Healing Wolves
Part Eight - The Article
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

ER and all related characters are the property of Warner Bros., Amblin Entertainment, and ConstantC productions, used here without permission. This story has been written entirely for entertainment value. No copyright infringement is intended, and no form of profit is being made on this work. Any errors in continuity, characterization, or common sense may be blamed entirely on me. Sorry. If this hasn't given you eyestrain already, read on.



I spent a restless night at the Holiday Inn, dreaming intermittently. At one point, I dreamed that Kerry Weaver was stumbling through the snowbound steppes of czarist Russia at night. She was dressed as I had first seen her in my office in Los Angeles, and had no crutch. She was bloodied and freezing, and I thought I heard wolves howling in the distance. It was like something out of "Doctor Zhivago." Or maybe "Ladyhawke."

The next morning, I had an unremarkable breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, then went back to my room and practiced some of the tai chi forms that Val Besch had taught me. She always said they were meant to be done slowly and fluidly, but I never had the patience for that. I drove them harder than usual, my arms and legs and hands and feet carving shapes in the air, defining the space with great, sweeping curves. I left the window open for the fresh air and breathed deeply, filling the muscles and the blood and the brain with rich oxygen. Or what passed in Chicago. Val would say that the feng shui of the hotel room sucked, but you work with what you have on hand.

I could neither argue with, nor entirely agree with, the words that Mark Greene had said to me last night. Richard Wintergreen has shown me that it's possible to find answers where there seem to be none to find, yet many of life's simplest and most obvious mysteries constantly elude me, slipping through my grasp like quicksilver. I have to believe that there are always answers, waiting to be found. But just because you look is no guarantee that you will find.

Around 9:00 in the morning, I called County General, getting a young woman named Randi. I asked her if Dr. Carter was working, and she asked me to hold. While I waited, I wondered if this was the Randi of Louisville Slugger fame.

"John Carter?"

"Hey, Carter, it's Danny Fox."

"Oh, hey, Danny. What's up?"

"I need a favor from you," I said. "I'm convinced that Kerry knew whoever was in the van. Would you be willing to let me search through her apartment?"

Carter didn't answer straight away. "You think that's really necessary?"

"Yeah, I do. I know it seems disrespectful, but it could be really important."

He thought about it. "I get off work at six," he said, "I guess I could meet you then and let you in."

Fair enough. I'd been hoping to get to it earlier than that, but I didn't want to push my luck. Carter might look young enough to walk the line between innocence and naiveté, but he didn't know me well enough to entirely trust me. I said thank you, and he gave me the address, and we hung up.

To pass the day, I went jogging by the river, and then killed some time at the Museum of Science and Industry. When I was a kid, the big things on the science front were the Apollo and Gemini missions. Everyone wanted to be an astronaut like Neil Armstrong. Now, the museum was displaying theoretical new forms of data storage and faster web browsers, and everyone wanted to be Bill Gates. Exploration of a microscopic artificial universe had supplanted the immense natural one. If that's progress, I think it's overrated.

At 7:02, I was sitting on the steps of Kerry Weaver's porch, when John Carter walked up. "Sorry to keep you waiting," he said, unlocking the front door.

"That's okay," I said, "It's half of what I do." I followed him inside, hanging back as he tapped a combination into the keypad of a home security system. When it turned green, he ushered me inside.

It was more of a townhouse than an apartment. The interior was not large, but it was well designed, giving the illusion of spaciousness. The place looked clean and well cared-for and comfortable, other than a day or two's worth of detritus. I suspected that Carter had reverted to bachelor habits in Kerry Weaver's absence. I noticed him looking uncomfortable, andsaid, "You okay with this, pal?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's just, I um..." He had something bothering him, but he chose to keep it to himself. "What sort of things are you looking for, exactly?" he asked.

"I don't know, exactly," I said. "Anything that might give me a lead on friends or family or other people she trusted. Specifically, anyone who might own a blue van. I'm looking for photographs, letters, memorabilia, address books, anything of that nature." If Kerry had an address book in her purse, it would now be in police storage, and I doubted that Lieutenant Wasserstein would be willing to let me see it.

Carter shrugged, uncertainly. "I always respected her privacy, so I wouldn't really know where--" He was interrupted as his pager went off. He checked the number, and went into the kitchen to use the phone. I began looking around.

There is an art to searching a space, as Richard has taught me. You work systematically, from one end to the other. You break the space down into cubes. Each shelf is a cube, each closet is a cube, each corner of the room is a cube, like that. You search the contents of each cube, then move on to the next one. You look at what is there, not what should be there, or what you want to be there. Just see what is there, and then determine what it means. Drop a clue in your lap, and any dimbulb can work it through to its logical conclusion. Finding those clues in the first place, ah, there's the rub.

The living room wasn't telling me very much. I learned that Kerry Weaver was a voracious reader and an audiophile. Her stereo system was state of the art, and she had more CDs than Tower Records. A set of tall bookshelves was filled almost to capacity with hardcover volumes. Mostly medical texts, but I also saw some history, geography, astronomy, sociology, and a dash of metaphysics. The books all looked like they had been read. Not just here for show. Another set of shelves held back issues of the Journal of the American Medical Association, running from the late '80's to the present. The walls had a couple of traditional African masks or icons, or whatever you'd call them, and also some paintings with Celtic and Native American influences. The overall effect of the room was understated and elegant, one of quiet good taste. Of course, the music probably made up for that.

"Danny?" Carter was calling to me from the kitchen. "You want to pick up the extension? I think you should hear this."

I found a cordless phone by the sofa. "Daniel Fox," I said into it.

"Danny, it's Lydia Wright, from County?"

"Of course, I remember. How are you?"

"Lydia, why don't you tell him what you told me?" Carter said. "It's okay, Kerry trusted him." I wasn't so certain of that, but what the hey?

Lydia hesitated. "I don't know if I should be telling this to anyone," she said. "I've got...a friend on the force, and if this gets back to anyone, it could really put him in deep."

I said, "I won't say a word. I promise."

She took a breath. "Okay. You know they found Dr. Weaver's crutch with her purse? Well, there was a partial fingerprint on it. My friend has heard that they've got a tentative match. The press doesn't know about this yet. Carter, they think it's Lonnie Bledsoe."

Carter made a small noise of despair. I said, "Who's Lonnie Bledsoe?"

"I'll tell you later," said Carter, sounding stricken. "Lydia, I really appreciate your telling us this."

"Okay," she said, and hung up.

"What's a Lonnie Bledsoe?" I asked Carter when he came out of the kitchen.

He rubbed at his eyes. "He's been on the news lately," he said. "There was a bloodbath in Calumet City a few days ago. Two guys robbed a pawnshop and killed four people, including a cop. Bledsoe's the one they ID'd. Jesus, if he's taken Kerry, I..."

It occurred to me that Carter was the only one at the diner last night who had referred to Kerry Weaver in the present tense instead of the past. It hadn't really hit him that she was gone. Today, it had sunk in.

He took a breath and got it under control. "The reason I was late, I had to do something with Dr. Greene. Apparently, Kerry made him the executor of her will." He laughed a little. "I guess she thought he didn't have enough paperwork to deal with."

I said, "Isn't it a little early for the will to be read?"

"Yeah, and nothing will happen legally until she's...anyway, Mark just wanted us to be prepared, under the circumstances."

I nodded. "Was her family contacted?"

Carter spread his hands. "She didn't have any. I didn't even realize that until today. She left everything she had to the hospital, except for a few personal items, which she kind of divided between me and Mark and Jeannie Boulet. You met her yesterday." He waved at the stereo. "She left me her CD collection. And arranged for the rent to be paid until the lease expires."

There was an awkward pause between us. Carter wasn't comfortable showing his grief in front of me.  Then he said, "I'm gonna have a drink. You want one?"

"Yeah. Whatever you're having." I don't normally drink while I'm working, but the occasion sort of called for it.

"Glenlivet okay?"

"Better than okay. Thanks." While he was in the kitchen getting the drinks, I turned my attention to the next room, a small study. It had little more than a desk and filing cabinet with two drawers. A Pentium PC sat on the desk with a mug holding pens and pencils. The cabinet drawers held documents regarding Kerry's finances, investments, and insurance, a copy of her medical records, information about her lease and her car, a couple of administrative reports she'd written, things of that nature. I thought about booting up the computer and searching through the files on her hard disk, but that could take forever. I decided I'd come back to it if I didn't find anything else.

Carter intercepted me as I was about to look in Kerry's bedroom. He wasn't carrying drinks. "Danny," he said, hesitantly, "I think someone's been in here."

"What do you mean?"

"C'mon, I'll show you." I followed him into the kitchen, and he pointed to a liquor cabinet above the refrigerator. I wondered why Kerry would keep her liquor that high up, where she'd need a stepladder to get it down. Maybe to avoid temptation. The cabinet was open, and mostly empty, except for a bottle of second-rate red wine in the back. There was room for plenty more. "This was fully stocked, last time I looked," Carter told me. "Kerry didn't drink often, but she liked to have it on hand, just in case."

I wondered if Carter could be mistaken about it, but I didn't see how. "And no one else has been here, that you're aware of?"

"No. No one else has a key."

"Or the combination to the security system," I mused. "Take a look around, see if anything else seems to be missing." While he did that, I examined the door locks and the security keypad. If either had been tampered with, I couldn't see it.

Carter said, "Looks like everything's here, but...kinda out of order, like it's been shoved around. Look," he added, pointing to the bookshelves, "The spines are all uneven. Kerry kept them neatly lined up." I saw what he meant. The books looked as if someone had removed them from the shelves, then replaced them carelessly. Maybe someone was searching for something?

"You live downstairs, right?" I said. When he confirmed, I said, "Check down there." He went.

What the hell was going on here? Someone burgles the place to steal some alcohol, but doesn't bother to take the TV, the stereo, the VCR, or the computer? And how did they get in? I resumed my search.

In the master bedroom there was a queen-sized bed with a floral print cover, and a couple of smaller bookshelves. These held the fiction. Danielle Steele, C.S. Lewis, Isaac Asimov, Emily Bronte, Maya Angelou...and a couple of volumes that looked like they had been printed and bound at Kinko's Copies. Glancing through one, I was surprised to discover it was a romance novel featuring thinly disguised characters from County General. Why Kerry, you little vixen, you. I wondered if I should read it and see if any of the characters drove a blue van. Then, feeling churlish, I put it back.

Behind the hanging clothes in the walk-in closet, I found a small hidden compartment where Kerry kept her jewelry. It wasn't hard to find, but the liquor thief hadn't taken any of it. Or not much, if they had. Surprisingly selective, for a thief. If it was a thief.

Carter appeared in the doorway. "The same," he said, "My stuff's all there, but not quite where I left it."

I told him what I had found. Or, rather, what I hadn't found. There were no pictures of friends or family-she had to have had family at some point-no old letters or college term papers, no photo albums, no stories she'd written or pictures she'd drawn as a child. No sign at all that Kerry Weaver hadn't just materialized in Chicago fully grown. The whole apartment spoke of a woman determined to live entirely in the present, looking only toward the future. What had happened to her past? Where did she keep her history?

Where did she get the photograph of her with Glory?

"Carter, do you know if Kerry maybe rented a unit in a storage facility?"

"Maybe. I...oh, wait, yeah. The day before she flew to Los Angeles, she said she had to go get something out of storage."

The Glory photo. That explained it. Lock your past away in a dark, empty space until you need it again. I wondered what that said about her. In any case, it meant that I was out of luck. No way I could get into one of those places without a court order.

"Danny," Carter said, hesitantly, "Is it possible that Kerry's alive? She's the only one I can think of who could get in here. Maybe she faked her own disappearance, but had to come back here for some things?"

I had thought about it. She'd know Carter's hours, so she could get in and out without running into him. Then I shook my head. "I doubt it," I said. "Looks like all her clothes are here. At least, I can't see any real gaps in the closet or the dresser. And she didn't take either of these." I pointed to a corner of the closet, where a spare crutch and an elegant cane were leaning. I figured the cane was for dressier occasions. The crutch she normally used was also in police storage, maybe with Lonnie Bledsoe's print on it. I could see Kerry Weaver leaving almost anything else behind, but she needed to be able to walk. Maybe she didn't need a crutch anymore. Maybe she had been miraculously healed. Maybe she had suddenly thrown her crutch aside and broken into a run and was now jogging across the heartland of America like Forrest Gump. Everyone who believes that one, stand on your head.

As we were going back to the living room, I heard Carter say, "The first aid kit." He was looking into the study, and he pointed under the desk. "There used to be a case with a first aid kit and some other medical supplies, under the desk, right there. Now it's gone." You could see a rectangle of carpeting that used to be pressed down.  Aha. Band-Aids and booze. The plot thickens.

I said, "Okay, Carter, there's one more thing I want you to do for me."

"Yeah, anything." I swear, the guy looked excited.

"Pack up whatever you need for a couple of days. I think it would be best if you stayed out of here for a while." I fished my hotel key out of my pocket. "I'm staying at the Holiday Inn. There's two beds, take whichever you want."

Carter took the key, but looked a little disappointed. Maybe it wasn't the thrilling assignment he'd been hoping for. Maybe he thought that rooming with me would cramp his style. Maybe he thought I was coming on to him. I said, "If whoever it was could get in once, they might do it again. Maybe they're friendly, maybe not. Maybe they know when you're out, maybe not. I don't want you getting killed just to protect your new CDs, okay?"

He nodded. Not happy about it, but game enough. That was all I asked.

While I was waiting for him to pack, I noticed the morning paper on the coffee table. Looking around, I found the previous week or so worth of newspapers stacked in the entry closet for recycling. I hauled them out and began looking through them, starting with today's and working backwards. I could have gone to the public library and looked up the same stuff on microfilm, but since I was here...

Two days back, I found a small article on page eleven of the local news section. It described the mysterious disappearance of 'doctor Carrie Weaver', and implied that foul play was suspected. The whole thing took up only two and a half inches of print, and there was no photograph. Alas, poor Carrie, we hardly knew ye.

The day before that, there was a much larger article on the front page, about the Calumet City massacre. Two men in ski masks had entered a pawnshop, carrying semiautomatic rifles. They demanded a large sum of cash, apparently under the impression that the pawnshop was a front for drug money. The owner protested that this was not the case. The gunmen took a variety of portable items, mostly jewelry and electronics and firearms, and then the lead gunman opened fire, needlessly killing the owner and two customers.  He then removed his ski mask, unaware of the surveillance camera installed in the shop. No genius, this guy, but a stone-cold killer.

Jason Farrell, an off-duty police officer, heard the gunfire and accosted the two men as they were getting into a nondescript Chevrolet sedan driven by a third person. A very brief gun battle ensued, resulting in the death of Officer Farrell. The three perpetrators escaped in the Chevy, which was later found abandoned. Bloodstains in the driver's seat suggested that the driver had been wounded by Officer Farrell before his death.

If the robbers abandoned the Chevy, they might have transferred to another vehicle. Say, a blue van? I checked the dates on the paper. Unless I was mistaken, the robbery occurred on the same day that Lily Jarvik had last seen Kerry Weaver. Curiouser and curiouser.

There was a grainy photo accompanying the article, probably taken from the surveillance camera. The caption identified Lonnie Bledsoe, the lead gunman. He had sunken cheeks and scruffy hair and beard, and he had what Vietnam vets called "the thousand-yard stare." Dead, flat eyes like gun barrels. The kind that looked at you and seemed to say, "how could I kill thee? Let me count the ways."

The article was continued on page fourteen. It said that the surveillance photo had identified the lead shooter as Edward Lonnegan "Lonnie" Bledsoe, 41, who had been court-martialed from the army for drunken behavior, and later served time for armed robbery, manslaughter, and attempted rape. God help Kerry Weaver if this bastard had her. The other gunman was believed to be Lonnie's brother, Thomas Garrett Bledsoe, 37, who had also done time for armed robbery. The identity of the driver was unknown.

Also on page fourteen was a pair of mug shots, taken after the arrest of the Bledsoe brothers in 1989. Lonnie looked younger, but otherwise the same. Thomas Garrett Bledsoe had fuller cheeks and lacked the predatory glint in his brother's eye, but still looked sullen and mean. For some reason, although he was the less dangerous of the two, his picture drew my attention. Did I know him from somewhere? I tried to imagine him ten years older. Maybe a few pounds heavier or lighter, maybe the hairline would be farther back...

Son of a bitch.

I had it.

The last time I had seen Thomas Garrett Bledsoe, he was bumping shoulders with me in the hall of Glorianna Rossili's apartment building.

I shook my head. In a quiet, singsong voice, I said, "Gary, Gary, Gary, what have you done with Kerry?"