She was trembling, bewildered and uncertain. “People almost always accept a doctor when he moves into town and starts practicing. They don’t stop and ask themselves — I didn’t, did you? — why a doctor should come from far away, at the age of forty-five, and start a new practice in a strange place. You don’t ask if he had to leave the place he came from.”
“You’ve seen Wilmott drunk?”
“No, never. But he’s always chewing chlorophyll tablets. But mainly the oxygen tank in the office. I use it mostly for metabolism tests and penicillin sprays; but it can sober you up fast too. We use too much!”
Another light went off upstairs. Kin stirred and said, “I’ll have to go in and ask a few questions.”
Katherine held him by the arm again, hard. “Kin, please! Maybe we’re both wrong but — but he likes to hunt and he has all kinds of guns — rifles — pistols. And Kin—” Her small, choked laugh was a little hysterical. “Kin, that awful night last spring. The first radio report was wrong — the one I heard. Somebody at the barracks didn’t mark it down when you had to rush to the hospital about your dad and because of that Harry took over for you. The relief dispatcher who came on that night assumed it was you out there in that car — not Harry. I... I fainted because I thought it was you—”
He gave her a light pat. “You run now, hon. Everything’ll be okay. I’ll give you a ring after.”
She got out and stood for a minute with the door open, her face still and pensive but with a fond smile moving along her lips. She said, “No, don’t ring, Kin. I’ll learn to worry and worry — and wait. I’ve worried all along, all summer and fall. I always will. But you’ll come home and I’ll see you — and all the worry in the world will be worth that. If you want to, come for breakfast.”
“I’ll be there, hon,” he said, stepping out the other side.
“Kin,” she said, turning a dozen feet away, “what did Stutz mean by kid stuff?”
Kin said, “Run along now, honey, beat it.” And when she was out of sight he looked up at the house, where only one window showed a dim light and a face flashing past. Kin got back into the car and radioed the barracks. Stutz was at the other end.
“Mac’s taking forty winks,” Stutz said, “and Lulu’s sick to his stomach. Some ball here tonight. What’s with you?”
“I think the man we want is Dr. Wilmott. I’m parked in front of his house. He’s upstairs pacing back and forth.”
“Why Wilmott?”
“I think the reason Wilmott stopped on the Turnpike was to smear mud on his license plate so it couldn’t be read. The wind blew his hat off, he saw headlights way up the Pike and didn’t want to be seen staggering around after his hat. At Boagard’s last physical he was overheard to say that he had no use for M.D.’s but he had to conform to the regulations. The news clipping in the strongbox said his wife died five years ago in the operating room. Maybe he blamed the surgeon, right or wrong — and probably Boagard was wrong. And those pamphlets on healing by faith — Boagard was always reading those. I don’t think Boag was gasping for a doctor. I think he was trying to tell us a doctor’s name.”
Stutz said, “Maybe you’ve got something. Going in after him?”
“Anything you say, sir.”
“I say that if a doctor killed a cop in order not to have himself exposed as an irresponsible drunk driver, he’ll kill another before he’ll be taken in. I say stay right where you are until we get there. That’s an order. No kid stuff.”
“Right. No kid stuff.”
In three minutes a car with a red blinker on top swung into Main past St. Andrew’s Church. Another was right behind it. Then a third. Kin turned on his own blinker as the cars converged. One stopped in the street. One drifted slowly up the driveway and around back. One parked in the driveway.
Upstairs, the last light went out.
There was an explosion inside the house.
“Um,” Stutz said, sucking on his pipe.