Blind-sided

by Monette Michaels

  Jeanette hadn’t talked about Paul much since his death, not even with Scott. Although she’d never actually kept Scott from speaking to her daughter about him, she hadn’t encouraged it either. It dawned on her that her all-consuming grief had her locking Paul away in her heart and mind oblivious to the needs and wants of all those around her. First, Scott’s interest in her, now her daughter’s need to know the father she barely remembered.

  What a self-centered ass she’d been.

  “Sure, honey. You can even pull out the scrapbooks and look at the pictures of Daddy.” She smiled at Tony. “I believe there are some of his Marine unit. Maybe you can find Mr. Fortier in them.”

  “I’ll be happy to look at the pictures.” Tony allowed himself to be led into the living room. “You go ahead and get dressed for the day, ma’am. I’ll take the watch.”

  “Thank you.” Jeanette smiled, then turned toward her bedroom. At the door, she stopped and turned back. “Mr. Fortier?”

  “It’s Tony, ma’am.”

  “It’s Jeannie, Tony. I’m sure that’s all you heard from Paul and Scott, so you might as well use it, too.”

  Tony’s face was solemn, then it tightened into something fierce and dangerous. “No one will hurt Paul’s widow and his child while I’m around. There are others coming to help. Paul was our commander. He saved our hides so many times I can’t begin to tell you. It’s the least we can do. You just go gussy yourself up. Let me do the worrying today.”

  Jeanette nodded, then hurried from the room before he could see her tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Wednesday, 11:00 a.m., Charles Carter’s apartment

  Scott searched Charles’s apartment for anything that might be useful in the pursuit of Rutherford. He didn’t expect to find much, and only went through the motions to satisfy Andrew that his brother had not been the primary target.

  Scott knew for a fact that whatever had killed Charles had been meant for Jeannie. Now, all he had to do was isolate it. Andrew had offered his CDC lab as a resource after the autopsy. The turn-around time on the tox screens would be faster. And more confidential than having it done in New Orleans.

  “I’m done here.” Andrew entered the living room from Charles’s bedroom. “I couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Just Charles’s usual mess. We might have better luck with the personal files and effects we picked up from his law office.”

  Once again, Scott had to look twice to be sure that the man speaking was Andrew, not Charles. It turned out they’d been twins. Identical.

  “Let’s take these things to Jeannie’s.” Scott picked up the box with the personal effects. “His briefcase with his other research and notes, along with our research, is at her place. You can look it over and see what we’re up against.”

  Andrew headed for the door. “I’ll leave my suitcase here. I can make camp here until I make arrangements for Charles’s transfer for burial in Atlanta.”

  “Aren’t you going to send him back north?” Scott motioned Andrew out ahead of him.

  “Nah. Mom isn’t there anymore, and she’d be the only one who cared.” Andrew locked the door and pocketed the key. “Dad would say he’d gotten what he asked for by poking his nose into something he shouldn’t. Dad took a cover-your-ass approach to life, especially if it was his own ass.”

  “No wonder.”

  “No wonder, what?” Andrew cast him a curious glance as they got into the car.

  “Your brother had trouble dealing with family relationships, which is probably why he and Jeannie weren’t married.”

  Scott wasn’t going into any greater detail. He just realized he could be a perfect suspect for Charles’s murder — at least in the eyes of Andrew Carter and outsiders who didn’t know the situation.

  “This Jeannie — she has a child, right?”

  “Yeah. A little girl.”

  “Then Charles would have had a problem.” Andrew sighed. “After Mom had us, the marriage fell apart. Father hadn’t really wanted us, but after the divorce, to spite Mom, he kept us. Then proceeded to either ignore us or attempt to control our every thought. After he remarried, he trotted us out for perfect photo ops. Charles and I used to plot father’s demise in painful, gruesome ways.”

  “What about your mom? Didn’t she see what was going on?” Scott pulled into the alley leading to the garage for Jeannie’s apartment block.

  “Mom didn’t get to see us again until after we left for college.” Andrew’s lips thinned into a parody of a smile. “Father had paid her well to stay away. She gave up all visitation. Charles never spoke to Father again, and only just recently made it up with Mom. Yeah, you could say Charles had familial relationship problems.”

  Scott mentally groaned. “Please don’t tell Jeannie all that. I’m sure she’s figured out by now that she was the intended target. If she knew what kind of childhood he’d had, she’d feel even worse.”

  “She made an issue of the family stuff, I take it?” Andrew raised his eyebrows in a manner so like his brother’s that Scott got chills.

  “Yeah. They agreed they wouldn’t suit after that.”

  Scott led the way to the second floor apartment.

  “Leaving the way open for you to compete the family group?”

  Scott heard no suspicion in the rhetorical question, just a sense that Andrew felt satisfied at solving a puzzle. He turned to face Andrew.

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that. You have a problem with that?”

  “No.” Andrew returned Scott’s regard. “As long as it wasn’t an issue between my brother and you, why should it bother me?”

  “Well, it wasn’t an issue.” Scott turned to proceed the man up the stairs. “Your brother saw this case as a way to put his name on the New Orleans’ legal-political map. He was committed to his career. Family was way down his list of priorities.”

  “That sounds like him. I just wanted to clear the air before we get down to the serious business of finding out who killed Charles.”

  “To be precise, we’re seeking the person who killed Charles by mistake,” Scott said over his shoulder as he waited for someone to let them into Jeannie’s apartment. “Jeannie was the target. And still is.”

  “I stand corrected.” Andrew tugged on Scott’s sleeve. Scott turned his head to stare into blue eyes blazing with anger. “I want to get this bastard. Count me in for whatever I can do.”

  Scott nodded. “We’ll need all the help we can get. New Orleans is as corrupt a town as you’re likely to find. We need Federal contacts.”

  As footsteps hurried to the door, Andrew whispered, “I’ve got all sorts of those — and, if you need corrupt, I can call on my father’s friends. The Carter name does mean something in certain underworld circles.”

  Scott’s shock must have shown on his face, because Andrew laughed, piercing the quiet of the courtyard and scaring a flock of finches from their resting places.

  “Obviously, Charles hadn’t divulged the family’s skeleton.” Andrew sneered. “Father made the family fortune as an accountant for the Jersey mob.”

  ———

  Scott emptied his mind of everything but the need to perform the autopsy. He wasn’t going to look on Charles as someone he knew, but as a clinical case. Objectivity was crucial in order to find all forensic evidence. He had no forensic training, but Andrew had and had offered to come along to assist in place of Scott’s friend. Less lips to worry about talking out of turn and tipping Rutherford off. The medical community was small when it came to gossip.

  “If someone walks in on us, let me do the talking,” Scott said as he and Andrew started with the initial cuts. “I’m playing it as a surgical resident who wanted more anatomical study.”

  “Okay. Gotcha.” Andrew frowned. “I called my lab and had them fax me a list of all organs we use for tox screens.” Andrew snapped his gloved fingers covered in a combination of blood and tissue. “Hey, Scott. You with me, buddy? You look sort of pale.”

&nbs
p; Scott scowled. He thought he’d gotten over queasy stomachs in his freshman year anatomy and physiology lab. Give him a live, anesthetized patient any day. Cutting on dead bodies spooked him.

  “I’ll make it.”

  Scott deftly cut the rib section so Andrew could get to the heart. The electric saw sounded like a dental drill and the ensuing smell reminded Scott of the hot odor of grinding teeth.

  “Takes some getting used to.”

  “Yeah, but you become immune to it,” said Andrew. “Med school cadavers are worse than anything because of the formalin smell. Fresh dead bodies are better.”

  Scott admired Andrew’s objectivity in light of the fact he was cutting his twin. This seemed to be harder on him, a total stranger, than on Andrew.

  He placed the ribs to the side. They’d sew them back into the chest cavity later for the undertaker to tidy up.

  Andrew placed the heart on the scale. “580 grams. Let’s get some heart tissue.”

  Scott took the heart and placed it next to the ribs on an empty stainless steel table. They’d take tissue for slides before putting the heart back in with the ribs.

  “What next?” Scott let Andrew lead, since he seemed the calmer of the two.

  “Next we go to the gut and get the samples we need.” Andrew pulled out the abdominal organs and laid them between Charles’s legs. “Why don’t you start checking every millimeter of the colon while I take care of the stomach contents.”

  Scott’s lips tightened, but he started examining the colon beginning with the small intestines and working his way down. “What exactly am I looking for?”

  “Unusual bleed-outs, loops, tumors — anything that shouldn’t be in smooth muscle tissue. GI is not your area, I take it?”

  Scott looked up from the colon. Andrew ladled stomach contents into a plastic container. Now that the gut was opened, foul bacterial odors had replaced the fresh meat smell in the room.

  “Uh, no.” Scott swallowed hard. “Believe it or not I’m in a trauma surgical residency.”

  Andrew laughed. “Blood and guts are okay — just as long as you don’t know them. Right?”

  “Yeah.” Scott hesitated. “Doesn’t it bother you — this being your brother and all?”

  “I refuse to let it.” Andrew stopped and looked at him. “You were in Desert Storm, right?”

  Scott nodded, knowing what was coming.

  “You saw people killed. You killed. You risked your life to bring your dying friend, Jeannie’s husband, out of the line of fire.” Andrew paused. “How did you do that? Didn’t it bother you?”

  “No. It was something I had to do. Something I would do again. I didn’t think — I just reacted.”

  “Bingo.” Andrew turned back to the stomach contents. “I’m not thinking. I’m just doing what is needed to get the bastards who killed my brother.”

  Scott nodded, his stomach now calm. His mind focused on what needed to be done. He turned back to his examination of the colon.

  “He’d eaten not too long before death, right?” Andrew stopped removing contents and fished out something floating on top of the slop.

  “Yes. He ate the same things we ate.”

  “Did all of you take gelatin capsules of some sort?” Andrew pinned Scott with a penetrating glance. “Cause I just found something that looks like that.”

  “No. I don’t recall him taking any meds at dinner.”

  Scott let go of the colon, marking the place he left off by tying the glove he’d removed around the spot. Then he walked over to the phone on the morgue desk.

  “I’ll call Jeannie, and see if she can tell me anything about a capsule.”

  While Scott waited on the phone, Andrew muttered as he continued to remove stomach contents — now into two containers: one for general content and a smaller one for gel cap remnants.

  “Hello?”

  “Jeannie. It’s Scott.”

  “What’s wrong?” Scott heard Tony’s voice in the background asking her who it was. “It’s okay — it’s Scott.” Tony’s voice rumbled once more. “Scott, do you need to speak to Tony?”

  “No. I need to ask you if Charles had taken any medicine that night.”

  “Yes. I thought I told you. No, I’d forgotten. Damn. I’m sorry.”

  “Darlin’, don’t worry. You’re telling me now. What did he take?”

  “He took one of my allergy capsules. He said they were the same kind he took. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Jeannie, get the bottle. Use something to pick it up. Then, give it to Tony. Do not — I repeat — do not touch the bottle anymore than you have to. And whatever you do, don’t take any of them. Now go — and put Tony on.”

  “Scott. What did you find? What’s this about allergy meds?” Tony’s voice sounded harsh with frustration at being on the sidelines.

  “Jeannie is going to give you a bottle with her allergy capsules. Charles took one the night he died. We found a partially digested one in his stomach contents.”

  “Thanks, Jeannie. I’ve got it. She wrapped it in a hankie. I’ll have some cops I know run the prints through NCIC. Andrew will have to have all the capsules tested. If we’re lucky, the killer doctored more than one to make sure he got his kill.”

  Scott grimaced. Lucky? Yes, he’d say so. Jeannie could’ve been killed at any time.

  “We’ll have the stomach contents and tissue for testing also. We’ll nail what did it, but will we be able to tie it to the person who ordered it done?”

  “Patience, Scott.” Tony’s I’m-in-charge-and-on-the-scene voice reassured him. “We’ll get there. Now, go back to work. Things are under control here.”

  “Tony?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He might have doctored other things in the house.”

  “Got it, buddy. Project massive-dump-time begins as of now. Anything that looks suspicious, I’ll bag it and preserve it as evidence.”

  “Tony — I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Scott hung up the phone.

  “Things okay on the home front?” Andrew had stopped to watch Scott.

  “Yeah. The capsules are allergy meds that Jeannie takes. Charles took one. They’re dumping all the food and meds just in case the son-of-a-bitch doctored anything else in the apartment.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me.” Andrew waved his hand at the containers of gut contents. “Whatever the toxin was, it killed him almost as soon as the gel cap began to dissolve. I found most of it and a lot of time-release beads. He absorbed the toxin and his system immediately started the process of shutting down.”

  “Are you saying the time-release beads didn’t have time to become absorbed?”

  “You got it.”

  Scott whistled. “That’s some poison. What would be your best guess?”

  “On the toxicity rating scale, with one being large amounts of the poison to kill and a six being minuscule amounts — I’d say this puppy would be a six. Very small amount and very lethal.”

  Scott came back to the body and regloved. Picking the colon up where he left off, he resumed his examination.

  “So what poisons would those be? Cyanide and the like?”

  “Yeah, cyanide would act that fast. Some heavy metals, too. But he didn’t have those kinds of symptoms. You said Charles lost all muscular control, then stopped breathing. Right?”

  “The paramedic said he was in full respiratory arrest with little then no pressure when they arrived — less than four minutes after the call went out.”

  “Fast-acting shit. Some poisonous plant oil, maybe.”

  “Will we be able to find it in that?” Scott tilted his head toward the containers with the stomach contents.

  “We won’t have to.” Andrew grew solemn. “The CDC lab’s computerized chemical analyzers will be able to find it if anything can. That’s our specialty. The bastards picked the wrong man’s brother to murder.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  One week later.
>
  “Hemlock.”

  Andrew Carter’s voice echoed like thunder in Jeanette’s living room.

  Scott glowered, his lips pressed together so tightly they had to hurt.

  As for herself, she was numb.

  The past week had been hell.

  First, she’d sent her daughter to the Retreat House on Lake Pontchartrain before the end of the school year in order to protect her. God help any attacker trying to get to her daughter through the vigilant guard of Sister Mary Cecille and the other nuns.

  Then, insulated in a frozen limbo, Jeanette stood between Scott and Andrew as Charles was buried in Atlanta.

  After flying home, she’d tendered an overly business-like, written resignation to Dr. Rutherford by first-class U.S. mail, return receipt requested. No way was she facing the devil in person.

  Finally, just this morning, she’d started her new job at the Medical Center Clinic run by Dr. Payton and Dr. Warren. The end results of Rutherford’s immoral practice of medicine confronted her throughout the long, interminable day. She’d cried so much for his victims she had no tears left.

  All through this time, Tony or one of his security people had been her constant companions. When Scott and Andrew were present, they spoke about anything but what they were doing — or whom they were seeing.

  Her life had become a prison.

  Yet now, she — and they — had to face the truth. No one could protect her from what they’d all managed to avoid acknowledging out loud. Someone tried to poison her, and Charles had died in her place.

  With Andrew’s one word, the game of fooling herself, blaming his death on a freak aneurysm or a weak heart, was at an end. Rutherford wanted her dead. He’d tried to poison her.

  “Jeannie?” Scott’s voice wrapped her in its concern. “You all right?”

  “No, but I’ll live.” Jeanette choked on a sob. “You know — it should’ve been me.”

  “No!”

  Jeanette jumped at the raw anguish in Scott’s roar. Chancing a glance at him, she shrank from what she saw.

  He wasn’t upset; he was in a rage.