Читать книгу Campbell Young Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - J.D. Carpenter - Страница 18

Debi was standing at the backstretch gate as BoumBoum opened the sliding side door of his Econoline van. He manipulated the lever that lowered the hydraulic lift bearing Trick and his wheelchair to the ground.

Trick and Debi talked for a few minutes about Young’s condition, and when Debi mentioned Reg, Trick assured her the bulldog was fine. “I’d better get to work,” he said. “Where am I likely to find Percy?”

“Barn 4,” Debi said, “so long as you get there before eleven. After that, it’s JJ Muggs.”

Trick consulted his watch. “It’s ten-thirty,” he said. “I’d better get a move on.” He told Boum-Boum to get himself a coffee at the track kitchen and to be back at the van in fifteen minutes.

Trick was relieved to find the surfaces he had to traverse hard and dry, and he steered his wheelchair quickly and carefully past horse vans, pickup trucks, fat men in fedoras, and small men in flak jackets.

Inside Barn 4, Trick negotiated his way along the shedrow past buckets and brooms and leaning rakes and bales of hay and straw, past dozens of stalls, most of whose inhabitants swung their heads out as he rolled by. A man sweeping asked Trick what he wanted, and Trick said, “Percy Ball.” The man pointed further along and said, “Far end.”

Trick wheeled himself towards the open door of a dimly lit tack room. Inside, Percy was sitting on a dingy cot cleaning his fingernails with a jackknife. He looked up, studied Trick for a moment, and said, “Who the fuck are you?”

Trick said, “Special Agent Arthur Trick, Metropolitan Toronto Homicide Department.” With his left hand he opened a small plastic identification folder and held it in front of Percy for several seconds, then closed it and returned it to his shirt pocket. “I need to ask you a few questions about the Shorty Rogers case.”

Percy wiped the blade of the jackknife against the thigh of his pant leg, folded it shut, slid it into his hip pocket, and flipped the blond hair out of his eyes. “I told that big cop everything I know. Which was nothin’. I don’t know nothin’.”

“Well, I’m confused,” Trick said, “because Detective Sergeant Young—the big cop—told me you said Shorty may have owed somebody money. And sometime later, you phoned him and told him Shorty was involved in a disagreement with a man named Buckley over a horse they owned together.”

Percy was silent. He pulled a cigarette out of his black jacket.

Trick looked around the tack room. “You allowed to smoke in here? I thought there were rules against smoking in barns.”

“Fuck the rules.”

Trick narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you don’t understand. People in wheelchairs, such as myself, or people who are otherwise disabled, get a little uncomfortable when able-bodied people, such as yourself, break safety rules. If something goes wrong, we can’t get out as fast as you can.”

“Fuck you, too.”

Trick looked closely at Percy but said nothing. He knew dead eyes when he saw them.

“Ask your questions,” Percy said. “I don’t have all day.”

Trick surveyed the room. Junk food trash in a corner. A pair of muddy boots. A pile of soiled clothing. Cigarette butts on the floor by Percy’s feet. A filthy sleeping bag balled up on the cot. “You exercised horses for Shorty, right?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Including the horse that died a while ago?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“We’re checking out the owner’s telephone records. A Mr. Mahmoud Khan. Has he ever phoned you?”

“Yeah ... no, I spoke to him a couple times when he was out here, that’s all. He’d ask me how his horse worked, and I’d tell him. Whichever horse worked that day.”

“Any reason to believe Mr. Khan might be strapped for cash?”

Percy laughed. “Are you crazy?”

“So why did he have Download murdered?”

It was a stab in the dark, and Percy looked away. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He shook his head. “It was colic killed that colt.”

“And who killed Shorty Rogers?”

Percy stood up. His hands were shaking. He glared at Trick. “I don’t know. I’ve no fuckin’ clue who killed Shorty.” He dropped the cigarette and ground it under the heel of his cowboy boot.

“If there’s any information at all—”

“I told ya, I’ve no fuckin’ clue! Now leave me alone!”

Trick studied Percy for a moment, then, with his left hand on the console of his wheelchair, he began to reverse out of the tack room. The little shit’s righteous as hell when he’s telling the truth, he thought to himself, but it’s obvious when he’s lying.

Dr. Habib said, “We have to run a tube down your throat.”

Young, who was in a fetal position on the bed, made no response.

Dr. Habib said, “Your abdominal area was traumatized by the operation. We had to handle you rather roughly. As a result, your bowel system has shut down.”

Young turned his head slightly.

“So much tissue had formed around your appendix,” Dr. Habib continued, “that we couldn’t locate it on the x-ray. We performed a laparoscopy—that is to say, we entered through your navel—but discovered that the mass was too large. So we created a traditional incision over the affected area.”

“Why did you have to handle me roughly?” Young’s voice was weak, barely a croak.

“We had to move things around a bit. To find it. As a result, your bowel system went into shock. In protest, you might say. So now we have to feed this plastic tube down through your nostril and into your abdomen to assist with evacuation.”

“You mean I’m going to shit through my nose?”

“Um, yes, basically. For a few days, until your bowel system starts up again.”

“And the reason I hurt so much down there is because you had to handle me roughly?”

“Yes. You see, when we finally found it, your appendix was the size of a ... oh, a small grapefruit. It had begun to perforate, and tissue had formed around the appendix to contain the poison.”

“It was the size of a grapefruit?”

“A small one, yes.”

“And you had a hard time finding it.”

“Yes, and we had an even harder time getting it out. It didn’t want to come. We had to treat your body rather rudely.”

Young frowned. “What do you mean rudely?”

“We had to move quickly.”

“I was in danger?”

“Oh yes. If this had happened in some remote area, if you had been on a fishing trip, for example, you might very well have died.”

Young swallowed. “No shit.”

“That’s why we operated on you so soon after you came in.”

Young glanced down towards his stomach. “So you had to go in fast, grab what you were after, and get out fast.”

“That’s right.”

“I feel like some animal’s been at me.”

“Well,” Dr. Habib sighed, “like I say, we had to be fairly rough. If you can, just picture a dog digging for a bone.”

Richard Ludlow was out of town on business, but his receptionist seemed to take a shine to Tony Barkas, who looked a lot like Tony Danza, the TV star. She offered him a cup of coffee and invited him to sit down. He sat in a deep leather chair beside a glass table with magazines and a bowl of peppermints on it. As she stood up from behind her desk to fetch his coffee, he saw that her black leather skirt was short and tight, and her legs looked eight feet long. She wore a yellow blouse, and her black hair hung down over her breasts. Her complexion was as pale as a geisha’s. After she handed him a mug of coffee and once again seated herself at her desk, Barkas explained that he was assisting in a murder investigation and asked if the receptionist, who said her name was Sandi—“with an ‘i’”—knew whether or not Mr. Ludlow was acquainted with a man named Shorty Rogers.

Sandi said she’d never heard of anybody by that name, but would Detective Barkas care for a cookie to go with his coffee.

“Sure,” Barkas said. He didn’t really want one, but he wanted to see her legs again.

Sandi walked to a small pantry in the corner of the office and took a package of Oreos out of the cupboard. “They’re double-stuffed,” she said. “I hope that’s all right.”

“That’s fine.”

When she was seated at her desk again, Barkas asked her how long she had been working for Mr. Ludlow.

“Almost three years now.”

“Three years? That’s a long time. You two work pretty closely, I guess.”

“Oh, yes. He depends on me.” She smiled. “He calls me his right hand.”

Barkas nodded. “I guess you have to work late some nights?”

The smile disappeared. “Some nights, yes. Why do you ask?”

Barkas scratched his head. “Please don’t take this personally, but I was just wondering if you and Mr. Ludlow ... well, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“It’s just that you’re such an attractive young woman. I’m sure Mr. Ludlow—”

“Our relationship,” Sandi interrupted, her face suddenly pink, “is strictly professional.”

Barkas said, “I’m sure it is, but word on the street is Mr. Ludlow likes the ladies.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“No, it’s not.” Sandi was twisting a pen in her fingers. “Mr. Ludlow is a respected member of the community.”

Barkas said, “He’s married, isn’t he?”

She dropped her head. “I know he’s married.”

“His wife know what’s going on?”

“There’s nothing going on! You have no right to talk to me like this. I’m going to have to ask—”

“What I hear on the street is Mrs. Ludlow found out about the others, and now their relationship—”

“What others?”

“—and now their relationship is one of those ones where the husband and wife sleep under the same roof, but not in the same bed, if you catch my meaning.”

Sandi snapped the pen in two. Royal blue ink spattered her yellow blouse.

“I’m sorry,” Barkas said, standing, “I didn’t mean to upset you, but I have to dig as deep as I can. A man’s been murdered, and we have to catch the killer before he does it again.”

Sandi was sobbing. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me say things, but I won’t! You don’t know him. He’s gentle and kind.” She dabbed at the ink stains with a Kleenex, smearing them. “He couldn’t kill anybody. He couldn’t even take a dead mouse out of a mousetrap under my sink, and I had to do it.”

“Just because he can’t take a mouse out of a mousetrap doesn’t mean he can’t kill somebody, or have somebody killed.”

Sandi looked across her desk at Barkas. Her eyes were like ice. “You walk in here out of nowhere, you say you’re investigating a murder, you start implying things about me and Mr. Ludlow, but you know what? Your little game won’t work. I won’t say a word against him. Whatever you think he may have done, you’re wrong. And you know why? Because he’s way too smart to put himself in a situation where he might lose his money or go to jail. He’s way too smart for that.”

A black nurse and a white nurse helped Young stand up. The black nurse greased one end of a transparent plastic tube. When she looked up at Young, who was looming over her like Frankenstein’s monster, she said, “He’s too tall.” She found a chair, stood it in front of Young, and stepped up onto its seat. Then she slipped one end of the tube into his left nostril. Two or three inches in it stopped. She pushed harder, and Young cried out. She tried again, harder, but Young cried out again, so she stopped.

Down below, the white nurse said, “Try the other side.”

The black nurse withdrew the tube, stepped down off the chair, greased the end of the tube again, and climbed back up on the chair. This time she inserted the tube into the right nostril and it slid in smoothly, but when it reached the back of his throat, Young gagged and vomited a small amount of liquid into a kidney-shaped basin the white nurse held in front of him.

Eventually the tube was all the way in, about three feet of it. Young wasn’t sure he would be able to stand it. It felt like a spoon down his throat.