The Sixth Commandment Page 5

  When she ran down, I said, foolishly, “I met your husband this morning.”

  “I meet him every morning,” she said. Then she added, “Almost.”

  She stared at me, suddenly very sober, very serious. Challenging.

  I tried to smile. I turned around and walked away. I didn’t know if it was good sense or cowardice. I did know I had misjudged this lady. Her idea of bliss wasn’t the boob tube and bonbons. Far from it.

  I found my car in the parking area, and while it was warming up, I scraped the ice off the windshield. Then I headed out of town.

  I remember an instructor down in Ft. Benning telling us:

  “You can stare at maps and aerial photos until your eyeballs are coming out your ass. But nothing can take the place of physical reconnaissance. Maps and photos are okay, but seeing the terrain and, if possible, walking over it, is a thousand times better. Learn the terrain. Know what the hell you’re getting into. If you can walk over it before a firefight, maybe you’ll walk out of it after.”

  So I had decided to go have a look at Dr. Telford Thorndecker’s terrain.

  By following Millie Goodfellow’s directions, with a little surly assistance at Mike’s Service Station, I found Crittenden Hall without too much difficulty. The grounds were less than a mile east of the river, the main buildings on the hill that had once belonged to Al Coburn’s daddy.

  The approach was through an area of small farms: stubbled land and beaten houses. Some of the barns and outbuildings showed light between warped siding; tarpaper roofing flapped forlornly; sprained doors hung open on rusty hinges. I saw farm machinery parked unprotected, and more than one field unpicked, the produce left to rot. It was cold, wet, desolate. Even more disturbing, there was no one around. I didn’t see a pedestrian, pass another car, or glimpse anyone working the land or even taking out the garbage. The whole area seemed deserted. Like a plague had struck, or a neutron bomb dropped. The empty, weathered buildings leaned. Stripped trees cut blackly across the pewter sky. But the people were gone. No life. I ached to hear a dog bark.

  The big sign read Crittenden Hall, and below was a small brass plaque: Crittenden Research Laboratory. There was a handsome cast iron fence at least six feet tall, with two ornate gates that opened inward. Inside was a guard hut just large enough for one man to sit comfortably, feet on a gas heater.

  I drove slowly past. The ornamental iron fence became chain link, but it entirely enclosed the Thorndecker property. Using single-lane back roads, I was able to make a complete circuit. A lot of heavily wooded land. Some meadows. A brook. A tennis court. A surprisingly large cemetery, well-tended, rather attractive. People were dying to get in there. I finally saw someone: a burly guy in black oilskins with a broken shotgun over one arm. In his other hand was a leash. At the end of the leash, a straining German shepherd.

  I came back to the two-lane macadam that ran in front of the main gate. I parked off the verge where I couldn’t be seen from the guard hut. I got out, shivering, found my 7x50 field glasses in the messy trunk, got back in the car and lowered the window just enough. I had a reasonably good view of the buildings and grounds. The light was slaty, and the lens kept misting up, but I could see what I wanted to see.

  I wasn’t looking for anything menacing or suspicious. I just wanted to get a quick first impression. Did the buildings look in good repair? Were the grounds reasonably well-groomed? Was there an air of prosperity and good management—or was the place a dump, rundown and awaiting foreclosure?

  Dr. Thorndecker’s place got high marks. Not a broken window that I could see. Sashes and wooden trim smartly painted. Lawn trimmed, and dead leaves gathered. Trees obviously cared for, brick walks swept clean. Bushes and garden had been prepared for the coming winter. Storm windows were up.

  All this spelled care and efficiency. It looked like a prosperous, functioning set-up with strong management that paid attention to maintenance and appearance even in this lousy weather at this time of year.

  The main building, the largest building, was also, obviously, the oldest. Probably the original nursing home, Crittenden Hall. It was a three-story brick structure sited on the crest of the hill. The two-story wings were built on a slightly lower level. All outside walls were covered with ivy, still green. Roofs were tarnished copper. Windows were fitted with ornamental iron grilles, not unusual in buildings designed for the ill, infirm, aged, and/or loony.

  About halfway down the hill was a newer building. Also red brick, but no ivy. And the roof was slated. The windows were also guarded, but with no-nonsense vertical iron bars. This building, which I assumed to be the Crittenden Research Laboratory, was not as gracefully designed as Crittenden Hall; it was merely a two-story box, with mean windows and a half-hearted attempt at an attractive Georgian portico and main entrance. Between nursing home and laboratory was an outdoor walk and stairway, a roofed port set on iron pillars, without walls.

  There were several smaller outbuildings which could have been kitchens, labs, storehouses, supply sheds, whatever; I couldn’t even guess. But everything seemed precise, trim, clean and well-preserved.

  Then why did I get such a feeling of desolation?

  It might have been that joyless day, the earth still sodden, the sky pressing down. It might have been that disconsolate light. Not light at all, really, but just moist steel. Or maybe it was Coburn and my mood.

  All I know is that when I put down the binoculars, I had seen nothing that could possibly count against Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker and his grant application to the Bingham Foundation. Yet I felt something I struggled to analyze and name.

  I stared at those winter-stark buildings on the worn hill, striving to grasp what it was I felt. It came to me on the trip back to Coburn. It wasn’t fear. Exactly. It was dread.

  After that little jaunt to the hinterland, Coburn seemed positively sparkling. I counted at least four pedestrians on Main Street. And look! There was a dog lifting his leg at a hydrant. Marvelous!

  I parked and locked the car. What I wanted right then was—oh, I could think of a lot of things I wanted: vodka gimlet. Straight cognac. Coffee and Danish. Club sandwich and ale. Hot pastrami and Celery Tonic. Joan Powell. On rye. So I walked across Main Street to the office of the Coburn Sentinel.

  It was a storefront with a chipped gold legend on the plate glass window: “Biggest little weekly in the State!” Just inside the door was a stained wooden counter where you could subscribe or buy a want-ad or complain your name was spelled wrong in that front-page story they did on the anniversary party at the Gulek Fat Processing Plant.

  Behind the counter were a few exhausted desks, typewriters, swivel chairs. There was a small private office enclosed by frosted glass partitions. And in the rear was the printing area. Everything was ancient. Hand-set type, flatbed press. I guessed they did business cards, stationery, and fliers to pay the rent.

  The place was not exactly a humming beehive of activity. There was a superannuated lady behind the counter. She was sitting on a high stool, clipping ads from old Sentinels with long shears. She had a bun of iron-gray hair with two pencils stuck into it. And she wore a cameo brooch at the ruffled neck of her shirtwaist blouse. She had just stepped off a Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell.

  Behind her, sitting at one of the weary desks, was a lissome wench. All of 18, I figured. The cheerleader type: so blond, so buxom, so healthy, so glowing that I immediately straightened my shoulders and sucked in my gut. Vanity, thy name is man. Miss Dimples was pecking away at an old Underwood standard, the tip of a pink tongue poked from one corner of her mouth. I’d have traded my Grand Prix for one—Enough. That way lies madness.

  Farther to the rear, standing in front of fonts in the press section, a stringy character was setting type with all the blinding speed of a sloth on Librium. He was wearing an ink-smeared apron and one of those square caps printers fold out of newsprint. He was also wearing glasses with lenses like the bottoms of Coke bottles. I wondered about the Sent
inel’s typos per running inch …

  That whole damned place belonged in the Smithsonian, with a neat label: “American newspaper office, circa 1930.” Actually, all of Coburn belonged in the same Institution, with a similar label. Time had stopped in Coburn. I had stepped into a warp, and any minute someone was going to turn on an Atwater Kent radio, and I’d hear Gene Austin singing “My Blue Heaven.”

  “May I help you?” the old lady said, looking up from her clipping.

  “Is the editor in, please?” I asked. “I’d like to see him.”

  “Her,” she said. “Our editor is female. Agatha Binder.”

  “Pardon me,” I said humbly. “Might I see Miss, Mrs., or Ms. Binder?”

  “About what?” she said suspiciously. “You selling something? Or got a complaint?”

  I figured the Coburn Sentinel got a lot of complaints.

  “No, no complaints,” I said. I gave her my most winning smile, with no effect whatsoever. “My name is Samuel Todd. I’m with the Bingham Foundation. I’d like to talk to your editor about Dr. Telford Thorndecker.”

  “Oh,” she said, “that. Wait right here.”

  She slid off the stool and went trotting back into the gloomy shop. She went into the closed office. She was out in a minute, beckoning me with an imperious forefinger. I pushed through the swinging gate. On the way back, I passed the desk of the nubile cheerleader. She was still pecking away at the Underwood, tongue still poked from her mouth.

  “I love you,” I whispered, and she looked up in alarm.

  The woman sprawled behind the littered desk in the jumbled office was about my age, and fifty pounds heavier. She was wearing ink-stained painter’s overalls over a red checkerboard shirt that looked like it was made from an Italian restaurant tablecloth. Her feet were parked on the desk, in unbuckled combat boots of World War II. There was a cardboard container of black coffee on the floor alongside her, and she was working on the biggest submarine sandwich I’ve ever seen. Meatballs.

  Everything about her was massive: head, nose, jaw, shoulders, bosom, hips, thighs. The hands that held the sub looked like picnic hams, and her wrists were as thick as my ankles. But no ogre she. It all went together, and was even pleasing in a monumental way. If they had a foothill left over from Mt. Rushmore, they could have used it for her: rugged, craggy. Even the eyes were granite, with little sparkling lights of mica.

  “Miss Binder,” I said.

  “Todd,” she said, “sit down.”

  I sat.

  Her voice was like her body: heavy, with an almost masculine rumble. She never stopped munching away at that damned hoagie while we talked, and never stopped swilling coffee. But it didn’t slow her down, and the meatballs didn’t affect her diction. Much.

  “Thorndecker getting his dough?” she demanded.

  “That’s not for me to say,” I told her. How many times would I have to repeat that in Coburn? “I’m just here to do some poking. You know Thorndecker? Personally?”

  “Sure, I know him. I know everyone in Coburn. He’s a conceited, opinionated, sanctimonious, pompous ass. He’s also the greatest brain I’ve ever met. So smart it scares you. He’s a genius; no doubt about that.”

  “Ever hear any gossip about that nursing home of his? Patients mistreated? Lousy food? Things like that?”

  “You kidding?” she said. “Listen, buster, I should live like Thorndecker’s patients. Caviar for breakfast. First-run movies. He’s got the best wine cellar in the county. And why not? They’re paying for it. Listen, Todd, there are lots and lots of people in this country with lots and lots of money. The sick ones and the old ones go to Crittenden Hall to die in style—and that’s what they get. I know most of the locals working up there—the aides, cooks, waitresses, and so forth. They all say the same thing: the place is a palace. If you’ve got to go, that’s the way to do it. And when they conk off, as most of them eventually do, he even buries them, or has them cremated. At an added cost, of course.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I noticed the cemetery. Nice place.”

  “Oh?” she said. “You’ve visited Crittenden Hall?”

  “Just a quick look,” I said vaguely. “What about the research lab?”

  “What about it?”

  “Know anything about what they’re doing up there?”

  She kept masticating a meatball, but her expression changed. I mean the focus of her eyes changed, to what I call a “thousand-yard stare.” Meaning she was looking at me, through me, and beyond. The same look I had seen in the eyes of the night clerk at the Coburn Inn when I had checked in and mentioned Thorndecker’s name.

  I had interrogated enough suspects in criminal cases in the army to know what that stare meant. It didn’t necessarily mean they were lying or guilty. It usually meant they were making a decision on what and how much to reveal, and what and how much to hide. It was a signal of deep thought, calculating their own interests and culpability.

  “No,” she said finally, “I don’t know what they’re doing in the lab. Something to do with human cells and longevity. But all that scientific bullshit is beyond me.”

  She selected that moment to lean over and pick up her coffee cup. So I couldn’t see her face, and maybe guess that she was lying?

  “You know Thorndecker’s family?” I asked her. “Wife? Daughter? The son? Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “The wife’s less than half his age,” she said. “A real beauty. She’s his second wife, you know. Julie comes into town occasionally. She dresses fancy. Buys her clothes on Fifth Avenue. Not your typical Coburn housewife.”

  “Thinks she’s superior?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said swiftly. “She’s just not a mixer, that’s all.”

  “She and the doctor happy?”

  Again she leaned away from me. This time to set the coffee container back on the floor.

  “As far as I know,” she said in that deep, rumbling voice. “You really dig, don’t you?”

  I ignored the question.

  “What about the daughter?” I asked. “Does she mix in Coburn’s social life?”

  “What social life?” she jeered. “Two beers at the Coburn Inn? No, I don’t see much of Mary either. It’s not that the Thorndeckers are standoffish, you understand, but they keep pretty much to themselves. Why the hell shouldn’t they? What the fuck is there to do in this shit-hole?”

  She peered at me, hoping I had been shocked by her language. But I had heard those words before.

  “And the son?” I asked. “Edward?”

  “No secret about him,” she said. “He’s been bounced from a couple of prep schools. Lousy grades, I understand. Now he’s living at home with a private tutor to get him ready for Yale or Harvard or wherever. I met him a few times. Nice kid. Very handsome. Like his pa. But shy, I thought. Doesn’t say much.”

  “But generally, you’d say the Thorndeckers are a close, loving American family?”

  She looked at me suspiciously, wondering if I was putting her on. I was, of course, but she’d never see it in my expression.

  “Well … sure,” she said. “I suppose they’ve got their problems like everyone else, but there’s never been any gossip or scandal, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Julie Thorndecker,” I said, “the wife … she’s a good friend of Constable Ronnie Goodfellow?”

  The combat boots came off the desk onto the floor with a crash. Agatha Binder jerked toward me. Her mouth was open wide enough so I could see a chunk of half-chewed meatball.

  “Where the hell did you hear that?” she demanded.

  “Around,” I shrugged.

  “Shit,” she said, “that’s just vicious gossip.”

  “You just said there’s never been any gossip about the Thorndeckers.”

  She sat back, finished chewing and swallowing.

  “You’re a smartass, aren’t you, Todd?”

  I didn’t answer.

  She pushed the remnants of her sandwich aside. She
leaned across the desk to me, ham-hands clasped. Her manner was very earnest, very sincere. Apparently she was staring directly into my eyes. But it’s difficult to look steadily into someone else’s eyes, even when you’re telling the truth. The trick is to stare at the bridge of the nose, between the eyes. The effect is the same. I figured that’s what she was doing.

  “Look, buster,” she said in a basso profundo rumble, “you’re going to hear a lot of nasty remarks about the Thorndeckers. They’re not the richest people hereabouts, but they ain’t hurting. Anytime there’s money, you’ll hear mean, jealous gossip. Take it for what it’s worth.”

  “All right,” I said agreeably, “I will. Now how about Thorndecker’s staff? I mean the top people. Know any of them?”

  “I know Stella Beecham. She’s an RN, supervisor of nurses and aides in Crittenden Hall. She practically runs the place. A good friend of mine. And I’ve met Dr. Draper. He’s Thorndecker’s Chief of Staff or Executive Assistant or whatever, in the research lab. I’ve met some of the others, but their names didn’t register.”

  “Competent people?”

  “Beecham certainly is. She’s a jewel. Draper is the studious, scientific type. I’ve got nothing in common with him, but he’s supposed to be a whiz. I guess the others in the lab are just as smart. Listen, I told you Thorndecker is a genius. He’s a good administrator, too. He wouldn’t hire dingbats. And the staff in the nursing home, mostly locals, do their jobs. They work hard.”

  “So Thorndecker’s got no labor problems?”

  “No way! Jobs are scarce around here, and he pays top dollar. Sick leave, pensions, paid vacation … the works. I’d like to work there myself.”

  “The hell you would,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, grinning weakly. “The hell I would.”

  “You know Al Coburn?”

  “That old fart?” she burst out. “He’s been crazy as a loon since his wife died. Don’t listen to anything he says.”

  “Well, I’ve got to listen to someone,” I said. “Preferably someone who knows Thorndecker. Where does he bank?”