Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (22 page)

“I got a note from Vi,” Claire said. “At least I think it was from her. She might have thought I had another reason for being at the clinic. See, I want to find out about what happened to my friend Ginny Sloop. I think she came here to have her babies, but no one has seen her since. Vi wrote about how something went wrong with a birth, about how it was three in the morning and Dr. Bradford told her he would take the baby to St. Vincent, but she didn’t believe him.”

Doug shrugged. His hand was back in his pocket now. “Things go south sometimes.”

“I checked with St. Vincent’s. She never got there.”

“He thinks I don’t notice things. I do.” Doug was talking to himself more than Claire. “I woke up and heard them yelling in the parking lot. He told Vi to take care of her end and not to worry about it. I decided it was better for me to go back to sleep. The next day I noticed that the dirt had been dug up between the roots of that big cedar that stands halfway between my place and my booth.”

“What do you think it was?”

“What do you think?” He leveled a long look at her, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing. Dr. Bradford had dug a grave.

“I need to see what’s buried under that tree, Doug. I need to see.”

He dropped his gaze. “So that’s what this” - he waved his hand in the direction of the city lights, the thermos of Long Island Iced Tea, the sofa pillow, Claire herself - “that’s what this was all about, then?” he asked. “This is why you called?” His voice was rough.

She nodded, but wasn’t sure if he saw her.

“I can’t help you. I dropped out of school when I was fourteen. What chance do I have out here, on my own?”

“Could you look the other way, though? Could you just not tell him if you hear something out there tonight?”

His head jerked back as if she had struck him. “Of course I wouldn’t tell him. How can you ask me something like that?”

They didn’t speak as she drove him to the foot of the private drive that led to the Bradford Clinic. As she nosed the car in, he said, “If someone were going to come up after hours, they should know that there’s a sensor in the road up ahead about thirty feet that registers a car’s weight.”

“Thanks, Doug.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, his beard coarse beneath her lips. There was a single intake of breath, and then he held himself still until she leaned back. Her heart was flooded with sorrow for the child he had been and the man he had become.

“Oh, and you should watch out for the dog. Sometimes he lets her loose on the grounds,” Doug said as he opened the car door.

“A dog?” Claire felt a twinge in her ankle as she remembered the terrible sight of long yellow teeth closing inches from her vulnerable skin.

“A real mean bitch named Pansy. She even snaps at me sometimes. Chow mix. They’re the worst.” And with that piece of advice he slammed the door, then gave her a short wave before walking away.

1MORTNG

Chapter Twenty-four

After Doug left, Claire drove without paying attention to where she was. Tears streamed down her face, but she made no attempt to wipe them away. Since she had begun trying to help Lori, she had found nothing but death. The Lieblings two dead babies. Zach was doomed to die, if not immediately, then in a handful of weeks. And now this news about Ginny.

Was Ginny’s body cradled between the roots of a tree? Claire had to find out. Not just for Ginny’s family, but for all the other Ginnys out there. A body - even if Ginny hadn’t been intentionally killed - would be enough evidence to put Dr. Bradford out of business forever. He must have had his suspicions about the Lieblings, whose children died with alarming regularity, but Claire was sure that their current child, the boy she had seen in the car, had come from him. He sold babies to the highest bidder, the kind of people who didn’t want social workers examining their lives too closely. And now because of the secret way he ran his clinic, a young woman might have died. If Ginny was dead - which seemed likely - and Claire could prove it, then she could save other women, other babies.

It would be a risk, but she had to put a stop to Dr. Bradford. And what other choice did she have? If she tried calling the police, Doug would deny everything he had told her. And the police couldn’t search without a warrant, and they couldn’t get a warrant without probable cause. Dr. Bradford would get his lawyers to stall. If Ginny’s body were up there, he would be sure she got moved well before any one set foot on the property.

She drove to a nearby Fred Meyer store. It was 10:45, fifteen minutes until closing, so she zipped her cart up and down the aisles. Freddies - Oregon’s own one-stop shopping emporium, where you could pick up anything from a gallon of milk to a drill bit - had the items Claire needed, but they were spread out all over the store. As she wheeled up to the checkout, she was a little nervous, thinking her purchases looked like a starter kit for a burglar. But the clerk scanned and bagged the items - a black sweatshirt, a black knit cap, a can of black shoe polish and a folding camping shovel - without comment. The woman tucked the final item - a T-bone steak, the biggest one in the meat department - in a separate plastic bag. Back at her car, Claire put on the sweatshirt and tucked her hair under her new cap, then unzipped her backpack and stowed the rest of her purchases next to the stuff she always carried, including a flashlight and the canister of Dog B Gon Jimmy had sold her.

There was a payphone twenty feet from her car. Should she call Charlie and tell her her plans? No, Claire decided.
 
She would wait until tomorrow, when it would be too late to forbid her to go. Better to ask forgiveness than to beg permission.

She parked just off the highway, at the foot of the unmarked private road that led to the Bradford Clinic. As she smeared shoe polish over her face, cars zipped by without pausing. The noise was like the droning a thousand giant mosquitoes. Even so, Claire was careful to close the car door quietly.

Keeping to the edge of the road, she began to climb the steep hill. In her left hand she held the handles of the plastic bag that contained the steak, and in her right palm she cupped the bottle of Dog B Gon. A half-moon offered filtered light. Her ankle began to ache. She wished she were wearing hiking boots instead of a pair of Nikes retired from running.

Finally the parking booth came into view. Claire stood next to it for a long time, evaluating what she saw and heard. A faint breeze rustled the trees, but it was otherwise quiet. Up here, even the sound of the traffic was hushed. Doug’s little cottage was dark, and only a single light burned in the big house.

It was harder than Claire had thought to locate the tree Doug had told her about. At least six trees could be described as “halfway” between his cottage and the parking booth. Claire walked back and forth, considering. She finally saw that one tree had a bare spot underneath, clear of the moss and twigs that littered the ground under the others. Putting down the steak, she opened her backpack, then unfolded her shovel and set the blade into the ground. The earth, loamy and loose, turned easily beneath her shovel, and she knew she had chosen correctly. In less than twenty minutes, the shovel caught on something and slid away from her, accompanied by the crinkling noise of plastic.

As her heart pounded in her ears, Claire knelt down and began gently brushing away the dirt. Her fingers touched something smooth and slick, layered over something that yielded. She snatched her hand back, rubbing her fingers together. They were dry. This must be Ginny, or at least her earthly remains, wrapped in plastic. All Claire had to do was see her body with her own eyes, and then she could race down the hill and go to the police.

Claire fished in her backpack for her flashlight and Swiss Army knife. The flashlight revealed a blue tarp. She plucked up a corner, cut a small slit, then flicked the knife closed. She didn’t want to risk cutting Ginny, even if she was past feeling. With her fingers, Claire carefully enlarged the hole she had made. She saw enough to know that she had been right. Blond strands of hair lay across Ginny’s open, dull eyes. The sweetly rotten smell of old blood made Claire gag.

A twig cracked behind her. Claire froze and prayed that she was imagining things. Another snap, this one closer. The skin crawled between her shoulderblades. At the sound of an in-drawn breath, Claire pushed herself to her feet, still clutching the metal handle of the shovel. She turned, expecting to face Dr. Bradford.

And was met with a silent dark blur that hit her square on the knees. Pansy. She staggered backward into the trunk of the tree, which kept her from falling. Claire swore at herself for getting so caught that she had forgotten all about the dog. Pansy began to bark triumphantly. Claire had read about coon and fox hunts, how the dogs howled when they found their prey, just before reducing it to a bloody scrap of fur.

The dog was crouched on its haunches, gathering itself to launch at her again, and Claire found herself watching it as if everything were happening to someone else. Move, she commanded herself as she saw long teeth glinting in the moonlight, but she couldn’t. As the dog leapt, Claire remembered the shovel she still held. Swinging it like a baseball bat, she heard first a crack and then a whine as it connected someplace with the dog’s midsection. The shovel flew out of her hands. She bent down and grabbed the steak. Raking the plastic open with her fingernails, she tossed it on the ground in front of Pansy.

The dog didn’t even dip its head. The three-pound steak held no appeal, not compared with one hundred forty pounds of living, breathing Claire. The dog circled Claire, its low growl throbbing on the edge of her hearing. Like a flat stone over still water, Claire’s mind skipped over her choices. Everything was out of reach. The Dog B Gon and the shovel were six feet away - in opposite directions. Closest was her Swiss Army knife, but what good would the two-inch blade be against the dog’s heavy muscles? As Claire tried to decide what to do, Pansy leapt.

Remembering Jimmy’s advice, Claire swung her left forearm across her throat. Hot lines of pain scored her arm. She landed on her back, the dog on top of her, its eager breath foul in her face. Claire sent up a silent thank you to Jimmy when she realized the dog’s jaws were worrying the heavy fabric of the sweatshirt, not her arm. She swept her free hand along the ground, frantically trying to find a weapon. The dog loosed its teeth from her sweatshirt and lifted its head just as her hand closed on the little canister of Dog B Gon. She pointed it toward Pansy and pressed the button.

Her eyes caught on fire. The smell of ammonia burned her nostrils. Damn! Claire realized she had sprayed herself, not the dog. And now she was blind. The weight of the dog was gone from her chest, but she knew this was only a temporary reprieve. Where was it? She was as helpless as a bug caught in a web, just waiting for the spider to come along.

At least she could meet death on her feet. Claire rolled to her stomach to push herself upright. Something dented her cheek. The closed knife. She grabbed it. Getting to her feet, she waved her hands in front of her. Her foot landed in the open grave and she stumbled and almost fell. Rough bark grazed her outstretched fingers. Claire pressed her back against the tree. She tried to force open her eyes, but they refused to obey. Tears and mucus washed across her face. The oily, nauseating taste of shoe polish filled her mouth.

Hadn’t Claire always read that blind people’s developed heightened senses to make up for what they lacked? She wished that would happen to her in a hurry, because she couldn’t hear the dog at all. The next thing she would feel would be its teeth in her throat. Her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t open the knife. Instead, Claire put her arm over her throat and braced herself for the attack. If - or when - she was knocked off her feet again, she would try to get into what Jimmy had called the pillbug position. The rumble of a growl made her jump, but she could not tell what direction it came from.

Then Claire thought of something. What had Jimmy told her? That attack dogs were trained to answer to German, not English? Claire wracked her brain for the words that Charlie had taught her. She shouted them out, trying to tamp down a quaver. “Nein! Halt!”
No. Stop
. What other words did she know? “Schlechter Hund!”
Bad dog
. Or since Pansy was a bitch, would she only respond to the female form of the word? Knowing it was hopeless, Claire screamed out, “Schlechte Huendin!”

But then the dog’s growl changed to a whine, the sound of an over eager animal being commanded to stay and obeying only reluctantly. Hope electrified Claire. She had done it! Then she heard another sound and identified it. The cluck of a tongue. A human tongue.

“Well, well, well. Aren’t you a pretty sight? You look like Al Jolson on a crying jag. And to think that our little Lucy Bertrand knows German. So sorry, but I’m afraid Pansy doesn’t.” Claire recognized the icy voice, and her mind conjured up what she couldn’t see - Dr. Bradford regarding her with his wolf’s eyes.

Through her swollen lids, Claire felt more than saw a beam of light being played over her. She heard herself panting with fear, and tried, without success, to still her breathing.

“Come along.” His hand closed around her left wrist, and Claire gasped in surprise. He began to tow her along, saying, “Please do us both a favor and don’t try anything. I have a gun.”

Claire realized that she was still clutching the closed Swiss Army knife. Knowing Dr. Bradford would confiscate it as soon as he saw it, Claire staggered as if she were off balance, using the second to hide it into the waistband of her jeans. It slid down an inch but then stopped, and she was suddenly thankful for the little shelf of flesh she had recently added courtesy of her bum ankle and Safeway Select Chocolate Chunk Peanut butter cookies. She stumbled along as Dr. Bradford dragged her across the uneven ground. Once she tripped over a tree root and nearly fell, but he just dragged her back to her feet. By the dog’s low, continuous growl, Claire could tell that Pansy accompanied them.

Finally, Dr. Bradford stopped and let go of her hand. Claire heard the sound of a key turning in a lock. With his hand on the flat of her back, Dr. Bradford pushed her inside, and she stumbled over the doorframe. Sighing with exasperation, he maneuvered her until she felt the edge of a chair against the back her legs. “Sit,” he commanded and she did. She heard the dog sigh as it also obeyed. Dr. Bradford snorted a laugh. “I’ve finally got you and Pansy both listening to me.”

The closed knife pressed painfully into Claire’s abdomen. She folded her hands meekly in her lap, where they were partly hidden by the folds of the oversized sweatshirt.

“So who are you? Did that girl’s family hire you?”

If he didn’t know who she was, then it must have been Pansy, not Doug, who betrayed her. Claire didn’t know whether it was better or worse to lie. Which would buy her more time? Would either buy her life? Her eyes were finally beginning to open a bit, allowing her to see the white blur of Dr. Bradford’s face and the silver blur of the gun he held in his hand.

“She has a name, you know,” Claire said, proud that her voice only shook a little bit. “Ginny Sloop. And the only reason she died was because secrecy was so important to you. Her family will never rest until they find out what happened to her. And then they’ll find you.”

He shook his head. “No they won’t. They didn’t even know she was pregnant. The one thing I appreciate about your coming here is that it’s made it clear to me that it was foolish to think I could keep her here for long. So later tonight I’m going to be taking a little drive to the coast. I’ll hitch up my boat with a couple of oversized coolers stowed on board. And then I’ll go sailing. Remember that lawyer who dumped his mistress’ body into the ocean in a weighted cooler? They’ve never found her. It’s a good thing you like Ginny so much, because you’ll be keeping company with her forever.”