Parts Unknown

by Rex Burns

  “The two pregnant women, too?”

  He blinked and seemed to recognize my face as someone different from the person he had been arguing with: a face of his own imagining, perhaps the face of his own conscience. Leaning back in his chair, his voice lost its excitement and sounded as flat and factual as a lab report. “They provided intact fetuses near term. Intact fetuses are almost impossible to locate, and even experiments with fetal tissue are no longer allowed. It’s insanity. Bureaucratic insanity.”

  “You needed the fetuses for experiments?”

  “I transplanted the fetal kidney into a recipient, using the hybrid protein in conjunction with cyclosporin A. It worked—by God, the experiment worked! And the patient would be alive and healthy today if she hadn’t contracted pneumonia. That transplant was a success!”

  “The hospital knew of this operation?”

  “Of course. But not of the hybrid protein,” he added.

  “They knew where you got the organ?”

  His hand waved irritably, as at a pesky gnat. “Antibodies Research is a clearinghouse for fetal tissue.”

  “And the second fetus? You experimented with it, too?”

  “I don’t know what happened there. The recipient’s entire immune system collapsed. I’ve been running various possibilities through the computer for days—weeks—and I still don’t know what happened there.” His mind drifted off to that problem.

  I asked very softly, “What happened to the bodies of the women and fetuses?”

  “Gilbert harvested them. To provide funding.”

  It gave new meaning to the term “operating expenses.” We sat in silence. Faintly through the brick walls of the clinic came the sounds of a busy, sunlit avenue pulsing with cars and the shuffle of leather along the sidewalks. Finally, I asked, “Will you tell the police what you’ve told me?”

  “The police?” Matheney sighed deeply, his shoulders weary and sagging against the curve of his padded chair. “Ah yes. The police. I don’t know. I need to think about that.”

  “You’ve accomplished a lot, doctor. You’ve made tremendous advances in your experiments. But you see it can’t continue.”

  The shoulders sagged even further. “A little more time. That’s all it would take—we’re so close.”

  “There’s no time left. You have to make a statement to the police. I have a friend in the police who will listen to what you say. Let’s do it now—come with me, doctor. He’s a friend. He’ll listen.”

  Another deep breath and his shoulders stiffened a bit. “Don’t patronize me, Kirk.” A wry twist bent the corners of his mouth. “Why don’t you arrest me? That would make a big splash in the papers for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s not important.” No arrest, citizen’s or otherwise, would do much good in court without a written confession first. “Come on, Dr. Matheney. He’s a detective. His name’s Kiefer—you’ll like him.”

  “I will, eh? Well, I have things to do first, Kirk. The experiment—I can’t leave it the way it is. Records … data … I have to straighten things out first.” He stood, brown eyes once more soft and smiling. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. There’s no place I could hide anyway. I’ll meet your Detective Kiefer first thing in the morning, and he’ll know everything I’ve told you. But I must make certain the experiments are in a condition to pass on to … to whoever will take them over … .”

  He pressed a button on his desk and the nurse, worried-looking but efficient, stuck her head through the doorway.

  Matheney rose. “Thank you, Mr. Kirk. It’s been an extremely interesting visit. I’m sure you’ll understand that I have a tremendous number of details to attend to in a short time. Anne, show Mr. Kirk out and then please come back. I know it’s late, but I have a few things I want you to look after.”

  I went out, but I didn’t go home. Instead, I sat in my car and watched the parking lot and the white Chrysler in the slot reserved for Dr. Matheney. On television, this would be the end—the detective would take the good doctor by the arm and walk him down to the nearest police station, saying, as the credits began to roll, “Come on—you’re under arrest.” But reality wasn’t like that. Reality was that arrest was an act loaded with legal freight that could weigh down the arrester in countercharges and—more important—free the arrestee because of technical violations. What it boiled down to was that I had little choice but to wait and watch, which I did until only Matheney’s car and one other remained. Finally the nurse came out, head down as she poked in her purse for her keys.

  “Anne!”

  She looked up, startled to hear her name.

  “When will the doctor be out?”

  “Why, he left half an hour ago.” She glanced at the white Le Baron and frowned. “I’m sure he left. I saw him going down the walk. But here’s his car … .”

  It took us about five minutes to determine that the clinic was, in fact, empty. My guess was that Matheney had gone down the walk, out the alley gate, and over to the street to find a taxi. And then to wherever—though I had a pretty good idea where that was.

  “What did he want you to do this afternoon, Anne?”

  “Clear up the records. Make certain all the files were up to date. Why?”

  “Is that usual?”

  “Well, he’s very meticulous. But—”

  “But what?”

  “It’s almost as if he’s arranging to transfer the files to another physician.”

  “Did he seem anxious?”

  “No. Very calm. Like he always is. Why? What’s going on?”

  I mumbled something about problems with his experiment at the laboratory and managed to find a phone hood and put in a call to Bunch. He was still in the office, working on equipment for our meeting with Taylor. “Metheney’s off and running.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’m betting to Antibodies. That’s where his research is. Bunch, he admitted using Nestor and the two women for his research. Now it looks like he’s cleaning up his caseload at his office.”

  “Skipping the country?”

  “If he does, so does our case.”

  “Crap—I’ll see you over there, Dev.”

  I angled onto Valley Highway, which was still choked with the remnants of rush hour traffic, and branched off at the Santa Fe intersection. In the flat gray light of early evening, the blank-walled brick building squatted behind its wire fence, seemingly vacant except for the four cars pulled up to the front door. I parked down the street and waited, figuring Bunch to arrive in a couple minutes, and he did. The Bronco squealed to a halt behind me, and the big man hopped out quickly and slid into the rider’s seat.

  “Anything going down?”

  “No. No one in, no one out.”

  Bunch leaned on the dash and eyed the building. “You sure he came here?”

  “No. But this is where he’s running his experiment. I don’t think he would go off and leave it hanging—he wants things wrapped up so someone else can take over.”

  “Wants his money, is what he wants.”

  “I don’t think that’s all of it.”

  We peered through the gloom at the still building as the streetlights began to shine more brightly against the darkening sky.

  “I did a little checking on this guy Gilbert,” said Bunch. “He came here from LA maybe ten years ago. Worked in commercial real estate until the market went flat. Then somehow he moved over to the private health business.”

  “Kiefer said he didn’t have a record.”

  “I didn’t find one either. He does have a lot of contacts around town from his real estate days. What he did was set up Antibodies and get out a prospectus that promised to pay a twenty percent return on investment the first year, thirty percent the second. He has a board of directors with Matheney at the top and a whole shitpot full of big names underneath.” He told me some of them, all recognizable. “It’s no wonder Kiefer got pulled.”

  “Did the company pay off?”

&nb
sp; “First year. I hear the returns were thirty-five percent. Now he’s got people kissing his ass to take their money.”

  “A Ponzi scheme?”

  “Don’t count on it—he made a million off Nestor, didn’t he?”

  The door opened and two figures in overalls came out. One was tall and thick-bodied; the other was shorter and almost round and had an arm braced with an elastic sling. They stood talking for a few minutes, in no hurry.

  “Working late tonight,” said Bunch. “Probably had a body to cut up.”

  There was something vaguely familiar about them. The smaller one. Perhaps a face I’d seen before … . No, more the shape of the man, his way of carrying himself … .

  “Bunch, those are the ones who broke into our office.”

  “Say what?”

  “The short one. The way he moves, kind of sidling. That’s them, Bunch—the burglars.”

  We watched the big one climb into a Chevy Blazer and back out. The other went to a Toyota pickup and followed. We noted the license numbers as the vehicles turned into the street.

  “Think I should follow one of them?” asked Bunch.

  I was tempted. “No. Gilbert and Matheney are the ones we want to keep an eye on right now.”

  He sank back against the seat. “The brown Caddy—that has to be Gilbert’s.”

  The other was a Nissan sedan of some sort. I didn’t think it was Matheney’s, but the possibility was there. We sat, talking a little bit about one thing and another—the other being the meeting tomorrow morning with Billy Taylor.

  “You’re all set for that?” I asked Bunch.

  “Yeah. I got a camera rig with a remote tripper. We can pick up that goddamn dog at seven and be over there in half an hour.”

  “It’s got to come off, Bunch. I promised Schute.”

  “Hey, have I ever failed?”

  “Yeah. More than once.”

  “I mean besides those times.”

  Before I could answer, a hefty, sandy-haired figure pushed quickly through the glass door and half trotted to the brown Seville that sat nearest the entry.

  “Uh-oh—here comes Gilbert,” said Bunch.

  “In a hurry, too.” I started my engine.” I’ll follow him. You sit on the last car.”

  Bunch slid out and stepped into the shadow of a doorway as the Cadillac’s headlights swept across us. I ducked down while it rushed past, then watched the car in the rearview mirror as it rocked into a hard turn at the corner. Squealing the tires, I swung around and followed, staying far enough back so that I had to occasionally guess where Gilbert would turn. But after a couple miles, I thought I knew and dropped back even further. We turned west on Hampden, and Gilbert pushed the speed limit as his heavy car wove through traffic toward Metheney’s home.

  Off at Sheridan south and a quick turn onto Mansfield. Far ahead, the brown car swung under the iron gateway bearing the ornate M, and I slowed to a halt at the entry. Through a screen of blue spruce and elms, I saw the wink of flashing emergency lights, and in the quiet of the peaceful country club neighborhood heard the crackle of official radio traffic with its cryptic, terse messages.

  After a while, a blue-and-white coasted down the drive, its flashers dark and the officer saying something into his microphone. I hopped out and waved him to a stop.

  “Can you tell me what happened, officer?”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “You a reporter?”

  “No. I’m a friend of Dr. Matheney’s family—I live just down the road. I don’t want to intrude, but if something’s happened and my wife and I can help … .”

  It wasn’t the offer of Christian charity that decided it; rather, it was the idea that I lived just down the road in another of the sprawling mansions that paid so much city tax and had such well-connected residents. He shrugged and scratched at a wing of his mustache. “It looks like the doctor shot himself. You might go up there and tell the detectives you’re a family friend— his wife’s pretty shook up.”

  “My God,” I said, and I meant it. “All right. Thanks.”

  The officer lifted a hand and cruised down the lane—his part of the drama was over, and it was back to serve and protect. I sat in the car and thought. Things had, indeed, been put into motion. But as is often the case, the exact direction of things hadn’t been foreseen, and this wasn’t the outcome I wanted. Matheney was dead. So were the others: Nestor, Serafina, Felicidad. I really couldn’t find a great amount of sadness and sympathy for the man, no matter how deeply I looked. What I did find was anger—a dead man couldn’t testify, and Matheney’s death meant a weak case against Gilbert. He had destroyed himself—fine. But he had also destroyed his usefulness, and that wasn’t so fine.

  As I pondered, a black Oldsmobile swerved past me and up the driveway; the man behind the wheel had a preoccupied look, and I wasn’t surprised to see a medical badge fastened to the car’s rear license plate. A few minutes later, Gilbert’s brown Cadillac glided down under the branches that shaded the drive.

  The headlights caught my face and the car braked abruptly. In the dash lights, I saw Gilbert’s mouth twist in anger. The window slid down.

  “Matheney killed himself,” he said accusingly.

  “Maybe you can sell his body.”

  Gilbert’s mouth tightened. “I warned you, Kirk. Goddamn you, I warned you!”

  “Going to have your two boys break into my office again?”

  The man blinked, anger stifled by caution. “I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t know what you think you’ve found out.” The thick lips clenched up into a semblance of a smile. “Matheney didn’t leave a suicide note. He didn’t give his wife any reason why he killed himself. And now he will never testify to one damn thing, Kirk. No one will testify to anything.” He pushed a button and the window rose smoothly as he spurted gravel from his rear tires.

  I turned, my headlights picking out two or three figures standing in the shadows of trees and staring up the drive. Then I headed back downtown.

  A yawning Bunch drove the Bronco toward the mountains, etched sharply by the low morning sun. “I left a note for Kiefer, Dev. He didn’t catch the suicide, but he’ll learn about it when he gets in.”

  “We’d better go to work on Chiquichano again,” I said.

  He nodded, voice stifled by another vast yawn. “That Nissan, it belonged to the secretary. She drove straight home. Still there, as far as I know.”

  In the far back, Sid Vicious scratched at his carrying case and breathed an unending rumble of growls and doggy curses. On the backseat behind us, the mound of camera equipment jiggled as the Bronco turned off the paved road and started up a dirt track.

  “Chiquichano might run now,” I said.

  “I don’t think so. I think as long as Gilbert stays, she’ll stay—he’s her golden goose.” He added, “I did get party and plate on those two clowns: Earl Vercher and Toby Dunlap. Dunlap’s got a jacket for boosting cars and assault. Nothing on Vercher.”

  “You think they’re a better bet than Chiquichano?”

  “I think she’s a hell of a lot tougher than they are. But she probably knows more about what went on.” Another yawn. “The way things are going, we’ll be damned lucky to get any kind of hard evidence. You see the paper this morning?”

  The headline in the Rocky Mountain News said, “Prominent Physician Kills Self,” and the article quoted a spokesman for the family who explained that extreme pressures from overwork and depression brought on by the failure of funding for his research contributed to his death. There was no mention of his affiliation with Antibodies Research. A picture of his family—red-eyed wife and two shocked-looking teenaged children—left me staring into space for a long time. “Yeah. I saw it.”

  Bunch’s head wagged. “Too bad he had no guts. He could have done something to straighten things out by testifying.”

  “Maybe he found out he was only playing at being a god.”

  “Naw—probably thought he was doing the nobl
e thing. Damn fool.”

  We rode in silence. The springs of the lurching vehicle creaked with each mudhole and spur of rock. Bunch finally pulled the car into the shelter of a thick stand of aspen, and we unloaded the gear to push through the underbrush. We were going in the back way in case the bikers had sent people ahead to stake out the meeting site. You couldn’t trust people like that, Bunch said, because they were sneaky, underhanded, immoral, and sly. So we had to best them in each category.

  I followed the big man up a steep hill through a stand of ponderosa and spruce. We crossed a ridge and paused at the edge of a clearing that overlooked another dirt road. It curved around a sharp bluff bitten into the cliff face and narrowed between the rock wall and the rush of the stream that had carved the notch. A barely visible two-rut track branched off toward us through the grassy field, with its orange and white and coral washes of gilia and billows of coneflowers and Indian paintbrush. Across the glade, abrupt against the deep blue sky, a mountain shaggy with black timber gradually lifted to the ragged and crumbled stone of its naked crest.

  “Now this is really pretty,” sighed Bunch.

  It was. But the time was past when a landscape could be admired solely for its beauty; it was useful, too: the open field made it difficult for anyone to approach without being seen, and the steep mountain across the narrow valley blocked anyone from circling around and closing off escape. The trees behind us gave cover and concealment, while the narrow gap the road twisted through meant a bottleneck for vehicles and motorcycles, one that a single rifleman could hold for enough time to cover an escape.

  We searched the area carefully with binoculars, finally satisfied that we were the only people there. Then Bunch hefted the carrier with the unhappily muttering Sid and carried him out to the center of the glade. The top of the plastic box was scarcely visible above the grass and flowers; I went another hundred yards and tapped in a stake with a shiny orange pennant and came back to wait. Bunch went back in the trees to set up the cameras and the telephoto equipment.