Healing Wolves
Part Five - The Call
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

ER and all related characters are the property of Warner Bros., Amblin Entertainment, and ConstantC productions, used here without permission. This story has been written entirely for entertainment value. No copyright infringement is intended, and no form of profit is being made on this work. Any errors in continuity, characterization, or common sense may be blamed entirely on me. Sorry. If this hasn't given you eyestrain already, read on.



Ten days later, give or take a Tuesday, I unlocked the office door, feeling rested of body, clear of mind, and perky of spirit. Valerie Besch would have called this a "good ozone day". She says that the ions in the air are positively charged, so that when you breathe them in, they realign the neurons of your brain in more favorable patterns. I tended to smile and nod and say "I see" a lot around her. Then again, I've had plenty of bad ozone days, so maybe she's onto something.

I opened the windows and was just putting a David Byrne disk into the CD player, when the phone rang. Wonder who else is up and feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this early in the morn? Okay, there's the obvious way to find out. I picked up the phone on the fourth ring, just before the machine could kick in. I would have gotten it on the third ring, but I paused to snag a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator.

Now, the trick is to celebrate every moment of a day like this by projecting the best possible energy into everything you do and say, establishing a harmonious sphere of influence right from the get-go. Answering the telephone, for example, should be an act of elegance and simplicity. Observe.

"Wintergreen Investigations," I half-sang, "Your fall from grace is our call to the case."  Eeesh, that one bit. So much for elegance and simplicity.

"You familiar with a Kerry Weaver?" It was Stan Jacobs, a detective sergeant I know on the LAPD. Jacobs is built like a fire hydrant, short, squat, and solid. His personality matches exactly. He's not one for elegance.

"And a cheery good morning to you, as well, Stanley," I said.

"Shut up and answer the question, Fox," he said. If he was still on the job at this hour, he must have pulled an all-nighter. Maybe longer. You could hear it in his voice.

"Yeah, I did a job for her a couple of weeks ago," I told him.

"What sort of job?"

"Tracked down an old friend. No-brainer, nothing unusual." I was beginning to feel my neurons misaligning. Something in Jacobs' voice told me I wouldn't like this conversation. Maybe I wasn't as clear of mind as I thought, or I would have picked up on it as soon as he asked about Kerry Weaver. "What's going on, Stan?"

"I'm guessing the friend is a Glory Rossili, right?"

"Yeah. Come on, Stan, what's--"

"Got a call from a Lieutenant Steve Wasserstein, Chicago PD," he said, "Kerry Weaver was reported missing."

Boom. You can feel the bottom of your stomach drop out at moments like this. I sat down. "Missing, like how? Didn't show up for work...?"

"Didn't show up for work, no word at home, been gone for forty-eight. CPD found her purse in an alley, block from where she worked, along with a dented crutch. No cash or credit cards, but other personal effects still there." You could tell that Stan had been through recitations like this a million times before and would go through them a million times more, and he knew it.

"Why'd Wasserstein call you?"

"Wanted to ask me about you, Danny Boy. I gave him my honest opinion of you. Didn't sound too thrilled, but he thinks you're probably clean, anyway."

"How'd my name get into this?" I didn't remember giving Kerry Weaver my card.

"She had a letter in her purse," Stan said, "Stamped but not mailed, addressed to a Glory Rossili, care of--"

"Daniel Fox, Wintergreen Investigations," I finished with him. It made sense. She couldn't let go of it, so she wrote Glory a letter. Maybe saying let's talk, maybe saying I'm sorry, maybe saying fine, to hell with you too. She'd send it to me, since I knew where to find Glory and she didn't.

I described the Glory situation briefly for Jacobs' benefit, giving him her address and telling him that she was now calling herself Gloria Russell. Just to be thorough, I also mentioned a guy named Gary, last name unknown, who maybe had a record. He listened without comment until I was done, then said, "All right, I'll have her checked out." He didn't sound like he expected there to be anything worth learning from that angle. I didn't either. I didn't see Glory and Gary flying to Chicago and doing harm to Kerry Weaver just to get her to leave them alone. It was overkill by any stretch of the imagination. But the cops have to look anyway.

"I'll talk to Wasserstein," Stan said. "He probably won't want to talk to you, but I'm supposed to tell you to keep yourself available, anyway."

"Yeah, okay."

He was quiet for a second, then he said, "Shit happens, Danny Boy. Not your problem." Then he hung up. I listened to the dial tone for a bit and then I hung up too. Stan Jacobs and I aren't what you'd call close, but those few words of comfort were more than he afforded most people.

I went back to the CD player and turned it on, but the air seemed to have changed. Was bad ozone something that could be projected through the telephone? Or did we create our own ozone by sheer mood? I'd have to ask Val if I ever talked to her again. I tried to finish up a couple of overdue client reports, but I kept losing track. No doubt about it, I was going to feel crappy for the rest of the day.

Picking up the phone again, I dialed information for the Chicago Police Department. For the next ten minutes, I racked up the phone bill trying to locate Steve Wasserstein's office. I thought about all the long-distance plans vying for public attention on television and was supremely glad that I hadn't seen any of my actor friends exhorting me to save three cents a minute on a collect call by dialing 10-10-BITE-ME. When I finally reached Wasserstein's office, he wasn't in. I left a message with my name and number and asked him to call me back. Lot of good that did.

I hung up, then sat back in my chair and tried to catnap a little. When that didn't happen, I got up and paced awhile, and then put in another disk, this time the Beatles. I sat through 'Hard Days Night' twice without paying attention.

What was going on here? Okay, I felt bad that Kerry Weaver was missing. And I felt worse that the evidence pointed to something ugly happening to her. Jacobs was right, I shouldn't be beating myself up over something that happened hundreds of miles away and probably had nothing to do with my business with her. People become statistics in big cities, and it was just a coincidence that I had met her shortly beforehand.

I dug out Kerry Weaver's business card and dialed County General Hospital. I listened to the phone ring and tried to think what I was going to say.

"County General, may I help you?" said a woman's voice, mechanically.

"Hi. I'd like to speak with someone regarding a Dr. Weaver..."

"Hang on." I was on hold, listening to a light rendition of "Dancing in September." Like there was a heavy version.

"ER," said a man's voice. For a second, I thought he said "Eeyore," and wondered what the significance of a Winnie the Pooh character was, then I figured it out. Emergency Room. Kerry Weaver hadn't looked like the type for emergency medical services, but people surprise you.

"Yes, I was calling to speak to someone about Dr. Kerry Weaver. Is there someone specific I should talk to?"

"Uhh, hold on, please." The phone went muffled, like he was cupping the mouthpiece, but I could hear him calling someone's name.

A minute later, another man came on, sounding sort of harried. "Mark Greene," he said.

"Hello, Dr. Greene," I said, hazarding a guess about the title, "My name is Daniel Fox. I'm in Los Angeles, and I just got word that Kerry Weaver was reported missing."

"Yes, that's right," he said, in what I figured was his business tone. All doctors, like cops, develop one. "Dr. Weaver has been missing for almost three days. Are you a friend of hers?"

"No," I said, "just an acquaintance, but I did some business with her recently, and I was concerned..."

"We're all very concerned here, as well, Mr. Fox. I'm afraid I can't tell you much more, except that the authorities are looking into the matter as we speak. If you'd like to leave your number, I can have someone call you if we hear anything more."

I could tell he wanted to get off the phone. "No, that's all right. Thank you anyway, Dr. Greene."

He said you're welcome and goodbye and we hung up. Some days.

I thought about closing shop and taking the day off, one of the perks of being in charge of the office, but I didn't feel like doing anything fun right now. Hopefully, work would get my mind off of it. If no new clients came in, I could try the juggling thing again. Wrong thought, Fox. It got me thinking about Kerry Weaver all over again.

It said something about her character that Richard Wintergreen thought highly of her. All right, I had to admit I kind of liked her, even if she was critical and anal and a real pain in the neck. You could tell there was somebody pretty okay under there, somewhere. Glory must have thought so, at one time, to hang out with her. And she had a sense of humor, even if it was buried pretty deeply. Okay, time to get off of this. It's bringing me down.

I got up and got a beer from the fridge. It's always after 5:00 somewhere in the world. When I closed the door, I looked at the magnets on the front of the fridge door, with pictures of Groucho Marx and Humphrey Bogart and Louis Armstrong and John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe, among others. The honored dead. They were all looking at me, and there seemed to be a condemning look in their eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, guys," I said to them. "It's not my fault that she's missing."

They didn't change expression, so I went back to the desk. Murgatroyd the Gargoyle was perched there, giving me the same look.

"The cops are looking for her. That's their job," I said to him.

He kept looking.

"Not like there's anything I can do about it," I said to him. Fine, stoneface, be that way. "It's not my problem," I said to the empty office. And that was my final word on the subject.

Five hours later, I was on United Airlines flight #463, coming into Chicago.