The fifth vial

CHAPTER 6

Mrs. Satterfield, what do you mean Pincus is gone?" Bracing the receiver between his shoulder and ear, Ben bunched the thin pillow beneath his head.

"He wanted to go out, dear, so I let him go out, and he hasn't come back."

Ben groaned and stared up at the ceiling of room 219 in the Okeechobee Motel 6. It was just after eight in the morning of yet another day that was going to be cloudless and hot. The motel, fifty-two dollars a night for a single, was just off the highway, twelve miles from where Glenn had been hit face-on by a speeding tractor-trailer. Although Ben had no more idea of the man's identity now than he had when Alice Gustafson first presented the case to him, he found it easier to motivate himself with a name than Unknown White Male, or even John Doe.

He chose Glenn because of the vanity plate glenn-1 on a black Jaguar convertible that cruised past his rented Saturn as he left the Melbourne International Airport on Florida's Atlantic coast. Perhaps that Glenn won the Jag in a raffle. Maybe he had won the lottery. Whatever the case, the man had to have had some good luck along the way, and Ben knew he was going to need more than a little of that. So far, though, over his five days in Okeechobee County, and several counties surrounding Okeechobee, good luck had been in depressingly short supply. Dogged by a lack of enthusiasm, he had nevertheless worked long hours every day. Still, he had come up with absolutely nothing that would shed any light on who Glenn was or what had happened to him.

The unpleasant conclusion persistently nagging at him was that despite some modest successes in stalk-and-gawk domestic cases, as a real private eye, he left much to be desired.

And now, his cat had gone missing.

"Mrs. Satterfield, remember what I said about Pincus being an indoor cat and not having any claws, and how he couldn't climb trees to get away from things like dogs?"

"But he wanted so desperately to go out, dear. He was crying."

Ben sighed. Althea Satterfield, his next-door neighbor, was Pop-Tart sweet and as kind as St. Francis, but she was also on the north side of eighty, and a little shaky on details. Her voice reminded him of comedian Jonathan Winters doing ancient Maudie Frickert.

"It's okay, Mrs. Satterfield," he said, "Pincus is a really fast runner. Besides, it's my fault for letting his claws be removed in the first place."

And, he reflected ruefully, it was. He and Dianne were still a few years from the big split when she caught his longtime pet having its way with the hem of one of her slipcovers. All right, Ben, either that cat of yours gets declawed, or I'm out of here! As always, the memory of her words brought a bittersweet smile. It could never be said that she hadn't given him a chance to take the initiative.

"So, how is your latest investigation going, Mr. Callahan?"

My only investigation.

"I haven't cracked the case yet, Mrs. Satterfield."

"You will."

I won't.

Alice Gustafson's former student, coroner Stanley Woyczek, had been as helpful as he could be, but the police in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, as well as those in the sheriff's office and, for that matter, the state police, had a serious resentment against a private investigator whose very presence suggested they were not able to do their job. There wasn't a single question he could ask nor a single way to ask it that didn't sound condescending or patronizing. After five days of repeated visits to the various stations and substations, attempts to chat about the Marlins, Devil Rays, Buccaneers, Jaguars, and Dolphins, and several dozen doughnuts, he had failed to cultivate even one dependable source of information. Ultimately, he was forced to conclude that, had he been one of the policemen, he would probably have reacted and sounded just like they did.

"Mrs. Satterfield, don't worry about Pincus. I'm sure he'll come back."

"I wish I shared your optimism, dear. Even your plant is sad."

"My plant?"

"It's the only one in your whole apartment."

"I know that, Mrs. Satterfield."

"It used to have such a big, beautiful pink flower."

"Used to?"

"I'm afraid it's fallen off."

The plant, an Aechmea, was a gift from a violinist in the philharmonic, his significant other for ten weeks before she took up with a French horn player, claiming, quite correctly, that Ben simply had no direction to his life. Not surprisingly, over the intervening two years, a replacement significant other for him had simply failed to come forward.

"Mrs. Satterfield, you have to water that plant every d — " He stopped himself mid-sentence, imagining Jennifer Chin stretched out naked on red satin sheets with her French horn blower. "You know what, Mrs. Satterfield?"

"What, dear?"

"Just give the cat's food to the plant and everything will be fine."

"Anything you say, dear. And don't worry about your case. You'll solve it."

"I'm sure I will."

"Just start with what you know."

"What?" "Pardon?"

"Never mind, Mrs. Satterfield. You're doing great, I'll be home in a few days."

"I'll see you then, dear."

Start with what you know.

With Althea Satterfield's oddly cogent words roiling about in his brain, Ben pulled up in front of a modest beige stucco house on a quiet side street in Indrio, just north of St. Lucie. A small red neon sign in one window read simply, readings. The door was opened by a tall, slender woman in her forties with bronze skin and straight, jet-black hair down to the small of her back. A colorful, artfully done zodiac was tattooed inside a half-moon across her forehead, the arc extending from the ends of her brows to just below her hairline.

"Madame Sonja."

"Well, Mr. Callahan," she said in a dreamy voice, "come in, come in. I couldn't remember if you were to be back this morning or tomorrow."

"You could have just read the future," Ben said, careful not to stare at Libra, his sign, which he knew from his last visit was just above her left brow.

It took a few seconds for Madame Sonja to gauge his expression. Then she grinned.

"That was funny."

"I'm relieved you think so. Sometimes, most of the time, in fact, I say things that are meant to be funny, but I'm the only one who thinks they are."

That is a curse.

She led him past a heavily draped reading room, complete with a card table, tarot deck, teacups, and nearly as many arcane artifacts as were in Alice Gustafson's office, into a cluttered den with overfilled bookcases, several computers, scanners, banks of electronics, and a professional-grade artist's easel. Except for a computer workstation and a small desk chair, there was no furniture, but in one corner was a potter's wheel, well used and splattered with dry clay.

"Any luck?" he asked.

"Perhaps. I'm quite pleased with what I have for you."

"As I mentioned, Dr. Woyczek spoke very highly of your work." "He knows I appreciate his referrals. I only wish that his regard for me carried over to his friends, the detectives at the police department. I'm afraid they think I'm something of a quack. They have their own artists, and even with numerous examples of my superior accuracy, they refuse to send their business this way."

Woyczek had understatedly described Madame Sonja as something of an eccentric, who used the latest in computer graphics to create or recreate faces, but often then modified her renderings with something she just saw in her mind. Three days before, Ben had brought the hideous photos of Glenn's nearly obliterated face to her. For a time, she sat across the table from him in her reading room, studying the pictures, sometimes with her eyes totally closed, sometimes open just a slit. He sat patiently, although he considered her actions a complete charade. Despite Woyczek's glowing endorsement of the woman, Ben had confessed his heavy, cynical bias against clairvoyance, mental telepathy, telekinesis, fortunetelling, and the supernatural.

"I've done one set of renderings in color, and one in black and white," Madame Sonja said. "As you will see, the sets are somewhat different from one another. I can't explain why." She sat down at her computer with Ben studying the screen over her shoulder. "Here is your man."

The first image, face-on in full color, materialized on the screen. It was essentially three-dimensional, done by a remarkable program, and clearly drawn by a woman with talent. The man depicted had a round, youthful face? pudgy, ruddy cheeks? rather small, widely spaced eyes? and somewhat low-set ears. There was little about the face that Ben found interesting, but it did have a certain childlike aura. Madame Sonja rotated the electronic

bust 360 degrees.

She allowed Ben a couple of minutes to study her handiwork and then put the black-and-white drawing on the screen. Few would have said the drawings were of the same man. The face was narrower and more intelligent, the eyes fuller.

"How do you explain the differences?" Ben asked.

"I don't try to explain anything. I draw what I see — on the photos and up here." She tapped a long, scarlet fingernail against Gemini. "I wonder if this man has — make that had — diminished intelligence. Perhaps I have drawn him as he was at the time of his death, and then as he might have been save for some accident of birth."

Another strikeout, Ben was thinking. Woyczek might be right about this woman, but as far as he could tell, her uniqueness began and ended with the zodiac on her forehead. He wondered how many customers had paid how much money for her "wisdom."

"I have hard copies of five views in each of these envelopes. My charge would usually be a thousand dollars per set, but because Dr. Woyczek sent you, I'll give you both of them for five hundred."

Shocked, Ben hesitated, about to refuse, when the woman added, "As you are thinking, you can refuse to pay and leave these here. But I tell you, Mr. Callahan, these renderings are what you are after."

Ben's eyes narrowed. Anyone could have known what he was considering, he finally decided. It was logical and obvious — pure deduction from his hesitation and probably his expression. Anyone could have known. Reluctantly, he took his checkbook from his briefcase.

"I'm afraid I only take MasterCard and Visa," she said with no sheepishness whatsoever, "and, of course, cash."

An entrepreneur with a tattoo across her forehead. What happened to the simple, carefree antiestablishment types he had hung out with in college? A little grass, a little beer, a little rock and roll. Ben checked his holdings and handed over the cash. It was extremely doubtful that Alice Gustafson and Organ Guard would reimburse him in full for this one, but what the hell.

Then, in a move that totally surprised him, Madame Sonja reached out and took his hand.

"Mr. Callahan, I'm sorry you feel as uncomfortable about me as you do. You have a wonderfully kind face, and I can tell that you are a good man. If you will, please come and join me for a cup of tea."

Ben wanted nothing more than to hit the road. He had visited every hospital within twenty — five miles of the accident site, as well as every police station. Now, as long as he had sprung for these pictures of Glenn, he might as well use what time he had left before returning to Chicago to show them to some people — perhaps starting with the hematologists. But there was something compelling about the woman's touch. Reluctantly, he followed her into the den and took a seat. A minute later, she was pouring a rust-colored, aromatic tea into two Oriental cups, each with a different Asian symbol on the side.

"Please, drink it down," she urged. "I assure you there is nothing in it but tea. When you have finished, please pass your cup over to me."

Ben did as she asked. Madame Sonja stared into the cup for a few seconds, then wrapped her hands around it and looked intently across at him. Finally, she closed her eyes.

"I'm not getting much," she said.

Since when is five hundred dollars not much?

"I'm sorry," he replied.

"I keep hearing the same words over and over, though."

I've got to get out of here.

"What words?"

"Just start with what you know."

Ben stared across at her in stunned silence. Althea Satterfield's words precisely.

"A…a friend in Chicago just said those exact words to me not an hour ago."

"They did come in loud and clear."

"I don't believe this. Anything else?"

Madame Sonja shrugged and shook her head.

"Nope. Some days are better than others for me. This one isn't much."

"You think that was just…luck? Coincidence?"

"Do you?"

She led Ben to the door.

"Well, thanks for your drawings and your help," he said, shaking her hand and heading down the walk.

"I hope you find your man," she called after him.

"So do I."

"And I hope you find your cat, too."

With no feeling for where he was headed or what he was going to do, Ben found himself on a small road that dead-ended at a grassy patch overlooking what his map said was the Inland Waterway. Madame Sonja's parting reference to Pincus's disappearance had shaken him, as had her reiteration of Althea's odd suggestion.

Start with what you know.

The phrase wasn't all that unusual, he reasoned, and maybe the words weren't precisely the same ones his neighbor had used. And as for Pincus, he was focused on his failure as an investigator and on handing over five hundred dollars in cash, but in addition the disappearance of his strongest connection to the world of the living was very much on his mind. He must have said something about the cat. That had to be it. In all likelihood, he had said something in passing and just couldn't remember having done so.

There was no other explanation for what had happened — no other explanation, of course, except the obvious. Was it possible that a woman with a zodiac tattooed on her forehead, living in a tiny house on an undistinguished street in Florida, had somehow tapped into his thoughts? If there were people running about with that ability, why didn't everyone know? How many times had he walked right past a tent at a county fair offering readings for five dollars?

He remembered talking with Gilbert Forest, a physician friend whose foundation of medical beliefs had been badly shaken by a traditional Chinese doc, who had cured an inoperable cancer in one of Gilbert's patients using only acupuncture and what he called "vitamins." Since Ben believed in very little at this point in his life, the biggest danger posed by Alice Gustafson and Madame Sonja was to those many things he didn't believe in.

Start with what you know.

As the sun rose higher and the wet heat grew more intense, Ben set his case file on the ground beside him, and started going through it a page at a time, searching for some angle he had missed. Perhaps the renderings of Glenn would stir some memory in one of the hematologists, he mused. Not likely, he quickly decided.

Okay, okay, Callahan. Aside from the fact that you're not much of a detective, what else, exactly, do you know?

Ben's gaze drifted out over the glistening water. When it returned to the papers in his lap, he was looking down at the article about the woman, Juanita Ramirez. The three photographs accompanying the text, typical of the tabloids, were grainy. There was one of the woman, one of the puncture wounds above her buttocks, and one of a likeness of the mobile home in which she had been kidnapped, held prisoner, and operated on. The mobile home…

Ben pulled out the transcript of the interview Gustafson had with the woman. The parts he considered important were highlighted in yellow. The part he needed at that moment was not.

AG: Can you describe the mobile home where you were held prisoner?

JR: I only saw the outside once, when they stopped to ask me directions, and then pulled me inside. It was big. Real big. Most of it was gray or silver, and there was like a maroon or purple design on the side, sort of like a swirl pattern, or a wave.

The woman's description wasn't much, Ben acknowledged, but it was something. He had done the police stations and the hospitals and the hematology offices and the surgicenters, all the while searching for the man he called Glenn. His plan, now that he had Madame Sonja's renderings, was to make the loop once again, hoping against hope that someone might connect with the face. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Who had told him that?

"All right, Callahan," he muttered, "you've been calling yourself a detective. So detect."

Two hours and four mobile-home dealerships later, he was losing faith. Beaver, Alpine, Great West, Dynamax, Road Trek, Winnebago, Safari Simba. The list of RV makers seemed endless. Damon, Forest River, Kodiak, Newmar Cypress, Thor Colorado. Almost every one of them had a model or more with a design on the side that could have been the one described by Juanita Ramirez.

By mid-afternoon, his feet and back were aching, and the super-stuffed burrito he had eaten at Taco Bell, usually a staple in his diet, was making more encore appearances than the Rolling Stones. A hundred and fifty dollars a day — maybe ten dollars an hour for the time he had put in. He had done quite enough. Alice Gustafson should have found some other way to spend Organ Guard's money. Even though he didn't care much about her miniscule organization and its arcane mission, he really had tried his best. Now it was time to give up and go home.

Three hours later, through lengthening late-afternoon shadows, he swung the Saturn up the short driveway to the Schyler Gaines Mart and Gas, the fifteenth gas station he had visited since deciding to quit the case and return to Chicago. He had managed to add a pounding headache to the persisting miseries in his feet and back. Callahan's Syndrome, he decided to call it — CS for the purposes of fund-raising.

The brainstorm that kept him on the road long enough to develop the syndrome was a circle he had drawn on his map, ten miles around the spot where Glenn had been killed. Armed with catalogues from the RV dealers and the pictures of Glenn, he had decided to go down fighting, visiting every gas station he could locate within the circle. Given the single-digit miles per gallon of the largest RVs, the one he was searching for had to spend as much time at the pump as in the trailer parks. Perhaps, he decided, pigheadedness should be added to the symptoms of CS.

The station, three miles off the highway in Curtisville, might as easily have been on the other side of a time portal. It was a rickety-looking red clapboard structure with a peaked, shingled roof, and a small porch, complete with two rocking chairs. The hand-painted sign over the door was faded and peeling. Out front was a single gas pump that, while modernized at some point from the glass-topped Esso pump standing off to one side of the tarmac, still looked outdated.

It was to the good that the active pump was a fair distance from the porch, because the man Ben assumed was Schyler Gaines was seated in one of the rockers smoking a pipe. With his bib overalls, plaid shirt, dirt-stained Caterpillar cap, and gray beard, he might have been teleported to the mart from Li'l Abner's Dogpatch. Ben pulled the Saturn to a stop not far from the corner of the porch and approached the man, who eyed him with some interest, but said nothing. The smoke from Gaines's pipe was cherry-scented and not at all unpleasant.

"Good afternoon," Ben greeted him with a half-wave, mounting the first step to the porch and leaning on a rail that he guessed was a fifty-fifty bet not to hold him.

Gaines pulled out a gold watch on a chain and checked the time.

"S'pose you could still say that," he replied, sounding exactly as Ben might have predicted.

"My name is Callahan, Ben Callahan. I'm a private detective from Chicago, and I'm looking for a man who was run down and killed on Route Seventy, south of here."

"He 'uz killed an' yer still lookin' for 'im?"

"Let's try that again. Actually, I'm trying to learn about him. No one even knows his name, let alone what he was doing out on Route Seventy at three in the morning."

"Big Peterbilt three-eight-seven hit 'em head on — back cab sleeper, contoured roof cap."

"You know the truck?"

"Stops by here for gas from time t'time. I got a diesel pump out back. Charge a dime less than the stations on the turnpike, but it adds up when yer pumpina hunnert gallons. Guy named Eddie's the driver."

"Eddie Coombs. I spoke to him. He's still pretty messed up over what happened."

"I'll bet. It's a crackerjack rig he got. Six-hunnert horsepower Cummings engine. Fella who got hit couldn't a had much time to knowed it happened."

"I think that's the case," Ben said. "Well, here are some computer drawings of what the guy might have looked like."

He passed the renderings over, suddenly feeling strangely foolish and impotent. What was he doing here? What could he possibly expect to learn from this laconic old man? Why had he ever said yes to Alice Gustafson in the first place? Rocking and puffing, Gaines studied the pictures for a time, then handed them back, shaking his head.

"Don't mean nothin' t' me."

"I didn't think they would," Ben said. "You got some cold Coke in there?"

"I do. Just short a havinice in the can if you know what I mean."

"Oh, I know exactly."

Ben used the back of his hand to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead.

"Cans are in the cooler. Jes leave a dollar on the counter. I'm enjoyin this bowlful too much t'git up."

The Coke, icy as advertised, washed away a bit of Ben's consuming feeling of futility. He left a five by the antiquated register, took Madame Sonja's renderings, and headed back to his car. Would Alice Gustafson accept oh, well, I tried? Doubtful. More likely, she'd want her money back.

Just start with what you know.

Ben opened the driver's side door, then stopped and returned to the porch with the brochures and his absurdly long list of RV models.

"Mr. Gaines, I'm also looking for a mobile home," he said.

"A what?"

"A mobile home. You know, like an RV Would have been here somewhere around the time this fellow was killed. Maybe from up north, maybe really big, maybe gray with darker gray or maroon markings. Here are some brochures of possible candidates."

"That would be a thirty-nine-foot Winnebago Adventurer," Gaines said matter-of-factly, without bothering with the brochures. "Oh-four or oh-five, I would guess. Ohio plates. Pulled in fer a fill. Took more'n seventy gallons."

Ben felt his heart skip a beat.

"Tell me about it."

"Not too much t'tell. The couple drivin' her didn't seem like the RV type."

"How so?"

"Oh, you know. Too young, not country enough, movin' about quicker'n most RV owners move. Bought three sandwiches and three chips even though there 'uz only two of 'em."

"Can you describe them?"

"I got a memory for cars 'n' trucks. Not people. She 'uz quite pretty, though. I do remember that. Cute bottom on her. Pardon me for sayin' that. I may be old, but I ain't dead."

"It's perfectly okay, Mr. Gaines. Is there anything else you can remember about the RV or the people?"

"I didn't notice until it was pulling away, but I don't think there 'uz windows in the back. As you'll see from them brochures, that ain't the usual."

"No windows. Are you sure?"

"If'n I said it, then I'm sure. What is it? You deal with people that sez what they don't mean?"

"I've been known to, yes."

Ben was aware of his pulse snapping in his fingertips. This whole business about the Adventurer could be nothing, but in every fiber he believed it was the RV described by Juanita Ramirez. He began rapidly processing ways he might use the limited information he had just gathered. How many people in Ohio buy a thirty-nine-foot Winnebago mobile home? Did the manufacturer keep records? How far would seventy gallons have taken such a beast? The questions weren't much, but after nearly a week of abject frustration, they were palm trees in the Sahara.

"Mr. Gaines," he said, "you've been very helpful. Is there anything else you can think of about this RV? Anything at all?"

"Nope. Except — "

"Except what?"

"I s'pose it might help if'n I gave ya the license plate number."

"The what?"

"They paid for their gas an' supplies with a credit card — a Visa, I think twuz. I got burned once real bad by a trucker with a stolen card, so now I always write down the license number on the credit card slip."

"And you still have the imprint?"

"A course I do," Gaines said. "You wouldn't think much a me as a businessman if'n I didn't."