Part 20 (2/2)
As the feel of Martha's fingers was replaced by her mouth, moist and wet as it moved back and forth, George's knees became weak, and Martha had him sit on the bed as she continued her work.
”Dr. Curtis, is this how you treat all your patients who don't have insurance?” she asked.
George's eyes shot open at the sound of the word ”insurance,” and the sight in front of him almost made him puke. Bone continued to hold the gun, but in his other hand was a small phone with the camera lens pointed right at the doctor.
”No!” George shot up off the bed, but Bone stepped forward and pressed the gun again into the doctor's forehead. Bone smiled and began talking in a television news anchor voice.
”Dr. George Curtis, longtime family physician in Pulaski, Tennessee was arrested today on charges of a.s.sault and battery and third-degree rape as a tape surfaced of him trading medical services for s.e.xual favors. Dr. Curtis is under investigation by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, and it is believed that he may lose his medical license. His reputation, once pristine, is now beyond repair.”
”You son of a b.i.t.c.h,” George said as Martha walked back into the bathroom and closed the door.
”And then some,” Bone said. ”Now, I want you to tell me how I can get close enough to Bocephus Haynes to put a bullet in his brain.”
”It's impossible,” George managed, fumbling for his underwear and his pants. ”You said it yourself.”
”Think, Doc. Come on. How can I get close to Haynes and not be seen?”
George blinked when it hit him, and Bone smiled. ”You already know,” George said.
”That I do, Doc. It came to me when I was listening to the news about the trial on the way here. But I wanted you to come to it on your own.”
”You can get close, and you'll never be seen. It's-”
”Perfect,” Bone said, completing the thought. ”However, I will need one thing from you to make it work.”
”I'll get it,” George said. ”I'll give it to you in return for the video you just recorded.”
”Deal,” Bone said, extending his hand.
George Curtis's body trembled with a mixture of fear and relief, but he managed to shake Bone's hand. ”Deal.”
48.
By the time the Giles County Courthouse opened for business at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning, the square was covered in white. At least three hundred members of the Ku Klux Klan surrounded the courthouse, all wearing white robes and hoods. Many held signs saying ”Justice for Andy Walton,” or the shortened ”Justice.”
Inside Reeves Drug Store, Emma Jean Waites could hardly believe her eyes. She had lived in Pulaski all her life, long enough to have seen Klan rallies that were organized and well attended. Most of those rallies had centered around some kind of Confederate or Klan tradition. For a few years there was one on General Nathan Bedford Forrest's birthday in July. Forrest had been the first Grand Wizard of the Klan. In other years the Klan had marched on General Robert E. Lee's birthday in January. Emma Jean couldn't remember a time the Klan had rallied in front of the courthouse during a trial. If they had, it was nothing like this.
”Kinda reminds me of that Grisham book A Time to Kill,” she said out loud.
”Me too,” a voice came from beside her. ”At least they're not chanting 'Fry Bo.'”
Emma Jean turned to the voice. ”Why hi there, Dabsey. Where's Dr. Curtis today?”
”He's not seeing patients this week, so he sent me to drop off the prescriptions. I think he wanted to avoid this circus too.”
Emma Jean nodded and turned back to the window. ”Don't blame him. It's got to be hard. Is he going to watch the trial?”
Dabsey shook her head. ”Can't. He's been subpoenaed as a witness. Witnesses are excluded from the courtroom.”
”Really?” Emma Jean asked, again turning to look at Dabsey. For the first time Emma Jean noticed that Dabsey appeared distressed about something. Her brow was furrowed, and she seemed lost in thought.
”Yep,” Dabsey said, still watching the Klansmen through the window.
”Hey, you OK, girl?” Emma Jean asked. ”You look pale.”
”Fine,” Dabsey said. ”Just a little spooked by this. Normally, when the Klan does their marches I try to stay out of downtown.”
”We all do,” Emma Jean agreed. ”But those rallies are usually one-day ordeals. This thing may last a week. We can't just shut the town down for a week.”
”You're right,” Dabsey agreed, still watching through the window. She was holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee, but she had yet to take a sip.
”You sure you're OK?” Emma Jean asked.
”I'm fine, Emma Jean,” Dabsey said, drinking from the cup. She took too big a sip and almost cried out as the scalding coffee hit the back of her throat. Coughing, she began to walk toward the door. ”I have to get back to the office now.”
Before Emma Jean could say anything more, Dabsey was out the door and on the sidewalk. Dr. Curtis's practice was on East Jefferson, just a block away, so Emma Jean expected to see the receptionist take off in that direction.
But Dabsey didn't walk toward Curtis Family Medicine. Instead, she turned down First Street.
Where is she going? Emma Jean wondered. Then, feeling an intuitive nudge, Emma Jean whispered the words she was thinking out loud. ”Something is wrong.”
Dabsey Johnson felt her heart beating hard in her chest. Something had been bothering her all weekend, but she hadn't known what it was until thirty minutes ago. At fifty-eight years old, Dabsey was having more and more senior moments, where she forgot what she was about to say or couldn't remember what she'd done the day before. Something about last Friday had bothered her, but she hadn't figured it out until she arrived at work that morning.
When she looked at the sign-in sheets, she noticed that Friday's page was gone. In fact, it appeared that Dr. Curtis had replaced the entire sign-in booklet with a clean one. Which made no sense. The sign-in booklets contained forty pages and were typically thrown out monthly or when they ran out of pages. There had still been a number of pages left to work with for September, but Dr. Curtis had thrown the whole thing out.
Then it came to her. The walk-in, she thought, remembering the woman who had come to the office Friday morning. Dabsey had written the name down, and something about it had seemed familiar. Martha . . . Martha something. She had forgotten about it then, because the morning had been so busy. It was cold season, which meant Dr. Curtis's office was crawling with patients, most of them young mothers whose kids were in kindergarten or preschool. Dr. Curtis had said he would work the woman in at lunch, but by the time Dabsey had come back after a sandwich at Reeves Drug Store, she was gone. When she had asked Dr. Curtis about the woman, he had just shrugged and said he didn't have room for another patient.
So why hadn't he told her that when she had first walked in the door? Dabsey had figured it was because the woman was attractive. Though Dr. Curtis was a lifelong bachelor, there was never any doubt, at least not for Dabsey, that he was heteros.e.xual. She saw the way he admired women's backsides when they left the office, or the way he would glance down their cleavage when he was doing an examination. The woman from Friday had been attractive. She could see Dr. Curtis at least wanting to talk to her before he showed her the door. So why had it bothered her all weekend?
Martha . . . Dabsey had thought to herself. Then she had said it out loud. ”Martha . . .”
She had tried to forget about it by calling her husband, Steve, about dinner. But when she had reached for the telephone, she had seen the flyer. It was hidden under a bunch of magazines on her desk. Something Officer Springfield had dropped off three weeks earlier. Dabsey had s.n.a.t.c.hed the flyer and looked at the photograph. An old driver's license picture that had been blown up. The name below the photo had caused her heart to skip a beat. Martha Booher.
”If you see this woman, please call the sheriff's office immediately,” the flyer had said at the bottom of the page.
Walking down First Street, Dabsey removed the flyer from her purse and looked at the photograph again. Then the name below it. Martha Booher.
That's her, she knew. That was the woman on Friday. Dabsey knew that she was not a smart woman. But she had been gritty enough to obtain her GED after having to quit high school when she got pregnant. And determined enough to scratch out an LPN degree at Martin Methodist, which allowed her to not just sign patients into Dr. Curtis's office but also to administer medications, take blood, and obtain histories. She wasn't smart, but she wasn't stupid either. Maybe a little slow, but not stupid.
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