by Robin Cook
“Ah, it’s too late,” he said. “This isn’t going to work. The closest nesting area we saw on the computer graphic is over a mile away. We’ll have to try this in the daytime.”
No sooner had these words escaped from his mouth when the night was shattered by a number of fearsome screams. At the same time, there was wild commotion in the bushes on the island as if a stampeding elephant was about to appear.
Kevin dropped the rope. Both Candace and Melanie fled back along the path a few steps before stopping. With pulses pounding they froze, waiting for another scream. With a shaking hand, Melanie shined the flashlight at the area where the commotion had occurred. Everything was still. Not a leaf moved.
Ten tense seconds passed that seemed more like ten minutes. The group strained their ears to pick up the slightest sound. There was nothing but utter silence. All the night creatures had fallen silent. It was as if the entire jungle was waiting for a catastrophe.
“What in heaven’s name was that?” Melanie asked finally.
“I’m not sure I want to find out,” Candace said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“It must have been a couple of the bonobos,” Kevin said. He reached out and grabbed the rope. The float was being buffeted in midstream. He quickly hauled it in.
“I think Candace is right,” Melanie said. “It’s gotten too dark to see much even if they did appear. I’m spooked. Let’s go!”
“You’ll not get an argument from me,” Kevin said as he made his way over to the women. “I don’t know what we’re doing here at this hour. We’ll come back in the daylight.”
They hurried along the path to the clearing as best they could. Melanie led with the flashlight. Candace was behind her, holding on to her blouse. Kevin brought up the rear.
“It would be great to get a key for this bridge,” Kevin said as they passed the structure.
“And how do you propose to do that?” Melanie asked.
“Borrow Bertram’s,” Kevin said.
“But you told us he forbid anyone to go to the island,” Melanie said. “He’s certainly not going to lend the key.”
“We’ll have to borrow it without his knowledge,” Kevin said.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Melanie said sarcastically.
They entered the tunnel-like path leading up to the car. Halfway to the parking area Melanie said: “God, it’s dark. Am I holding the light okay for you guys?”
“It’s fine,” Candace said.
Melanie slowed then stopped.
“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.
“There’s something strange,” she said. She cocked her head to the side, listening.
“Now don’t get me scared,” Candace warned.
“The frogs and crickets haven’t restarted their racket,” Melanie said.
In the next instant all hell broke loose. A loud, repetitive stuttering noise splintered the jungle stillness. Branches, twigs, and leaves rained down on the group. Kevin recognized the noise and reacted by reflex. Extending his arms, he literally tackled the women so that all three fell to the moist insect-infested earth.
The reason Kevin recognized the sound was because he once had inadvertently witnessed the Equatoguinean soldiers practicing. The noise was the sound of a machine gun.
CHAPTER 10
March 5, 1997
2:15 P.M. New York City
“Excuse me, Laurie,” Cheryl Myers said, standing in the doorway to Laurie’s office. Cheryl was one of the forensic investigators. “We just received this overnight package, and I thought you might want it right away.”
Laurie stood up and took the parcel. She was curious about what it could be. She looked at the label to find out the sender. It was CNN.
“Thanks, Cheryl,” Laurie said. She was perplexed. She had no idea for the moment what CNN could have sent her.
“I see Dr. Mehta is not in,” Cheryl said. “I brought up a chart for her that came in from University Hospital. Should I put it on her desk?” Dr. Riva Mehta was Laurie’s office mate. They’d shared the space since both had started at the medical examiner’s office six and a half years previously.
“Sure,” Laurie said, preoccupied with her parcel. She got her finger under the flap and pulled it open. Inside was a videotape. Laurie looked at the label. It said: CARLO FRAN-CONI SHOOTING, MARCH 3, 1997.
After having finished her final autopsy that morning, Laurie had been ensconced in her office, trying to complete some of the twenty-odd cases that she had pending. She’d been busy reviewing microscopic slides, laboratory results, hospital records, and police reports, and for several hours had not thought of the Franconi business. The arrival of the tape brought it all back. Unfortunately the video was meaningless without the body.
Laurie tossed the tape into her briefcase and tried to get back to work. But after fifteen minutes of wasted effort, she turned the light off under her microscope. She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept toying with the baffling question of how the body had disappeared. It was as if it had been an amazing magic trick. One minute the body was safely stored in compartment one eleven and viewed by three employees, then poof, it was gone. There had to be an explanation, but try as she might, Laurie could not fathom it.
Laurie decided to head down to the basement to visit the mortuary office. She’d expected at least one tech to be available, but when she arrived the room was unoccupied. Undaunted, Laurie went over to the large, leather-bound log. Flipping the page, she looked for the entries that Mike Passano had shown her the previous night. She found them without difficulty. Taking a pencil from a collection in a coffee mug and a sheet of scratch paper, Laurie wrote down the names and accession numbers of the two bodies that had come in during the night shift: Dorothy Kline #101455 and Frank Gleason #100385. She also wrote down the names of the two funeral homes: Spoletto in Ozone Park, New York, and the Dickson in Summit, New Jersey.
Laurie was about to leave when her eye caught the large Rolodex on the corner of the desk. She decided to call each home. After identifying herself, she asked to speak to the managers.
What had sparked her interest in telephoning was the outside chance that either one of the pickups could have been bogus. She thought the chances were slim, since the night tech, Mike Passano, had said the homes had called before coming and presumably he was familiar with the people.
As Laurie expected, the pickups indeed were legitimate, both managers attesting to the fact that the bodies had come in to their respective homes and were at that time on view.
Laurie went back to the logbook and looked again at the names of the two arrivals. To be complete, she copied them down along with their accession numbers. The names were familiar to her, since she’d assigned them as autopsies the following morning to Paul Plodgett. But she wasn’t as interested in the arrivals as the departures. The arrivals had come in with longtime ME employees, whereas the bodies that had gone out had done so with strangers.
Feeling frustrated, Laurie drummed her pencil on the desk surface. She was sure she had to be missing something. Once again, her eye caught the Rolodex which was open to the Spoletto Funeral Home. In the very back of Laurie’s mind, the name made a hazy association. For a moment, she struggled with her memory. Why was that name familiar? Then she remembered. It had been during the Cerino affair. A man had been murdered in the Spoletto Funeral Home on orders from Paul Cerino, Franconi’s predecessor.
Laurie pocketed her memo, pushed away from the desk and returned to the fifth floor. She walked directly to Jack’s office. The door was ajar. She knocked on the jamb. Both Jack and Chet looked up from their respective labors.
“I had a thought,” Laurie said to Jack.
“Just one?” Jack quipped.
Laurie threw her pencil at him, which he easily evaded. She plopped down in the chair to his right and told him about the mob connection with the Spoletto Funeral Home.
“Good grief, Laurie,” Jack complained. “Just because there is a mob hit in a funeral home, doesn�
��t mean that it is mob-connected.”
“You don’t think so?” Laurie asked. Jack didn’t have to answer. She could see by his expression. And, now that she thought about her idea, she understood it was a ridiculous notion. She’d been grabbing for straws.
“Besides,” Jack said. “Why won’t you just leave this alone?”
“I told you,” Laurie said. “It’s a personal thing.”
“Maybe I can channel your efforts into a more positive direction,” Jack said. He motioned toward his microscope. “Take a look at a frozen section. Tell me what you think.”
Laurie got up from the chair and leaned over the microscope. “What is this, the shotgun entrance wound?” she asked.
“Just as sharp as usual,” Jack commented. “You’re right on the money.”
“Well, it’s not a hard call,” Laurie said. “I’d say the muzzle was within inches of the skin.”
“My opinion exactly,” Jack said. “Anything else?”
“My gosh, there’s absolutely no extravasation of blood!” Laurie said. “None at all, so this had to have been a postmortem wound.” She raised her head and looked at Jack. She was amazed. She’d assumed it had been the mortal wound.
“Ah, the power of modern science,” Jack commented. “This floater you foisted on me is turning into a bastard of a case.”
“Hey, you volunteered,” Laurie said.
“I’m teasing,” Jack said. “I’m glad I got the case. The shotgun wounds were definitely postmortem, so was the decapitation and removal of the hands. Of course the propeller injuries were, too.”
“What was the cause of death?” Laurie asked.
“Two other gunshot wounds,” Jack said. “One through the base of the neck.” He pointed to an area just above his right collarbone. “And another in the left side that shattered the tenth rib. The irony was that both slugs ended up in the mass of shotgun pellets in the right upper abdominal area and were difficult to be seen on the X ray.”
“Now that’s a first,” Laurie said. “Bullets hidden by shotgun pellets. Amazing! The beauty of this job is that you see new things every day.”
“The best is yet to come,” Jack said.
“This is a ‘beaut,’ ” Chet said. He’d been listening to the conversation. “It’ll be perfect for one of the forensic pathology dinner seminars.”
“I think the shotgun blasts were an attempt to shield the victim’s identity as much as the decapitation and removal of the hands,” Jack said.
“In what way?” Laurie asked.
“I believe this patient had had a liver transplant,” Jack said. “And not that long ago. The killer must have understood that such a procedure put the patient in a relatively small group, and hence jeopardized the chances of hiding the victim’s identity.”
“Was there much liver left?” Laurie asked.
“Very little,” Jack said. “Most of it was destroyed by the shotgun injury.”
“And the fish helped,” Chet said.
Laurie winced.
“But I was able to find some liver tissue,” Jack said. “We’ll use that to corroborate the transplant. As we speak, Ted Lynch up in DNA is running a DQ alpha. We’ll have the results in an hour or so. But for me the clincher was the sutures in the vena cava and the hepatic artery.”
“What’s a DQ alpha?” Laurie asked.
Jack laughed. “Makes me feel better that you don’t know,” he said, “because I had to ask Ted the same question. He told me it is a convenient and rapid DNA marker for differentiating two individuals. It compares the DQ region of the histocompatibility complex on chromosome six.”
“What about the portal vein?” Laurie asked. “Were there sutures in it as well?”
“Unfortunately, the portal vein was pretty much gone,” Jack said. “Along with a lot of the intestines.”
“Well,” Laurie said. “This should all make identification rather easy.”
“My thought exactly,” Jack said. “I’ve already got Bart Arnold hot on the trail. He’s been in contact with the national organ procurement organization UNOS. He’s also in the process of calling all the centers actively doing liver transplants, especially here in the city.”
“That’s a small list,” Laurie said. “Good job, Jack.”
Jack’s face reddened slightly, and Laurie was touched. She thought he was immune to such compliments.
“What about the bullets?” Laurie asked. “Same gun?”
“We’ve packed them off to the police lab for ballistics,” Jack said. “It was hard to say if they came from the same gun or not because of their distortion. One of them made direct contact with the tenth rib and was flattened. Even the second one wasn’t in good shape. I think it grazed the vertebral column.”
“What caliber?” Laurie asked.
“Couldn’t tell from mere observation,” Jack said.
“What did Vinnie say?” Laurie asked. “He’s become pretty good at guessing.”
“Vinnie’s worthless today,” Jack said. “He’s been in the worst mood I’ve ever seen him in. I asked him what he thought, but he wouldn’t say. He told me it was my job, and that he wasn’t paid enough to be giving his opinions all the time.”
“You know, I had a case similar to this back during that awful Cerino affair,” Laurie said. She stared off and for a moment, her eyes glazed over. “The victim was a secretary of the doctor who was involved with the conspiracy. Of course, she’d not had a liver transplant, but the head and the hands were gone, and I did make the identification because of her surgical history.”
“Someday you’ll have to tell me that whole grisly story,” Jack said. “You keep dropping tantalizing bits and pieces.”
Laurie sighed. “I wish I could just forget the whole thing. It still gives me nightmares.”
Raymond glanced at his watch as he opened the Fifth Avenue door to Dr. Daniel Levitz’s office. It was two forty-five. Raymond had called the doctor three times starting just after eleven A.M., without success. On each occasion, the receptionist had promised Dr. Levitz would phone back, but he hadn’t. In his agitated state, Raymond found the discourtesy aggravating. Since Dr. Levitz’s office was just around the corner from Raymond’s apartment, Raymond thought it was better to walk over than sit by the phone.
“Dr. Raymond Lyons,” Raymond said with authority to the receptionist. “I’m here to see Dr. Levitz.”
“Yes, Dr. Lyons,” the receptionist said. She had the same cultivated, matronly look as Dr. Anderson’s receptionist. “I don’t have you down on my appointment sheet. Is the doctor expecting you?”
“Not exactly,” Raymond said.
“Well, I’ll let the doctor know you are here,” the receptionist said noncommittally.
Raymond took a seat in the crowded waiting room. He picked up one of the usual doctor waiting-room magazines and flipped the pages without focusing on the images. His agitation was becoming tinged with irritation, and he began to wonder if it had been a bad decision to come to Dr. Levitz’s office.
The job of checking on the first of the other two transplant patients had been easy. With one phone call Raymond had spoken with the recruiting doctor in Dallas, Texas. The doctor had assured Raymond that his kidney-transplant patient, a prominent local businessman, was doing superbly and was in no way a possible candidate for an autopsy. Before hanging up the doctor had promised Raymond to inform him if the situation were ever to change.
But with Dr. Levitz’s failure to return Raymond’s phone call, Raymond had not been able to check on the last case. It was frustrating and anxiety-producing.
Raymond’s eyes roamed the room. It was as sumptuously appointed as Dr. Anderson’s, with original oils, deep bur-gundy-colored walls, and oriental carpets. The patients patiently waiting were all obviously well-to-do as evidenced by their clothes, bearing, and jewels.
As the minutes ticked by, Raymond found his irritation mounting. What was adding insult to injury at the moment was Dr. Levitz’s obvious success.
It reminded Raymond of the absurdity of his own medical license being in legal limbo just because he’d gotten caught padding his Medicare claims. But here was Dr. Levitz working away in all this splendor with at least part of his receipts coming from taking care of a number of crime families. Obviously, it all represented dirty money. And on top of that Raymond was sure Levitz padded his Medicare claims. Hell, everybody did.
A nurse appeared and cleared her throat. Expectantly, Raymond moved to the edge of his seat. But the nurse called out another name. While the summoned patient got up, replaced his magazine, and disappeared into the bowels of the office, Raymond slouched back against the sofa and fumed. Being at the mercy of such people made Raymond long for financial security all the more. With this current “doubles” program he was so close. He couldn’t let the whole enterprise crumble for some stupid, unexpected, easily remedied reason.
It was three-fifteen when finally Raymond was ushered into Daniel Levitz’s inner sanctum. Levitz was a small, balding man with multiple nervous tics. He had a mustache but it was sparse and decidedly unmanly. Raymond had always wondered what it was about the man that apparently inspired confidence in so many patients.
“It’s been one of those days,” Daniel said by way of explanation. “I didn’t expect you to drop by.”
“I hadn’t planned on it myself,” Raymond said. “But when you didn’t return my calls, I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“Calls?” Daniel questioned. “I didn’t get any calls from you. I’ll have to have another talk with that receptionist of mine. Good help is so difficult to come by these days.”
Raymond was tempted to tell Daniel to cut the bull, but he resisted. After all, he was finally talking to the man, and turning the meeting into a confrontation wouldn’t solve anything. Besides, as irritating as Daniel Levitz could be, he was also Raymond’s most successful recruit. He had signed up twelve clients for the program as well as four doctors.
“What can I do for you?” Daniel asked. His head twitched several times in its usual and disconcerting way.