“I could tell you some stories.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her and she hoped that meant he was loosening up.
“What kind of stories?”
He leaned a little closer. “More than one famous woman has come in to Dr. Bradford with a flat belly and come out with a baby and a birth certificate that says she’s the mother.”
“Oh really? Like who?” She thought he might say Amanda Price, but evidently he wasn’t loose enough yet to name specific names.
“Let’s just say some pretty famous ones, including some whose names you would definitely recognize. You get to see a lot where I sit. Pretty much everybody takes you for granted, you know, like they do the guy who cleans the floors. You’re just an extension of the mop. Or in my case, the little striped arm that lets them get where they want to go. They only notice you if they need something. Like once a girl begged me to hide her and her baby. I’m sitting there reading a magazine and suddenly there she is in a hospital gown with no back and a little itty-bitty baby in her arms. There’s still blood running down her legs and she is begging me to hide her. As if I had a way to do that.”
Was Claire imagining sadness in Doug’s voice? “What did you do?”
“Dr. Bradford was there about ten seconds later, so there wasn’t much I could do, was there? Vi - that’s the head nurse, did you meet her? - Vi told me all about how hormones will make a woman say things she doesn’t mean.”
“Do you think that was true? That she really didn’t mean it?” Claire asked. She imagined what it would be like to be that girl with the baby and no place to hide.
He lifted one shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe Dr. Bradford talked her into doing something she decided she really didn’t want to do. Maybe he didn’t even talk her into something, just took the baby. I learned a long time ago that Dr. Bradford is all secrets, he is layers and layers of secrets. Maybe some I know, maybe some Mrs. Bradford - the first Mrs. Bradford - knew, maybe some nobody but him knows.”
“The first Mrs. Bradford?” Claire echoed.
“The real one. Two years ago last month, she died of a heart attack. Six weeks later, Dr. Bradford married one of the nurses from the clinic. He expects me to call her Mrs. Bradford, now. But she didn’t like me when she was working there, and she for sure doesn’t like me now that I’m living two hundred feet away.”
“You said only Dr. Bradford knows all the secrets. Do you know any secrets, Doug?”
“What kind of a question is that, Lucy?” He was definitely warming up now. He had turned to face her in his seat, and now he leaned forward and tucked a curl behind her ear. “I like your hair like this.” Aside from the pillow, Claire had come more or less as herself - with her hair down and in her Mazda. He had commented on the change in cars when he got in. She should have thought to borrow the Firebird again from J.B. - a parking lot attendant probably had little do all but memorize cars. “I’ll trade you,” he said now. “I’ll trade you a secret for a kiss.”
His tongue was in her mouth, his teeth knocking against hers, before she could argue. He smelled like Ivory soap, and he tasted only of Long Island Iced Tea and what Claire thought was Crest, so at least she had that to be thankful for. With his right hand, he tried to pull her toward him. Maybe Mata Hari had done this willingly, but Claire was having a hard time staying in character. Unbidden, she thought of Dante, of his dark curls and the way one of his front teeth had been broken and then mended with a flash of white. Claire remembered the last time she had been with him, and without planning to, she tore her mouth away. Humming with desire, Doug leaned over her. Reflexively, she put both hands on his chest. Doug put his arm around her waist and tried to pull her closer, but instead his hand grabbed the pillow. Claire pushed him so hard that he fell halfway back across the seat, his right hand still holding the pillow. His left hand came out of his coat pocket. Claire jerked back when she saw it.
Gray and shiny with scar tissue, it was half the size of a normal hand. It retained enough of the look of a hand so that it was eerily familiar, like a money’s paw or a raccoon’s human-like hand.
They spoke at the same time.
“You’re not pregnant?”
“What happened to your hand?”
Only then did Doug notice his shriveled hand was still on display. He quickly thrust it back into his pocket, his expression unreadable. “My first mother got herself pregnant in college and decided to make some money off the deal. She got her thirty pieces of silver off Dr. Bradford, who sold me to my second mother. Then when I was two my second so-called mother was doing her ironing while I played on the floor. The phone rang. She left me alone while she went to answer it, and while she was gone I pulled on this long dangly cord to see what was on the end.”
“Oh, no,” Claire breathed.
“The iron fell flat on my hand. They say you can’t remember anything that happened when you were that little, but I do. By the time she heard me screaming, it had burnt right down, through the skin and the tendons and the muscles. Down to the bones.” His words were matter-of-fact, but Claire could hear the pain that underlay each one.
“After my second mother ruined me, she decided she didn’t want me, either. She just drove up to the clinic and left me on his doorstep and drove off. It’s like I was some toy that she broke the wheel off of. Since she couldn’t put me in the trash she did the next best thing and tossed me on Dr. Bradford’s doorstep. He didn’t want a little two-year-old boy child with a crippled hand either. But putting me out on the street might have led to too many questions. So he got his wife to raise me. The first Mrs. Bradford. The real one. She was like the only mom I ever had.” Doug’s voice was low and full of bitterness. “Except for Mrs. Bradford, Vi was the only one there who was nice to me. After she got her daughter, I told her about what happened to me. She understood, you know. And now she’s dying, too.”
“Dying?” Claire interjected, surprised. It was hard to think of Vi, with her impractical high heels and bright intelligent eyes, as dying.
“She’s got lung cancer. Dr. Bradford’s new wife has been filling in for her again, just like the old days when she used to work there.”
“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 advic
e, 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!”