by Kathy Reichs
“Cruikshank, Montague, and Helms were garroted, Emma. Some cold-blooded maniac put a wire around their necks and squeezed the life out of them. And God knows what else was done to Helms and Montague.”
“Tempe.”
“Am I the only one who cares about these people?” Even to me I was sounding shrill, and somewhat irrational. If Teal and Flynn were dead somewhere, no urgent action would restore their lives.
“I want you to call my sister.”
“What?” That caught me completely off guard.
“Will you do that for me?”
“Yes. Of course.” Dear God, what had happened? “Why?”
“The discord between us has continued too long.”
I swallowed hard. “Did you see Dr. Russell today?”
“I’ll see her tomorrow.”
“Why the change of heart?”
“Find Sarah. Say that I’d like her to visit.”
“Shall I—”
“Yes. Tell her I’m sick.”
“Give me the number.”
Embarrassed hesitation. “I don’t know it.”
With my newly acquired skills in doctor-digging it took little Internet time to locate Mark Purvis, a cardiologist on staff at two Nashville hospitals. Unlike Marshall, Purvis was boarded up the wazoo.
Another few sites and I’d learned that Mark Purvis was married to Sarah Rousseau, an ’81 graduate of South Florence High School in Florence, South Carolina. A number of Sarah’s classmates really wanted to get in touch with her. Imagine.
I’d also acquired the Purvis’s home number, address, and a map to their house. God bless the electronic age.
The Purvis’s housekeeper informed me that the doctor and his wife were in Italy until the first week of June.
I practically slammed down the phone. Was the whole world suddenly unreachable?
Seeing my agitation, Ryan suggested a beach stroll. Boyd backed the plan. While walking, we all agreed that the only forward motion to be made that day would have to involve Cruikshank’s boxes and laptop.
Back at “Sea for Miles” we all had a drink, then went straight to the den. Ryan and I took the couch. Boyd settled at our feet. Birdie joined us, but chose to observe from the hearth.
“Want to take a crack at Cruikshank’s code?” I asked.
“What do you think, Hootch?” Ryan addressed Boyd with the nickname he’d given him upon their first meeting.
Boyd raised his head, twirled the eyebrow hairs, then laid his chin back onto his paws.
“Hootch says no problemo.”
“I’ll finish this last box.” I didn’t mention the reason a few items had remained unexamined. Why stir memories of my Wednesday night meltdown and cuddle with Pete?
As I was opening the flaps, the subject of the Wednesday night driveway incident appeared in the flesh.
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” Pete called from the foyer.
Ryan’s jaw muscles bunched.
Boyd shot from the room. I heard a thunk, then the rattle of golf clubs. Seconds later Pete appeared, the chow cavorting around him.
“Counselor.” Ryan nodded a greeting to Pete.
“Detective.” Pete nodded to Ryan.
“Tempe.” Pete nodded to me. Adults, being polite. Then a smile curled Pete’s lips.
“Sugar britches.”
Don’t start, I squinted.
“What’s the latest?” Pete asked, all innocence.
I brought him up to date.
“I’m going through these last few things. Ryan is taking a shot at the notes.”
“The detective may succeed where the lowly attorney has failed.” Pete’s voice had taken on an edge. He turned to Ryan. “Hoping to find the key to the killer, Andy?”
“No, info on troop movements in Iraq, Pete.”
“Forgot.” Pete pointed a finger at Ryan. “Andy’s one mirthful fellow.”
“You probably garner a few laughs on the links.”
Pete fired a shot from his finger pistol. “Detect your asses off, people. I’m going to shower.”
Boyd followed Pete to the doorway.
“Pete?”
He turned. “Yes, sugar britches?”
“Have you picked up any vibes at GMC as to why Cruikshank might have been killed?”
“None whatsoever.” To Ryan. “By the way, good choice. Black goes with everything. Never needs laundering.”
I watched Pete leave, feeling what? Annoyance? Pity? No. Mostly the sadness of loss.
Setting aside the trophy, the baseball, the police paraphernalia, and the photos, I dug out the book and the two envelopes I’d yet to open.
The book was titled The Chronicle of Crime, and promised details on “the most infamous criminals of modern times and their heinous crimes.” Tall order.
I flipped to the table of contents. All the usual suspects were there. Lizzie Borden. Ted Bundy. Dr. Crippen. Jeffrey Dahmer. Albert Fish. Charlie Manson. Jack the Ripper. Peter Sutcliffe.
Something tingled below my sternum. Why was Cruikshank researching serial killers? Personal interest? Or was he looking for insight into Charleston’s MPs?
I put the book on the coffee table and opened Cruikshank’s first envelope. The contents consisted of a single photocopy and pages printed from the Net. The latter looked familiar. Very familiar.
“Cruikshank was looking at Lester Marshall,” I said. “Visited the same physician credential checking sites that I did.”
“Makes sense. He was observing the place where Marshall practices medicine. Cruikshank get anything beyond what you found?”
“Not really. But some of his searches had to do with another doctor. Dominic Rodriguez graduated St. George’s the same year as Marshall, 1981, did a surgical residency at the University of California–San Diego, then practiced medicine there until 1990. The site lists nothing beyond that.”
I picked up the photocopy.
“Looks like Cruikshank obtained a list of residency appointments for St. George’s grads spanning the years eighty to eighty-five. Doesn’t appear to have come from the Net.”
I was talking as I read.
“Lot of foreign names. Some impressive appointments. Neurology—University of Chicago; internal medicine—Georgetown; emergency medicine—Duke. No Lester Marshall, but the name Dominic Rodriguez is circled. Do you suppose Cruikshank was looking at this guy because he and Marshall were classmates? But why Rodriguez? He’s a cutter, Marshall’s family medicine.”
Ryan thought about that.
“Marshall dropped out of sight in Tulsa in eighty-nine, reappeared in Charleston in ninety-five. You’re saying Rodriguez slipped under the radar in San Diego in ninety. That’s curious.”
I was replacing the first envelope when I noticed a flyer lying flat up against the side of the box. I took it out. The thing was a one-page travel brochure touting the benefits of a health spa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
“Maybe Rodriguez was Mexican,” I said, holding the ad up. “Started pining for the homeland.”
“Right.” Meaning, not a chance.
“It happens. Surgeons burn out. Maybe Rodriguez went to Puerto Vallarta in ninety to practice medicine in a less stressful environment.”
“A spa?”
“The text promises medically trained personnel offering options found in few clinics worldwide.”
“Such as?”
“There’s a number you have to call.”
“Maybe Cruikshank had the ad because he was looking for a detox program south of the border.”
“Why?”
“The guy was a drunk.”
“Why Mexico?”
“Good burritos.”
Orbital roll. “Making progress with the code?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Patience, fair maiden.”
Tossing the flyer into the box, I opened the second envelope.
Again, the contents w
ere photocopies and printouts. There were six, maybe seven in all, some single sheets, others composed of multiple pages.
I started reading. At first, I was confused. As comprehension grew, the room receded around me, and a dark feeling took root inside me.
When I’d finished the articles, I checked the table of contents in the crime book. There it was. Fingers cold with dread, I turned to the chapter. A yellow Post-it marked the page, suggesting that particular case had been the focus of Cruikshank’s interest.
Every neuron in my mind screamed no! The explanation was just too macabre. But it all fit. The clinic. The disappearances. The cut marks on Helms and Montague.
Had Helene Flynn been murdered because she’d learned about this? Had she stumbled on the truth while searching for evidence of financial wrongdoing? Had Cruikshank also found out?
I opened my lips to share the horrific idea with Ryan. I never spoke.
The next few moments exploded so quickly that in my memory there was no sequence. My later attempts to reconstruct the chronology yielded only jumbled images.
Pete moving toward the kitchen. Boyd rocketing from the den. Boyd barking. The kitchen light shooting arrows onto the corridor wall. A gunshot ringing out. Me on the floor, Ryan pressing my head to the carpet. Ryan’s weight leaving my back. Me scrambling toward the kitchen, crouching, terrified. The barking more frenzied.
My blood freezing in my veins. Pete facedown on the floor, red mushrooming from some unseeable wound.
30
AN AMBULANCE ARRIVED. RYAN HELD ME IN his arms as two paramedics worked on Pete. Boyd whined and scratched on the far side of the pantry door. I shared his fear. The kitchen seemed awash in blood. Could anyone survive the loss of so much?
Though I asked question after question, I was repeatedly ignored. After furious manipulation involving tubes and wound packing, Pete was strapped to a backboard, placed on a stretcher, and whisked away.
Two Isle of Palms uniforms arrived and asked a lot of questions. Their name tags read CAPER and JOHNSON. At one point Caper asked about the bruise on my arm. I described the previous Thursday’s bottle-throwing incident. Caper put it in his notes.
Ryan told the cops he was on the job, showed his badge, and tried to deflect the interrogation. Caper and Johnson said they understood, but needed to file an incident report.
Tersely, I outlined what Pete was doing in Charleston. Caper wanted my thoughts on who might have shot him. I suggested he interrogate Herron and the GMC clinic staff. Caper’s expression suggested that was unlikely to happen.
“Probably a beach prank,” Johnson said. “Damn kids sneak Daddy’s gun, get wasted, start firing bullets into the air. Happens every long weekend.”
“Someone get drilled every long weekend?” Ryan asked.
I too knew that explanation was stupid, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I was anxious to follow the ambulance.
An hour after the shooting Ryan and I were in the emergency room waiting area at the MUSC hospital. This time we’d entered on the Ashley Street side. The life side. I prayed Pete would be exiting through the same door.
An hour crept by. Another. Pete was in surgery. That’s all they would tell me. He was in surgery.
The ER was chaos, the staff pushed to its limits by the full onslaught of an American holiday. A family of six burned in a barbecue grill explosion. A child pulled from a backyard pool. A drunk trampled by a horse. A woman beaten by her husband. A man shot by his lover. Drug overdoses. Dehydration. Sunburn. Food poisoning. It was a relief to be moved to the surgical waiting area upstairs.
We were entering our third hour when a doctor approached, face tired, scrubs spattered with blood. My heart seized. I tried but couldn’t read the doctor’s face.
Ryan took my hand. We both stood.
“Dr. Brennan?”
I nodded, afraid to trust my voice.
“Mr. Petersons is out of surgery.”
“How is he?”
“I removed the bullet and fragments. There’s some damage to his right lung.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“He lost a lot of blood. The next twenty-four hours will be critical.”
“Can I see him?”
“He’s been moved to the ICU. A nurse will take you.”
The ICU was a sharp contrast to the bedlam downstairs. The lights were low, the only sounds the squeak of an occasional heel or the hushed murmur of a distant voice.
Exiting the elevator Ryan and I followed our guide to a configuration of four glass-walled units. A nurse sat in the middle, monitoring the occupant of each bed.
Tonight, the glass quadrangle held three patients. Pete was one of them.
If the sight of Emma in the ER had caught me off guard, that paled in comparison with the shock of seeing post-surgical Pete. Despite his six feet, powerful shoulders, and boundless energy, the Latvian Savant looked ashen and shrunken in his bed. Vulnerable.
Tubes ran from Pete’s nose and mouth. Another from his chest. A fourth from his arm. Each was taped with adhesive. An IV tree at the head of his bed dangled several bags. Machines surrounded him, pumping and whirring and sucking. A monitor displayed an undulating series of peaks and valleys, and blipped a constant rhythm.
Ryan must have heard my sudden intake of breath. Again, he enveloped my hand in his.
I felt my knees buckle. Ryan’s arm went round my waist.
Pressing a palm to the glass, I closed my eyes and conjured up a long-abandoned childhood prayer.
Disregarding hospital regs, I called Katy’s cell. Got a recording. What message to leave? “Katy, it’s Mom. Please call me as soon as you can. It’s very important.”
Go or stay? The nurse assured me Pete would neither hear nor see during the night. “Go get some rest. I’ll call if anything develops.”
I took her advice.
* * *
Lying in bed that night, Ryan voiced the questions I’d been asking myself.
“Do you think Pete was the target?”
“I don’t know.”
“That bullet might have been meant for you.”
I didn’t say anything. I thought the shooter had been close enough to distinguish male from female, but perhaps he’d aimed at a silhouette.
Ryan pushed his point. “No one was thrilled to see us at that clinic. If you’re closing in on something, folks could be getting antsy.”
“The IOP cops weren’t impressed. It’s America. It’s Memorial Day. People fire guns.”
“What’s that developer’s name?”
“Dickie Dupree.” Ryan was thinking along lines I’d considered. “A strange car shows up. Someone beans you with a beer bottle. All around the time you’re digging Dupree’s site.”
“The bottle could have been totally unrelated to the shooting.”
“Dupree threatened you.”
“Dupree could be a bottle thrower, but not a shooter or employer of shooters. That’s too big-time for him. Besides, my report to the state was already in. What does he gain in having someone take a shot at me? Everything happened after we found Willie Helms’s bones on Dewees. Maybe Helms is the triggering factor.”
“Maybe it’s Montague.”
“Maybe it’s that clinic.” I sat bolt upright. “Oh my God. I was so upset about Pete I forgot.”
Throwing back the covers I dashed downstairs, Boyd at my heels.
The contents of Cruikshank’s second envelope lay scattered across the den. Snatching up the papers and the crime book, I raced back upstairs, Boyd matching me tread for tread.
“Ever heard of William Burke and William Hare?” I asked when I was once again under the blankets.
Ryan shook his head.
“Burke and Hare were responsible for sixteen murders spanning a period of less than a year.”
“When and where?”
“Edinburgh, 1827 to 1828. At that time, under British law, only the bodies of executed criminals could be used for dissection. Demand exceeded s
upply for the fresh corpses needed to teach anatomy and surgery, and grave robbing became common.”
“Gotta admire those Scots. Entrepreneurial. Even the criminal set.”
“Bad news, Ryan. Burke and Hare were Irishmen who moved to Scotland to work on the Union Canal. Both ended up living in a boardinghouse owned by Maggie Laird. Helen MacDougal also roomed there, and the four became drinking buddies.
“In 1827 one of Laird’s boarders fell ill and died owing back rent. On the day of the funeral Burke and Hare robbed the coffin and sold the man’s body to Robert Knox, an anatomy professor at the Edinburgh Medical School.”
“How much?”
“Ten pounds seven shillings. Big bucks back then. Seeing an income stream of easy money, the dynamic duo made a career change into the cadaver supply business. When another boarder fell ill, Burke and Hare suffocated him by pinching off his nose and mouth. That became their MO, and the origin of the modern term ‘burking.’
“Next came a relative of Helen’s, a street busker, a string of prostitutes. Eventually, Burke and Hare grew lazy, or complacent, and started taking victims close to home. The neighbors began to notice that locals were disappearing, and Dr. Knox’s students began to recognize faces on their tables. The downfall came with the murder of a hooker named Mary Docherty.
“When arrested, all four turned on each other. Burke and Helen MacDougal were charged and tried, Hare and Maggie Laird turned king’s evidence. Helen won a verdict of not proven, Burke was found guilty and sentenced to death. Before his hanging, Burke admitted to a total of sixteen murders.”
“Why risk murder? Why not read the obits and buy a good shovel?”
“These guys were slugs. Digging a grave was too labor intensive.”
“Cruikshank was collecting articles on Burke and Hare?”
“Lots of them.” I held up the papers.
Ryan considered this for several seconds.
“You think someone at the GMC clinic is knocking patients off for their corpses?”
“Cruikshank must have been considering the possibility.”
“OK. Suppose that’s it. Why? Where’s the profit?”
“I’m not sure. Wait. Maybe they were harvesting skeletal parts to sell for medical purposes. Remember that scandal involving a funeral home and a number of tissue procurement companies?”