Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 63

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“How are things?” I asked my secretary.

“Awful. Dr. Wyatt couldn't get here from the Roanoke office because they got snow in the mountains and the roads are bad. So yesterday Fielding had four cases with no one to help him. Plus, he was due in court and then got called to a scene. Have you talked to him?”

“We touch base when the poor man has a moment to get to the phone. This might be a good time for us to track down a few of our former fellows and see if one of them might consider coming here to help us hang on for a while. Jansen's doing private path in Charlottesville. You want to try him and see if he wants to give me a call.”

“Certainly. That's a fine idea.”

“Tell me about Stevens,” I said.

“He hasn't been here very much. He signs out in such an abbreviated, vague fashion that no one is ever sure where he's gone. I'm suspicious he's looking for another job.”

“Remind him not to ask me for a recommendation.”

“I wish you'd give him a great one so someone else would take him off our hands.”

“I need for you to call the DNA lab and get Donna to do me a favor. She should have a lab request for the analysis of the fetal tissue from Susan's case.”

Rose was silent. I could feel her getting upset.

“I'm sorry to bring this up,” I said gently.

She took a deep breath. “When did you request the analysis?”

“The request was actually made by Dr. Wright, since he did the post. He would have his copy of the lab request at the Norfolk office, along with the case.”

“You don't want me to call Norfolk and have them make a copy for us?”

“No. This can't wait, and I don't want anyone to know that I've requested a copy. I want it to appear that our office inadvertently got a copy. That's why I want you to deal directly with Donna. Ask her to pull the lab request immediately and I want you to pick it up in person.”

“Then what?”

“Then put it in the box up front where all the other copies of lab requests and reports are left for sorting.”

“You're sure about this?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I hung up and retrieved a telephone directory, which I was flipping through when Lucy walked into the kitchen. She was barefoot and still wearing the sweat suit she had slept in. Groggily wishing me a good morning, she began rummaging in the refrigerator as I ran my finger down a column of names. There were maybe forty listings for the name Grimes, but no Helens. Of course, when Marino had referred to the guard as Helen the Hun, he was being snide. Maybe Helen wasn't her real name at all. I noted that there were three listings with the initial H., two for the first name and one for a middle name.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked, setting a glass of orange juice on the table and pulling out a chair.

“I'm trying to track down someone,” I said, reaching for the phone.

I had no luck with any of the Grimeses I called.

“Maybe she's married,” Lucy suggested.

“I don't think so.”

I called Directory Assistance and got the listing for the new penitentiary in Greensville.

“What makes you think she isn't?”

“Intuition.”

I dialed. “I'm trying to reach Helen Grimes,” I said to the woman who answered.

“Are you referring to an inmate?”

“No. To one of your guards.”

“Hold, please.”

I was transferred.

“Watkins,” a male voice mumbled.

“Helen Grimes, please,” I said.

“Officer Helen Grimes.”

“Oh. She don't work here anymore.”

“Could you please tell me where I could reach her, Mr. Watkins? It's very important.”

“Hold on.”

The phone dunked against wood. In the background, Randy Travis was singing.

Minutes later, the man returned. “We're not allowed to give out information like that, ma'am.”

“That's fine, Mr. Watkins. If you give me your first name, I'll just send all this to you and you can forward it to her.”

A pause. “All what?”

“This order she placed. I was calling to see if she wanted it mailed fourth-class or sent ground.”

“What order?”

He didn't sound happy.

“The set of encyclopedias she ordered. There are six boxes weighing eighteen pounds each.”

“Well, you can't be sending no encyclopedias here.”

“Then what do you suggest I do with them, Mr. Watkins? She's already made the down payment and your business address was the one she gave us.”

“Shhhhooo. Hold on.”

I heard paper rustle; then keys clicked on a keyboard.

“Look,” the man said quickly. “The best I can do is give you a P.O. box. You just send the stuff there. Don't be sending nothing to me.”

He gave me the address and abruptly hung up. The post office where Helen Grimes received her mail was in Goochland County. Next I called a bailiff I was friendly with at the Goochland courthouse. Within the hour he had looked up Helen Grimes's home address in court records, but her telephone number was unlisted. At eleven A.M., I gathered my pocketbook and coat, and found Lucy in my study.

“I've got to go out for a few hours,” I said.

“You lied to whoever you were talking to on the phone.”

She stared into the computer screen. “You don't have any encyclopedias to deliver to anyone.”

“You're absolutely right. I did lie.”

“So sometimes it's okay to lie and sometimes it's not.’

“It's never really okay, Lucy.”

I left her in my chair, modem lights winking and various computer manuals open and scattered over my desk and on the floor. On the screen the cursor pulsed rapidly. I waited until I was well out of sight before slipping my Ruger into my pocketbook. Though I was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, I rarely did. Setting the alarm, I left the house through the garage and drove west until Cary Street put me on River Road. The sky was marbled varying shades of gray. I was expecting Nicholas Grueman to call any day. A bomb ticked silently in the records I had given him, and I did not look forward to what he was going to say.

Helen Grimes lived on a muddy road just west of the North Pole restaurant, and on the border of a farm. Her house looked like a small barn, with few trees on its tiny parcel of land, and window boxes clumped with dead shoots that I guessed once had been geraniums. There was no sign in front to announce who lived inside, but the old Chrysler pulled up dose to the porch announced that at least somebody did.

When Helen Grimes opened her door, I could tell by her blank expression that I was about as foreign to her as my German car. Dressed in jeans and an untucked denim shirt, she planted her hands on her substantial hips and did not budge from the doorway. She seemed unbothered by the cold or who I said I was, and it wasn't until I reminded her of my visit to the penitentiary that recognition flickered in her small, probing eyes.

“Who told you where I live?”

Her cheeks were flushed, and I wondered if she might hit me.

“Your address is in the court records for Goochland County.”

“You shouldn't have looked for it. How would you like it if I dug up your home address?”

“If you needed my help as much as I need yours, I wouldn't mind, Helen,” I said.

She just looked at me. I noticed that her hair was damp, an earlobe smudged with black dye.

“The man you worked for was murdered,” I said. “Someone who worked for me was murdered. And there are others. I'm sure you've been keeping up with some of what is going on. There is reason to suspect that the person who is doing this was an inmate at Spring Street - someone who was released, perhaps around the time that Ronnie Joe Waddell was executed.”

“I don't know anything about anybody being released.”

Her eyes drifted to the empty street behind me.

“Would you know anything about an inmate who disappeared? Someone, perhaps, who wasn't legitimately released? It seems that with the job you had you would have known who entered the penitentiary and who left.”

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