32
The front room of Garner’s house, the room on the other side of the kitchen wall, was a showcase for glass jars filled with herbs and dried flowers, slender brown vials topped with medicine droppers, squatty blue tubs filled with botanical salves, larger bottles variously labeled as syrups or tonics, and several elegant teapots and cups.
Beth ran her fingers along the labels, curious about her grandfather’s work. Many of them bore the green Garner’s Garden logo. Others appeared to be from Europe. She saw some from China, with the contents handwritten in English on a sticker and applied over the Chinese characters. A whisper of rising red sun slipped through the lightweight curtains, likely drawn to protect the jars from direct light without darkening the room. A display case that also served as a counter bearing a register and credit card machine separated the products for sale from the shop’s front entry.
“He’s developed all these remedies?” she asked Trey, who was fishing a laptop out of his backpack.
“Not the stuff that requires a lab. He has a contract with one company to produce a few recipes, and he has his favorite distributors, but his specialty is the fresh plants—you should see the basement.”
“I thought he was in real estate.”
“Up here? This botanical interest of his makes more sense to me. He has cancer, you know.” Beth turned to face him, and his eyebrows shot up. “Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“What kind?”
“Liver.”
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“Not bad enough to keep him off his feet. He doesn’t talk about it very much, except to swear by this stuff.” Trey indicated the remedies on the shelves. “And by the good doctor, who calls herself holistic.”
Trey dropped onto a sofa under one of the windows and opened his laptop on his knees. “So Dr. Cat told you Garner’s dead. And did I tell you she wrote me off as a specimen of perfect health? What kind of doctor resents a healthy person? Let’s look into her.”
Beth didn’t see how this might help them find Garner.
“Do we really have to wait here for him to come home?”
“When the sun’s up, we’ll go ask around. Garner’s popular here. But right now the town sleeps. And besides, I don’t mind being forced to hang out for a while with a pretty cowgirl who listens to my stories.” Trey didn’t seem to be teasing her, but a veil of oil covered her hair, and her jeans might be able to stand up by themselves. “How did you come by Cat and Nova?” he asked.
“Nova was sick. I found her on my way into town, up at that church.”
“The Burnt Rock Harbor Sweet Assembly. Silly place. But Nova has broad beliefs about her spiritual life. Is she okay?”
“She’s had a miscarriage.”
Trey looked up from his computer. “Garner said something about her expecting.”
“Nova told me Dr. Ransom poisoned her.”
Trey didn’t laugh.
“I saw Nova Saturday night,” Trey said. “She looked fine to me. She came by Cat’s after we finished eating dinner.”
“Does everyone here make a habit of eating with folks they don’t like?”
Trey’s fingers flew and the keyboard clacked.
“Don’t we all now and then? I think Garner was trying to patch up an argument between them. Cat was pretty nice about things, now that I think of it—she invited Nova to join us, then sent some rolls home with her when she said she didn’t have time. Garner thinks I ought to get friendly with Nova. I like her and all, but she’s a bit too old for me, not to mention really far out there with her belief system. You come much closer to hitting the mark—outdoorsy, friendly with the wildlife, bold.”
“You’re not too shy yourself.”
He glanced up at her for a second and grinned. “No time to be shy. Too many cool people to meet. And I get the idea that you’re a Christian?”
“Yes.”
“Spectacular!”
His eyes scanned his computer screen again.
“Dr. Ransom gave Nova food? Could that have been what made her so sick?”
Trey shrugged. “Dinner sat fine with me, and Garner seemed okay last time I saw him.”
“Which was when?”
“Sunday morning before I went out. Look here: I’ve been searching for ‘Catherine Ransom, MD’ and can’t find squat. She’s listed on the state license board, but her license is barely a year old. She’s only been in Burnt Rock that long.”
Beth moved to the sofa and sat next to him where she could see the computer screen. “So maybe she’s from another state.”
“True. I can’t remember where she’s from. But I don’t get any hits at all on her name, not anywhere, and she’s not on any of the physician listings.”
“If she’s only been practicing for a year, they might just not be up to date.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it? She’s what—fortyish? And if Nova’s right about Cat poisoning her, maybe she’s trying to hide a malpractice history.”
“Poisoning someone is worse than malpractice,” Beth said. The day was taking far too long to get underway. Beth gripped Trey’s arm. “What if she poisoned Garner?”
“Yow! Your hands are Iceland!” Beth let go of him and sat on her hands. “Cat wouldn’t hurt him. They’re like this.” Trey crossed his fingers.
“Until I know for sure,” Beth said, “I’ll keep the option open. The rolls that Cat gave Nova—did all of you eat some?”
“No. I seriously swear off gluten. That offended her. But when I pointed out that she wasn’t eating any either, she dropped it.”
“She didn’t have some? What about Garner?”
“He ate a bunch—one for each of us and two for himself.”
“Trey, think about this—”
“Mind’s a-whirling.”
“What kind were they?”
“I don’t remember. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know, but Nova and Garner ate some, and you and Cat didn’t. It was less than three days ago. Come on. You have a head for details.”
Trey closed his eyes for two seconds. “Rye. They were rye.”
Beth sighed. Rye meant nothing to her. And what did she know about poison? She scoured her mental files for anything: her very limited experience with bread baking . . . high-altitude baking . . . rye. There were a few farmers in the valley who farmed rye. It was an easy dry-climate crop that was good for livestock feed. Sometimes the rye from neighboring farms took root in the wild and spread quickly onto grazing lands, where the cows noshed it with other grains and grasses.
“When I was a kid, we bought some rye to supplement our herd’s winter feed. It had been a really good year—lots of rain for the crops, but also lots of good warm weather and grazing in the mountains. We didn’t have the usual losses that year and had a few extra mouths to feed. So Dad bought this supply from a new farmer who was getting into the market with some great prices.”
“You’re not going to tell me that the farmer poisoned the rye and killed off your herd, are you?”
“Not exactly. The crop was infected with this fungus that grows on grain crops when the weather is particularly wet and warm. I can’t remember what it’s called. This farmer was so green that he didn’t realize what he had going on. It didn’t kill our cows, but it caused gangrene in a few of the older animals. They lost parts of their hooves. A few lost ears or tails. But what made me think of it is that a whole bunch of our pregnant cows miscarried.”
“Like Nova?”
“It’s a stretch, isn’t it? That something like that would have a similar effect on a human?”
“The weirdest possibilities are the ones that usually turn out to be true,” Trey said. “Did you know that the actress Hedy Lamarr patented a frequency-hopping technology in the 1940s that was used in the development of cell phones?”
“What does that have to do with rye bread?”
“Not bread, weird facts.”
“How much trivia can your big brain hold up there?” Beth asked, pointing to Trey’s head.
“Not much that’s actually useful,” he said, and then he laughed and typed away.
It took only fifteen minutes for Trey and Beth to unearth a few grim details about rye and the history of that fungus, which was called ergot. This included a popular theory that the Salem-witch-trials tragedy might be blamed on a wet spring and ergot-riddled rye, which caused hallucinations and burning sensations of the skin and other unpleasant symptoms. They also learned about the use of ergot in midwifery and ergot derivatives in modern-day obstetrics. A few experts believed that ergot might cause abortion in the early pregnancies of women who had other underlying risk factors, though this application was inconsistent and unreliable.
After long minutes of leaning into the small screen to read search-engine summaries and pages, Beth said, “This is all interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything.” She reached across the keyboard and hit the cursor that took them back to the search results.
“You have mud on your earrings,” Trey said. Beth had leaned in so close to him to read the pages that she’d eclipsed his view of the screen. Annoyed with herself, she withdrew, but he had already reached up to rub the caked dirt off the dangling silver, and she was forced to stay put or get a painful yank on her earlobe.
She said the only thing that came to mind. “That mud’s from Wally.”
Trey chuckled again, always so ready with that warm laugh. “I guess you have your own stories to tell. I’d like to hear them sometime.”
Beth didn’t know why her thoughts went to Jacob at that moment, or why Trey’s unguarded attention made her feel both flattered and guilty. She liked his easy manner and entertaining talk, and his apparent interest in her grandfather’s well-being. But she wished Jacob were here to help her find Garner too.
She took the earring in her fingers and gently pulled it out of Trey’s grip. His hands, unlike hers, were wide and warm, but this time he didn’t comment on her frigid fingers. He freed her from discomfort by scrolling down the search results and then clicking through to the next page.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing to a link halfway down the list.
It seemed Trey had seen it at the same time. “Mentally ill physician vanishes,” with the keywords ergot and poison highlighted in the summary. The link took them to an article archived two years earlier in the Daily News, a Los Angeles–based newspaper. At the top of the article was a photograph of Catherine Ransom, who at the time wore her hair long and blond.
Trey and Beth read together silently.
Authorities are searching for Katrina White, MD, who fled her clinic in North Hollywood hours before an arrest warrant in her name was issued Wednesday afternoon. White is accused of intentionally and routinely poisoning at least two minors in her care over a six-month period.
James Delaney filed a complaint against White after his child was hospitalized for a series of “suspicious and inexplicable illnesses” according to Detective John Kane, who is overseeing the manhunt.
Forensic psychologist Dirk Swenson believes that White suffers from a form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a factitious disorder in which a caregiver, usually a mother, willfully causes harm to her charge, usually a child, for the purpose of gaining medical attention, recognition, and praise for her caregiving skill. Rarely the syndrome affects physicians.
Beth became stuck on “attention, recognition, and praise for her caregiving skill.” She found herself reading the same line over and over. It was unfortunately easy to see herself in that yearning. The desire to help others wasn’t entirely altruistic, was it? Her hopes of being a great veterinarian, and perhaps a gifted healer, were firmly rooted in a longing for attention, recognition, and praise. From Jacob, from Levi, from Danny, from her mother. From anyone who would notice her and think that such gifts must be far greater than any of her sins.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is difficult to detect and diagnose because of the apparent trustworthiness and devotion of the caregiver.
“She was the kindest professional you’ll ever meet,” says Newell Reinhart, a single father who has also filed a legal suit against White. “My daughter’s fears of going to the doctor vanished when we met Dr. White. It sickens me to say they’ve all come back now.”
According to Kane, “We might never have cornered White if not for the quick thinking of Mr. Delaney,” who turned over to police the drug samples White had provided for the child from her office. The pills did not match the description on their box, and White’s recommended dose was toxic. The child was immediately removed from White’s care, though an investigation yielded no intent to harm.
The case might have been called an unfortunate medical error if not for the suspicions of Reinhart, who described himself as a “close friend” of the doctor’s until his child began to suffer from chronic bouts of skin irritation and symptoms that “looked like dementia,” said Kane. Less than three months after the Delaney investigation, Reinhart’s problems were eventually traced to a natural remedy touted by White. This remedy, which White claimed would mitigate environmental allergies, contained powdered ergot, a grain fungus known for causing psychological disturbances. Traces of the concoction were found in White’s home, where it appears she made the remedy herself.
The article closed with a phone number that people could call if they had information pertaining to the whereabouts of Dr. White.
Trey finished reading first and was dialing his cell phone before Beth was done. He put the phone to his ear as the call went through to the predawn state of California.
“I’m not just seeing Dr. Cat’s face in that photo because I’m tired, am I?” Trey asked her.
Beth shook her head, more worried than ever about her grandfather. She rose from the sofa and went over to Mercy, then got down on her knees and lifted the wolf’s sleepy head in her hands. “I know God is using you, boy. I know we’re not going to find Garner without you. Please show me where he is.”
The wolf put his head back on his paws. The sunlight penetrating the thin draperies was shifting from blue to red. “Can’t we go now? Please? I don’t understand the holdup.”
Mercy closed his eyes.
Behind her Trey said, “Yes, I’m calling about an old case of Detective Kane’s . . .”