Black House (54 page)

That is all well and good, if it happens to be true, the young person allows, but Nurse Bond is not going to be doing any door opening and waving in today, for today Nurse Bond is off duty. Could it be that when Mr. Sawyer showed up to see Mrs. Marshall yesterday he was accompanied by a family member, say Mr. Marshall?

Yes. And if Mr. Marshall were to be consulted, say via the telephone, he would urge the young fellow presently discussing the matter in a commendably responsible fashion with Mr. Sawyer to admit the gentleman promptly.

That may be the case, the young person grants, but hospital regulations require that nonmedical personnel in positions such as the young person’s obtain authorization for any outside telephone calls.

And from whom, Jack wishes to know, would this authorization be obtained?

From the acting head nurse, Nurse Rack.

Jack, who is growing a little hot, as they say, under the collar, suggests in that case that the young person seek out the excellent Nurse Rack and obtain the required authorization, so that things might progress in the manner Mr. Marshall, the patient’s husband, would wish.

No, the young person sees no reason to pursue such a course, the reason being that doing so would represent a pitiful waste of time and effort. Mr. Sawyer is not a member of Mrs. Marshall’s family; therefore the excellent Nurse Rack would under no circumstances grant the authorization.

“Okay,” Jack says, wishing he could strangle this irritating pip-squeak, “let’s move a step up the administrative ladder, shall we? Is Dr. Spiegleman somewhere on the premises?”

“Could be,” the young person says. “How’m I supposed to know? Dr. Spiegleman doesn’t tell me everything he does.”

Jack points to the telephone at the end of the counter. “I don’t expect you to know, I expect you to find out. Get on that phone
now.
”

The young man slouches down the counter to the telephone, rolls his eyes, punches two numbered keys, and leans against the counter with his back to the room. Jack hears him muttering about Spiegleman, sigh, then say, “All right, transfer me, whatever.” Transferred, he mutters something that includes Jack’s name. Whatever he hears in response causes him to jerk himself upright and sneak a wide-eyed look over his shoulder at Jack. “Yes, sir. He’s here now, yes. I’ll tell him.”

He replaces the receiver. “Dr. Spiegleman’ll be here right away.” The boy—he is no more than twenty—steps back and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You’re that cop, huh?”

“What cop?” Jack says, still irritated.

“The one from California that came here and arrested Mr. Kinderling.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m from French Landing, and boy, that was some shock. To the whole town. Nobody would have guessed. Mr.
Kinderling?
Are you kidding? You’d never believe that someone like that would . . . you know, kill people.”

“Did you know him?”

“Well, in a town like French Landing, everybody sort of knows everybody, but I didn’t really know Mr. Kinderling, except to say hi. The one I knew was his wife. She used to be my Sunday school teacher at Mount Hebron Lutheran.”

Jack cannot help it; he laughs at the incongruity of the murderer’s wife teaching Sunday school classes. The memory of Wanda Kinderling radiating hatred at him during her husband’s sentencing stops his laughter, but it is too late. He sees that he has offended the young man. “What was she like?” he asks. “As a teacher.”

“Just a teacher,” the boy says. His voice is uninflected, resentful. “She made us memorize all the books of the Bible.” He turns away and mutters, “Some people think he didn’t do it.”

“What did you say?”

The boy half-turns toward Jack but looks at the brown wall in front of him. “I said, Some people think he didn’t do it. Mr. Kinderling. They think he got put in jail because he was a small-town guy who didn’t know anybody out there.”

“That’s too bad,” Jack says. “Do you want to know the real reason Mr. Kinderling went to prison?”

The boy turns the rest of the way and looks at Jack.

“Because he was guilty of murder, and he confessed. That’s it, that’s all. Two witnesses put him at the scene, and two other people saw him on a plane to L.A. when he told everyone he was flying to Denver. After that, he said, Okay, I did it. I always wanted to know what it was like to kill a girl, and one day I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went out and killed two whores. His lawyer tried to get him off on an insanity plea, but the jury at his hearing found him sane, and he went to prison.”

The boy lowers his head and mumbles something.

“I couldn’t hear that,” Jack says.

“Lots of ways to make a guy confess.” The boy repeats the sentence just loud enough to be heard.

Then footsteps ring in the hallway, and a plump, white-coated man with steel-rimmed glasses and a goatee comes striding toward Jack with his hand out. The boy has turned away. The opportunity to convince the attendant that he did not beat a confession out of Thornberg Kinderling has slipped away. The smiling man with the white jacket and the goatee seizes Jack’s hand, introduces himself as Dr. Spiegleman, and declares it a pleasure to meet such a famous personage. (
Personage, persiflage,
Jack thinks.) From one step behind the doctor, a man unnoticed until this moment steps fully into view and says, “Hey, Doctor, do you know what would be perfect? If Mr. Famous and I interview the lady together. Twice the information in half the time—perfect.”

Jack’s stomach turns sour. Wendell Green has joined the party.

After greeting the doctor, Jack turns to the other man. “What are you doing here, Wendell? You promised Fred Marshall you’d stay away from his wife.”

Wendell Green holds up his hands and dances back on the balls of his feet. “Are we calmer today, Lieutenant Sawyer? Not inclined to use a sucker punch on the hardworking press, are we? I have to say, I’m getting a little tired of being assaulted by the police.”

Dr. Spiegleman frowns at him. “What are you saying, Mr. Green?”

“Yesterday, before that cop knocked me out with his flashlight, Lieutenant Sawyer here punched me in the stomach for no real reason at all. It’s a good thing I’m a reasonable man, or I’d have filed lawsuits already. But, Doctor, you know what? I don’t do things that way. I believe everything works out better if we cooperate with each other.”

Halfway through this self-serving speech, Jack thinks,
Oh hell,
and glances at the young attendant. The boy’s eyes burn with loathing. A lost cause: now Jack will never persuade the boy that he did not mistreat Kinderling. By the time Wendell Green finishes congratulating himself, Jack has had a bellyful of his specious, smarmy affability.

“Mr. Green offered to give me a percentage of his take, if I let him sell photographs of Irma Freneau’s corpse,” he tells the doctor. “What he is asking now is equally unthinkable. Mr. Marshall urged me to come here and see his wife, and he made Mr. Green promise
not
to come.”

“Technically, that may be true,” Green says. “As an experienced journalist, I know that people often say things they don’t mean and will eventually regret. Fred Marshall understands that his wife’s story is going to come out sooner or later.”

“Does he?”

“Especially in the light of the Fisherman’s latest communication,” Green says. “This tape proves that Tyler Marshall is his fourth victim, and that, miraculously, he is still alive. How long do you think that can be kept from the public? And wouldn’t you agree that the boy’s mother should be able to explain the situation in her own words?”

“I refuse to be badgered like this.” The doctor scowls at Green and gives Jack a look of warning. “Mr. Green, I am very close to ordering you out of this hospital. I wish to discuss several matters with Lieutenant Sawyer, in private. If you and the lieutenant can work out some agreement between the two of you, that is your affair. I am certainly not going to permit a joint interview with my patient. I am in no way certain that she should talk to Lieutenant Sawyer, either. She is calmer than she was this morning, but she is still fragile.”

“The best way to deal with her problem is to let her express herself,” Green says.

“You will be quiet
now,
Mr. Green,” Dr. Spiegleman says. The double chins that fold under his goatee turn a warm pink. He glares at Jack. “What specifically is it that you request, Lieutenant?”

“Do you have an office in this hospital, Doctor?”

“I do.”

“Ideally, I’d like to spend about half an hour, maybe less, talking to Mrs. Marshall in a safe, quiet environment where our conversation would be completely confidential. Your office would probably be perfect. There are too many people on the ward, and you can’t talk without being interrupted or having other patients listen in.”

“My office,” Spiegleman says.

“If you’re willing.”

“Come with me,” the doctor says. “Mr. Green, you will please stand back next to the counter while Lieutenant Sawyer and I step into the hallway.”

“Anything you say.” Green executes a mocking bow and moves lightly, with a suggestion of dance steps, to the counter. “In your absence, I’m sure this handsome young man and I will find something to talk about.”

Smiling, Wendell Green props his elbows on the counter and watches Jack and Dr. Spiegleman leave the room. Their footsteps click against the floor tiles until it sounds as though they have gone more than halfway down the corridor. Then there is silence. Still smiling, Wendell about-faces and finds the attendant openly staring at him.

“I read you all the time,” the boy says. “You write real good.”

Wendell’s smile becomes beatific. “Handsome
and
intelligent. What a stunning combination. Tell me your name.”

“Ethan Evans.”

“Ethan, we do not have much time here, so let’s make this snappy. Do you think responsible members of the press should have access to information the public needs?”

“You bet.”

“And wouldn’t you agree that an informed press is one of our best weapons against monsters like the Fisherman?”

A single, vertical wrinkle appears between Ethan Evans’s eyebrows. “Weapons?”

“Let me put it this way. Isn’t it true that the more we know about the Fisherman, the better chance we have of stopping him?”

The boy nods, and the wrinkle disappears.

“Tell me, do you think the doctor is going to let Sawyer use his office?”

“Prob’ly, yeah,” Evans says. “But I don’t like the way that Sawyer guy works. He’s a police brutality. Like when they hit people to make them confess. That’s brutality.”

“I have another question for you. Two questions, really. Is there a closet in Dr. Spiegleman’s office? And is there some way you could take me there without going through that corridor?”

“Oh.” Evans’s dim eyes momentarily shine with understanding. “You want to
listen.
”

“Listen and record.” Wendell Green taps the pocket that contains his cassette recorder. “For the good of the public at large, God bless ’em one and all.”

“Well, maybe, yeah,” the boy says. “But Dr. Spiegleman, he . . .”

A twenty-dollar bill has magically appeared folded around the second finger of Wendell Green’s right hand. “Act fast, and Dr. Spiegleman will never know a thing. Right, Ethan?”

Ethan Evans snatches the bill from Wendell’s hand and motions him back behind the counter, where he opens a door and says, “Come on, hurry.”

Low lights burn at both ends of the dark corridor. Dr. Spiegleman says, “I gather that my patient’s husband told you about the tape she received this morning.”

“He did. How did it get here, do you know?”

“Believe me, Lieutenant, after I saw the effect that tape had on Mrs. Marshall and listened to it myself, I tried to learn how it reached my patient. All of our mail goes through the hospital’s mailroom before being delivered,
all
of it, whether to patients, medical staff, or administrative offices. From there, a couple of volunteers deliver it to the addressees. I gather that the package containing the tape was in the hospital mailroom when a volunteer looked in there this morning. Because the package was addressed only with my patient’s name, the volunteer went to our general information office. One of the girls brought it up.”

“Shouldn’t someone have consulted you before giving the tape and a cassette player to Judy?”

“Of course. Nurse Bond would have done so immediately, but she is not on duty today. Nurse Rack, who is on duty, assumed that the address referred to a childhood nickname and thought that one of Mrs. Marshall’s old friends had sent her some music to cheer her up. And there is a cassette player in the nurses’ station, so she put the tape in the player and gave it to Mrs. Marshall.”

In the gloom of the corridor, the doctor’s eyes take on a sardonic glint. “Then, as you might imagine, all hell broke loose. Mrs. Marshall reverted to the condition in which she was first hospitalized, which takes in a range of alarming behaviors. Fortunately, I happened to be in the hospital, and when I heard what had happened, I ordered her sedated and placed in a secure room. A secure room, Lieutenant, has padded walls—Mrs. Marshall had reopened the wounds to her fingers, and I did not want her to do any more damage to herself. Once the sedative had taken effect, I went in and talked to her. I listened to the tape. Perhaps I should have called the police immediately, but my first responsibility is to my patient, and I called Mr. Marshall instead.”

“From where?”

“From the secure room, with my cell phone. Mr. Marshall of course insisted on speaking to his wife, and she wanted to speak to him. She became very distraught during their conversation, and I had to give her another mild sedative. When she calmed down, I went out of the room and called Mr. Marshall again, to tell him more specifically about the contents of the tape. Do you want to hear it?”

“Not now, Doctor, thanks. But I do want to ask you about one aspect of it.”

“Then ask.”

“Fred Marshall tried to imitate the way you had reproduced the accent of the man who made the tape. Did it sound like any recognizable accent to you? German, maybe?”