Kill Me With Kindness

By Mike Kirby

Too many patients at this VA hospital are dying unexplained deaths. Potent drugs are missing from the crash carts.There are rumors that a shadowy organization called the "Key Club" is involved. An old psych patient whispers to Tom Callahan that if you give people a hard time, you end up dead. Tom, an ex-cop working at the hospital as an aide, wonders if some of these heart attacks might be murder. And one day a water-soaked box of records is found in a hospital dumpster with evidence int it that an organized cover-up is going on. Soon the people who are murdering patients add Callahan to their to-do list. Soon he is fighting for his life and he will find out that there is big money but not much mercy in their brand of mercy killing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Kirby
• Release date: Jan 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301943159

Mike Kirby

A lovely life of horizontal mobility, now retired and fancy free, living with my wife, the writer Lu Stone, in the San Diego area in the winter, Northampton MA. in the rest of the year. I am a reporter on the Northampton scene, reporting on kirbyontheloose.blogspot.com, and working on a book about a local bank failure. Stay tuned for moe.

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Kill Me with Kindness

Mike Kirby

Published by Mike Kirby at Smashwords

First Ebook Edition, March 2013

Copyright 2013 by the author

All rights reserved under international and Pan-

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Chapter 1.

There is no shortage of snow out here in West Chesterfield. Frequent bumper crops keep us happy. When you swing around that tight corner down in Burgie, and hit Route 143, you begin climbing, and you keep climbing for the next five miles. When you come over the hump, with the Town Hall and a library the size of a living room, you go steeply downhill into the village in the west part of town. You might as well be in central Maine. Long after the daffodils blossom in gardens in the city, grimy drifts of snow lurk under the pine trees and the snowdrops are just thinking about getting going. Yeah, I'm here, the snowdrifts say to you, and I'll be back in November. Almost nightly this month we had dustings of snow to keep things fresh and clean. We had one last night, maybe an inch.

The only industry in town is relay towers and an underground switching center for AT &T and a big radar dome operated by the FAA. The cabin was my father’s refuge when the world he was born into began to close in around him. Some times I feel I am stranded on another planet, reduced to reading the Good News Messenger, Chesterfield’s local paper. The people in the First Congregational publish it. Weddings, funerals, tag sales, meeting notices. Up here the old Yankees still have their theocratic state.

This morning dawned clear and cold with a sliver of moon in the west and after I got my wood in and got the stove fired up and calmed down, I thought about a walk. Get myself fired up and calmed down. I decided to leave the truck where it was and walk it off. Stop thinking about work, about my ghostly patients who follow me home, waking me up in the middle of the night.

The Blackstone Hills loom over us, both to our north and our south, and only a steep valley in between, there's just room down here in the gulch for the road, the creek, and a scattering of houses. My cabin and the road are still in the shadows, but the sun is walking its way down the southern hills, and it'll be here by the time I get back. Take deep breaths, Callahan, swing the arms, stride confidently, act like a man of the world.

Not a car passes on the road; only four set of tracks here since the snow stopped. You fake it until you make it, says the program. I reach the village and wave hello to Jimmy Downing, who is clearing off his car. The East Branch is running strong under the ice. I pick up my mail at the world's smallest post office. I get some milk at the store. Millie, the postmistress/dorm mother/sustenance provider says hi, I get the paper and walk back.

I see Katie Steiner's ratty black pickup with her red badge of honor (Chesterfield Fire Department. Katie is an EMT. We are in the volunteer fire department, and from all the drills we have gone to over the last year, we have become friends. She is absolutely fearless. She's only 108 pounds soaking wet, but she is strong, and ready for anything. We only had one serious fire this year, and she got there first, stormed right into a raging kitchen fire with two extinguishers blasting away and put it out by the time the pumper arrived.

In winter almost all of her artwork is invisible. Only the dragon pokes his head out from behind a tree and smirks. In summer all is revealed and her sculptures crop up all along the path that leads into her lair. She works in marble and hardwood. The playful dragon lurks in the shrubbery, trolls leer at you from under a tree. Her figures, for the most part, are shy creatures that flee or hide from blows or hide out of sight in the tall grass. Her roots are New York and Scarsdale and Point Judith, Rhode Island. The trail bends, and the house comes into view. Only one like it anywhere in the world. Cement and steel and glass. Built like a small factory overlooking the creek. Cement block walls, big double-pane windows, and the strangest touch, a sloping shed roof made of glass brick. A piece of Manhattan deep in the woods. A friend of hers designed it, an architect in a big New York firm whose specialty was curtain walls, whatever they are. I saw her house go up, and lent a hand when I could, doing dog-work shoveling fill and digging drainage trenches. She and her crazy friends from an Arts colony over in Cummington built it last year. She has a couple boyfriends, including this gloomy old bearded writer who stays there now and then. She dragged me over to the arts colony a couple times for these really weird readings. When there is a good band at the Hilltop Lounge over in Goshen, Katie and I go over and dance. When I take her home, she blows me a kiss and shuts the door firmly in my face. I think as far as men go, she can take them or leave them.

Today, I banged on the big door to her studio.

Come in, come in, dammit.

She came out of the bathroom tucking her plaid shirt into her dungarees.

Callahan, she said, I bet you want some coffee.

Did I interrupt anything?

Besides my time in the bathroom? No, I needed a break anyway.

I sat at her table, and looked at what she was working on. A slender nude, hiding her face in her hands.

She ground her own beans in this machine, and ran them through a machine that forced the hot water up through the grounds. Strong as hell.

She brought out the chessboard.

You look a little on the ragged edge, said Katie. Working at the VA already starting to get to you?

I nodded, and castled. She was bringing up a strong attack on my right flank, with her queen and bishop moving into position to threaten my back row. She was hemming me in, and I needed room to make a sally.

Do you know Mel Jackson? Katie asked.

No.

Oh, he lives on Fairgrounds Road, she said. He's been working at the VA for ten years now. He doesn't talk about it much, but you get the feeling that he's counting the days, counting the months until he gets his retirement vested, and he can quit. Lucky for him they count your service time toward your retirement. He had twelve years in the Navy.

She moved a pawn to protect her knight. She was ready for me.

Being a veteran helps you adjust to the place, I said. Wearing the whites, the rules, the consequences.

The consequences?

I didn't answer. I moved a pawn to block the line of her advance.

It's hard to explain the VA to civilians. When I was working at Mohawk Machine, I sometimes would get caught in the traffic jam on Route Nine at shift change. The VA cop would come with his pushbutton; and let everyone out. For ten minutes the light would be red for us and they would come pouring out of there, smoking up the rubber, all these shut-down faces, a let me the hell out of here attitude. I never thought I'd be part of that horde, but here I am.

From the road, their Medical Center looks great, acres and acres of green rolling lawn, two ponds joined by a small waterfall, and ornamental plantings. A pine forest shields the complex and gives it a little privacy. Coming up the driveway, it’s reminiscent of a military hospital, six brick cottages with large screened-in porches with the names of the doctors on little signboards. In the summer heat you would expect to see the doctor himself in a white suit and a pith helmet smoking his pipe. The main complex of buildings is up on the crest of the hill. It was surrounded by forest on three sides, open in the east to views of the Connecticut River. Like a great circle of Conestoga wagons, eight two storied brick buildings were connected with roofed-over walkways. Patients out to get exercise could walk and walk and eventually end up back where they started. There are worlds within worlds out on the back wards. Things happen there that no one on the outside ever hears about.

On the first day, when I put my application to be a psychiatric aide, the floors shone like mirrors, and the sounds of buffers and lawn mowers buzzing everywhere. Groups of weather-beaten characters hung out by the clinic entrance, passing cigarettes around and sucking on them greedily. The health care professionals were all badged up, quiet and serious people, walking back and forth with folders. I read one of the posters pinned up on the wall about quality care and the mission of the VA. It sounded okay. The application was ten pages long, and I took it to the cafeteria to work on it. I had hoped for a little peace and quiet and a good cup of coffee, but the coffee was awful and the din was something terrific. It was old home week, everybody bumming cigarettes and laughing at nothing in particular. I put the paperwork down.

A patient sat down at my table and smiled at me. He had this yellow and blue Bardahl cap, and a T-shirt saying KISS ME I’M A LITHUANIAN worn under an old tweed jacket. He introduced himself as Edward Trompfeller and said he was a former colonel. He looked the part, like an old sunburned Marine with spare grayish hair in a brush cut. He had an authoritative air with a lunatic kind of sparkle occasionally showing in his eyes. He quickly briefed me about his posting to Turkey in the fifties, and about the top-secret capabilities of ozone-scatter in long-distance target acquisition. He seemed to know what he was talking about. He shook his old head sagely, felt badly about what happened to Gary Powers and the whole U-2 project. He had let Gary go out that morning when a KGB agent in Bodo, Norway, had already leaked the flight schedule and flight pattern. Langley, he said, had their heads up their asses like usual and decided to make their most ambitious flight on May Day. "Fuckin’ May Day," Trompfeller shouted, his face flushing deep red. He told me most of Russia’s routine traffic was on the runway and their pilots were out on the parade grounds, so that one lonely blip coming out of Lahore headed north was spotted right away.

The colonel, as he talked, leaned forward and started whispering. He wanted me to keep my voice down. There were communists there in the cafeteria, he said, and pointed them out. His voice dropped even lower.

Someone is killing patients here, he said so softly that I could barely catch it, and then his eyes twitched in both directions as he looked around in a classic paranoid manner. Someone was listening? Then a great hulk of a heavily drugged busboy dropped a stack of trays, and I felt right at home. These were my kind of people. In Chelsea down by the Norcross building they were out on the streets on sunny days, taking the air. Here they were living in a sheltered workshop of sorts, taking their medicine, or not taking their medicine.

I got an epic freeze at the job interview two weeks later, sitting all alone with five health care professionals staring at me, wondering what I could do for their patients. There wasn’t a smile in the room. The attractive black woman in charge of the inquisition handled my application as if it was contaminated, pushing it around in front of her with her index finger, and tapping on it impatiently as she waited for my answers. I don’t quite understand where you are coming from, she said. I didn’t get the job.

About a month later the phone woke me up at eight-thirty in the morning. People have no respect for us second shift people.

Callahan, is this you?

The rough amiable voice was familiar.

Yeah, it’s me.

Rusty Marchand. How’s the kid doing?

Rusty, this is really you?

Where in hell is West Chesterfield? he said. I never heard of it.

Twenty miles from Pittsfield, thirty miles west of Springfield. Nowheresville, Rusty. How the hell did you find me?

We have our means, brother, we have our ways. Your old man used the cabin as collateral for a small loan he took out with his bank. Jesus, you did a good job of disappearing off the face of the earth. Look, you’re not still into the shit, are you? You sober, keeping your nose clean?

I should have known that if someone could find me out here it would be Rusty. A great sleepy amiable cop, always scratching his hoary head, and coming up with the right questions and making the right phone calls. Chelsea's finest, stuck forever at Detective Third.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah? His tone of voice said that Rusty had his doubts.

So what’s up?

What’s up is that we got a visit from the FBI on Monday, and they wanted to know all about you. Very cagey, very discreet. The Chief probably bad-mouthed you up in the front office, I don’t know. You’ve not in trouble, are you?

What’d I just say?

You must be doing something. All these fucking questions they threw at us. Two of their finest were here at morning roll call wanting to talk with any of us that knew you. Being your old partner, I came in for a share of the grilling. Those goddamn zombies. All take and no give. They must all go to training camps for the effect. So what you doing with yourself these days?

Working in a machine shop.

Huh, Rusty said, You okay with that?

It’s a job, Rusty. I find I need to go somewhere every day and do something that has some money attached to it.

Well, whatever. Us poor donkeys miss you. These kids I am saddled with now are too fucking serious. Young suburbanites, home at six to mow the lawn. All they care about is scoring their work-site details. Drop by and say hi next time you’re in town.

Yeah, I’ll do that. And let me know if you hear anything about what’s going on.

It’s probably nothing to worry about. The Feds send those guys out for all kinds of routine security clearances. Someone might be thinking of giving you some position more befitting your bloodhound abilities. You know, all these fucking questions about character. I put in a good word for you.

Chapter 2.

One day about a week later, I noticed a new guy at the nooner. It takes one to know one, and I knew that despite the three-day beard and the cute Salvation Army outfit he was wearing and the story he told when we were going around the room that this kid was no drunk. He was too damn observant, too damn interested in our daily confessionals, but in a disinterested kind of supercilious how tacky this is manner. I had it in my mind that I had seen him earlier in the Falls Diner. He was FBI or something like it. I noticed him twice: once when he was following me down the driveway, and now when he was looking me over. After the meeting was over he beat it when I went over to say hi.

Who is that guy? I asked Billy Higgins, my sponsor.

Dunno, Higgins shrugged, and continued his conversation with three other fellows about Goshen stone. One of them was on a crew building a wall out in Williamsburg.

It was Higgins's idea putting in an application out at the VA. He said I needed a better job. I did. I hustled out and caught a glimpse of him heading across the crosswalk toward Masonic Street. Parked in back of the fire station was a brand new Chevy Caprice in industrial green with government plates. He was talking with someone else in a suit and tie, and then the two of them got in, and the car sat there for a while. I was starting to get irritated about whatever was going on. I sidled up as quietly as I could and found the back door unlocked. I slid in and joined them. The two of them swung around and looked at me coldly.

How’s it going? I said, giving them a big friendly smile.

They looked at each other, heads were shaken, and they got out of the car. My door was opened and they stood there looking at me.

Out, said the driver. I got out.

We don’t know you, sir, said the driver, a businesslike man in his forties. And we don’t want to know you. We are here in your little hick town on official business, and the business is just about over. Everything has been okay, and we’re heading home. Don’t ruin our day, okay?

I looked at the other guy. He looked a little more aggravated than the driver because I had made him, and I decided that his partner was giving me pretty good advice. I would move along.

A couple weeks later I got a call from the VA. I went in, not expecting much. This time the interview was with the head of nursing, and it was in the brand-new looking administration building. Looking over the palatial reception area was a big portrait of President Reagan and flanking him on either side were portraits of the hospital’s executive director, head of medicine, and director of public relations. There was something about the face of the director of public relations that grated on my nerves. Joanne McMurtry. She was someone, I think, to steer clear of, someone who would give you the knife with a calm, sympathetic smile. How come the director of PR gets her own big