AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He gathered up our dishes and rinsed them off in the sink before he put them in the dishwasher. “Let’s head to my office, and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”
I went ahead of him to the office at front of the house. The room was dark and masculine. Books lined the walls on either side of a gray stone fireplace, and his desk took up almost all the space on the adjacent wall. A thick rug lay in the middle of the floor, and two overstuffed chairs flanked each side of the fireplace. A well-used leather couch sat against the opposite wall, and there was an ancient throw Jack’s mom had knitted in hues of green tossed carelessly over the back. It was a comfortable space, and it was obvious it was where he spent most of his time.
White boards were set up in front of the windows, identical to the ones he had up in his office, and he had the curtains pulled tight so no one could see in or out. It was hard to miss the garish evidence of what we were dealing with when it was so starkly presented. Jack handed me a fresh cup of coffee when he came in.
“I’ve got Doctor Vance under surveillance,” he said. “There are two other departments working with me who don’t have assholes in charge, so I’m using their resources for surveillance purposes. I don’t think we’re going to pin this on Vance though.”
“But you think he’s guilty?”
“I think he knows what’s going on, at least part of it, but his hands are clean. He’s made sure of it. But I’m not sure he’s trained his sons to be so careful. William and Gregory Jr—I’ve got them both under surveillance. One of them reads like an altar boy. Comes off squeaky clean. The other doesn’t have a record of violence, but he’s got a hell of a temper, according to a few people who’ve worked with him in the past.” Jack rubbed at the back of his neck. “One of the Vances is involved somehow. Maybe all of them. But I don’t have the evidence to pin a murder on anyone.”
“Let me guess. The younger Doctor Vance is the one with the temper.”
“Bingo,” Jack said.
“How are we supposed to find everyone involved in this?”
“We’ve got a warrant for the membership list. I’ll serve it in the morning and have one of the tech guys pull it from online. If someone paid the membership dues and was ever entered into the system, then it’ll show up in the list.”
Jack grabbed a folder from his desk and went to the extra white board set up next to the murder board. “And to answer your question. We’renotsupposed to find everyone. That’s for the federal guys to deal with. We have to focus on Daniel Oglesby and George. It all comes back to them. Have a seat, buttercup. We’re going to be here for a while.”
I curled up in one of the oversized chairs in front of the fireplace and watched Jack construct the puzzle pieces by sticking them to the board in a loose timeline. Daniel Oglesby’s photograph went up first—not the crime scene photo, but one identical to the picture hanging in the church.
“He was taken Sunday afternoon,” Jack said, writing in approximate dates and times. “By one initial assailant who had access to a drug only available to doctors. Who has access?”
“In Bloody Mary or in the county?” I asked.
“In the county. Anyone you can think of.”
“I’d have access. Doc Randall would be the only other one here in Bloody Mary. But he’s old as dirt. I can’t see him stabbing anyone in the back with a hypodermic needle. He can barely see two feet in front of him.”
“Who else?”
“King George Proper has several doctors who work at a clinic there in town, and all of them would have access to Augusta General. Nottingham and Newcastle are small like we are, so just a few. We’ve already established that Doctor Vance had access. I feel like you’re testing me. You have that look on your face that says you know all of this already.”
“Sometimes it’s better to hear it all out loud in case it knocks something loose. Augusta General is our place,” he said. “Twenty milliliters of Diprivan are unaccounted for. The nurse who mans the cage where they keep all the drugs has no explanation, and we can’t find a tie in to the Diprivan Doctor Vance signed for a week ago. Everything in their records shows every doctor logged in like they were supposed to. Even Doc Randall on the afternoon before Daniel Oglesby went missing. But the hospital can’t pin the theft on any one of them.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“I got the chance to talk to Doc Randall this afternoon while you were digging into George.”
“I bet that was an interesting conversation.”
“In all honesty, I’d have rather watched you put George back together instead of dealing with what I did today. You’re right. Doc Randall can’t see two feet in front of him, and he’s as old as dirt. He started to cry as soon as he saw me at the door. Easiest confession I’ve ever gotten out of a suspect before.”
“He confessed to injecting Reverend Oglesby with the drug?” I asked incredulously.
I didn’t have feelings for Doc Randall one way or the other. He’d kept his opinions to himself about my parents as far as I knew, and I’d only gone to him a couple of times as a patient when I was a child. But I still didn’t believe he’d be capable of doing something like that. He was just so—old. And small. And his glasses were thicker than Coke bottles.
“He confessed to getting an envelope full of money in his mailbox last Thursday. He said his practice has dwindled down to nothing. Most everyone is driving over to King George to the clinic there or waiting for you to open a private practice here.”
“What? Really?” I asked, intrigued.
“Focus,” Jack said. “He said his social security isn’t enough to pay for his malpractice insurance and still live on, and he keeps hoping he’ll die of old age soon so he can get some rest.”
Jack rubbed his forehead and put up Doc Randall’s photo on the timeline before Reverend Oglesby, and the date he stole the medicine.
“Christ,” I said.
