She started for the door. The man in the bed gave a sudden loud gasp, turned blue, convulsed—
“Wait,” said Ned Thompson.
“It’ll only take two minutes, Doctor.”
“That’s two minutes too long.” He stared at the pinprick in the man’s arm, the tiny trickle of blood already congealing, the stained sponge fallen down from the injection site.
And then with a snarl he was out the door, pelting down the hall to the nursing station and into the medications alcove.
The woman there whirled, her eyes wide. The syringe still lay on the tray, the tiny glass ampule sitting on the counter nearby...
She kicked him hard in the shin, cursing as her hand flashed out for the ampule. Ned’s hand crashed down on her wrist until she screamed out, her fingers opening to release the tubule. Swiftly he plunged his hand into her pocket, felt another ampule there, unbroken. He tossed it out on the counter beside the other. “All right now,” he panted, “that’s all for you. You’ve got a murder to answer for now.”
“I should have seen it as soon as I knew it was nitroglycerine in her purse,” he said later to Gibby. “The only people who carry nitroglycerine are people with angina pectoris, and she didn’t have that trouble, not at her young age. There was only one other thing she could have wanted it for — and I made my mistake when I didn’t realize what fantastic chances she’d take. We knew she was withholding drugs, of course. It didn’t even occur to me that she might start substituting—”
“But why the nitroglycerine?”
“It’s indistinguishable from morphine, in tablets like that. It dissolves like morphine. There are plenty of coronaries on this floor getting morphine who might even get some pain relief from the nitro she gave them when she pocketed the morphine. But Demerol was different — it’s already dissolved, in sterile ampules, in solution. And in the emergency tray right in the same drawer, another drug, also dissolved, in solution, in identical ampules.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I knew last night that she must be substituting Coramine for Demerol. A powerful cardiac stimulant. As good a way to kill a man with a sick, weakened heart muscle as a bullet through the brain. She’s undoubtedly used it before and got away with it. This time she picked a man who was a little too sick.”
Gibby sighed and turned back to her coffee. “Feels funny,” she said. “It’s such a relief to have it over — but now there’s nothing to watch.”
“Come watch a movie with me tonight, then. You need a rest. There’s one downtown that will rest you just fine.”
“Oh?”
“They say it’s a great picture,” said Ned Thompson. “All about this doctor that strangles his patient, see—”
Helen Mabry Ballard
Wind in the Afternoon
Neither crisis nor calamity can break the rhythm of farm life — no, not even murder. Yet in a land of white farmhouses, clean fields, and straight fences, why should there be any murder at all? Why?
Abel Walsh stared unhappily at the body sprawled in the barnyard. It lay face down in fallen leaves, one leg angled, the other stretched back until the heavy, manure-caked boot touched the wall of the barn. There were brown leaves on the grizzled hair and over the back, and one leaf that was dyed at the edges near a hole in the dirty gray sweater. The newly risen sun slanted across the enclosure, throwing shadows from a wind-stripped oak against the face of the barn, but it was pallid light with no warmth in it for Walsh and the two men beside him.
The sheriffs unhappiness had nothing to do with the cold, nor with sentiment for the dead Matt Kershaw. It sprang from the humbling suspicion that this was something he couldn’t handle, that no previous experience had prepared him to cope with murder. It was irritating to know that Doc Hans-low would agree; the doubt in the coroner’s eyes had increased the sheriff’s own self-distrust.
He lifted his head and turned to the big farmer in milk-splashed overalls and windbreaker.
“What brought you down here so early, Muller?”
“He’s my brother-in-law, ain’t he?” retorted the farmer, as though that were answer enough. “I found him and called you from the house, then waited till you come. Now I got to get back and finish the chores.”
Walsh looked beyond the yard to the farmhouse and its smokeless chimney.
“Where’s his wife?”
“Don’t you read the paper?” asked the doctor. “They buried her yesterday. Pneumonia. Nancy and I were in high school together — Lord, what a long time ago! She was a pretty little thing, full of laughter.”
“Not now she wasn’t,” growled Muller. “Not after fourteen years with him. Look, Sheriff, I told you I have chores waiting. Hunt me up at home if you need me.”
He turned on his heel, ignoring the coroner’s disapproving stare, jumped into a pick-up, and rattled off down the driveway. The dry leaves rustled, stirred by a puff of wind. Beyond the barb-wire fence a red cow mooed piteously, begging relief for overloaded udder and oozing teats.
“A chore that’s waited too long,” remarked the coroner. “She’s hurting, poor beast.” He blew his fingers for warmth, then thrust them deep in his overcoat pockets. “Come on, Walsh, let’s finish this up before I freeze.”
Finish! thought the sheriff. I don’t even know how to start.
Pride stiffened him. Pull yourself together — do something, anything at all. He stooped and lifted the stained leaf. It came reluctantly, bringing gray fibers from the sweater. He brushed off the other leaves and thought of the wind that had stripped an oak tree and thrown a brown coverlet over both the yard and the corpse.
“Here’s your weapon.” Hanslow, tramping to keep warm, had made a discovery. “Matt’s own rifle, by the nameplate.”
Walsh lifted the gun by the stock, then, remembering fingerprints, hurriedly shifted his hold to the trigger guard. He propped it against the barn and said, “There’ll be a bullet somewhere,” and felt the wall until he found it. He dug it out with his knife, juggled it thoughtfully, then dropped it into his pocket. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s turn him over.”
They rolled the body off the bare ground and onto a drift of leaves.
Hanslow gasped. “Look at his face! He knew, poor devil.” Then the doctor’s fingers moved swiftly, unfastening buttons, probing the wound.
Walsh asked without much hope, “Any chance he did it himself?”
“Not Matt Kershaw! And don’t ask me when — he’s been lying in frost all night. Probably not later than seven yesterday evening, and certainly not earlier than around five because I was down here talking to him.”
“I didn’t know you knew Kershaw.”
“I didn’t, but I knew Nancy and once I even imagined I was in love with her, in the idiotic way boys do imagine they are in love. She didn’t reciprocate, worse luck, so I wooed the family. Ran down to the farm on Saturdays and blistered my palms hoeing her father’s weeds. I was in college when she got married. The news threw me into a two-day drunk and a bitter renunciation of all women. Life is tough for kids.”
“You married yourself,” commented the sheriff.
“Puppy love doesn’t last. Being coroner and staff doctor at the hospital keeps me pretty busy. I’d almost forgotten Nancy until I read the funeral notice, but for old times’ sake I dropped in on the services.”
“Matt asked you home after the funeral?”
“He did not. I came,” said Hans-low disgustedly, “because I was a sentimental fool. I couldn’t get Nancy out of my head. I wallowed in tender memories. After finishing at the hospital I drove out to see the grieving widower. God knows why. I suppose I thought we could weep together. A mistake, because Matt wasn’t grieving — not much he wasn’t.”