Bad Karma In the Big Easy

by D. J. Donaldson

  While he ran his fingers over the nearest counter and inspected the rippling multicolored veins in the onyx, Kit went to a small plastic grocery bag by the sink and looked inside. There, she found a receipt showing the items purchased: two boxes of blueberries, two of strawberries, and some cottage cheese. The receipt was time-dated yesterday at 4:40 PM. She walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. Inside, along with a scant few other things, were the purchased items. The fruit was unopened. She inspected the cottage cheese and found it likewise, untouched.

  Gatlin joined her. “What are you looking at?”

  “Assuming no one else lives here, he bought that fruit and cottage cheese yesterday afternoon, but didn’t open any of it. To me, that says when he bought the items, he didn’t know he was going to kill himself.”

  “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bought two boxes of each kind...”

  “Yeah. Question now is, what happened between four-forty yesterday afternoon and when he threw that rope in the car and drove to the park.”

  “Over the years, I’ve had to inform a lot of folks that their husband or wife or parents have been murdered. I can’t remember one of them who committed suicide after hearing the news.”

  “And you’re point is...?”

  “If a person is basically normal and well adjusted, a sudden awful turn of events won’t cause them to kill themselves. They somehow struggle through the horror and find a way to go on. Look at the thousands who went through hell when the flooding came. We’ve had maybe one report of someone being so strung out over what they lost, they decided to be dead. And this guy... look at his house... no damage. He’s even got power. The storm hardly touched him. So whatever made him take his own head off, I suspect it was something that had been eating at him for a long time. This problem suddenly took a major turn for the worse. Having lived constantly with the fear of this thing for so long, he couldn’t take it.”

  When they’d entered the kitchen and Gatlin had become enthralled with the counter tops, Kit had wondered whether his mind was wandering again. But with this analysis, which was exactly what she believed, she saw he was all there.

  “So let’s see if we can figure out what that circumstance was,” Kit said, leaving the kitchen.

  “Won’t be easy.”

  “Isn’t that the way you like it?”

  “Not so much lately.”

  From what Kit had seen so far, she was willing to bet Marshall had a profession, not a job. In her view, the best place in any professional man’s home to learn about him was his study. They found Marshall’s behind a door off the main hall, halfway down, between a photo of the gall bladder and a particularly colorful cross section of the esophagus.

  The study was paneled in wood the color of weak tea. Kit didn’t know much about decorating, but thought she’d seen pictures of similar paneling in magazines, where the style was referred to as Edwardian. The focal point of the room was a large fireplace surrounded by a simple but elegant mantel flanked by bookcases filled with leather-bound books. Above the fireplace, where Marshall could have put a large photo of the tongue or the trachea, he’d gone more traditional, choosing a large impressionist painting of women and children in old-style bathing suits playing at the beach.

  “Look at this stuff,” Gatlin said, over by another bookcase to the left.

  Joining him, Kit saw as odd an assortment of objects as she’d ever seen in one place. On the shelf at eye level, an ornately carved replica of an old armoire about a foot tall was loosely flanked by more leather books. Artfully arranged on the left set of books were two white plaster casts of upper limbs, including the hands. To the right, a third cast was carefully balanced on its closed hand so the shoulder appeared to be coming out of the side of the bookcase. Below that shelf, supported by a pair of folding picture stands, sat two framed caricatures of human bodies with the skin removed. They were bracketed by identical plaster casts of a foot. Other shelves bore articulated manikins sitting on the edge of the shelf as though about to push off and make a run for it.

  “He seems quite interested in the human body,” Kit said.

  “Too interested,” Gatlin replied.

  Then Kit saw why. Hanging above a nearby shelf with Marshall’s name on it was a Ph.D. degree in human anatomy from Tulane Medical School. Next to it hung another Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering. On the shelf below, there was a third, for Molecular Genetics. “Look at all these degrees. Was there anything this guy couldn’t do?”

  “Face life like the rest of us. I’d put that on the list.”

  Kit walked over to Marshall’s big desk and picked up a digital camera by his computer. She turned it on and after a little fiddling, found the stored images, which were all dated. She scanned through them and handed the camera to Gatlin. “Here’s what he did today, before going to the park.”

  Gatlin looked at the picture on the little fold-out screen. “It’s just a photo of an area of the city that was flooded. From the look of those dilapidated stores and the shotgun houses in the background, it wasn’t Lakeview.”

  “There are three more on there like that one,” Kit said, moving around to the front of the desk, where she turned on Marshall’s computer. “Maybe he’s been in financial trouble for a long time. He could have had investment property there. When he saw what had happened to it, he knew he was ruined.”

  The computer played its happy little sign-on tune.

  “Seems like he’d have to own an awful lot of that kind of property to be ruined by its loss,” Gatlin said. “He was a smart guy... he’d have had insurance.”

  The computer asked Kit for the access password. Having no faith she could guess her way in, she turned to Gatlin, who was looking over her shoulder. “Got any ideas how to bypass this?”

  “Oh, sure. Sometimes I can’t even get my car started. Why do you figure a guy would have his home computer password protected?”

  “Makes you wonder doesn’t it?”

  “What’s all this?” Gatlin said, moving to the other end of the desk, where there was a stack of DVDs in jewel cases. He picked up the top disc in the pile and read the information on the front. “Organogenesis Inc.” He looked down at the next one, which bore the same words. Picking up that case, he saw an identical label on the disc under it.

  “Let’s put one in that player over there and see what it is,” Kit suggested.

  Gatlin handed her a disc, and she carried it to the player and TV on a nearby bookshelf. A few seconds later, Jude Marshall appeared on screen in a white lab coat. As he began speaking, Kit remembered his head lying in the grass. A shiver ran down her spine.

  “I’m sure you have many questions about our service,” Marshall said in a confident voice. “You have obviously contacted us because you know that many children in need of a liver transplant die before they can find one. With our service you will be assured of a liver. But that’s not the only advantage we provide. The liver you receive will be an exact tissue match. That means there will be no need for your child to take any rejection-suppression drugs, which, in any other circumstance, would have to be used for the rest of their life. These drugs often have serious side effects. To be free of these dangers will ensure that your child will progress through life with no more health risks than the average little boy or girl.”

  “How can they do that?” Gatlin said.

  “You’re probably asking yourself how we can do this?” Marshall echoed. “It’s possible because we are not an organ procurement agency. Instead, we will create an organ for you using cells taken from your child’s bone marrow. In the marrow of everyone, there are cells that have the potential to form any cell in the body if given the proper instructions and environment. We alone know how to make these cells become the cell types found in a normal liver.

  “Once we have created a population of each of the required cells, we place them in a modified ink jet printer, similar to the one you may be using at home or your office, except we fill the ink cartridges with the
various cell types we have produced. A computer program then guides the printer so that the cells are ‘printed’ a layer at a time onto a flat surface. Gradually, as the printer makes many passes across the surface, a three dimensional organ is constructed, complete even down to the blood vessels and bile duct system. What results is a perfect liver. Because it came from your child’s own cells, it will be an exact tissue match.

  “Here’s a liver being made for a California client...”

  The picture shifted to a large glass box with a printer suspended on rails above a liquid containing a gray mass of tissue. The sound of a printer mechanism could be heard in the background.

  Marshall’s voice came back from off screen. “After each pass across the forming organ, the liquid level in the container is gently raised one cell diameter and the printer stops for 30 minutes to allow the seeded cells to spread and adhere to the tissues already laid down. Then another pass is made. In time, an entire organ will be constructed.

  “One of the most difficult problems to be overcome in formation of organs in this manner is how to oxygenate and feed the cells deep in the organ. Because of proprietary consideration, I’m not at liberty to disclose exactly how that is accomplished, but I can tell you that what appears to be water in the container is something far different.”

  The camera cut back to Marshall.

  “Organogenesis Inc. is a full service facility. Once the organ is complete, our board-certified surgeons will schedule your child for transplantation. At present, there are over thirty happy, healthy children in the world who have benefited from our ability to create a new liver for them. If you feel this might be the right choice for your child, contact us and we’ll discuss it. We can be reached in the following ways.”

  Just as the screen shifted to some printed contact information, the phone on Marshall’s desk rang.

  Kit picked it up. “Hello, Jude Marshall’s residence. Who’s calling please?”

  “His wife,” an indignant voice said. “Who are you?”

  Kit hesitated, trying to think of just the right words to tell her what had happened. Not finding any, she just plunged ahead. “Mrs. Marshall, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. My name is Kit Franklyn. I’m with the medical examiner’s office. I just came from Audubon Park, where... I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but... your husband has passed away.”

  Nothing but silence came from the other end, then a choking sound. “What are you... how... what happened?”

  There was no way Kit was going to describe the circumstances of Marshall’s death to his wife over the phone. So she hedged. “We’re not exactly sure, but at this point, it appears he may have committed suicide.”

  Hearing that a spouse committed suicide was often harder for the surviving member of the pair to deal with than to learn their loved one had died of natural causes, or in an accident, because it suggested to the survivor they had somehow failed to give the deceased the proper emotional support. Otherwise, this wouldn’t have happened. So even though Kit had never met Mrs. Marshall, she felt for her.

  “Mrs. Marshall, where are you now?”

  “Houston. I’ve been visiting my sister here since the storm. But I need to come home right away...”

  “Because of the storm, there aren’t any facilities here to serve your husband, so we’ve arranged for him to be sent to the FEMA mortuary in St. Gabriel. When you arrive, go there and they’ll help you with further arrangements. I’m sorry to have to ask this, but do you know of anything that was bothering your husband to the point it would cause him to do this?”

  “Absolutely not. He wasn’t disturbed in any way. He was perfectly normal.”

  “Of course. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ll see that your husband’s keys will be with his other effects at the St. Gabriel facility. If you have a pen, I’ll give you the number there...”

  After a short interval, while Marshall’s wife rounded up something to write with, Kit gave her the mortuary number. She then hung up and looked at Gatlin. “That wasn’t fun.”

  “You did it as well as anyone could have. I guess she didn’t know of any reason for her husband killing himself.”

  “No.”

  “What now?”

  “I’m going to take a ride over to Organogenesis Inc. and talk to them about Marshall. Maybe someone there knows things his wife doesn’t.” She ran the DVD back to the company’s contact information and wrote the address and phone number in the little note pad she always carried. She then looked at Gatlin. “Thanks for coming over here with me.”

  “It was interesting. You gonna be at Andy’s birthday party at Grandma O’s tonight?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  Chapter 5

  Uh-oh... Broussard stood looking at the sectioned right ovary of corpse 428, the second of the three bodies found together in the lower Ninth Ward brush tangle. Like 427, this one had not drowned. Moreover, she also had given birth about a month before her death, yet her ovaries showed no signs of a corpus albicans of pregnancy.

  It was not hard to believe that two women, both of whom had served as gestational surrogates, might have been living together in the lower Ninth before the flood. But then to find both dead, and wearing nothing, neither one with water in her lungs, both with what appeared to be antemortem bruises around their mouth and nose... Broussard’s skullduggery sonar was now squealing.

  And, like 427, the consistency of this body didn’t feel right.

  Despite all he was doing that was right and clever, Broussard had been insensibly snared in a trap baited by his provocative findings on 427. Becoming too focused on looking for those same features on the second corpse, he had once again failed to notice what he had also missed on the face of the first.

  At that moment, the drapes parted and a young redhead leaned in. “Dr. Broussard, those samples you wanted processed are ready. Should I hold them until later?”

  “No. I’d like to see them now.” He looked at Lyons. “I’ll be right back.”

  Broussard took off his gloves and face protector and followed the redhead down the draped hallway to the tissue processing area, where when he entered, his eyes went directly to a microscope equipped with a TV camera and monitor on a table. A slide was already on the scope so the monitor screen was filled with images of skeletal muscle fibers.

  “Is that slide from what I sent down?”

  “Yes. I was checking the section for staining quality and just left it on there.”

  Broussard was a man of many passions. He had read nearly all 110 books written by Louis L’Amour. He owned fifteen paintings of sheep by six different old master Dutch painters. Though the supply he’d brought to St. Gabriel had run out days ago, he usually carried a cache of cellophane-wrapped lemon balls in his pants pocket. He firmly believed his six 1957 T-Birds were a reasonable number and that one more would make him an eccentric, but whenever one drove by he didn’t own, he watched it with envy as long as it remained in sight. To his mind, Man’s greatest accomplishments included French cooking and anything Tchaikovsky wrote. These were among the things that had shaped his existence and given his life meaning for much of his adult life.

  But he could hate as well as love. And nothing incurred his wrath more than the arrogance that made one person believe they had the right to kill another. Now, that familiar anger began to sweep over him, engulfing him in a tsunami that made his face flush, for the muscle fibers displayed on the monitor were full of holes obviously caused by ice crystals forming in them.

  Corpse 427 had been frozen before she was found.

  Coupled with the antemortem bruising he’d seen around her mouth and nose, there was no doubt whatever in his mind that this woman had been murdered and her body hidden away in a freezer before hurricane Katrina had somehow liberated it. Though he hadn’t yet seen sections of muscle from 428, or even autopsied 429, he was equally certain they had the same history. But it still had to be documented.

  He looked at the tec
h. “Good work. I can already see what I was lookin’ for. In a few minutes, I’d like you to process a few more samples. Will you be available?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  This changes everything, Broussard thought as he headed back to the autopsy room. Before he’d known they’d been frozen, he’d assumed all three women had died at roughly the same time, most likely within a day or two after the flooding began. But now, he had no idea when they’d been killed. A month ago? Three months? A year? That meant they could have been killed not at the same time, but at widely-spaced intervals.

  This was going to make catching the killer extremely complicated.

  For the first time in nearly a month, Broussard’s mind became engaged at a level that, for a moment, lifted his veil of depression.

  Chapter 6

  Organogenesis Inc. appeared to be the only occupant of a one-story monolithic cement building with little rectangular windows that made the place look like it was squinting. Inside, the sprawling lobby was decorated like an art museum, its white walls hung with bright, happy impressionist paintings whose colors danced in the light focused on them from canister fixtures in the ceiling. The similarity in feeling to the long hall in Jude Marshall’s home was striking.

  The cry of a child drew Kit’s attention to a couple sitting on a sofa in a waiting area along the back wall. A baby was in the woman’s arms and she was speaking to it and stroking its face. Beside the sofa, a receptionist behind a French writing desk was working at a computer.

  Kit crossed the lobby and approached the receptionist, an older light-skinned black woman with thinning hair and suspicious eyes that reminded Kit of her high school algebra teacher. She was even wearing a big gold broach like the kind Mrs. Claymore wore every single day to school.

  How many times when returning one of Kit’s test papers had the imperious Claymore looked down over her glasses and said, “Young woman, I’m afraid you’re not going to amount to much in this life.” Now, for the first time since graduating from Speculator High, as Kit looked at the baby being comforted by its mother, her own childless state made her feel that Claymore might have been on to something.