“I’m not sure. Maybe seven-thirty or so?”
“And it took you an hour to get gas and reach Reverend Fergusson’s house?”
“I guess. I wasn’t in any hurry.”
“Did you make any other stops?”
“Nope.”
“What time did Dr. Rouse contact you?”
“It was after dinner, so… between six and six-thirty.”
“Which?”
She looked at Burns before answering. “Closer to six, I guess.”
Burns placed both hands on the table. “I think that just about covers it, don’t you, Chief?” He stood up. “Ms. Clow has covered all the events of that night in which she played any part. She’s been nothing but cooperative, both today and during the night Dr. Rouse disappeared. I trust there won’t be any need for further questioning.”
Debba glanced at Russ, then at Burns, checking to see if she really could just get up and leave.
“I’m sure Debba here understands that we need to do everything that we can to find Allan Rouse,” Russ said.
Burns hooked a hand under Debba’s arm and levered her out of her seat. “Then I suggest, Chief, that you stop hounding my client, get off your butts, and start tracking the man down.”
Chapter 27
Tuesday, March 29, 1955
Allan checked the address on the mailbox against the one scrawled on the paper in his hand. This was it? This cruddy little house on Ferry Street was where his last hope for med school lived? If he didn’t know that Dr. Farnsworth had no sense of humor, he’d think the old guy had been jerking him around. But he was the one who had set up this meeting between Allan and the founder of the new clinic. There must be more to Mrs. Jane Ketchem than met the eye. Allan looked at the peeling green paint on the door of the tiny barn and the front room’s sun-bleached curtains, whose barely discernible pattern was distorted through the ripples in the window glass. There certainly couldn’t be less.
He took the granite block steps in one stride and knocked on the door. It jerked open, startling him so he nearly tumbled backward off the top step. The woman standing there stared at him. “You must be Allan Rouse,” she said.
He recovered his balance. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m Mrs. Ketchem. You’re late.”
He saw she was buttoned into a navy coat, with a knit hat tied beneath her chin. Oh, Christ, had he blown it without ever getting a chance to present his case? “I’m sorry,” he began, “I was-”
“I’m due to volunteer at the clinic. You can walk with me.” She reached behind her and snatched a purse and gloves from a hall stand. He jumped out of her way as she swung out the door, shutting and locking it in one efficient movement. She tugged on her gloves and narrowed her eyes as she gave him the once-over. “Is that all you’re wearing?”
“Uh…” he gestured toward his mom’s Chevrolet. “My coat’s in the car. Can I drive you?”
“I’d rather walk. It keeps your joints young.” She nodded toward the car. “Well? Better get it if you’re coming along. It’s raw out today.”
Allan stumbled down the steps and loped across her bath mat-sized lawn. He retrieved his coat, a long, heavy thing that had been his brother Elliot’s, and slipped into it while following Mrs. Ketchem down the sidewalk. Evidently, she didn’t wait for stragglers. He fell into step beside her, and studied her in quick glimpses that could be passed off as checking out the ways home owners had tried to individualize this row of identical houses. If Mrs. Ketchem’s joints were young, they were the only part; she was gaunt and rawboned, with deep grooves running from her nose to her chin and tomahawk-slashed creases radiating out from her eyes.
“Dr. Farnsworth tells me that you want to become a doctor.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Why?”
Because I’ve always been the smartest one in my class and I don’t want my brains to shrivel up behind a desk. Because I don’t ever want my fate to be decided by some faceless, cigar-puffing board in Cincinnati. Because I don’t want to work for thirty years with nothing to show for it but a paid-up mortgage on a house nobody wants to buy. Because I want respect, and money, and to travel on jet planes to places where no one has ever heard of Millers Kill.
None of which was what financial-aid boards and admissions officers wanted to hear. “Because I want to use my gifts-my facility with science, my curiosity, my empathy-to help people. Not in a lab, but hands on. One-on-one.”
“Have you thought about alternate careers? Medicine should be a calling, you know, not something you pursue because you can’t think of anything better.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, ma’am. Since I was a kid. I was the one who was always collecting hurt pets and trying to treat them.”
“But you don’t want to be a vet?”
He risked a grin. “People don’t bite you.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.” The reached the corner and crossed the street, to where the new cemetery lay behind a squared-off granite wall. That was another thing he wanted to put behind him, a place where something “new” had been built a hundred years ago.
“Tell me why it is you’re looking for funding,” Mrs. Ketchem said as they rounded the corner onto Burgoyne Street.
“My folks can’t afford to send me,” he said. It was embarrassing, but at this point, he had rehearsed the details on so many applications and forms that it was almost as if he were talking about some other Allan Rouse. “I’m going to Albany on a scholarship, and working for my room and board. I’ve applied for scholarships and loans for medical school, but I haven’t been able to pull together nearly enough money to cover all the expenses. Plus, they only go through school. I’d be left looking for money to live on all over again when it was time for my residency.”
“Couldn’t you work while going to school?”
“Not if I wanted to learn anything.” He looked at her, willing her to understand. “Medical schools only accept the best of the best. You have to be there, giving one hundred percent every day, if you hope to keep up. I don’t want to just keep up. I want to excel.”
She cocked a graying eyebrow. “Why not sign on with the military? They’ll pay for everything. One year of service for each year of schooling, isn’t it?”
His fingers closed around the edges of Elliot’s coat. “I had an older brother who was in the marines. He died in Korea three years ago. It would just kill my parents if another of us joined up.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. They reached the corner of Pine Street, and she paused, the toes of her shoes hanging off the edge of the curb, while a dump truck chuffed past. “It’s hard to lose a child. Real hard. I can understand your parents’ point of view.” She stepped across the street and he followed, dodging the mucky gutters still wet with melted snow and the earliest spring rains. “Your parents used to live here, didn’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am. I graduated from Millers Kill High.” He tilted his head back to look at the sky, heavy with scudding gray clouds. “My dad worked at the mill until it closed down. They moved to Johnstown a couple years ago.”
“This town’s been going through some hard times. I don’t mind telling you, that’s one of the reasons I told Dr. Farnsworth I’d be willing to speak to you. I gave them the building for the clinic-practically had to ram it down their throats-and I gave them my in-laws’ farm that had come to me, so there’d be money to support the thing. But I can’t make the aldermen pony up enough money so’s to keep a steady doctor around. If it weren’t for the hospital staff doing volunteer shifts, we’d have to close it down.”
She fell silent. Should he leap into the gap? Tell her he was dying to come back to town as Dr. Rouse and take care of her clinic? She looked as if she was thinking about something. Maybe he ought to just keep his mouth shut.