Public Anatomy (30 page)

At seven thirty, after circling the block three times, Eli at last found an empty parking meter at the medical center. How nice it had been a few weeks ago to have access to the Gates’s parking garage.

He had planned to arrive at the morgue by seven, before Meg started the day’s autopsy barrage. But his head still pounded from the night before and only now could he fully open his eyes.

Miss Conch protested as he passed through the reception area into the autopsy room. Meg hovered over an intact body, knife in hand. He interrupted her.

“I need your help for a few minutes.”

“Good morning to you too, and take a number.” She pointed to a sheet-covered corpse on a gurney. “He beat you here by just a few minutes.”

Eli nodded to the deceased. “I’m sure he’ll understand.” Then, to Meg, “Log me on. We’re about to find out who the next victim is.”

Exasperated, Meg dropped the knife on the instrument table. Steel clanging against steel made a statement. She walked toward her desk but stopped short in front of Eli.

“You look like warmed-over shit.”

“Thanks, I feel like it.”

Meg typed in her passwords. “What are we looking for today, nuclear launch codes?”

Eli leaned closer to the screen. No matter how much death surrounded them, Meg always managed to smell fresh and sexy.

“Go to the OR files like we did before.”

A few clicks later she asked, “Do you even know how to type?”

“Yeah, but I like to watch you do it.”

She gave him a look, started to say something, then accessed the requested files.

“Now, put in the names of the first three victims plus the latest, the Zante Repository nurse.”

Meg copied the names from the white board while Eli wrote the fourth name at the bottom of the list.

“If what I’m thinking is right, by entering these four names, the first operative death will be displayed.”

“The first?”

“Yes. We’ve been trying to connect the murders to the most recent patient who died in the OR. But the real link to the murders is the accidental death that occurred six months ago.” Eli pointed at the screen. “This program will match any operation with the personnel assigned to work the case. I’m betting each of these hospital employees was involved in that first, fatal procedure.”

When Meg finished entering all the names, an operative report appeared on the screen. It was red-flagged like the other, with a central gray box that warned:

Yes we do, thank you very much.

As Eli predicted, all four names were listed, plus the surgeon, Liza French.

Meg leaned back in the chair, kept staring at the screen. “But the three murder victims were all listed as part of the operating team during the most recent OR death, including your nurse friend.”

“That’s correct,” Eli said. “These three personnel were part of the operating team when both deaths occurred. But the fourth name didn’t fit. That’s because all the murder victims were involved in the first operating room death that occurred six months ago.”

Meg nodded once to Eli. “I’m impressed.”

“By what?” Eli asked. “Four people have been killed and I can’t seem to stop it.”

These words pulled them back to the list of six Gates’s employees and the four murders.

The anesthetist in the cotton warehouse with a bone cut from his foot.

The scrub nurse without her tongue at the wrestling arena.

The anesthesiologist missing his stomach in Tunica.

And the circulating nurse at the Zante Repository without a heart.

The next name that appeared on the computer screen was that of an OB/GYN resident, Thomas Greenway.

Eli said his name out loud.

“What about your Dr. French?” Meg asked. “Could she be the next victim?”

The way Meg said
French
, her head tilted, her lips pursed, Eli sensed a definite attitude. He wondered if Meg somehow knew about his and Liza’s past. He had no time to go there.

“Liza’s out of town, oddly enough,” Eli said. “I don’t know what’s going on with her. Maybe she
is
behind the whole thing.” He thought that was good cover.

“How could that be?” Meg made a face and wagged her head clearly rejecting that theory.

“I don’t know, but someone is killing these medical personnel.” Eli pointed at the screen. “And it’s all related, somehow, to this operation.”

Eli recalled the order of Vesalius’s
Epitome
. The fifth book focused on the brain. Through a hungover fog, Eli tried to remember the conversation with Salyer the night before. Salyer predicted that the next organ to be removed would be the brain. A male brain. Eli read the resident’s name from the screen. Thomas Greenway. Definitely male.

Eli grabbed Meg’s phone, started punching numbers. Meg knew
exactly who he was calling. “Is Detective Lipsky buying all this?”

Eli nodded. “He’d better. This is all he’s got.”

Meg stood and arched her back in an early morning stretch.
“We’re
all he’s got.” She spoke in a sarcastic, self-important tone.

On the second ring, Eli heard a voice answer, “Who loves you, baby.”

“Lipsky? It’s Eli.”

“Top of the morning to you, doc.”

“Listen, I’ve got a name for you. We need to find this guy before it’s too late. Put some police protection on him.”

Complete silence on Lipsky’s end.

A wave of dread passed through Eli. “The name’s Thomas Green-way.”

More silence.

Then Lipsky said, “Oddly enough, I’m looking at someone with that same name.”

“Damn it!” Eli drew out the words.

Meg placed the autopsy knife on the table and mouthed, “What?”

“Question for you,” Lipsky said. “In that old bastard’s book, you know, the one who cuts people open and draws pictures of them, what’s the next body organ? I’m just curious.”

“The brain, Lipsky. It’s the brain.”

That old saying, about how silence is deafening—

“I’ll hand it to you, doc, you’re a smart one.”

“Where are you, Lipsky?”

“I’m over at Shelby Farms. Got your Tom Greenway with me. You know, it’s true what they say about the brain. It does look like a big, shelled pecan.”

“When did you last talk to her?”

Lipsky drove in the outside lane of Poplar Avenue toward downtown. He was tempted to put the blue light on the roof, to take on some real speed, but he didn’t yet know where he was going, only that they needed to find Liza French.

Eli rode shotgun in the detective’s car. “A few days ago,” he answered. “Liza seemed more concerned with the malpractice suit than the fact that two members of her medical team had been murdered.”

“Now that number is up to five.” Lipsky stopped at a red light. “Maybe she just wanted to change the subject.”

“You think she’s responsible for all this?”

“Most everyone involved in that botched operation is dead, right? Don’t you doctors always cover your tracks?”

Lipsky was correct. Five of the seven personnel from the first botched operation were dead. Eli stared at him, waited for Lipsky to retract that statement. He didn’t.

“By killing her surgical team? Is that what you’re saying?”

Lipsky accelerated through the intersection. “Somebody’s killing these people. And that someone has got to have a reason. In the homicide business, we call that motive.”

“Thanks for the lesson.”

“And we’ve got to consider all possibilities.”

“Like?”

“Like someone connected to the surgical deaths. Family, friends, business associates who may have lost income or power because of the deaths.”

Eli looked at Lipsky with pure skepticism. “Business associates?”

“Sometimes people crack, Eli. Normal, sane, well-meaning people just go off. It’s not only postal workers. Respected businessmen, housewives. Take your Dr. French Kiss, for example. She’s had two patient deaths in the OR within six months. She’s in deep shit. Her career’s in jeopardy and she’s facing criminal charges. She’s thinking her medical team will say she’s at fault, the one to blame, negligent.” Lipsky turned to Eli. “She’s found a way to keep them from talking. Permanently.”

As Lipsky said this, Eli shook his head. “She’s five foot five, maybe a hundred twenty pounds. Sound like someone who could string a body from a chain?”

Lipsky spoke after a moment. “Had a granny in a wheelchair once. Son-in-law assaulted her granddaughter. You know what I mean?”

Eli lay his head back against the seat. Closed his eyes. He wished he could close his ears.

“She found him, held him at gunpoint, and cut his balls off with a hedge clipper.”

Lipsky waited for that to sink in.

“So don’t tell me how small your doctor friend is.”

Eli had nothing to say to that. He could think only about his testicles and sharp garden tools.

“Besides,” Lipsky continued. “I didn’t say
how
she could have done it. Maybe she had help. Maybe she used some of that big doctor money and paid someone.”

Lipsky was enjoying this. Eli let him roll on.

“Hell, for all I know, she’s got you sucked into this.”

“Yeah, Lipsky, I’m sneaking around at night killing my colleagues and helping you during the day.”

“I’ve done my research,” Lipsky said. “I know you two were an item a few years back.” He slapped the dashboard. “Old love dies hard.”

Alex’s Tavern is a small bar on Jackson Avenue in Midtown. Known for late-night entertainment and friendly bar service, it’s a popular hang spot for students from the medical school and undergrads from nearby Rhodes College. Liza French didn’t care much for the beer, but she had a deep appreciation for the young male patrons. She scooted her stool closer to the bar. No longer did she have to request a glass of Chardonnay. Joe, the bartender, had it waiting for her on a little square white napkin.

At nine o’clock, it was a little early yet for the late crowd. The musician for the night plugged in his amp and started an awful rendition of guitar tuning that didn’t bode well for the music to come.

One couple sat off by themselves near a corner. A booth held three guys wearing team softball jerseys laughing over a pitcher of beer.

How boring, Liza thought. She took a sip of wine and replaced the glass in the exact center of the napkin. A man sat down on the bar stool next to her. Older than the average student, he was in his early thirties maybe, black hair cut short under a baseball cap. Even in the dim light, Liza caught a glimpse of a few gray strands. He ordered a draft beer, and Liza watched bartender Joe fill a mug, cap off the foamy head.

She waited to see if Joe knew him. Joe, of course, knew anyone and everyone who frequented the bar. He pushed the beer to the man and asked if he wanted to start a tab. Definitely not a regular.

“That depends,” he said.

Liza felt his gaze upon her.

“On how long this takes.”

He raised the mug and took a long gulp. He had a sturdy build and
Liza watched the flex of a tattoo on his arm, three cute little animals in a column. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

Nice
. Liza took a sip of wine, handed her napkin to him, and sat her glass down on the bar top.

“Thanks,” he said.

Liza raised her glass. “You should try wine. Not quite as messy.” Then she ran her tongue across her lips.

After a few minutes of small talk, the man told Joe, “No tab, I’ll just pay for these two and we’ll be on our way.”

Liza watched the headlights of his black Trans Am in her rearview mirror as he followed her into Victorian Village. She hadn’t seen a Trans Am in years, the type of car driven by bad boys. She thought the make had disappeared in the early eighties. She remembered now that she liked them. Especially black ones.

She drove around to the back of her house into the garage. He parked on the street. Layla met him at the front door and let him in.