Never Say Die

Chapter 9

Harrison County, Indiana, is named for the president Hoosiers sent to Washington in 1889. His term in office was mostly distinguished by the admission of six new states, but he remains a local hero in the state that still congratulates itself on giving birth to one John Herbert Dillinger. The county seat is Corydon, on Highway 62. Ten miles to the south is Dogwood, a tiny town of fewer than one thousand year-round residents.

The nearest airport, Remo had discovered, was in Louisville, Kentucky, on the wrong side of the river. Flying to the closest strip in Indiana proper would have meant a stop in Evansville, some eighty miles due west, and spending two more hours on the road to reach their destination. Coming out of Louisville, the trip was more like thirty miles.

No contest.

Chiun got all the normal looks, and then some, in the terminal at Louisville. He spoke to no one, let Remo do all the talking at the Avis counter, and it was a challenge trying to decipher his impression of the rubberneckers who kept gawking at him. Sometimes Remo thought the old Korean took it as his due, assuming they were awestruck by the Master of Sinanju; other times he caught Chiun glaring back and was convinced that shortly some gaping fool would find himself on the receiving end of an uncomfortable lesson in respect.

A Chrysler Concorde waited for them in the Avis parking lot, and Highway 64 took them across the river to New Albany, best known in recent years for the sadistic murder of a junior high-school student by a gang of teenage girls whose motive was a curious amalgam of black magic, homosexuality and simple boredom.

The world is collapsing around all our ears, thought Remo as he picked up Highway 62.

The highway branched off nine miles east of Corydon, a narrow strip of two-lane blacktop veering south. New Middleton was there and gone almost before he knew it, catching State Road 337 for the short run into Dogwood.

The town lived up to its name, the nearby woods ablaze with flowers, pink and white. A fair percentage of the homes they passed along the way were built from logs, some obviously new, while others looked as if they could have been around when Daniel Boone was fighting Indians and redcoats in the neighborhood.

Chiun absorbed the rustic atmosphere without commenting on it, watching as they passed a horse-drawn carriage, followed closely by a pair of shaggy thugs on Harley-Davidsons. Most of the vehicles Remo saw were pickups and four-wheelers, with a visible minority of old sedans, the bodies rusting out from long exposure to the salt laid down on snowy winter roads.

The Dogwood Inn reminded Remo of the Bates Motel, except there was no mansion looming on a hill behind the simple L-shaped structure with its twenty rooms all facing toward the highway. If the motel parking lot was any indicator, they had twenty vacancies to choose from. Tourist business in the tiny town was obviously no great shakes, despite the painted sign out front that promised free TV and telephones in every room.

Predictably it was the one and only place in town with rooms to rent. Remo considered getting straight to business, and to hell with staying overnight, but he would still need someplace for Chiun to stay while he was checking out the target. There were two restaurants in town—a drive-in that reminded him of something from American Graffiti, plus a little mom-and-pop that specialized in family dining—but he couldn’t see the Master of Sinanju killing time in either one. It could have been amusing, Remo thought, to watch Chiun order rice, and then demolish the establishment if someone gave him any lip, but this was not a pleasure cruise.

He had to scope the target out, and something told him that it would be wise to wait for nightfall. That meant moving in and sitting tight until the proper moment, insulating Chiun from any contact with the local yokels that could spark a minor riot.

Although in a small place like this they were more noticeable, there was one advantage: Chiun looked too “irregular” for anyone to consider them as investigators of anything—especially a home for unwed mothers owned and operated by a doctor who was bound to rank among the wealthiest and most respected men in town.

It could be worse, Remo told himself. I could’ve brought the circus with me, maybe rode an elephant down Main Street, with a marching band and fireworks. Get some acrobats and clowns in funny little cars.

Step one was leaving Chiun outside when he went in to register. The motel manager was five foot six or seven, skinny as a rail, with ancient pockmarks from a killer case of acne on his sunken cheeks. His hair was almost gone on top, and he attempted to conceal the fact by combing what he had across the barren wasteland of his scalp, from left to right. His wife wore hot-pink curlers and at least two hundred pounds of excess flab that dangled from her arms like the voluminous sleeves of a choir robe.

Jack Spratt, thought Remo, swallowing a smile as he signed in and paid for two nights in advance, a double room.

“Wife with you?” asked the missus, wobbling dangerously on tiptoes for a glimpse of Remo’s car outside.

“No, ma’am.”

“Your girlfriend?” Scarface asked.

“Just passing through on business.”

“Hmph. An’ what would that be?”

Remo left the question hanging, finished filling out the registration card and slid it back across the counter with a ballpoint pen that advertised a nearby funeral home. He thought of Norman Bates again, decided Scarface couldn’t pull it off, and wondered for a moment if the Dogwood Inn was so depressing that its guests were prone to thoughts of suicide.

He reckoned it was time to put the ball in play.

“I’m looking for Ideal Maternity,” he said.

“Ideal?” the woman echoed.

“Some directions would be helpful,” Remo told her. “I could save a bit of time.”

“Ideal Maternity, you say.” Her husband wore the look of someone trying to do calculus by counting on his toes and fingers. “I don’t rightly know—”

The woman jabbed him with an elbow in the ribs to shut him up. “Keep on through town,” she said, “until you~ meet Highway 11, ’bout a mile, or so from where we’re standing. Left’s the only way it goes from there—that’s east to you and me. Another mile and something, there’s a private road off to your left. They got a sign.”

“Appreciate it,” Remo said. He palmed his key and turned to leave the office.

“Selling something, I expect,” Scarface chimed in.

“You-never know,” said Remo, and he let the. door swing shut behind him as he walked back to the car.

“You didn’t have to tell him, for God’s sake!”

“What was I supposed to do, then, Raynard? Maybe stand around and make believe we haven’t lived here thirty years? Like we’re so blasted dumb we couldn’t find our way across the street without a map?”

“We don’t know who he is, Matilda!” Sweat had beaded up on Raynard’s forehead as he paced the tiny office. “Why, he could be anybody!”

“So? What’s that to us?” she challenged him.

“Dammit, woman, you know as well as I do! Talk about how much you know, and then play stupid like a little child!”

“Nobody’s paying us to send some stranger on a wild-goose chase,” she said. “And if they are, I damn sure haven’t heard about it.”

“Strangers asking questions lead to trouble,”″ Raynard Bisbee told his wife. “It don’t take no rocket scientist to figure that one out. This Mr. What’s-his-name starts raisin’ hell, who d’you think them folks out there are gonna blame? The ones what told him where to go, that’s who!”

“Think straight for once,” Matilda, snapped. “The home ain’t like some kinda secret military base. They got a sign out on the road. They’re licensed with the state, got people goin’ in and out there all the time. They must be on a hunnerd lists for people sellin’ everything from pills to sheets and toilet paper. Jumpin’ Jesus, Raynard, you beat all!”

“So why’d he have to ask directions, then?”

“Well, lemme think about that puzzle, for a second. Could it be because he’s never been here in his life, before? You figure that could have something to do with it?”

“Don’t mock me, woman!”

“No one’s mockin’ you, for Lord’s sake. I’m suggestin’ that you use your head for once, and don’t go makin’mountains out of molehills.”

“I don’t plan on windin’ up like Winthrop’s boy, awright?”

She flashed him a look that didn’t thank him for being reminded. “That was an accident, for all you know.” But Matilda Bisbee didn’t sound convinced somehow. “Besides, the doctor settled out of court on that. Good money, what I hear down at the Clip ’n’ Curl”

“You’d like that, I expect. Found money, you could just forget about me, easy as you please, and find yourself somebody else.”

“You’re talkin’ foolish, Raynard.”

“Accident, my ass. Boy gets electrocuted, fried like catfish on the griddle, and they claim he did it messin’with some kinda fuse box.”

“Can you prove he didn’t?”

“Can’t prove nothin’, ’cept he’s dead as hell, and I’m in no great rush to join him.”

“Jimmy Winthrop was a troublemaker, Raynard. You know that as well as I do. He was trespassin’ the night he had his accident, most likely hopin’ he could catch one of them girlies with her britches down. Can’t say I miss him all that much, you wanna know the truth.’

“You got a cold streak, woman.”

“Maybe so,” she said, “and maybe not. One thing I am sure of, the doctor and his people haven’t hurt this town one little bit. Spend money here, they do, and never make no fuss. They pay their bills on time, but otherwise keep outa sight and outa mind. Good neighbors all around the way I see it, even if they haven’t been here fifty years, like some who think they’re so damn special.”

Raynard Bisbee couldn’t argue with her logic, even if it gave him chills sometimes to think about the Winthrop boy. The Dogwood Inn was not a major beneficiary of the financial benefitsfrom Ideal Maternity, although a family had been known to spend the night from time to time, when they were dropping off a pregnant daughter, waiting to be sure she settled in just right.

And then there was the little something extra Raynard got each month as an incentive to keep both eyes open and alert for strangers in the neighborhood. He had a hard time working out exactly why a home for unwed mothers would be so concerned about security, but it was certainly a crazy world these days. You had all kinds of pressure groups around—pro-life, pro-choice, whatever—butting into other people’s business, telling them what they should read or watch on television, whether they should keep a kid or get it farmed out at the clinic. Hell, for all he knew, they could be hiding Russian agents at the home. No skin off Raynard Bisbee, either way.

He got a hundred dollars on the first of every month—in cash, with no reports to Uncle Sammy—just to keep a watch for anybody who came snooping thereabouts.

“Why me?” he’d asked, suspicious, when the matron from the home had first approached him.

“You’re a man of substance, with his roots in the community,” she said, so sweet and flattering that Raynard didn’t even mind if it was soap before the bar. “Besides, with the motel, you have a decent chance of meeting any strangers stopping off in town.”

It made good sense, and so what if he found out later they were also paying someone at the two restaurants? Fool and his money, Raynard thought. It didn’t shave his profits any if they chose to throw more cash around. His curiosity was piqued, given the way they seemed so paranoid, but Jimmy Winthrop’s fate was a reminder of the risks that came with snooping into other people’s business.

It pissed him off, the way Matilda took it on herself to point the stranger on his way, but there was only so much he could say about it. Going on five years, he hadn’t told her yet about his monthly stipend from the home, and Raynard didn’t plan on sharing with her now.

Too late to throw the stranger off, but that had never been a part of Raynard’s job, in any case. He was supposed to watch, report and mind his own damn business after that.

“I’m goin’ out awhile,” he said.

There was suspicion in her whiny voice. “Where to?”

“To have a brewskie at the Pine Room, if you must know,” Raynard told her. “Arguin’ with you’s done made my throat sore.”

“Brung it on yourself, at that.”

“I’ll see you later on.”

They had a pay phone at the Pine Room, with a good old-fashioned wooden booth where you could close the door and not be overheard by every jackass in the place. First time in all these years that Raynard had to earn his monthly C-note, and he didn’t want an audience. Whatever happened after he made his call was someone else’s headache, he decided.

Indiana’s county roads showed signs of neglect and infrequent repairs. Baked in summer, frozen in winter, they displayed the scars to prove it—potholes disguised as harmless puddles when it rained, but were still deep enough to jolt a vehicle off course and sometimes blow a tire. “Repairs” consisted, in large part, of sporadic asphalt drops to fill the more impressive craters, but the patchwork never seemed to last. Throw in a few steep hills, blind corners, one-lane bridges, season it with roadkill, and they were a proper driving challenge for the inexperienced.

The scenery was something else. As Remo motored south from Dogwood, past the handful of small businesses that were the town, he understood why tourists might be drawn from other states. It wasn’t Yellowstone, but there was simple beauty here, perhaps a fond reminder to the city-bound that life wasn’t confined to steel and concrete, traffic noise and air pollution.

Maybe—for a few of them, at least—it felt like coming home.

Highway 11 branched off to his left, a small sign making sure he didn’t miss it. Remo signaled for the turn, although he had the highway to himself, and kept within the posted limit as he headed east. Based on the directions he was given, he was almost there.

Chiun had taken one look at their motel room and grunted in disgust. The television was an ancient, black-and-white with rabbit ears, which seemed to get four channels and a lot of static. There were two small beds, with bedspreads that resembled terrycloth, and other bits of furniture that would have made a swap meet seem like shopping on Rodeo Drive. The bathroom was an afterthought. Any sudden moves while sitting on the toilet, and you risked collision of your elbows with the sink and the adjacent wall.

Chiun was mollified, to some degree, when he located a new infomercial on Channel 4. It was for something called a Fat Blaster. He settled on the floor, legs folded in the lotus posture, frail hands resting on his knees. His recent, inexplicable passion for football seemed to have died off, Remo thought. Or had it been a pretense, a front, for some other preoccupation at the time?

“Beware of any and all who would say you have a ‘purdy’ mouth,’- the Master of Sinanju had warned, eyes locked upon the television screen.

“Will do.”

He saw the sign now, coming at him on the left, nailed between two upright posts set back a few yards from the road. The overhanging trees almost obscured it, and it would have been no trick at all to miss the sign if Remo hadn’t known what he was looking for. Ideal Maternity Home. He wondered what prompted Dr. Quentin Radcliff, with two decades of his life invested in genetic research, to bail out and spend his golden years providing care for unwed mothers. It was a most unusual step in the man’s career path.

And what did any of it have to do with Thomas Allen Hardy, much less carbon-copy killers with his face and fingerprints?

There were no answers yet, but now he had a likely starting point. If Dr. Radcliff’s name still troubled Jasper Frayne, more than a decade after they had parted company and the Eugenix Corporation was dissolved—more to the point, if Jasper, with his dying breath, blamed Radcliff for his own assassination—then the doctor must be worth a closer look.

Remo had never been a great believer in coincidence, especially where murder was involved.

Beyond the sign, a one-lane gravel track wound out of sight among the trees. Another pair of upright posts had been erected at the entrance to the driveway. These were steel and painted black, a chain stretched out between them, decorated with a smaller sign that cautioned PRIVATE DRIVE—NO ENTRY.

Remo drove on past, another mile or so, until he found a handy place to turn around. His second pass confirmed that there was no chance of observing Dr. Radcliff’s operation from the highway. He would have to penetrate the grounds on foot, and that was something he preferred to do by night.

He didn’t know what to expect in terms of security. After all, what kind of risk could pregnant women pose to anyone except themselves, or possibly their unborn children? Remo understood the urge for privacy, especially if Dr. Radcliff drew his clients from among the semi-rich and famous, but there was a world of difference between discretion and defense.

Still, the early indications were that something was different here.

Correct or otherwise, the late, lamented Jasper Frayne had seemed to think his executioner was sent by Dr. Radcliff. The killer had been somehow linked to Thomas Allen Hardy and the late Eugenix Corporation. Radcliff, by his own admission was once the top dog in genetic research at Eugenix. And if Jasper Frayne still, feared him, after almost fifteen 1 years.

Then, what?

A vague suspicion loitered in the back of Remo’s mind, reached out to nudge him every now and then, but he resisted the suggestion, unwilling to follow where it led.

His mind rebelled at driving back to the motel so soon and sitting in the squalid little room for hours, waiting for the sun to disappear. A drive would do him good, check out the local scenery and get a feeling for the back roads, just in case he had to beat a swift retreat.

The Chrysler handled well enough, if Remo took it easy on the speed and watched for potholes in the road. Squirrels dodged across the road in front of him, defying him to run them down, oblivious to the repeated evidence of others who lost the game. At one point, Remo stopped to let a turtle cross the highway, keeping one eye on his rearview mirror while the brightly colored reptile took its time.

He had to give the doctor credit, if there was some kind of plot in progress at the home for unwed mothers. Dogwood was the last place anyone would think to look for something sinister. It was the perfect cover, tucked away in Nowhere, USA.

And it could still be nothing, Remo thought.

But told himself, Don’t bet your life on it.

There were certain hallmarks about the operation, sight unseen. Remo recognized them from a distance, long exposure having sensitized him to the nuances.

He was picking up a pattern that spelled death.