Whiskers of the Lion (21 page)

Friday, August 19

9:35
P.M.

PARAMEDICS WERE able to sedate the sheriff only because they established a viable IV port on the back of his hand while he still lay in shock on the third-floor carpet of the Hotel St. James. In Millersburg's Pomerene Hospital, the anesthesiologist was able to anesthetize the sheriff's jaw and face for surgery in an ER bay only because Robertson had earlier been sedated. Even then, despite the anesthesia, they were able to close the long arc of the knife wound on Robertson's face only because they were able to add Demerol to the cocktail of pain medications that he was receiving through the original IV port. Otherwise, the sheriff would have torn the ER apart trying to get down the hall to the surgery suites, to find out what progress was being made with Stan Armbruster's shoulder wound.

When all of the commotion had settled down, Robertson lay on his back in a semiconscious state of disgruntlement, in a recovery room between the ER and the surgical suites of the hospital. Over a span of about twenty minutes, he dozed on and off. Eventually, he became aware, while struggling out of an ensnaring hallucination, that a bearded Amish man was standing at the railing beside his hospital bed. It caused the sheriff a moment of confusion, because his struggle had not been with anything Amish. It had been a struggle with a morphine-induced hallucination of semihuman shapes writhing inside the translucent walls of his room. But the sight of a plain Amish man seemed incongruous enough to the sheriff to cause him to hold his eyes open and study the man more closely.

He wore a vest, Robertson could see. He was in denim. His hair was short. It was too short for an Amish cut. The long blue sleeves of the Amish man's shirt were stained with blood. The man's hands had been scrubbed, but Robertson could see a reddish grime under his fingernails.

Because of the pain, Robertson was able to turn his head only slowly. He looked more carefully at the man's face. It wasn't a face with a proper Amish beard. The beard was neatly trimmed, not full and bushy. It was a professor's beard. Only gradually, because his thoughts were muddled by the sedatives and the morphine, was Robertson able to recognize the man.

“Mike,” Robertson whispered through lips he could barely move. The effort to speak nearly exhausted him, but he managed to add, “Armbruster?”

“Still in surgery, Sheriff.”

“Earnest Troyer?”

“Dead, Bruce. Missy is taking his body to the morgue. I'm to tell you that she'll be up here as soon as she has logged her evidence.”

Though his efforts to move were suffused with exhaustion and pain, Robertson grasped the professor's sleeve and said, “We should have wanded him, Mike.”

“It was a lettuce knife, Bruce.”

Robertson's eyes closed, but he waved his hand to encourage more from Branden.

The professor leaned in over the bed railing. “He sharpened a plastic lettuce knife, Sheriff. It wasn't metallic. We would have passed right over it with a metal detector.”

Robertson's eyes remained closed. Branden gently shook the sheriff's shoulder, but Robertson did not wake. So the professor walked into the bathroom to scrub again at the dried blood under his fingernails. When he came out of the bathroom, Sheriff Robertson was fumbling with the ice in a pink plastic glass of water that had been placed on his bed's rolling tray. Branden held the cup steady so that Robertson could take out a chip of ice. On the tray, a plastic spoon was in its wrapper. The professor unwrapped the spoon and lifted another sliver of ice out of the cup. He offered it to the sheriff, but Robertson ignored the spoon. He looked back at the professor with weary lids and troubled eyes.

Robertson closed his eyes and drew several deep breaths to steady his mind. Slowly, he lifted his hand to his face, and he felt with the pads of his fingers along the ragged line of sutures that had been used to close his wound. As he felt the alarming length of the wound, which started on his jaw-line below his left ear and arced across his cheek nearly to his lips, the sheriff whispered to Branden, “I got too close to the lion cage, Mike.”

“I know, Bruce. You were lucky.”

“Instinct,” Robertson said grimly.

“I know, Bruce.”

“I saw his face, Mike. First time in my life. I saw the face of the lion tamer.”

“It wasn't a lion, Bruce,” Branden said. “It was just a man with a lettuce knife.”

Robertson shook his head, and as he lost consciousness, he said, “Face too close to the bars.”

 • • • 

While Robertson slept, the professor held vigil in a chair beside his bed. Branden tried his wife's cell number, but Caroline didn't answer. When he looked up from the phone, Robertson was struggling again to grasp the small plastic glass of water.

Branden rose and held the spoon with a sliver of ice to Robertson's lips. The sheriff took the ice between his lips and then sank back onto his pillow, asking, “Missy?”

Branden held the glass of ice water ready and said, “Not yet. I can call her.”

“No,” Robertson said. “She has her hands full in the morgue.”

At the door to Robertson's room, there was a knock. Pat Lance entered carrying a cell phone. She was still in her dusty-rose Amish dress and white apron. She wasn't wearing her wig or her Kapp. She asked the professor, “Can he talk?” and Branden answered, “Little bits at a time. He whispers.”

Lance came up to the side of Robertson's bed. Before she said anything, Robertson asked, with his eyes held shut and his mind dreading bad news, “Armbruster? Anything?”

“He's critical, Sheriff,” Lance answered. “He's still in surgery.”

Robertson grasped the sleeve of the professor's shirt. “Mike. How long has it been?”

Branden turned to the wall clock, but Lance answered directly, “One hour and fifty-seven minutes, Sheriff. They're almost done.”

Robertson turned to Lance and asked, “Is that his phone? He has a blue case like that.”

“Yes, it's Stan's phone,” Lance answered. “I've been going through it, to see who I should call. He has only two numbers listed I.C.E.”

Robertson closed his eyes again. “He has a sister down in Chillicothe. And his mother is still alive.”

“They're all listed as just names, Sheriff. There's no ‘Mom' or ‘Sis' like you'd expect.”

Robertson waved Lance out of the room. “Call the I.C.E. numbers, Lance. Gotta be family.”

As Lance left the room, the professor's phone announced a call. He recognized the strumming tone, and to Robertson he said, “It's Caroline.” He stood by the bed to take the call.

Robertson pushed himself up on his pillow and waited. Branden listened for a moment and then said, “I'm with Bruce, Caroline. I'm going to put you on speaker phone. OK, say that again.”

Muddled by road noises, Caroline's voice sounded from the phone. “I'm driving to Akron behind the ambulance. They're taking Ellie to Akron Children's Hospital. There's trouble with her pregnancy.”

Robertson became instantly agitated. He struggled to clear his voice, but he managed only to whisper, “Be OK?”

“What's that?” Caroline came back.

“Is she going to be OK?” the professor asked for the sheriff.

“I don't know. But her doctor told Ricky that they have better neonatal facilities at Akron. For preemies, Michael.”

Branden took Caroline's call off speaker phone, and he retreated to a chair in the corner to talk with her privately. Robertson sank back onto his pillow. His head and arms lay immobile with the heaviness of lead weights. His thoughts seemed to swim against currents of viscous oil. Vaguely, he recognized Pat Lance as she came again into the room. The sheriff waved her up to his bedside.

“I talked to his sister, Sheriff,” Lance reported. “She's driving up from Chillicothe. His mother will have to fly up from Florida.”

Next, a doctor entered the room. He inspected Robertson's long arc of sutures and wrote notes on a clipboard at the foot of Robertson's bed.

The sheriff fought mental sluggishness to frame a question. He pushed on Lance's elbow to start her toward the doctor, and he managed to say only, “Stan?”

Lance asked, “Doctor, can you tell us anything about Stan Armbruster?”

The doctor slid his clipboard back into the bed's charting slot. “He's critical,” he said. “They had him in recovery, but his blood pressure dropped, and they're deciding now if they can go back in, to try again to stop the bleeding.”

Branden appeared beside the doctor at the foot of the sheriff's bed. “Why wouldn't they do that, Doctor?”

The doctor shrugged. “They need more of his blood type, Professor. They've already used most of what we had on hand. They're making some calls.”

Immediately, Lance drew her cell phone from the side pocket of her long rose dress. She jabbed her finger at Chief Wilsher's speed dial, and when Wilsher answered, she said, “Stan needs blood, Dan. He needs it right now, if it's to do him any good.”

Lance listened to the chief's short reply, and she switched out of the call. Her eyes turned to the ceiling as if she had been listening to answered prayer. “They're sending everybody here, Sheriff,” she said, turning back toward Robertson's bed. “Dan is calling them all. Everybody. Holmes County, Wayne County, everywhere. To donate blood.”

 • • • 

When Bobby Newell entered the room, Professor Branden was standing again beside the railing of Bruce Robertson's hospital bed. The sheriff's eyes were closed, so Newell asked Branden, “Can he talk, Mike? He's going to want to hear this.”

Branden pushed on Robertson's shoulder, but the sheriff did not open his eyes. Branden shook the sheriff a little harder, and still Robertson did not respond. Branden laid his hand on Robertson's chest, and the sheriff was breathing restfully. So Branden pulled Newell away from the bed and said, “I'll tell him, Bobby, once he wakes up.”

Newell hesitated and roughed up the tuft of black hair over one ear. “I can come back, Mike.”

“He's going to ask me who was here, Bobby. I should have something for him.”

“OK, it's Earnest Troyer's house,” Newell said. “In Sugarcreek. We went in to search it, and we found a cutting table for drugs in his basement. He's been bagging cocaine, and he's had a lot of help. We're working through a list of contacts and messages on his phone. There are going to be a lot of arrests. Maybe a dozen people were involved.”

“He had to have had some help, Bobby. At the Helmuth farm. There had to be at least one accomplice to drive Earnest Troyer off the property.”

“I don't know, Mike. Maybe Troyer followed Dent there. Maybe he had his own car. But on the drugs, he had plenty of help. Dozens of people, Mike. This is how most of the cocaine in Holmes County was being distributed.”

Branden arched a brow. “He managed the northern terminus, Bobby. All of Molina's drug shipments eventually went to him.”

“Right,” Newell said. Nervous energy rippled through his muscles.

Branden shook his head and smiled as if he shouldn't have been surprised. “He delivered more than pizzas, Bobby. He had a ready-made delivery route for drugs.”

“We've impounded his car,” Newell said, agreeing. “But we pulled out of his house.”

“Why pull out?” Branden asked.

“I called in the BCI labs. This needs to be handled at the state level.”

“Did you tell the FBI, too?”

“Yes. I think I had to, Mike. I think we should let the state and the feds handle this investigation. I'm down to one detective, and she's standing uselessly outside the surgical suites. Looks like she's been Tased.”

“What about evidence of Howie Dent's murder?” Branden asked. “You'll find evidence in Troyer's house in Sugarcreek.”

“I turned the house over to an FBI forensics team, Mike. We'll process the scene at the St. James. And we have Troyer's car. If the FBI finds evidence in Sugarcreek that Troyer killed Dent, then I'm willing to wait to let them tell us that.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Branden said.

“Maybe,” Newell said with a vexed smile. “My question is whether the sheriff is going to think that it's reasonable, too.”

Newell turned to leave, but his phone rang. He stopped in the room to take the call. He said, “Hello,” and listened for several moments. Then he said, “Mike, I have to take this out in the hall. You'll never believe who it is.”

 • • • 

As Newell left, Pat Lance returned with Armbruster's phone. On the display, she had found a picture of herself, taken by Armbruster when she was in the Mast home, wearing the dusty-rose dress that Fannie and Irma had made for her. Lance showed the photo to Branden and said, “Stan took this. I didn't know.”

Branden looked at the phone and said, “That looks like it was taken at the Mast farmhouse.”

“It was,” Lance said with a smile so confused and crooked that it turned only one corner of her lips. “And there's more, Professor. He's taken other photos of me on the job.”

Lance selected a second photo from the phone's light box, and she showed it to the professor. It was a picture of Lance working at a computer, while she and Armbruster had been searching the
Budget
newspaper for evidence of Fannie Helmuth's movements.

With puzzled chagrin, Lance asked the professor, “Has he been talking about me?”

To delay the obligation to answer, the professor gave a reluctant smile. But from his bed, the sheriff answered readily, “He likes you, Lance.” Then as he struggled to rise up on his pillow, the sheriff added, “I can't believe you didn't know that.”

Pat Lance stared back at the sheriff as if he had surrendered to insanity. She looked again at the photo on Armbruster's phone, and she switched it off. Her face flushed with pink heat, and she spun around and hurried out of the room.