“They come when they know that he is away,” he read. The typescript was faded, and he had to remove his glasses and hold the page close to his face. “If I’m not outside, they whistle. Then I know and I go out.”
“Why, do you suppose?” he’d asked.
“It stops the pain.”
“What pain?”
His interest had been given another jolt by her answer. He’d condensed it in his notes, and it had been transcribed from his rapid scrawl by the efficient Miss Ruth Henley. It had to do, he had gathered, although she was not perfectly clear, with a logging operation. The timber on Pine Tree Point, in 1937, was not virgin, but it was old stands, untouched for a hundred years. She had talked about the constant round of saws and axes, the rumblings of the logging trucks, and the vulgar talk of the loggers. And she’d talked about the trees, how they hurt when the ax bit in, and how it made her want to scream.
It had not all come out in one session. It had been scattered through weeks of treatment, but then it had begun to make a picture and now, as he read, it began to take shape.
She had asked her husband, begged her husband to cease the timbering. But 1937 was a hard year, and, apparently, Paul Rogers desperately needed money. She mentioned the cost of the large house. She said once that Paul was worried about money, something about his northern investments going bad.
“Tell him, Dr. King. Tell him it’s his fault. Tell him I only do it because it hurts. Tell him I’ll stop if he’ll stop the pain.”
The file was relatively thin. The series of treatments had been terminated abruptly. It was closed out by a newspaper story about the tragic death of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rogers in a flash fire at their luxurious home on Pine Tree Island. All the bodies except Evelyn’s had been discovered in their beds, or what was left of the bodies and the beds. Human bodies are devilishly difficult to burn, and there was enough left for identification purposes. Rogers’s remains were discovered in the area of the master bedroom. The three children had died in their own beds. Evelyn Rogers, horribly burned, did manage to get out of the house. She was found several hundred yards from the house, with her body half-submerged in the waters of a small, natural pond. Her clothing had been burned off. Sheer speculation by the newspaper writer had her running from the house in flames. The fire had spread to the thick brush around the house. Perhaps, it was speculated, she ran ahead of the flames, seeing relief for her terrible pain in the water.
End. Finish. But then, a young psychiatrist had seen more than was stated in the newspaper article. In fact, King, knowing the degree of disturbance in his patient, had called the Ocean County Coroner. There were notes regarding the content of his conversation with the political hack who held the office, along with marginal notations of his dissatisfaction with the information received. No, the coroner had not performed autopsy on the remains; there were not enough remains to work with. No, the coroner was not a medical doctor. No, there were no facilities in Ocean County to make the kind of detailed analysis which Dr. King requested. Waste of time, anyhow. It was evident what had happened.
End of case.
Except for three more clippings, also dated in 1937, late in the year. A decomposing corpse had been discovered by loggers working on Pine Tree Island. The remains were identified as being those of one J. Edgar Smith, Negro, a former employee of the sawmill operator doing the logging. A protracted search of the area turned up three other bodies, also black, also former employees of the sawmill operator. In the South, in 1937, if a Negro had been turned in as missing by his relatives to the local law enforcement officers, the officers would have laughed. Everyone knew the shiftlessness of Negroes. Three dead Negroes, more or less, even four, made only inside pages of the newspapers.
Yes, King thought, putting the file back in its folder, he’d had his chance, and he’d blown it. There was, of course, no direct evidence; but Evelyn Rogers had been one disturbed young lady. A woman, young, strong, healthy, who shared the pain of trees as they were cut was not exactly normal. His notes indicated a huge reservoir of latent hostility toward her husband, whom she blamed for the logging. Most mass murderers had some sexual problem, and Evelyn Rogers had hers. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that the deaths of the Rogers family had not been accidental. Paul Rogers knew of his wife’s infidelity. In his one talk with Rogers, King had seen a man embittered, a man full of anger. He’d talked freely, with great emphasis on the fact that his wife’s lover was a retarded boy, big for his size but with the mentality of a six-year-old. And there was the matter of the dead loggers. Four strong Negro men. But give a woman the proper weapon and she can be deadly, even against strong men.
Too bad. If she had lived, he would have offered his services. He’d have worked for nothing, just to have the chance to pry into such a mind.
But that was in the past and now his curiosity was satisfied. To himself, for the first time, he admitted that he had neither the time nor the energy to write his book, that it would never be written. Evelyn Rogers, interesting as she was, would die, once again, when he died. His will provided that his files be destroyed.
Too bad. If he had known all, if he’d had a chance to talk with the woman, he might have been able to—to what? Satisfy his craving for sensation? Please his ego with an article about an interesting aberration? Help? Save lives?
Perhaps it was time to quit. Wasn’t his attitude toward the potential homosexual a clear sign that he was no longer interested in the welfare of his patients? Once he could have become totally involved in the case, worried about it and thought of ways to help. When the patient no longer seemed important, then it was time to take down his shingle.
He chewed on the cigar, which had long since gone out. No use fighting it. Nature herself would solve the problem soon enough. Meanwhile, as Ruthie had said, what else was there? Greece? He’d have to carry an extra steamer trunk just to contain enough medication to last the both of them. One reason why he’d never married was a recognized desire to retain all his freedoms, and now he was tied to his medicine cabinet even more securely than he would have been tied to a family. He could have married. Ruthie, at thirty, was a real woman. Then he’d not had the time. Had prized his freedom.
He tossed the closed file folder onto the front of his desk. That was a part of his past and, unearthed, it lost something. At least, before Ruth dug it out, there was a little hint of curiosity, something to occupy his mind now and then when he thought about it. Having read it, he saw no real connection with anything. True, both Evelyn Rogers and Gwen Ferrier had sexual problems, but they seemed to be diametrically opposed. From what he’d gathered, Mrs. Ferrier’s problem was sexual repression, not an overly free expression of sexual desire. What was it that had led his subconscious mind to make a connection between the two cases? Probably just the coincidence of residence. Pine Tree Island was a remote, thinly populated area. It was remarkable enough that he’d have two patients, even years apart, from the Island. That was probably it. Perhaps a bit of the plant business, too. For he’d gathered from the Ferriers that they had some interest in plants. George had remarked on the health of the fly-traps transplanted inside by his wife, and he had laughingly said that they were happy because his wife talked to them and pampered them with food. But Gwen Ferrier wasn’t identifying with plants, as had Evelyn Rogers, and Gwen Ferrier had not done in a family and possibly four plant killers.
“The diner has fried eggplant on the menu,” Ruth said, poking her head in the door.
“Fine,” he said. He took her arm. “Shall we lunch in elegance and grace at the famous greasy spoon of Port City?”