Chapter 5

All the angst his wife had introduced to his life faded as Russ drove the few blocks from the Commode to the University. Breakfast with Sam, Kate and Majewski had helped cheer him up, but nothing energized him more than his work. There was a ton of things he needed to organize for his upcoming trip to Ecuador, excitement overtook him as the Biology Department came into view. He looked forward to spending the entire day with Vin.

 She worked in a sort of sub-department shared by Biology and the Medical School. It was a natural partnership, they both agreed. The possible new orchid species on Russ found on Wilder Island had captured Vin’s interest. 

“Russ, you must let me analyze it,” she had insisted. “It could have exactly the alkaloid I’ve been looking for.”

That alkaloid was mentioned repeatedly in some of the ancient Chinese medicine recipes, but no one had been able to identify what it was, other than it was a miraculous cure for cancer. Vin thought Jadum wilderii might just be the answer.

How fantastic would that be? That he would not only find a new, undiscovered species of orchid that would also cure the most dreaded disease known to humans!

Russ pulled into the parking lot and into his designated slot. Up the steps at the back of the Biology building, two at a time. He passed by Alfredo’s door on the off-chance he was there. He wasn’t. Russ hoped he’d show up—he really needed some more samples of Jadum, and no one could get to Wilder Island where it grew without Alfredo’s invitation.

At his desk in his office, his email page opened as soon as he logged on to his computer. He smiled at the twelve messages from Vin. The words “HOLY BAI-JI JIAO!” blared at him. So like Vin. Her enthusiasm was loud and clear. He dialed her number from his cell phone.

“Come over here right now,” Vin said without greeting him and hung up.

Russ grabbed the small black case that contained his laptop and trotted down the stairs, out the double glass doors, across a small patio, and into BioMed. She worked in the basement, where all the analytical equipment was housed. 

“In case it floods or something, they want to make sure all this expensive stuff is the first to go,” she joked.

In fact, BioMed had recently increased its personnel, students, and research projects, and was literally bursting at the seams. Vin and her instruments were temporarily housed in the basement until the new facility was finished.

Vin was the smartest person Russ knew, having earned a PhD from Duke University Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology by the time she was twenty-four. Her senior thesis as an undergraduate was impressive enough to allow her to jump from undergrad straight to a doctorate. It helped that she had started college at the age of sixteen, having skipped two grades during her elementary school years.

Vin’s office fascinated Russ. His own desk was neat as a pin. But he was not in the midst of writing several proposals and papers simultaneously, while doing the research required for both. He never felt like he even approached her intellectual brilliance. Or her amazing ability to multi-task.

Vin sat at her desk typing rapidly on a keyboard behind several stacks of paper and journals, with a great many post-it notes of different colors sticking out of them.

“Have we cured cancer?” Russ asked with exaggerated excitement as he burst through her door.

“Oh, heavens, no!” she said without looking up. “That’s not our job, thank God! We just have to find bizarre little properties in ordinary things. Someone else will have to figure out how to cure cancer.”

After typing in a few more characters, she hit the last one with finesse and turned to Russ. “And we did. That is, you did.”

“Me?”

“You,” she said, grinning a she pushed the print key. A few seconds later, her printer came to life and spit out a single sheet of paper. She handed it to Russ without looking at it.

“Fantastic!” Russ said, shaking his head as he read the lab report. “But what did I do?”

“You found an orchid with the bizarre little properties we seek,” she said, laughing.“Your Jadum contains large amounts, relatively speaking of course, of the combination of alkaloids that have been shown in a scant few, yet positively eyebrow-raising laboratory tests to be highly effective in experimental treatments for cancerous tumors.”

Orchids had been the steadfast interest of Russ’s life, since he was a small child. Jade loved orchids the way most people love them: for their highly visible, very beautiful, very colorful, unabashedly exposed sexual organs. Vin loved them the way he did—as a scientist, fascinated by the gifts of Nature. And the gifts within gifts.

Vin had told him on a few occasions of her interest in Chinese medicine, borne largely out of the work she did. “Plants pretty much give us all the medicines and pain-killers we have,” she told him. “And we’re not the first ones to figure that out.”

Vin had been part of several projects that concerned some preliminary testing, she told him. “We discovered that at very high concentrations, about a hundred times higher than in nature, the Bai-Ji alkaloids found in some species of orchid stopped blood flow to tumors, at the same time switching off the gene that tells a cell to replicate itself infinitely.”

“That’s fantastic!” Russ said.

“It also killed the patient, a laboratory rat,” Vin said. “But that’s not our problem either, fortunately. We only care about how much of these alkaloids are in Jadum wilderii. And where in the plant the alkaloid resides— seems it’s unevenly concentrated in the flowers, with little to none anywhere else.”

“Jadum wilderii is not a typical orchid,” Russ said with a smile. That much he had learned when he first discovered it on Wilder Island. “That purplish blue color caught my attention. I had thought it might be due to atypical alkaloid concentrations in the flower.”

“And you were right, Dr Matthews!” Vin said. “Let’s get to work on merging our research and write this puppy up. Do you have a draft of your part of the paper?”

“Give me a minute,” Russ said. He withdrew his laptop from its case and opened it. He attached the file to an email. 

Seconds after he pushed ‘send,’ Vin said, “Got it! We’ll combine mine with yours today, take both home tonight, read, edit, and finish it off tomorrow. I’d like to get it sent off to Pharmacology Journal before we leave for Ecuador. It’s the best place to put out provocative hypotheses based on convincing, yet scant evidence. We’ll write a more involved, more data-laden paper later, after we get back.”

Majewski left the Commode for the police station, to possibly ID the body they’d found as Stella’s. He tried not to hope it was her. But it would surely make his life easier if it was.

God knows she had made everyone’s life harder. Mine. Mother’s. Her own.

When Majewski had last gone home to deal with Stella’s running away for the final time, Mother was hysterical. “Stella’s got herself pregnant. Pregnant!” Mother wailed into her hanky. “What will I tell people? How could she shame me like this?”

“Where is she now?” he had asked.

But Mother had only waved him away as a new round of sobs shook her shoulders.

Majewski found her—situated on a tiny island in the middle of the small stream that ran through the family’s property. She had constructed a rude shelter that almost  suggested a large bird nest—a network of branches interwoven with vines and pine needles. A teakettle, a cup, a frying pan, and a sleeping pad completed the furnishings. She was quite pregnant. 

He returned to the house, called an ambulance, and led the paramedics to Stella. Mother followed, wailing and wringing her hands. Expressionless and silent, Majewski watched the paramedics wrap a struggling and screaming Stella into a straight jacket. He felt nothing except a profound wish to be gone.

When the ambulance drove away, he couldn’t hear Stella’s screaming. But he could hear Mother’s histrionics. He gritted his teeth against her stream of angry recriminations peppered with bleating about how Stella had made her suffer so endlessly.

“And now this,” Mother had moaned over and over, rocking herself, perpetually hanky-dabbing at what he was sure were fake tears.

“She’s Rosencranz’s problem now,” he said tersely and walked out the door of the family mansion. He never went back home again, but for the one occasion of his father’s funeral. 

Mother made him Stella’s legal guardian, ensuring he would never be able to wash his hands of her. Every once in awhile over the years, Mother would pester him to approve a new procedure that might help Stella. He signed off on every single one, never asking for any information, including if these procedures were actually helping Stella or just burning up the family’s wealth.

After Mother passed, he set up a trust fund to pay whatever bills Rosencranz sent for her stay. There would be no more procedures, no consultations with doctors. Just her room and board. When the trust fund ran out some 6 years ago, Stella became the state’s burden.

And that was that, until Stella decided to re-enter his life and ruin it.

Divine Providence had blessed him lately; perhaps the body was indeed Stella’s. That would be the best thing. Nothing but misery had surrounded that girl from the moment she was born. Perhaps it was time she was delivered from all that.

He pulled into the police station and parked. Manzi, though—what the devil is going on with him?  It was so unlike him to be so incommunicable. And there was a great deal for the two of them to talk about. He could not wait to tell Manzi that his research into DiggyDocs had unearthed many interesting things. And then they’d talk about the paper they would co-write.

Detective O’Malley escorted Majewski to the morgue, and opened the door. The odor of bleach and blood nauseated Majewski, but he betrayed nothing. Like a corpse. A man in a white coat nodded and led them to a row of square white doors. He pulled the handle on one and a long drawer slid out.

Majewski choked at the gruesome sight of the nude woman whose bloated face was near unrecognizable. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear; the bloodless wound gaped open. He made the sign of the cross over the body with his right hand, resisting the urge to vomit.

“I am sorry,” O’Malley said. “This is never easy.”

“May the dear Lord Jesus receive you into his arms,” Majewski said to the pale flesh, “that you may finally rest in peace.” 

“Is she your sister?” Detective McDermott asked.

It isn’t Stella.

After blessing himself again, he turned to the detective. “It could be her, Stella had long black hair…”

Tempting as it was to give a positive identification, Majewski resisted. He pulled his eyes away from the body. “But I cannot say it is not her, nor can I be sure it is. I am sorry, Detective.”

“No problem,” Detective McDermott said. “I didn’t expect you could; you said on the phone you had not seen your sister in a number of years. And this body is pretty messed up. But we always start here—recognition and identification of the body by a family member is always our preference.” 

The detective pushed the drawer back, but the image of the dead woman’s slit throat remained in Majewski’s memory.

Not Stella.

“Let me escort you up to the lab for the DNA test,” O’Malley said. “That’ll tell us everything.”

Majewski managed to nod and murmur, “Okay.”

“If it makes you feel any better, we were going to do the DNA test, even if you had positively identified her.”

Majewski followed the detective out of the morgue. At the lab, O’Malley stood aside and said, “They’ll scrape a cell sample from your cheek. We’ll send it on to be analyzed, and once we get the results, I’ll call you.”

Majewski left the police station, got into in his car and told the navigating app on his cellphone to provide directions to Kafka Memorial Hospital. He could never find the time, nor the inclination to visit Stella during her time at Rosencranz Asylum. Funny how he could now made the trip to the new hospital where she had never been. Perhaps it was because he knew she wasn’t there.

A pleasant, yet humorless female voice instructed him to turn right onto University Drive. The voice reminded him of a nun he had in catholic school in his boyhood, who enunciated every syllable so carefully, it took her twice as long to say everything.

It drove him nuts.

At 11 o’clock on the dot, the door to Kate’s office opened, and an exceedingly handsome, well-dressed woman stepped inside.

“Hello!” she said with a bright smile and her hand extended. “I’m Minerva Braun”

“Yes!” Kate said, taking Ms Braun’s hand. “Please come in!”

“Perhaps you know of my late husband, Henry?” Mrs Braun said as she took a seat.

“Uh, yes,” Kate said. Who doesn’t? It was hard to imagine this elegant woman across the desk had been married to a lout like Henry. “I had heard that he passed. My condolences.” Whatever  could she want with a small-time attorney like me?

A broad smile swept across Mrs Braun’s face. “Henry was a difficult man. But no matter!” She waved her gloved hand. “I do want to thank you for saving that enchanted island from Henry. I cheered you on when I saw the newscasts of the Friends of Wilder Island on tv.” 

She snickered behind the gloved hand. “I even donated to your cause, under an assumed name of course. Henry would have been enraged if he knew.” She grinned with the satisfaction of having bested the beast.

“It was my pleasure,” Kate said, feeling her shoulders relax. “I had a lot of help. We are all very happy the way things turned out.”

“Indeed,” Mrs Braun said. “I hope that the island remains forever safe and wild.”

“That’s the purpose of the land trust,” Kate said. “Perhaps you will consider becoming a board member?”

“In fact, I will!” Mrs Braun said. “But, there’s something else I need to take care of first.” She pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into her small leather handbag. “I want to change my name.”

Kate’s mouth fell open, and Mrs Braun laughed.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Kate said. “It’s just—”

“So soon?” Mrs Braun grinned wickedly. “Quite poor taste also, don’t you agree? I have not even buried him yet.”

“Deliciously poor taste,” Kate said, chuckling. She turned to her computer and started typing. “Are you taking back your maiden name?”

“Yes,” Mrs Braun said. “It was duBois. And I want to use my middle name, Gabrielle, as my primary legal name, or whatever you call it.”

Gabrielle?

Kate turned her head and stared. “Gabrielle?”

“Yes,” she said. “Gabrielle duBois. Is that a problem?”

“Ah, not at all,” Kate said. “It’s just that Gabrielle is an unusual name. See, during our  Friends of Wilder Island Arts and Crafts Fair, a woman named Gabrielle bought a painting at the silent auction we held to raise money to save the island.”

“That was me!” Mrs Braun said. Her eyes lit up, and the smile returned. “The Wilder Side—marvelous painting by my favorite local artist, Jade Matthews! I had donated it to the library, but it never got there.” 

Her face darkened and she frowned. “I never saw it again after that auction. It just disappeared. No one knew anything. But—” she shrugged and exhaled a long sigh. “I never asked him—I didn’t want to know, but I am sure Henry was behind it.”

The vivid image that Russ described of awakening in the dead of night to find Wilder Side burning on their front porch rose up in Kate’s memory. And her own voice saying, “I am sure Henry is behind this.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kate said.

“Me too,” Mrs Braun said. “The destruction of the beautiful painting broke my heart. But that’s over now, thank God. And Henry has left me a very wealthy woman. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of asking Ms Matthews, that is, commissioning her for another painting. Do you know how I can reach her?”

“I do,” Kate said, smiling as she scribbled on a post-it note. “Here’s Jade’s cell phone number. I’m sure she’d be just ecstatic to hear from you.” 

Gabrielle put the note in her purse. “I’ll call her. Thank you.”

“All right, Ms Gabrielle duBois,” Kate said as she faced her computer. “That is a lovely name. You are essentially resuming your maiden name.”

“My full maiden name was Minerva Gabrielle duBois, after my Greek and French grandmothers, respectively. I want to get rid of Minerva. I always hated that name. I—well, I just want to make a new start. You know?”

“I do,” Kate said. “I started over here in Ledford, after a dismal failed marriage—we had no kids, so I changed my name back to the original. I also cut off all my hair.”

Gabrielle gazed at Kate’s flaming red hair, now reaching her shoulders. “I would not have had the courage to cut my hair if it looked like yours.”

“I was making a political statement,” Kate said, tossing her head.

She powered the printer on her desk and it spit out a single sheet of paper. She handed it to Mrs Braun saying, “Okay, sign this, I’ll notarize it, and as soon as I walk it over to the courthouse this afternoon, you will officially be Gabrielle duBois.”

“Thank you! I want Minnie Braun to disappear forever,” she said as she signed. “Along with her late husband.” She pushed the papers back to Kate. “There is one more thing I need you to do, Ms Herron.”

“Certainly. I am at your service, Ms duBois.”

“Well, perhaps two things. First, you must call me Gabrielle.”

“That would be my pleasure, Gabrielle,” she said. “You must also call me Kate.”

“Fine,” Gabrielle said and opened her purse. She withdrew her checkbook and without asking how much she owed for Kate’s legal services, she filled it all in, tore it from the book.

“Consider this a retainer for your services,” she said and handed the check to Kate.

Kate glanced at the check. $10,000? “Gabrielle, this is far too much for a simple name change. Please, I—”

“The second thing I want you to do,” Gabrielle said, holding her hand up to silence Kate, “is to begin the probate of my late husband’s estate. I’ll owe you much more than that, in the end. Consider it a retainer, or whatever.”

Kate’s mouth fell open, and her eyebrows nearly reached her scalp.

Gabrielle laughed again. “I love shocking you, Ms Herron—Kate. You are able to probate estates, are you not?”

“Uh, yes, of course,” Kate stammered. “That’s what I do. I’m honored. Thank you.” omg! Is this real? Probating Henry Braun’s estate! OMG! I can’t wait to tell Sam!

“I’ll have Jules Sackman send over the documents concerning Henry’s financial holdings and what-not,” Gabrielle said. And laughed again. “He was my late husband’s attorney. I sent him a letter this morning, firing him.”

Kate smiled and nodded. The last person she wanted to deal with over Henry’s estate was Jules Sackman. She drew a breath and said, “Good. He’s a smarmy bastard. Though I oughtn’t speak of one of my own in such a way—”

“But he is a smarmy bastard,” Gabrielle said. “Pretending to be concerned with me. Ha! He’s a liar and a thief, and if I never see that greasy smile of his again, it’ll be too soon. That’s why I gave you such a large retainer. You will earn it, I am sure. Chances are the estate will be excruciating to probate, considering Jules Sackman was involved in all of Henry’s finances. I’m surprised he somehow didn’t make off with all Henry’s loot.”

Gabrielle reached into her handbag and withdrew a compact disc. “Here is his will, by the way. Unless you need a hard copy?”

“If I do, I can print one out,” Kate said, willing her hand not to tremble as she reached for the CD. It was hard to maintain her decorum. She wanted to dance on her desk. And call Sam. I can’t wait to tell him!

“Wait!” Gabrielle said. “I didn’t even think of this until now, but will changing my name affect my inheriting Henry’s wealth?”

“No,” Kate said without even cracking the big fat smile that she was keeping trapped behind her teeth, “that will not affect anything. Women change their names all the time. And there is a paper trail, in case anyone wants to dispute it. But who would? Everyone in Ledford knows who you are.”

Gabrielle laughed. “In spite of my best efforts to stay hidden!”

“Low profile has its merits,” Kate said. She turned to her computer, and touched the keyboard, which made the monitor come alive. “Okay then, let’s get the probate of Henry’s will started. It always takes longer than anyone thinks.” She opened a file, hit the print button. “Do you need money in the meantime?”

“Not at all,” Gabrielle said. “You see, for years, I squirreled away a few pennies here and there out of the household and personal items allowances I received every month from from Henry. He was quite generous with me, in spite of his other breathtaking flaws. But on occasion, he wanted me to look like a wealthy man’s wife. Anyway, I invested what I had stashed over the years. I actually don’t really need his money to live on. That check I gave you came from personal funds.”

Kate laughed out loud. “Did Henry ever know you were doing this?”

“I think so,” Gabrielle said, laughing. “He never let on, but if anything, he’d approve—even the sneaky way I did it.” She laughed again. “What he would not have approved of is that I shopped for all my clothes at second-hand stores. Oh, some of them were pretty high-end, I grant you! For those public occasions, you know.”

“I love it,” Kate said, laughing with her. She reached behind her and pulled a stack of paper off the printer. “Here’s a couple documents I need you to sign, which authorize me to probate Henry’s estate, as well as the fee, which can be hourly or a percentage set by the courts.” 

Probating Henry Braun’s estate. It gave her goosebumps.

“Fine,” Gabrielle said. “Percentage will work better for you, I am sure. Henry was loaded. I’ll be hard pressed to spend all his money.” She pushed the signed document pile back toward Kate.

“Great!” Kate said. She arranged them in a neat pile and placed them in a file folder.

Holy freaking Universe! A percentage of Henry Braun’s wealth!

On his way to the new Kafka Memorial Hospital, following the map app’s explicit and repeated instructions which included ever-shorter distance to the next two turns, he entered the onramp to the highway. The scenery changed from urban to rural after a few miles. Majewski liked the patterns that the rigidly spaced and absolutely straight rows of corn made with the undulating hills. 

In his youth, this country had more forested spots—it wasn’t all cornfields back then. Better than miles of apartment tenements, though. Such was the D.C. landscape where he lived. For now.

Wilder Island rose dark and alluring in the sparkling river. Soon, he promised himself. Soon I will make you my home. But Stella’s face rose up in front of his island fantasies. Still an obstacle, after all these years. 

Why, Lord? Why?

On the nightly news, the hospital had offered lame excuses for their inattention. “We were in the midst of a move,” the spokesperson had said. “Ms Steele got lost in all the confusion. We did not discover her missing until it was time to load up the patients.”

“Two days later,” Majewski had snorted.

The news anchor asked why it was so easy for patients to just walk away. “This is the second such incident in a month.”

That was one of the reasons to shut the place down. It leaked like a sieve, apparently. The other patient had been found, however.

“Rosencranz is old,” the hospital administrator said, shrugging. “It was never designed to be a mental hospital. We lacked the infrastructure to emplace and maintain even the most rudimentary security. Though we did have several security cameras on the roof, but they did not record anyone leaving the premises without authorization.” 

The administrator neglected to mention that the cameras that might have showed someone walking away were covered by crows. But everyone knew that…it had been in all the news, repeatedly. The tv anchor had ended the story expressing hope that Charlotte Steele would be found alive. 

The good people of Ledford did too. And, they had cheered the crows for their part in Charlotte’s escape.

Majewski passed the turnoff to Rosencranz Asylum. The image of the gruesome, swollen face in the morgue rose up in his mind. 

“Dear God Almighty,” he murmured. “Save me.” He prayed for an end to his torture. Prayed for Stella to be gone. Truly gone. Not just missing somewhere, haunting him for the rest of his life. All the way gone.

It was bad enough that Stella’s birth ruined his plans for his life, and here she was again—about to ruin his plan to have the only thing he ever wanted. Scholastic adoration.

Majewski looked over his shoulder as he changed lanes to pass a slow-moving truck. He switched on the radio. A familiar melody came from the classical music station on the radio. Ah, Chopin. When he was a boy, his father had introduced him to the “Pride of Poland,” as he’d called the greatest composer that ever lived .

No one in the history of classical music had ever done the piano so proud as Chopin, his father always said. Majewski tapped his fingers in the air above the steering wheel, playing along.

Suddenly, the map app jarred him back to the present, ordering him to turn right onto Hospital Drive in one mile, then into a vast, largely empty parking lot of Kafka Memorial Hospital. Grateful for the number of spaces close to the building, he parked the rental car and walked up the stairs to the entry.

A rather sour-faced woman sat behind the enormous reception counter, fanning herself as she watched him enter. “May I help you?” she asked in a tone that suggested she’d rather not.

“Good day, Miss. I’m Father Thomas Majewski—” He placed his calling card on her desk.

She glanced at it, and her face brightened immediately. She jumped to her feet, straightening her skirt on the way up. “Oh, Father. I mean, Father Superior! Forgive me! I had no idea.”

Much to Majewski’s great amusement, she curtsied as she said, “I’m Dora Lyn McMann, Father. And just so you know, I am Catholic.”

“Oh, no need for that, Miss McMann,” he said. “I am not a king, just a lowly priest.”

“Well, okay, but I am so sorry, Father, I hope you forgive us. You’re not going to sue us, are you, Father?”

“Whatever for?” Majewski said, frowning and tipping his head to the side.

“For losing your sister the way we did.” She looked again over her shoulder. “Probably I shouldn’t remind you. I bet you’re worried sick about her, aren’t you?”

He stared speechlessly at her. He had never once worried about Stella.

“Yes, of course,” he said, blinking away his surprise at the question. “I’m sick with worry. But I have no intention of holding the hospital responsible. My sister often wandered off as a child.”

Dora Lyn fiddled with the things on her desk in small jerky motions that reminded him of the sparrows on his office windowsill back in Washington.

“Well, perhaps, but it shouldn’t of  happened.” Dora Lyn sniffed. “Mabel—she fills in for me on the weekends—well, she did not follow protocol that day. She didn’t get the visitor signed in properly, I mean it’s just so basic.” She pursed her lips, shaking her head. “Nothing like this would ever have happened on my watch, Father.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t have,” Majewski said, smiling. “Do you have my sister’s medical file? As I told you, I have not seen her in many years, and it may be that her medical history is all the family will have of her memory.”

Majewski had never been interested in his sister’s medical history, never asked a single question to anyone about her. That Stella remained institutionalized told him everything he needed to know. She was alive and someone else was taking care of her. But now—since that hospital administrator had said on the nightly news—that there was a vault of old records still at Rosencranz. Hopefully the file he had requested would tell him everything he needed to know.

“The doctor said he could make Stella speak English again,” Mother had informed him. “He said he has a completely natural remedy that will block her brain from letting her speak crow ever again.”

That was well before Majewski knew about Wilder Island, and that his protege Alfredo Manzi had the same gift as Stella—if you could call it a gift. No one would ever consider Manzi insane. And, Stella had not uttered a word of English in more than 20 years.

“They said they found a body, Father,” Dora Lyn said, her eyes wide with fear. “It’s not her, is it, Father? Charlotte’s not dead….is she? Tell me please!” 

“I don’t think it’s her,” Majewski said. “But we won’t know until the DNA tests come back.”

“Oh, what a relief!” Dora Lyn said. “I mean, well—I hope it isn’t her.” She picked up a manilla folder and waved it at Majewski. “Anyhoo, I made a quick copy of the her file for you before the police came and took it.”

The police have her file? The thought filled him with dread. He had hoped see it before the police did. Rosencranz in its day was quite trustworthy to keep the family’s secrets forever—but what if—?

As he reached for it, Dora Lyn pulled it away and folded one arm on top of the other.—with the file firmly in her grip. 

“See, most of her medical history is on the computer,” Dora Lyn said, tapping her chin with a forefinger. “Except these few things I found laying around. I hope it helps—I mean I know it probably won’t help find her but—”

She paused her finger tapping and said:  “If only Mabel’d done her job, we’d know for sure who was there that day.” She unfolded her arms and pointed a corner of the file folder at Majewski. “You know, maybe someone should talk to that doctor fellow that visited her a couple times, you know? He might know something.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

“I’m sure the police will talk to everyone who saw her within the few days or even weeks of her disappearance,” Majewski said and looked at his watch. “Including visitors.”

“See, that’s the thing, Father,” Dora Lyn said. “Charlotte, see, she never had a single visitor, in all these years—and I was here when she got here, so I would know. Then outa the blue, he walks in, this Dr Robbins. Lord, was he handsome!” She clucked, shaking her head, one hand floating up to her bosom. “And very, very nice. He even brought me flowers.”

“Very nice of him,” Majewski said. “May I have the file plea—”

Dora Lyn sighed and refolded her arms with the file again tucked under. A faraway look came over her face. “Charlotte, she just adored him. I could tell. We women can tell those things, you know. I guess I had kind of a crush on him, too.” She  giggled behind a chubby, freckled hand. 

Majewski shifted his weight to the other foot and looked at his watch again. He resisted the urge to reach out and just grab the file.  Good Lord,  just give it to me!

“But see,” Dora Lyn prattled on. “He talked to her. I mean they talked. We never er could understand the strange language she spoke, but he did, that was for sure. They had real conversations. And she laughed a lot. I never heard her laugh until he came.”

“This doctor that came to see Stella—” Majewski said, his forehead wrinkled. “He  actually talked to her?” Someone who speaks the Patua’? “What’s his name? Did he write any reports of his visits for her file?”

“His name was Dr Robbins, Father. He had the most amazing eyes!” Dora Lyn said, opening hers wide. “Dark, really dark, but warm somehow. I could just have fallen right in. But—”

She frowned and looked up at the ceiling. “But now that you mention it, he didn’t make any reports of his visits that I know of. See, Charlotte’s file was missing the first time he came, and I told him I’d try to find it, but I guess we both just forgot. And then I found it when we moved. But I didn’t know how to get a hold of him.”

“This Dr Robbins, who asked him to visit my sister?” Majewski said, frowning. Since she had become a ward of the state, he had pretty well discarded all thoughts of her. Until he visited Wilder Island….

“Don’t know,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I assumed it was your family. But I do know he was so nice! Even when I couldn’t find her file. Most docs get all nasty and impatient when we can’t find a patient’s file.” She narrowed her eyes into slits for a moment.

“But not Dr Robbins. He was just as sweet as pie. You know who he reminds me of, though?” She pointed at Majewski with a short red fingernail. “That really handsome professor, you know the one who lives on Wilder Island and talks to crows? I think he’s a Father just like you. Do you know him? I forgot his name. It wasn’t Robbins.”

Majewski’s mouth dropped open, and he raised his eyebrows. “Alfredo Manzi?”

“Yeah! That’s him!” she said. “I seen him on tv the other day, oh, you know, when Mr Braun’s paddleboat was giving people free rides and stuff. You know, when they were trying to save the island? Not Mr Braun, but that Professor. I forget what he taught—oh wait!” She slapped her forehead with one hand and giggled. “Of course! He taught classes about Crows!”  

“Ornithology,” Majewski said.

“What?” Dora Lyn looked confused for a moment, then shook her head. “Yes, that. Anyhoo, this professor fellow—gad, if he wasn’t almost the spittin’ image of Dr. Robbins, though. Except for that sexy white streak he had right here.” She brushed a couple fingers through her hair above her forehead. “And he wore glasses. Other than that. Coulda been twins. He even talked just like the professor, all stiff and formal like. It was just adorable.” She sighed, smiling.

The floor felt suddenly soggy under Majewski’s feet, and he reached for the edge of Dora Lyn’s desktop to steady himself.

Manzi visited Stella? Why didn’t he tell me?

Dora Lyn’s dreamy smile faded, along with her face.

 “Are you all right, Father?” She darted around her counter, grabbed his arm, and pulled him a few steps to a chair. He sat down heavily, beads of sweat dotting his brow.

“Let me call a doctor!” she said. 

“No, no,” Majewski said, holding up a hand in protest. “I’m fine, really. Just a bit of jet lag.”

“And the shock about your sister, Father,” Dora Lyn said. “Let me at least get you some water.

Majewski nodded.

Dora Lyn brought him a glass of water, and fussed over him for a few moments. “There!” she said, “Your color’s coming back. What else can I bring you Father? A candy bar? No? Cup of coffee? A sandwich?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Majewski managed to choke out. “Just bring me the file, please.”

He stood up. Dora Lyn hovered near his elbow—ready, willing, and able in case he needed her. “Let me call someone to help you to your car, Father!”

Majewski handed the empty glass to her. “Thank you, Dora Lyn, but I am fine, really. And I must be on my way. If I can have that file, I’ll be going.”

“Sure thing, Father,” she said. “But first I’ll need you to sign a release form. You just stay put, and I’ll bring it all to you.”

When she returned, Majewski signed the form, and she handed him the file. He frowned, “It seems rather thin.”

“I copied everything there was, Father,” Dora Lyn said.

The few sheets in the file were merely ledgers of the billing for Stella’s residence, and the payments the family trust had made, but only up through 1987.

“Where is the rest of it?” he asked. “Where are her medical records?”

“Well, Father.” Dora Lyn grimaced. “We switched to computers, oh, more than ten years ago. Things got so messed up and some of the patient’s stuff just didn’t get into the system. Everything from before computers was paper, you know, and had to be typed.  And then it had to be scanned in. We just didn’t have the manpower.”

She grinned and held up a fist. “Or the woman-power!”

“What did they do with the old paper records?”

Dora Lyn shrugged. “God, that was so long ago,” She gazed up at the ceiling for a few moments. “There were tons of records, Father. We spent months getting them into the computer, and then we shredded everything. Except for the files in the vault, which no one knew how to open anymore. It rusted shut years ago after the basement flooded. Maybe the rest of your sister’s file is in the vault.” Dora Lyn said. 

“How many files are still in that vault?” Majewski asked.

“Don’t know, Father,” she said. But that’s where they stored the older records, from before your sister came—about five, oh, maybe six years before we got the computers.” She shrugged. “But I don’t know for sure  if anything’s in that vault, so please don’t quote me on it, Father.”

“My lips are sealed,” Majewski asked. “Is that vault still there?”

“I reckon so,” Dora Lyn said. “It was built into the foundations of the house.”

With every passing mile after he left Kafka Memorial Hospital, Majewski’s anger morphed to guilt, and back to anger again—a complicated creature that continuously reviled him, then absolved him. Stella had been a wicked, disobedient child—he had the letters from his mother to prove it.

But Manzi… At one time just a few weeks ago, he had wished Manzi could visit Stella. Why didn’t he tell me he did?

It was easy to be more angry with Stella, as if it were all her fault. Which it was. If she hadn’t  walked off. If she had not ever been born…

“I don’t know about you,” Vin said as she turned away from her computer and stood up. “But I could use a good strong cup of coffee.”

“Sounds good to me,” Russ said. 

They walked to a coffee shop on the main drag near the campus and ordered coffee. Vin talked about her childhood. “I didn’t have much of one. My mom raised me by herself. She had worked as a waitress since she was 16—right after she had me. She was determined that at all costs, I would not end up like her. Uneducated and pregnant as a teenager. So I had no toys—just books and school. I skipped two grades, and so had no friends. But, I managed to graduate magna cum laude and got snapped up immediately by the School of Medicine at the university here in Ledford.”

“So you made your mom proud,” Russ said. 

“I might be a bit fun-impaired,” Vin said, “though well educated and well paid. But, enough about me—tell me, were you always a geek?” 

Without waiting for him to answer, she went on: “I imagine you were curious about everything—a total know-it-all, just like you are now. You probably read every science book in the school library by the time you were in fourth grade.”

“Guilty on all counts!” Russ laughed as he raised his hand. “But I was incredibly average scholastically. I just loved the natural world of plants and animals. I barely stayed in the house at all in the summer time.”

“Except to eat, right?” Vin said with a knowing grin.

“Yup,” Russ said, grinning back. ”See, my dad and I built a treehouse in our backyard,” he said. “I practically lived there in the summer time. I spent all day up there. And night. Other than to eat, I only came down to crap.”

Vin cracked up. “I’m surprised you didn’t just pee off the Treehouse—being a guy and all…”

“Well, duh!” Russ said, laughing with her. “I did say ‘only to crap’.”

“Wise lad. So what’d you do in the treehouse all day long,” Vin said. “Spy on the neighbors?”

“How’d you guess?” he said, with a cheesy grin. “My dad gave me some high-powered binoculars. I saw everything that went on outside, and a few things through windows with no curtain.” He told Vin how he had watched Mrs Robinson step out of the shower, naked in all her glory. 

“Right in front of the window!” 

“Had no idea you were such a perv,” Vin said, giggling at him. “Ogling the neighbor lady’s boobs.” 

“I am not a perv,” he said, leering back at her. “I never had a sister, and my mother was of the opinion that nakedness had been invented by Satan. I was just a perfectly normal, curious lad.”

“A curious lad with binoculars,” Vin said, still laughing.

He loved her laugh—so robust and light-hearted.

“I am a scientist,” he said, trying to keep a straight face. “I need good tools with which to observe my universe.”

“Very noble,” Vin said, turning in her seat to salute him. “Thank you for carrying the torch of knowledge across the lonesome darkness of ignorance.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

The afternoon flew by. In her office, Vin and Russ each at their own laptops, stitched together the paper they’d present at the conference. She read through it quickly and said, “This is the ‘shitty first draft stage’. But it’s short, sweet, to the point. But let me spice it up with a little more data here and there.”

He could feel the energy surging through her—vivacious, infectious energy that picked him up and swept him away. She printed out two copies and handed him one. “Let’s go eat and then take these home and mark ‘em up. Unless you need to go home and make amends?”

“I really should go home,” Russ said, as he glanced at his watch. “But give me a moment to call Jade. She may be painting, and would rather not stop for dinner.”

He hoped.

He rose from his chair and left Vin’s office to call Jade. He stopped at a sitting area—thankfully no one was around, it being Saturday. He sat near a small water fountain and dialed home.

Jade picked up after five rings.

“Hi, Hon,” he said, careful to not sound angry, nor too cheerful.

“Everything okay?” she asked after a moment.

“Uh, yes, everything is fine. No worries. I’m just checking in. It’s almost dinner time. I can stay here and work if you want to keep painting.”

That didn’t come out the way he wanted. Trying to be light-hearted, he blundered on. “But I can also leave now. And finish up at home.”

“Come home,” Jade said, without hesitation. “I’ll warm up the pizza.”

“Terrific!” he said, “I’ll be ready to eat when I get there! See you in a bit, babe.”

He was disappointed to turn Vin down for dinner, there was much they could still discuss about their paper. But he was already in the doghouse with Jade.

Russ arrived home with a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. “I’m sorry about this morning, babe.” He set them both down in the kitchen and turned to hug her.

She let him kiss her forehead. “I am too.” She took the flowers, put them in a vase with some water and set it on the kitchen table. 

Majewski woke up in a cold sweat, his heart pounding. He sat up and leaned back against a pile of fat pillows. Dora Lyn’s voice echoed inside his head—a continuous reel.

 “…this professor fellow—gad, if he wasn’t the spittin’ image of Dr. Robbins, except for this sexy white streak he had right here. Coulda been twins. He even talked just like Dr Robbins, all stiff and formal. It was just adorable.”

This could ruin everything Majewski wanted, and planned, for his retirement. I’ve got to talk to Manzi.

He flicked the television on and remotely scrolled through all the channels, paying no attention to what was flashing by. The old Rosencranz asylum rose up on the tv screen, followed by Stella’s blurry picture. Detective McDermott talking about DNA tests.

“We will continue to look for Charlotte Steele until we find her,” McDermott said to the camera.

How could Manzi have been so duplicitous? So two-faced? To sit there while I talked about my sister and never ONCE did he mention he had actually been visiting her!

The tv reporter droned something about bodies in the river. Majewski’s eyelids felt so heavy he could not keep them open. 

He drifted in and out of sleep, flailing around in his bed for much of the night. He rose a few times to use the toilet, as was becoming increasingly more common these days. His anger with Stella and anxiety about Manzi not answering his phone kept him from easily going back to sleep.

As his anger abated somewhat, reason and rationality took over. I need to get Manzi off that island to someplace no one will ever find him. Until this blows over. After which,  he would bring Manzi back, and resume his plan for scholarly research and publications. Of course he would not need to be first author on all of the papers they would publish together. Just the first one.

He got up and took some aspirin for his pounding headache. He grabbed the remote and flipped through the channels until he came to one called, ‘Branded With a Bad Tattoo’. The show was just what he needed—a silly, meaningless diversion. Majewski shook his head between chuckles when a woman wanted the tattoo of her ex-boyfriend’s name removed from inside her thigh. 

How on Earth did God’s most magnificent creation ever devolve into such an imbecilic species?

Majewski drifted off to sleep at some point after the show featured devils masquerading as angels; a tattoo tattoo artist cleverly concealed two red horns in a little cherub’s curly blonde hair and turned the red devil’s tail with an arrow on the end into a red rose.

The owner of the tattoo was a tall, willowy woman with black feathers that poured down her back, almost to her knees. She held a basket of purple berries that she fed to the curly blonde infant child in the folds of her apron.