June 16, 10 NE (Investigation)

Carol stops by the daycare to peek in on Sweetheart but doesn't let the little girl spy her through the window, because then she'll think she's headed home for the day. Daryl's supposed to pick her up when he gets back from hunting, but Carol just wants to see her. Almost losing Sweetheart in the swine flu has left her feeling a bit guilty every time she drops her off at daycare.

The two-and-a-half year old is the oldest and biggest in the group of children who are sitting in a circle with Sherry. Sweetheart can technically start preschool in December, when she turns three, but Carol thinks she'll wait until April of next year, when VanDaryl can also start, and then her little girl will have a familiar friend with her.

Sherry sits singing with the children and trying to get them to clap. Connie's sister Kelly is list on the shift calendar as the next daycare worker, to take over in an hour. It's impressive that not one child has broken free of the circle to crawl or toddle away. To Sweetheart's left sits VanDaryl, and the rest of the circle wraps around to meet her - Benji Carter, Hope Myers, Yona Smith, Little John Davies, Dwight, Jr., and Harry soon-to-be Mayfield (once Deputy Thomas legally adopts him). Harry, who has not yet learned to crawl, is on in his knees and rocking and watching the others as they clap their hands together. Sweetheart pauses from her clapping to pat Harry on his little, brown-haired head.

Six months is the minimum age for daycare drop off, so Barry's new granddaughter Hailey will probably be added to the mix in five months, as will Sarah and Santiago's baby in seven months. Sarah's due in July, but she plans on continuing her work as a deputy "until she drops." She's even running for Council. Carol suspects she won't be elected given that she's expected to give birth two to three weeks after the installment, but she's probably continuing to build name recognition for a future bid.

Carol smiles to see the little ones at play and thinks how their world is growing and will one day fall into the governing hands of these children. There are these little ones here, and seven more in the preschool. The lower school has eleven children enrolled, including Gary, who is the youngest, and the upper school has twelve. There are nine teenagers, aged thirteen to sixteen, currently working their apprenticeships, and another ten aged sixteen to nineteen who are journeymen. And that's just in Jamestown. Oceanside, Alexandria, and Hilltop have been growing too.

Carol draws back abruptly form the window when Sweetheart looks up. Wishing she could pluck up her little girl and spend the day with her, but glad Sweetheart is in loving and friendly hands, she walks back down the hall, through the foyer past the library/theater, and to the hall of offices. Garland's blinds are open, but the door is closed, and he's furiously writing on the first page of a stack of lined papers. She waves to him, but he's too engrossed to notice.

When she arrives at the infirmary, the blinds are drawn and the door is shut, which must mean Dr. Ahmad is with a patient. Carol kills time by rounding the corner and going to the old women's employee locker room, where she quickly washes her hands and face with warm running water. One of the two shower stalls has the curtain pulled shut, and the water is running. A sign on the wall between the three sinks and the bathroom stalls reads –

Bathroom Rules:

- Limit showers to 10 minutes

- One shower per week per person

- Showers reserved for orphans, Thursdays, 7 PM – 9 PM

- Limit sink use to 4 minutes

- Use outhouses when possible to limit toilet flushing

Carol turns the water off and looks at herself in the mirror above the sink, thinking she looks so much older than she feels. She's still something of a newlywed after all – only a little over three years into her marriage – and she's the mother of a toddler. She's just begun her career in politics, and she hopes to serve as mayor one day. But she turns fifty-four next week.

She hasn't told anyone it's her birthday, not even Daryl, and he's never asked when her birthday is. He doesn't even know his own, says his parents never celebrated it, and that he only saw it once, on his birth certificate, when he went to get his driver's license. She thinks he's fifty-two at the moment, but she doesn't really know. He could be fifty-one. One of the dairy girls told him yesterday that he looks like he's forty-two.

But she doesn't look like she's forty-two, Carol thinks, even if she feels like she is. She shakes the water from her hands and then runs one through her hair, trying to give it a slight wave of style. Then she laughs at herself for the vanity, shakes her head, and leaves the bathroom.

Carol heads back toward the infirmary, and when she's just about to round the corner, she hears the infirmary door open and two voices rise in the hall, so she stops still to avoid interrupting.

"Please don't tell Dianne about any of this," Gunther says. "I need to be the one to tell her. In my own way. In my own time. Then I'll send her to see you to talk about it."

"Of course," Dr. Ahmad replies. "I always maintain patient confidentiality. I know this news is scary and unexpected, but try not to get too stressed out about it. That's not going to help your blood pressure any."

"Thank you, doctor. I'll try not to."

Carol waits for Gunther's footsteps to fade around the corner. Her heart feels heavy. Gunther has stepped back from running for reelection to "rest and rejuvenate." She had hoped he was really doing it to give Dianne a better chance of election, but it sounds like he may actually have a serious health condition. She used to worry about friends getting killed by walkers or violent human enemies. It's so strange to worry about ordinary health problems again, which come so quietly, and kill so slowly.

With a heavy pace, she rounds the corner.

"Carol," Dr. Ahamad says when he notices her. "Do you need something?"

"I need to talk to you, if you have a moment." Carol pushes down her fear for Gunther and follows Dr. Ahmad into the infirmary, closing the door behind herself.

They talk for a while, with Carol swearing him to silence about the questions she's asking. "And you didn't find any signs of stroke or heart attack?"

"No," he answers, "but to be honest, I didn't do a lot of dissecting. I didn't think there was a reason to. I didn't know there were suspicious circumstances."

"If we exhumed the body at this point and autopsied it now, would you be able to tell anything useful?"

He crinkles his nose. "I might be able to rule out heart attack with more digging. But I wouldn't be able to rule out all natural causes. Once they're transformed, the insides don't quite look the same. And now he's died, been transformed, died again, and been decomposing for four days. And I know I couldn't possibly tell you how far apart in time the gunshot wounds occurred."

"Would you be able to tell how close range the chest shot was?"

"Oh, well I can tell you that now. Within two feet. I noticed the stippling."

"Stippling?"

"The principle indicator of close-range fire is a pattern of tiny, punctuate abrasions on the skin around the entrance wound. But I just assumed she was that close when she shot his transformed body. She shot him in bed, right?"

She supposedly shot him after pushing him back into the bed and then scrambling out of the bed to get the gun off the desk. Carol will have to go have a look at that officer's cabin for herself, before the Godpeed heads to the weigh station. But she's not supposed to be sharing details of this case unless she has to, so she changes the subject. "How's your wife?"

"Good. I quarantined myself away from Tamara during the swine flu, you know. I didn't want to bring it home with me unknowingly from some patient. We both took a few days off when it was all over to catch up. But lately she's been busy working on a back-up battery for the museum. She may visit Alexandria to confer with Eugene and some of the other engineers next week if she can get a spot on a taxi. I guess I'll be a bachelor for a week or two."

"And how's Gunther?" It's an abrupt segue, Carol knows, and not likely to trip him up.

It doesn't. "You saw him leave the infirmary?"

She nods.

"You know I can't discuss that. Doctor-patient confidentiality."

"Of course. Could I see Lawson's medical file, though? I assume death ends the doctor-patient confidentiality?"

Dr. Ahmad nods and heads over to the filing cabinet in the corner of the clinic. He rolls out the second drawer, pages through the files, and pulls one out and hands it to her. She sits down in the metal folding chair under the window and flips it open. "I hope I'm not keeping you from anything."

"I need to do some organizing anyway."

Dr. Ahmad walks over to the counter, pushes back the microscope he was apparently using earlier, and opens the medicine cabinet. While he organizes the cabinet, Carol reads through the medical file, paying special attention to Lawson's family history. There's no history whatsoever of heart disease in his family, or of stroke. His father lived to 89, and his mother until 86, and both, he reports, died in the Great Sickness. She turns a page. "He didn't drink. Was that because of the gout?"

"Alcohol can increase the frequency of attacks of gout, but, no, that's not why he didn't drink. He was always a teetotaler, even before I diagnosed the gout. No drinking, no smoking, a regular Puritan." The Puritans drank. They brewed beer. But Carol doesn't correct him. "But he had his vices," Dr Ahmad continues. "He loved his organ meats, trout, and venison, which are high in purines. That can contribute to the problem. As you know, he was a bit of a portly fellow. I advised him to eat less trout and more cherries."

"Cherries?"

"There's some clinical evidence it can reduce the frequency of attacks of gout. But we only have the two cherry trees, and they're rationed. I advised him to trade for more, but he wasn't a fan of spending his meager savings on cherries."

"Meager savings," Carol echoes. "Who told you he had meager savings?"

"Well…I just assumed he did, based on what he said – that he couldn't possibly afford to waste his ammunition on cherries."

"And what was Mrs. Lawson's reaction to that?"

"She seemed to agree."

Carol wonders if perhaps Mrs. Lawson didn't know about her hoarding husband's treasure chest of ammunition, and if she only found out recently, and if the discovery angered her. After all, for the past seven months since Lawson's health retirement, they'd been eking by on his pension of fifteen hours, along with the ten hours of light duty he performed. If she discovered his stash, perhaps they argued over whether or not to start spending that ammunition on better living. "Thank you for all your help." She closes the file and hands it back to him.

On her way down the hall, she stops and raps on Garland's closed door. He looks up from his work and, through the open blinds, waves for her to come in. He begins to stand when she opens the door, but she tells him to sit back down before he can finish. It's an old-school courtesy she appreciates, but she doesn't have time for it. "Quick question," she asks him as he settles back onto his chair and rests a hand on his desk. She could look this up in the files herself, but it will be quicker to consult the encyclopedia of information in Garland's head.

"What's that?"

"How do naval pensions work? Lawson was forcibly retired for health reasons, and he was getting a retired navy pension, of fifteen hours of rations a week. If he dies, does that pension vanish, or does Mrs. Lawson keep getting it?"

"He opted to take survivor's benefits. He could have had twenty hours for life, but he took a reduced amount of fifteen so that, upon his death, his wife would continue to receive fifteen hours of rations until her death."

"Thanks." She begins to step back toward the hall.

"Are you working a case?"

"Yes."

"You don't think Lawson died in his sleep?"

"Garland, you're not sheriff anymore. Don't let this worry you. You have plenty to worry about right there." She points to the pile of papers on his desk.

He sighs. "Sometimes I miss sleuthing."

"Well, you'll only be mayor for one more year. Maybe you can go back to it."

"You assume I'll be elected again next month."

"Of course you'll be elected again." She smiles. "Don't work too hard." Carol closes the door on her way out.