Finally Roy said, “What happened to us, baby?”
“Maybe... maybe there wasn’t enough ‘us.’ Just you and your practice and your idealism. And me and my artwork and the gallery.”
Her father had set her up with an art gallery in Atlanta’s Little Five points area of quirky shops and boutiques. She was not an arty type, though — she did lovely landscapes that the tourists bought. She was good. He was proud of her for that.
He walked her out to the Toronado and they collected her suitcase.
“If we’re going to be trapped in here for a few days,” Roy said, as they headed back in, “maybe we can work some things out. Without any lawyers.”
“Without my father?”
“Without your father.”
“About Richard.”
“About Richie.”
He escorted her to the foot of the stairs and she started up without him, then turned and said, “Roy, you should know that I don’t have any desire to play the little woman to a small-town doctor.”
“I suppose you’d like it better if I had a private practice in Buckhead.”
“Yes. I would.”
And she went up to bed.
As he hammered the boards in place over the busted-out window, he hoped he was disturbing her rest.
Chapter 4
The morning was overcast as Chief Blake Cutter joined Dr. Roy Ryan in the yard where Sgt. Jackson was kneeling as he made moulage casts of more footprints left by last night’s visitor.
Hands on hips, Cutter — who didn’t know what the hell to make of the large feet with the extended, gripping toes the prints suggested — said, “Well, what exactly did you see, Doctor?”
As Ryan watched Jackson work, he said, “Just what I told you. A low-to-the-ground shape in black, like the top half of a man, broad shoulders, long arms, fingers apart, as if about to... clutch or grab or climb. His movement was as much side to side as forward, yet he moved remarkably fast.”
“A dwarf, possibly?”
Ryan shrugged. “Maybe so, but I couldn’t make out any legs.”
Cutter’s eyebrows raised as he pointed to a print in the damp earth. “Well, he obviously has feet. I guess we can safely deduce he has legs.”
With a hint of dry sarcasm, Ryan said, “You’re the detective... It’s muggy out here. Hope the sun burns this off.” He turned to the chief. “How about some coffee? I made some breakfast, if you like grits.”
“No thanks. I’m not that Southern. But I’ll take you up on that coffee.”
In the spacious old-fashioned dark-wood kitchen off the big open living room, Helen Ryan — in a light yellow blouse and orange slacks and open-toed sandals — was seated at the table with a cup of coffee, a dish of grits and some toast. The lovely young woman, with her blonde shoulder-brushing hair and expertly applied make-up, rose and smiled politely at the chief, exchanging nods with him, and offered to get him coffee. Even casually dressed, the doctor’s wife seemed like the hostess at some elegant cocktail party.
“Thanks, Helen,” Cutter said. “Black.”
Ryan said, “For me too, please.”
She delivered on those requests and joined her husband and their official guest at the old cherry-wood table with the nicks and gouges of thousands of breakfasts. “No further incidents last night?”
Cutter shook his head. “None, fortunately. But unfortunately no one but Mr. Ryan here got any kind of look at your guest.”
“Not any of your four officers?”
“Nothing useful.”
Her look was coolly judgmental. “Yet despite those four officers, our intruder made it over the wall, hurled a burning missile, and made his way back over the wall and into the night?”
Cutter sipped his coffee. “Despite that, yes. But we’ve had presidents in this country killed surrounded by Secret Service security. The attacker always has a certain advantage in these situations.”
Helen raised her eyebrows. “That’s hardly a reassuring point of view.”
The chief tried to soften things with a smile. “Sorry. But before, having men posted was a precaution. Now, we’re on the alert.”
The two men resumed what appeared to be a conversation they were in the middle of.
Cutter asked, “Could your caller have been an amputee?”
Ryan smirked at that. “With feet?”
“Obviously there are prosthetic limbs available...”
“Which just as obviously would make him taller than the less-than-four-foot creature I saw. And what kind of prosthetic limb would leave those kind of footprints?”
Cutter sighed. “None I can imagine.”
Helen frowned at her husband. “You make it sound like something from a horror film — a ‘creature.’ This must be a person, a little person most likely.” To Cutter she said, “I could try to draw a sketch for you, unless you already have a police artist available.”
“We don’t. You’re an artist, Mrs. Ryan?”
“‘Helen,’ remember? Yes. I have a gallery in Buckhead, and a degree from UGA.”
Nodding, Cutter said, “That’s an excellent suggestion and a good offer. A little department like ours doesn’t have a sketch artist on staff, and this saves me begging Atlanta to send one down.”
They moved into the living room and onto the couch, the fireplace unlighted this time of day. Helen sat between the two men, her husband in a gray polo and darker gray slacks, Cutter in his usual short-sleeve white shirt with tie and chinos. The chief’s Stetson and black windbreaker were on a nearby chair as if keeping guard over the Rorschach blot of scorched wood on the floor from last night’s Molotov cocktail.
The sketch came quickly and Ryan identified it as an accurate representation of what he’d seen. But as that had been a rear view of their unwanted visitor, its helpfulness was limited, though the chief was impressed with the artistic skill of his hostess.
“So if, as you say, he wore a sweater or jacket,” Cutter said to Ryan, “that could have ridden down over legs, however stubby, giving the impression of a head and torso moving minus legs.”
“A dwarf, then,” Ryan said.
The chief shrugged. “That’s the only answer I can come up with. But most little people aren’t broad-shouldered, long-armed and, at the same time, remarkably agile.”
“Little or not,” Helen said, “they are first and foremost people, good and bad and in-between like the rest of us. Surely if there are criminals among them, that would be on the books. Small stature might prove useful in home invasions, wouldn’t it?”
Cutter nodded. “That’s a good point, and we’ll run checks. But this isn’t a standard-issue criminal — it would appear to be a madman. What the FBI these days is calling a serial killer.”
Helen said, “With a grudge against doctors.”
The chief again nodded. “As you suggested last night, possibly doctors whose patients include, or are exclusively, children. And if we can find a specific link between the three victims, a genuine tie-up, we would have a real shot at figuring what’s going on here... and stopping this madman.”
Helen’s eyes moved past Cutter and she raised “shush” fingers to her lips. “Here comes Richard...”
The boy, in a white and navy-blue-striped short-sleeve shirt and denims and tennies, trotted in, smiling. A stethoscope was around the child’s neck — Cutter had no idea what that was about...
“Morning, Dad,” Richie said, beaming. “Morning, Mom. Morning, Chief Cutter.”
Everybody said hello to the polite child.
“Did I miss breakfast?” he asked.
His mother assured him he hadn’t and the little group returned to the kitchen, where Richie helped himself to a bowl of grits. His mother got him a glass of milk and the boy unceremoniously joined them at the table, between his mom and dad.