Mortal Remains Page 6

  “You have a dad who’s a great doctor, you know,” Kelly had said to him on many occasions, puffing him up with pride. “He saw me first when I was a little girl and was very sick. Now I’m healthy, but he’s still the one I talk with. Lucky you to have him all the time.”

  Not for long.

  The summer she disappeared, he lost his father in the autumn.

  Funny about sound memories. Recalling a person’s voice seemed far more vivid than conjuring up a face. It was as if the dead spoke to him.

  He moved on to checking the Bs.

  Whenever Kelly came up from New York, she’d always made it a point to come over. As a little boy Mark assumed it was to play with him, especially since she had been his baby-sitter for most summers up until medical school kept her in the city. She always made such a big deal out of seeing him, scooping him up in her arms for a hug and a big smooch. He smiled, remembering how her skin smelled like cinnamon. She made him feel important, the first adult outside his mom and dad or aunt to do so, and he loved the way she fussed over him on account of she liked him, not simply because they were related.

  But the truth was she’d also been there to see his dad. An hour became a slow, unendurably long torture whenever he had to wait outside the study, listening for the two of them to finish talking so she’d be all his again.

  Kelly might have told his father about her troubles. And if he acted as her physician, even if only as a sounding board, he might have kept a file documenting whatever they discussed. If such a record existed, Mark figured he might find an adult’s point of view as to what was going on in Kelly’s life just prior to her death.

  His own youthful recollections of that time came to him filtered through love. When his mother died, Kelly became so much more to him, even though she was in medical school by then, and her visits were less frequent. For a year he felt safe only when she hugged him, said everything would be all right, and softly sang to him. “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Yellow Submarine,” “To Every Season” – no matter what the lyrics, her voice in his ear made them both invincible. Eventually his mother’s death started to seem long ago, and at times he could again be a carefree kid in endless sunny days. She’d given his childhood a reprieve, resurrecting it before the world grew dark again.

  He flicked over voluminous sets of labeled manila tabs before Braden-McShane, Kelly popped up. Looks promising, he thought. the folder being thicker than the rest. Pulling it out of the box, he carried it over to a workbench, snapped on a lightbulb that dangled from the ceiling, and opened the front cover.

  The first page contained a faded clinical entry dated July 13, 1951.

  His father’s first year in practice. He began to read.

  Kelly is six years old. Mother states she’s had a long-standing stomach disorder that no doctors in New York have managed to help her with. Complaints, according to her mother, range from intermittent abdominal pain, nausea, loss of appetite, irregular bowel movements, and diarrhea alternating with constipation. The problem has been episodic since infancy. No history of fevers. No history of tarry stool or blood by rectum. No discoloration of urine, nor jaundiced skin or eyes. Recurrent nonspecific rashes. Repeated investigations, including X rays of her upper and lower intestinal tracts using barium, have been negative.

  Rest of Functional Inquiry: Negative.

  Immunizations: Complete to date.

  Surgical History: Appendectomy at age four, subsequently reported to be normal. Laparotomy at age five, for abdominal pain NYD, results negative.

  Family history: No siblings. No history of allergies, diabetes, arthritis, nervous or psychiatric disorders in either mother’s or father’s family (according to the mother’s account).

  Social History: Father is founder and president of a brokerage company in New York. Mother active in some charities, but looks after Kelly herself. No nanny or nurse.

  Kelly initially shy, but on careful questioning reports no abdominal symptoms of any kind today.

  Physical Exam:

  Appearance: Well-groomed. Blond hair, blue eyes, thin physique.

  CVS: Normal heart sounds. BP 85/60; P 88

  Chest: Clear

  Abdomen: Non-tender, normal bowel sounds, no bruit, no masses, liver and spleen normal. Surgical scars RLQ and midline below the umbilicus consistent with history of appendectomy and laparotomy.

  External genitalia: Normal

  Limbs and extremities: Normal

  Skin: No rashes at present.

  EENT: Normal.

  Head and Neck: Normal

  Neurological Exam: Normal

  Impression: Healthy young girl. Functional GI disorders and neurodermatitis, both secondary to stress.

  Plan: Prescribed fun and sun. Good nutrition. Frank discussion with Mrs. McShane stressing the absence of any physical illness in her daughter. Follow up in one month to see how child is doing, or immediately if symptoms return (which isn’t likely).

  Mark started to flip the page when he saw written faintly in pencil off to one side the word Mother? He smiled. His father had obviously nailed the problem, diagnosing Kelly’s symptoms as the result of a high-strung parent.

  No further entries appeared on the other side of the paper. Clearly Kelly’s mother hadn’t brought her daughter back. Probably hadn’t liked the “frank discussion.”

  He shivered. The dampness down here had already penetrated his bones, but now he felt a draft around his legs. He got up and walked over to the slat door that was taking the brunt of the wind. A flow of cool air from where the bottom had warped out of the frame ran across his feet. He grabbed an old coat and stuffed it into the opening.

  Seated again, he came to a sheet not so faded, but nevertheless aged. It had brief entries running from July 1, 1970, to July 3, 1974. Each one was identical. Three words: Psychiatric support therapy. Mark let out a solitary quiet chuckle. He’d been right about Kelly discussing her issues with his father. But the man had done what he, Mark, did when the material was so sensitive the patient wanted it to be kept absolutely secret, even from people authorized to look at the record – simply recorded that the session took place, not what was said.

  Discouraged, he went on to the third document, a sheet of flowered stationery folded in thirds.

  Opening it, he read:

  July, 14, 1974

  Dear Doctor R,

  The salutation made him smile. Kelly had always called his father Dr. R.

  You were right. I was not being candid with you when we met two weeks ago. There is a reason I’m so happy, and you are the first and only person I can tell.

  I’ve met a man.

  A wonderful, caring man who loves me, and I love him.

  What a release to be cherished, respected, and liked. I feel as if all the other garbage has fallen away, and I’m free, with a new life ahead of me. Whether it will be with him or not, I don’t know, but I’m full of hope. I haven’t decided yet what to do about it all, and look forward to talking over possible strategies with you. But I am ecstatic!

  Regarding the other two matters, we must discuss those. Whatever I plan for myself, I can’t leave and let them go unresolved.

  Can we have lunch at the Plaza on Saturday, the twenty-seventh? I can’t bear to go to the estate on weekends anymore, and have pleaded hospital work as my excuse to stay in the city. Waiting to see you then.

  Love,

  Kelly

  Mark’s pulse leapt.

  The man could be the mystery person in the cab. If his father had kept the appointment with her, she’d probably told him who it was.

  He quickly pulled out and unfolded the next two sets of documents in the file, hoping to see a note or follow-up letter about their meeting.

  No such luck. In his hands he held photocopies of some New York City Hospital M and M reports, or Death Rounds, the conference that reviews patient morbidity and mortality.

  What the hell were these doing here? Scanning through them, he saw that they were accounts of
two separate cases involving digitalis toxicity. The first patient had lived, the second had died, but there were no names listed, only chart numbers, standard practice to preserve anonymity in such investigations. One was dated January 1974, the other June of the same year. They must be misfiled, he concluded, laying them aside.

  The final contents were old newspaper clippings lauding the Braden family’s involvement in the community. A FAMILY AFFAIR read the headline of one. It praised the volunteer work of Mrs. Charles Braden and her daughter-in-law, Kelly McShane Braden, at a local home for unwed mothers called The Braden Foundation Clinic founded by Dr. Charles Braden III. LIKE FATHER LIKE SON ran the lead of another article featuring Chaz helping check out a newborn at another of Dad’s projects, an upscale maternity center in Saratoga Springs.

  Nothing of use, Mark decided. The Bradens were renowned for lending their name to high-profile charities, as well as feeding the family fortune through commercial medical ventures such as high-priced private clinics. In fact Charles had pioneered the concept of combining the intimacy of home delivery with the latest in obstetrical technology in freestanding facilities, then franchised it through a well-known hospital chain. Mark returned the clippings to the file, having no idea why his father had stuck them here.

  Still, he had Kelly’s letter. He’d contact Everett first thing in the morning and tell the detective he’d found proof that she had a lover. Chances were he might have been the mystery man in the taxi.

  To which Everett would say, Who was he?

  And he’d have to admit he didn’t know.

  At that point Everett would probably hang up on him.

  Shit!

  He had another thought. Why hadn’t his father passed the letter on to the police? Obviously he kept it to himself even after she disappeared.

  As Mark picked it up and read it again, it sank in just how abstract Kelly was to him. How different and tormented she must have been from his sunlit memories of her. He never caught so much as a hint of her unhappiness or that she needed to escape from it. Nor had he any specific recollection of her last days in Hampton Junction. He remembered only his father telling him that she’d had to leave without saying good-bye.

  “Then I’ll say hello when she’s back,” Mark had said, accustomed to her comings and goings to medical school. But as days turned to weeks with no sign of Kelly, those few words with his dad became the landmark that stuck, not whatever laughing encounter with her that had been his last. Unlikely his take on her with the eyes of a seven-year-old would help explain anything about those final weeks anyway. Hell, he still had trouble reconciling his version of the woman he had known with the grisly remains lying in the mortuary.

  He continued to stare at the letter. It at least pinned down one event in the countdown to her murder. The day Kelly and his father planned to have lunch together, presuming they met, she had little more than a week to live.

  He pictured them at the Plaza. Had she been as rapturous and exuberant as she sounded in her writing? Was his father happy for her? Did they order champagne? The image of them toasting her well-deserved joy, oblivious to death being so near, filled Mark with sadness. Dreams could be so puny, struggle, hope, and daring so futile. She was on the verge of achieving everything – being a doctor, finding a man who loved her, making a clean break with her past. It made her moment of celebration seem all the more cruel.

  Then a chill that had nothing to do with the cold shimmied through him.

  That meeting, if it took place, also marked what would be the final two months of his father’s life.

  10:00 P.M.

  Buffalo, New York

  “Can we do a cuddle sandwich now, Daddy?”

  Earl looked up from his computer screen to see Brendan, dazed and tousled, totter through the study door. “What are you doing awake?”

  “Isn’t Mummy home yet?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He stood and picked the boy up. “But it’s back to sleep for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s very late.”

  “I mean why isn’t she home?”

  The vagaries of labor had sabotaged yet another evening of all three of them being together, but try and explain that to a four-year-old. “I told you, sometimes babies don’t want to come out on time,” he said, placing him in bed and tucking in his covers.

  “Can’t she make them?”

  “Sometimes, but not tonight.”

  “She could holler real loud at them, like she does for us when we’re playing outside, and it’s time to eat.”

  He grinned down at the budding obstetrical genius. “Mummy won’t be home until long after you’re asleep.”

  “I can stay awake.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Look. My eyes are open wide.” He scissored his lids apart with his fingers and grinned like some goofy space creature.

  Earl slowly reached toward him with twitching fingers. “Not for long.”

  Brendan started to giggle. “Yes, for long.”

  “But Mr. Tickle’s here.”

  His small hands flew out to grab Earl’s. “No, not Mr. Tickle,” he squealed, wriggling with delight in his bed. “Cuddle sandwich! Cuddle sandwich!”

  “Time to sleep, little man.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Hey, you’re as relentless as your mother.”

  “What’s ‘rentless’?”

  “Relentless. It means you never give up.”

  “Do I get a cuddle sandwich?”

  “Okay. Tomorrow morning, you can crawl into bed between Mummy and me, but not until the sun comes up.”

  “Promise?”

  “You bet. Now good night, and let’s see who can give the strongest hug.”

  Brendan’s arms flew around Earl’s neck and squeezed for all their worth. The embrace had the restorative power of a resuscitation. “Night, Daddy,” he said.

  Earl gently held him a second longer, pronounced him the winner, and turned out the light.

  A quarter of an hour later, alone in his own bed, except for Muffy sprawled on her back, he once again wrestled with what to tell Janet. There’d been small follow-up stories on the evening newscasts, and other New York papers posted updates on their web sites. The only new development was that the NYPD had turned the investigation over to the local authorities in the Adirondacks who had found the remains. Anyone with pertinent information on the case should contact Sheriff Dan Evans or Dr. Mark Roper, coroner. Earl recognized a slough when he saw it, having had his own share of unwanted work dumped on him.

  At first he’d felt relief. Recalling the sleepy countryside surrounding Chaz Braden’s estate, he couldn’t imagine there being much of a police force there. Any attention to her murder would probably focus on local acquaintances of hers. It might even be directed at Chaz again, and this time subject his alibi for the day she disappeared to the rigors of small-town scrutiny. After all, weren’t rural murders more apt to get solved than urban ones, what with everybody being into everybody else’s business? It was their equivalent to live theater. Rather than draw the curtains and remain uninvolved, people noticed things, stored them up, and kept them at the ready for later tellings. As long as the case was out of the NYPD’s hands, no one would be stirring up old memories in his former classmates, and he might be home free. So why say anything to Janet and worry her for nothing?

  Because he felt as if he was betraying her by staying silent.

  He rolled over and picked up the original, well-creased New York Herald article from his nightstand and studied it again. The name of the local coroner, Dr. Mark Roper, seemed vaguely familiar. Now why, he wondered, did it resonate?

  Then he remembered.

  Kelly had sometimes talked about a Dr. Roper. He was the man who encouraged her to go to medical school and whom she often visited, confiding her problems to him whenever she went up to Hampton Junction. He even counseled her to escape her marriage to Chaz.

  Could this Mark
Roper be the same man? Hell, if he was, he must be in his early seventies. And that would mean trouble if Kelly had told him everything. The guy could be making a beeline to find him right now, which would take about a day. Shit, he might already have contacted the Buffalo authorities and a cruiser could be on the way to pick him up.

  Earl lay still. Feeling his heart start to race, he fought the compulsion to get up and peek through the bedroom window to make sure that a squad car wasn’t pulling up to the front door.

  But had she referred to that doctor as Mark? It didn’t sound right. Yet a second physician called Roper in so small a place was unlikely.

  He got out of bed and went to his study to check the directory of licensed physicians for New York State. He skimmed through all the Ropers, finding only one whose office address was Hampton Junction. Except it couldn’t be Kelly’s Dr. Roper. This man’s license number indicated he’d been in practice only seven years.

  The original Dr. Roper’s son? he wondered. That could also be problematic if the father were alive and capable of discussing what he remembered about Kelly. The name Earl Garnet might still come up.

  He undressed and returned to bed, hoping he could escape into sleep, but thoughts of Kelly persisted. He found himself drifting back to 1974.

  It had been the time of Watergate, Nixon’s ignominious slide toward the disgrace of his resignation, when the anatomy of the president’s self-destruction, like the Vietnam War, was documented in wall-to-wall television coverage. His downfall seemed suited to the little screen, running daily as it did with the incremental revelations of a soap opera, something Earl and his classmates could tune in to after skipping weeks of episodes without feeling behind in the story. As medical students in their most clinical year yet, they had little time to pay it more attention. But they never missed M*A*S*H.

  At the movies, portraits of evil topped the big box office hits. Robert De Niro emblazoned himself on everyone’s memory in Godfather, Part II; but for making them cringe, nobody topped Roman Polanski when he sliced open Jack Nicholson’s nose in Chinatown.