Third man out - Stevenson Richard - Страница 42

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"Got a minute?"

He followed me back into the shadows of the church entryway.

"Tell me again," I said, "how the pathologist identified John Rutka's body."

"Why? You don't think that's John in the hearse?"

"I guess it must be. Forensic pathologists don't make mistakes, do they?"

"Only very rarely."

"Oh. Only very rarely."

He said, "There was the circumstantial evidence, of course-the wallet, and some traces of clothing. A belt buckle, I think. Then there was the chipped ankle bone from the gunshot wound. The clincher was the dental work. John's records were with Dr.

Glossner right here in Handbag and the mouth on that corpse was indisputably Rutka's."

I saw the filthy glass half full of cloudy water on a shelf by the sink in John Rutka's bathroom. I said, "The mouth was John Rutka's, or just the teeth in it? Rutka didn't wear dentures, did he?"

Bailey thought about this. "I don't know. He would have been kind of young. The report just said the pathologist's findings were consistent with the dental records submitted by Dr. Glossner."

I trotted over and caught Ann Rutka as she was climbing into her car. I said quietly, so that her bored- and irritated-looking children could not hear, "Bub Bailey and I are just tying up a couple of loose ends, and we have a peculiar question."

"Go ahead."

"Did your brother wear dentures?"

"Oh, God, yes. Since he was twenty. The dummy practically lived on candy bars, and when he was a kid getting him to brush his teeth was like-pulling teeth. In fact, that's what Dr. Glossner did. John's teeth were so rotten by the time he finished nursing school that Dr. Glossner pulled them all out and gave John dentures. He never seemed to mind, though. By then I guess he had other things on his mind besides what he looked like when he went to bed and got up. Why do you ask?"

"Just something about the pathologist's report. But that clears it up," I said. "One other thing. When John was a nurse at St.

Vincent's, what kind of nursing did he do? What unit did he work in? Do you know?"

"For a long time John worked in critical care," she said. "And then later with AIDS patients. Eddie says John was one of the best they had. He knew what he was doing, and he cared. I'm sure it's true. When John believed in something, there was no stopping him."

"It must have been devastating to him when he was fired from the hospital."

"It was hard on him, yes, but I think he never regretted what he was fired for-taking morphine to give to AIDS patients who were in pain. Anyway, John wasn't fired from the hospital. He just wasn't allowed to work as a nurse anymore. He was so well thought of he was kept on in the hospital for several months as some kind of junior administrator until he moved back up to Handbag. Whatever mistakes he made, John was still appreciated."

"What did he do in the hospital after he left nursing?" I asked.

"He worked in the morgue. Creepy, huh? Not for this Rutka, I'll tell ya. In fact, some of John's best friends who came to the funeral worked in the morgue, too." We looked out toward the street in time to see the station wagon and the other car from the city just pulling away. "Well," Ann said, "I've got a house full of cousins to feed, so I'd better hit the road. Stop in the store sometime when you get a chance. And thanks again for all your good work. I don't know this Father Morgan they say killed John, but it doesn't surprise me at all that Bishop McFee had something to do with it. He always seemed to be mad at somebody or something. I guess it was himself."

We said good-bye and I went back over to Bub Bailey. "He wore dentures. He used to work in a morgue in New York. That crew that just pulled out of here, they work in a morgue in New York. They could have filched a male corpse Rutka's size-New York is overflowing with homeless dead people nobody knows or cares about- and chipped the ankle bone and substituted Rutka's dentures for the dead man's dental work. The crude surgery would have been covered up by the effects of the fire.

"Then, all they needed to do to pin the 'murder' on Father Morgan was tear off some of the white Chrysler's mud flap and leave it at the abduction scene. And then make a couple of anonymous, knowing phone calls to you and to me directing us to Slinger, and then to Linkletter, and then onward to the bishop for his grand outing."

"It'd be something John Rutka might dream up."

"That's what I think."

"He was always a boy who kept people on their toes." end user

I told Bailey and Timmy that it was up to me to do what had to be done next. I was the one who had gotten Father Morgan charged with murder and I was the one who had outed the bishop. So the rest of it was up to me too. They agreed.

Bailey said he hoped to hear from me soon. I said I hoped he would, too. He offered Timmy a ride into Albany, and I gassed up the car and drove over to Elmwood Place.

I could see from the bottom of the street that two cars were in the Rutka driveway, in the process of being loaded with suitcases and boxes. I waited around the corner and half an hour later, when the two vehicles passed me, I followed the station wagon, in which Eddie Sandifer rode next to the driver.

We hit the interstate network around Albany, then took the Thruway south. At some point I lost the second car but stuck with the one Sandifer rode in. By one-thirty we were on the Major Deegan heading southeast. I had no food in the car and my headache was back. I offered the toll collector on the Triborough Bridge ten dollars for a candy bar if he had one. He said twenty and I called him a name and drove on. Briefly distracted, I lost the wagon for a panicky quarter of a minute but caught sight of it ahead on the always slow approach to the bridge, which we both crept across. Sandifer's car headed out past LaGuardia, then onto the Van Wyck and finally into JFK.

The late-afternoon near-gridlock hadn't hit the airport yet and we cruised into the lot across from the International Departures complex. I parked and slouched down and watched them unload. The boxes were left in the wagon, but three of Sandifer's bags were pulled out and the two men carried them across the loop roadway and into the Mexicana Airlines departure lobby. After they were inside the building, I followed.

I saw the three of them-Sandifer, his Queer Nation chum, and John Rutka-hugging one another at the end of a long check-in line. Rutka was wearing shades and a tacky blond wig, but there was no mistaking the Byronic profile.

I walked over and said, "Don't you guys ever eat? How about some lunch? Eddie, you're rich, so you can pay."

Sandifer fell backwards, breathing hard, and the Queer Nation man glared and stepped toward me. Rutka just grinned and took off his shades and extended his hand.

I grasped it and said, "Nice work, John. It was your piece de resistance. An outer's masterpiece."

He looked at me levelly. His wild eye wasn't wandering at all. "I knew you'd appreciate it, Strachey, when you figured it out.

Even if I hadn't wanted so badly to get McFee, I still would have enjoyed doing it to earn your appreciation and approval." He grinned contentedly.

"Appreciation, yes, but I have to tell you I don't approve. No, John, I don't approve at all. A Father Andrew Morgan is scheduled for arraignment an hour from now on a charge of murder. Your murder. You claim to be a man after justice.

Is that fair?"

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