by E. A. Copen
“Before I show you, you should know that the bodies have all come in this way,” said Dr. James. Without further warning, he pulled the sheet away from the dead man’s face.
I put a hand over my mouth and nose and restrained a gag. Not because of the shape of the body. The old man looked mostly intact, his face looking more like he was sleeping peacefully than actually dead. But the torso was a mess. It had been pinned open using an apparatus that looked more like a sort of reverse vice than anything else. His insides were shaped masses of deep red and pale pink, but everything I could see looked normal. Of course, I was only willing to give him a quick once-over before I turned away thanks to my stomach’s protests.
“Notice anything?” Dr. James asked.
“Yeah, you forgot to sew him back up.” I squeezed my eyes shut. I will not puke over a dead body this time.
“Lazarus,” Emma said, “half his internal organs are missing, and there are five more bodies just like this one in the next room.”
Chapter Two
I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and verify what Emma had said. At first glance, the body cavity had looked plenty full to me. Then again, I’d never been very good at biology. Good thing Dr. James was there to clear things up.
“The lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines have all been removed with near medical precision,” the doctor said. “There’s an incision on the left side of the body.”
“On the left side?” I hazarded a glance back and then looked quickly away again. “This guy’s whole middle is ripped open.”
“For the autopsy, yes.” He sounded annoyed. Good. If I was going to have to suffer through revisiting breakfast, the least I could do is make him a little miserable.
Emma gestured to the body in my peripheral vision. “D.J., do you mind? Laz is a little squeamish around dead bodies.”
“I am not!” I spun around to prove my point just as Dr. James finished adjusting the sheet over the body.
Moses stood on the opposite side of the gurney, his face a few shades paler. Good to know I wasn’t the only one suddenly not feeling well.
“As I was saying,” Dr. James continued, “the incision on the left side of the body seems to be how they got the organs out. The most impressive part to me is that the heart and other organs are completely intact. Such a procedure would’ve been difficult without access to medical equipment. Of course, this was all done post-mortem.”
“In the medical sense,” Emma added. She looked at me to make it clear the next bit of information was for my benefit. “This man and all the other victims are only linked by one thing other than the missing organs and how they were taken. They were all card-carrying organ donors.”
“Captain Ross.”
Emma and I turned to Moses who hadn’t recovered. He braced himself on the wall, trying to look casual, but there was no mistaking the tremble in his voice. I noticed for the first time his eyes were bloodshot when they met mine.
“His name is Captain Adam Ross, Lazarus. He was a good man. Even better cop.” Moses’ eyes became unfocused. “He was about two weeks from retirement too. Almost made it.”
Suddenly, Emma’s mood shift and Moses’ apprehension made sense. The guy on the table wasn’t just anybody; he was one of their own, someone they’d both known well in life. More than that, he was one of the good cops. A lot of cops don’t make it to retirement, but to die and have your body desecrated, torn apart… It was more than sick. It was demoralizing on a whole new level for the living.
Emma’s voice was tight as she nodded to Doctor James and said, “Thank you, Doctor. I think we’ve seen enough.”
The doctor nodded, gripped the metal gurney, and wheeled Captain Ross’s body back through the double doors.
I rubbed my chin in thought. “I see why you called me. This isn’t really your case is it?”
“We’re homicide detectives, and these aren’t homicides.” Emma stared at her shoes. “There’s no law on the books in Louisiana for abuse of remains, so the best anyone could hope to charge the bad guys for in this case would be theft. Right now, the case is in bureaucratic hell. No one knows what to do with it.”
“And until they decide what to do with it, ain’t nobody doing nothing with it.” Moses crossed his arms. “Our hands are tied by a whole roll of red tape.”
I stared at the double doors the doctor had just gone through. “But not mine.”
Moses nodded. “But not yours.”
“Even if we caught the perp in the act, he’d just get a slap on the wrist.” Emma stepped forward and swept around so she was directly in front of me. “The guy responsible for this needs to rot in a cell, Lazarus, but that’s not going to happen, no matter what. He…He…” She trailed off and held her shoulders tight, fists clenched at her sides.
She couldn’t say it, but I knew exactly what she was asking me to do. Whenever I found the guy responsible, she didn’t want him brought back kicking and screaming. She wanted him brought back in a body bag, which meant she had the wrong guy. I might’ve been a lot of things, but I wasn’t a contract killer. I’d never killed anyone. Well, except for Vesta, but even then, I hadn’t done it by choice. I had no idea what would happen if I ripped out her soul. And I’d been having nightmares about it ever since.
“Emma,” I said, my tone as gentle as I could manage, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll help, but I’m not killing anyone.”
She nodded stiffly.
I thought about my first moves. Finding a bunch of missing human remains shouldn’t have been difficult, especially when the thief left behind most of the body. I could whip up a tracking spell if I could get enough DNA from one of the bodies, but I wasn’t sure Dr. James, or Emma and Moses for that matter, would be fine with me taking bits of the body away. An object might work if that object was in close contact with the deceased when they died. “How did Captain Ross die?”
“He was headed east on I-10, and his vehicle veered off the road,” Moses said. It sounded like he was reciting information from a police report. “His car struck a tree at over sixty miles per hour, and he was ejected through the windshield. He died at the scene.”
“No one will say it, but Ross was an alcoholic.” Emma gave me a pointed stare. “His blood-alcohol indicated he’d been drinking that night. But you won’t find that in any obituaries, so don’t go looking, and don’t spread it around.”
I didn’t think the car accident had anything to do with his organs being removed, not unless the other victims had been in car accidents too. I asked, but Emma said they’d all died in different ways. There was absolutely no connection between how the victims died and the removal of their organs. Worse, Captain Ross hadn’t been in contact with anything but the pavement when he died, so I had nothing. Not unless Emma and Moses were willing to help me out.
“The easiest thing to do would be a tracking spell,” I said, watching Emma’s face carefully. “But I’d need organic material to link to the missing organic material. Fresher is better, but it doesn’t have to be. Couple of hairs, some fingernail clippings. Anything you can get me.”
She nodded. “I’ll talk to D.J. about it. Anything else you need?”
“Everything else is at my shop.” I plucked the sunglasses from where they hung on my collar and slid them on. “As long as you don’t plan on arresting me in the middle of performing the spell this time, we’ll be good.”
I turned to go, but paused when Emma called my name and turned back around.
She stood with her fingers interlocked in front of her, chewing on her bottom lip. “I have some files that might be helpful. I can’t give them to you officially, but as long as they don’t leave my possession, since you’re on the payroll now as a consultant, you could have a look. There’s a little coffee stand on the lower floor.”
I nodded. I thought I remembered seeing it on my way in, though it was more of a coffee nook than a stand. “I’ll wait there while you finish your business up here.”
&
nbsp; Relief flooded her face. She returned the nod, and I left the morgue.
A bored-looking attendant stood at the counter when I got to the miniaturized version of the national coffee chain shoved into a narrow hallway. She gave me a glare when I didn’t order using their weird Italian coffee terminology and scowled all the way through dumping some lukewarm black coffee into a paper cup. For the second cup, she added copious amounts of sugar and a shot of espresso. After collecting both, I found a nice corner where two armchairs had been shoved to either side of a round, glass table, and got to work sketching some ideas on a napkin.
Mythology held no shortage of organ thieves. Gods and monsters alike liked to snack on human innards. That the organs had been taken from the dead and not the living narrowed my search down a little, but not much.
Ghouls were at the top of my list. They were notorious for eating the dead, and there were a few of them in the cemeteries around New Orleans, though not many. Contrary to how most pictured them, the ghouls were sentient and organized. I knew their king by reputation to be a reasonable sort of monster. But they usually only ate bodies that had already been interred, and if all those bodies were in the morgue, they hadn’t seen a burial yet.
I made a note to ask Emma exactly when the organs came up missing. If it was at the crime scene, it was possible I was dealing with a rogue ghoul. If it was at the hospital, where most of the victims would’ve been taken to be declared dead, then ghouls seemed unlikely.
Then there were the Baba Yaga-type characters. Boogeymen. In most stories, they feasted on the bones and flesh of children, and all the victims so far had been adults. Plus, I didn’t know if there were any actual boogeymen in the world. I’d have to ask The Baron next time I saw him.
In big letters, I wrote the word ROUGAROU. It fit the story so far, too, and we weren’t far from Cajun country. The rougarou stories I’d heard were mostly embellished werewolf stories.
That covers the monsters I’ve heard of. Now, onto gods. I put the pen to the napkin and paused. Being the secular kind of guy that I was, I’d never bothered to study up on gods. I’d meant to after everything that happened with Vesta, but that sort of fell to the wayside after Odette’s revelation. I knew there were cannibals like Kronos and the Cyclops in The Odyssey and other Greek and Roman legends, thanks to my prestigious public-school education, but that was the extent of it. Under the rougarou, I wrote: STUDY CANNIBAL GODS.
“You go writing stuff like that down and people will think you’re crazy.”
Emma leaned over my shoulder. “The boogeyman? You think the boogeyman is stealing people’s organs?”
“Not the boogeyman,” I said, gesturing for her to sit. “It’s sort of a class of monsters, and no I don’t really think so, but sometimes even a crazy, off-the-wall idea can lead you to a clue.”
Emma sat, and dropped a beige file folder with only a few pages inside onto the table between us. Her face brightened when I handed her the coffee with sugar. She tasted it and smiled. Bingo, I’d guessed right.
I wanted to jump right into the questions, but Emma looked so drained. Even after rescuing her partner from a crazed goddess with her own cult, she hadn’t looked so tired. Sipping the sugar-laden coffee had practically revived her.
“So, you and Captain Ross were kinda close, huh?”
Emma nodded. “He mentored me when I first became a detective. The man had a real knack for closing cases. Said he knew my grandfather. The last thing he said to me was that grandpa would be proud.” She wiped away a tear I pretended not to see and blew out a shaky breath before continuing. “He didn’t have any family, so I guess there’s a plus. No widow or children for me to break it to. The department was his life when he was sober enough to live it.”
“Everyone’s got their demons.” I tapped the pen on the little glass table and eyed the file. “May I?”
“Have at it.”
“Any idea where in transit the organs are getting lost?” I asked flipping the file open. “Obviously before they make it here or you’d be looking at the staff.”
Her posture relaxed when I brought the conversation back to the case. She sank into the chair, her back pressed against the cushion. Somehow, the motion made her look smaller, more delicate. “We’ve looked at the staff here and at the hospital. Watched hundreds of hours of footage in our off time, since the chief won’t let us pursue anything directly. Nothing. One of the victims was even alive when they got to the hospital but expired shortly after. My guess is it’s happening at the hospital, but they would’ve had to get into a locked ward.”
I flipped through the pages, nodding. It looked like the angle they’d taken was to treat it like live organ theft. Made sense. There was a huge black market for transplantable organs, mostly because the transplant list was so long and the list of available organs was so short. But organs were only viable so long after they were harvested, and the stomach wasn’t typically used in transplants. Black market organ theft didn’t fit, at least not exactly.
But there was another black market Emma didn’t know about, one where human organs would be highly sought after. At least, if you could believe the rumors. I’d never been to the Black Bazaar myself, though it was practically legendary. Every hedge witch in the Quarter swore on their mother’s grave their second cousin’s girlfriend’s uncle went there once and saw all manner of things. Problem was, you needed an invitation to get in, and the Bazaar moved around.
Even if this was related to the Black Bazaar, it didn’t tell me who or what might be taking the organs. Worse, if the organs were being bought and sold on the black magic market, a tracking spell wouldn’t work if the organs had already been consumed in a spell, or if they were behind any wards.
“What are you thinking?” Emma’s words pulled me back to the present. She’d finished her coffee and now sat with the lidless cup crumpled in her hand.
“I’m thinking I should’ve answered your calls sooner.” I didn’t say it, but if I had maybe Captain Ross would still be alive.
Emma turned her face away and shrugged stiffly. “Everyone’s got their demons. I figure you’ve got more than most.”
“About the dreams…” I lowered the folder and studied her carefully.
When I’d given Emma the Kiss of Life, I hadn’t stopped to think about the unintended consequences, and we’d gotten psychically linked. Ever since, we’d periodically swapped memories through dreams. I saw some of her past cases in my nightmares, the ones she wished she’d never been assigned. The really hard ones. She hadn’t ever told me what she’d seen of mine. I got the distinct feeling she didn’t want to talk about it. Despite everything, Emma still wasn’t comfortable with magic, at least not enough to talk about it in the open.
She cleared her throat and drew a small prescription bottle from her pocket. At least, it looked like a prescription bottle with the label removed. “D.J. got some fingernail clippings and a few hairs from Ross. Will that be enough for your tracking spell?”
Guess today wouldn’t be the day we talked about it either. I flipped the file closed and took the offered bottle from her. “As long as the organs aren’t behind any wards, it should.”
“And if they are?”
“We’ll have to resort to other methods or get organic material with a stronger connection.” I lifted the bottle to the light and shook it. Three fingernails and a tiny tuft of hair. Not much to work with.
“So, any idea what did this? Any theories?”
“I have some ideas, but I’ll need to do a little research first to be sure. Talk to a few people I know. Shake some bushes and see what jumps out. That sort of thing.”
Emma placed her cup on the table and stood. “I’ll get my things and meet you at the car.”
I had to jump up and step to the side to keep her from running off. “Whoa there. I said I was going to go looking for trouble, not that you should come along.”
The look Emma shot at me would’ve made a rattlesnake shrink. “I’m not
just going to let you turn the city upside down on your own, especially not in your condition.”
“What condition? I’m hung over, not injured.” I lowered my voice, partly because the lady at the coffee counter was staring. “Besides, if I go into some of these places with a cop on my heels, the people I need to talk to will bolt. I’ll call you later and fill you in on what I find, okay? And if it leads to something where I need backup, you’ll be the first person I call.”
She didn’t seem to like the idea, but at least she understood my reasoning. When she tried to press me further for more theories, I stood my ground and refused to tell her more than I already had. If I even gave her a hint of what I was thinking, she’d pursue this on her own, and with what I knew might be lurking out there, put her in unnecessary danger. Maybe Emma could handle herself in a fair fight, but Emma versus a god or monster, or even another wizard, wouldn’t be fair. Even if it pissed her off, keeping her out of it as much as possible was the best thing to do.
She finally realized I wasn’t going to tell her more after the third time she asked and stomped off after making sure I’d call her by eight. I collected my half-drunk coffee and stepped around the table toward the exit.
And directly into someone else.
The woman I’d bumped into let out a surprised gasp as dark coffee splashed from her open cup all over her white button up. A thick book thudded to the floor, the bookmark floating through the air like a feather and coming to land on top of my shoe. Panicked, I squatted to pick up the book while stumbling over an apology, pausing when I saw it was an encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptian artifacts. It was just long enough for the woman to recover. I expected her to cuss me out, tell me to watch where I was going, or something similar. Instead, she said, “Holy crap. Lazarus?”
I looked up. Glasses. Dark brown, almost black hair pulled back in a messy braid. Unusually, almost awkwardly tall, a face with cheekbones sharp enough to cut and a cute little downturned nose. “Beth?”
Just my luck that I’d run into the one ex-girlfriend I’d hoped never to see again.