“Who is this?” he demanded.
I told him.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Mr. Todd. Did you get that report I promised you?”
“I did,” I said, “and I want to—”
“Good,” he said. “Then I presume the grant will be forthcoming shortly.”
“Well, not exactly. What I really—”
“The skeptics,” he said disgustedly. “The nay-sayers. Don’t listen to them. We’re on the right track now.”
“Dr. Thorndecker,” I said, “I was wondering if—”
“Of course there’s a lot to be done. We’ve just scratched the surface. No one knows. No one can possibly guess.”
“If you could—”
“I don’t know when I’ve been so optimistic about a research project. I mean that sincerely. It just seems like everything is falling into place. The Thorndecker Theory. That’s what they’ll call it: the Thorndecker Theory.”
All this in his booming baritone. But I missed the conviction the words should have conveyed. The man was remote: that’s the only way I can describe it. I didn’t know if he was trying to convince me or himself. But I had a sense of him being way up there in the wild blue yonder, repeating dreams.
“Dr. Thorndecker,” I said, trying again, “I have some questions only you can answer, and I was hoping you might be able to spare me a few moments this afternoon.”
“Julie,” he said. “She’ll be so proud of me. Of course. What is it you wanted?”
“If we could meet,” I said. “For a short time. This afternoon.”
“Delighted,” he shouted. “Absolutely delighted, Now? This minute? Are you at the gate? I’m in my lab.”
“Well … no, sir,” I said. “I was thinking about this afternoon. Maybe three o’clock. Around there. Would that be all right?”
There was silence.
“Hello?” I said. “Dr. Thorndecker? Are you there?”
“What’s this about?” he said suspiciously. “Who is this?”
Once more it occurred to me that he might be on something. In never-never land. He wasn’t slurring; his speech was distinct. But he wasn’t tracking. He wasn’t going from A to B to C; he was going from K to R to F.
I tried again.
“Dr. Thorndecker,” I said formally, “this is Samuel Todd. I have a few more questions I’d like to ask you regarding your application to the Bingham Foundation for a grant. Could I see you at three this afternoon?”
“But of course!” he said heartily. Pause. “Perhaps two o’clock would be better. Would that inconvenience you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’ll be out there at two.”
“Excellent!” he said. “I’ll leave word at the gate. You come directly to the lab. I’ll be here.”
“Fine,” I said. “See you then.”
“And Mary and Edward,” he said, and hung up.
It was Loony Tunes time. I figured I might as well be equipped. I found a hardware store that was open, and bought a three-cell flashlight with batteries, a short stepladder, 50 feet of cheap clothesline, and a lead sash weight. They didn’t have any ski masks. I stowed my new possessions in Betty Hanrahan’s pickup and headed out to Crittenden to meet Mary Thorndecker. If she had showed up in a Batman cape, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. The whole world had gone lunatic. Including me.
She wasn’t hard to find. Parked off the road in a black car long enough to be a hearse. I pulled up ahead of her, figuring I might want to get away in a hurry and wouldn’t want to be boxed in. I got out of the pickup, ready to sit in her limousine. It had to be warmer in there. The Yukon would be warmer than Betty Hanrahan’s pickup.
But Mary Thorndecker got out of her car, too. Slammed the door: a solid
chunk
muffled in the thicker air. Maybe she didn’t want to be alone with me in a closed space. Maybe she didn’t trust me. I don’t know. Anyway, we were both out in the open, stalking toward each other warily. High Noon at Crittenden.
But we waded, actually. Because there was a morning ground fog still swirling. It covered our legs, and we pushed through it. It was white smoke, billowing. The earth was dry ice. And as we breathed, long plumes of vapor went out. I glanced around that chill, deserted landscape. Bleak trees and frosted stubble. A blurred etching: fog, vapor, my slick trenchcoat and her heavy, old-fashioned wrap of Persian lamb. I hadn’t seen one of those in years.
She wore a knitted black cloche, pulled down to her eyes. Her face was white, pinched, frightened. Everything that had seemed to me mildly curious and faintly amusing about the Thorndecker affair suddenly sank to depression, dread, and inevitability. Her demonic look. Bleached lips. Her hands were thrust deep into her pockets, and I wondered if she had brought a gun and planned to shoot me dead. In that lost landscape it was possible. Any cold violence was possible.
“Miss Thorndecker,” I said. “Mary. Would you—”
“How did you know?” she demanded. Her voice was dry and gaspy. “About the note? That I wrote the note?”
“What difference does it make?” I said. I stamped my feet. “Listen, can we walk? Just walk up and down? If we stand here without moving for fifteen minutes, we’ll never dance the gavotte again.”
She didn’t say anything, but dug her chin down into her collar, hunched her shoulders, tramped beside me up the graveled road and back. Behind the fence was the Crittenden cemetery. On the other side were the winter-shredded trees. Not another car, a sound, a color. We could have been alone on earth, the last, the only. Smoke swirled about us, and I wanted a quart of brandy.
“Why did you write it?” I asked her. “I thought you loved your father. Stepfather.”
She tried to laugh scornfully.
“She
told you that,” she said. “I hate the man.
Hate
him! He killed my mother.”
“Can you prove that?”
“No,” she said, “but I
know.”
I wondered if she was out to lunch, if her fury had corroded her so deeply that she was lost. To me, herself, everyone.
“Is that why you wrote: ‘Thorndecker kills’? Because you think he murdered your mother?”
“And his father,” she said. “I know that, too. No, that’s not why. Because he’s killing, now, in that lab of his.”
“Scoggins?” I suggested. “Thorndecker killed him?”
“Who?”
“Scoggins. Ernie Scoggins. He used to work at Crittenden. A maintenance man.”
“Maybe,” she said dully. “The man who disappeared? I don’t know anything about him. But there were others.”
“Petersen?” I asked. “Chester K. Petersen? They buried him a few days ago. Pelvic cancer.”
“No,” she said, “he was a heart patient. That’s why he came to Crittenden Hall. I saw his file. Angina. No close relatives. A sweet old man. Just a sweet old man. Then, about three months ago, he began to develop tumors. Sarcomas, carcinomas, melanomas. All over his body. On his scalp, his face, hands, arms, legs. I saw him. I visited him. He rotted away. He smelled.”
“Jesus,” I said, looking away, remembering the dying chimp.
“But he was only the latest,” she said. “There were others. Many, many others.”
“How long?” I demanded. “How long has this been going on?”
She thought a moment.
“Eighteen months,” she said. “But mostly in the past year. Patients with no medical record of cancer. Cardiacs, mentals, alcoholics, addicts. Then they developed horrible cancers. They decayed. He’s doing it to them. Thorndecker is. I
know
it!”
“And Draper?” I said softly. “Dr. Kenneth Draper?”
A hand came swiftly out of her coat pocket. She gnawed on a chalky knuckle.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I ask him. I plead with him. But he won’t
tell
me. He cries. He worships Thorndecker. He’ll do anything Thorndecker says.”
“Draper is in on it,” I told her flatly. “He’s the physician in attendance. He signs the death certificates. But
why
are they doing it? For the bequests? For the money the dead patients leave to the lab?”
The question troubled her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what I thought at first, but that can’t be right. Some of them didn’t leave the lab anything. Most of them didn’t. I don’t know. Oh my God …”
She began weeping. I put an uncomfortable arm about her shoulders. We leaned together. Still stamping back and forth, wading through that twisting fog.
“All right,” I said, “let’s go over it … A patient checks in. A cardiac case, or a mental, drugs, alcoholic, whatever. Young or old?”
“Mostly old.”
“Then after awhile they develop cancer and die of that?”
“Yes.”
“The same way Petersen died? Or internal cancer, too? Lung cancer? Stomach? Spleen? Liver?”
“All ways,” she said in a low voice.
“In how long a time? How long does it take them to die of the cancer?”
“At first, when I became aware of what was going on, it was very quick. A few weeks. Lately it’s been longer. Petersen was the most recent. He lasted almost three months.”
“And they’re all buried here on the grounds?”
“Or shipped home in a sealed coffin.”
“But all of them tumorous?”
“Yes. Decayed.”
“And no complaints from relatives? No questions asked?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. People are like that. People are secretly relieved when a sick relative dies. A problem relative. They wouldn’t ask questions.”
“You’re probably right,” I said sadly. “Especially if they’re inheriting. And Draper hasn’t told you a thing about what’s going on?”
“He just claims Thorndecker is a genius on the verge of a great discovery. That’s all he’ll say.”
“He loves you.”
“He says,” she said bitterly, “but he won’t tell me anything.”
We paced back and forth in silence. It was the pits, absolutely the pits.
“What will you do to find out?” I asked her finally.
“What? I don’t understand.”
“How far will you go to discover what’s going on? How important is it to you to stop Thorndecker?”
Suddenly she came apart. Just splintered. She stopped, jerked away from my shielding arm, turned to face me.
“That cocksucker!” she howled. Her spittle stung. I took a step back, shocked, bewildered. “That murderer!” she screamed. “Turdy toad! Wife killer! You think I don’t—And he—with that slimy wife of his rubbing up against everything in sight. He has no right. No right! He must suffer. Oh yes! Skin flayed away. Flesh from his bones. Rot in the deepest, hottest hell. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord! Naked! The way she dresses! Licking up to every male she meets. Edward! Oh my God, poor, young, innocent Edward. Yes, even him. What does she
do
to them? And he,
he,
lets her go her way, his life destroyed by that wanton with her filthy ways. Ruining him. Her body there. For everyone! Oh yes, I know. Everyone knows. The whore! The smirking whore! Den of iniquity. That house of wickedness. Oh God, strike down the evil. Lord Jesus, I beg you! Smite this filth. Root out—”
She went on and on, using words I could hardly believe she knew. The schoolteacher gone berserk. The spinster wrung by an orgasm. Obscenity, jealousy, sexual frustration, religious frenzy: it was all in her inchoate shouts, words tumbling, white stuff gathering in the corners of her mouth, something leaking from her eyes.
And love there. Oh yes; love. Julie hadn’t been so wrong. This woman had to love Thorndecker to damn him so viciously, to want him so utterly destroyed. Every woman deserves one shot at the man she loves, and this was Mary’s, this wailed revilement, this hysterical abuse that frightened me with its intensity. The vapor of her screams came at me in spouts of steam smelling of acid and ash.
I wondered if I might shake her, slap her, or take her in my arms and say, “There, there,” and commiserate over her wounded soul, lost hopes, wasted life. Finally, I did nothing but let her rant, rave, wind down, lose energy, become eventually silent, just standing there, mouth open, trembling. And not from cold, I knew, but from pain and shame. Pain of her hurts, shame for having revealed it to another.
I put a hand on her arm as gently as I could, and led her back to her car. She came willingly enough, and let me get her seated behind the wheel. I pulled up her collar, folded the coat carefully over her knees, did everything but tuck her in. I offered her a cigarette, but I don’t think she saw it. I lighted up, with shaking fingers, smoked like a maniac. I finally had to open the window on my side just a crack.
When, after a few moments, I turned to look at her, I saw her eyes were closed, her lips were moving. She was praying, but to whom or for what, I did not know.
“Mary?” I said softly. “Mary, can you hear me? Are you listening to me?”
Lips stopped moving, eyes opened. Head turned, and she looked at me. The focus of her eyes gradually shortened until she saw me.
“I can help you, Mary,” I whispered. “But you must help me do it.”
“How?” she said, in a voice less than a whisper.
I laid it out for her:
I wanted to know the number of exterior and interior security guards on duty Sunday night. I wanted to know their schedules, when the shift changed, their routines, where they stayed when they weren’t patrolling.
I wanted to know everything she could find out about alarms, electric and electronic, and where the on-off switch or fuse box was located. Also, the location of the main power switches for the nursing home and the research laboratory.
I wanted to know the number of medical staff on duty Sunday night in Crittenden Hall and who, if anyone, might be working in the laboratories.
Finally, most important, I wanted that big ring of keys that Nurse Stella Beecham carried. If she wasn’t on duty late Sunday night—say from midnight till eight Monday morning—she probably left the keys in her office. I wanted them. If Beecham was on duty, or if she handed over her keys to a night supervisor, then I needed at least two keys: to the Hall and to the research lab. If those were impossible to obtain, then Mary Thorndecker would have to let me in from the inside of the nursing home, and I’d have to get into the lab by myself, somehow.
It took me a long time to detail all this, and I wondered if she was listening. She was. She said dully: “You’re going to break in?”
“Yes. I’m going to find out about those cancer deaths.”
“You’re going to get the evidence?”