story is the best. Elaborate details are more likely to entrap the teller than entrance the hearer, she knew that from painful experience. Gaining entry to a suspicious San Francisco apartment with the story that she was a city earthquake inspector had garnered her no evidence, and she’d ended up having to check out every weight-bearing beam in the place. By the time she’d finished, the real stash, in the apartment below, was gone.
So what about Jeff Tremaine? What did she really know about him? The man had seemed so ordinary, so parochial. The biggest question she had had about him was why he chose San Francisco for medical school. But bedside manner or no, you couldn’t say, “Why didn’t you go somewhere duller where you would have fit in?”
But the change in him had not come after med school at all. There were plenty of dull, parochial cities with medical schools, but dull, parochial-seeming Jeff Tremaine had opted for San Francisco. And once there, he hadn’t taken the safe road and limited himself to studies and spouse, he had come to the parties where he didn’t fit in, had coffee with the students who found him parochial. He’d done it almost on principle.
Still, he was the last person she’d have expected to find in Africa five years later. By that time he should have been right up the interstate here, happily treating measles, chicken pox, and offering the occasional flu shot.
She shut her eyes and tried to recall him at those parties or in the rotations they had shared: ob-gyn, surgery, pathology. Try as she might, she could get no picture but the straight arrow, the guy with the naval scholarship who was pleased to be looking at four years’ service in the navy.
Four years? Had he just been out of the service a year when he arrived in Africa? Why did she think not? It took dredging up six conversations in Africa before she recalled him saying it had been awkward to leave his practice after only three years.
So Jeff Tremaine had been in the navy only two years instead of the four he owed them? Why?
She stared out at the black power lines running in tandem against the darkening sky. The distant hills were charcoal shadows and the whole landscape had taken on the unreality of dusk, the time mystics called the doorway.
In the front seat Potter drove, hands still atop the wheel, shoulders tight.
Jeff? Did the navy discharge him for drugs, drink, incompetence? Maybe the dead woman in Gattozzi was a local who came to Jeff Tremaine ill, and he made the wrong diagnosis and prescribed the wrong treatment and when she died, he panicked and called for a second opinion. No. It would take more than wrong treatment to cause the woman to bleed out. And there had been no smell of alcohol on Jeff’s breath, no dilated pupils or twitching hands.
But he certainly balked at performing the autopsy. And that, Kiernan realized was least like him. Because … because why? In Africa Jeff had been nowhere near the senior doctor, not even the senior American. But after her needle stab it was he who called everyone within five hundred miles of Takema to get her the ribavirin. He jumped in the truck and drove overnight and back to get it to her. He made the decision to use the only available dosage for her.
He had loved Hope Mkema. He hadn’t even liked Kiernan. But it was the principle that had motivated him. Maybe he would have called more hospitals, driven twice as far for Hope, but by the time she was symptomatic, he knew there was no ribavirin left anywhere.
Potter jerked his head to the right. His mouth opened, froze open, then slowly closed as if he had realized the insubordination he was about to commit and caught himself just in the nick of time.
Kiernan smiled; the silence was getting to him. She decided to give it another few minutes. What other possibilities were there with the dead woman and Jeff Tremaine, her newly discovered man of principle? Did he know the woman who ran the safe house? He was the
So what about Jeff Tremaine? What did she really know about him? The man had seemed so ordinary, so parochial. The biggest question she had had about him was why he chose San Francisco for medical school. But bedside manner or no, you couldn’t say, “Why didn’t you go somewhere duller where you would have fit in?”
But the change in him had not come after med school at all. There were plenty of dull, parochial cities with medical schools, but dull, parochial-seeming Jeff Tremaine had opted for San Francisco. And once there, he hadn’t taken the safe road and limited himself to studies and spouse, he had come to the parties where he didn’t fit in, had coffee with the students who found him parochial. He’d done it almost on principle.
Still, he was the last person she’d have expected to find in Africa five years later. By that time he should have been right up the interstate here, happily treating measles, chicken pox, and offering the occasional flu shot.
She shut her eyes and tried to recall him at those parties or in the rotations they had shared: ob-gyn, surgery, pathology. Try as she might, she could get no picture but the straight arrow, the guy with the naval scholarship who was pleased to be looking at four years’ service in the navy.
Four years? Had he just been out of the service a year when he arrived in Africa? Why did she think not? It took dredging up six conversations in Africa before she recalled him saying it had been awkward to leave his practice after only three years.
So Jeff Tremaine had been in the navy only two years instead of the four he owed them? Why?
She stared out at the black power lines running in tandem against the darkening sky. The distant hills were charcoal shadows and the whole landscape had taken on the unreality of dusk, the time mystics called the doorway.
In the front seat Potter drove, hands still atop the wheel, shoulders tight.
Jeff? Did the navy discharge him for drugs, drink, incompetence? Maybe the dead woman in Gattozzi was a local who came to Jeff Tremaine ill, and he made the wrong diagnosis and prescribed the wrong treatment and when she died, he panicked and called for a second opinion. No. It would take more than wrong treatment to cause the woman to bleed out. And there had been no smell of alcohol on Jeff’s breath, no dilated pupils or twitching hands.
But he certainly balked at performing the autopsy. And that, Kiernan realized was least like him. Because … because why? In Africa Jeff had been nowhere near the senior doctor, not even the senior American. But after her needle stab it was he who called everyone within five hundred miles of Takema to get her the ribavirin. He jumped in the truck and drove overnight and back to get it to her. He made the decision to use the only available dosage for her.
He had loved Hope Mkema. He hadn’t even liked Kiernan. But it was the principle that had motivated him. Maybe he would have called more hospitals, driven twice as far for Hope, but by the time she was symptomatic, he knew there was no ribavirin left anywhere.
Potter jerked his head to the right. His mouth opened, froze open, then slowly closed as if he had realized the insubordination he was about to commit and caught himself just in the nick of time.
Kiernan smiled; the silence was getting to him. She decided to give it another few minutes. What other possibilities were there with the dead woman and Jeff Tremaine, her newly discovered man of principle? Did he know the woman who ran the safe house? He was the
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