Anyway,’ he said, looking up, ‘that’s all done with now,
thank God. Ishmael, sir, my brother: I really need to see him.’

Beale’s expression was fixed. ‘I’m afraid you can’t. He’s not here. The fact is not all the patients at Trinity were accounted for, and I’m sorry, but one of those was Ishmael.’ He watched as Isaac’s features stiffened. ‘We’re missing seven patients in all right now and until we have the final report we won’t know how many bodies were actually recovered. It’s not an easy identification process because with the way that fire took hold, the intensity of the heat, there wasn’t much left.’ He was staring intently across the desk. ‘I’m sorry, but your father will know more. I imagine the investigators have been touch.’

He watched from the window as the Jeep took Isaac back to the gates. Brow a little sweaty, he plucked a key from the top drawer of his desk. On the far wall a picture of Sigmund Freud dominated the office. Taking it down Beale revealed an inset safe. Two shelves holding various reels of tape in cardboard boxes, they were labelled carefully and on top of them was an address book.

Back at his desk Beale flattened a page with the heel of his hand then picked up the phone. He hesitated a moment before dialling. Sitting back in the chair he waited for the phone to be answered. It rang and rang but nobody picked up and no answer machine cut in. Beale hung up, sought another page in the address book and dialled another number.

Once more he waited; three rings, four, five. Then the call was answered and he hunched a little closer to his desk.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘This is Dr Beale. I’m sorry to call you again so soon and I know you asked me not to. I thought you should know that he just showed up here at the hospital.’ Listening for a moment he nodded. ‘Bellevue in Shreveport, yes. He told me he’d been to Trinity and he’s on his way to his father’s house. Look, there’s no need to worry. I’m going to go up there myself.’ Again he listened and again he nodded. ‘Yes, she is. One of the ones we brought here. Look, I know I said I wouldn’t call, but I figured you ought to be
aware. It will be fine though, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m telling you just in case.’

For a while after he’d put the phone down he sat with his hand on the receiver where it rested back in the cradle. He looked long and hard at the notes he had made, then collected the pad of paper and his pen and placed them in his briefcase. Replacing the address book back in the safe he locked it and re-hung the photo.

From the bottom drawer of a file cabinet he retrieved a twin-reel tape recorder together with a hand-held microphone. Locating another set of keys, he left the office and locked the door. He told his secretary that something had come up and he would be away for a few days and she should cancel his appointments. Then he rode the elevator down to the ground floor.

In the lobby he left the tape recorder behind the desk, then used his keys to open the first of the adjoining doors. Cast from metal, the window was laced with wire mesh. Closing that door he locked it again, then walked the short corridor to another door with a similar pane of reinforced glass.

Now he was in the women’s wing and he passed beyond a set of double doors into a common room where some of the patients played checkers while others stared at the TV. Women of all ages: pale in the face, lank-haired; wearing robes and baggy pajamas. Beale made his way through the common room and unlocked the far door. Opening and closing two more locked doors, he was in a corridor with linoleum on the floor and heavy oak doors with unbreakable panels were staggered on either side. He walked almost as far as the nurse’s desk at the end before he paused outside a door on the right.

He could see the patient through the glass. Around fifty, she was bone-thin and bug-eyed, her hair weak and sparse with her waxen-colored scalp visible in places. A single bed, the walls covered in pencilled drawings of stick children. The woman was sitting on the bed cradling a baby in her arms, only the baby was a porcelain
doll, and its hair was as thin as hers. On the other side of the room a narrow bureau was laid with a vinyl changing mat, next to it a Moses basket supported by wooden legs. Rocking back and forth, the woman suckled the doll at her breast.

Turning from the door Beale called to the nurse who was seated behind the desk at the end of the corridor.

‘Nancy,’ he said, ‘can you let me into Miss Annie’s room?’

A grim expression twisting her lips, the nurse got up from the desk and walked the corridor carrying a set of keys. Selecting one, she fit it in the lock but before she opened the door she paused.

‘Dr Beale,’ she said, ‘don’t you think I should fetch an orderly?’

He shook his head. ‘No, that’s all right. I’m not going to be very long.’

‘Even so. She’s not been herself just lately.’

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Nancy, when has Miss Annie ever been herself?’

‘You know what I mean.’ The nurse was peering through the panel to where the wizened-looking woman stared back. ‘Are you sure you want to go in there? You know how she’s been. Look at her. Look at her eyes; she’s got that look in her eyes, and if you’re going in there she really ought to be strapped.’

Beale too now looked through the window. ‘In a jacket you mean? I don’t think so. She trusts me, Nancy. She won’t try anything. She never does.’

‘She used to trust you,’ the nurse said. ‘She doesn’t trust you anymore. She doesn’t trust any of us anymore, and she remembers, Doctor. There’s nothing Miss Annie forgets.’

Finally she unlocked the door and Beale went in. Nancy closed the door behind him but she did not lock it and she did not move away. The doctor leaned with his back to the panel of glass while Miss Annie remained where she was. She held the baby doll in her arms, its chill features pressed to a tired nipple where it poked through her pajama top.

‘I’m feeding,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be in here, not when I’m feeding my baby.’

‘I know that and I’m sorry. How is he, Miss Annie?’ Beale asked. ‘How’s your baby?’

She did not reply. She just looked at him. ‘If you touch him, if you try and take him away from me, I’ll kill you.’

Quarrie was still at Henry’s Bathtub. Prising another cigarette from his pack he felt in a pocket for his lighter. The wrecker down by the water’s edge was in position with the winch hooked up to the chassis of the submerged cruiser. The driver flipped the switch and the winch started rolling and a couple of minutes later the vehicle surfaced. The same steely blue as the car he had inspected back in town, it was dripping water and weed and hissed like some ancient leviathan. The driver’s door was not locked and the keys were still in the ignition. Grabbing them, Quarrie opened the trunk.

The dead man’s face was the color of a gutted fish, his clothes fastened to his skin. He looked flattened, as if the weight of the water had squashed him, where he lay curled in the foetal position between the traffic cones and wheel-jack. The Marion County sheriff stood with his arms folded and alongside him Chief Billings.

‘Don’t look like he took a bullet,’ the chief said. ‘Jesus Christ, do you think this sumbitch had him climb in?’

Briefly Quarrie glanced at him. ‘Like you say, Chief: it don’t look like he’s holed any.’

He went through the dead man’s sodden pockets. No driver’s license or wallet, nothing that could identify him. Nostrils flared, he wiped his hands on his jeans.

‘That gal you talked to from the diner,’ the sheriff said. ‘Did she have any idea what it was he might’ve been driving?’

Quarrie shook his head. He looked beyond the two men back towards the highway. ‘Whatever it is, he’s but a few hours ahead of us. We’ve traced him this far so I’m going to follow my gut and see
if I can’t get any closer.’ He glanced at the sheriff again. ‘Nicole,’ he said, ‘the waitress. Have somebody walk her through a detailed statement and call me if she comes up with anything.’

A few hours later he was south of Marshall, Texas, heading for the freeway and listening to the regular radio where the newscaster was relating a casualty report.

‘Thirty-one Americans and one hundred and seventy-six of the enemy were killed in a three-hour battle in a jungle clearing sixty miles north of Saigon. Of the six hundred Americans involved, one hundred and twenty-three were wounded. There was no estimate for wounded among the Vietcong.’
The man’s voice was crisp and clear, staccato, like the firefight he was describing.
‘The Vietcong struck first with heavy machine guns from the brush and tree line shortly after the American battalion hiked into the knee-high sawgrass. US soldiers returned fire and within fifteen minutes artillery began to pound the enemy positions …’

The shortwave crackled where it was housed under the dash and Quarrie turned the regular radio off.

A woman’s voice lifted through the speaker. ‘Harrison County dispatch calling Ranger Unit Zero Six?’

Reaching for the handset Quarrie picked up. ‘Copy that, Harrison County. What’s up?’

‘The sheriff up in Marion told us you might be in our neck of the woods and that you’d want the heads up on anything we got.’

‘Yes, mam, go ahead.’

‘The Sheers Motel in Fairview, one of the cleaning staff found the partial barrel of what she thinks is a shotgun dumped by the side of the road.’

Twenty minutes later he was driving Main Street, Fairview, passing the bank and mercantile. A little further he came to the Sheers Motel. A flat-roofed concrete block housing two dozen rooms together with a tiny reception area like a kiosk out front. The manager was sitting behind a tall counter reading a copy of
Sports Illustrated
and the sawn-off barrel of a shotgun was lying on a sheet of brown paper. Bald-headed, when he got to his feet the man stood around five and a half feet with suspenders keeping up his pants.

‘You the Ranger?’ he said, glancing at Quarrie’s guns.

Quarrie nodded.

Stepping back from the counter the manager wedged a fist against his hip and jutted his chin at the truncated barrel. ‘Grace found it walking into town this morning.’

‘Grace is the cleaner?’ Quarrie was inspecting the roughly sawn barrel carefully.

‘Colored woman, yeah. She’s gone for the day right now; got kids at home to take care of.’ The manager gestured vaguely in the direction Quarrie had just come from. ‘I had her run to the store real quick to pick up some stuff we needed, and she came across this here piece of metal. Said it was back from the road aways but the sun caught on it and she went to see what-all it was. Just lying in the brush, she said, like somebody tossed it out of a car window.’ Taking a hunk of chewing tobacco from his pocket, he peeled a sliver off with an overlong thumbnail that looked to have been cultivated for just that purpose. ‘She brought it back here to me because she figured I’d know what to do.’

Again Quarrie considered the barrel. ‘How far down the road did she find it? How far away from the motel?’

‘I can’t tell you exactly. About a hundred yards I reckon.’

‘If I asked her could she show me the spot?’

‘I don’t know. She’s pretty sharp. Yeah, I imagine she probably could.’

Quarrie cast another short glance his way. ‘You busy right now? Got many people staying?’

‘I guess there’s one or two.’

‘What about last night?’

‘Five, I think there was.’ Spinning the register around where it
was laid on the counter, the manager took a look. ‘Yeah, we had five people staying last night.’

Quarrie turned the book so it faced him again. ‘What about vehicles? There’re no license numbers written down here.’

The manager shook his head. ‘This is a small place and people pay up front and usually it’s with cash. I don’t bother with license plates or stuff like that; it ain’t as if we ever need to trace anybody.’

Looking through the window Quarrie studied the concrete block of rooms. ‘Was one of your guests a young guy with dark hair?’

‘Maybe. We had one young guy, I think. Can’t tell you what-all color his hair was. I don’t notice stuff like that.’

Quarrie squinted at him once more. ‘You want to show me his room?’

Grabbing a key from the metal locker behind the desk, the manager led the way across the parking lot. He unlocked the door to room 13 and was about to go inside when Quarrie checked him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘Grace cleaned this room already, is that what you said?’

The manager nodded. ‘Last one before she went home.’

‘OK, thanks. I can take it from here.’

The room was not very big and it was basic, a nightstand beside a narrow-looking double bed, a black-and-white TV and a tiny bathroom at the back. The bed was freshly made and the drapes at the window tied back. Yellow flowers had been painted directly onto plain blocks of blue cinder that made up the walls. The carpet was threadbare and patchy and in places he could see a hint of concrete showing through.

It looked as though everything had been vacuumed thoroughly and he imagined if Grace was sharp enough to spot the barrel of a shotgun by the side of the road then she would be more than fastidious in her work. Standing in the doorway still, he cast an eye across the nightstand, the bedclothes and the little table where the
TV was set. Nothing jumped out at him initially; he could see no marks on the table or nightstand to indicate where someone might have taken a saw to a shotgun. But then his gaze fastened on the luggage rack.

Moving into the room now he shut the door and considered the carpet again. It was clear Grace had worked it hard, but he kept to the edge of the room as he sought the luggage rack. Folding metal legs with canvas bands running in between, taking care to open it up he inspected those bands and could see nothing at first, but then he picked up the tiniest slivers of what looked like shavings of steel. In the bathroom he tore a piece of toilet paper off the roll and gently smoothed the shavings onto it. Folding the paper over, he took a pen and marked it with the room number and name of the motel.

Back in the parking lot he opened the trunk of his car where his 7mm hunting rifle was clipped to the underside of the lid. Lying on top of a folded sheet of tarpaulin was a briefcase and inside that a stack of evidence envelopes. Carefully he slipped the fold of toilet paper into one of those then sealed it and scribbled a note on the front. Grabbing a roll of police tape from his tool box he sealed the door to the motel room, then went back to reception for the barrel of the gun.

Back in the little kiosk he called the sheriff’s office and requested that a lab team be sent down to dust the room. He told them he wanted a teletype of any fingerprints they recovered forwarded both to the National Crime Information Center and his captain’s office in Amarillo. Then he went back to his car and drove the short distance into town.

The mercantile was on the right-hand side and he pulled into the parking lot and went in. A young woman was sitting on a stool at the checkout chewing gum, and he asked her if she remembered anyone coming in to purchase a hacksaw.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘Young guy about my age came in here first thing.’

‘What was it he bought exactly?’

‘A hacksaw like you said. That and a roll of duct tape.’

Thanking her, Quarrie went back to the parking lot and was about to get in his car when he noticed the facade of the local bank. He stood there for a second or so chewing his lip and thinking how there’d been no wallet on the dead man in the trunk of the cruiser.

Inside the bank, he talked to the cashier and she showed him the check she had cashed for sixty dollars. A little red-faced, she admitted she had not asked the young man for any identification.

Using the manager’s phone Quarrie spoke to Ranger Headquarters in Austin and then he went back to the mercantile to get a cup of coffee while he waited for somebody to call him back. He was sitting in his car outside the bank with his hat over his eyes when the manager came out and Quarrie followed him.

A dispatcher was on the phone and he took it at the manager’s desk. ‘John Q,’ the woman said, ‘we got the information you wanted. The body you found in the trunk was a salesman called Kelly, working for a farm supplies company out of Little Rock, and it’s the company that owns the vehicle. 1966 Buick sedan, it’s black and the license plate is five, double-three, double-one.’

‘All right,’ Quarrie told her. ‘I want an APB out on that car and someone from Arkansas needs to call on Kelly’s next of kin.’