5 Bodies to Die For

by Stephanie Bond

  In a moment of clarity, she conceded that she’d kept Peter at arm’s length since their reunion partly because she enjoyed the power. There was something very satisfying about being pursued by the person who had so abruptly and so publicly cast her aside. Making love with Peter would mean she’d forgiven him for what he’d done to her, and their relationship would change…into what?

  One thing was certain—she would never know unless she took a chance.

  Carlotta pressed the diaries to her chest and resolved in her heart to take her relationship with Peter to the next level. It was time. Just making the decision seemed to calm a place deep inside her.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of fresh-cut suburban grass, with undertones of organic pesticides and fertilizer, wafting through the screens of the open veranda windows. Now, there was a scent to be bottled…

  Carlotta’s eyes flew open. She suddenly remembered where she’d smelled the scent from the ladies’ restroom at Moody’s Cigar Bar. It was at Neiman’s, at a private testing session for Clive Christian colognes, the most expensive ones in the world. And she remembered well her coworker who had coveted a tiny bottle of No. 1 Pure at twenty-four hundred dollars a pop.

  Michael Lane.

  Her heart thumped against her breastbone at the implication that it might have been Michael who’d followed her into the women’s restroom and stood next to her in a stall. Had he meant to harm her, then changed his mind?

  Carlotta picked up her cell phone and punched in Jack’s number with a shaky hand. He answered on the second ring, but sounded groggy. “Did I wake you?” she asked.

  “Just dreaming of you, darlin’. Since you’re calling at this hour, I take it Ashford hasn’t ventured across the hallway yet.”

  Carlotta rolled her eyes. “Jack, shut up and listen. I think Michael has been shopping.”

  24

  Wesley unzipped his backpack and a toothless head stared back, mocking him. He dropped the backpack and fell backward, jarring himself awake.

  When light bounced off his retinas, pain exploded in his head. Damn, the more he tried to stay away from the Oxy, the worse the headaches got. He pushed himself up from the bed in Chance’s guest room, holding both temples. The pain was almost unbearable. He felt for his backpack and rummaged frantically for the small bag of Oxy he had left. When his fingers closed around it, he popped a pill in his mouth and chewed until the crashing in his head stopped.

  Sighing in relief, he stepped into the small private shower adjacent to his room and stood under the cool water until he felt more like himself. When he turned off the tap, he could hear bells pealing in the distance.

  He wondered briefly if Meg was sitting in church this morning like a good little girl. He still hadn’t decided what to do about the fact that her father had hired someone to follow him, but he was forming a plan. On the table next to his bed was a bulletin announcing a lecture this afternoon at Piedmont Hospital by Dr. Harold Vincent, noted geneticist, on the subject of cancer stem-cell gene therapy. The lecture was open only to physicians and invited guests, but that didn’t bother Wesley. Thanks to a digital camera, Photoshop software, a color laser printer and the lamination machine at OfficeMax, he’d fashioned a pretty convincing lanyard identifying him as Wesley Wren, M.D. It was kind of a kick.

  He slung his backpack over his shoulder, then walked out into the living room and stopped. The fact that Chance was up before noon on a Sunday was enough to give him pause, but his buddy was standing at the kitchen stove wearing nothing but an apron that left his white ass hanging out. He was whistling under his breath as he used a spatula to move sizzling sausage patties around in a skillet.

  Chance looked up to see Wesley and waved the spatula. “Mornin’, dude. Where are you going all dressed up?”

  Wesley looked down at his chinos, short-sleeve collared shirt, and hard-sole shoes. “Uh…to church.”

  Chance nodded. “Jesus is cool. Want some breakfast?”

  “Since when do you cook?”

  “Since I woke up fucking starving.”

  Wes was still marveling over the fact that his buddy knew how to turn on the stove, when Chance’s bedroom door opened and Hannah emerged wearing Chance’s All This and a Big Dick, Too T-shirt. And from the looks of it, nothing else. The funny thing was that the shirt was more believable on her than on his friend.

  “Mornin’, shithead,” she said to Wesley, then she smacked Chance on his bare ass, leaving a red handprint. “Mornin,’ you.”

  Chance gave her an adoring look, then blushed.

  Blushed, for crying out loud.

  “You’re going to catch a fly if you don’t close your mouth,” Hannah said to Wesley. “Haven’t you ever seen a man frying sausage?”

  “Not that man,” Wesley said. “How’s the tattoo?”

  “Still tender,” she said, rolling her shoulders.

  “But it’s so damn beautiful,” Chance offered.

  Wesley thought his friend wiped the corner of his eye. “O-kay,” Wes said, “I’m outta here.”

  He exited the condo and tried to squash the image of his friend riding Hannah. Of course, the more likely scenario was that she’d ridden Chance…with spurs on.

  Wes’s phone rang and he reached for it, happy for the distraction. It was a local number he didn’t recognize. “Hello?”

  “Wesley, right?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “Bernard from Inkwell. I got the name of the guy who had his tat lasered off.”

  Wesley blinked. “That was quick.”

  “Made a few calls to tattoo-removal places I make referrals to, and I got lucky.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Where’s my cash?”

  Wesley sighed. “Are you at the tattoo parlor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  He disconnected the call, then unlocked his bike and took off toward Inkwell. His reflexes were a little slow though, and his mind was elsewhere. Once, he came close to being clipped by a car because he swerved out of the bike lane. He cursed and pulled over until his heart slowed, then gave himself a shake to regain focus. His inner voice whispered that maybe his baby habit was morphing into something more serious, but he refused to listen.

  He climbed back on his bike and pedaled to the tattoo parlor. Spike, aka Bernard, was in the parking lot taking a smoke. He dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with the toe of his boot as Wesley wheeled up.

  “You got my cash?” the guy said.

  “Give me the name,” Wesley said.

  Bernard dug in his pocket and removed a slip of paper.

  Wesley took the scrap and scanned the words written in skinny print. Crosby Newell or maybe Croswell Newton. Newt Crossen? He looked up. “What the hell is this?”

  “Hey, I was lucky to get a name at all. This laser tech normally does things off the books, ya know what I mean? But he remembers this guy’s tat. Guess they had a conversation or something. Said the guy was a bear.”

  “A bear?”

  “Fat. And he paid in cash.”

  Fat and shady—it sounded like the kind of guy who’d do business with The Carver. And it was more information than Wesley had to go on before. He pulled out his wallet and peeled off two hundreds. “Okay, thanks, man. Later.”

  Bernard pointed to the angry scars on Wesley’s arm that his short-sleeve shirt revealed. “Come back when your scars fade some. I can camouflage them with a radical tat.”

  Wesley looked down at the crude C-A-R that had been sliced into his skin. “I’ll think about it.”

  He took his time pedaling to Piedmont Hospital, nursing what was left of his buzz and hoping it lasted through the lecture. He locked his bike in front of the hospital’s fitness center that was across the road from the main building. He waited until a member approached the door, then he slung his backpack to his shoulder and casually followed the man inside, bypassing the card reader.

&nbs
p; Once inside the fitness center, he headed toward the men’s locker room. Several men, chatting while they buttoned shirts and donned jackets, were easily identifiable as physicians who took advantage of the state-of-the-art facility. Wesley tried to blend in as he opened an empty locker and deposited his backpack inside.

  When he unzipped the backpack, he half expected to find a toothless head inside. Instead, he removed a clean folded lab coat that he’d acquired as a prop for collecting with Mouse, and shrugged into it. Then he removed the lanyard he’d made and hung it on his neck so that his picture and name faced his shirt. No use broadcasting unless someone asked to see his ID. With the hospital name on the back, the lanyard looked legit.

  He placed his combination lock on the locker, then walked out of the fitness center and joined a group of lab-coated doctors who were crossing the street to the main hospital. He mimicked their posture and stride, and somewhere between one side of Piedmont Street and the other, he actually began to feel like a doctor. He had a slight build, but his height and his glasses made him look older. Besides, what was the quote on the tattoo artist’s neck?

  Say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to. Meaning, it was possible to bluff your way through life.

  Inside the hospital, his chest swelled with confidence as people gave him admiring glances, stepped out of his way or opened doors for him. They really thought he was a doctor, all because of a lousy lab coat. If he bought a stethoscope on eBay, he could probably talk his way onto the E.R. staff.

  He stopped to consult a hospital directory and took the elevator to the floor with the meeting rooms and lecture hall. On the way up, a tall salt-and-pepper-haired man nodded to him. “Are you headed to the gene-therapy session, son?” he asked in a booming voice.

  Wesley’s back stiffened. He hated it when older men called him “son,” as if they were a father figure to him. But he squashed his anger, reminding himself of his reason for coming. The key to getting into secure areas is to act as if you belong there. He pushed up his glasses. “Yes, sir, as a matter of fact, I am.”

  “Me, too,” the guy boomed. “See you in there, son.”

  Wesley gritted his teeth and let the man stride off the elevator ahead of him, not wanting to attract any seat companions who might want to talk medicine. Following signs displayed on easels, he fell in with a group of doctors who were heading toward the auditorium. At the check-in table, attendees simply picked up their printed name tags and waved them in front of the accommodating registrar. Wesley followed suit and nabbed the name tag of Wilson Wendt, Pharm D If he was questioned, it would be easy to say he picked up the wrong one by mistake.

  He clipped the name tag onto the collar of his white lab coat, then entered the lecture hall and took a seat in the rear next to nobody. As the hall filled with doctor types, Wesley studied them, exchanging waves and shaking hands—the brotherhood of the elite. Something akin to envy washed over him. Their heads were full of knowledge that could heal people…stuff that could change the world. Things might’ve been different for him if he was the college type, but he couldn’t picture himself sitting in class, pledging a fraternity, tailgating at football games.

  The front of the hall filled first, probably because over-achievers liked to sit up front. He’d hoped to sit alone, but a dark-haired man dropped into the seat next to him and nodded hello.

  The man looked familiar and Wesley panicked, trying to jog his memory. The Oxy was working on him. His brain chugged along as if it were underwater. He glanced at the guy’s name tag: Frederick Lowenstein, OB/GYN. It didn’t ring a bell, although he was sure he knew the man’s face. Wesley stared straight ahead, but he felt the guy studying him.

  Crap.

  “I’m sorry, have we met?” Lowenstein asked.

  Wesley glanced at him for a split second, then shook his head.

  “You look familiar to me,” the man insisted, then leaned forward to look at Wesley’s name tag. “Dr. Wendt.” He stuck out his hand. “Freddy Lowenstein. Are you from Atlanta?”

  “Uh…no,” he said in his best Germanish accent. “Vis-i-tor.”

  “Ah, I see. Velcome,” Lowenstein said, then chuckled at his cleverness.

  What an asshole. Suddenly Wesley had a flash of seeing the man holding a glass of wine and a cracker of caviar…

  Screen on the Green, he realized. The man and his wife—Tracey Tully, the daughter of one of his father’s former partners—had been sharing Carlotta and Peter’s blanket when Wesley had come to get Carlotta for a body-moving job.

  From the stories Carlotta had told him about Tracey, the woman would be delighted to catch him impersonating a doctor.

  Which, now that he thought about it, was a federal offense.

  Sweat trickled down his temple, but he brushed it away, estimating the distance from his seat to the door in case he had to make a run for it.

  A bookish man came onto the stage and introduced himself as some sort of administrator of the hospital, then introduced Dr. Vincent. The speaker’s professional credentials in research and clinical trials were long and impressive. At the end of the introduction, a man from the front row stood and walked up the steps on the side of the stage to the podium to enthusiastic applause.

  Wesley’s mouth went dry. It was the salt-and-pepper-haired guy from the elevator. Anger whipped through him. Harold Vincent was having him followed like he was some kind of lowlife, but had been downright chatty when he’d thought Wesley was a doctor. He’d even called him “son.” Wesley’s hand tightened on the armrest.

  The lights lowered and Dr. Vincent led the audience through a slide show. Wesley had to force himself to concentrate and was sweating profusely. He conceded that the presentation had its merits—parts of it were fascinating. And even though some of the terminology was over his head, he followed the gist of identifying tissue-specific cancer stem cells as the targets for therapy. By honing in on the cancerous cells, fewer healthy cells would be sacrificed in the treatment, meaning treatments ultimately would be not only more effective, but the patient would also suffer fewer side effects throughout the healing process.

  “What we’re talking about here,” Dr. Vincent said, “is creating patient-specific cancer treatments—designer oncology, if you will. Hopefully, some of the new devices my research team is developing, devices that are being tested right here at Piedmont Hospital, will streamline the cell-targeting processes to the point that these couture treatments will be affordable for anyone who needs them.”

  The lights came up and applause filled the auditorium. Wesley glanced around at the respect and admiration on the faces of the attendees. Sweat trickled down his back and his left eye was twitching. But even plummeting from his Oxy high, Wesley recognized this as a watershed moment for him. At the end of Dr. Vincent’s life, much would be said and written about his mark on the world.

  At the end of Wesley Wren’s life…would anyone even know he’d existed?

  Wesley pushed to his feet and sidled past Lowenstein.

  “Nice to meet you,” Freddy said.

  “Dankeshein,” he muttered, effectively exhausting his German vocabulary.

  Wesley left the auditorium feeling antsy and frustrated, but he managed to smile at all the people who looked at him with reverence. It was a heady feeling to be treated as a physician. He rode to the first floor, lifted a pair of thin latex gloves from a cart, put them on and walked up to a sign-in desk.

  “Excuse me.”

  A woman turned his way. “Yes, Doctor, what can I do for you?”

  “Uh…I was wondering if I could get an envelope with the hospital’s return address?”

  “Certainly, Doctor. Here’s a self-sealing envelope. Do you need a stamp?”

  “Uh…sure. And a pen?” He took the items she handed to him and thanked her, chalking up another one to the power of the magic lab coat. He walked away from the desk, then reached into his pocket and withdrew the scrap of paper listing the potent
ial names of the man who’d had his tattoo lasered off.

  Wesley turned over the paper and wrote “Decapitated man in county morgue,” purposely altering his handwriting. Then he stuck the piece of paper into the envelope, sealed it and addressed it to Atlanta Police Department, Homicide, Atlanta, Georgia. When he exited the hospital, he stopped at a blue mailbox and hesitated, trying to think if there was any way the envelope could be traced back to him. His mind chugged along, turning over all the pieces, but he couldn’t think of one.

  He dropped the envelope into the mailbox, and instantly felt relieved. Coop was right—no matter who the guy was, his family had a right to know what had happened to him. He would want someone to do the same for him if the tables were turned.

  He turned around to head back to the fitness center across the street, but came up short. As if he’d conjured up Coop, the man himself was striding toward the front entrance, wearing holey jeans, T-shirt and tennis shoes. Wesley turned his back until Coop had passed, then he frowned after his boss.

  If Coop was at the hospital for a body pickup, he wouldn’t come through the front door. And he wouldn’t have dressed so casually.

  Curious, Wesley backtracked into the hospital lobby in time to see a flash of Coop’s T-shirt as he got on the elevator servicing floors one through nine. When the elevator doors closed, Wesley watched the numbers light up to see where it stopped—on floors three, eight and nine.

  Wesley got his own elevator and a few minutes later, stopped on the third floor. He asked a security guard if he’d seen a man matching Coop’s description, and the man shook his head. Wesley got back onto the elevator and rode to floor eight. After hearing Wes’s description of Coop, the security guard on that floor pointed down a hallway. Wesley explored carefully, peeking through the glass and frosted-glass doors into the waiting rooms of individual doctors. He relaxed some, thinking that Coop might be getting his eyes checked, or having a routine physical. In fact, when he spotted his boss sitting in one such waiting room, reading a magazine, Wesley exhaled in relief…until he glanced at the practice specialty lettered on the door.