Pieces of a Whole

by: Betsy J. Bennett

CHAPTER 11

“You can trust me.”

“How about we count the number of times I said, “I’m innocent, there was a one-armed man,” and use that as a yardstick into when I’m willing to completely trust you?”

“This person, was she hurt by knowing you?”

“No, in retrospect, no. I suppose I was seeking atonement of a sort. Not everyone who helped me could have afforded to do so and I was hoping somehow for her blessing.”

Gerard mentally shifted through his files. He did not know every stop the fugitive Richard Kimble made, but he knew most of them. “And did you find peace there?” he asked, ignoring the word blessing.

Peace? Did one find peace in a cemetery? “About all I could expect. I had a car, she needed something, and directed me here. They offered me a job on the spot, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“And the woman?”

“Brain tumor and it was terminal. Not much that could have been done for her, but I know it made her feel better that I cared enough to check in on her.”

“No. The doctor.”

With a shiver, and the phrase “eew,” Phil had mentioned while he waited for Dr. Kimble to show up, the talk in the waiting room was Richard and the lady doctor would be married, or ‘shacked up’ soon, and that both were absolutely clueless to the fact. The talk in the waiting room while he waited for Kimble was a bit more restrained, but then, he supposed these people had reason to be suspicious of cops.

Kimble didn’t look over at Gerard, had no idea the motive behind the question. “Dr. Olivetti. Dedicated. Tireless. Absolutely brilliant. Her father is a big shot cardio-vascular surgeon in Manhattan. She wanted to join the Peace Corps and see the world, but her father convinced her to stay in the States. I think he was thinking Palm Springs or Los Angeles, or something closer to home, but she found Vista, Volunteers in Service to America, and the clinic a few years before I did. She’s an incredible doctor.”

“Is that all she is to you? A doctor?”

“Well, she is treating my stomach ulcer, if you want to know. Something about stress and eating poorly. And I’ve got arthritis in my shoulder, caused by a bullet wound.”

On the corner, a car was stopped, the engine idling while the driver spoke to a woman who stood on the sidewalk, bending down toward the passenger window. Gerard looked away. “You could have stayed in the hospital until you healed.”

Kimble kept his eyes on the road as he drove through a yellow light. Another recurring nightmare. “Is that what you were going to do, let me heal in the hospital?”

“No. I planned on moving you out that night.”

“In hand cuffs.”

“Obviously. You never should have gotten away that time.”

“Please accept my apologies that I disagree.”

“No. I had you. Next time I won’t be so lax.”

“Next time?”

“Sorry, figure of speech.”

“Yeah. I’ll take comfort from that. Anyway, my shoulder wound got infected. I had a couple of bad nights, with no access to antiseptics or antibiotics, but don’t bother telling me I would have been better off with you.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“We’re here.” Kimble parked the car, got out, entered the restaurant. The diner was small, smelled of burnt coffee and Spic and Span, and at least the latter made it seem inviting. There was a short bar and a dozen red naughahide benches and a juke box, which thankfully was silent. Three people sat at the bar, nursing coffee and pie, either coming off a late shift or about to start one, and one elderly couple sat in a booth, eating a toasted cheese sandwich between them.

The light was almost too bright, but the floor was spotless. Kimble studied the set up, concentrating on the swinging door to the kitchen.

“Looking for a back exit?”

“Sorry, force of habit. I keep trying to break myself of it, but haven’t yet succeeded, especially when I have to associate with police lieutenants.”

“I’m not after you, Doctor. I’d like your opinion.”

“Coffee,” Kimble ordered the waitress who appeared with menus. “Black is fine.”

“Will it keep you awake?” Gerard asked.

“After the long days I’m putting in, nothing keeps me awake.” He ignored the menu, checked the chalkboard for specials. “I’ll have the meatloaf, mashed potatoes, whatever vegetables you’ve got.”

“Sounds good,” Gerard said. “I’ll have the same.” He waited until the waitress disappeared before he spoke again. “I want to say that I’m glad you’re looking better.”

Kimble looked up, he’d been rubbing his nose, ineffectual treatment against the headache. “Better?”

“Than you were the last time I saw you. I’m not the doctor here, but alcohol looked like an inefficient way to treat depression.”

“Yeah, you’re right there, and alcohol didn’t help much with the nightmares.”

“If you don’t mind my prying, why were you in such bad shape that you were taking your comfort from a bottle? I followed you for four years, and you never got so much as nervous.”

“I was nervous enough.”

“No, when we’d meet, you were calm, controlled, put your wrists together for handcuffs.”

“Until a situation presented itself when I could run.”

“Then after you get your freedom, complete exoneration, you fall to pieces.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Do you have a theory?”

He pulled out a cigarette, took the time to light it, to taste it before he spoke. “I’m not a psychologist either, but yeah, I’ve got a theory. You know how to break a prisoner of war? I’ve been doing a lot of reading on it, in the medical journals and whatever I can find. Bad conditions don’t do it, and torture doesn’t necessarily do it. To break a man, you take everything away from him, then give him hope, just a shred, that things can get better, then take it away. There’s a pattern there. It isn’t the disaster, or pain or deprivation that breaks a person, it’s the hope that never manifests into reality.”

“But you had your freedom. No one’s taking it away.”

“I was treated as much like a murderer those few weeks I stayed at Donna’s as I was after I was arrested. Those journalists had the same information I did, but they kept asking their insidious questions about other charges, about other states after me. There were policemen, maybe not you, but policemen who would give me a double look. I’ve learned to beware of attracting police attention. I was terrified of getting on their radar. What if I ran a red light, got caught speeding?”

“Are you doing better?”

Define “better.”

“Since you saw me, yeah, I am. A lot better. I haven’t had a drink, other than an occasional beer, since I saw you last.”

“I’m glad. It looks like you put on a little weight too. You needed it.”

“Donna talk your ear off about my eating habits?”

“She ordered me to ask, to see if you were eating properly. It’s the only reason she gave me your locale.”

“Hence the offer to pay for dinner.”

“I had to eat, anyway.”

“So, what have you got that brings you all the way out of your way?”

He opened a file, turned it so Richard could read it. “I told you I’d follow up on Fred Johnson. Information is still sketchy, but I’m making progress.”

Richard pulled smoke into his lungs. “I’m not sure I can concentrate. What is the bottom line?”

“From what I could tell, he made his living as hired muscle.”

“Johnson killed for a living?”

“Yes, well not so much killing as breaking knee caps and arms. He ran numbers rackets all over the country, but he’d take these odd jobs and someone would end up in the emergency room needing his kidney or spleen removed, or in the morgue.”

Richard wrapped his hand around the coffee cup, decided not to lift it to his mouth, for he knew his hand would shake. “You think what happened,” he paused, tried to put jumbled thoughts into words, “What happened to Helen was deliberate?”

“I can’t prove it yet, but that’s the way it looks to me.”

“I thought Helen was a random victim of a home invasion.”

“Yes, with your exoneration, I thought so too. But it isn’t shaping up that way. I can pin at least three other murders on him, and easily a dozen cases of assault. Not enough to take to a court or a grand jury, but enough that I’m satisfied he inflicted pain or killed for money.”

Kimble closed his eyes, pinched them shut, before opening them and studying Gerard. He never expected help coming from this corner. “And?”

“And he had a routine, where he could be contacted, how to be contacted.”

“And?” Controlling himself, Kimble sipped his coffee. It probably had been fresh that morning, or maybe the night before. Not the best thing to drop in on his ulcer.

“I want you to know I tried to take this to the FBI, but with Johnson’s death, they consider the cases closed, even when we could officially close some cold cases. They said, probably rightly, that there are too many killers out there still plying their trade to waste much manpower on the dead ones.”

“So you’re on your own.”

“I took this to my captain. He’s granted me a lot of leeway over the years.”

“I can imagine.” His tone was wry.

“He’s willing to let me follow any trail I can find. Dr. Kimble, if I follow through with this, it’s going to open a lot of old wounds. You’ll be in the papers again. And yes, they’ll say you’re innocent, but it might be attention you don’t want.”

“And?” He had promised Donna he would stop smoking, one of the few things she ever asked of him. How could he ever think to quit, with news like this?

Gerard tapped his fingers on the file. “A couple of things. I won’t do this if you tell me to let it rest. I owe you that much respect. The other men on the force think I’m beating a dead horse, and to let it go. And Marie—“

“Your wife doesn’t approve?”

Gerard stirred his coffee without effect: he drank it black. “She keeps hoping it’s over, that I never mention the names Richard Kimble or Fred Johnson ever again. Having said that, Phil is all for it.”

Richard smiled, fleetingly. Gerard’s son had shared thoughts about his home life while they waited for the bus back to Stafford. And he remembered something Olivia had said after she met Gerard’s son and he mentioned he had nightmares of Phil. “Nightmares?” she had demanded, “you’ve got it backwards. You’re not afraid that he would hurt you, but that you would hurt him. You don’t recognize the distinction, but you should. It makes a world of difference. Yes, you were afraid, but not for yourself. You were afraid you hurt the boy. You didn’t. Get over it.” He found that healing. So many times he had been afraid, but she was right, many of those times he had been afraid by his actions he had hurt others.

“I haven’t been out of town since I brought you in, well, until now. Marie likes having me home for dinner.”

“Anything else I can get you boys?” the waitress asked, slipping the plates in front of them.

“No, we’re good.”

By many definitions, they were neither one of them good.

Kimble started eating, mindlessly.

“How does it taste?”

“Taste? I haven’t had anything to eat but a lollipop since yesterday, or perhaps the day before. I don’t keep food in my room. There are rats and roaches. Why encourage them? And if I am selfish enough to take a lunch break, that means patients who have been sitting, usually for hours, will have to sit longer, in pain. No one comes to the clinic who doesn’t have to, and that means pain.”

“Certainly you can afford a place without rats.”

“I’ve got money coming from Indiana, probably in the millions, for wrongful conviction, so says Stapleton. I haven’t seen a penny of it yet, and a lawyer’s cut comes off the top, so who knows how much I’ll see. I’ve got money from my father’s estate, that I can get to should it need it. It’s not under my name, but in case you’re wondering, Leonard and Donna paid taxes on it, so it’s legal. The clinic has no money, and I’m taking what they offer, which is pay for a janitor. That helps to keep their books nice. They don’t want to pay me as a doctor, should some community do-gooder decide my license is invalid. So I stay with the rats and roaches. Generally speaking, I’ve slept in worse.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Now, since you’ve come all this way, and we’ve exhausted all pleasantries between us, why don’t you tell me what you think.”

Like Kimble’s, his plate had been neatly cleared. The food had been hearty, hot and filling. Both of them had been hungry, and equally as hungry for a resolution to this situation between them. “As I said, I don’t have anything definitive, but I’ll tell you my suspicions. Johnson was in Milwaukee then the packed up and a day later was in Stafford.”

“He got an assignment.”

“I can’t prove it yet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to prove it, but yes. It looks like Helen was the deliberate target.”

Kimble picked up his coffee cup, set it back down when he noticed it was empty. “Why not me?”

“Several reasons. He waited until she was alone. If he wanted you, there were probably easier ways to get you, specifically at the lake where the boy was fishing. You were, for all practical purposes, alone then. Second, he left town immediately. He wouldn’t have gotten paid if he hit the wrong target, and remember, he wasn’t a suspect. Even with your testimony, he could have stayed, half-hidden, waiting for another shot at you.”

“And? I take it there’s more?”

“A bit. He kept running. I’ve been able to trace some of his routes, not all by any means. Why was he running? This is just supposition on my part, but let’s say he’s hired to take out Helen, for whatever reason, so now the guy who hired Johnson knows Johnson can identify him and he’d want to cut off that loose end. Johnson could have been running from him.”

“That’s weak. I was looking for him.”

“Maybe.  But almost immediately you were in jail and the police had no reason to accept your statement of the one-armed man.”

“Except that it was true.”

“And after the derailment, from your own testimony, while apparently you got close a few times, it doesn’t justify the number of times he fled. Why didn’t he stay quiet somewhere? There were years when you had no clue of his whereabouts and he moved almost continually, and oddly enough, as often as you did.”

“You boys want pie?”

“Sure, whatever’s available.”

“So he was running.”

“Not from the police. I couldn’t find any police department looking for him. I suspect after he killed Helen he got cocky, said something like I can identify you. Don’t get so high and mighty with me, and give me more money.”

“Blackmail?”

“All things considered, easier than murder, and probably far more lucrative.”

“Why Helen? What did she do?”

“This is another reason why I wanted to talk to you. I think she heard something or saw something. It might not have made an impression on her, something she didn’t know she knew. It could have been at the hospital, or it might have been anywhere. Did she say anything?”

“Not that I can remember. When she saw me, she only wanted to scream about adoption. But honestly, I’ve only thought of her as a random victim of a home invasion.”

“A home invasion where nothing was taken.”

“Yea, but then, that would have been a nail in my coffin. Prosecution certainly brought that up often enough. Ok, I’m intrigued. You have my permission to keep the case open. I’ve dealt with publicity before, and if I lose this job, well, I’ll find another.”

“Helen had to know something.”

He thought of his wife, and the clearest picture he had of her, after almost ten years of marriage was laying on the living room carpet, her skull fractured. “I have no idea what.”

The pie was blueberry, came with a side of vanilla ice cream. “I’ll try to keep in touch, certainly I will if I find anything. You might let Donna know I can be trusted with your location, should I ask.”

“All right, unless for some reason the situation between us changes.”

“It won’t.”

“You’re right. I would like some answers, especially if Helen wasn’t a random victim. She wasn’t speaking to Donna back then, or Ray or my father, but I’ll think about if she had any girlfriends she might have confided in.”

“I spoke with Lloyd Chandler. She mentioned nothing to him, and I wasn’t going to go any further until I spoke with you.”

“Ok, and Gerard, thanks.”

“I’ll be in touch. No need to drive me, that’s my hotel there. Good luck with the clinic. Oh, and one other thing.”

He knew there had to be something.

“I’d like you to read this.”

“What is it?”

“Read it.”

“I will.” Richard left, taking the typed pages with him. Two nights later, in a dark, no-name boarding room, he remembered the pages, and unfolded them, and sat by the single bare bulb and read them.

They were from the column Decker was writing, and they were statements from Gerard.

I first met Richard Kimble September 17, 1960, late in the evening, the day of his wife’s murder. He protested his innocence, and he spoke of the one armed man. To my regret, I didn’t believe in either. Forty-eight hours later, I arrested him. I testified at his trial, of what I found at the scene, of the answers he gave during interviews I conducted. After the trial, after the train wreck, and for the four years he ran as an interstate fugitive, I never once considered him guilty or innocent. That was not my place. That had been decided by a jury of twelve. I considered him convicted of a crime, and made it my duty to try to apprehend him.

“But that is not what I want to discuss today. I want to discuss another side of Dr. Richard Kimble, a side that most people don’t believe exists, a side that increasingly I refused to acknowledge myself.

“Richard Kimble is an honorable man. He saved my life four times, when each time it would have been easier for him to ignore me and continue on with his flight. In healing me, he delayed the time he could have been running, and using his medical knowledge, he cured me enough so that I could try to detain him….

 

Something was wrong with Olivia, Maggi and Dora Ann. None of the three were talking to him. Kimble ignored it for a few hours, keeping busy, seeing patients, tried to convince himself that everything was fine, but it wasn’t. Maggi and Dora Ann were clearly angry, and he learned earlier that morning to keep his distance from them, but Olivia was another matter. She looked hurt, or perhaps shattered.

He finished his last patient, kept himself occupied while Maggi and Dora Ann locked the front door and left before he hunted up Olivia.

“Can we talk?”

She didn’t bother to look up. “I’m sorry. I’m busy. We’ve been swamped since you left after that dog photograph.”

A lie, he thought, curious, she had been fine yesterday and the day before. Whatever happened, whatever she thought she heard, had to have been early this morning.

“I’ve got patients by the thousands. Not only that but reporters from every news outlet on the planet keep calling, wanting a comment. Even your Lieutenant Gerard called. We didn’t give him the time of day, in case he believed everything he reads in the papers.”

“I told you right now I consider Gerard a friend. One of a few. I’m sorry for the publicity. I don’t know where that photographer came from. And I know dogs are not our specialty, but I couldn’t let those kids down.”

“No one is blaming you for the dog.”

“No? Something is bothering you. Are you upset that I left, or that I came back?”

“Neither. You know we respect your work here.”

“What’s the matter?”

She exhaled loudly, clearly in frustration. “Richard, please, I’ve had a long day. I’m tired. I just want to go home. If you want to stay and finish up some work, go ahead. If not, please don’t take any more of my time.”

“All right, I’ll work, but I’d like to explain about the dog.”

Olivia removed her hair tie, this one for some reason surviving an entire day, finger-combed her hair, then with a quick, unconscious movement, tied her hair back again. He didn’t notice any difference.

“I am not interested in talking about the dog, or the three dead puppies we found, and be glad we found them. The press only knew about two.”

“I am not murdering puppies. Livi, Dr. Olivetti, it was a mistake to come back. I promised—“

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then who?”

“Myself, that I wouldn’t run any more. That I had done nothing to be ashamed of. You know my background. I was never guilty of the things I was accused of. Almost as bad as that, I was starting to feel happy here. That was the main problem. I have been happy here, probably happier than I deserve. I shouldn’t bring any of the ugliness that surrounds me into your clinic.”

She dropped the pen she had picked up. It rolled aimlessly around on the papers on her desk and then fell to the floor, undoubtedly to get lost among the other things she no longer had any interest in keeping. There was forgotten detritus all around her.

She stood, held onto the desk. She still hadn’t made eye-contact with him. “I’ll let you in on a secret. There’s ugliness everywhere, you have no monopoly on it. Now I really have to get back home.”

“Can I buy you dinner?”

“You want to buy me dinner?”

He wanted to step closer, knew enough that the action could be seen as aggressive, that he was trying to corner her. Fugitives learn early to keep their distance from people, even people they care about. “You’re always asking me.”

Finally she looked up. Her bottom lip quivered, and her eyes were red rimmed, not that she had been crying. No, he doubted she’d ever allowed herself that luxury, that freedom. No, not crying. Holding emotions at bay. She bit her bottom lip, then straightened her shoulders and her resolve. She would attack. It was always easier to attack. That’s another thing a fugitive learned, even if he came to understand it was an option no longer available to him.

“No, Mr. Kimble, I am not interested in going to dinner with you. I told you once I don’t suffer fools, and it annoys me the most when the fool is myself.”

Ahh, the root of the problem. “What did you say? And to who?”

If there was fallout, he would accept it. He could do no less. But he didn’t believe it. Olivia would never do, never say, anything to hurt anyone. She was a healer down to her lowest red blood cell. And if she had misspoken, that wouldn’t account for Maggi and Dora Ann. To a person, each one stated their belief in him, and that when asked by the reporters who had been hanging around, that they had made no comments at all, except to proclaim his innocence.

He was hurting her by staying. He had no idea why. It wasn’t as if he had lied about his background. And if she found something she didn’t like in the newspapers, he knew her well enough that she would ask. There had been a lot of lies printed about the depraved killer Richard Kimble. He had hoped they could be honest with each other.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.” And he turned on his heel and left. If the only way he could ease the pain in her eyes was to leave, he’d go. Even if it shattered his own heart.

He shoved the key in the car’s ignition, then, leaving it idling, pounded on the steering wheel. All those years he hadn’t allowed himself to care, had kept his heart under control so he could walk away without looking back, so he could prevent the devastated feeling he was experiencing now. How had she gotten to him, he didn’t know. And he was half-surprised that the emotion was catching him off guard. He hadn’t expected to care this much, this deeply. After all, there were other clinics he could work. Other doctors he could work for.

Who was he trying to kid? It was Olivia Olivetti and no one else. He had no idea why, only that she was the matching part to his soul, a piece that had been stolen from him with Helen’s murder returned fresh and glowing. Olivia. He shifted the car into drive and left the clinic.

Twenty minutes later, Olivia looked up from her charting when Richard appeared in the doorway. “You’re not gone yet?”

“No, not yet. I come bearing gifts.” He handed her a Turkish taffy candy bar. He noticed once that she had a fondness for them.

“That’s ok. I’m not hungry.”

“You’re starving, and it won’t compromise any of your values if you’d take it. You won’t go out to dinner with me, so I thought I’d compromise.”

She eyed the candy he had placed on her desk, then looked up at the man who had stepped back three steps after he dropped it off.

“No. I’ve got to finish this chart, then I have things I need to do at home.”

“I haven’t got a phone at my place, well, I’ve barely got a place, so you can’t contact me, but if you don’t want me in tomorrow, or ever again, I wish you’d tell me.”

She clamped her eyes shut, bit her bottom lip. Said nothing.

His hands were empty, and he never felt so defenseless in his life. “Then be honest with me. I’ve always been honest with you. What are you so mad about? We got the puppy thing straightened out.”

She rubbed her eyes then made a fist, not from anger, from frustration. “Honest? Have you been honest?”

“Yes.”

“What about the pregnant woman you were seen kissing.”

“Pregnant woman? I haven’t been kissing anyone.”

“I have my sources. My patients don’t ever have any money, but there is nothing that goes on in the local neighborhoods that they don’t know about, and sometimes they let me in on what they’ve found. The day of the article on the puppies, you were kissing a massively pregnant woman. Are you seeing someone?”

Her question hit him unexpectedly. What? Who? He wanted to ask, until the pieces fell into place. “You’re talking about my sister, Donna?”

“Your sister?”

“She showed up at my room. She didn’t have the address of the clinic, but she knew I’d be upset about the article, and brought me something she thought I needed. As it turned out, I did.”

“Pregnant?”

“About seven months, she says. Seemed I was right, that I needed to move out of their house. To be perfectly honest I didn’t see it coming, but I’m glad for both of them. For years they didn’t want to take the chance of her getting pregnant, felt it wouldn’t be good for the baby if she had to sit in the front row to watch an execution. Again, I didn’t know that, frankly I’m glad I didn’t. But she’s doing well.”

She slumped in her desk chair. Whatever had been strengthening her backbone had melted. “And you, how are you doing?”

“I’m not sure. I seem to have done something to annoy you.”

“No. Richard, I’m better now.” She reached out, grabbed the candy bar, gave it a good, swift whack on the desk, before she used her teeth to open the wrapper. “I’m better now. I may strangle Maggi tomorrow though.”

“I’d love to tell you I know a good defense attorney, but you know how my experience with them turned out.”

“You’re a menace,” she said.

He waited a few seconds until she looked at him, nodded sedately and said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Link to Chapter 12