House of Mercy (37 page)

“When I was a kid, we bought some rye to supplement our herd’s winter feed. It had been a really good year—lots of rain for the crops, but also lots of good warm weather and grazing in the mountains. We didn’t have the usual losses that year and had a few extra mouths to feed. So Dad bought this supply from a new farmer who was getting into the market with some great prices.”

“You’re not going to tell me that the farmer poisoned the rye and killed off your herd, are you?”

“Not exactly. The crop was infected with this fungus that grows on grain crops when the weather is particularly wet and warm. I can’t remember what it’s called. This farmer was so green that he didn’t realize what he had going on. It didn’t kill our cows, but it caused gangrene in a few of the older animals. They lost parts of their hooves. A few lost ears or tails. But what made me think of it is that a whole bunch of our pregnant cows miscarried.”

“Like Nova?”

“It’s a stretch, isn’t it? That something like that would have a similar effect on a human?”

“The weirdest possibilities are the ones that usually turn out to be true,” Trey said. “Did you know that the actress Hedy Lamarr patented a frequency-hopping technology in the 1940s that was used in the development of cell phones?”

“What does that have to do with rye bread?”

“Not bread, weird facts.”

“How much trivia can your big brain hold up there?” Beth asked, pointing to Trey’s head.

“Not much that’s actually useful,” he said, and then he laughed and typed away.

It took only fifteen minutes for Trey and Beth to unearth a few grim details about rye and the history of that fungus, which was called ergot. This included a popular theory that the Salem-witch-trials tragedy might be blamed on a wet spring and ergot-riddled rye, which caused hallucinations and burning sensations of the skin and other unpleasant symptoms. They also learned about the use of ergot in midwifery and ergot derivatives in modern-day obstetrics. A few experts believed that ergot might cause abortion in the early pregnancies of women who had other underlying risk factors, though this application was inconsistent and unreliable.

After long minutes of leaning into the small screen to read search-engine summaries and pages, Beth said, “This is all interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything.” She reached across the keyboard and hit the cursor that took them back to the search results.

“You have mud on your earrings,” Trey said. Beth had leaned in so close to him to read the pages that she’d eclipsed his view of the screen. Annoyed with herself, she withdrew, but he had already reached up to rub the caked dirt off the dangling silver, and she was forced to stay put or get a painful yank on her earlobe.

She said the only thing that came to mind. “That mud’s from Wally.”

Trey chuckled again, always so ready with that warm laugh. “I guess you have your own stories to tell. I’d like to hear them sometime.”

Beth didn’t know why her thoughts went to Jacob at that moment, or why Trey’s unguarded attention made her feel both flattered and guilty. She liked his easy manner and entertaining talk, and his apparent interest in her grandfather’s well-being. But she wished Jacob were here to help her find Garner too.

She took the earring in her fingers and gently pulled it out of Trey’s grip. His hands, unlike hers, were wide and warm, but this time he didn’t comment on her frigid fingers. He freed her from discomfort by scrolling down the search results and then clicking through to the next page.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing to a link halfway down the list.

It seemed Trey had seen it at the same time. “Mentally ill physician vanishes,” with the keywords
ergot
and
poison
highlighted in the summary. The link took them to an article archived two years earlier in the
Daily News
, a Los Angeles–based newspaper. At the top of the article was a photograph of Catherine Ransom, who at the time wore her hair long and blond.

Trey and Beth read together silently.

Authorities are searching for Katrina White, MD, who fled her clinic in North Hollywood hours before an arrest warrant in her name was issued Wednesday afternoon. White is accused of intentionally and routinely poisoning at least two minors in her care over a six-month period
.

James Delaney filed a complaint against White after his child was hospitalized for a series of “suspicious and inexplicable illnesses” according to Detective John Kane, who is overseeing the manhunt
.

Forensic psychologist Dirk Swenson believes that White suffers from a form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a factitious disorder in which a caregiver, usually a mother, willfully causes harm to her charge, usually a child, for the purpose of gaining medical attention, recognition, and praise for her caregiving skill. Rarely the syndrome affects physicians.

Beth became stuck on “attention, recognition, and praise for her caregiving skill.” She found herself reading the same line over and over. It was unfortunately easy to see herself in that yearning. The desire to help others wasn’t entirely altruistic, was it? Her hopes of being a great veterinarian, and perhaps a gifted healer, were firmly rooted in a longing for attention, recognition, and praise. From Jacob, from Levi, from Danny, from her mother. From anyone who would notice her and think that such gifts must be far greater than any of her sins.

Munchausen syndrome by proxy is difficult to detect and diagnose because of the apparent trustworthiness and devotion of the caregiver
.

“She was the kindest professional you’ll ever meet,” says Newell Reinhart, a single father who has also filed a legal suit against White. “My daughter’s fears of going to the doctor vanished when we met Dr. White. It sickens me to say they’ve all come back now.
”

According to Kane, “We might never have cornered White if not for the quick thinking of Mr. Delaney,” who turned over to police the drug samples White had provided for the child from her office. The pills did not match the description on their box, and White’s recommended dose was toxic. The child was immediately removed from White’s care, though an investigation yielded no intent to harm
.

The case might have been called an unfortunate medical error if not for the suspicions of Reinhart, who described himself as a “close friend” of the doctor’s until his child began to suffer from chronic bouts of skin irritation and symptoms that “looked like dementia,” said Kane. Less than three months after the Delaney investigation, Reinhart’s problems were eventually traced to a natural remedy touted by White. This remedy, which White claimed would mitigate environmental allergies, contained powdered ergot, a grain fungus known for causing psychological disturbances. Traces of the concoction were found in White’s home, where it appears she made the remedy herself.

The article closed with a phone number that people could call if they had information pertaining to the whereabouts of Dr. White.

Trey finished reading first and was dialing his cell phone before Beth was done. He put the phone to his ear as the call went through to the predawn state of California.

“I’m not just seeing Dr. Cat’s face in that photo because I’m tired, am I?” Trey asked her.

Beth shook her head, more worried than ever about her grandfather. She rose from the sofa and went over to Mercy, then got down on her knees and lifted the wolf’s sleepy head in her hands. “I know God is using you, boy. I know we’re not going to find Garner without you. Please show me where he is.”

The wolf put his head back on his paws. The sunlight penetrating the thin draperies was shifting from blue to red. “Can’t we go now? Please? I don’t understand the holdup.”

Mercy closed his eyes.

Behind her Trey said, “Yes, I’m calling about an old case of Detective Kane’s . . .”

33

C
at needed so little from her apartment. She took a tote bag off her closet shelf and snapped it open, overcome by a sense of déjà vu that filled her with unexpected calm. When she’d fled California, she had even less time than she did now, and most of the essentials were already in her car.

She went into the kitchen to retrieve what cash she stored in the kitchen drawer, and some photographs of Newell and Amelia that would connect her to her life as Katrina White. They were a moot concern. Fingerprints all over this apartment and office would confirm her double identity, and she didn’t have time to clean. But she couldn’t part with the pictures.

It was fortunate that she had no images of Garner. It would make him easier to forget.

She took her one framed photograph, a snapshot of her parents on their honeymoon, but left the frame behind. Purse. IDs. A change of clothes, her favorite makeup. Books on the region’s native, edible, and medicinal plants. Perhaps she’d stay in the Rocky Mountain region. She had time to collect her favorite teas and the valuable herbs that had taken so many hours to gather and prepare for storage.

Everything else could turn to dust. She left without locking the door.

She intended to move downstairs and away from her office as quickly as possible without glancing back. She took each step downward on heavy feet, marching to a parade of new names she might pick from. Carrie. Mary. Kendall. Sherry. Clarissa. Melissa. Bernadette. Terri. She didn’t want any of them.

Her foot hovered over the landing. She wanted to be Catherine, Katrina—a name that could be anything she wanted it to be, anything
anyone
wanted it to be. Cat. Cathy. Katie. Kate. It helped draw people to her, this easy way of being, this flexible label. She didn’t want to let go of it yet.

And yet she had to. She had never despised her life more than at this moment.

A cry from her office cut straight through the rear entry of her offices as she passed it, and the burst of terror almost turned her head. She covered her ears and ducked her head and jumped off the last step, then ran down the common hall toward the back door.

Garner raised his voice again, and this time her name penetrated the barrier of her fists.

“Catherine . . .”

It was a weak, dry, pathetic cry. A pitiful, wasted sound that shouldn’t have been able to travel past his own toes. But it sought her out and found her, and she was troubled. He never called her Catherine. Only Cat.
Cat, girl, have a look at this. Cat, child, you’re on the prowl. What’s bugging you?

“She’s fainted!” Garner croaked.

He was hallucinating, a side effect of the ergot. It would wear off, if he didn’t die first. There was nothing to do for ergot but to let it wear off.

“You’re needed at the church!”

With her purse on one shoulder and tote bag over the other, Cat lowered her clenched hands until they shielded her heart. She told herself not to turn around. She should leave the building
now
. Her office was a fishnet and Garner’s voice was the lure, and the authorities were the fishermen who would haul her off to prison and filet her soul and lay it bare on a plate, and the hungry bears would say, before they ate her alive, that she was cold-blooded and calculating and deserving of such treatment.

No one would ever know the depths of her capacity to serve, to heal. To love.

Cat reached out and touched the exit. She leaned into it. She placed her forehead on the wood.

“Cat, girl.” The whisper-thin words were barbed hooks in her heart. “I need you.”

The door became an immovable object.
I need you
. She had no will to force it open.
I need you
. The three words she had never in her life been able to turn away from. If only Garner knew what he was saying.

She couldn’t refuse to help him. Cat returned to her office. She passed through the entry without feeling the weight of the knob under her fingers. She floated across the old looped carpet, barely touching the fibers, and reached the exam room where Garner lay as he had ten minutes ago, lashed to that board with no one to help him up. His eyes were wide and unfocused, darting around in his head as if each hole in the ceiling’s acoustic tiles commanded his undivided attention.

“I’m here,” she said as she stood at his feet, which were still clad in the red clogs he wore around his basement garden every day.

“Ashes fall,” he murmured. “They burn.” And then, more frantic, “They burn!” His fingers strained against his restrained arms, contorting to reach out to an imaginary fire.

The flames of heartbreak licked the back of Cat’s eyes then, as she watched him babble and twist. It would take hours, days of this wild nonsense before Garner was himself again. And by then they would be separated, he placed in the care of another physician who didn’t know or care about a fraction of Garner, the father figure. And then they would teach him to hate her.

He would protect her if he could. But now he would never know that Cat had done this for the good of their relationship, for the strength of their father-daughter bond. What her own father had severed, she had restored with the skill of a precise and patient surgeon.

Cat knew then that she would never leave Garner. She’d suffered from a momentary lapse into selfishness, and now was the time to set that aside. They would never be separated the way she’d allowed her father to separate himself from her childhood, the way she’d allowed Newell Reinhart to walk away with Amelia. Never again would anyone rob Catherine Ransom of the right to care for another person. Not relatives. Not the law. Not anyone or anything lesser than human love.