I’ll look back in before I go, after you and Blythe have had a chance to talk.”
“Go right ahead.”
The doctor motions for me to follow him back to the kitchen, but even there, we’re too close to my father for comfort. At Kirby’s suggestion, we step out onto the small redwood terrace that overlooks the wooded backyard.
“Poor Blythe,” Jack says. “I see it all the time. All the men I grew up with act like kings in their dotage. They expect to be waited on hand and foot, regardless of how obstinate they are or what silly whims they come up with. I’ve seen a man send his wife and children thirty miles in every direction to find him a goddamn Nehi soda.”
“I can imagine.”
The doctor sits on the redwood bench against the rail and squints up at me. “Marshall, before I speak, I want to be very clear that everything I’m about to tell you is off the record. Is that understood?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m about to break a bunch of HIPAA regulations, or laws, and you’re going to keep quiet about it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And please don’t call me ‘sir.’ It’s Jack, all right?”
“All right, Jack. Off the record.”
He takes out a cigarette, a Winston, and lights it. After blowing out a long stream of blue smoke, he holds up the cigarette and says, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
“Noted.”
“All right. In the next day or two, an autopsy on Sally Matheson is likely to say she was healthy when she died. But in truth, she was ill. Very ill.”
My reporter’s radar throws back a hard echo. “Really? If she was that sick, why won’t the autopsy pick it up? Are they getting that local pathologist to do it? Like they did with Buck Ferris?”
“I don’t know who’s doing the post, but medical fraud isn’t my worry. About four months ago, I diagnosed Sally with a rare condition called amyloidosis. It’s a blood disease. A progressive one. You’ve probably heard of amyloid proteins—they’re what’s deposited as plaques in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease. But there are different types of amyloidosis. Some you can live with a long time, others you can’t. Sally had an incurable type.”
“Did she know that?”
“Oh, yes. But she told me she didn’t want anyone to know she was ill—not even Max and Paul. She was adamant. And my policy with longtime patients like Sally is to honor their wishes. At least until it becomes a serious risk to them. Of falls, et cetera.”
“Were you treating her for this condition?”
“Symptomatic treatment. There’s really no treatment for the disease itself. Not for her type. She was a borderline candidate for a bone marrow transplant, but she ultimately decided against it.”
Jack’s revelation has already altered my perception of both Sally’s death and her husband’s alibi. “You still haven’t said why the autopsy won’t pick up her illness.”
“The disease is subtle, at first. And they won’t be looking for it. Tests involve collecting twenty-four hours’ worth of urine, doing skin fat tests, things like that. Depending on the extent of organ damage at this point, a first-rate pathologist might detect it, but my guess is it’ll slip through.”
“How bad was her prognosis?”
“With her type . . . pretty grim. For a proud, beautiful woman like Sally, it would be tough to endure.”
In some fraction of a second I recall with perfect clarity Paul’s TV-pretty mother teaching us to gut, clean, and fry fish at Lake Comeaux. “How long would she likely have lived beyond last night?”
Dr. Kirby scratches his chin. “Hard to say. I learned long ago that physicians make poor oracles. As long as a year, but more likely seven or eight months. Possibly less.”
“Christ. This is some kind of week we’re having.”
Kirby’s eyebrows go up. “We?”
“Everybody. The whole town.”
“I’d have to agree with you there.”
“Why have you told me this, Jack?”
Dr. Kirby takes a long drag on his Winston, then lets the smoke out slowly. “I read your story on Buck Ferris. I’m glad you wrote it, but I’m probably one of the few. And I was worried that if you wrote about Sally’s death in the same way, you might get out ahead of your skis, suggesting it was murder.”
For a few seconds I wonder if Dr. Kirby has come here at the behest of Max Matheson or someone else in the Poker Club. But Jack Kirby is no great friend to the Poker Club, and he’s certainly not a member of their little cabal. “You’re saying Sally