A Knife Edge

TWENTY-FOUR

I like Pensacola. Not too big that you don't know anyone, and not so small that everyone knows you. Home to the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels, and also to Amy McDonough. I drove out to her house. It was off a busy road and it was small and mean. I stood in the driveway and looked around. The house across the street was black with mildew, one corner sinking into the soft earth. An old oak with a limp beard of Spanish moss threw a pale gray shadow across the veranda. The house was a twin to the one McDonough lived in, except that the oak in her yard was reduced to a gray stump, the rest of the tree having been sawn off three feet from the ground a long time ago, its ancient dry roots breaking through the concrete drive here and there.

Amy's red Chevrolet Cavalier was not parked in the driveway. I went to the door and knocked. No answer. The place felt empty. I checked the fuse box. Something inside was drawing power, a low drain. Probably a clock, a radio turned down low, a computer on sleep. There were a couple of reasonably fresh oil drips on the driveway. The mailbox didn't hold the usual junk that might have indicated a long-term departure. Amy was just out. If I believed Boris, she was out paying her doctor a visit. I didn't have the resources at my disposal to ring the one hundred or more doctors in town to find out which one was hers. This made me reflect, for an instant, on how different police work is from that shown on TV shows and how, in reality, some cases actually take longer than forty-four minutes plus commercials to resolve. I wondered when Agent Lyne would get impatient with me and demand to have his house back.

I parked the SUV down the road a respectable distance and waited for Amy's return. Two hours later, she was still a no-show. I called Boris on my cell. He said she hadn't come back to work and hadn't called in again. It was time to move on. I had a doctor's appointment of my own I didn't want to miss.

Dr. Murray Mooney shared his waiting room with five other doctors in the medical center, a rambling, prefab fortress that reminded me of a pile of blocks stacked by a two-year-old. The doctor was behind schedule, but then so was I. As I ran the usual gauntlet of forms at reception, he came out to walk me into his office.

Dr. Mooney's age was impossible to guess, anywhere between thirty and fifty. What was more certain, however, was that he was short and hairy — coarse black wire sprang from his ears, nostrils, and up and over the collar at the back of his neck. Alsatians had less hair than this guy. But in a joke played on him by his genes, his noggin was as smooth and brown as a polished walnut. He wore pants and a striped blue-and-white business shirt without a tie.

I followed him into his office. I took the seat indicated with a sweep of his hand, along with a moment to get my bearings. Hung on one wall was the chart I'd seen in every doctor's office I've ever visited. It showed a man with a placid look on his face whose skin and musculature had been peeled back from his belly so that the correct position and size of his organs could be seen. When I was a kid, I wondered if doctors had this poster in case they needed reminding where everything went should someone walk in spilling their guts on the carpet. Mooney was a general practitioner, not a specialist, so there was an array of interesting models scattered about: a tower made from half a dozen vertebrae of the lower spine, the workings of the inner ear, a partial bust of a flayed head showing the muscles of the face, jaw, and eyes. In another corner of the room was an eye chart. Beside it, a human skeleton hung from a pole. His desk was littered with numerous items for the probing and prodding of human orifices, as well as items such as pads and pens and gimmicky bits of junk all carrying the logos of various branded drugs. The place looked like the aftermath of a medico's rummage sale.

“So, Vin Cooper,” he said, glancing at the card I'd filled out at the front desk. “What can we do for you today?” He leaned toward me, his hands clasped together in the space between his knees, his face wearing its professional smile — affable without being friendly. “Special Agent,” I said.

“Sorry?” He took another look at the card, confused.

“Special Agent. Special Agent Vin Cooper.” I showed him my badge. “You were the doctor of a friend of mine who—”

The smile vanished and he sat back in his chair. “I'm sorry, but I thought you needed medical attention. I cannot discuss—”

“…A friend of mine who is now dead.”

“Who…?”

“United States Air Force Master Sergeant Ruben Wright.”

“Sergeant Ruben Wright?” His larynx was working like a piston.

I nodded. “Yeah, sergeant. You didn't know Ruben was in the Air Force?”

“No. I… I would've handled it differently.”

“Like, for instance, you'd have notified the Air Force that Sergeant Wright had MS?”

Mooney stared at me. I watched the wheels turning behind his eyes. Do I come clean? Do I claim doctor-patient privilege? I gave him a nudge.

“There're no liability issues here, Doc. He jumped out of a plane and hit the ground. I'm looking into why.”

“He committed suicide?”

“That's one possibility,” I said.

Mooney shook his head, stood up. “I thought he was a fitness instructor.” He turned to his computer and pulled up the relevant file. “Yes, a personal trainer,” he said, reading the screen. “He was a very healthy man.”

Was. Ruben must have known something was very wrong with him to have picked out a doctor fifty miles from the base. If the medical staff at Hurlburt Field had known of his condition, they'd have had him discharged as fast as the clerks could cut the paperwork.

The doctor sat, breathed deeply, and expelled his next breath with a hiss. “Ruben Wright's MS came on fast. Do you know much about the disease, Mr…. er…” He checked my card a third time.

“Special Agent will do,” I said. “And, no, not much. You prescribed him Tizanidine?”

“I prescribed him a long list of medicines to control the disease and its symptoms. He had to take pills all day long. The Tizanidine was for the spasticity, yes.” He swung round in his chair, faced his computer again. “MS is a disease that attacks the myelin, a fatty tissue that helps nerves in the brain and spinal cord conduct electrical impulses. Ruben came to see me about three months ago with a range of symptoms. I sent him off to have an MRI and it came back conclusive. MS has a wide range of symptoms and not all sufferers run the gamut of them, because the attacks on the myelin range in severity and location from one sufferer to the next. Ruben's presentation, though, was classic. Let me see… the first time he saw me he complained of the spasticity, and the fact that the right-hand side of his face was numb, along with his right foot. Two weeks later he was back with the numb face, a numb hand, vertigo, and… er… yes, erectile dysfunction. That's when I sent him off to get the MRI. He had what's called the progressive-relapsing type of MS, the type that gets steadily and quickly worse.”

“How did Ruben take it when you gave him the good news?”

“He reacted the way most people do — he went into a kind of denial and shock spiral, followed by depression. Depression, incidentally, is another feature of the disease.”

“Sounds like a barrel of laughs. Is the disease fatal?”

“No, not usually. Not in the sense that it will kill you.”

“What other sense is there?”

Mooney massaged his chin. “In the sense that MS can put an end to your life the way you've always known it, especially if you're a physical person, the sort of person Ruben Wright obviously was. There's no known cure for the disease, either.”

Yeah, Ruben was that kind of guy. He'd have taken the news of the steep slide into atrophy ahead of him hard. “Was he sui cidal, do you think?”

“I hope not… but I can't say for sure. I'd prescribed an anti-depressant called Effexor to help him cope. I also gave him the name of a very good psychologist I know.”

“Would her name be Judith Churcher?” I asked.

“Yes, that's her. How did you know?”

“Nokia,” I said. The doctor didn't seem to understand, but I was beginning to. “Well, thanks for your time, Doc.”

“Seems Ruben wasn't so honest with me.”

“I guess he thought he had a lot to lose,” I said, and left.