Fatal Reaction (18 page)

CHAPTER 45

Emily lifted the hem of her nightgown, unable to get used to the look of the stitches, or how they felt tugging her burning skin. The redness had spread overnight, and the nurse who was supposed to have been arranged for still hadn’t shown up.

Derrick had already left three messages for Dr. Carmichael, but so far, no one had called back.

Emily covered up and reached for the water and the bottle of painkillers on the nightstand. She swallowed two pills, and the water swishing in her empty stomach made the already terrible nausea worse.

“Dammit.”

Something crashed in the kitchen.

“You okay?” Emily called out, a drugged slowness to her speech.

Derrick appeared in the bedroom doorway, dabbing at the faint brown splatter on his button-down dress shirt with a kitchen towel. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“What broke?”

“Coffee cup”—he looked at his watch—“and I’m late.” He tugged at the knot in his tie and pulled it loose. “I’m going to have to change.”

“Late for what? Where are you going?” For as much as Derrick loved her, and she knew he did, he was a slave to his work.

“I have to go to a client meeting, Em. My mom’s coming to sit with you, and I’ll be back in an hour, two tops. We have to keep money coming in for this baby.”

As if money were ever a problem.

“Has the nurse called yet?”

“Not yet. I’ll leave another message before I go.” Derrick shook the prescription bottle of painkillers. “Is this supposed to be almost empty already?”

“It says four to six hours, as needed.” Emily could see him doing the math. “I take them when I need to.”

“Well, don’t overdo it.” He bent down and kissed her. “Mom will be here soon. Need anything?”

“No, I’m set.” Emily settled in, shifting until she was comfortable and the tension was off her incision. The pills made it impossible to stay awake. She pulled the blankets up to her chin and drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER 46

Marco’s address had been easy enough to find. A quick Internet search directed Jared to Windsor Towers. He couldn’t imagine why a pathologist making more than two hundred grand a year would live in such a low-rent complex on the outskirts of town.

The driveway had been only half plowed, and Jared parked in a void where a car had recently left. He reached for a piece of gum in his center console and chewed until he could no longer taste his own breath.

Despite the message he’d left telling Colby he’d be home late, he spent the night on Ana’s couch, falling asleep after half a bottle of wine and intimate conversation that went on well into the morning. He had been infatuated with her up until that point, drawn to her sexually as much as anything else. Knowing her as he did now, how much pain and suffering she’d endured, he was convinced she deserved nothing less than true love, and he wanted to give it to her.

One night and he wanted to give her everything.

He was about to pull the key from the ignition when a bearded man blocked his door with a rusty, overflowing shopping cart.

Jared had no choice but to roll down the window. A distinct urine smell filled his car.

“Spare some change, sir?”

Even if it wasn’t freezing out, he’d have been compelled to help the man. He reached into his back pocket and pulled a twenty from his wallet.

“Get yourself something hot to eat.”

The man couldn’t thank him enough. “Bless you, bless you, sir.”

When the door was clear, Jared stepped out and locked his car twice, though he knew that a locked door didn’t mean his car would be there when he got back.

He followed the signs to apartment 24, which couldn’t have been farther from his parking spot, and knocked.

“Marco, it’s Jared Monroe. Are you there?” Screams erupted in the apartment across the hall, and Jared knocked harder. “Marco? I need to speak with you. Please, open up.” He wiggled the doorknob and found it unlocked.

A smell, like dirty dishes and mold, made him cough, and a terrible feeling took hold of him.

The sparsely furnished apartment had been tossed. Jehovah’s Witness tracts littered the floor, and the end tables had been overturned. The kitchen had been ransacked, the dishes shattered, and the cabinets left open. Jared kicked aside the broken ceramic and picked up a worn birth announcement for a little girl named Jasmine Prusak.

In their brief conversations, Marco had never once mentioned having a daughter.

“Marco?” Jared prayed that whoever trashed the apartment was gone, and that maybe Marco hadn’t been there when it happened. He moved slowly toward the closed bedroom door and turned the knob. A familiar odor eclipsed the rotten food smells coming from the kitchen. He cupped his hand over his nose to filter it.

Even without taking the scene in fully, he knew the stench of a decomposing body. He pulled his shirt over his face and suppressed the urge to throw up.

Sunlight poured through a set of dusty blinds and settled on a lump in the center of the bed. Tufts of dark hair and an off-colored forehead stuck out from under the green wool blanket. The single nightstand had been knocked over. The contents of its three drawers littered the floor.

From Jared’s few minutes in the apartment, it was clear that Marco hadn’t been robbed. The most valuable item in the place was an old, tube television, and it had been left behind. Someone, if instinct served, had been after information.

An audible click
broke the tense silence, and the heat kicked on, magnifying the odor. Jared lifted the blinds and coughed as dust clouded around him. He opened a window to let in fresh air and pressed his face to the screen until he was able to face the smell again.

There was no sense checking for a pulse; the putrid smell guaranteed there wasn’t one. Morbid curiosity had him pull back the blanket to make sure, though he was near positive, that the body was, in fact, Marco’s. And it was. His olive complexion had taken on a pale, ashen tone. He had been stripped naked, and blood pooled along his backside, his buttocks and heels, appearing like one massive bruise. Lividity, the pooling of blood after death, indicated he had died in that bed, some time ago.

Jared flipped through the papers scattered on the floor and looked inside the toppled nightstand. He felt around the deep holes where the drawers would have been, and along the top and bottom edges for something taped or fastened to the wood. He looked inside the closet, and around the bed, noting a slight arc in the mattress and the sheet peeled slightly back.

“Bingo.”

He slid his hand between the box spring and mattress, and his fingertips found the stiff leather binding of the book that had been hidden there.

New World Translation of the Bible.

Inside, two pieces of folded paper corroborated his and Ana’s suspicions that Sydney’s uterus had been implanted in Stephanie Martin. He put the book back where he found it, pocketed the reports, and called the police.

CHAPTER 47

Mike watched as Kim exchanged her soiled lab coat for a clean one. Her turquoise dress hung perfectly on her lean frame, emphasizing the slight curves of her athletic shape. A Navajo-style pendant dipped low into the “V” above her cleavage, and he tried not to stare. There were twenty-year-olds who didn’t look as good as she did, but he figured telling her that would sound crass.

“You ready for this?”

“As I’ll ever be.” Mike focused on the ashen corpse flayed on the autopsy table.

“The victim’s name is Dr. Marco Prusak. He’s the pathologist at County Memorial Hospital.”

Mike knew as much since he had been called to the scene by another of County’s physicians, Dr. Jared Monroe, who came to check on the victim when he failed to show up at work. “Cause of death?”

Kim pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves and rolled the victim’s arm. “Educated guess? Insulin overdose.”

Mike examined the tiny pinprick in the crease of the man’s elbow. “Was he a diabetic?”

Kim shook her head. “No, and there’s no record of a recent hospitalization. Residual trace shows insulin at the injection site, a spill when the needle was pulled. Whoever did this got sloppy. The tape residue indicates that the insulin was given intravenously. The level of knowledge and skill to administer this kind of treatment requires medical training.”

“Training, like the kind a doctor would have?” Dorian Carmichael had been arrested for disturbing the peace at County Memorial in Marco’s lab.

There was no way it was a coincidence.

“It could be a doctor, but it wouldn’t have to be. It could be a nurse, or a paramedic.” Kim swung a light over Marco’s face, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth. “But it’s definitely homicide.”

Mike peered inside Marco’s mouth and recoiled at the sight of a severed stub where his tongue had once been.

Kim closed Marco’s mouth. “Whoever did this, it seems maybe they hadn’t planned to. There are hesitation marks in the cutting. Compared with the almost impossible to prove, but suspected insulin overdose, this is very unskilled.”

“And somewhat unoriginal.” The crude glossectomy implied someone didn’t want Marco saying something he knew. Mike made a mental note to look for a dull or serrated knife. “Tell me about the insulin. How does it work? What would the person feel? How long would it take to kill someone?”

Kim peeled off her gloves, threw them in the trash, and after rinsing her hands, sat down on a metal stool with her legs crossed at the ankles. “If the person knew what they were doing, it could take as long as the killer wanted for the person to die.” Mike sat down in a chair across from her and jotted down notes while she spoke. “The brain needs sugar to function. The more insulin that is released into the blood, the lower the level becomes. An IV would allow for slow infusion, building to a fatal dose, or could release a fast fatal dose, depending on the rate of the drip.”

“So, it’s feasible that the killer would use this IV method to conduct prolonged questioning of the victim?”

Kim nodded. “Feasible, sure, if they could keep the victim conscious and lucid. Insulin is normally given subcutaneously with a small needle. An IV takes time. Lowering the blood sugar would cause discomfort. The victim would have headaches, shakiness, heart palpitations, and confusion. A deliberately slow infusion could cause panic, and if the victim was lucid, that might be a way to extort information. The long-term effect is unconsciousness, leading to eventual death.”

“And the tongue? Was he still alive?”

“No. The lack of bleeding is consistent with a postmortem injury.”

Mike sighed. “Thank God for small favors. I’m sure I know the answer to this, but was there any trace? How did the attacker manage to keep him still through all of this?”

“Adhesive on his wrists and ankles is consistent with binding using duct tape, and there’s a needle-stick injury on his thigh. It’s possible he was injected with something else to control him. There are a few things that wouldn’t register on lab tests.”

“What kinds of
things
?”

“Succinylcholine, for example. It’d keep him still long enough to tie him up if someone could keep him from suffocating.”

Suffocating.

The word struck a chord.

“Mike, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Were there any prints?”

“Not so far”—Kim brushed her sideswept bangs behind her ear—“but I’ll keep looking.”