Hiss of Death

by Rita Mae Brown

  Annalise nodded in agreement. “Fervent.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Fervent. He truly wanted to cure cancer. The hours that man spent with me here, and Jennifer, too, examining the ones who died from various cancers.” She wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  Toni walked over to the counter, plucked out some tissues, brought them back. “Here. You need to hold it together.”

  Annalise wiped her eyes. “Mascara.”

  “You look like a raccoon. Here, let me fix it.” Toni fetched more tissues, wetted them at the small sink, then cleaned under the pathologist’s eyes. “You’ll need a reapplication.”

  “Have a tube in my bag. Toni, how did you find out?”

  “Izzy Wineberg took the call from Sheriff Shaw. Couldn’t find Will Archer,” she said, naming the hospital administrator. “Izzy came down to our department. We are being told department by department, and I think Izzy will oversee a notice to go out by email, as well as for a printed bulletin.”

  “As the most senior physician, he’s the best choice.”

  “Yes. I don’t think there is a doctor here more respected than Izzy. But here’s the thing”—she again wiped a speck from under Annalise’s eye—“the cops think Paula Benton’s death, Thadia Martin’s death, and Cory’s may be linked.”

  Annalise’s eyes opened wide. “Nothing was found to have caused Paula’s death. And Cory’s, I told him! I told him!”

  “Annalise, lower your voice.”

  “Oh, Toni.” She put her hands to her face, dropping her head back, exposing her swanlike neck. “I doubt they’re all connected.”

  “It does seem a stretch, but Izzy doesn’t know the details. They’re treating Cory’s death as murder.”

  “What?”

  “According to Izzy, the car was, I don’t know the terms, anyway, hotwired.”

  A long silence followed. “It couldn’t be. Rachel knows nothing about cars,” Annalise said, naming Cory’s wife.

  “Did she find out?”

  “No. At least he didn’t think she did.” A deep breath followed. “Look, if she did, I wasn’t the first. I seriously doubt his wife would kill him. Hit him with a frying pan, yes, but kill him, no.”

  “Did you love him? All the times we talked about covering your tracks, I never asked.”

  Annalise looked directly into Toni’s eyes. “I loved him, but I wasn’t in love with him. We shared a passion—more for medicine than each other—but it was good. We pushed each other to learn more, look more deeply. And we were both always figuring out how to invest, utilize our resources. That doesn’t sound romantic, but it drew us closer. Everyone thinks doctors are rich. Well, I make a much better living than someone in a computer pool, but the expenses are considerable, and there’s all those school loans to repay. We talked about everything. I will miss him.”

  Toni looked through the large glass window in the door. “Your assistant is washing up. You don’t know what kind of emotions will well up, so do your best: Repress.” She squeezed Annalise’s shoulder. “Pull it together. Bad as it is, it would be much worse if you had been in love with him.”

  Annalise rose to walk with Toni to the outside door. “Maybe. He was my friend before he was my lover. Lovers come and go, Toni; a friend is forever.”

  “You might be right.” Toni hugged her, then slipped out the door.

  • • •

  Izzy Wineberg fielded calls, soothed some shaken staff members, and was grateful when he had a moment to himself in his private bathroom in his large office. He washed his face, then held a washrag, wrung out, to his face.

  Rising like a comet in the medical world, Central Virginia Medical Complex wouldn’t be brought down by what now appeared to be connected deaths. Ten years ago at the old hospital, there had been murders, related, as they usually are, to money. It’s always love or money. He patted his face dry with a fluffy towel, courtesy of his wife of forty-six years. She filled his life with all manner of thoughtful objects and events.

  On the subject of wives, he knew Cory had cut a wide swath through the hospital nursing staff, and probably outside, as well. He was that kind of guy.

  Izzy faced two immediate conundrums. The first was: If he told Sheriff Shaw about Cory’s conquests, would the sheriff raise the issue with Cory’s wife, Rachel? What a wretched time for a woman to learn her husband suffered from chronic infidelity. Then again, maybe she knew. But Izzy doubted it. He’d seen them together many times, been a guest at their home. But people can be marvelous actors, he reminded himself.

  The second problem—thornier—would need a deft touch. Paula and Cory had worked together. Thadia had not, but one could hardly miss the fact that the woman was besotted with the surgeon. Physicians solve mysteries. You can’t cure a patient until you know what ails him or her. Using all the skills that had served him well in his profession, Izzy discarded extraneous information, concentrating on symptoms. His conclusion: Cory Schaeffer was central to this string of murders.

  The fruit-bearing trees dropped their blossoms, and tiny little bumps of peaches, pears, and apples gave hope for a good crop. The dogwoods, too, lost their beautiful white or pink blossoms. Trees began to fill out, the light spring green already turning a shade darker.

  Daffodils and tulips faded in their place while, like blaring trumpets, irises opened. There were small, intense Japanese irises, bearded irises in lavender, a maroon iris with a peach interior. There was every shade of purple imaginable. Along with the early irises, the azaleas created luxurious oceans of color. It’s a rare Virginia residence lacking in azaleas or irises. People will haul in sand to give those azalea bushes the right soil.

  Some years the azaleas and irises did not bloom in sync, but this year they did, and Harry marveled at the color around her house and in the big wooden half buckets in front of the barn. Eventually those buckets would give way to the ever-hardy geraniums and petunias.

  Kneeling, she weeded out her flower bed by the back door. She’d have another radiation treatment at the end of the week, so it’d be better to get this task done now. She knew she’d be even more tired than she was the last time.

  In her support group, she learned not only about what cancer does to the body but also what the treatments do. A combination of chemo and radiation seems designed to kill cancer cells and very nearly the patient. Grateful that she had to face only radiation, she joked with those sisters about losing their hair, their appetite, and their energy. Thankfully, nobody lost their sense of humor.

  One of the girls quipped, “God made hair to cover imperfect heads.”

  Some invested in good wigs, and those without funds were helped out by an organization that makes wigs for indigent cancer patients. Others wore baseball caps and said, “The hell with it.”

  Harry didn’t know how she’d handle that. She knew what she faced wasn’t nearly as bad as what so many of the others had. Still, she felt it: the slide in energy; the gusts of irritability, which she took pains to hide; and sometimes the sorrow of it. Yes, she was doing great, in good shape, but the idea that her body had fooled her troubled her.

  She’d repeat over and over to herself the mantra of her support group: I have cancer; cancer doesn’t have me.

  The long rays of late-afternoon sun brushed the barn, the fields, the old handblown glass in the windowpanes. Harry thought of this as soft light, almost liquid light, and like most country people, she felt one of the compensations for winter’s harshness was the magical quality of the light, no matter what the time. But now, mid-spring, one waited for late afternoon.

  “Coop,” Tucker barked, for she heard Coop’s truck turn off the road far away, onto the gravel farm drive.

  Coop pulled up next to the barn.

  Harry stood up, dropping a handful of persistent weeds into the blue muck bucket. Dusting off her knees, she walked toward the tall blonde just stepping out of her truck.

  “Hey, neighbor.”

  Coop smiled. “The p
lace looks great.”

  “Thank you. I couldn’t stand looking at those weeds one more minute.”

  “You’re much better about weeding than I am.” Coop sighed. “Got a minute?”

  “Of course. Come on in and let me wash up.” Harry peeled off her gardening gloves, putting them on a high shelf inside the screened-in porch, because if Tucker could reach them, she ran off with them.

  In the kitchen, as clean as possible, given that she’d been gardening, Harry asked, “Your pleasure, madam?”

  “Iced tea, if you have it.”

  “Sounds like just the thing.”

  Harry reached into the big double-door fridge and grabbed the handle of a full jar of unsweetened tea. Heavier than she thought, for she was weaker than she realized, she had to use both hands to get it to the counter.

  Coop noticed, rose, and poured the tea. “You’ll come back.”

  Frustrated, Harry plucked out a lemon from a bowl on the counter and sliced it. “I know. If I weren’t going to Heavy Metal, it would be even worse. It comes, then goes. I don’t mean it comes out of nowhere. I’ve noticed a definite schedule. Exhaustion after radiation. That turns into tiredness the next day, and each day away from the treatment, I improve. And it’s the same way for, I don’t know, strength. But the effects last longer. One last treatment. Really, Coop, I’ve been lucky.”

  Coop put the jar back in the fridge, and they both walked to the rough-hewn kitchen table.

  The cats jumped up on the counter to eat from their large crunchie bowl. Harry filled it once a day, doing the same for Tucker.

  “Brought you this.” Coop plucked a small jar of potassium tablets out of her back jeans pocket.

  “Good you did before you sat down.” Harry opened the jar, for Coop had slit the plastic covering. She knew Harry’s grip hadn’t been as strong since the treatments.

  “What!” Both cats looked up.

  Before any of the animals could respond, Harry popped a vitamin into her mouth.

  “Oh, no,” Tucker wailed.

  “Tucker, calm yourself.”

  The three animals stared in horror, waiting for Harry to keel over.

  As the two humans chatted, Pewter finally said, “Maybe it’s not the same smell.”

  “It is!” both Tucker and Mrs. Murphy shouted, which brought quite a rebuke from Harry.

  Fifteen minutes passed.

  “She’s fine,” Pewter pronounced.

  “Maybe it takes a long time,” Tucker worried.

  “We ate them,” Pewter rightly said.

  “Our systems are different.” Mrs. Murphy stopped eating, baffled.

  “It is the same smell,” Tucker insisted.

  “Obviously, there’s something we don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy intently watched Harry.

  “Maybe it was used in combination with something lethal, or maybe it’s the way you take it,” Pewter logically offered.

  “The problem is, anyone can buy this stuff.” Tucker lay down by Harry’s chair. “We can’t isolate the killer through the smell.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Mrs. Murphy, as curious as any cat, hated not knowing something as much as Harry did.

  The two humans talked, unaware of the concerned conversation swirling around them.

  “Did you know that rottweilers are being studied to understand long lives?” Harry pushed a piece of paper toward Coop. “Fair showed me this at breakfast.”

  “Huh.” Coop read that a thirteen-year-old rottweiler is the equivalent of a one-hundred-year-old human.

  “The study comes out of the Cancer Foundation in West Lafayette, Indiana. Isn’t that something? The old rottweilers escaped cancer, renal failure, all that stuff. It will be fascinating to see what’s discovered.”

  “On the subject of long lives, I came by to drop off your potassium and to talk about short lives.” She then conveyed Dr. Isadore Wineberg’s conclusion.

  “He’s right, but, Coop, is it possible that Thadia killed Paula? She had some provocation in her own mind, at least, and the scarab fit into her bracelet. Then someone kills her.”

  “Anything is possible.” Cooper squeezed more lemon into her tea.

  “Cory’s spectacular demise supports Izzy’s idea that Cory is at the center of all this.”

  “Well, he’s paid for it.”

  “Which means someone is still out there.” Harry thought. “Any other clues you’re willing to share?”

  “No. Well, there is one thing, and it’s a long shot. The fire at Pinnacle Records. Paula rented a file cabinet there, so her records were destroyed. Big Al said she went in a few days before she died. They have to sign in and sign out. She deposited a file in the cabinet. They’re locked. It probably has no bearing at all on the deaths, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  “No. You have the yellow cylinders. Paula had one. Cory had one.”

  “Right. I’ve thought of everything. Too small for organs. Really too small for the amounts of cocaine that would make one rich. I’d estimate the cylinder might hold eight thousand to ten thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine if wrapped in plastic, compressed.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Not in that business, Harry.” Coop finished her tea, got up, poured more for her and Harry. “More lemon?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I don’t think Cory would be dumb enough to risk his license for ten thousand dollars a pop.”

  “But if he had a thing going for years, it sure would add up.”

  “It would. But the longer you deal, the higher your chances of being found out. If Cory or Paula had something to do with drugs, they’d go for hundreds of thousands, millions. Then it would be worth the risk.”

  “I guess.”

  “I thought about stealing expensive sperm from high-priced stallions. Now, could they do it? Neither one could handle a stallion and collect from the animal. They’d be injured or dead.”

  “True enough, but they could steal it from someone who had. Particularly if the straws were in liquid nitrogen and stored to be shipped the next day. The problem with that theory is that whoever was missing the straws of sperm would report them missing immediately.”

  “No such reports.” Coop put her fingers together like a steeple. “And how would they even know the value of a stallion’s semen? That’s not the answer.”

  “No.”

  “Then I thought about shipping organs,” Coop said. “But the cylinder isn’t big enough. There is a huge black market for organs.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “In our country—in other countries, too. Sometimes a single man is at a bar and a pretty woman baits him, so the stories go. Mr. Gullible goes to her hotel room, is knocked over the head, anesthetized, and operated on—usually, it’s taking one kidney; they don’t kill these people. Then they place them in the tub, ice pack on the incision. When the guy awakens, there’s a note on the ice pack telling him what has happened and to call nine-one-one. It’s big, big business, and still some horny men are dumb enough to walk off with a woman they don’t know. Can you imagine a woman doing that?” Coop threw up her hands.

  “Yes, but not to the numbers that men do it.”

  “Well, as far as I know, there is not one report of a woman being robbed of her kidney. Who knows? Now, there might be one today, but so far it’s men. Imagine getting out of a tub, a fresh incision, one organ removed, no painkiller, and finding the phone in the hotel room.”

  Harry grimaced. “Awful.”

  They sat there thinking about these things. “I even thought there could be a scheme involving stealing drugs from the hospital—Percodan, OxyContin—packing them in the cylinders, and sending them out again. But there are much easier ways to distribute stolen prescription drugs.”

  “Figure out what goes in those cylinders, and I expect you’ll find the killer.”

  Coop leaned forward. “You’re so observant, and you’re at the hospital every week for your support group. Keep your eyes op
en.”

  “I will.”

  “That means we have to figure out how to get into the hospital,” Mrs. Murphy worried.

  “Not so easy,” Tucker said, stating the obvious.

  “If you were a teacup dog, you could hide in Harry’s handbag. But with your bubble butt, you couldn’t even hide in a potato sack.” Pewter peered over the countertop to harass the dog.

  “Zat so? Well, they’d need a gurney just for you, Miss Tubby.”

  The gray cat launched off the counter, right onto the sturdy dog. The two rolled across the floor amid furious yowling and growling.

  Harry stood up. “That’s enough.”

  This had no effect, so she ran over to the sink, pulled out the sprayer, and shot water at the animals. The dog and cat ran in opposite directions.

  “I don’t know what gets into those two,” Harry said as she knelt down to wipe up the floor.

  Coop knelt down to help, but she couldn’t stop laughing. She didn’t know which was funnier, the dog and cat or Harry with the sprayer.

  Back down and reverse arms,” Noddy commanded. “You’re going to do ten of these for each arm.”

  “Noddy, you can be hateful.”

  “That’s right.” Noddy crossed her arms over her chest as she carefully monitored Harry.

  After ten, the end of a long workout, Harry sat on the gym’s floor. “I am so glad that’s over.”

  “You’re doing good. I think these exercises and the one balancing on the large ball are especially difficult. You’re forced to use a lot of muscles, whereas in the weight room, you isolate one muscle, like your quads, and you work it to exhaustion. These exercises strengthen your entire body, especially your core, and they create better balance. Mind you, down the road, once the effects of the treatments are vanishing, if you want to add bulk, I’m glad to help. The biggest mistake women make is not developing their upper body. From the waist down leg power.” She paused. “Men, women, doesn’t matter. It’s the upper body where most women are afraid to look muscular. Obviously, that was never my problem.”

  “I never thought about it.”