Doris consulted her notebook. “It’s tomorrow, Doctor.”
“Good. Doris, be an angel and see if you can get me a seat on a plane for New Orleans tonight. Then try to get me Dr. Quentin Quirk, medical officer in charge of the U.S. Public Service Hospital at Carville, Louisiana. Make it person to person. Then get me Mrs. Coffee on the other line.”
In five minutes Dr. Coffee had reservations on the night flight to New Orleans, had instructed his wife to pack a small bag with enough clothes for three days away from home, and was talking to Dr. Quirk in Louisiana.
“This is Dan Coffee, Quent. I’m coming down to your shindig tomorrow after all... Sure, I’ll read a paper if you want. I don’t care whether it’s in the proceedings or not. Will you let me ride back to your hospital with you after the show? Fine. I’ve always wanted to see the place. See you tomorrow then, Quent. ’Bye.”
The pathologist had barely replaced the instrument when Max Ritter walked into his office and tossed a pair of very thin rubber gloves to his desk.
“Developments, Doc,” the detective said. “I just come from Patty Erryl’s Auntie Min’s place. She happens to have five pairs of surgeon’s gloves in the house. Seconds, she says. Big sale of defective gloves at the five and ten. Forty-nine cents a pair because they’re imperfect but still waterproof. She buys six pairs for herself and Patty to wear when they do the dishes. But there’s only five pairs there when I find ’em. She can’t remember what happened to the missing pair. She says she thinks Patty threw ’em out because they split.”
“So you think old Auntie Min wore the defective surgical gloves to kill Wallace?”
“I don’t say that. But this lush Rhodes is at her house practically every night to sell his bill of goods to Patty. If he should have grabbed that sixth pair of surgeon’s gloves one night, it might explain why there ain’t any fingerprints.”
“Max, have you arrested Rhodes?”
“Not exactly. But the chief is getting impatient. I’m holding Rhodes as a material witness.”
“Good lord! Well, at least I won’t have to face Patty when she starts raising hell to get lover boy out of custody. I’m going to Louisiana tonight, Max. If it’s at all possible, don’t prefer charges until after I get back. I have a hunch I may pick up a few threads down there. Do you have that letter with the Baton Rouge postmark?”
“Sure.”
“And a photo of Patty Erryl?”
“A cinch.”
“Wish me luck, Max. I’ll call you the minute I get back — maybe before, if I run into something hot and steaming.”
Dr. Coffee savored the applause with which the convention of pathologists greeted his paper on Determination of the Time of Death by the Study of Bone Marrow. He also savored two days of gastronomic research: Pompano en papillote at Antoine’s and Crab Gumbo chez Galatoire, among other delights. Then he drove northwest along the Mississippi with his old classmate at medical school, Dr. Quentin Quirk.
Except for an occasional mast which poked up above the levees, Old Man River was carefully concealed from the Old River Road. The drive through the flat delta country was enlivened by the pink-and-gold bravura of the rain trees, the smell of nearby water hanging on the steamy air, and the nostalgic exchange of medical school reminiscences — who among their classmates had died, who had gone to seed, who had traded integrity for social status, who had gone on to be ornaments to the growing structure of the healing sciences.
Dr. Coffee carefully avoided mentioning the real purpose of his visit even after the moss-hung oaks and the antebellum columns and wrought-iron balconies of the entrance and Administration Building loomed ahead.
It was Dr. Coffee’s first visit to Carville. In spite of himself, he was surprised to find that the only leprosarium in the continental United States should be such a beautiful place. He knew of course that modern therapy had removed most of the crippling effects of the disease, which was not at all the leprosy of the Bible anyhow, and that even the superstitious dread was fading as it became generally known that the malady was only faintly communicable.
Yet as Dr. Quirk gave him a personally conducted tour of the plantation — the vast quadrangle of pink-stucco dormitories, the sweet-smelling avenue of magnolias leading up to the airy infirmary, the expensive modern laboratories, the Sisters of Charity in their sweeping white cornettes, the gay parasols in front of the Recreation Hall, the brilliantly colored birds, the private cottages for patients under the tall pecan trees beyond the golf course — Dr. Coffee wondered how it was possible for the old stigma to persist in the second half of the Twentieth Century. When he settled down to a cocktail in Dr. Quirk’s bungalow, however, he remembered what he had come for.
“Quent,” said Dr. Coffee, “I’ve seen Hansen’s bacillus only twice since we’ve left medical school, while you’ve been living with it for years. Didn’t we read something in Dermatology 101 about leprosy affecting fingerprints? Some Brazilian leprologist made the discovery, as I remember.”
“That’s right — Ribeiro, probably, although several other Brazilians have also been working in that field — Liera and Tanner de Abreu among them.”
“Am I dreaming, or is it true that the disease can change fingerprint patterns?”
“Definitely true,” said Dr. Quirk. “Even in its early stages, the disease may alter papillary design. The papillae flatten out, blurring the ridges and causing areas of smoothness.”
“Do the fingerprint patterns ever disappear completely?”
“Oh, yes. In advanced cases the epidermis grows tissue-thin, the interpapillary pegs often disappear, and the skin at the fingertips becomes quite smooth.”
Dr. Coffee drained the last of his Sazarac, put down his glass, and gave a rather smug nod.
“Then I’ve come to the right place,” he said. “Quent, you may have a murderer among your patients — or among your ex-patients.”
“Murderer? Here?” Dr. Quirk got up and pensively tinkled a handful of ice cubes into a bar glass. “Well, it is possible. Over the years we have had three or four murders at Carville. When did your putative Carvillian commit murder?”
“Last Wednesday night,” said Dr. Coffee, “in Northbank. The murderer left bloody finger marks but no distinguishable prints. I suspect the victim might also have been a one-time patient of yours. There was Diasone in his medicine chest, and at autopsy I found fragmented Hansen’s bacilli in the lymph nodes and in one earlobe. Did you know a character named Paul Wallace?”
“Wallace? Good lord!” Dr. Quirk shook Peychaud bitters into the bar glass with a savage fist. “That no-good four-flushing ape! Yes, Wallace has been in and out of here several times. Whenever he gets into trouble with the law, he tries to scare the authorities into sending him back here. ‘You can’t keep me in your jail,’ he says. ‘I’m a leper. You have to send me to Carville.’ But I wouldn’t take him back any more. He’s an arrested case. Last time he tried to dodge a conviction, I sent him back to serve time. I knew he’d end up in some bloody mess. Who killed him?”
“Somebody who must have loathed his guts enough to cut them to pieces. It was a real hate job — by a man with no fingerprints.”
Dr. Quirk shook his head. “I can’t imagine—”
“Quent, did you ever see this girl before?” Dr. Coffee opened his brief case and produced a photo of Patty Erryl.