I dropped Sancho off at the office just as Vic was heading out to a chimney fire on the south side of town. I waved as Saizarbitoria jumped in her unit, and she flipped me off.
It was a quiet day at Durant Memorial, with only a few cars in the lot. “ Janine, is Isaac Bloomfield still wandering around in here?”
She traced a finger down the register and smiled. “You’re in luck, he’s making his late morning rounds.”
I thought about the eight-five-year-old man who had been knocked unconscious only two days ago. “His rounds?”
She nodded. “He has been stalling out in the B Ward dayroom about this time.”
I leaned against her counter and rested my chin in the palm of my hand, happy to discover the Doc was human. “Well, we’re none of us getting any younger.”
She smiled. “That’s not why he stalls out.”
Lana still looked like a Hindu, but she had obviously gotten supplies from home since she now wore flaming red silk pajamas, a white terry-cloth bathrobe, and pink bunny slippers. The most recent copy of Saveur magazine lay open in her lap. “Looks like you’re settling in.” It was a kooky smile, but a warm one nonetheless.
“I’ve decided to treat this like a spa vacation.”
Isaac was seated on the ottoman next to the bunny slippers, the picture of the attending physician. “Well, Doc, what’s the prognosis?”
He continued to smile at her and, if I were a betting man, I would have labeled him as smitten. “If we can get the patient to stop playing with her head, we can probably save it.”
I stood by the plastic chair. “Stop playing with your head, or it’ll end up looking like my ear.” I glanced over at the Doc. “Or his head.”
“I like your ear and his head.”
Okay, I was kind of smitten, too. “Lana, I need to talk to the Doc. Will you excuse us?”
Isaac and I codgered our way out to the hallway, where I stopped. I didn’t see any reason to drag the Doc any farther than I had to. “How’s Lucian?”
“Asleep in the lounge; it’s where we’ve both been staying.”
I nodded. “Isaac, I need to ask you a question, and the situation being what it is, I don’t have a lot of time for niceties.”
He leaned against the smooth wall of the hallway and crossed his arms. “Yes, Walter?”
I hitched my thumbs in my gun belt and then shifted them to my jacket. It was enough that I wore a gun around Isaac; there wasn’t any need to broadcast the fact. “This human suppository, Charlie Nurburn, did he leave any illegitimate children that you know of?”
He sighed deeply. “This concerns the case at hand?”
“You know, a lot of people have been asking me that lately.” I waited to see if police prerogative would override medical confidentiality. I hated leaning on the old guy, but I needed some answers and, after all, we were talking about ancient history.
“There were a number of women.”
“I’m listening.”
“Perhaps an Indian woman.”
“I’m still listening.”
He took off his glasses and cleaned them with the corner of his smock. “I don’t know her name, or if I did, it has been too long, Walter.”
“When?”
“Early fifties. I could check my private journals and give you an exact date, perhaps a name.” I studied the small indentations at the Doc’s nose, where the same glasses had sat for a half a century. “I have those journals here.”
I straightened a little. “Here at the hospital?”
“In my office here.”
I laughed because it was all I could think to do. “Why would you have those specific journals on hand?” He looked ashamed but not particularly guilty.
“I was transcribing some historic familial selections for the young lady.”
“Lana?”
He smiled and shook his head at himself. “Foolish, yes?”
I smiled back at the charming old man and gently put my arm around his narrow shoulders. “Isaac, everything to do with women is foolish and, therefore, absolutely essential.”
11
“I need to do a little cleaning up.”
His diaries were piled on the desk and looked like old ledger books, the kind that businesses used to use for accounts and which the Lakota used for painting. He sat in the only chair, and I propped myself against an unoccupied corner of the desk.
I watched as Isaac deftly slipped a journal from the stack. It was the oldest of the tomes, and I was beginning to feel like some cleric in training. “My notes are not as complete as I hoped but perhaps something is relevant.” The thin finger with the yellowed nail traveled along the lines like the carriage on a typewriter, pausing here and then there; finally, it stopped.
“Something?”
“It was when I first started the clinic north of here near the reservation.” He looked up at me, his fingertip still on the spot. “December eighth, 1950, a boy, six pounds, two ounces.” He looked back at the ledger. “No name was given to the child at that time.”
“You think this baby was Charlie Nurburn’s?”
He carefully placed the book on the surface of the desk as if the years were in danger of tumbling out, and I thought about all the time that had been collected between the lines. “Acme was a hamlet up near Tongue River, small, even then. Once they stopped producing coal, it became even smaller.” He looked up at me with a thin smile. “It is difficult to hide things in small places.”
“What was the mother’s name?”
He watched me through his overlapped eyelids, which were magnified through the bifocals. He checked the ledger. “Ellen Walks Over Ice.”
I hadn’t moved since he had spoken. “Ellen Walks Over Ice… not Anna Walks Over Ice?”
He looked at the ledger again. “Ellen.” His eyes locked with mine. “Anna Walks Over Ice is the woman that works at the Durant Home.”
I looked back at him for only a moment. “Can I borrow your phone, Doc?” He looked around, finally giving up on the landline and handing me the cell phone from his smock pocket. Isaac didn’t have any staff, so he could have anything he wanted. “Isaac, what’s the number for the home?” The phone made a loud beeping noise. “I think you have messages.”
“I’ll check them after you make your call. The phone was in my car, and your new deputy, the young man, was kind enough to return it to me. I get most of my messages through my answering service, but sometimes people don’t want to talk to anyone but me.” He took the mobile, dialed the number for me, and handed it back.
Jennifer Felson answered. “Jennifer, is Anna Walks Over Ice working today?”
“Let me check.” I waited as she dropped the phone, picked it up, rustled some papers, and declared Anna Walks Over Ice missing for the day.
“She’s sick?”
“She’s an Indian. Sometimes they don’t show up, and mostly they don’t call.” Racial slurs aside, most Indians did have their own sense of time; these priorities had worked fine for centuries, so I guess they saw little reason to change. “She doesn’t speak much English anyway.”
I dialed the number for the Red Pony and asked Isaac which button to push. “Ha-ho, it is another wonderful day at the Red Pony bar and continual soiree.”
“Hey, do you know where Anna Walks Over Ice lives?”
“No, but I can find out.”
“Can you check on her for me?” He said he would, and then I asked him if he’d ever heard of Ellen Walks Over Ice. He said no, but that they were a large Crow family. He would ask Lonnie and then get back to me.
“Call me at the office.”
I handed the tiny phone back to Isaac and watched as he hit a few buttons and held it to his ear. He looked at the journal as he listened. “I have her age listed as late teens, possibly early twenties.”
“So she’d be in her seventies?”
He smiled. “You don’t have to make it sound so old.”
I glanced for the ghostly numbers on the inside of Isaac’s arm but the sleeve of his smock hid his dreadful distant past. “She probably hasn’t had as easy a life as you, Doc.”