" 'Fraid not. But I think I know what you're talking about."
"Well, in its worst form, her condition would be like that. And it was getting there. She was pretty deformed at the end. No telling what she would have looked like had she lived."
Nikki glanced up at the sun and then checked her watch.
"You really plannin' on leaving today?" Grimes asked.
"I'm on call for my office tomorrow night, so I have to be back by then. I'm one of the world's least reliable nighttime drivers, so I plan on going as far as New York, then the rest of the way in the morning. I'd like to play just a little bit longer, though, before I take off. There are a couple of Kathy's pieces I'd like to try with the gang."
"I sure wish you could stay," Grimes said, with invitation in his voice and expression.
"Thanks for the thought," she said, not at all threatened by the police chief's tone, "but I'm locked into getting home." She stood. "Why don't you come in and let us play something for you. Do you have any favorites you haven't heard?"
"I'm not much of a bluegrass expert," Grimes replied, "although I do enjoy the music. Tell me something," he said, as he walked her back to the social hall, "why did you decide not to tell the Wilsons about Kathy's neu-ro-fi-bromas?"
"I didn't see any reason to tell them over the phone. Then after I met them in person here, I still wasn't sure I wanted to. Then they told me… Kit asked if Kathy's face had been battered in the accident. The poor dears had enough trouble getting their minds around her deranged mental state. It seemed cruel to tell them her face was deformed as well. Besides, the microscopic examination of her brain and the neurofibromas isn't done yet. If it shows anything to explain what happened, I plan to share that news with them. If it doesn't provide any explanation, I'll have to decide if it's worth telling them at all. As you know, Kathy's an only child, so there's no need to worry about some evil gene working its way through her family."
"If I were in your position, I don't think I'd mention it to the Wilsons, either," Grimes said. "Nothing to gain."
"Nothing to gain," Nikki echoed.
"Well," he said when they reached the social hall, "I'm sorry to have met you under these circumstances, but I'm certainly glad to have met you."
"Same here."
"Who knows? Maybe we'll see each other again."
"You never can tell. If I find myself headed back this way for any reason, I'll call you at the station."
"Do that. And I'll call you at the coroner's office if I find myself in Boston."
"I'd like that," she said.
"And Nikki, if anything does turn up on those microscopic slides you spoke about, please let me know."
Nikki picked up her fiddle and gently rubbed it down with a cloth.
"I'll do that, Bill," she said, taking her seat among the musicians, who were currently between numbers. "Since you don't have a request, I'll pick one. We've been playing some Alison Krauss. She was Kathy's idol. Mine, too."
The smart, distinguished-looking medical examiner she had never gotten to meet might have left, but few others had. People were gathered around the buffet table and scattered across the dance floor, arm in arm, waiting for the next tune. Kathy would have approved and probably would have insisted on adding a keg of Bud to the celebration of her life.
Nikki closed her eyes and let the music fill her mind and her body. A few hours ago she was a total stranger in Belinda. Now, because of Kathy and the gift of bluegrass, she was connected to the town and the forests and the mountains and the water in ways that would endure as long as she did.
It was nearing three-thirty. Nikki helped transfer Kathy's things into the Wilsons' Dodge Ram pickup. After everything was set in place, she reached into the trunk of the Saturn and brought out the case containing Kathy's exquisite mandolin.
"Here," she said, handing it over to Sam. "Chief Grimes told me you taught Kathy to play."
"Only fer a couple a weeks," he replied, taking the instrument out and cradling it in his huge hands, a soft, wistful expression on his face. "After thet she begun teachin' me."
He ran his thick-jointed thumb over the strings, which Nikki had tuned before loading the instrument into the trunk. Then he took one of the picks from the case and played a brief riff of remarkable clarity and some technical difficulty.
"That was great," Nikki said. "No wonder Kathy was so good. It's in her blood."
"Here," Sam said, placing the instrument back in its case and passing it back to her. "I want you ta have it."
"But I — "
From beyond where Sam was standing, Kit stopped her short with a definitive shake of her head.
"Sam's got arthritis pretty good," she said. "We'd both be happy knowin' Kathy's instrument is with you."
Nothing in either of Kathy's parents' faces encouraged debate.
"I may come back for a lesson on it," she said.
"You'd be welcome if'n ya did," Sam managed, his eyes moist.
Nikki set the instrument on the front seat, embraced the Wilsons, then headed down the arching church driveway toward the road north. At the outskirts of Belinda, she paused and gazed back through the rear window, down the length of Main Street. It really was a lovely town — gentle, earnest people; beautiful countryside; and an appealing pace of life. She ached to think she would never get to know the place with her friend.
She turned north, retracing her route onto the narrow, two-lane road that would bring her to Route 29. The road, snaking through dense forest, was deserted, just as it had been on the trip into town. Nikki pulled on a blue Red Sox cap to control her hair and opened the moon roof and her window. Sunlight filtered through the tops of the trees, dappling the pavement. As she rounded a tight turn, she saw a car pulled over at an angle on the narrow shoulder. A man in jeans and a yellow T lay facedown on the road. A heavyset man in a dark suit knelt beside him. Nikki's immediate assessment of the scene was that the man had struck a pedestrian. He looked up as she approached, then stood and waved to her. Nikki pulled over, scanning the ground around the victim for blood.
The man, in his thirties and obviously distressed, hurried to her window.
"I… I didn't see him. I came around the corner and there he was. Do you have a cell phone?"
"Is he breathing?"
"I… I think so."
Nikki stepped from the car and hurried to the motionless man, expecting the worst. No blood, no obvious injuries. There was a slight rise and fall of his chest — he was most definitely breathing. She had no intention of rolling him over without stabilizing his neck. She knelt down next to him, peered at his face, and reached across to check his pulse. At that instant, he rolled over, and at the same moment, the large man standing behind her grabbed her roughly by the hair and clamped a cloth over her nose and mouth. It was soaked with a substance she knew well from the lab — chloroform.
"Beddy-bye, Doc," he said.
CHAPTER 13
During her one year of surgical residency before the switch to pathology, Nikki had earned the nickname "Cube" because of her absolute coolness and composure in the face of even the direst medical emergencies. She never could fully explain what seemed to be an inborn trait, but once she did check her pulse seconds after saving a patient by performing an emergency tracheotomy. Fifty-eight.
"I guess I'm just a very logical person," she once told a medical friend by way of explanation. "And a very positive one, too. Once a situation begins — critical or otherwise — all I focus on is what I have to do, almost never on what will happen if I screw up."
The whiff of chloroform gave Nikki three seconds before the obese man in the business suit clamped the cloth over her mouth. As with emergencies in the hospital, her reactions over those precious seconds seemed reflex, but were, in fact, the product of a number of rapid-fire observations and deductions.