The Killing Harvest

by Don Donaldson

  Three minutes later, a man with prematurely gray hair walked in, saw her, and came to her table. “I’m Claude Veret.”

  They exchanged a handshake, and he sat in the chair beside her.

  Veret’s hair was gray, but his mustache and eyebrows were brown. Unlike the two detectives she’d dealt with in Memphis, Veret was beautifully dressed in a charcoal pinstriped suit, a pale blue shirt, and a patterned yellow tie that picked up his suit stripe. She hoped his attention to detail in clothing carried over into his work.

  “Seminoux,” he said. “Any Cajuns in your family?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Pity.” Small talk over, he took out a pen and a little notebook. “Now, why did you ask Sharon McKinney to go to Tropical Joe last night?”

  Over the next twenty minutes, interrupted only by the waitress bringing coffee for Veret and a cup of hot tea for herself, Sarchi bravely laid the story before him without breaking down. But when she reached the end, her courage wavered. Brushing back tears that threatened to embarrass her, she said, “Whoever killed Sharon must be very close to Latham, most likely someone who works with him.”

  It was a conclusion Veret had reached long before she voiced it.

  34

  CLAUDE VERET DIDN’T like Yankees adding to his troubles, even if they did have a French name. He also believed you shouldn’t be able to smell a woman when she walks into a room. He was therefore relieved when he finished questioning Latham’s nurse, Julia, whose lavender perfume reminded him of bathroom deodorizer.

  “Thank you, Ms. Price. Would you ask”—he looked at the notes he’d made when he’d asked Latham for a list of everyone who worked for him—”Lee-Ann Hipp to come in, please.”

  When Julia was out of the room, Veret waved the air in front of him to disperse her smell. The door opened, and a plump blonde came in.

  A plump blonde . . .

  Veret’s interest in these interviews, already keen, instantly sharpened. Angela, the person Sharon McKinney had asked about at Tropical Joe, was such a woman.

  “Ms. Hipp, please have a seat.”

  Lee-Ann saw that Veret was sitting in the chair she used when she did the billing. That just wasn’t right. She should have had her regular chair, and he should sit in the one for visitors. Well aware of the risks he posed, she was careful not to let her feelings about this show.

  “I’m Detective Veret. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Though Lee-Ann had no doubts regarding the reason for his visit, she furrowed her brow and said, “What’s this about?”

  “A murder that occurred last night.”

  “What does that have to do with the people in this office?”

  “Probably nothing. But I’d like to talk to you a bit anyway. Do you mind?”

  “I’m not a very good conversationalist. I always say exactly what’s on my mind, and sometimes that makes people uncomfortable.”

  “I happen to like it. How long have you worked for Doctor Latham?”

  “Three years.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “It doesn’t seem so to me.”

  “You must enjoy your work.”

  “It’s always gratifying to see sick children get better.”

  “I understand you assist Doctor Latham in surgery and handle the billing. That’s kind of an odd combination.”

  “I’ve been doing it so long it seems natural to me.”

  Veret smiled. “I guess it would. Do you know a Doctor Sarchi Seminoux?”

  Lee-Ann pretended to search her mind. “I think I’ve seen that name on the medical records for one of our patients.”

  “So it’s part of your job to look through those records?”

  “On occasion.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Before they come to us, our patients have all spent several days in another hospital. Doctor Latham likes to know what medications they’ve been given before they arrive.” This was actually Julia’s job, but it was all Lee-Ann could think to say.

  “Is this a task you alone perform?”

  He knew it was Julia’s job. She was sure of it. “Generally, that’s something Julia does. But if Doctor Latham needs the information on her day off or if she’s ill, then I do it.”

  “Have you ever contacted Doctor Seminoux for any reason?”

  Lee-Ann considered the question briefly then said, “Not that I can recall.”

  “Why did you hesitate before answering?”

  “I was trying to remember if I might have called her for Doctor Latham. But I’m sure I never have.”

  Veret couldn’t put into words how he knew it, he just had well-honed instincts for deceit. In the short time they’d been talking, he’d become convinced that Lee-Ann was a skilled liar. “Does the name Tropical Joe mean anything to you?”

  Trying to keep her pupils from dilating at this direct hit, Lee-Ann said, “No. Is that a person?”

  “It’s a place, a coffeehouse on Magazine Street. So you’ve never been there?”

  “If I had, I wouldn’t have asked you if it was a person, would I?”

  “That’s true.”

  Lee-Ann now saw just how dangerous Veret was. All that was necessary to prove she was lying was for him to take her picture from her driver’s license to Tropical Joe and ask the clerks if they’d ever seen her there. And since the redhead had asked her name, if Veret found the clerk who was on duty last night, he would surely remember her. She looked at Veret and briefly wondered if it would be possible to kill him. But even if she could manage that before he filed a report, they’d just send a replacement. She thought about killing the clerk who posed the greatest threat, but there was no time. And there were certainly other clerks who’d seen her there on different nights.

  Veret flipped his notebook closed. “I think I have all I need. Thanks for being so helpful.”

  Veret left the hospital and headed for the office to pick up some driver’s license photographs, hoping the clerks who’d worked last night at Tropical Joe would be on duty when he got there, and he wouldn’t have to track them down.

  Lee-Ann was frightened. She knew Veret would be back. And next time, he would probably have a warrant for her arrest. Well, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. If he wanted her, he’d have to work for it. As much as she hated Latham, she felt that after three years, she should at least say good-bye. Her biggest regret was that she wouldn’t be around to see Seminoux bring him down.

  She found him checking on Karen Owens, the child they’d operated on that morning.

  “How’s she doing?” she asked.

  “Very nicely.”

  “I have to tell you something.”

  He looked at her with a puzzled expression.

  “I have a family situation that requires me to leave New Orleans.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Weeks? Months?”

  “Maybe for good.”

  To Lee-Ann’s surprise, Latham looked devastated. “This is very bad news for me. Because, frankly, you’re the best surgical nurse I ever worked with.” He reached out and took her hand. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

  Lee-Ann’s hand tingled from his touch, and its warmth traveled up her arm and spread through her body, making her knees tremble.

  “So if you ever need anything, particularly your job back, just let me know.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, setting her nerves ablaze. “When will you leave?”

  “Today . . . right now. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you advance notice about this.”

  “Don’t be. At some time in our lives, we’re all acted upon by forces we can’t control.”

  There was no do
ubt in Latham’s mind that Lee-Ann’s sudden wish to get out of the city was related to the visit of Claude Veret. He didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into, but couldn’t have been more pleased that she was hitting the road and taking her troubles with the police away from him. And there was another bright spot in this development. She was a great surgical nurse, but she’d been around too long to be completely unaware of certain things in his clinic that didn’t add up. He’d been considering arranging a fatal accident for her, but the Seminoux problem had made that too risky at the moment. Luckily, now she no longer worked for him and wouldn’t even be living in New Orleans.

  Latham remained at Karen Owens’s bedside a bit longer, wondering if Veret’s visit meant he should call off his field man in Memphis. Instead, he decided that things there should proceed as planned.

  LEE-ANN CLEARED out her checking and savings accounts, taking it all in cash, and threw as much of her clothing as she could get into the two suitcases she owned. Everything else was left behind in her haste to get moving.

  She’d been driving only a half hour or so when she saw a woman with an overnight bag hitchhiking. Had the woman been the least bit attractive, Lee-Ann would have delighted in passing her by. But seeing she was on the homely side and plump, Lee-Ann stopped the car and waited for her.

  When the woman reached the car, she opened the door and appraised Lee-Ann for a moment before getting in. “Hey, thanks for stopping.”

  “I could use some company, and you need a ride,” Lee-Ann said, checking behind her before pulling back onto the highway. “It’s a fair exchange. Where you headed?”

  “St. Louis,” the woman said, arranging her bag on her lap. “I got relatives there who’ll take care of me until I get back on my feet.”

  Now that she was in the car, Lee-Ann realized the woman wasn’t as young as she’d looked. Actually, they were both about the same age.

  “They don’t know I’m coming, but that shouldn’t be a problem, do you think? I mean, I’m family.”

  “Why don’t they know you’re coming?”

  “I’m running out on my old man. Didn’t exactly plan it, but I just suddenly had enough of his abuse. Never thought I’d have the nerve, but here I am. He hit me, see . . .” She pulled her lower lip out and bent closer.

  Just to be polite, Lee-Ann turned to look at her but couldn’t take her eyes off the road long enough to see anything.

  “He hit me and then went in the can. Know what I did? I nailed the damn door shut with him inside, packed a few clothes, and took off. He may be locked in there yet. I left so fast, I forgot my cell phone.”

  Where most people might have found this woman’s tale boring, hearing about her troubles sort of made Lee-Ann feel better about her own.

  35

  THE MEMPHIS CITY lights splayed across the land like a terrestrial galaxy as Sarchi and LaPlante arrived back at the Olive Branch airport, where he landed the plane as softly as hitting a pillow.

  It had been about four hours since John had left for Chicago, enough time, Sarchi thought, for him to have discovered the bald man’s destination. She was so eager to hear what he’d found that after she thanked LaPlante and he left for home, she called John. But all she got was a voice that said the customer she was calling was unavailable.

  Then, her thoughts began to turn on her. It was just like Sharon. John was hundreds of miles away, maybe in trouble, and Sarchi couldn’t do a thing about it. She was a menace, drawing everyone she cared about into her problems. And they were the ones who suffered for it. Disgusted and angry at herself, she headed for John’s truck.

  Sitting there, about to start the engine, she remembered the Timmons articles she’d ordered from the UT library. She called the circulation desk and asked about them.

  “Yes, Doctor Seminoux, they’re right here waiting for you”

  Eager to see the articles but at the same time feeling utterly miserable, she started the truck and headed for the UT library. On the way, her body reminded her she hadn’t eaten anything all day. Disgusted at the thought that she should be hungry mere hours after learning Sharon had been murdered, Sarchi drove on, refusing to indulge herself.

  At the library, she was handed a tan envelope with her name written across the front. Too curious about the contents to wait until she got home, she took the envelope to one of the long tables by the book stacks and removed the two papers inside.

  Whoever had copied the articles hadn’t pressed the bound center of the journals tightly enough against the copier. Consequently, a couple of letters were missing from each line. Though distracting, this didn’t make them unreadable.

  She started with the earlier of the two: “Breakdown, A New Mouse Mutation.” Hurriedly scanning the abstract, she discovered that the mutation in question led to a sudden paralysis of most of the voluntary muscles.

  The same thing that had happened to Drew and Stephanie Stanhill, and who knows how many other children.

  Sarchi felt as though she’d just emerged from a long, muddy crawlway into a virgin walking cave. This was big.

  With her heart threatening to blow a rod, she plunged further into the article, which was written in an almost anecdotal style that included information not generally seen in scientific papers. The mutation had been discovered by accident, when several important animals in an experiment were found one morning unable to move their legs, a phenomenon that couldn’t be explained by the treatment they’d been given.

  Over the next few weeks, this happened to two more sets of animals. Intrigued and puzzled as to the cause, Timmons had pored over all the lab records of the paralyzed mice as well as those that were unaffected. Two facts emerged. The condition appeared only in litters from the matings of one particular pair of animals, and only when susceptible animals were put in the smaller of the two mouse rooms in the vivarium.

  After considerable study, Timmons discovered that the inducing stimulus for the paralysis was a high-pitched sound emitted by the room’s air-conditioning vent.

  Sarchi began to breathe faster as the horrible truth took shape. The inducing stimulus was a sound. And there was a hidden sound in the books someone had sent to all the children who subsequently became Latham’s patients. These facts had to be related. But how?

  Convinced that she held the answer in her hand, she read on. But the rest of the paper merely described a lot of physiological testing of the affected animals, documenting the nature of the paralysis, which appeared to originate in the brain.

  She turned to the other paper, “Studies on the Mutant Gene in the Breakdown Mouse.”

  From her physiology course in med school, Sarchi knew that the normal functioning of nerve cells requires the regulated movement of charged particles known as ions into and out of the cell through tiny pores, the ion channels, in the cell membrane. This knowledge wasn’t much help in understanding details of the various experiments Timmons described in the first part of the second paper, but she was able to grasp the significance of his conclusion: The breakdown mutation had its effect through production of an abnormal ion channel in nerve cells. He had determined that when the defective channel was activated and opened for the first time, it remained open, disrupting normal neuron function. The inciting stimulus for the channel to open came from auditory pathways originating in the part of the inner ear mediating high frequency sounds. Even though the affected cells replaced the channel subunits every few hours, the channels remained open.

  The rest of the paper contained proof that he had indeed isolated the mutant gene. This is commonly done by putting the gene into cells that don’t have it and determining if those cells then behave like cells from the mutant animals. To get the gene into a host cell in a functional form, viruses incapable of reproducing on their own are usually used as the transporting agent. Though much of the terminology and nearly all the techniques Timmons used i
n this part of the paper were also over Sarchi’s head, one fact leapt from the page: The transporting agent into which he had put the gene was a virus consisting of parts of adeno-associated virus two and the mouse Molony leukemia virus—the same hybrid virus Latham’s PCR primers were designed to detect. There was no question now in her mind. Latham was making kids sick by infecting them with a virus carrying the breakdown gene.

  36

  IN THE LAST part of the second paper, Timmons described experiments in which he was able to selectively turn off the breakdown gene in the virally infected animals. Within hours, as the short-lived mutant ion channels began to disappear, the paralyzed mice recovered. That was obviously how Latham had been curing all the kids he’d made sick.

  In the beginning, Latham had probably cured his first few victims for free to show the HMOs he was the best chance for anyone with that kind of illness. Whatever his fee, the HMOs would find it cheaper than paying for a lifetime of care for someone like Gilbert Klyce.

  With her head spinning from all she’d learned, Sarchi left the library and returned to the truck. As she headed for home and the heat of her discoveries cooled, all the still-unanswered questions swam before her.

  If Latham could cure the disease by an injection, why was he boring holes in his patients’ heads and damaging their brains—to make the cure look more difficult? He could have accomplished that without doing damage: Bore a hole, slip a probe into a silent area of the brain, and quit. Why didn’t he go into the same part of the brain on every child? And why choose only kids whose umbilical cords were given to the New York Cord Blood Repository? And the bald guy? Where did he fit in?

  She thought of what Helper had said during their Internet Relay Chat. “The answer is in two parts.”

  Tropical Joe . . .

  Sharon . . .

  Oh, God.

  During the time Sarchi had been in the library, her interest in Timmons’s papers had shunted Sharon’s death from the main track of her thoughts to a siding. How could she have allowed that? What kind of person was she?