Cat's Eyewitness (25 page)

36

W
orn down by questioning, anger, and grief among the brethren, and the press of people worshiping at the base of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mother, Brother Handle felt his mind was fraying. He knew his temper was, but he would have to go over the same question, the same info, two or three times before it lodged in his head. Never a sound sleeper anyway, he would lie awake, eyes wide open.

Although the news of Brother Thomas’s demise had been given to him only days ago, the time seemed like weeks since so much had been compressed in those days. Badgered by Rick, questioned in a nicer manner by Deputy Cooper, the stony faces of the monks contributed to his wondering if he should step down from his post. On the one hand, he would clear the way for a more vigorous Prior; on the other hand, it would look as though he ran away from trouble. Miserable though he was, he decided to stick it out. He told no one of his inner struggles. Even if Brother Handle had thought someone would be willing to listen, he would not have divulged his torments.

“I know this is the second time I’ve been in here,” Brother Handle stood in the middle of the infirmary examination room, “but show me one more time.”

“The morphine?” Brother John raised his bushy eyebrows.

“The routine. Go through the whole routine.”

Indulgently, Brother John walked into the large supply closet, with Brother Handle close behind. “Everything is kept here. As I’ve told you before, the medicines, the needles, the linens, bandages, whatever we might need is kept here. In the examining room, the surgical implements are in a locked drawer. If Brother Andrew or I needed them, they were placed on the stainless-steel tray. Everything sanitized, of course.”

Brother Handle pointed to the white metal cabinet, lock prominent by the handle. “It’s in there.”

“Yes.” Brother John pulled a key from a chain around his neck. “Only Brother Andrew and myself have a key.”

Brother Handle knelt down, peering at the lock as Brother John slowly opened it so as not to smack him in the face with the door. “Someone with dexterity could pick the lock.”

“Yes, if someone were especially dexterous I guess they could get away with it.” Brother John pointed to the bottles, most of them dark brown with white labels; a few were in white boxes.

“The morphine is clearly marked. Mmm, flu shots.”

“Have you had yours yet? I didn’t give it to you? Did Brother Andrew?”

“No, but—”

“Brother Handle, you need the flu shot. You’re due and it’s going to be a bad year.”

“We can do it tomorrow.”

“Today. It stings for a second and that’s that.”

Resigned to his fate, Brother Handle sat in the wooden chair. “Get it over with. I hate these things.”

“Do you know anyone who likes them?”

“No.”

Brother John took out the bottle. With his thumb he flicked off the hard plastic cap covering the top. He peeled the clear plastic wrapper off the needle, allergy-size, stuck the point into the rubber, and with his left hand turned the bottle upside down, drawing out the liquid with his right hand as he pulled back on the needle plunger. “Simple. Anyone can draw liquid out of a bottle. I know Brother Andrew is under arrest because he didn’t report the missing bottle, but it doesn’t take specialized knowledge to use a needle. They’re being too hard on him.” He checked the milligram bars, turned the bottle upside down, and removed the needle. He dabbed alcohol on a cotton ball and rubbed that on Brother Handle’s left triceps. Straight as an arrow, he quickly inserted the needle, pressed the plunger with his thumb, removed the needle straight, held the cotton swab on the spot. “You’ll live.”

“I wonder,” Brother Handle pessimistically groaned.

“A flu shot isn’t going to do you in.”

“Not the flu shot I’m worried about.”

“I know. We’re all worried.”

Brother Handle leaned forward in the chair. “At what temperature does blood freeze?”

“30.99 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s why blood is separated from plasma; the water and minerals freeze earlier than the actual blood.”

“Who would steal blood?” Brother Handle asked.

“No one. It breaks down quickly. It would be worthless in medical applications.” Brother John opened his hands, palms upward. “Unless the thief were a doctor or trained nurse, the blood would be useless rapidly. I can’t see any reason for someone to steal blood.”

“Do you count the blood packets each day?” Brother Handle’s eyes bored into Brother John.

“No. Brother Andrew and I did count them but not every day.”

“Did you ever lose any?”

“No.” Brother John shut the refrigerator door. “Wait. Yes. September.”

“What happened?”

“Brother Thomas and Brother Andrew picked up a container—you know those big blue containers with dry ice—of blood. They parked the car up here and then couldn’t find the blood.”

“Container.”

“The container was in the car.”

“I see.”

“This is December. What does that have to do with the terrible situation—I know Brother Andrew is under suspicion but I don’t see what blood has to do with it nor do I think Brother Andrew would kill Brother Thomas. It’s absurd.” Brother John’s jaw set hard.

“I don’t know, anymore. But I do know it took a crane to put Mary back on her boulder, and that was mid-September.” Brother Handle raised his voice. “Who? If not Brother Andrew?
Who?”

Brother John walked over to the Prior. “We live close together here, Brother Handle, yet we don’t know about one another on many levels. A man could live his entire adult life here and others would only know of his temperament and his habits. Who is to say what or why?”

“You’re certainly sanguine about it, forgive the pun.”

“I’m a scientist. A doctor is a scientist. If I remain dispassionate I can help you more readily than if I’m emotionally involved.” Brother John noted to himself that Brother Handle did not know about the laws involving the storage of blood by private physicians. He wondered how long before the Prior would begin making queries to outside doctors and learn about what Brother John considered a necessary irregularity.

Brother Mark ran into the infirmary. “Brother Handle!” he called out.

“Speaking of emotions,” Brother Handle sourly said. “I’m in the supply room.”

Brother Mark hurried to the open door. “Brother Handle, the main boiler broke down.”

“Well, fix it.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You spent all that time assisting Brother Thomas and you can’t fix the boiler?” Brother Handle’s hands flew up in the air in disgust.

“I lack his gift,” Brother Mark pleaded.

“You’d better find it, because I am not calling j. g. cohen.”

“That’s an electrical company, Brother,” Brother John quietly corrected him.

“All right, then,” Brother Handle fumed, “I am not calling a plumbing company. Bunch of damned thieves. The type that set upon St. Paul.”

“Setting that aside, it’s nineteen degrees outside,” Brother John flatly remarked.

To Brother Mark, the Prior sputtered, “Isn’t there anyone else in this place who knows some plumbing?”

“Brother Prescott knows a little bit about the boiler. He was with us this summer when we drained the boiler, drained all the radiators, and then restored the pressure.”

“Get him, then!” Brother Handle bellowed.

“Yes, sir, but,” Brother Mark’s voice trembled, “if I can’t fix it, you really will have to call a plumber right away, because if the radiators freeze they will blow apart. A big chunk of metal could kill someone.”

This stopped Brother Handle. “Let’s all go down into the bowels of this place. You, too, Brother John.”

Once in the cavernous underground, they stepped down another four feet to the enormous cast-iron furnace built in 1914, installed that same year. It was still heated with coal, the huge pile of dense anthracite, shovel next to it, near the open door of the furnace.

A water gauge—a clear tube one foot tall on iron hinges—was attached to the side of the furnace but far enough away from the metal itself so one would not be burned when reading it. The pressure gauge, face as large as a railroad clock, sat atop a pipe emerging from the box of the furnace itself.

“Pressure’s falling fast,” Brother Prescott, summoned by Brother Mark, stated the obvious.

“She’s full up on coal. I shoveled it in myself,” Brother Mark said, his grimy hands proving it.

“You know,” Brother Prescott spoke to Brother Handle, “most people alive today have never seen a boiler like this, a furnace this huge. Brother Thomas worked on these kinds of things when he was a boy. If you call a plumber, chances are whoever walks in here will be over his head. All he’ll tell you to do is to replace it with a modern furnace or heat pumps.”

“I know that!” Brother Handle snapped.

“The only thing I can think of is that one of our water pipes is leaking or burst. Everything here is all right,” Brother Mark added.

“You’re the smallest; you’ll have to get into the crawl space. It has to be down here,” Brother Prescott stated. “If a pipe had burst in the kitchen or the bathrooms, we’d know. There’d be water everywhere.”

“Here.” Brother John handed the young man a powerful flashlight, then gave him a leg up to wiggle into the crawl space, a maze of pipes.

Brother Mark slid along the cold underbelly of the monastery. Cobwebs festooned his robe. The robe itself was an impediment. The occasional rat stared at him, then scurried away. At last, he found the leak at a U-joint where the pipes turned toward the housing side of the building. He was belly-flat in water.

He then had to back out, bumping his head in the process.

Brother Prescott grabbed his feet when they dangled from the crawl space.

A begrimed Brother Mark announced, “I found it. I need a new U-joint, a wrench, and grease. We need to turn off the main water valve. I can fix it in an hour, in less time if one of you will come in with me and hold the light, hand me the tools.”

“I’ll shut off the water valve,” Brother John volunteered.

“Brother Prescott, get in there with him,” Brother Handle commanded. “We’ve got to get this fixed as quickly as possible.”

Wordlessly, Brother Prescott walked over to a corridor running from the big room at a right angle. Brother Thomas had kept everything necessary for the furnace there. “How big a U-joint?” he called out.

“I’ll get it.” Brother Mark, dripping, dashed over to the room.

“Brother John,” Brother Handle turned to the physician. “You’d better stay down here to give them a leg up and to pull them out. Also, if anyone should get hurt in there you’ll be on the spot. Better safe than sorry.”

“Of course.”

Then Brother Handle strode out to leave them to it. He reached his office, pulled on an overcloak, grabbed a small high-intensity flashlight from his desk. There was a pump in the forge, one behind the greenhouse, which also served the gardens, and another one in a small building behind the chandler’s cottage.

While not a plumber or a particularly handy fellow, he knew the basics. He could spot a split pipe, a worn-out hose. He could read a pressure gauge as easily as the next man. He wanted to get outside despite the cold and he wanted to be alone. Double-checking everything would give him a reason to go out, not that he really needed one.

The chandler’s shop was fine, as was the forge. His last stop and the one farthest from the monastery was the pumphouse behind the greenhouse. He could hear, even though he was one hundred yards away and on the ridge, people praying, chanting.

Grimacing, he ducked into the pumphouse, which was about eight feet by six feet, with a seven-foot ceiling. The pump in here, more modern than the one in the monastery, powered the sprinkler system in the greenhouse and the watering system outside. The brothers had long ago given up carrying buckets to the many plants and shrubs as the gardens expanded.

The overhead naked lightbulb, 150 watts, afforded some light. A standing kerosene heater was lit to provide warmth, to keep the pipes from freezing. The kerosene odor made Brother Handle woozy. He clicked on the flashlight, checking the gauge, the dial, the pipes. Then he got down on his hands and knees, cursing, to check those pipes running out and under the ground. A narrow-gauge copper pipe behind the pump caught his eye. It was tucked behind a large pipe. The copper pipe had been freshly painted black. He scratched it with his thumbnail and was rewarded with the sight of gleaming new copper. A metal box, painted black to blend in with the pipes and the walls of the pumphouse, hung under this pipe.

“He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. My kinsfolk and my close friends have failed me.” Brother Handle, heart sinking, quoted Job, Chapter 19, Verses 13 and 14.

He touched the box, cold to his fingertips. The pipe, too, was cold but not freezing.

He didn’t know how long he remained there, cramped under the larger pipe. He blinked and shook his head to clear it, then moved backward before standing up.

He whispered to himself the lament of Job, “My brethren far from me.”