Fatal Care (13 page)

“With a magnifying glass.”

They hurried out of the autopsy room and down the deserted corridor. Everything was dead quiet. There was no music or laughter coming from behind the closed doors. Joanna decided to examine only one fetus. She’d pick the largest because it would be the easiest to do. But she would perform only a gross, cursory examination and look for obvious abnormalities. A more detailed examination would have to wait until tomorrow.

They entered the special autopsy room and went directly to the shelf that held the fetuses. Joanna picked the bottle that held the largest one. It measured about three inches. She carefully opened the bottle and waved her free hand, dispersing the pungent odor of formaldehyde. Using forceps, she gently removed the fetus from its surrounding fluid.

It was well formed with clearly defined hands that had tiny fingers and small feet that had tiny toes. Joanna could easily see its eyes and ears and mouth. There was a deep incision across its chest and abdomen.

“Jesus,” Lori breathed. “This is like a horror show.”

“I know,” Joanna said softly.

“Do you think the cut is the result of an abortion?”

“Could be,” Joanna replied. “But the incision is so straight. That’s not what we usually see in a D and C. And I see only one cut.”

“No, no,” Lori said hastily. “There’s another cut here atop the head.” Lori swallowed hard. “Do you think that a fetus this age could feel anything?”

“I hope not,” Joanna said, and reached for a small pair of tweezers. “Let’s see how deep these incisions go.”

Lori held the fetal limbs stationary while Joanna gently separated the edges of the incision that ran from the abdomen to the upper chest.

Joanna’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, Lord!”

“What?”

Joanna looked up at Lori with a stunned expression. “This fetus has been eviscerated. Somebody has removed all of its organs.”

Joanna could hear the rain pounding down on the patio outside her bedroom. In the distance there was a low, continuous rumble of thunder.

She snuggled up to Jake under the blankets. “You know what’s strange?”

“What?” Jake asked.

“How one minute you’re so tired you can hardly move,” she told him. “And an instant later you’ve got plenty of energy for sex.”

“That happens when you shut your brain off.”

Joanna smiled. “Do you want to explain that to me?”

“Sure,” Jake said easily. “In people like you, who think for a living, fatigue is mostly mental.”

Joanna looked at him strangely. “So, if I shut my brain off, the fatigue should magically disappear?”

“Naw,” Jake said. “That just pushes the fatigue aside so you can get on with more important things.”

Joanna chuckled and moved even closer to Jake. She wished that time would come to a sudden stop and stay frozen in place. If only for a little while.

Outside, lightning cracked and the rain was coming down so hard it caused the sliding-glass door to rattle. Good, Joanna thought, hoping all the streets and roads would flood so badly that everybody would have to stay where they were over the weekend.

Jake’s stomach suddenly growled and then growled loudly again.

Joanna looked at him. “I think somebody skipped dinner.”

“Busy,” Jake said, as if his mind was elsewhere.

“How does chicken pot pie and cold beer sound to you?”

“Like manna from heaven.”

They put on terry-cloth robes and left the bedroom. Joanna skipped into the kitchen, humming happily under her breath. Jake went over to the fireplace, where he stoked the fire back to life and added a fresh log. The fire blazed, lighting up the living room.

Jake glanced at the clothes strewn about. On the coffee table were his pants and shorts and holstered weapon, and next to them were Joanna’s skirt and blouse. Her bra and panties were on the floor, partially covered by his tie and coat. Jake had been waiting for her at the front door when she arrived home. They barely made it to the bedroom.

“Here you go,” Joanna said, and handed him a frosty mug of beer. “My microwave is on the fritz, so I had to put the chicken pot pies in the oven. It’s going to take a while.”

“No rush,” Jake said, and sat down on a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Do you want to talk a little murder?”

Joanna quickly sat next to him. “You got something?”

“Bits and pieces,” Jake said tonelessly, “that may or may not add up.”

Joanna reached for his cigarette and took a puff; then she handed it back. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“For starters, we think the Russian guy lived in the neighborhood,” Jake told her. “The doughnut lady said he came into her shop two or three times a week for over a year, and a couple of times he was carrying a big bag of groceries.”

“He doesn’t live too far away,” Joanna agreed.

“We also know the bar he was in just before he went to the convenience store,” Jake continued. “It’s a crummy low-class bar with a lot of regulars. They recognized his face, but he always kept to himself, so nobody knew his name.”

“Damn,” Joanna groaned. “He sounds like a real loner.”

“And some,” Jake went on. “But on the night he got iced, he was talking to somebody in that bar. He spent some time with a well-dressed woman who had never been in the place before. They left separately, but the bartender was almost certain they met up outside.”

“But he doesn’t know that for a fact?”

“He’s pretty sure,” Jake said. “He could tell from the way they left the bar. Bartenders are really good at that. In addition, he heard her propositioning the Russian.”

Joanna’s brow went up. “
She
did the propositioning?”

“Big time,” Jake assured her. “According to the bartender, she offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a bang.”

Joanna thought for a moment. “Was this woman a blonde?”

Jake stared at her wide-eyed. “How did you know that?”

“Because we found two long strands of blond hair in the Russian’s shoe box.”

“Son of a bitch!” Jake jumped to his feet and started pacing the floor, moving articles of clothing aside with his foot. “She was inside that guy’s shoe box.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s for sure.”

“And I think she looked in it after she killed him.”

Joanna looked at him strangely. “How do you figure all that?”

“Follow me,” Jake said, puffing on his cigarette as he thought aloud. “We’ll take it step by step. First, the Russian leaves the bar with the shoe box under his arm. She hadn’t looked inside it yet. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then he walks a half block to the convenience store and buys a candy bar,” Jake continued. “The clerk remembers that the Russian was alone. The blonde was nowhere in sight. So far she still hasn’t looked in the box.”

“Maybe they did a quickie, like in her car.”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said promptly. “There wasn’t enough time. The Russian left the bar just before nine. He bought the candy bar at nine-o-five.”

“She’s following him,” Joanna deduced.

“Had to be.” Jake nodded and then flicked his cigarette into the fireplace. He started pacing again. “The Russian leaves the convenience store and walks down a dark street. She pops him with two slugs in his head and looks into the shoe box.”

“She knew what was in that shoe box all along,” Joanna said.

Jake tried to follow Joanna’s logic, but couldn’t. “What do you base that on?”

“A number of things,” Joanna told him. “First, this obviously wasn’t a run-of-the-mill robbery. She looked like Beverly Hills and he looked like a ditchdigger. So she wasn’t after his money. Second, and most important, she removed the bottle from the shoe box and took it with her. Remember, that shoe box was open at the crime scene, and we never found the bottle it contained.”

“Maybe she threw the bottle into the pit after she pushed the Russian in,” Jake suggested.

Joanna shook her head. “All the bottles in the pit were buried or half-buried. She knew what was in the box, and that’s why she followed him and killed him. She wanted what was in that shoe box. Otherwise we would have found it at the crime scene.”

Jake thought through Joanna’s line of reasoning. All of the pieces fit except for one. “But why kill him if you don’t have to? Why not just conk him over the head and take the box? Keep in mind, she had the gun.”

Joanna shrugged and gestured with opened palms. “That I don’t know.”

Jake paced the floor again, thinking through the story from start to finish. The guy was on a quiet, deserted street with poor lighting. It was a perfect place for a robbery. But why bother to shoot him
twice
and take the chance that somebody would hear the shots? That didn’t make sense. Everything up to that point had been planned so—

Suddenly the answer came to Jake. He stopped in his tracks and spun around to face Joanna. “I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

“What?”

“It was a hit,” Jake said hoarsely. “A well-planned hit. She set the poor bastard up perfectly. She comes on to him in the bar, even offering him money for a bang. He can’t believe his good luck. He’s going to get laid and get paid for it. He arranges to meet her later, maybe after he does his burial business. And he ends up getting iced for his trouble.”

Joanna sipped her beer slowly, her eyes fixed on the fire. “This blonde sounds like a pro, a real pro.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jake said, and lit another cigarette. “She had everything planned down to the minute.”

“Professional hitters cost,” Joanna went on. “Now, who would be willing to pay big bucks to hit some Russian immigrant?”

“Somebody who wanted to stop him from planting babies,” Jake replied at once.

“Or somebody who wanted to stop him from taking babies to plant,” Joanna added. She thought again about all the evidence at hand, including the cut-up fetuses. “There’s some very gruesome business going on here. And we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg now.”

“Are you talking about the guy’s murder?”

“I’m talking about fetuses that have been cut open and eviscerated.”

“What!” Jake came over to Joanna and sat beside her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The babies in the bottles have all been split open and their internal organs removed,” Joanna said quietly.

“Jesus!” Jake hissed under his breath. “What’s this all about?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea,” Joanna answered. “But somebody removed every organ, including their brains.”

“Why would somebody do that?” Jake asked, feeling way out of his depth.

Joanna shrugged. “Who knows?”

“
Cui bono
?” Jake asked. “Who would benefit from it?”

“No one that I can think of.”

“Can the organs be used?” Jake probed.

Joanna considered the question at length. “The brains maybe. In some medical centers they are now implanting fetal brain cells into the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease.”

“Does it work?”

“Some think it does,” Joanna said ambiguously.

“What about the heart and liver and things like that?”

“They have no use that I know of.”

“So you couldn’t transplant them into kids or adults?”

“No way.”

“Could they be used in some type of experiment?”

Joanna thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. In this country, experiments on fetal tissues are closely monitored. And even if they weren’t, I don’t know what you’d do with a fetal heart or liver. You can’t keep the organs alive for very long.”

“How long are we talking?”

“Hours.”

“Well, somebody sure as hell wanted those organs.”

Jake was back on his feet, pacing. “Where did those fetuses come from? That’s the key here.”

“We’re going to check out all the local hospitals and abortion clinics, but chances are we’ll come up with a big nothing.”

“You figure the people responsible would cover their trail pretty good, huh?”

Joanna nodded. “You can lose track of tissue specimens real easy, particularly in a clinic setting.”

Jake continued to pace the floor. “Where the hell did those fetuses come from?”

“I’ll bet the blond hitter could lead us to it.”

“And so could the Russian,” Jake said. “But he’s dead and she’s disappeared.”

“You’ve got to find her, Jake.”

“Tell me about it,” he growled. “We scoured every bar and motel in a five-mile radius, thinking she was just some well-heeled housewife looking for some action. And of course, we found nothing because she’s not some damn housewife. She’s a professional hitter.” Jake ran a hand through his hair absentmindedly. “Who the hell could have ever guessed that?”

“Not the Russian,” Joanna commented. “That’s for sure.”

“And we’re running into dead ends with him, too,” Jake said sourly. “Nobody in the neighborhood knows who he is or where he lives. And on the occasions he went into some store, he always paid in cash. If the guy had a credit card, he never used it.”

“My kingdom for a credit card,” Joanna muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Joanna got to her feet and went into the kitchen to check on the chicken pot pies in the oven. She opened another bottle of beer, still thinking about credit cards and how valuable they were in tracking down an individual. A credit card yields a person’s name, address, place of employment, income, bank, and work history. It detailed what a person bought and where he bought it, what his tastes were, where he traveled, and in some instances it would tell you all about a person’s habits and vices. Credit cards had tracked down more criminals than fingerprints ever would.

But the Russian didn’t have one. He was just a poor working stiff. The expensively dressed blonde, on the other hand, would have a purse full of cards. And Joanna had an idea where the blonde might use them. She hurried back into the living room and handed Jake a fresh beer.

“Let’s talk about the blond hitter,” Joanna said.

“Okay.” Jake carefully poured beer into his mug and sipped it. “What aspect?”

“Where she’d be most likely to use her credit cards.”

Jake looked up quickly. “How do you know she had any?”