Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.
today. Keep your distance so you don’t lose an arm.”
Walking the hall to her office I kept pasting a bright smile on my face and it kept slipping off like a Halloween mustache.
“Morning, Clair,” I said, eyeballing through her half-closed door. She wore a dark jacket and simple white blouse. Beneath the desk she’d have on a skirt and heels. Clair’s lanyard-strung reading glasses perched on her nose as a fountain pen hovered above an official-looking form.
“I’m busy, Ryder. No time for chit-chat.”
“It’s important, Clair.”
She reluctantly gestured me inside. “Mind if I close the door?” I asked.
Clair narrowed a puzzled eye and nodded. I sat in a worn leather wingback chair opposite her ancient oaken desk. As a high-ranking public employee, ME, Clair could have demanded the full decorator treatment including thousands of public dollars’ worth of furniture, drapes, shelves. Instead, her only concessions to office were the removal of the overhead fluorescents in favor of warmer light from floor and desk lamps, and an ergonomic chair that probably cost ten bucks more than the ones supporting the chunky gals at the license bureau.
In my line of work reading upside down is helpful. I saw the header on the official-looking form beneath Clair’s pen: REPRIMAND.
I pointed to the form. “Is the reprimand to Dr. Davanelle?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your…” Clair paused and wearily closed her eyes. “Why do I think a bad morning is about to get worse?”
“She’s at my place,” I said. “She couldn’t work today and yesterday because she was drunk. She’s been drunk since Wednesday. She’s a mess, Clair.”
She tossed the pen on the desk and rubbed her eyes. “That explains a lot. In the past six months she’s called in sick seven times. Four of her sick days were Mondays. ‘Lost weekends,’ probably.”
“Probably,” I admitted.
“You know how I run this place, Ryder. I have three paths to handle the bulk of the medical procedures. I handle as much as I can, but mainly I’m up to my ass in administration. I need people who show up on schedule and work.”
“She’ll get treatment. It’s a disease, Clair.”
She picked up the pen and poised it over the reprimand. “I can’t have an alcoholic here, Ryder, even one in treatment. The position demands attention to detail. And in the end, no matter how capable or well meaning she is, it’s not her ass on the line, it’s mine. My department, my reputation. She’s out of here.”
The penpoint pressed at the paper. I caught the word capable in Clair’s description and threw a desperate rope to it. “Dr. Davanelle is good at her job, capable, as you say?”
“Allowing for age and experience, she’s the best I’ve ever seen. When I was interviewing for the position only one person came close, Dr. Caulfield.”
Caulfield was a fresh-from-school pathologist hired six or seven months back. He was performing an autopsy on a low-life S & M practitioner named Ernst Mueller when a bomb in Mueller’s lower bowel detonated. It was speculated Mueller had crossed someone inventive with explosives. Dark-humored cops dubbed the perp the “Bottom Bomber,” and figured he’d gotten Mueller pass-out drunk, inserted the device, and left Mueller to awaken, attempt to remove the device, and die horribly. The hard-living Mueller foiled his nemesis by succumbing to a heart attack in his drunken sleep. The only casualty was Alexander Caulfield, who lost three fingers and a career. The case remained unsolved, an enigma.
I said, “If Ava was so good, why’d you hire Dr. Caulfield?”
Clair took a deep breath. She set the pen aside, stood, and walked to the window. “I don’t expect you’d understand, Ryder.”
“I’ve amazed others. Try me.”
There was a long pause as she stared into the clouds.
“I’m inflexible and unyielding,” she said as if reciting from a sheet of paper. “I demand excellence from my staff every minute they’re here, and have no desire to involve myself with their lives when they’re not. This is a hard job anywhere in the country, especially for a woman.” She reached out and put her hand against the window as if confirming its existence. “Don’t take that as whimpering, Ryder; the hardships are ingrained in the system and will be for years to come. I have to be tough to make it work.” She turned from the window. “But I wasn’t sure I could be completely unyielding with a woman pathologist. I’d remember the struggles I’d encountered, make allowances, maybe even…” Clair grasped at the air as if trying to pluck the perfect words from it.
“Become empathetic?”
“Whatever. The whole dynamic and personality of the office might change.”
“With a man you could maintain distance.”
“Only after Dr. Caulfield’s…incident did I question why I’d hired him, what my motives had been.”
“And you hired Dr. Davanelle.”
She sat behind her desk again, the reprimand beneath her fingertips. “It was always her or Caulfield. They were on a different level than other applicants.”
“But you managed to avoid empathy, though, didn’t you, Clair? You pushed hard.”
Her voice tightened, defensive. “She was new and new people make mistakes, Ryder.”
My gut tightened. “I’ll bet you were right on her about her mistakes, right?”
“When she screwed up I let her know. She had to know.”
My hand slapped the desk and I spoke through clenched teeth. “Damn right, let her know. Put her through what you went through! No sympathy, no empathy, no quarter. Whip the little bitch. Show her how bad Clair Peltier had it. Shovel it into her face.”
The words scalded my tongue; I didn’t know where they came from. Clair jumped to her feet. “You’ve got no goddamn right to talk to me like—”
“She thinks you hate her, you’ve always hated her and wish she’d never come here.”
“Don’t you dare think you can…” My words registered and confusion clouded the fire in Clair’s eyes. “What? Say that again, Ryder.”
“Ava thinks you hate her and want her gone. Is it true?”
“Hate her?” Clair looked unsteady, as if the floor had softened beneath her. She lowered herself, reaching for the arms of the chair with unsure fingers. “My God, no, I—I think she’s exceptional, I think…”
“You don’t dislike her?”
“My God, no. I never meant for her to think…” She turned her head away and blinked several times. “Maybe I—”
“It’s time for some empathy now, Clair. Maybe even overdue.”
Clair closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them she reached for the pen and tapped it on the reprimand. Fourteen times. She slipped the pen in her pocket.
“She gets three days, Ryder. I’ll put her down for emergency family leave. Next Tuesday I want her back here clean and sober. One transgression, no matter how minor, and she’ll be gone while her footprints are still warm on the floor.”
I was halfway to the door and letting my breath out when Clair spoke.
“Ryder?”
“Yes?”
“Why did she come to you? Are you two romantically involved?”
“No. I guess she’s a friend.”
I was closing the door when she spoke again.
“Carson?”