Free Deficiency by Andrew Neiderman Page A

Eileen Okun and she had been Paige's closest friend.
    Everyone stood while the coffin was removed through a side entrance to the waiting hearse and then everyone began to file out, no one speaking in anything above a whisper, greeting each other with nods or movements of their eyes.
    With her eyes down, Terri marched behind the crowd of mourners and, like everyone else, felt she was escaping from under the shadow of death when they left the church.
    It was one of those perfect fall days when the sun seems to be holding back in intensity, but not brightness, and every cloud in the sky looks as if it was whipped with fresh milk. The air was redolent with the aroma of apples streaming in from an orchard near the church. It was a day designed for backyard touch football games and barbecues, which all made a funeral seemed that much more jarring and unreal.
    Terri paused on the street outside the church while the funeral procession was being organized and directed to proceed to the cemetery. There, she had a chance to speak with Will Dennis, the county district attorney. Tall and lanky with a Lincolnesque look of melancholy that Terri imagined was carved by twelve years in the elected position, seeing the results of one vicious act after another, Dennis had the demeanor and bearing of someone dependable, someone in whom you would comfortably trust the important things in your life. It was this charisma that made him invulnerable election after election, that and his uncanny memory for putting together faces and names, a politician's biggest asset. Be introduced and shake hands with him once and you were remembered forever.
    "Dr. Barnard," he said, nodding at her.
    "Mr. Dennis." She stood beside him and both of them watched the hearse creep away from the church, the line of automobiles following to snake slowly up to the cemetery in Glen Wild, a hamlet best known for its cemeteries.
    She sighed deeply and then blew some air between her gently closed lips.
    "Tough one," Will Dennis muttered. "Especially when it makes no sense."
    He looked at her.
    "Medically speaking, of course," he added.
    "Yes," she agreed. "Have you determined whether or not there was a criminal act committed?"
    "In what sense?" he asked, his heavy eyebrows turning in and toward each other. "There wasn't any violence. It was scurvy, right?"
    "I was referring to the man who brought her to the motel, leaving her there."
    "Oh. No, we don't have anything concrete about him and I don't know how we could indict someone for that. We'd have to establish that she was sick and he knew it, but everything we've learned suggests there was nothing wrong with her. On the contrary, she was a ball of energy if you want to believe the eyewitnesses."
    "Right. So the BCI investigator is leaving the case?"
    Will's lips curled up and in as he turned to look at her.
    "What BCI investigator?"
    "The one who interviewed me, Clark Kent?"
    His grimace of confusion softened into a look of amusement.
    "Is that some sort of joke? Clark Kent?"
    "No. That was his real name. He claimed his parents had a sense of humor. How could he come see me without your knowing anything about it?" she wondered. "I mean, does that happen?"
    "No," he said shaking his head, the grimace gone now. "Someone was obviously pulling a very, very sick joke on you, Terri. What did he look like?"
    "Look like? He was tall, about six feet one or two, blond-haired, blue eyes. He had a slight cleft in his chin and he was well tanned, like someone who had just returned from the Caribbean. I'd say he was in his mid-to late thirties."
    Will Dennis nodded.
    "There's no detective in this county I know of who matches that description. Let me know if you ever see or hear from this piece of shit again," he added angrily. "I'll have him indicted and prosecute him to the full extent of the law for impersonating a police officer."
    She shook her head.
    "He seemed so convincing and very nice. He talked about his pregnant wife and moving