If a Tree Falls Read online

  If a Tree Falls: A Kurtz and Barent Mystery

  By

  Robert I. Katz

  If a Tree Falls

  A Kurtz and Barent Mystery

  Copyright © 2019 by Robert I. Katz

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form, without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Steven A. Katz

  As always, thanks to Lynn and Erica for their editorial assistance and Steven for his excellent artwork, and a special thanks to Phil Marshall, former defense attorney, prosecuting attorney and judge of the City Court of Buffalo, NY for his advice on police and legal procedures.

  Also by Robert I. Katz

  Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future

  The Cannibal’s Feast

  The Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series:

  Surgical Risk

  The Anatomy Lesson

  Seizure

  The Chairmen

  Brighton Beach

  The Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind:

  The Game Players of Meridien

  The City of Ashes

  The Empire of Dust

  The Empire of Ruin

  The Well of Time

  The Survivors:

  The Towering Flame (forthcoming)

  Praise for the Books of Robert I. Katz

  “Surgical Risk is a highly original medical mystery…Peppered with insightful comments on medicine and its practitioners, Surgical Risk is a well-crafted and richly different mystery.”—Mystery Scene Magazine

  “…Kurtz and Barent make a compelling investigative team, and Surgical Risk is a mystery with plenty of suspense and twists”—Mystery Review Magazine

  “…the expertly realized background and the solid professionalism of the prose and dialogue mark Katz a writer to watch.”—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (About The Anatomy Lesson)

  “…a suspenseful medical mystery which grabs the reader from the first page and takes us on a ride you won’t soon forget…You can’t put it down.”—Midwest Book Review (About Seizure)

  “…one of the most unlikely and enjoyable amateur detectives around…this battle-loving doc with the snarky sense of humor is outrageous fun.”—Mystery Scene Magazine (About Seizure)

  “Recommended…”—Library Journal (About Seizure)

  Contents

  Praise for the Books of Robert I. Katz

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  The End

  A Note on the Timeline

  Information About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Seamus Sullivan was a very large man with a crooked smile, gentle brown eyes and a short, tangled beard. He lived in a small house constructed of pre-fab logs that stood on a wooded plot just outside of town. For the area, it was a common enough looking house, with a brick chimney, double-paned windows and a wooden porch containing a wooden swing, two chairs and a bench.

  From the outside, the house appeared to be no more than eight-hundred square feet but it contained a very large, very well appointed basement, originally built by moonshiners to hide their product. The basement was the feature that had most appealed to Seamus Sullivan when he purchased it, fifteen years before. He had a lot of fun in that basement.

  For the past seven years, Seamus Sullivan had taken great pleasure in dressing up as Santa Claus and sitting on a makeshift throne at the local mall, surrounded by cotton snow and reindeers made from cardboard, while Christmas carols played softly from the overhead speakers. The local kids (the small ones, at least) would line up to sit on his lap, declare that they had been very good indeed and solemnly present him with their list of hoped for presents. Their parents would look on fondly, no doubt remembering their own long-ago days sitting on Santa’s lap, though a few of these would always frown, no doubt remembering that very few of the requested presents had made their way down the chimney.

  Oh, well, let’s let the little rats cherish the illusion while they can.

  Most of all, Seamus Sullivan liked the little girls in their party dresses. These, he would give a special smile and bounce a little on his knee, wonderfully aware of their soft cotton panties rubbing against his groin.

  One or two of these would give him a doubtful little frown, at which he would let out a particularly large and merry, “Oh, ho, ho.”

  None of them ever complained, which was good for them, because Seamus Sullivan was also keeping a list…

  Richard Kurtz looked at the pile of luggage sitting on their apartment floor and gave his wife a doubtful frown. “You sure you have enough clothes? We’ll be there for six weeks. You might need more.”

  “Hush, you.” Lenore tapped her lips with a pen, looked down at her list and then gave a small shrug. She grinned at Kurtz. “If I need more, I’ll buy them. They do have stores in West Virginia, don’t they?”

  “One or two.”

  “Then I think we’re ready to conquer the wilderness.”

  Kurtz sighed.

  Lenore was a city girl, through and through, but Kurtz, though he had grown comfortable over the years living in New York, and had even learned to enjoy it, still retained a lot of the country he had grown up in. He preferred jeans to a suit and he would rather spend time with a hunting rifle or a fishing rod than wandering through a museum.

  He did like the food, though. You couldn’t find Jean-Georges or Daniel or Per Se in West Virginia, and God knew there was nothing like Chinatown.

  The barbecue was better, though. He was looking forward to the barbecue.

  Six hours later, after a limousine ride to LaGuardia and a stop-over at Dulles, their plane landed at Morgantown Municipal Airport. Kurtz sighed in relief as the plane touched down.

  Lenore glanced up at him from her copy of Vogue. “Something bothering you?”

  Morgantown’s runway was too small for the bigger passenger jets. The plane they had taken from Dulles was a Saab 340 turbo-prop, with a maximum passenger capacity of thirty-three.

  Flying never bothered Lenore. Flying was the safest way to travel. Fewer than one death in seven-million. Nothing to worry about. Kurtz knew this, but to Kurtz, flying didn’t feel safe, not when the plane was barely larger than a coffin and swayed back and forth with every breeze.

  Also, Kurtz was a surgeon and surgeons were pretty much all control freaks. Something about entrusting his life to another person did not sit well with Richard Kurtz…he repressed a shudder. How well trained was the pilot, anyway? Did he get a good night’s sleep? Is anything in his personal life distracting him from the job? Any history of alcoholism or drug abuse?

  “No,” Kurtz said. “Not at all.”

  Anyway, here they were, so forget it. Flight over, ground firm beneath his feet, just the way he liked it. He wriggled his toes. Firm.

  They piled the luggage into the rental car and pulled out onto the hi
ghway, which soon narrowed down to two lanes winding in and out between forest and open fields. Thirty minutes later, they arrived.

  “This is it?” Lenore asked.

  “This is it.”

  The farmhouse was well kept, with white clapboard siding and a big wooden porch. Funny, how welcoming the old place looked, comfortable, like an old pair of shoes. Weird, particularly since he had spent most of the first eighteen years of his life trying to get away.

  A wooden fence enclosed a corral, with two horses munching on hay. On one side of the corral stood a row of trees that led into a forest rich with deer and wild turkey. On the other side of the corral, the fields began: twenty acres of hay, another twenty of sweet corn, ten acres rotated year by year between tomatoes, cucumbers and yellow squash, a hundred acres where a herd of cattle roamed, an apple orchard that produced fifteen different varieties and another, smaller orchard full of peach trees.

  Most farms in West Virginia were small, family owned operations. The Kurtz family farm was larger and more prosperous than most, and since Kurtz, the only child, had left, his father depended on seasonal workers to keep the place going.

  And speak of the Devil. The door opened and Gary Kurtz stepped out.

  The old man looked good, Kurtz thought, not that he was all that old, barely sixty, and looking at least ten years younger.

  “Dickie,” he said with a grin.

  Kurtz sighed. “Please don’t call me Dickie.”

  “Well, then, Richard.” The old man’s grin grew wider. “Welcome home.”

  The old man talked a lot at dinner. He was smiling and engaged, even charming. It was strange, strange in a good way, but strange. For as long as Kurtz could remember, his father had been the morose, silent type. Lisa had sure changed things.

  Lisa was also a great cook. Almost as soon as they arrived, they had been ushered to the table. Lenore wandered into the kitchen to help, leaving Kurtz and his father sitting by themselves. Gary Kurtz had a little smile on his face. “So, how’s things?” Kurtz asked.

  “Pretty damn good,” the old man said. He didn’t elaborate. “You want some wine?”

  Kurtz’ father was not a connoisseur, but the wine, an Italian red Kurtz had never heard of, wasn’t bad. The dinner was terrific. Cornbread, wild turkey with sage and bread stuffing, peas from the garden behind the house, pan fried potatoes and apple pie for dessert.

  Kurtz had met Lisa at the wedding but hadn’t had the chance to speak to her then, beyond some routine pleasantries. “When do you start work,” Lisa asked, once the turkey was served.

  “Day after tomorrow. It should be interesting.”

  Don Stewart, one of two general surgeons on staff at Clinton Memorial, the small local hospital, had dropped dead from a heart attack in the middle of morning rounds. A new surgeon had been hired but couldn’t start for another six weeks. Kurtz already had a West Virginia license and had somehow been ‘volunteered’ to fill in, for an appropriate fee, of course. He hadn’t objected too strongly, since it was nearly four years since he had visited home and he was feeling a little guilty about ignoring the old man.

  “It’s a small place,” Lisa said, “It’s not like one of those big hospitals in New York.”

  Kurtz frowned. “So long as everybody knows their job, it doesn’t have to be big.”

  “Aside from your wedding, I’ve never been to New York,” Lisa said. “The closest I ever got was the Jersey shore.” She smiled at Kurtz’ father. “We should go back sometime.” Kurtz’ father returned the grin, evidently happy to go anywhere Lisa wanted.

  They made a good-looking couple. Gary Kurtz was almost as tall as his son, a bit leaner, his hair dark brown sprinkled with gray. Lisa must have been close to fifty but she looked more like thirty-five. She was a beautiful woman, nearly six feet, with thick black hair and a lush figure.

  Lisa was a widow. Her husband had been a local lawyer, Lisa, a paralegal. She had one grown daughter, a sophomore at West Virginia. “You’ll probably meet her tomorrow,” Lisa said. “She has a room in the dorms but she’s in and out a lot. I expect she’ll be home for the weekend.”

  Interesting, how the Kurtz farm had turned into ‘home.’ Lisa had known Kurtz’ father for less than a year, but she had moved in three months ago and they certainly did look homey together.

  God knew, she had improved the old man’s mood.

  After the coffee was served, Lisa frowned at Kurtz and said, “I hope you’re not sorry about coming. Clinton Memorial has some problems.”

  Kurtz blinked at her. “Oh?”

  She shook her head. “Wait a day or two. You’ll find out.”

  Chapter 2

  Seamus Sullivan almost always felt good after a job had been completed, with the getaway complete and the money safely tucked away in one of three anonymous accounts. This latest thing had been an easy one. The target lived alone in a supposedly secure community but the security was a joke. Sure, you had to drive in through a gate, if you wanted to drive in, but self-respecting assassins like Seamus Sullivan prefer not to leave a trail. The community had a fence around it but fences are easily climbed.

  So, climb the fence, stroll down the road, find the target, who was small, old and decrepit. Do what you came to do, and walk away, whistling. He hadn’t asked why the client wanted the old guy dead. He never did. His not to reason why.

  A good assassin knows a hundred different ways to get the job done. The chest muscles, for instance, are surprisingly weak. All they do is expand the ribcage, drawing in air, and then the ribcage passively contracts, squeezing it out. Expanding the ribcage takes almost no energy at all. Weak. Put one hand over the mouth, squeeze the nostrils shut with two fingers. Wait ten minutes or so for the struggles to cease and you have yourself a nice dead victim who apparently died of a heart attack. A job well done, easy as could be.

  As always when returning home, he left the car in a small, hidden clearing in the woods, and then hiked along a nearly invisible trail until he had a clear view of the building. Through his cell phone, he accessed the security cameras hidden in each room of the house, reviewing the recordings from all of them, then focused his binoculars on each door and window before concluding that everything was as he had left it.

  Then, whistling, he walked up the steps onto the porch, punched in the code and swung open the door. Before entering, he paused one final time, sniffing the air. Nothing. He entered and closed the door behind him.

  A soft laugh brought him up short. He spun, reaching for his gun, then sighed in relief. A laptop computer sat on the mantel, where he had left it, its screen pointed at Seamus. The screen showed a man, white, middle-aged, short brown hair, looking very pleased with himself.

  “Seamus, old boy,” the man said. “We have another job for you.”

  Clinton Memorial was too small to support an ICU, so no neuro or cardiac, and thank God, no major trauma. Also, no obstetrics. Delivering babies required a separate unit with specialized staff. The babies were delivered in nearby Morgantown. Clinton Memorial did bread and butter surgery, but a fair amount of it.

  All-in-all, a routine, country-time practice, and there was nothing at all wrong with that, Kurtz thought. Take out a few gallbladders, fix a hernia or two, go fishing. A nice life.

  A small, country hospital, barely fifty beds, and far from the big city, but it seemed to run well enough. If there were problems, they were not apparent. Most of the paperwork had been filled out well before Kurtz’ arrival. He stopped in HR, picked up his ID badge and a keycard for the doctors’ parking lot, filled out a charge form for the hospital cafeteria, then wandered over to the ER. There wasn’t much to see in the ER, one sleepy looking physician on rotation, a receptionist, an orderly and three RN’s.

  The food in the cafeteria surprised him. A choice of three entrees: ham steak, trout almondine and chicken cordon bleu, with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, buttered peas or red cabbage. A second station served pizza and a third served burgers, hot dogs and
French fries. All of it was dirt cheap.

  A lot of trout farms in West Virginia. The trout was local, a little under-seasoned but the almonds were flavorful and crunchy, and packets of salt and pepper sat on every table. The fries were crisp on the outside and meltingly soft on the inside, just the way fries should be and rarely were.

  The cafeteria was a lot busier than Kurtz would have expected, a few men and women in white coats and surgical scrubs, a couple of patients, one pushing an IV pole, but there were also whole families with kids and more than a few old folks sitting companionably together. Maybe all of them were here visiting patients but Kurtz doubted it. The place was open to the public, not just the patients and staff, and this was probably the best deal in town.

  The OR suite was tiny, only four rooms, and not a lot of surgeons on staff, just Kurtz and his temporary partner, Jerry Mandell, plus an orthopedist, a urologist, one eye surgeon, an ENT surgeon and two gynecologists. A long hallway stretched across the double doors leading to the operating rooms. The hallway contained a check-in station, a waiting room, a row of offices for the surgeons and administrative staff, men and women’s locker rooms and a nice sized lounge with tables, chairs, refrigerators and two microwaves. A flat-screen TV hung near the ceiling, tuned to the local weather station. Two nurses sat at a table, with a plate of cookies and cups of coffee, chatting. They looked up at Kurtz, curious, as he poked his head in. He smiled, nodded, walked down the hall and knocked at a closed door.

  “Come in,” a voice said.

  A woman in scrubs sat behind a large wooden desk. She had a plain, pleasant face and blonde hair flecked with gray, tied back in a pony tail. She smiled. “Dr. Kurtz?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Emily Carvalho. Please sit down.”

  The office was pleasantly messy, books and trinkets scattered over the desk and three metal shelving units along the walls. A picture of four rebellious looking toddlers sat on one of the shelves. Grandkids, probably. Emily Carvalho looked a little old to have children that young. Kurtz sat in one of the three visitors’ chairs.