Coldwater confession, p.14
Coldwater Confession, page 14
When Dwayne started to move, Joe got a glass of water from the kitchen. “Sit up,” he ordered. The man’s eyes lolled from side to side and then came slowly into focus. Joe handed him the glass. “Drink this.”
“You hit me.”
Joe wrapped Dwayne’s hand around the glass and asked, “What’s your last name, Dwayne?”
The man on the floor looked as if he wanted to say something rude but not at the risk of another beating. “Burdock,” he muttered.
“Occupation?”
“Computer technician.” Burdock lifted the glass and sipped. The muscles of his face and torso contracted as if the water had scoured something raw and tender.
“How old are you Burdock?”
“Fifty-three.”
Joe scribbled a note. “Getting mighty long in the tooth for this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Assault. Burglary.”
“Bullshit!”
“I pulled out your pockets while you were napping.” Burdock slapped his chest where the envelope had been, reached inside, and found a baggie and a plastic vial.
“These aren’t mine.” He dropped the baggie and vial on the carpet.
“That’s what makes it burglary,” said Joe. “The pills make it ten years.” Burdock opened his mouth and then shut it. Joe noted the ascendancy of brain over emotion and encouraged it. “Good choice,” he said. “There’s a chance you might get out of here without bracelets.” Joe opened his notebook. “Address?” Burdock gave it. Joe held up the envelope he had taken from Burdock’s pocket. “And where did you get this?”
“Off a computer that came into the shop.”
“Do you know the name of the customer?”
“Andrew Ryan. Karen’s ex.”
“Has she seen these?”
“Not yet. She’s seen some others.”
“Pages from a journal?”
Burdock grunted.
“When?”
“Last Sunday. More on Tuesday.”
“And where are those pages now?”
“She has them.”
“Do you have copies?”
“On a disk at work.” The upper half of Dwayne’s face contracted in pain. The bottom half sank in sullenness.
“That’s Percodan,” said Joe, gesturing toward the plastic prescription bottle on the floor. “Take one, it’ll make you feel better.” Dwayne opened the bottle and swallowed two pills. “Keep the rest. You’ll need them if you want to sleep tonight.”
“This isn’t right,” Dwayne muttered.
“Assault. Burglary. Possession of a controlled substance.” Joe held up the envelope of papers. “And this.” Burdock looked confused again. “Did you read it?”
“Some,” he muttered.
“Did you read any of the other documents you copied for Mrs. Ryan?”
“I read them.”
“More about her daughter getting beaten by her stepmother?”
“The stuff I gave her on Tuesday, yeah. The first stuff was just about him not getting laid.”
“And what part did Mrs. Ryan seem interested in?”
Burdock nodded as if he finally understood. “The daughter.”
“Not happy?”
“Nuclear.”
* * *
The doctor on shift at the Coldwater Hospital Emergency Room pocketed his stethoscope, unstrapped the blood pressure cuff from the sheriff’s arm, and told him to remove his shirt. “It’s my hand,” Joe protested.
“I’ll get to that. Your neck looks like the day after a mosquito wedding feast. We’ve had two cases of West Nile in Coldwater this summer. I want to see the rest of you, take some blood (‘so did they,’ thought Joe), and give you a shot of antibiotics. I don’t think your constitution is up for another major hit, Sheriff. Not after abrin poisoning last year.”
“Who told you…Dr.…” he read the name from the plastic tag on the doctor’s blue tunic. “Tran?”
“I’ve read your file, Sheriff. Or rather files. They’re rather voluminous for a man of your age. Though perhaps not for someone in your profession.”
“And you read all of it just to treat a banged-up hand?”
The doctor shrugged. “Carelessness can have fatal consequences in both our professions, Sheriff.”
An hour later, Dr. Tran returned with a set of x-rays and a plastic cast. “You’ve got a hairline fracture of the third metacarpal. Keep this on for a few days and the fracture will mend itself.” He wrote a prescription and gave that to Joe as well. “I don’t want to wait for the lab results before starting you on antibiotics. When I see insect bites in the hundreds the odds are that at least one is virulent.”
“Conscientious.” Joe meant it as a compliment, but he could see that the doctor was troubled. “What?” When Tran remained silent, he pressed. “You got that reluctant bystander witness face, doctor. Whatever it is, spit it out.”
The doctor closed his eyes and his face became still, almost as if he were praying. “We had a case in here last week.” His voice rasped as if his throat had suddenly lost a great deal of moisture. “An apparent drowning. It caused some disagreement among the staff.”
“I’m familiar with the case.”
“At the peer panel review, our chief allergist questioned the initial diagnosis of drowning. The deceased had water in her lungs. But not as much as is usually found in a drowning victim. And the throat was almost closed. The allergist asked the panel to consider the possibility that the deceased asphyxiated, rather than drowned. That started a somewhat heated debate. In the end, the panel voted not to amend the initial finding—unnecessary trauma to the family, with no obvious significance, even if an alternative might theoretically be possible.”
“And that troubles you?”
“As a medical professional, yes. My colleagues were clearly outside the scope of their competence in choosing to close off further inquiry based on non-medical assumptions.”
“How might Mrs. Ryan have asphyxiated?”
Dr. Tran folded his hands. “An allergic reaction. Perhaps to something in the water. There are a number of possibilities.”
“And not all of them accidental?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Chapter Twenty
Joe left his truck at the top of the driveway and walked down to the Ryan house. An unsmiling Rosemary Ryan observed his progress from the kitchen window and took her time responding to his knock. “Maggie’s resting,” she announced, opening the door only part way. “She’s not having a good day. Please don’t upset her.”
“May I come in?” asked Joe. Rosemary frowned. Joe pushed on the half-opened door and squeezed past. “Is there someplace we can talk?” With undisguised reluctance, Rosemary led the way to the sun porch at the back of the house. Joe took a seat on a wooden glider facing the water and a distant figure beneath a large straw hat dozing in a redwood lounge at the end of the dock. He began without preamble. “Was your daughter-in-law allergic to anything, Mrs. Ryan?”
Rosemary startled. “Well, of course. Everyone who knew her knew that. What’s this all about?”
“What was she allergic to?”
“Please answer my question, Joseph. What is this all about?”
“With respect, Mrs. Ryan, this is my classroom. I ask the questions; you answer them.” He looked calmly into the face of his former junior high school teacher and watched it move like data on a sign curve, alternating between caution and offense.
“Don’t bully me, Joseph. I’m no Billy Ambler.”
“‘Take out your textbooks and begin copying from chapter one,’” Joe recited. Rosemary’s face rippled. “Bullying is an effective tool when your target knows you can get away with it. I learned that from a very experienced teacher.”
“And what are you’re trying to get away with today?” Rosemary harrumphed.
“Whatever it takes to get answers to my questions.”
“I see.”
“I thought you might. Cops and teachers have a lot in common, don’t they? They can’t afford to lose the upper hand…ever. Lose it once, and maybe you can hang on to the paycheck, but you’re finished as an effective professional.”
“That’s a remarkable insight, Joseph.”
“And one that bears no grudges Mrs. Ryan—not that I thought you were worried about that. But I do need to know what your daughter-in-law was allergic to.”
“Is it important?”
“It could be.”
“Then as far as I know, the answer is restraint, men, pollen and peanuts…if that’s helpful.”
“Go on.”
“I assume this has to do with her drowning? I have a theory about that, though it’s not likely to be what you think. Do you want to hear it?”
“Please.”
Rosemary looked out the window at the flat, still water, as if giving herself a moment to gather her thoughts. “Well, as you know,” she began, “I come back to Coldwater to visit my son for a few weeks every August and September. For the last twelve of those summers, Andrew has been married to Dee Dee. She and I got to know each other well over that time. Lots of girl talk…about her childhood, early marriages, and things that I’m sure she never told anyone else, including her husband. Early on I came to realize that my daughter-in-law was not the Superwoman everyone thought her to be, and that in fact, she was a fragile, damaged human being. Tragically so.
“I’ll let you use your imagination for the specifics, but suffice it to say that by the time the young Dee Dee escaped her father’s house, she was an emotional cripple, with no use for men except to manipulate them, and no tolerance for any kind of authority or restraint. But she hid her demons well—especially from herself. She was no dumb bunny. She knew she had them. But she couldn’t quite face them or even allow herself to acknowledge precisely what they were. Some people find it less painful to be angry than honest.
“The woman my son married was attractive, outgoing, and seemingly keen to help with a difficult, and some might have said impossible, parenting situation. A prayer answered, or so it seemed. But it was an act, and it proved to be an unsustainable one. The woman who drowned a decade later was the worn-out shell of a person who could no longer maintain an impossible pretense—angry, obese, and alienated from everyone who had been attracted to the act but not to the reality. To be fair, I don’t think many people could have reformed the Maggie of thirteen years ago—my son in particular—and certainly none had volunteered. But the methods Dee Dee used were not the ones that brought her success in the workplace or that initially attracted the circle of former friends that you saw at her funeral. Her principal tool was the one that I suspect had been used regularly on her: punishment.
“As you’ve pointed out, Sheriff, punishment is an effective behavior modification tool. But its regular use comes at a price no family can pay and call itself happy. I’m surprised that my son permitted it. His father was a bully, and I know that any kind of abuse sickens him. He’s weak in that respect…always hoping things will get better. And poor Dee Dee…she really did love Andrew in her own damaged way. She dealt with Maggie in the only way she knew how, even though I’m sure she knew it was wrong.
“It takes passion and energy to be a tyrant, Sheriff. You can’t ever let your guard down or care what your subjects think of you. Dee Dee didn’t have that kind of strength, and she cared very much about what people thought of her. Maggie eventually conformed, under duress… like a prisoner waiting for a chance to escape. Andrew simply withdrew, ashamed of his own weakness I suppose. In recent years, he and Dee Dee could hardly stand to be in the same room with each other. Which is sad when you think of it—discomfort in another’s presence being the same sure sign of both the beginning and end of a romance.”
Mrs. Ryan was on a roll. Joe let her run.
“Dee Dee was through as an effective professional to use your analogy, though my peace-at-any-price son kept her on the payroll. Once she realized her demotion, my daughter-in-law let herself go, surrendering to the comforts of overeating and minor illnesses. A few years ago she started having to carry an inhaler, then refused to stay away from the things that caused her to need it. She seemed committed to a slow, self-inflicted decline. Then suddenly, a few months ago, she began a strenuous exercise program, not as any reasonable person would, slowly and, given her weight, under a doctor’s supervision. She did it unsupervised and unrestrained. Swimming by herself across Wilson Cove, at night, heedless of the cold, the boats, and the realities of an aging, overweight, and out-of-shape body. I don’t know what new demons drove her to change course from slow decline to headlong rush for the exit. But she was clearly in some sort of hurry, and to hell with anyone who might suggest a more sensible approach. It was almost as if she was swimming away from the unhappy mess she had created here…or trying to bring it to a rapid end, one way or the other. That she got herself killed in the process might not have been her preferred outcome. But it was a foreseeable one. The only thing that surprises me, is that it took all summer.”
* * *
Joe left Rosemary Ryan repeating her warning about Maggie’s fragile condition and made his way to the dock. A thick September air lay over the shoreline, humid and breathless. The glare off the water was intense. He found Maggie stretched out on the same deck chair, and in the same overdressed outfit as on his last visit: long sleeve white shirt, skinny jeans, and wide-brimmed straw hat.
“Sister Judith sent me,” he said, seating himself in a weathered Adirondack chair beside her.
Maggie moved her face to one side and lifted the brim of her straw hat.
“Ha! A Morgan! I haven’t seen one of those lately.”
“The other one found a gray hair in his comb last week. He’s still recovering.”
“Well, so am I. And you can tell that to Sister Judith…if that’s really why you came.”
Joe shaded his eyes and spoke to the upturned face. “I’m here to ask some questions about your stepmother.”
Maggie reached for a colored beach towel and wrapped it around her shoulders. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Probably not.” Joe opened his notebook and plowed ahead. “Was your stepmother allergic to anything?”
“Earth, air, fire, and water.”
“Any specific types?”
“Grass, pollen, strawberries, dairy, cat hair…. It was a long list, and it got longer every year. Why?”
“Did she have any close friends?”
“Lots.”
“Any male friends?”
Maggie hesitated. “Admirers. I wouldn’t call them anything more than that.”
“Did your stepmother socialize with anyone from the Fort, or know anyone there?”
“Dee Dee wouldn’t have been caught dead with anyone who drove anything cheaper than a Lexus. Her friends were almost exclusively other rich women.”
“And the ones that weren’t?”
“‘Noblesse oblige.’ She’d give my old clothes to the cleaning lady, help her friend’s au pair get a green card, that sort of thing. She usually wound up firing them. But before that, they treated her like Eva Peron.”
“Were any of these women married to soldiers?”
“Could have been. But I wouldn’t know any of the recent ones.”
Joe flipped a page in his notebook. “How did your father and stepmother get along?”
Maggie winced. “Joe…is this necessary?”
He nodded.
“I don’t have anyone else to compare them with.”
“Parents of your friends?”
“Not many of them fight in front of their children’s playmates.”
“How did you and your stepmother get along?”
“Joe! I was in the hospital when she drowned. Why are you asking all this? What could it possibly matter?”
“I understand that she used to hit you,” Joe pressed. “Did you ever hit her back?”
Maggie stood and faced him. Her body and hands shook. “Grandmother was right. You are not a nice man.”
“Did your stepmother cheat on your father…or vice-versa?”
“Go to hell!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Karen sat in a folding chair behind a cafeteria-style table and listened to her lawyer argue that she was no longer a ‘danger to herself or others.’ The hearing was a formality. She had not hit anyone or cut herself, and she had pretended to take all the medications that they forced on her. If the hospital did not let her out, Legal Aid would sue them. She would sign papers promising not to sue and acknowledge that she was leaving the facility ‘against medical advice.’ A promise that her lawyer reminded the panel was unenforceable if she was, as they believed, impaired. She gazed at her attorney’s curly dark hair and pale, smooth skin. He was maybe thirty. While they were preparing for the hearing, Karen told him he was cute. But he seemed not to hear. He was shy. Not like the last one. But she couldn’t use that one again unless she paid his bill.
Karen couldn’t remember much of what had brought her to the psychiatric facility this time. Usually, there was some sort of build-up over a period of weeks, and then only after she had been off her meds for a while. This one came on all of a sudden, which had not happened in a long time. She wasn’t sure what day it was. But she remembered that Dwayne was supposed to tell her something about Maggie. If it were not for that, she would have stayed in the hospital for some R&R. Why not? The food was good and they had decent cable. She had left a message on Dwayne’s machine before the hearing to tell him to meet her at the VFW.
