Elevator Pitch

“Just a question about them. How many places in the city other than you sell these?”

The man shrugged. “I’d guess all kinds. Why? You want us to match a price?”

Bourque shook his head. At this point, he displayed his badge and put it away. “Do you remember a guy coming in here buying a pair like this?”

The clerk blinked. “You kidding? We sell lots of those. And there’s lots of others work the checkout.”

Bourque was not deterred. “Every item in this store has a different UPC number, right?”

The young man shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

“So then if you enter that UPC number, up will come all the purchases of this particular sock. And if they were paid for with a credit card, you’d know who made the purchase.”

“Maybe, yeah.”

Bourque smiled. “That’s what I’d like you to do for me.”

The clerk grinned. “So let me see if I understand this. You want to find a guy who bought a pair of these socks.”

“Right.”

“If I did sell a pair to your guy, maybe I’d recognize him. You got a picture?”

“No,” the detective said.

“Okay, so, I’d need one of the managers to okay looking through our records, but I’ve already got your email.”

Bourque handed him a card. “That’s got my phone number on it, too.”

“I don’t have a lot of time,” the detective said, dropping into the plastic chair in the small examining room. “I need a new scrip.”

The doctor, a short, round man in his midsixties with a pair of glasses perched atop his forehead, sat at a small desk with a computer in front of him. He lowered the glasses briefly so he could read something on the screen. He tapped at the keyboard, slowly, with two fingers.

“I hate these goddamn computers,” the doctor said. “Whole clinic has changed over to them.”

“So just write me one the old-fashioned way,” Jerry Bourque said. “On a piece of paper, Bert. With your illegible handwriting.”

“That’s not how it works anymore,” Bert said, squinting at the screen. He paused. “Hmm.”

“What, hmm?”

“You’re going through these inhalers pretty fast,” he said.

“Come on, Bert.”

Bert perched the glasses on his forehead again and turned on his stool to face his patient. “Inhalers aren’t the answer.”

“They work,” the detective said.

The doctor nodded wearily. “In the short term. But what you need is to talk—”

“I know what you think I need.”

“There’s no physiological reason for your bouts of shortness of breath. You don’t have, thank God, lung cancer or emphysema. I don’t see any evidence that it’s an allergic reaction to anything. It’s not bronchitis. You’ve identified plainly what brings on the attacks.”

“If there’s nothing physiological, then why do the inhalers work?”

“They open up your air passages regardless of what brings on the symptoms,” Bert said. “Has it been happening more often, or less?”

Bourque paused. “About the same.” Another pause. “I had one this morning. I got called to a scene, and I was okay, but then I had this … flash … I guess you’d call it. And then I started to tighten up.”

“Is it almost always that one memory that brings it on? The drops—”

Bourque raised a hand, signaling he didn’t need his memory refreshed. “That does, for sure. But other moments of stress sometimes trigger it. Or a tense situation brings back the memory, and it happens.” He paused. “There doesn’t always have to be a reason.”

Bert nodded sympathetically. “The department doesn’t have anyone you can talk to?”

“I don’t need to talk to anyone in the department. I have you.”

“I’m not a shrink.”

“I don’t need a shrink.”

“Maybe you do. You either need to talk to someone, or—”

“Or what?”

“I don’t know.” The doctor waved his hands in frustration. “Maybe you’re like Jimmy Stewart in that Hitchcock movie. He gets vertigo after suffering a trauma. It takes another trauma to cure him of it.”

Bourque scanned the walls, looking at the various framed medical degrees.

“What are you looking for?” Bert asked.

“Something from the New York Film Academy. I’m guessing that’s where you got your medical degree.”

Bert ignored the shot. “It’s been eight months. You need to see someone who can bring more to the table than I can.”

“I’m not baring my soul to anyone in the department.”

Bert sighed again. “Maybe the department is the problem.”

Bourque looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

The doctor said, “Maybe you’re in the wrong line of work. Do you actually like what you do?”

Bourque took several seconds to answer. “Sure.”

“That was convincing.”