Off the Wall Stories Volume 2

Dedication

To the fond memory of David and Susan Dunscombe

Preface

In the late 1980s, I was alone on an extended business trip to a place where I did not speak the native tongue and did not know many people. Lonely, knowing no one, and with nothing to do,  I set up my luggable, portable computer and began to write stories drawn from my personal and professional experience.

All of which explains why some of these stories are time-worn. They deal with thirty-plus-year-old computer technology and social issues. They predate the Internet, social media, and cell phones.

Rather than upgrade and rewrite those old stories, I am publishing them as I first wrote them with minor corrections here and there and perhaps a touch of rewrite where I couldn’t help myself.

I published the first volume of this work, Off the Wall Stories, in 2012, with stories I’d written since retiring, most of which are not related to technology. The stories in this second volume didn’t make that cut because of their legacy technical content. When I decided to do this volume, I gathered up the neglected stories and added a few more for a second collection, which you are now reading.

Al Stevens, 2020

Death in Rehab

The cart’s wheels squeaked and chattered as they rolled down the tiled corridor. Nurse Walt Pullen pushed it along, using the bulk of his small frame to propel the cart, heading back to the second floor nurses’ station, and in no hurry. His evening rounds over, the fortyish nurse could return, catch up on paperwork, and then sit at his desk, reading his paperback novel, on call in case a patient buzzed for assistance. He’d done this same work for years, pushing carts, dispensing meds, and waiting for buzzers, years spent mostly indoors with a pallor of a complexion and a small paunch to show for it.

As he rolled along, he thought about the future. They had announced that the rehab center would be closed in the coming year. Something about real estate values. It would mean he’d have to find another job, not an easy matter for a male nurse his age. The irony amused him. The facility’s owner was now one of its patients, a stroke survivor in the room he was rolling past. Pullen didn’t wish a stroke on anyone, but maybe this guy’s stay here would convince him of the need to keep the place open. Or maybe he’d die and his heirs would want to keep it going. Pullen could only hope.

He wheeled his cart past Mr. Clark’s room, lost in his thoughts. A loud report like a backfire came from inside. Pullen stopped pushing, stepped to the door, and gave it a yank. It wouldn’t open. Something inside had it jammed shut. The harder he pulled, the more the door resisted.

He punched a button on his mobile intercom. A sluggish voice answered, Dempsey here.

This is Pullen. I’m on the second floor. Sounded like a gunshot from Mr. Clark’s room, and I can’t get the door open.

Be right there.

Pullen paced back and forth, checking his watch. This was a first for him. In twenty years on this job, he’d never heard a gunshot. He worried that somehow he’d be found at blame. He wished Dempsey would get there.

After a few minutes, Bob Dempsey stepped out of the elevator at the end of the hall, his uniform rumpled as if he’d slept in it, which he probably had. He adjusted his holster and ran his fingers through the wisp of grey hair that surrounded his bald spot. He walked briskly from the elevator toward the room.

Fester Walton trailed along behind, carrying his toolbox, which clattered in time with his steps. Fester was the resident maintenance man. His job was both indoors and out, he’d been at it since a young man, and he had the ruddy complexion, callused hands, and stooped shoulders to prove it.

They walked with urgency to where Pullen waited. Dempsey moved past Pullen without a word and gave the door a tug. It didn’t budge. Walton tried it. Nothing. Patients’ doors had no locks and opened into the hallway, so nothing should have prevented it from opening.

Something’s jammed in there, Dempsey said.

Walton gave it a pull. Yep, he said. Jammed.

Well, Nurse Pullen said, we have to get it open. There’d be hell to pay if something was wrong and they didn’t get to Mr. Clark in time.

All three men nodded their understanding of the urgency of what Pullen suggested. Wilson Clark was a big shot in the community that was home to the Clarkton Rehabilitation Center. The town had been named after his ancestors, settlers from two centuries back, and his family had controlled most everything ever since. He was in his early seventies and owned a manufacturing plant, two restaurants, the newspaper, the hardware store, a television station, and other businesses that nobody seemed to know much about. Most of the working citizenry were in his employ one way or another. He’d come to the rehab center a month ago following a stroke. He occupied one of the few private rooms and kept the staff jumping during the day.

Walton pulled a hammer and screwdriver from his toolbox and punched out the hinge pins. The door fell slightly inward and rested against its frame. They maneuvered it down and twisted and pushed it in, knocking over a straight-backed chair that had been hanging from the doorknob on the other side of the door.

The three men climbed over the door and chair and pushed their way into the room. Pullen threw the light switch, but the overhead fluorescent light did not come on. When Walton shined his flashlight toward the bed, the three men fell back. Pullen was surprised and unnerved by what they found and the others seemed to be so too.

Wilson Clark, the town’s leading citizen, was sitting up in bed, motionless, a small, round bloody wound on his left temple, his eyes wide open. A revolver lay on the bed next to Clark’s left side. The room smelled of a mixture of antiseptic cleanser and spent gunpowder.

Pullen stepped over to the bed, pressed his fingers on the old man’s neck, and felt for a pulse. He shook his head and looked at the other two men who stood staring at the dead man, their jaws open, their eyes wide. Dead old people were an uncommon sight at a rehab center, but it did happen occasionally. Dead old people with gunshot wounds were another matter altogether.

Dempsey snapped out of it and took charge. Okay, everybody out of here. Don’t touch anything. Go back to where you belong and wait.

He unclipped his cell phone from his belt and called 911. This is Dempsey, security at Clarkton Rehab. There’s been a shooting. Looks like suicide. Send the police and an ambulance.

Nurse Pullen went into the corridor and wondered what he should do. The shift paperwork needed attention, and regulations required him to complete and file the reports on time. But somebody would surely expect him to stay here and give his statement to the police. He didn’t know which choice would get him in the most trouble. He decided to do his job as usual. They couldn’t chew him out for that. He rolled the cart away from the scene and toward the nursing station.

***

Detective Emory Pfalzgraf stood at the unhinged, toppled door, which rested half against an overturned chair and half on the floor just inside the room. He shined his light around the room, and took careful measure of the scene.

A short bulky man in his early forties, Pfalzgraf wore a rumpled light-weight zip-up jacket over a plaid cotton shirt, blue jeans, and dirty running shoes without socks. The dress code didn’t apply when you were pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, or so Pfalzgraf would rationalize if anyone asked. Didn’t matter, though. The brass were all tucked in and comfy at home, not having had their sleep disturbed, and there was no one around to disapprove of his appearance. He ran his tongue over his teeth. He had neglected to brush in his haste to get dressed and to the scene. His mouth felt like the bottom of a bird cage.

This was a do-or-die case. Pfalzgraf was out of favor. His most recent case had been commandeered by the FBI and the brass didn’t like having to turn over their hard-earned evidence to the Feebs who grabbed all the glory when the case was cracked. The bosses had given Phalzgraf an ultimatum: Close the next one yourself or start thinking about retirement.

Dempsey stood next to him, wringing his hands. Never had anything like this happen before, he said.

Pfalzgraf ignored him. The detective was tired and looked it. Although he was accustomed to being rousted at all hours, he didn’t much like it. But he was the town’s only homicide detective, and he took his work seriously. When they called, he responded. Not as a reaction to the current instability of his position on the force but because he believed in advocating for those whose lives had ended unnecessarily.

What do we have here? he asked the uniformed cop standing guard at the door.

I’m guessing a suicide, the uniform said. That’s what the E.M.T. thought when he declared him.

The M.E. makes that call, Pfalzgraf said. Let’s see if we can guess. He turned to Dempsey. Who found him?

Nurse Pullen heard the shot.

Where’s she?

He. He should be at the nursing station.

Pfalzgraf examined the body and its surroundings. What’s this?" he asked.

That’s the tray the nurse brings him his meds on.

There were no pills on the tray, and the glass of water was half empty.

Based on what he saw, his gut instinct told him this was no suicide. The dead man was sitting up in bed with a bullet in his brain. Why does a guy take his meds just before he kills himself?

Pfalzgraf looked up at the overhead fluorescent light fixture. He stepped around the unhinged door to the wall switch by the doorway and shined his light on it. It was in the up position, indicating that the light was supposed to be on. He stretched a surgical glove onto his right hand and flipped the switch down and up. The light didn’t work. Mr. Dempsey, he said, how long has that light been burnt out?

Not long, Dempsey said. We stay on top of things like that.

Why’s the door off its hinges?

Couldn’t get it open. I think that chair was wedged in it. Maybe the old man didn’t want to be interrupted. Walton—he’s our maintenance man—he knocked the hinge pins out.

Who was first one inside?

We went in together, Dempsey said. Three of us.

Pfalzgraf took a small digital camera from his jacket pocket and took pictures of everything. Is there another room laid out like this one? He wanted to reconstruct the scene without disturbing anything, and a similar room would allow him to do that.

Dempsey stepped into the light coming from the hallway, punched something into his cell phone, waited a few seconds, and said, Next door. Vacant.

You can tell that from your phone? Pfalzgraf asked.

It controls the security system. It’s got a floor plan and who’s in what rooms. Saves time.

What’ll they think of next? Pfalzgraf said. He called out to one of the uniforms. Come in here, climb on that chair, and check the tubes. But don’t leave prints. Come on, Dempsey. Let’s go look at that room.

They stepped out over the door and went a few steps down the corridor and into the adjacent room. It did have the same layout and furniture as the neighboring death scene. Pfalzgraf closed the door and wedged the back of the chair over the doorknob. Sure enough, the door wouldn’t open. Then he removed the chair, positioned it under the light fixture, and stood on it.

Yeah, I can reach the lights, he said as if to explain to Dempsey what he was doing. Let’s go back.

As they walked back to the scene, Pfalzgraf said, Word’s out they’re closing this place.

Yeah, Dempsey said, That’s the scuttlebutt.

What happens to the people that work here?

I guess we look for jobs. Mr. Clark—the dead guy—would be making that decision. I guess not now.

When they returned to the scene, the overhead light was burning bright.

One of the tubes was twisted out of its socket, said the uniformed cop.

Pfalzgraf grinned at Dempsey as if to say, Told you. He looked at the ceiling