Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº13

Left-Footed Angels-2

A hunched, sweaty-faced man in his mid-seventies came to the door. He was gaunt and would have been taller than me if you took the bend out of his spine. Ichabod Crane, that’s who I thought of. Bald except for some steel wisps at the sides of his head, he wore an old-fashioned smoking jacket like a red and gold brocade chair. The silly jacket was appropriate as he smelled of pipe smoke, his yellowy teeth attesting to the habit. Ellington, if that’s who this man was, wasn’t holding a meerschaum pipe in his shaking right hand, not unless they made them to look like .40 caliber Berettas.

I interlocked my fingers and placed them atop my head. “Dr. Ellington?”

Sniffling, wiping his wet brow with his free hand, he asked, “What do you want?”

“I come in peace.”

“Unless I’m hallucinating, mister, that’s an M4 not an olive branch on your shoulder.”

These times demanded that even people who had once been ardent supporters of gun control become familiar with firearms. So I wasn’t surprised by either the Beretta in his hand or his ability to name my assault rifle.

“If I came to f**k with you, I wouldn’t have knocked and my M4 wouldn’t be over my shoulder.”

“Better answer.” He repeated, “What do you want?” He didn’t give me time to respond. “I think I know. Let’s get this straight. I don’t have any drugs on hand and if you need medical assistance, you’re s**t out of luck. I haven’t treated a breathing human being in forty years.”

Unless I’m hallucinating, mister, that’s an M4 not an olive branch on your shoulder.

I called bullshit on that. Of course he had drugs on hand. From the size of his pupils, the yellow tint of his loose skin, his constant sniffling, and his bone thinness, my guess was he was his own best customer. I didn’t blame him for using. It was like that old joke. A guy is on a crashing plane and calls for the flight attendant. She asks, “What is it, sir? Can’t you see we’re all about to die?” He says, “Can I please get some raw mushrooms?” Confused, the flight attendant says, “Mushrooms! Why do you want mushrooms now?” He shrugs and says, “Well, I was always afraid to eat them before.” I only half-believed the second part about his not dealing with live patients.

“Mary Johnson,” I said as if to explain the universe.

“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

“Does it?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m getting impatient, mister. I’m not well.”

That was a junkie euphemism for he needed to fix. I ignored him.

I said, “James Johnson.”

Ichabod tried not to react, but it was too late. Not that he threw up his arms or snapped his bony fingers. His expression changed just enough for me to know. He gave up the stall.

“Infant male, Caucasian, seven months of age.” Then he smiled a smile that let me know my instincts were right. Mary Johnson had paid for the autopsy and report as she had tried to pay me.

“That’s the child.”

“What about it?” It, not him.

“Mrs. Johnson has retained me to look into the murder of her son.”

Ichabod was laughing. “You are an absurd man.”

“The situation is absurd, not me.”

He raised the Beretta. “Go away. I told you, I don’t have drugs and I’m not well.”

Raising the gun was a mistake. It was now too close to me. The idea of a gun was that it contained bullets. The bullets meant you could leverage power at a distance. There was more to guns than knowing how to load a magazine, rack a slide, and squeeze a trigger. Experienced people knew you stood beyond arm’s length. Fortunately for me, most people had learned their gun lessons from TV, movies, and video games. I unlocked my fingers, spread them apart, and smacked the gun out of Ichabod’s hand with a sharp chop of my left fist. He yelped in pain, grabbed his right wrist with his left hand, and crumpled to his knees. The Beretta fell behind me. I didn’t bother retrieving it. Raccoons had opposable thumbs, but I wasn’t worried.

I grabbed Ellington by the scruff of his smoking jacket and yanked him inside the house. Locking the door behind me, I pulled him up to his feet.

“I was a cop for a long time. I get sensitive when people point guns at me.”

“What do you want from me?” he asked, hand still rubbing where I’d hit him. “You might’ve broken my wrist.”

“I might’ve broken your f*****g neck. Be glad I’m less ambitious. Let’s go to your office and talk.”

“But I’m not—”

“—well. Yeah, you said that already. Don’t worry, Doc, I’ll let you fix up once we talked.”

I followed him through the house, keeping the M4 pointed at his back. If he tried anything stupid, it would be hard to miss a target wearing red and gold and walking six feet in front of me. I kept my eyes straight ahead until we got to a room that looked like a Hollywood set of a doctor’s office.

There was a leaded glass window that faced the front lawn. The walls were lined with reference books and covered in enough framed degrees and certifications to choke a mule. There were photos of the doctor with men and women in evening dress. Some of their faces were recognizable to me. Some not. The room was furnished with brass-tack brown leather chairs and a huge fussy desk for which many trees had given their lives. The office smelled intensely of cherry-flavored tobacco smoke. Lingering beneath the appealing scent of the smoke was a more astringent, chemical odor that was vaguely reminiscent of hospitals and morgues.

“Okay, Doc, go sit behind your desk, but keep your hands where I can see them.”

His hands were shaking badly. He was sweating profusely. His sniffling was the soundtrack to our conversation. Ellington was about to bring up fixing again when he noticed me studying his walls. Vanity lit his fire almost as much as his opioid of choice.

“County Medical Examiner, expert witness to the stars. I testified at some big trials.” He laughed at himself. “I was once somebody when being somebody had meaning. Now...” He shrugged.

“Tell me about the kid. Then I’ll go and you can get well. You need to get the file or boot up your computer?”

“Not necessary. But first, please, indulge me.”

“How?”

“On its face, your being here ... it’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe so. You’re a detective as long as I was, it’s all you know how to be, all you know how to do. Why should I stop now?”

“But you’re no longer a detective, not officially, I gather, or you would have shown me a shield.”

I had my FIPD shield in my pocket, but I was embarrassed by it.

“Being a cop now with what’s coming, it’s more like being a garbage man. All the uniforms do is round people up and send them to higher ground. They just shoot the stubborn ones. Detectives don’t investigate s**t anymore. With the FIPD, I’d show up at crime scenes, even homicides, and pretend to investigate, but I was ordered to forget it. Distraught relatives would call and ask what I was doing about their murdered wife or son and I’d have to make s**t up. I guess I got tired of lying. I can do something as a PI. At least I can try. As a detective I was ordered not to. I couldn’t stomach that.”

“County Medical Examiner, expert witness to the stars. I testified at some big trials... I was once somebody when being somebody had meaning. Now...”

“To what end, Mr. ... what is your name?” he asked, wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his jacket.

“Ruben Connor.”

“To what end, Connor? You can try. You may even succeed, but what does it mean? It means nothing.”

I liked a good metaphysical discussion as much as the next guy, but I wasn’t in the mood.

“Let’s get back to James Johnson.”

“Another waste of your time. The child died of SIDS, Sudden Infant—”

“—Death Syndrome. I investigated a lot of infant deaths. Any unexpected death, even suicide, is investigated as homicide until the ME tells us different, but you would know that better than me.”

“The more fashionable name for it these days is SUIDS. When I started out in this business, we called it crib death.” He laughed a manic laugh. “But there won’t be enough time to give it a newer name. Whatever it’s called, the parents never want to believe it. Even before Red Sunday, they would be out of their minds to find a reason other than it just happens sometimes. Without a reason they blamed themselves. Now can I please—”

“You’re sure?”

“Hundred percent. The doctor who signed the death certificate in New York thought so, too. By then the states had been ordered to not bother with autopsies the same way you were ordered not to bother investigating homicides. It was pointless. After those orders came down, my business flourished. I did more autopsies in a month than I used to do in a year. And once they began evacuations and people became desperate, they would show up at my door willing to pay me for anything ... amputations, abortions ...”

“Did you oblige them?”

“Sometimes.” He wasn’t more specific. Ellington couldn’t take it any longer and reached into the top left-hand drawer of his desk in spite of my threats. “I’ve got to dose myself. Please! Please!”

I stood, training the muzzle of the M4 center mass. “Slowly, Doc. Very slowly.”

He followed instructions and placed a rubber strap and a glass vial on his blotter alongside a sterile packaged syringe.

“Just enough to calm you down,” I said. “After we’re done talking you can juice yourself into eternity for all I care.”

He opened and partially filled the syringe, strapped his biceps, and pumped his fist. In spite of his shaky hands and full body ache, Ellington performed the ritual with surprising grace and speed. I was mesmerized. Competency was beautiful to watch no matter the choreography or to what purpose. Almost immediately, a kind of peace settled over the old man as he eased back in his chair, the tension and junkie panic flowing out of him as if through the soles of his black corduroy slippers.

“Although the infant’s mother had managed to cold store the body, there was minor inevitable tissue degradation,” he said, a relieved smile on his face. “Still, not enough to affect my conclusions. There weren’t any signs of violence, no trauma at all. The child had simply stopped breathing.”

“But that’s not what you wrote in your report.”

He shook his head. “No. I gave her what she wanted.”

“And she gave you what you wanted.”

“Eagerly,” he answered without a hint of remorse. “She was grateful. I had absolved her of her guilt.”

“Not exactly like making her recite ten Hail Marys and lighting a candle, was it?”

“You’re mistaking me for a priest. My wife died three years ago and she’d been sick for two years prior to that. It had been a long dry season for me.” His smile rearranged itself into something dark and ugly. “My God, Connor, the feel of Mary Johnson’s t**s alone made it worth my while.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I was astride Ellington, slapping his face black and blue, sweeping the glass vial and syringe off his desk. I did it not because I was pure-hearted. The opposite was true. I was Elmer Gantry, tempted when Mary Johnson had stripped off her sweater and offered me anything I wanted as long as I didn’t make her f**k on the floor. I was jealous because I hadn’t taken the opportunity.

But instead of defending himself or begging, Ellington laughed as I alternated between my palm and the back of my hand. It was more effective than any words or defense might have been. I stopped slapping him. He didn’t stop laughing.

“I was right, you are an absurd man.”

I opened my mouth to say something. What, I’m not sure. It was moot, because before sound came out, a diamond-shaped pane in the leaded glass window shattered, and the left side of Ellington’s forehead exploded. Suddenly I was covered in blood, skin, brain matter, and upholstery foam. Tiny bone fragments blinded me. I dropped to the floor, blinking feverishly, letting tears wash the debris out of my eyes. I crawled back to the visitor’s side of the doctor’s huge desk to put as much solid material between me and the shooter as I could. A mist of atomized blood hovered above me like a red ghost. I waited for a second shot to come. I put my Phillies cap on the muzzle of my M4 and raised it up trying to draw fire. None came. A car engine came to life. Tires skidded on leaves, then, finding purchase, screeched.

After another attempt to draw fire and two minutes of calm, I crawled back around to the doctor’s side of the desk, stood. Using the bookcase for cover, I surveyed the driveway, the front lawn. Nothing. I could see the tire tracks in the leaf litter. There was something small and flesh colored on the lawn near the driveway exit, but it was impossible to make out clearly from this distance.

I reached out, checking Ellington for a pulse. He was as dead as James Johnson. There was no question about the COD. I knew it before I checked. Still... I pushed the dead man back in his ruined chair. There was a ragged, fist-sized hole in the left side of his head. I let go of his chest and his head slammed into his desktop.

My M4 at the ready, I found the rear entrance and came around the other side of the house. It would have been stupid to assume the threat was gone, but it was. I made my way down to the front of the driveway where I’d spotted a furless, featherless shape on the lawn.

“Holy f**k!” I ran the last thirty feet. “A newborn.”

No, it wasn’t. It was an incredibly lifelike replica of a fetus, a girl, umbilical cord attached. She—it was the size of my open hand. I rolled it over as gently as if she was real. Though its eyes were shut, I felt it, her looking through me. There was a red-painted crucifix around its neck. The red crucifix meant one thing. I knew where I had to go from here. /MT