The Memory Killer

by J. A. Kerley

  Bardazon and the other medic, Ted Fuselli, called for a special gurney. Ten minutes later I answered the door to a black guy about the size of Harry Nautilus. His name was Washburn Kincaid, and he was one of the FCLE’s elevator pros. I sat and waited until he summoned me to an open box beside the furnace/AC unit, a grouping of thick cables running to the panel.

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” Kincaid said.

  “Sure, a breaker box.”

  “Controls power to the electrical systems. A short or overload happens, the breaker shuts off the juice and that circuit goes down.”

  I looked at what was simply a larger box than the one in my home: a dozen or so switches all canted to the right. In the case of a short or overload, the breaker closed down the circuit and the switch flicked to the left to indicate a problem. Fix the problem, reset the switch, power continues.

  “They all look fine to me,” I said, seeing an opening at the bottom of the panel, a rectangle half the size of standard brick. “What goes down there?” I asked. “At the bottom?”

  “That’s the space for a larger breaker, two-twenty volts.” Kincaid tapped a switch assembly to the right of the hole. “Like this one, which protects the furnace and AC circuit. But one breaker is missing.”

  “Someone pulled the entire unit?” I said.

  “Not hard, Detective. They pop out for replacement or repair.”

  I closed my eyes. “The breaker for the elevator, right?”

  He nodded. “As soon as it got pulled, the elevator went to its safest mode. In other words, it shut off. Powerless. Totally dead.”

  Gary Ocampo had been murdered.

  Kincaid bridged the circuit and the elevator was operational. The bus arrived and the heavy-duty gurney went upstairs. Three minutes later it returned bearing a huge body under a sheet, no one having XXX-Large body bags. Jonathan followed the medics from the elevator, sniffling and wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

  Bardazon stopped and turned to me. “Sorry it had to go down like this, Carson. The stairway was just too narrow.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, looking out the window and seeing Longo and Rasmussen pulling in. “Excuse me,” I said.

  I was in the street seconds later, the pair of surveillance cops wide-eyed at seeing me striding toward them with my fists clenched. Their eyes widened further when I kicked the mirror off their cruiser. I was trying to yank the locked door open when the two medics and Kincaid wrestled me back to the shop.

  48

  An hour later I entered the pathology department, knowing it was going to be an unhappy occasion. I flicked a wave at the woman behind the counter, thirtyish, attractive, and another of Gershwin’s occasional companions.

  “Where’s Ziggy?” she said.

  I patted my pockets like he was in there somewhere. She laughed, good, because I needed to hear a laugh before my next stop. I bypassed Morningstar’s almost-former office, now just a desk and a chair and a single brown box, continuing to suite six, the one with the outsize autopsy table. They had another on order, corpulent bodies becoming so common.

  I entered to see a gowned Vivian almost hidden behind the rise of Gary Ocampo’s mountainous belly. Because of the situation, his autopsy had gone to the top of the list. He was naked, hands at his sides, eyes closed. The slice over his heart gaped like a leering mouth, yellow fat puffing out like the mouth was chewing.

  I’m sorry,” Vivian said, pulling a tray of instruments to her side. “I know you liked him and were trying to help him.”

  I shrugged, not liking to talk about failures. “Anything in the screens?”

  “A huge dosage of black locust in his blood.” She nodded at the body. “I just finished the visual. No needle punctures like Prestwick.”

  “Oral, then?”

  She nodded. “The forensics team is checking every item in the living area as a possible source.” She picked up a scalpel. “I’m starting now. Are you staying?”

  I went to sit a chair against the wall. I’m not sure why, but I felt I owed it to Gary to be here. The task took almost three hours, slowed by the necessity of removing quivering blocks of yellow adipose tissue.

  When she finished, a trio of assistants moved the remains to a cooler compartment. It hit me that next of kin was usually notified regarding disposition of the body. The only next of kin was Donnie, who was our killer, a thought that took a minute to shake from my head.

  Morningstar hit the locker room and slipped from the surgical wardrobe, and I followed her down the hall toward a meeting room.

  “I took the liberty of running the case by our new shining star,” she said as we approached. We stepped through the door. “Dr Davanelle, I have someone you should meet … if you haven’t already, that is.”

  Ava was seated with a stack of manuals and forms before her. We both performed eyes-wide amazement. “Dr Davanelle,” I said, reaching to take both her hands in mine. “What a surprise!”

  Morningstar smiled. “I wondered if you two had met. Dr Davanelle’s resumé mentioned working in Mobile for a few months.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Ava said. “But Detective Ryder and I were together on a couple of cases.”

  “Interesting ones, if I recall, Dr Davanelle,” I said.

  A wisp of smile, but only if you knew Ava.

  “Yes, I think they were.”

  “Looks like the Ryder–Davanelle alliance is back at work,” Vivian said, her words carrying more weight than she’d ever know. “A pity it reopens with such an ugly case.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned the wall. “Any thoughts, Dr Davanelle?”

  “I gotta get my post-mortem recording logged in,” Viv said. She gave me an unpurred purr, but only if you knew Vivian. “Nice seeing you again, Detective Ryder.”

  I nodded politely as she headed door-ward. “Likewise, Dr Morningstar.”

  Though our relationship was not strictly verboten by official rules, working the same cases was frowned on. But Vivian had almost made it to the end of her pathology career before taking up with a colleague. We figured when she was a month or so gone we’d – presto! – seem to discover one another.

  A pair of young lab techs were across the hall discussing a case, in earshot and preventing Ava and I from overt appearances of familiarity. I pulled out a chair and sat. Despite our strange history we were at work, we had a case to solve, and – despite her background – Ava was an extremely bright and talented person.

  “What’s your take on the plant toxins, Dr Davanelle?” I asked. “Odd, right?”

  “The effects on humans are roughly analogous to the effects on cattle, Detective Ryder.”

  “Cattle? How would you know that?”

  “In Fort Wayne I worked at a municipal office complex. Northern Indiana is a big farming region and a state agriculture agent worked there as well, John Kepes. He had a degree in bovine-ology or whatever.”

  “Cows.”

  She nodded. “John sometimes ran off to inspect livestock found dead or sickened. Jimson weed was a problem. Black locust less so, but I recall him mentioning how some horses were chewers, drawn to the shoots or bark, and if the farmer didn’t remove or fence off black locust trees, animals might die.”

  “Scary plants sound like a big deal up there.”

  “It’s pretty much what every farmer does, since toxic botanicals are everywhere. John would issue warnings to the agriculture community to check fields for jimson weed, snakeroot, sneezeweed, larkspur and a dozen other toxic species.”

  “You saw no human exposure?”

  She shook her head. “Most people don’t graze in pastures. Which brings up what I find the most interesting aspect of the case.”

  “Which is?”

  “How do you figure out a human dosage that incapacitates but doesn’t kill?”

  I shrugged. “Probably just a madman’s roll of the dice.”

  She looked dubious. “Helluva lucky roll, balancing three different forms of toxin without a si
ngle death.”

  Across the hall, the pair of techs moved on, laughing about something. Ava tinkered with a button on her jacket and gave me a sly, eye-batting smile, one I remembered from when she was sober and in a puckish mood.

  “What’s with the Cheshire Cat face?” I asked.

  She glanced to the door to make sure the techs were distant and lowered her voice to a whisper. The smile remained. “You and Viv have a thang going on, right, Carson? Isn’t that the current term, thang?”

  “Uh … Viv?”

  “That’s what you call Dr Morningstar outside of work, right? Viv or Vivian. Or do you have pet names?”

  Jesus, a thang? I swallowed hard and tried a dodge. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What pet names do you and Jeremy have for each other?”

  “I call him Lady Brunhilda and he calls me Spot.”

  “What?”

  She laughed, a chime-like sound I also remembered from her better times. “Come on, ’fess up, Carson – am I right? You’re seeing Dr Morningstar?”

  I learned long ago never to argue with a woman who said you were seeing a woman. Their detection equipment was calibrated in the Beyond. I cleared my throat. “Uh, yes, Ava … Vivian and I have been keeping company.”

  “Ah, keeping company. For very long?”

  I pretended to check my watch. “It’s countable in hours. How did you know?”

  “She walks differently when you’re near. Her voice changes. Jeremy would wonder if Dr Morningstar needed saving.”

  “Saving?”

  “From alcoholism, a difficult past, anger at the world. Jeremy believes you’re attracted to women who need to be saved from something. He says that’s the driving force in your life: saving people from their wretched pasts. It’s how you deal with your own past.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Projection. Jeremy’s the one controlled by his past.”

  I expected Ava to push back with the It’s-different-now-that-we’re-together argument. Instead, she calmly nodded.

  “That’s very true, Carson. It’s also about to change.”

  “Oh, really? When?”

  She mimicked my watch-glance.

  “It’s countable in hours.”

  I left Ava to her study and climbed into the Rover, uncertain where to go next. It had been a long day, starting at the office, moving to Gary’s Fantasy World, where I had watched a man die, then to his autopsy. I felt frazzled, drained, and on the verge of passing out. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything in over a dozen hours.

  It seemed there was only one thing to do: go to Tiki Tiki and chow down before my head dissolved. A drink was a nice thought, too. I got to the restaurant and found Connie Amardara was at home. I’d thought she lived at the restaurant, maybe in a refrigerator, waiting to ambush Zigs and me with platters of food. I missed her exuberance, but it made my entrance quieter and easier on my ribs.

  I ordered a platter of carnitas, tortillas and salsa verde, plus half a pastrami on rye, and called Gershwin.

  “Where you at, Zigs?”

  “The forensics department. Guess I just missed you. Hey, I hear you knew the new pathologist back in the old country. She’s a cutie. Did you give her the white hair way back then?”

  I winced; it was more nearly the opposite. “Negative. I’m at Tiki Tiki working on a Consuelo’s Delight. Join me.”

  “Muy bueno. I just found out how the poison got into Gary Ocampo’s mouth, by the way.”

  “I’m not hearing any more bad news until I’ve got several ounces of rum in my belly.”

  Gershwin arrived twelve minutes later, grabbed a mug of draft from the bar and hustled to the booth. “Well?” I said.

  “You ever see a big red cup in Ocampo’s place? Seems it got painted with the black locust stuff. He was drinking Dr Pepper from it when the stuff hit.”

  “Oh Jesus, Zigs.”

  “You think Donnie got in while the surveil unit was gone?”

  I finished the sandwich and started on the carnitas. “It was the only time he could have managed it. But there was no sign of forced entry.

  “But Donnie was in there. He had to go upstairs to paint the inside of the cup with poison.”

  “Go with it, Ziggy,” I said. I wanted to see if Gershwin gravitated toward Jeremy’s conclusion.

  Two minutes later he looked at me, a frown in the dark eyes. “Do you think Gary might have been hiding certain things about Donnie, Big Ryde? Like they knew each other?”

  I pushed my plate away. “Try this, Zigs: Donnie created the diversion that pulled the surveillance. He knew the lock code or Gary let him in. Sometime in there he went to the bathroom and swabbed the cup with hyper-concentrated black locust. When the meeting was over, he crippled the elevator, knowing if the poison didn’t kill Gary outright, his only salvation was getting to a hospital immediately.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  I went quiet while the waiter cleared the plates. When he left I leaned forward and spoke quietly. “My guess? Donnie had crossed a line. I think it was the escalation of violence.” I was cribbing from my brother, who had read a break-up in the cessation of the Gemini symbol.

  “But if the Ocampos were in this together, why did Donnie kill Gary?”

  “I think they’d agreed upon certain rules,” I said. “But Donnie changed the game with Harold Brighton.”

  “And Donnie was afraid Gary would squeal.”

  “I think Gary was getting close to telling me, Zigs. The guilt was too heavy.”

  Gershwin nodded and sipped beer. A thought hit: in all of my communications with Forensics, I’d assumed Gary was innocent. His potential involvement meant we needed a microscope on Gary Ocampo’s trappings. I called Forensics.

  “I’m interested in his computers and anything related,” I told Deb. “Disks, memory sticks, whatever. Especially files created in the past month.”

  A pause. “Sounds like you don’t think he’s solely a victim.”

  “Dawn comes slowly.”

  “The night shift just checked in. I’ll send a team there now.”

  As I’d spoken, Gershwin had been running his finger over the condensation on his mug. He turned it to me and I saw the sign of the twins.

  “Brotherly love, Big Ryde. They were in something together until Donnie went rogue. But where the hell is Donnie?”

  I couldn’t answer so I ordered another Consuelo’s Delight, which meant I couldn’t drive. Because I wasn’t going to be driving, I ordered a third. Gershwin ended up taking me to the Palace. He got me to the elevator and pressed my floor and I took it from there. As I studied the enigma of my clothes and tried to remove them – difficult while sitting on the floor – I recalled Ava’s thoughts about the difficulty in figuring out dosages. I’d made a flip response, but the longer I sat on the floor, the more sense it made.

  I grabbed a pen and scribbled some words on a pad, and crawled toward the bed.

  49

  In the morning I arose with snatches of dream floating in my head – Jeremy in one, a faceless man in another, in a third a dancer leapt into the air and when he landed his legs became red paste. I showered them away, dressed and chased a couple of power bars with coffee. I was slinging on the Glock when I recalled a dream about making a note last night.

  Or was it a dream?

  I jogged back to the bedroom and found nothing on the nightstand but a pen. I dropped to my knees and saw a scrap of paper that had fallen to the carpet. I picked it up and read my worst handwriting:

  Ask Ava: farm guys

  Farm guys? It hit me: I’d been thinking about Ava’s thoughts on Donnie’s need to test the toxins. And her experience with the agriculture guy in Indiana. Aspects of it made sense, but it wasn’t my world. First, I had to check with the path department–morgue to see if anything had been found on Gary’s computers.

  I stopped by the computer-analysis section first, saw Gary’s computers on a long desk, a large monitor between them, files blowing across
its screen like The Matrix. I heard footsteps and turned to see Lee Clark, head of Computer Forensics, enter with a cup of coffee in his hand, Jerry Garcia, the slim, thirty-year-old version, in khakis and a blue dress shirt.

  “Anything showing up, Lee?” I asked.

  “A shitload of movies and games. We’ve run searches for words like ‘brother’ and ‘donnie’ and names of the toxins. Nothing yet. No file marked ‘diary’ either, but you know …”

  “Yeah, never that easy. Keep on truckin’, and thanks.”

  I moved to the pathology part of the complex, seeing Ava exiting an autopsy suite, making notes as she walked. A dark dress made her hair seem as white as snow and her face was that of a kid at Christmas. She saw me, smiled. “This place is incredible. All the latest.”

  “You see the new DNA box?”

  She nodded. “The future has arrived.”

  “Chicago have one?”

  “On order. I sent my last DNA sample to the national lab last month, doing it old school. The results should be back any day now.”

  “But you’re here now. In the future.”

  “And loving it.”

  I saw an empty meeting room and guided her inside, closing the door and leaning against it. “I’ve been thinking about the perp needing to test the toxins. Any further thoughts?”

  She sat, mulling it over. “You’ve checked local colleges, right? Chem, ag, and botany programs?”

  “Nothing came up.”

  “Thing is, there are all sorts of weird chemical concoctions that could be used to subdue victims. A budding chemist might even make something like 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate, or BZ. It’s listed as a weapon of mass destruction, but it’s basically a powerful deliriant. That might have the same effects.”

  “Your point?”

  “Why did the perp use actual plants? Because he knows them. And like I said, the effect must have been tested on humans. There are two ways to go with such trials, Carson: start lethal, drop back, or go light and ramp up. The first choice is probably faster. Kill someone, halve the dose, try again.”