Public Anatomy Page 17

  Eli drove south on Dudley Street, took a quick left onto E. H. Crump Boulevard, then zigzagged back onto Dudley. His Bronco passed old warehouses and open lots where the grass was long dead and the ground lay bare and dusty.

  Henry rode in the backseat. As a child, whenever their mother took the boys for a ride, Henry rode in the back of the car. Not one for changing routines, he was not changing now, no matter how much Eli urged him to ride up front.

  Dudley Street came to a dead end at the entrance to Elmwood Cemetery. The street narrowed to a single lane bridge that arched over a gorge, a train track lay below. Eli glanced at a sign to the left that announced visiting hours: 8–4:30 daily. By the time Eli had convinced the staff at Green Hills State Home to release Henry to him for a few hours, their trip to the cemetery started late. It was almost four o’clock. If they missed their annual visit, Henry would be unable to cope.

  A high fence surrounded the bridge on both sides. Eli drove onto the bridge and stopped midway. A train passed slowly under the bridge a few feet below them. Henry had always been fascinated by trains. He leaned close to the window.

  They waited until the short train passed before continuing across the bridge, then drove past the cemetery manager’s office, which doubled as a visitor center. The road branched into three paths. Eli chose the middle path and they followed it as it curved at the bottom of a hill before ascending the hill’s western side. Eli considered this hill the heart of Elmwood because at its crest lay the centerpiece of the cemetery, a five-column stone colonnade elevated on a platform and modeled after ancient Roman architecture.

  Eli parked along the side of the paved path. He removed Henry’s wheelchair, unfolded it, and pushed it to the side of the car. Able-bodied Henry climbed out of the back and plopped into the chair, leaning forward, ready for the ride.

  Henry must have sensed that it was late in the day. He bucked against the chair, trying to move it along while Eli retrieved the box holding the grass clippers, the scrub brush, the liquid soap.

  “Hold on buddy,” Eli said. “We’re going.”

  Eli glanced at his watch. In a half hour, the grounds would be closed to visitors.

  The attendant on duty, a young man named Jason, met them on the path.

  “Hello, Branches.”

  Jason called everyone by their last name, knowledge he gained by watching family members at their respective gravesites. He knew the tombstone of each family member and the exact path they would take to get there.

  Eli greeted him with a single nod, “Jason.” He kept pushing the wheelchair.

  Henry did not acknowledge Jason’s presence. He would not make eye contact with anyone other than Eli, and even then, no longer than necessary.

  “We’re closing in a half hour,” Jason told them.

  Eli said nothing. He pushed Henry toward their mother’s grave. Henry insisted on using the wheelchair in the cemetery even though he did not need it now. Eli had pushed him in a wheelchair during their mother’s funeral ten years earlier. Every year, on the anniversary of her death, the two brothers reenacted the same ritual using this same wheelchair on the concrete paths to her grave.

  Sunlight reflected at a slant off stone-encased mausoleums that projected from the ground like shrines. A deftly crafted cherub kept watch as time covered her in a skin of green moss. They passed tombstones that presided over bankers, and lawmakers, and harlots; a refuge in the midst of the city where some inhabitants lived larger in death than life.

  Henry leaned forward, engine-humming his way to a faster trip. An older couple passed arm-in-arm and Eli steered off the path to give them way.

  Eli wondered how different their own lives would be had their mother lived. Henry would be with her, sharing home-cooked meals, a clean bed to sleep in each night. Eli had been a poor substitute for Henry’s mother, as every annual visit to her grave reminded him. Over the years, his twice-monthly visits to Henry’s facility had dropped to every other month. But they always had this date, a time when the memory of their mother bonded them as brothers.

  Henry watched for the landmarks that led to their mother’s site. He pushed forward, harder, as the colonnade on top of the hill came into view. Arranged in a semicircle, the five Corinthian columns stood on a stone platform, a stage awaiting the cast of a Greek tragedy.

  There was no traveling troupe present, rather a father and his young daughter sharing a late lunch on the stone steps. Staring over the graves, the man halved an apple and ate it, while the girl skipped in and out of the columns, a streaming blue ribbon in her hair trying to keep up.

  Eli was reminded, by contrast, of his father, who had died two years before. How in the years before his death, Elizer Branch never visited his wife’s grave, at least, not with his sons. For that matter, he never visited Henry, either.

  Henry was distracted by the girl and her father. Eli guessed that Henry was wondering what had happened to the mother, and why she wasn’t there to see her daughter at play. Eli pushed off the main path closer to the stone columns. Because Henry rarely showed interest in other people, Eli felt obligated to foster any opportunity. When the girl saw the wheelchair, she ran out to them against the warnings of her father. She stopped in front of Henry. She held a tattered, wilting bouquet of wildflowers garnished with weeds and grass.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  Henry looked down at her feet.

  “What happened to your legs?” she asked. “Why can’t you walk?”

  After a few moments of silence, Eli intervened.

  “He’s sad today. Doesn’t want to talk.”

  The girl bent with hands on her knees, trying her best to make eye contact. “My mother died. We come here a lot.”

  Henry rocked against the chair, eager to leave the little girl and her questions. She reached for his hands, which Henry allowed to open, and into them she placed the flowers. She closed his hands around the bouquet and skipped back to the safety of her father. The rest of the way, Henry held the flowers protectively suspended over his lap.

  Many visitors were attracted to Elmwood each year by the craftsmanship of the headstones, combined with the history of those buried there. A photographer’s haven. Eli felt at times that the cemetery was more tourist attraction than resting place. However, in these last few minutes of visitation, only a few family members were making their way back to their cars.

  Eli and Henry approached the grave of Naomi Branch. Henry jumped from the wheelchair before Eli fully stopped. He rushed to the headstone and knelt in front of it. Eli saw the reason for Henry’s agitation. Weeds sprouted at the base of the stone and a vine climbed across their mother’s engraved name. The sun had baked on a layer of grime.

  Henry ripped up the vine, wrapping it over and over around his hand until he had enough purchase to dislodge it. He flung it to the side, grabbed the brush and soap from the box, and began to scrub the limestone. Eli clipped the weeds at the base of the stone.

  Fifteen minutes later, Henry stood, took a step back and examined their work. Satisfied with the appearance, he placed a single peach-colored rose on top of the headstone, as was their custom. Then he collected the girl’s bouquet of wildflowers from the seat of his wheelchair and sprinkled them at the base of his mother’s grave.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  A car crept along the paved road at the bottom of the hill. Visiting hours were over, but by the looks of the spotless black sedan, the occupants were not here to visit the dead. The car stopped behind Eli’s Bronco. Eli continued to push Henry in his wheelchair until two men wearing dark suits got out of the sedan and began walking toward them. At first, Eli thought they might be undertakers or some other representatives for the cemetery.

  Not quite.

  “Dr. Branch, may we have a word with you, sir?”

  As they came closer, Eli recognized the federal agents that had approached him a few days ago at the hospital. He kept pushing Henry, who was already becoming anxious to leave.


  The big agent flashed his badge as though that would make Eli stop.

  It didn’t.

  “I know who you are,” Eli said.

  “We need an update on the investigation,” Moustache said.

  “Now’s not the time. We’re in a cemetery, in case you didn’t notice.”

  The agent looked over a few plots. “They won’t mind, trust me.”

  “Maybe I don’t know anything.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you know this isn’t right. That something happened in that OR. Something bad.”

  “Yeah, a patient died. That’s pretty bad.”

  “You know what we mean. You can’t turn your back on this.”

  Henry pushed at the wheels, trying to move them along.

  “I’ve got enough to take care of on my own,” Eli said and gestured to Henry. “I don’t need this mess.”

  “But this ‘mess’ started years ago, didn’t it, Dr. Branch?”

  Henry was becoming impatient with the slow progress. He started rolling the wheelchair himself.

  “What exactly happened that night, doctor? When you and a much younger Liza French were on call together.” Using his fingers, Moustache smoothed the hair on his lips. “A certain patient needed your assistance—emergency, life-saving assistance—but the two of you seemed preoccupied, unable to respond to desperate calls on your beepers.”

  Eli reached his car and opened the back door for Henry, who climbed in without assistance.

  “Or so the nurse said in her incident report. She said she saw both you and Dr. French come out of a linen closet while a prominent Nashville politician was taking his last breath. Seems the two of you were quite breathless as well.”

  Eli folded Henry’s wheelchair and placed it in the back.

  The agent continued. “That incident happened over a decade ago and it just faded away. You would like to keep it that way, wouldn’t you, Doctor?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Eli’s cell phone rang as they were leaving the cemetery.

  “I found some information on Nurse Tongue.”

  “Nice name, Meg,” Eli said. “Shows sensitivity to the victim.”

  “Sorry, I forgot that you knew her. Do you want to hear it or not?”

  “Sure I do.”

  Meg said nothing for a few moments. Made him wait.

  Eli drove across the cemetery bridge. In the backseat, Henry craned his neck to look at the empty train track below.

  “Meg?”

  “She worked at Presbyterian Hospital.”

  “Presby? That doesn’t fit.” As he said this, Eli knew Meg was giving him only bits and pieces. He accelerated on Dudley Street, as though going faster would coax the information out of her.

  “But get this, she was hired there only a couple of days ago after transferring from …” She hesitated long enough for Eli to fill in the blank.

  “Gates Memorial.”

  “Where she worked for eleven years,” Meg continued, “in the operating room.”

  On Interstate 240, Eli merged behind an eighteen-wheeler, felt the turbulent air shake his Bronco until he fell in behind the truck’s draft.

  “Of course, because I knew her as an operating room nurse. But how did you find out she was working at the other hospital?”

  “There’s a citywide nursing data base you can access online.”

  Eli considered the source. “First, it was the Gates doctors’ files, now city nursing. What’s next, Meg? Classified federal information?”

  “You put me on this trail, Eli. Once I get a whiff, I can’t stop.”

  “Did you have a password to get in?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact. Miss Conch gave it to me.”

  “Miss Conch?”

  “She’s been around longer than antibiotics. She knows everything.”

  Eli pictured the woman squatting behind her desk, glow of a computer screen in her glasses. “I’m curious, Meg. What surgical specialty did the nurse cover other than general surgery?”

  He could hear taps on the keyboard.

  “General surgery and—OB/GYN.”

  Eli set his cruise control near eighty and fell in behind an eighteen-wheeler that cleared their side of the interstate. “If I remember correctly, there’s one specialty that all three victims have in common.”

  Meg was apparently waiting for the answer.

  “OB/GYN,” Eli said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe that’s the connection.”

  “So they all worked in the same specialty. What of it?”

  “I need to get in the OR database,” Eli said. “Search for operations they may have had in common.”

  “Is that separate from the doctors’ files?”

  “Yes, I think so. I’ll be there in less than an hour. Think you can get us in?”

  “I can try,” Meg said. “If not, I’ll find out how from the Conch.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  When Eli arrived at the morgue, he found Meg sitting at the computer. She had pulled a white dry-erase board next to her desk, written the names of the three victims, and next to each name their identifying organs:

  Bone

  Tongue

  Stomach

  This ID scheme fit with the method used in clinical medicine, referring to the patient by their diseased organ rather than by name: the gallbladder in room six, pancreatitis in nine.

  Eli turned a chair backward, straddled it, and tilted toward the screen.

  Meg greeted him. “Where you been?”

  Eli released a pent-up breath. He had driven a straight shot from Henry’s institution, staring absently at the road, preoccupied with the series of murders, trying to discern a pattern.

  “I went to see my brother.”

  Meg turned toward Eli. He did not look away from the computer screen.

  “How is Henry?”

  Eli shook his head. “Not good.”

  Meg already knew how dedicated Eli was to his brother. Each other’s only close family, Eli was Henry’s sole financial and emotional support.

  “You’re doing all you can, Eli. The place may not be pretty, but they will take care of him. They will.”

  Eli nodded, confirming her words and moving on.

  “What are we looking at?”

  Meg slid the mouse and advanced to the next screen. “You asked for the OR log files. You got ’em.”

  “The Conch-inator rocks.”

  “She has her moments.”

  Eli studied the web page and pointed to a section of the screen. “Go to Operating Room Register.”

  The next window presented the search options, by Specialty, Operation, or Personnel.

  Under Personnel, eight empty fields appeared in which to enter the names of OR personnel.

  “What is this database used for?” Meg asked.

  “Quality control. Allows you to search outcomes based on different OR teams.”

  “Outcomes?”

  “Say that the infection rate of a certain procedure starts to rise. They can search for common denominators within the teams. Maybe someone who’s breaking sterile technique—or carries staph in their nose.”

  Meg fake gagged. “Hospitals are nasty.”

  “Yeah,” Eli said and turned to the white board. “Enter the three names. See what happens.”

  Meg started typing. “Any certain order?”

  “No, it shouldn’t matter. The computer will search for all operations that have those three in common.”

  After typing the third name, Meg looked at Eli.

  “Hit enter.”

  A prompt appeared asking for dates of inclusion.

  “How far back?” Meg asked.

  “I don’t know, say, six months.”

  A list of operations filled the screen, listed by date, type of procedure, and surgeon. Meg scrolled to the end of the list. Twenty-three operations in all.

  “S
o what does this mean?”

  “It means that these three employees, all of whom are now dead, were assigned to work together on twenty-three operations over the past six months.”

  They read through the list. Orthopedic operations such as hip replacements and spinal fusions. General surgery cases, mainly laparoscopic cholecystectomies. And gynecologic procedures including cervical biopsy, D and Cs, hysterectomies.

  “How does this help, Eli? They worked at the same hospital, with some of the same patients. So what?”

  “We’re looking for a connection, Meg. You got a better idea?”

  She gestured toward the sheet-covered lump lying on her autopsy table. “Yeah, I could take care of my customer. He’s been waiting patiently through all this.”

  “I forgot about him,” Eli said. “I guess you never get lonely down here.”

  “Never.”

  Eli turned toward the gurney. “Just a few more minutes, sir. She’ll be right with you.”

  Meg turned his face back toward the screen. “Very funny.”

  Eli grabbed the mouse, clicked at random on one of the operations listed. A spinal fusion.

  The screen gave a detailed account of the procedure. The patient’s name was listed at the top of the page followed by all the personnel involved. Eli found the names of the anesthesiologist, the anesthetist, and the nurse. Also listed were the circulating nurse, orthopedic resident, medical student, and, of course, the attending surgeon.

  “That confirms they worked together,” Meg said. “But what does it tell us about why they were murdered?”

  “I don’t know,” Eli said, “we’re looking for something unusual.” He read information on the screen that included start and end time of the operation, designation of infection risk, and any complications that occurred. The spinal operation lasted one hundred and thirty-four minutes, was a clean case, no complications.

  Eli returned to the previous screen and scrolled up to the top of the page Meg had initially displayed.

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Wait a minute, what?” Meg asked.

  Eli waved the cursor over the most recent operation and underlined the surgeon’s name, Liza French. The operation was marked with a red exclamation point. Eli double-clicked it.