The Last Clinic Gary Gusick
Alibi New York
This is an uncorrected excerpt file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book. The Last Clinic is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. An Alibi eBook Original Copyright Š 2013 by Gary Gusick All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. Alibi and the Alibi colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC. eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54888-7 Cover design: Scott Biel www.readalibi.com
1 Morning Vigil It was 6:00 a.m. and still dark when Reverend Jimmy Aldridge dragged the seven-foot pine cross from the back of his oversized SUV. He leaned the cross against the rear door and examined the spot where the two spiky poles intersected. The rawhide cord that held the stakes together was wrapped three times and tied nice and tight. He fumbled around in back of the SUV until he found the rolled-up poster with a photo of an infant with a quote asking “Aren’t you glad I was born?” He carefully unrolled the poster, pressed it flat to the cross, and whacked it with the staple gun four times. Top, bottom, right, and left. He reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and came out with an envelope bulging with money. He locked the envelope in the glove compartment behind an official state map of Mississippi. Feeling behind the front passenger’s seat, he removed a brown gunnysack robe from its hanger. He lifted his arms and slipped the robe over his suit, letting it fall until it reached his shoe tops. Next he leaned his back against the SUV and pressed onto the cross, lifted his shoulders, and wrapped his arms around the beam. Bending at the waist, he hoisted the cross upward so that his back supported its weight. Then, step by step, he plodded up the hill a quarter mile until he reached the entrance to the Jackson Women’s Health Clinic. He positioned himself next to the gate, placing the bottom of the cross on the sidewalk and holding the staff upright with one hand. With his free hand he took a small flashlight from his pants pocket, flipped it on, and angled the light upward toward the poster, illuminating the photo of the infant.
A set of headlights popped up over the hill. A truck, a twelve-wheeler, rumbled his way. He lifted the cross a few inches off the ground and shook it at the driver. “Christ died so babies may live!” His robe flapped in the breeze as the truck roared by, the driver failing to react. A second vehicle, a Jackson school bus, followed. “The health clinic is a death clinic!” he yelled. This driver, a middle-aged hippie type, gave him the finger. “Have a blessed day, brother,” he called out to the disappearing taillights. Then added, “You baby-killing son of a whore.” The sun peeked over the horizon. A black SUV wheeled around the corner and came to a halt across the street, directly in Reverend Jimmy’s view. “The unborn have a right to live,” he shouted to the occupant. “God’s work must be our own.” The window on the driver’s side rolled down. Reverend Jimmy’s face broadened into a smile. “What are you doing here at this hour?” The driver said nothing. Still smiling, the preacher propped the cross against the fence, clicked off the flashlight, and started toward the SUV. Two steps later, he saw the barrel of the shotgun pointing out the window at his groin.
2 House Bill 674 Darla Cavannah was in REM sleep when she became aware of the ringing. She was dreaming about the child again, the little boy. It was dark in the dream at first and she could only sense the boy’s presence. Something told her they were on the same wavelength, though, she and the boy, yet she wasn’t sure if they were related, or friends, or even if they had met. She recalled catching glimpses of him in other dreams, where the boy had been running from room to room, but in that super slow motion they do in movies, his blondish/brownish hair, lighter than hers, bouncing up and down with each step he took. He was different ages in different dreams, as young as four and as old as twelve. Though the boy had been in many dreams, each dream was set in a different house. The houses always had multiple floors and many rooms. In every dream it was just Darla and the boy alone in the house, though they were always in different rooms. She could hear him calling to her as she moved from room to room, looking for him. His voice was like the choirboys she used to hear during Mass back in Philadelphia when she was a schoolgirl. Pure and sweet, it sounded as though it were coming from the next room. While she had no trouble picturing his features, she was also sure she’d never seen him face-to-face. Sometimes it felt like she was on the verge of catching up with him. Other times it seemed like he was about to slip away. That was the worst. One minute hope, the next despair. She heard ringing. It’s my alarm clock, she thought, the alarm on my cell. The alarm mixed with her dream and she speculated that the sound might be her biological clock going off. Her roommate, Kendall Goodhew, who had two children and was up on pop psychology, had planted the thought in Darla’s head two days earlier.
“Women in their mid to late thirties, it jumps up and bites them, Sugar, this barrenwomb issue. Especially if they’ve lost a husband like you have. You feel like time is running out. The chance for a child is slipping away from you. So you have these crazy dreams, and sometimes a woman can have panic attacks. I saw it on Oprah.” For Kendall, the talk show lady was the final word on all womanly matters. Kendall was right, of course, although so far there hadn’t been any panic attacks. Not yet, thank God. But there was this yearning and the aching sense of incompleteness, a void feeling in her womb. But there was more to it, issues too private to discuss even with Kendall. On the third ring, Darla identified the sound and groped around the nightstand for her phone. “Hello.” “Miss Darla?” She didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know it was Shelby Mitchell, the sheriff for Hinds County. Fifty-eight years old and a grandfather of six, he still addressed all women, regardless of age or marital status, as Miss, followed by their first name. “Are you familiar with House Bill 674?” Shelby did this sort of thing, came at you out of nowhere. She looked at the clock on the phone. It was just past eight. She was normally an early riser, but lately she’d fallen into sleeping until ten or eleven, and sometimes wallowing in the sheets until well past noon. “I do apologize for the somewhat early hour,” Shelby said. She rubbed her face and ran a hand through her morning hair, smoothing it out, and noticed she was feeling a little crampy. She was actually glad about it, glad that she could still ovulate. She’d missed a month and she hadn’t been with anybody. Thinking it might be the
onset of menopause had scared her. The discomfort was a good sign. Still groggy, she sat up on the edge of the bed. What had Shelby been saying? Something about a house bill? Not that it mattered. She wanted to go back to the dream with the boy. She wanted to hang up. “I hope this isn’t about work, Shelby. I’m on leave for a year. You’re the one who encouraged this.” “The unpaid leave. A verbal agreement, as I remember, but subject to the vicissitudes of the ever-changing business of law enforcement.” Shelby did crossword puzzles and whenever the opportunity arose enjoyed using fivedollar words like vicissitudes. “I need a favor,” he said. “Now that you put it that way.” She owed him one. Okay, more than one. When her husband died last fall, Shelby had come to her aid in that quiet, gallant way Southern men had. He’d used his influence to keep the details of her husband’s death out of the papers. Hushed up the stuff about Hugh’s being high on oxycodone when he wrapped his Mercedes around a streetlamp on his way home from the casino in Vicksburg. Thanks to Shelby, there was no mention of the gambling debts Hugh had run up. Shelby went further and called a friend, a state senator from over that way. He got the senator to convince a couple of the casino owners to go easy on the paper they were holding on Hugh and lower the vig, and then work out a reasonable payment plan so Darla could at least keep her house. Maybe some of the help was more out of respect for her husband’s football career than their marriage, more about protecting the image of a state treasure—that’s how Shelby and everybody else in Mississippi had looked at Hugh Cavannah. Darla owed Shelby, and now he was calling to collect. Must be something important. “Now about House Bill 674,” he said. “As I’m sure you’re aware . . .”
She twisted her head back and forth trying to loosen the kink in her neck. “I’m lucky if I can keep track of my electric bill, let alone a house bill, whatever it is. You know I’m not political.” Not being political was something you had to declare if you lived in Jackson, Mississippi, where the state government was the biggest employer and politics was only slightly less popular as a spectator sport than SEC football. “Here’s the short of it, if I must,” Shelby said, his sweet Southern drawl peppered with cynicism. “The pro-life forces in the great state of Mississippi are trying to get a law on the books that says life begins at conception. The personhood law, they call it. The idea being to take the new law up to the Supreme Court and knock heads with the pro-choice crowd. But the initiative was defeated because it was poorly written and confusing. Who knows how long before they can get the next personhood initiative before the voters? In the meantime, Bobby Goodhew, your roommate’s ex, his lobbying firm represents the National Rights of the Unborn. They got the chairman of the House Public Health and Human Services Committee, that little fat ass, Charlie Hogshead, to sponsor this bill, House Bill 674. I won’t torment you by reading the bill in its entirety. In essence, it says that no clinic, meaning no abortion clinic—of course there’s just one in the entire state—no abortion clinic can perform a D & C in Mississippi unless they have a physician who is on staff at . . . and I am reading now ‘. . . not less than three hospitals within a five mile radius of said clinic.’ You see where I’m headed, right?” This was how Shelby talked, like a slow ride down a winding country back road. “I have no idea where you’re headed.” “It all gets eventually around to Reverend Jimmy Aldridge. You know him?” “I know who he is. If you mean do I know him personally, we met a couple of times. Kendall used to attend services at his church. He married her and Bobby, didn’t he?” “Baptized their children, too. I was there at the wedding, along with half of northeast Jackson. Quite the to-do.”
“I’ve seen pictures of the wedding.” She had come home a few times to find her roommate, Kendall, in tears, going through a photo album, looking at wedding pictures, but mostly pictures of her two kids, Molly and Jake, ages ten and eleven. The kids now lived with Bobby. Separation from her children, and only getting to see them on weekends, was tearing Kendall apart. Shelby continued. “For the last three years, Reverend Jimmy’s been out picketing every morning in front of the abortion clinic. Carrying a cross with photos of a little baby on it. Calling attention to the goings-on at the clinic, you might say. Stirring the pot. Flagging the house members as they drive by on their way to the capitol. Doing his part to push the bill, number 674, through. In addition, of course, the said reverend is trying to shame women out of terminating their pregnancies.” Darla heard Shelby take a breath and thought about telling him to get to the point, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. “That doctor at the clinic—that Stephen Nicoletti fellow? Only two hospitals in Jackson have him listed on staff. Bobby Goodhew and his people saw to that. If the bill passes, and the good doctor isn’t listed on three hospitals, he won’t be allowed to perform abortions in the state of Mississippi. The Jackson Women’s Health Clinic will be out of business. Dr. Nicoletti will have to pack up his little black bag and move to Alabama. So you might say there’s a natural amount of antipathy between Reverend Jimmy and the doc.” “Please, Shelby, I haven’t had my coffee yet. Can we move this along?” “Stay with me. We’re in the homestretch.” “Go on.” “Now, if you’ll be so good as to turn on the TV, you’ll see that snot-nose reporter from WJAK, Josh Klein, talking about motive and possible suspects, like he’s a natural-born criminologist. Thinks he actually has a clue in hell about what’s going on. I assure you he doesn’t.”
She reached across the bed, found the remote on the opposite nightstand, and flipped on the TV. There he was, scrawny little reporter Josh Klein, a ringer for Woody Allen, microphone in hand, standing outside the entrance to the Jackson Women’s Health Clinic, along with uniformed cops from the sheriff’s department, firefighters from Engine Company #12, and a gaggle of onlookers, all bunched up and crowded into the camera’s eye. A couple of dumb-ass teenagers in the foreground were making faces and waving at the camera. Across the bottom of the screen, a big headline: Breaking News. “Reverend James Aldridge dead.” Darla muted the sound, preferring to hear Shelby’s version of events. “Looks like the Ole Miss Grove on homecoming weekend, don’t it?” he said. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t follow college football. I prefer the pro game. You know that.” “Sorry. My mistake. You ain’t from down here. Anyway, the shooting was called in about an hour ago. A jogger—a young woman, a junior over at Millsaps College—came up on Reverend Jimmy’s body outside the clinic. She found him draped up on that cross like he was our dear savior. Three loads of buckshot in him. Freaked out when she saw the corpse shot all to hell. She thought it was Armageddon.” “Don’t tell me. One of the guys from the sheriff’s department showed up before Jackson PD, and now you’re stuck with a murder. The first one there picks up the case. It’s a stupid rule. Have you tried getting the Jackson PD to take it off your hands?” Jackson PD had about five times the manpower as the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. “The chief of police is too smart for that. Besides which, the mayor’s already called. He wants me heading up the case. Says it’s because I’m the number one law enforcement officer in the metro. Meaning I get more money than the Jackson chief of police. The real reason the mayor wants my services is that he knows there ain’t much chance of anybody finding the killer. So when this thing goes down unsolved, it will look like my failure, which will not endear me to the Christian right. This is most everybody in Jackson, most everybody who votes, anyway, except the Belhaven Obamaites over in your neck of the woods.”
“So you’re definitely running for mayor next term? And you can’t refuse this case because you need the current mayor’s endorsement?” “Only if I want to win.” Darla heard Shelby take a breath and knew he was going to pop the question. She also knew what her answer would be. “Here’s my problem. I’m going to need two senior detectives on this one, and sorry to say we’re strapped, what with the layoffs and all. I’m offering you the right of first refusal.” “Okay, I refuse.” “Just moments ago I said to myself, Sheriff Shelby, seeing as your office is about to find itself in the middle of a religious right shit storm, it sure would be real, I mean, real nice if you could tell the mayor of Jackson and the governor that you had available for this case the services of an officer with stellar credentials, Philadelphia PD, and a hate crimes specialist.” “I’m not a hate crimes specialist.” She was a standard-issue detective who’d paid her dues. That was all. First in Philadelphia, then down here in Jackson, after her husband blew out his knee four years ago, ending his football career, and they came back south so he could help run his family’s business. Shelby continued, “If I’m not mistaken, you found the skinhead dry cleaner who asphyxiated the Islamic minister by putting poison in his suit coat. And shot him in the behind when he was trying to run off, and then when he didn’t go down shot him in the back with that tiny .380 Taurus you like because it looks good strapped to your ankle. Damn fine marksmanship it was. Got you your fifteen minutes of fame to boot.” “The story in People was only because my husband was an All-Pro wide receiver. Anyway, what if this isn’t a hate crime?” “Doesn’t matter. That’s how the media will play it.”
“So this is really about what you can say to the press. You want to say to them that you’ve got an ‘expert’ on this case? Even if it’s that Yankee bitch?” “I don’t recall ever using the b-word in reference to you, though I am prone to colorful descriptive.” “More than likely you called me ‘that Yankee bitch, Miss Darla,’ ever the gentleman.” “Maybe I did call you that, just once, during our getting to know each other period. At the time, you were referring to me as Asshole Andy of Mayberry.” “So we’re even, I guess,” she said. The transition from the Philadelphia Police Department to the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department had some rough patches the first couple of years. A big change. Philadelphia Metro had a host of units, divisions, and task forces. Lots of opportunities for an ambitious young cop and lots of support staff. The Hinds County Sheriff’s Department ran everything of consequence out of one department, criminal investigations with twenty detectives. Darla had to empty her own wastebasket at night. But it had been mostly low-pressure cases with regular hours, allowing her more time to spend with her husband. The problem was the other investigators, the bubbas. Not that some of them weren’t first-rate officers, but they weren’t used to outsiders. The prevailing opinion was that anybody who moved down here was out to show them up. Even Shelby felt that way. A year after Darla started, he still thought she was trying to get him fired. He could have sacked her, calling it budgetary issues, but he didn’t. Toward the middle of the second year, she made two good homicide busts that stuck. She was smart enough to stay in the background both times while he took most of the credit. The move cemented their working relationship. “We’ve got authorization for unlimited overtime, and if it means anything to you, I’m going to personally run the investigation. You’ll report directly to me on this one. No gobetweens, no lieutenants, no captains.”
She knew enough about Shelby to know he’d give her room. Let her follow her intuition, operate outside the lines a little now and then, if she was quiet about it. “Who else have you assigned to the case? Quentin Mosley? Joe Strum?” She picked the two top detectives in the department. “They’re tied up in a trial.” “Ramparts? Lon Edwards?” “Took early retirement. Both of ’em. Budgetary issues.” “Who does that leave? Who’s going to be my partner?” There was a pause. “Like I said, you can work independent.” “For Christ’s sake, Shelby, who is it?” “Tommy Reylander.” She shook her head in disbelief. “The Elvis impersonator?” The worst detective in the department. Darla had avoided working with him for her three years on the force. A life-size picture popped into her head. Tommy, with his hair slicked up in a pompadour, standing in front of the TV camera, giving the reporter that “Yes ma’am, no ma’am, thank you very much” routine. “I thought he was making a career change.” “Sorry to say, that didn’t work out. He did get himself entered into that Elvis impersonating contest they do every year up in Tupelo. Came in dead last. Kind of put a damper on his aspirations for a singing career. Course he still does gigs on the side. Mostly I assign him auto thefts and burglaries over in the west Jackson ghetto. The stuff nobody expects to be solved.”
“So what’s he doing on this case?” “I’m afraid, His Honor, Mayor Williamson, got his way on this one. Demanded I put Detective Reylander on the case. Tommy was a member of Reverend Jimmy’s church. He’s also the mayor’s nephew.” “Just one big happy family.” “This is Mississippi. Everybody’s related to somebody, and in Tommy’s case the somebody happens to be mayor.” “Tommy Reylander is lazy, arrogant, a grandstander, a media suck-up, and lacks the basic instincts for police work.” “Yankee bluntness notwithstanding, your assessment is more or less correct.” “He should have been demoted for blowing that meth bust last fall.” “You know that ain’t how things work down here. An officer don’t get demoted for being stupid. Usually they get an assistant, which unfortunately we can’t afford at present. To get fired, a detective like Tommy needs to get caught doing something downright illegal. Then maybe we can do a little wrist slapping. Unfortunately, Tommy ain’t got the smarts to try anything ambitious.” “Does he still show up for his shift in that pink Caddy with the giant tail fins?” “Only when he thinks the media will be there.” “That’s how he blew that meth bust, isn’t it? The cooker spotted his car.” “I don’t expect you and Tommy to start picking out dinette sets together. Just keep each other in the loop.” “I was having a very interesting dream when you called. I’m going to go see if I can find it.”
Raising his voice to her just a wee bit, Shelby said, “Miss Darla, I’m out of my depth on this case. We don’t see this sort of thing around here that often. If we don’t make an arrest real quick like and make it stick, the family values politicos in this town, the Rights of the Unborn membership, with the feelings they’ll stir up . . .” “What are the citizens going to do? Form a vigilante committee and hang the abortionist?” She laughed a little, until she heard that Shelby wasn’t laughing along with her. There was another long silence: two cops waiting each other out. Finally, “Okay,” she said, but I want as much overtime as I need. No questions asked. That’s the only way I’ll do it.” “Thank you, Jesus.” He actually did sound relieved. “And if Tommy Reylander gets out of line, which he probably will, I get to tell him to fuck off.” “Words to that effect. Less graphic I would hope.” “Are there any other little surprises you have for me this morning?” “There is one bit of good news. Remember how you were always telling me that the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department needed to get us some personnel to send over to FUSION?” FUSION was a regional combined-forces IT center. Jackson PD, the local office of the FBI, and several other law enforcement agencies in the region all had dedicated staffers accessing a national crime database, from a center in Pearl, a small town east of Jackson. “You actually found the money for an IT person?” “Not exactly. We got us an intern from Jackson State, fellow working on his PhD. So we don’t really need to be paying him. His name is Uther.” “Like Luther Vandross?”
“No. Uther, without the l. Uther—as in, I don’t know what. Johnson’s his last name. He dresses like a Muslim minister, with that bow-tie deal. He looks like that character in the Spike Lee movie, the one where a bunch of them blacks trashed that pizza place. Course, that was probably before your time.” “Do the Right Thing. Yes, I got it on Netflix. But what character?” “The one that started all the trouble.” “Radio Raheem? The big guy with the boom box?” “No, not him. The little guy with the crazy hair. Buggin’ Out, I think was his name.” “You got something against African American hairstyles?” “There you go now, acting like I’m always stereotyping. But crazy hair is crazy hair. On the other hand, this Uther is a well-mannered young man, even if he does talk kind of funny.” “Ebonics? Is that what you’re saying? He uses a lot of street talk?” “The opposite. Look, you can form your own impressions.” “Straight out, is he ours or are we going to have to share him?” “We can use him if we need to, but the school wants him to spend most of his time on a damn fool research project. Get a load of the title: How to Use the Computer to Identify Undetected Crimes. Can you believe what they’re letting kids do in schools these days? Like we don’t have enough crimes to solve already. Got to find some more. Detect the undetected. What’s next? Dogs sleeping with cats? Anyway, this young Uther, he about put me to sleep just listening to him go on about all his big ideas.” “Fine. Whatever.” “You find the murderer for me before Jackson starts a civil war over abortion and I’ll get you a pay bump when you come back.”
“I’m not sure I’m coming back.” “One last thing. About me using that b-word. Thinking back on it, I said it only that one time. And that night I got on my knees and asked Jesus to forgive me.” “I admit, you’re a better Christian than I,” she said. But he’d already hung up. She sat the phone back in its cradle, walked over to the window, opened the shutters, and let in the morning glare. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Tommy Reylander?”
ORDER NOW