"She's right," Miranda agreed.
"Yeah." Harry sighed. "Instant meeting. Just add danger."
"My point exactly. Harry, let the professionals deal with this." Mim got up and dialed Sheriff Shaw.
"I still think we should try the missing-dog notice by ourselves," Harry said to Miranda, who shook her head no as Mim read the letter over the phone to Rick Shaw.
"Now that Larry Johnson's been killed, Mother won't rest. She wants to find the killer probably worse than Rick Shaw and Coop." Murphy worried. "I don't know if we can keep her away from the hospital."
"Well, I know one thing," Tucker solemnly declared. "We'd better stick with her."
"And I think what's under the floor is dangerous. Pewter, those IVAC units aren't down there for lack of space. I predict if someone stumbles onto that room there will be another dead human." Mrs. Murphy put her paw on the postage scale.
31
For Sheriff Rick Shaw and Deputy Cynthia Cooper it was the week from hell. The ballistics report ascertained that Larry Johnson was killed by a shell from a twenty-gauge shotgun.
While Rick spent the week questioning everyone who had been at the hunt meet, the barns, on Larry's patient list, Coop dipped into the state computer file on twenty-gauge shotguns.
There were twenty-six registered firearms of that description in Albemarle County, ranging from a handmade Italian model costing $252,000, owned by Sir H. Vane-Tempest, a very wealthy Englishman who had moved to Crozet five years ago, to the more common $2,789 version, a good working shotgun made by Sturm Ruger.
Coop patiently called on each shotgun owner. No one reported a firearm stolen. She asked each owner if they would allow the shotgun to be checked to see if it had been fired recently. Everyone agreed. Everyone wrote down the last time they had used their shotgun. Even Vane-Tempest, a pompous man whom she intensely disliked, cooperated.
Of the twenty-six firearms, four had been used recently and each owner readily volunteered when and where they had used their shotgun. All four belonged to the Kettle and Drum Gun Club. None of the four had any connection that Coop could discover to anyone at the hospital.
Being in law enforcement, she expected people to lie to her. She knew in time she might find a connection but she also knew the chances were slim.
The weapon that killed Larry was most likely unregistered. It could have been bought years ago, before registration became the norm in America. It could have been stolen from another state. Could have, should have, would have-it was driving Coop crazy.
Rick and Coop studied patient logs, pored over maintenance records kept by Hank Brevard. They even walked through the delivery of a human kidney right up to the operating room.
The hospital routine was becoming familiar to them. The various doctors, nurses, orderlies, and receptionists were fixed in their minds. The one unit that upset both of them was Tussie Logan's. The sight of those terminally ill children brought them close to tears.
When Rick came back into the office he found Coop bent over the blueprints of the hospital.
"So?" He grunted as he removed his heavy jacket, quick to pluck the cigarette pack from the pocket. He offered her one, which she gratefully took. He lit hers, then he lit his. They both inhaled deeply, then relaxed imperceptibly.
Nicotine's faults were publicized and criticized but the drug's power to soothe temporarily never abated.
She pointed to the center of the blueprint with the glowing tip of the cigarette. "There."
He put his elbows on the table to look closely. "There what? You're back at the boiler room."
"This old part of the building. Eighteen thirty-one, this old square right here. The boiler room and the one hallway off of the boiler room. The rest was added in 1929. And it's been renovated three times since then. Right?"
"Right." He put his weight on his elbows as the pressure eased off his lower back, which felt stiff in the cold.
"The old part was originally built as a granary. Heavy stone flooring, heavy stone walls, whole tree-trunk beams. The original structure will last centuries. I was thinking about that. Now what I've been able to piece together about the history here"-she paused, took another drag-"thanks to Herb Jones's help, he's quite the history buff, well, anyway, he says the rumors always were that the granary was a way station on the Underground Railroad. No one was ever able to prove it but the owners, the Craycrofts, opposed slavery. Peaceably, but opposed, nonetheless. But as Herb says, no one ever proved a thing and the Craycrofts, despite their opposition to slavery, fought for the Confederacy."
"Yeah, well, you tend to do that when people invade your backyard." Rick straightened up.
"The Craycrofts lost everything, like everyone else around here. They sold the granary in 1877 to the Yancys. Herb also said that the granary was used as a makeshift hospital during the war, but then so was every other building in the county."
"Yeah, they shipped in the wounded by rail from Manassas, Richmond, Fredericksburg. God, it must have been awful. Did you know that the War Between the States was the first where the railroad was used?"
"Yes, I did." She pointed again to the boiler room. "If this was a way station on the Underground Railroad then there are probably hidden rooms. I doubt there'd be anything like that in the new part."
"When did the granary cease being a granary?" Rick sat down, realizing he was more tired than he thought.
"Nineteen hundred and eleven. The Krakenbills bought it. Kept it in good repair and used it for hay storage. They were the ones who sold it to Crozet United, Incorporated, the parent company for the hospital. There are Krakenbills in Louisa County. I contacted Roger, the eldest. He said he remembered his great-uncle mentioning the granary. He doesn't remember much else but he, too, had heard stories about the Underground Railroad."
"What you're getting at is that maybe the location of Hank's murder is more important than we thought."
"I don't know. Boss, maybe I'm grasping at straws, but it looked like a hurry-up job."
"Yeah." He exhaled heavily, a spiral of gray-blue smoke swirling upward.
"I keep coming back to how Hank was killed and where he was killed. If this were a revenge killing, the murderer, unless he is stone-stupid, would pick a better place. The risks of killing Hank at work are pretty high-for an outsider. For an insider, knowing the routine and the physical layout of the hospital, killing Hank could be a matter of opportunity as well as planning. The risk diminishes. The way he was killed strongly suggests knowledge of the human body, height, and physical power. Whoever killed him had to hold him long enough to slit his throat from left to right. Hank wasn't a weak man."
"I'll agree with you except on the point about knowledge of the human body. Most of us could slit a throat if we had to. It doesn't take a surgeon."
"But it was so neat, a clean, one-sweep wound."
"I could do that."
"I don't know if I could."
"If your victim were weaker than you or you had him helpless in some way, sure, you could make a neat cut. The trick to slitting a throat is speed and force. If you hesitate or stick the knife straight in instead of starting from the side, you botch it. I've seen the botched jobs."
She tightened her lips. "Yeah, me, too. But boss, the weapon was perfect, sharp."
"A layman could grind a knife to perfection, but I grant you this looks like an inside job, someone picked up a big scalpel or whatever and s-s-s-t. You know, it would be easy to throw away the instrument or return it to where surgical instruments are cleaned. We've been through that."
"Okay. We're on the same wave here." She held out her hands as if on a surfboard, which made him laugh, then cough because he'd inhaled too much. She slapped him on the back, then continued. "Big foxhunt at Harry's farm. Everyone's in a great mood. They view the fox. The fox gets away per usual. People are lined up for the breakfast like a movie premiere. Everyone and her brother is there. You can hardly move it's so packed. The food is great. Larry drinks a little, gets a little loud, and says he'll meet up with me. There couldn't be too many reasons for Larry to meet with me. I'm not a patient. It's not a big stretch to think he had something professional to tell me, my profession, that is. But it's not like it's a big deal. He didn't make it a big deal. Over fifteen or twenty people near the table had to have heard him. But again, it didn't seem like a big deal. He didn't use a dark tone of voice, no hints at evil deeds. However, he knew procedures cold. He knew the people. He probably knew more than even he knew he knew. What I'm saying is that he's known his stuff for so long he forgot how much he did know. An observation from him was worth a hell of a lot more than an observation, say, from Bruce Buxton. See?"