Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (25 page)

Harry sat in the truck with Coop as she turned and drove down the drive.

Back at the horrible scene, Rick asked Barker, “Can he be removed without danger?”

“Yes, now he can. But to be sure, we’ll drain the battery. It’s far too heavy to lift out.”

“Barker, you’re sure?”

“I’m sure. The circuit is broken. And Tom grabbed a tester just to make certain there’s no leak.”

Tom was the head mechanic.

Rick, still unconvinced, followed the men to the car. “Barker, how could something like this happen?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Jesus Christ, Sheriff, do you think I’d sell cars if I thought they were capable of doing this to someone?”

Rick, knowing Barker was shaken, soothingly said, “I know you wouldn’t.”

Working as fast as possible, the body was removed before Mrs. Schaeffer and the children got home. Rick took pictures with his cellphone. They may not have been protocol, but being the boss means you know when to drop protocol without jeopardizing a case.

The car was towed to the dealership. The mechanics found out what had happened easily enough. Someone had direct-wired the battery to the metal frame of the driver’s seat. When Cory turned on the car, he was instantly electrocuted. The pain had to have been ferocious. He could have felt it for only a second or two, but he did feel it.

•    •    •

Later, Harry was home, Fair with her, when Coop called.

“I’m sorry to call so late, but I thought you’d like to know that a yellow cylinder like what you found at Paula Benton’s was in the backseat of the Lampo.”

“What in the hell is going on?” Harry blurted out.

“I don’t know. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Well, as all right as I can be. What about you?”

“Same. I keep thinking I will have seen everything in my line of work, every humiliation and violence to which the human body can be subjected, and then there’s something new.”

After talking a bit more, Harry hung up. She told Fair the news.

“Not one of them was a horseman,” he replied.

“This is so bizarre. But if there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that what seems bizarre always makes sense once we find out the killer’s reason.”

“If only she hadn’t said ‘we,’ ”
Tucker wisely noted.

A
nnalise finished harvesting organs from a young suicide. Done, she left her assistant to sew up the body, peeled off her gloves, and washed up.

As she stepped outside, Toni Enright walked into the anteroom, a grim look on her face.

“What’s the matter?”

“Cory’s dead.”

“What?” Annalise stepped closer to Toni. “How?”

“Electrocuted by his Lampo.”

“Oh, no.” Annalise swayed.

Toni caught her, maneuvering her to a chair. “Sit down. This is a terrible, terrible thing, and the staff has had too many shocks these last weeks.”

“I told him not to buy that damned electric car! I warned him that no matter what they tell you—and I went to look at one, too—that much voltage isn’t safe. It can never be safe. A gasoline engine might seize up, but it won’t take you with it. The gas tank might explode in an accident, but your chances are good to get out without bad burns if you have your wits about you or aren’t comatose behind the wheel. But these things—why, why didn’t he listen to me?”

“Listening was not his strong suit,” replied Toni, her voice kind. “He
thought he knew more than he did about a lot of things. Maybe we’re all like that.”

“I grew up with cars. I explained everything to him. I told him that at four hundred and forty volts, it would take less than one amp to kill a person. He blew me off, saying that was impossible. The bypass safety relay and backups provided ironclad safety. They’re too new. You never buy the first year of any car model, because the bugs haven’t been worked out yet. In something this new, you’re nuts to buy one.” She dropped her head in her hands.

Toni leaned over, put her arm around Annalise’s shoulders. “You did all you could.”

Tears running down her lovely face, Annalise strangled a wail. “The man couldn’t even change a spark plug.”

“No, but he was one hell of a surgeon.”

Annalise nodded in agreement. “Fervent.”

“Pardon?”

“Fervent. He truly wanted to cure cancer. The hours that man spent with me here, and Jennifer, too, examining the ones who died from various cancers.” She wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands.

Toni walked over to the counter, plucked out some tissues, brought them back. “Here. You need to hold it together.”

Annalise wiped her eyes. “Mascara.”

“You look like a raccoon. Here, let me fix it.” Toni fetched more tissues, wetted them at the small sink, then cleaned under the pathologist’s eyes. “You’ll need a reapplication.”

“Have a tube in my bag. Toni, how did you find out?”

“Izzy Wineberg took the call from Sheriff Shaw. Couldn’t find Will Archer,” she said, naming the hospital administrator. “Izzy came down to our department. We are being told department by department, and I think Izzy will oversee a notice to go out by email, as well as for a printed bulletin.”

“As the most senior physician, he’s the best choice.”

“Yes. I don’t think there is a doctor here more respected than Izzy. But here’s the thing”—she again wiped a speck from under Annalise’s eye—“the cops think Paula Benton’s death, Thadia Martin’s death, and Cory’s may be linked.”

Annalise’s eyes opened wide. “Nothing was found to have caused Paula’s death. And Cory’s, I told him! I told him!”

“Annalise, lower your voice.”

“Oh, Toni.” She put her hands to her face, dropping her head back, exposing her swanlike neck. “I doubt they’re all connected.”

“It does seem a stretch, but Izzy doesn’t know the details. They’re treating Cory’s death as murder.”

“What?”

“According to Izzy, the car was, I don’t know the terms, anyway, hotwired.”

A long silence followed. “It couldn’t be. Rachel knows nothing about cars,” Annalise said, naming Cory’s wife.

“Did she find out?”

“No. At least he didn’t think she did.” A deep breath followed. “Look, if she did, I wasn’t the first. I seriously doubt his wife would kill him. Hit him with a frying pan, yes, but kill him, no.”

“Did you love him? All the times we talked about covering your tracks, I never asked.”

Annalise looked directly into Toni’s eyes. “I loved him, but I wasn’t in love with him. We shared a passion—more for medicine than each other—but it was good. We pushed each other to learn more, look more deeply. And we were both always figuring out how to invest, utilize our resources. That doesn’t sound romantic, but it drew us closer. Everyone thinks doctors are rich. Well, I make a much better living than someone in a computer pool, but the expenses are considerable, and there’s all those school loans to repay. We talked about everything. I will miss him.”

Toni looked through the large glass window in the door. “Your assistant is washing up. You don’t know what kind of emotions will well up, so do your best: Repress.” She squeezed Annalise’s shoulder. “Pull it together. Bad as it is, it would be much worse if you had been in love with him.”

Annalise rose to walk with Toni to the outside door. “Maybe. He was my friend before he was my lover. Lovers come and go, Toni; a friend is forever.”

“You might be right.” Toni hugged her, then slipped out the door.

•    •    •

Izzy Wineberg fielded calls, soothed some shaken staff members, and was grateful when he had a moment to himself in his private bathroom in his large office. He washed his face, then held a washrag, wrung out, to his face.

Rising like a comet in the medical world, Central Virginia Medical Complex wouldn’t be brought down by what now appeared to be connected deaths. Ten years ago at the old hospital, there had been murders, related, as they usually are, to money. It’s always love or money. He patted his face dry with a fluffy towel, courtesy of his wife of forty-six years. She filled his life with all manner of thoughtful objects and events.

On the subject of wives, he knew Cory had cut a wide swath through the hospital nursing staff, and probably outside, as well. He was that kind of guy.

Izzy faced two immediate conundrums. The first was: If he told Sheriff Shaw about Cory’s conquests, would the sheriff raise the issue with Cory’s wife, Rachel? What a wretched time for a woman to learn her husband suffered from chronic infidelity. Then again, maybe she knew. But Izzy doubted it. He’d seen them together many times, been a guest at their home. But people can be marvelous actors, he reminded himself.

The second problem—thornier—would need a deft touch. Paula and Cory had worked together. Thadia had not, but one could hardly miss the fact that the woman was besotted with the surgeon. Physicians solve mysteries. You can’t cure a patient until you know what ails him or her. Using all the skills that had served him well in his profession, Izzy discarded extraneous information, concentrating on symptoms. His conclusion: Cory Schaeffer was central to this string of murders.

T
he fruit-bearing trees dropped their blossoms, and tiny little bumps of peaches, pears, and apples gave hope for a good crop. The dogwoods, too, lost their beautiful white or pink blossoms. Trees began to fill out, the light spring green already turning a shade darker.

Daffodils and tulips faded in their place while, like blaring trumpets, irises opened. There were small, intense Japanese irises, bearded irises in lavender, a maroon iris with a peach interior. There was every shade of purple imaginable. Along with the early irises, the azaleas created luxurious oceans of color. It’s a rare Virginia residence lacking in azaleas or irises. People will haul in sand to give those azalea bushes the right soil.

Some years the azaleas and irises did not bloom in sync, but this year they did, and Harry marveled at the color around her house and in the big wooden half buckets in front of the barn. Eventually those buckets would give way to the ever-hardy geraniums and petunias.

Kneeling, she weeded out her flower bed by the back door. She’d have another radiation treatment at the end of the week, so it’d be better to get this task done now. She knew she’d be even more tired than she was the last time.

In her support group, she learned not only about what cancer does to the body but also what the treatments do. A combination of chemo and radiation seems designed to kill cancer cells and very nearly the patient.
Grateful that she had to face only radiation, she joked with those sisters about losing their hair, their appetite, and their energy. Thankfully, nobody lost their sense of humor.

One of the girls quipped, “God made hair to cover imperfect heads.”

Some invested in good wigs, and those without funds were helped out by an organization that makes wigs for indigent cancer patients. Others wore baseball caps and said, “The hell with it.”

Harry didn’t know how she’d handle that. She knew what she faced wasn’t nearly as bad as what so many of the others had. Still, she felt it: the slide in energy; the gusts of irritability, which she took pains to hide; and sometimes the sorrow of it. Yes, she was doing great, in good shape, but the idea that her body had fooled her troubled her.

She’d repeat over and over to herself the mantra of her support group: I have cancer; cancer doesn’t have me.

The long rays of late-afternoon sun brushed the barn, the fields, the old handblown glass in the windowpanes. Harry thought of this as soft light, almost liquid light, and like most country people, she felt one of the compensations for winter’s harshness was the magical quality of the light, no matter what the time. But now, mid-spring, one waited for late afternoon.

“Coop,”
Tucker barked, for she heard Coop’s truck turn off the road far away, onto the gravel farm drive.

Coop pulled up next to the barn.

Harry stood up, dropping a handful of persistent weeds into the blue muck bucket. Dusting off her knees, she walked toward the tall blonde just stepping out of her truck.

“Hey, neighbor.”

Coop smiled. “The place looks great.”