The Skeleton's Knee (22 page)

The sounds stopped opposite my front bumper. I waited for a minute longer, feeling increasingly foolish, and finally lifted myself up just enough to peer over the dash. Norm Runnion was standing there, a grin on his face, wiggling the fingers of one hand at me in greeting.

With all the dignity of an embarrassed eight-year-old, I struggled to straighten up nonchalantly.

Runnion came around to the side door and slid in next to me. “Catch any bad guys yet?” He pulled a half-empty bag of Fig Newtons from his pocket and handed it over.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, gratefully biting into one of the cookies.

He chuckled. “I think you got Jeffers nervous. When I told him you were waving funny credentials in front of building guards, he had visions of a country cowboy running amok. We waiting for Shilly?”

“Yeah.” I liked his approach—relaxed, friendly, one of the boys, and yet very sharp. That he had traced my whereabouts was no remarkable feat, but that he had apparently taken the time to watch me after I’d left his office to see what kind of car I was driving—just for future reference—struck me as the workings of a careful, calculating mind.

“What’d you have on him?”

I told him, along with how I’d gathered my information. I finished with a question I’d been planning to ask him later. “Do you have any contacts inside the University of Chicago hospital?”

“Sure.”

“Could they get us a look at Shilly’s old files there?”

He was quiet for a time, bouncing a thumbnail against his lower lip. I was worried he’d end by downplaying my interest in Shilly, claiming I was grabbing at straws. But either he saw no harm in examining straws—especially when we had little else—or he was homesick for a good chase, because he finally said, “Maybe. We’d have to watch out for patient confidentiality, though, unless we got someone similar to your Dr. Yancy. My connection’s more on the administrative side.”

I thought of another angle. “How about tracing the metal knee? That’s administrative—pure inventory. I have the make and model number; we connect that to a specific operation, then maybe we can get a warrant if we need it—the knee does connect to a homicide, after all.”

That made him much happier. “Okay. Let’s go.”

I checked my watch, reluctant to abandon my planned tail of Shilly. “Your contact still there? It’s almost quittin’ time.”

“Yup—staggered shifts. Besides, I hate stakeouts—bad for my butt. We can find out where Shilly lives from the tax assessor’s office in the morning.”

I headed out into traffic, following Runnion’s advice on which streets to take. It was nice having him along—he was open and conversational, totally lacking in the inbred mistrust many of my Vermont colleagues might have displayed had the roles been reversed.

I began asking him about his background—where’d he’d been born, where he’d gone to school, whether he was married. He’d attended Chicago City College night school, he’d informed me, and yes, he was married, with two kids. His replies came in elliptical, anecdotal, humorous monologues that blended his biography with those of thousands of others like him who’d spent their entire lives helping to make the city what it had become.

“Chicago’s different. It’s neighborhoods, family ties, and the Catholic Church—at least for people like me. That’s the old-style Chicago. There’re lots of new people, new trends, but the old ways—the politics, the who-knows-who way of doing business, that sense of everybody knowing the other guy’s roots—that’s still real strong.”

He spoke of the ward politics, the old Daley Machine, the huge black and ethnic populations, the hapless Cubs, supported with the exaggerated weariness of fatalistic in-laws. He spoke of the city’s energy, its raw nerve, the source of its renowned, almost belligerent self-confidence, and he talked of the bars, restaurants, and music clubs, examples of which he pointed out now and then as we drove.

It was a rambling, disjointed, free-for-all tour, fueled by questions I fed him to keep it going. It made the long, traffic-clogged trip go more quickly and helped me to understand both my new and sometimes overwhelming environment and my affable, temporary host.

Norm Runnion, it turned out, was three months shy of retirement. At age fifty-five, he had spent thirty years on the force; he had been disappointed in promotions after making detective ten years back—late in life by modern hyperactive standards—and now was resigned to spending the rest of his life on pension, taking on odd jobs to keep himself sane.

“That’s one of the reasons I’m glad you came along,” he explained. “They won’t let me out on the street anymore—not officially. Afraid I’ll screw up ’cause I won’t give a damn anymore, as if I could just turn it all off after thirty years. Typical of the brass, I suppose; they think all this time you been faking it—doing it just for the money and not really caring.” He looked out the window at the endless blur of buildings and people, each half mile exhibiting enough sights, sounds, and energy to fuel the entire state of Vermont.

“They’ve had me doing paperwork for the past six months,” he concluded with a murmur.

I glanced over at him, his eyes glued to the scenery, and saw the loneliness that his words had been struggling to suppress. I remembered then Captain Jeffers’s questioning me about how little help I’d need before he’d rung for Runnion, and the memory angered me. I wasn’t that far from retirement myself, and I, too, wondered what life would be like afterwards—from the outside, looking in.

When we finally got to the University of Chicago, we didn’t enter the medical complex by the front door, as I had earlier. The entrance we used was so far from that gloriously self-indulgent portal—and so modest in appearance—that I doubted we were in the same building.

Runnion led me along a baffling maze of hallways and back stairs, finally stopping at the door of a room containing several young women sitting at computer terminals, one of whom looked up with a broad, crooked-toothed smile and called out, “Norm—long time no see.”

Norm introduced me and waved to the others, all of whom seemed well used to him. “Leslie’s one of my favorite deep-cover operatives. She’s a great cook, has a husband who likes to beat on my car, works at the right job, and is something like a cousin forty-three times removed. None of which matters,” he added after she’d given him a friendly punch in the stomach, “since I’d love her, anyway.”

Leslie rolled her eyes. “I guess I know why you’re here.”

Runnion gave her a hug where she sat. “Cynical, but true. How’re you at checking ancient inventory on that thing?” He nodded at the computer.

She looked surprised. “Inventory? Like what?”

“A metal knee, bought in early ’69—we think.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “You’d have to have the exact numbers.”

Runnion glanced at me as I dug into my pocket for the catalogue and lot numbers and handed it to Leslie.

She stuck the information on the edge of her computer screen with a bit of tape and began tapping away at the keyboard.

I looked on, amazed as always at both the depth of information passing before me and at the trust people put in these machines. As undeniably useful as they were, I still put more faith in huge, badly lit rooms stuffed with generations of lovingly filed, dusty archives. It wasn’t the fear of loss that put me off computer-stored information—I recognized that a good fire could wipe out a storeroom as easily as a bolt of lightning could fry a hard disc. It was more a longing for the hands-on experience. Pawing through reams of old files gave me a feel for when they were amassed. A computer screen was always the same, regardless of how old the information it was disgorging.

Nevertheless, this computer had been well fed. After some fifteen minutes of back-filing and cross-checking, Leslie let out a little grunt of satisfaction and relaxed in her chair. “I wasn’t going to admit it, but I wasn’t so sure these files went back that far. But there it is.”

Runnion and I craned our necks over her shoulder to see what she’d found, but while I recognized Shilly’s name, it was surrounded by clusters of numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me.

“Translate, Les,” Runnion muttered.

She stabbed the screen with a slightly pudgy, nail-bitten finger. “Okay, here you’ve got your friend’s numbers. There’s our purchase number; there’s the purchase date, and our own inventory number, and the assignment bin so we’d know where to find it. These are cross-references to manufacturer, salesman, type and style of prosthesis, and basic material—like plastic, metal, wood, what have you…”

“What was the purchase date?” I asked.

She looked up at me, surprised that I’d spoken. “February 8, 1969.”

Runnion eased her back to the screen. “So when did it move off the shelf?”

“October tenth, same year. Dr. Shilly used it. Payment was routed…” She hesitated and tapped in a couple more commands. “Huh—that’s unusual. Looks like it was a cash transaction—not insurance.”

“Who got the knee?” Runnion asked gently.

She turned on him in genuine alarm. “You know I can’t give you that. I’d get in enough trouble just for doing this.”

He patted her shoulder. “I know, I know. Don’t worry about it. Just give me the case number and we’ll go through channels.”

“Maybe we can do even better than that,” I muttered, looking around. “You have a phone directory—for this building?”

“Sure.” Leslie pulled open a drawer near her leg and handed me a soft-cover phone book about the same thickness as Brattleboro’s. “The phone’s over there.”

I crossed over to the counter she’d indicated, leafing through the directory until I found Hoolihan’s name. I dialed the number and reintroduced myself to his secretary’s familiar protective voice. She hedged at first but finally admitted he was in. I told her I’d be right up.

Just as with regular phone books, this one had a limited address opposite the names. “Know how to find that?” I asked Runnion.

He was eyeing me with keen interest. “I thought Hoolihan had you right up there with root canal work.”

I shrugged. “He gave me Shilly’s name. I doubt he thought that would be the end of it.”

We left Leslie with many thanks and a promise from Runnion to bring a one-pound bag of peanut M&Ms for everyone next time, then rode the elevator up to the top floor. Hoolihan’s acerbic secretary merely stared at us as I took the lead and ushered Runnion into the cavernous office beyond.

Hoolihan was sitting where I’d found him before, still looking like a grouchy gnome behind a too-large desk. “You found Shilly.”

I passed on introducing Runnion, who, in any case, hadn’t received so much as a glance. “Yes. He denied doing the operation.”

“Then I have no other suggestions.” Hoolihan began his dismissal trick of swiveling toward the window.

“But your records indicate otherwise.”

The swivel stopped. “Our records?”

“We traced the prosthesis. Shilly took it off the shelf and used it in October 1969. It was paid for in cash. I’d like to look at the files concerning that operation.”

Hoolihan didn’t move or immediately respond. In profile, I could see his lips compressing and relaxing, as if he was slowly grinding out an answer between his teeth. Finally, he turned back to face us, for the first time addressing Norm Runnion. “I take it you have enough for a warrant in any case.”

Despite the doubtfulness of that statement, Runnion didn’t equivocate. “We do.”

“What do I get for being cooperative?”

I knew what he wanted. “You and the university get left out of it, at least as far as we can control things.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. What’s the case number?”

· · ·

The low-ceilinged basement vault, jammed with tightly serried rows of metal shelf units, which in turn bulged with thousands of compressed medical files, was much more my element. Just walking the length of the aisles, I could sense the energy that had created this room’s contents—the agonies, ordeals, triumphs, and failures that could be extruded from the batches of hastily scrawled notes and reports that mark every patient’s stay in a hospital.

Runnion and I were following a diminutive gray-haired woman whose stature had been inflated with anger. She fairly hummed ahead of us, bitterly muttering to herself about the thoughtlessness of others and of the sacredness of quitting time, the latter of which we’d trampled upon with our arrival on her doorstep, complete with an authoritative note from Dr. Hoolihan.

She finally came to a spot about halfway down one of the aisles, wrenched a file from its place with undisguised viciousness, and thrust it like a sword toward Runnion’s chest. “You can use the tables at the back. I’ll be waiting.”

The venom of those last three words swirled in the air like smoke as she stalked rigidly back to her post. Runnion wiggled his eyebrows at me in mock horror and set a course in the opposite direction.

We sat side by side, the file open before us, trying to nail down a chronological sequence of events. I was holding an Emergency Room admittance sheet, struggling to make the hieroglyphic scrawl become English. From prior experience, I’d discovered that doctors, nurses, EMTs, and just about everyone else who learns how to take a blood pressure not only lose their penmanship in the process but also a large chunk of the English language.

“What the hell does CAO x 3 c/o mean?”

Runnion looked up and took the form from me. “Okay, you got the Admit. That’s ‘conscious, alert, and oriented to time, place, and date’—that’s pretty good, considering the injury.” He scanned the sheet generally, seemingly unstumped by the jargon. “I’ll translate—I’ve gotten pretty good at this garbage.”

I pulled my note pad from my pocket and opened it flat on the table.

Runnion spoke slowly, occasionally turning to other pages to fill in the blanks. “Okay—bottom lines first. Name: Robert Shattuck; date of birth: 9/11/38; address: transient; physician: doctor on call, meaning he took what they gave him. Apparently, he was a ‘walk-in’—I have a hard time believing that…”

“Does it say who helped him walk in?”

He flipped through several pages. “Nope, just that; no more. He was suffering from a gunshot wound to the knee…”