Public Anatomy Page 4

  Eli did not respond. The “robotic” portion of the operation is always under the surgeon’s control. To blame it on the instrument was most unusual. A shot at an easy way out of a career-threatening situation.

  “Any comments about that?”

  “I don’t have enough details to comment,” Eli said.

  The two men made eye contact with each other and nodded simultaneously. “There’s another little detail we haven’t told you yet.”

  Eli waited as Moustache checked his notes.

  “The name Liza French mean anything to you?”

  Eli clenched his jaw.

  “Doctor Liza French,” the agent added, as though the prefix was needed to jog Eli’s memory.

  Eli knew she had recently taken a position at Gates Memorial. He had kept up with advances in her robotic surgery research, but had not seen her again in nearly ten years since they were interns together. He had tried not to think of her.

  “You think there’s some connection between us?”

  “If you say so, doc. All we know is she personally asked us to notify you.”

  “Why me?”

  “You know why.”

  Eli didn’t want to hear this again. How just weeks ago he’d exposed the corrupt company, Regency Biotech International, while running from an ill-conceived police search that pinned him as the main murder suspect. What they didn’t know was that he needed to take care of his institutionalized brother, work on rehabilitating his hand, and land a steady job as a surgeon in this town.

  “Frankly, doc, you don’t have much of a job anymore.”

  Maybe they did know.

  “You can’t operate—”

  “Hey,” Eli said, raising his left hand, a fresh scar down the length of his forearm. He pointed in the direction of the operating room where he had delivered the injured boy, “Did you see?”

  “Okay, let’s put it this way. You can’t operate on people who actually consent to your operating on them.” He cleared his throat. “You’re working shift-to-shift in an ER out in the, how you say it? Boondocks?”

  Eli thought about the previous night’s call. Waterpiking maggots seemed preferable to getting involved in this mess. Especially since his previous foray into the dark side of medicine had gotten him shot at, sliced open, and stabbed.

  “We’ll put you on a steady income, with benefits. And health insurance.” Moustache gestured to Eli’s hand. “Which it looks like you could use about now.”

  That got Eli’s attention. He had been paying for his rehab out-of-pocket. But he remained silent, wondering what else they had to offer.

  “We’re being gentle here. We have ways of requiring you to assist us if you prefer we open that can of worms.” The big man sneered, proud of using such a clever expression.

  “All you’ve told me is there have been two deaths during surgery by the same surgeon. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “You seem to be able to figure out these tricky little situations.” They got up to leave. “We’ll be in touch.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Police detective Nate “The Lip” Lipsky got the call soon after he sat down for his first cup of coffee. He liked to sit at his desk a few minutes each morning and think about the previous day and the day ahead. A Memphis homicide investigator, he enjoyed this brief time of humaneness before his day became veritably inhumane. He needed his coffee this morning, craved it.

  He chewed the first few sips, an act intended to activate his taste buds and scrape off the caffeine receptors. He’d come home late the night before after investigating a potential homicide that turned out to be a heat-related death behind a Dumpster on Poplar Avenue. He drank four beers, watched a Taxi rerun and an old episode of Kojak, and fell asleep in his recliner. Woke at two thirty and couldn’t go back to sleep until thirty minutes before his alarm clock screeched, at which time, of course, he was sleeping like a baby.

  His desk phone rang and he grabbed it, not wanting to suffer another shrill ring.

  “It’s too damn early.”

  “Good morning to you, Nate.”

  The only person who ever called him by his first name was Phil Doster, the officer who delivered assignments like a warm batch of glazed doughnuts. Lipsky didn’t much like the name Phil or the fact that Doster’s voice had never lowered, like he’d skipped puberty altogether.

  “Got a homicide for you down on Second.”

  “You’ll have to sell it better than that, Phil. Homicide these days means heat-fried brains.”

  “Workers found the body strung up in an old cotton warehouse.”

  Lipsky took a gulp of brew; the luxury of sipping was gone. “I could’ve tolerated your whiny ass much better if you’d called after this cup of coffee.”

  Like a schoolgirl, Phil said, “I’m sorry, Nate.”

  “Strung up?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they said.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Couple of patrol officers. They’re on the scene now.”

  Downtown Memphis was coming alive with steady but not yet congested traffic. Lipsky drove past the Front Street Deli. A couple at retirement age emerged with tall cups of coffee-to-go. The woman wore a camera around her neck. Tourists headed to Graceland, or Sun Studio, or maybe to catch the Peabody ducks, unaware that a few blocks away, a body was “strung up.”

  For a homicide detective in Memphis, there was always business somewhere, and lately business was booming. A bump in violent crime during the hottest part of the summer was to be expected, whether in Memphis or Boston or Wichita. But this heat wave had been extreme. Temps over 100 degrees for days in a row. And not that dry heat like out West. Yesterday hit a dripping 104.

  Violence wasn’t occurring in only the bad parts of town, either. A housewife in Central Gardens stabbed her neighbor with an ice pick because she wouldn’t let her borrow a couple of eggs. Ice pick injuries were way up, a sign of the times. Homemakers were filling Tupperware bowls with water and freezing them for extra ice. Then they’d find some rusty old ice pick in the back of the drawer to bust up the bowl-sized blocks. Ice picks lying around are a dangerous thing, Lipsky thought. They’re sharp and thin, and a mild-mannered housewife can drive one six inches to the hub.

  All heat-related deaths had to be evaluated for potential homicide, a tricky endeavor since heatstroke left no external marks. Most likely, the guy found under the bridge or the old woman alone in her house was a heat death—but maybe they were popped on the head or poisoned or stabbed with an ice pick, leaving a wound no larger than a pimple.

  Lipsky had driven this route so many times he no longer noticed the old warehouses that used to be the centerpiece of the world’s cotton market. He passed an historic warehouse with the painted letters “F. G. Barton” fading into aged brick. As a child he’d watched barges float mountains of white bales down the river toward New Orleans and the Gulf. So much had changed since then. Cotton was traded electronically now, phantom bales floating the Internet, with the old warehouses a decaying reminder of the city’s past.

  Halfway down Cotton Row, two squad cars, each with strobing blue lights, were parked on the sidewalk in front of a slender brick building with a rusted-out garage door. Lipsky pulled to the curb and stepped from the car. As if from nowhere, a disheveled man in a tattered goose down vest and no shirt was all but in his face.

  “There’s deadness in there, I’m telling you. Deadness.”

  The man’s breath reeked of decay.

  “Get back,” Lipsky ordered. “Unless you want me to lock you away.”

  The man took a step back, and Lipsky saw that he wore army fatigue pants and running shoes likely plundered from the garbage.

  “I saw it. In the eyes.”

  The man stretched his arms to both sides and gazed trance-like toward the sky, as if he was a street preacher delivering an end-of-the-world message.

  “The world is on fire.”

  Then he looked directly at Lipsky and started w
alking backward.

  “It’s here. The burn is finally come.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lipsky felt his heart rate slow as the man walked away. He’d experienced abrupt street confrontations many times before and was surprised that this time he’d let his safety zone be breached. One of the police officers approached him.

  “Sorry about that, detective. That old geezer’s been hanging around trying to get a look.”

  Lipsky recognized the officer. “Didn’t bother me, Riley. What you got?”

  A large, metal door that opened from the bottom made up the front wall of the warehouse. They entered through a single door off to the side. Lipsky adjusted his eyes to the only light streaming in from two corner windows placed high on opposite walls. Floating dust reflected the two columns of light that converged mid-room on their subject, a suspended body, arms out to the side, head tilted back at an unnatural angle.

  Officer Riley flipped on his flashlight and ran it across a large metal beam. From it, a turnbuckle held heavy chains and two taut leather straps that formed an inverted V and looped under the victim’s arms. The body was suspended by an old cotton scale. An orange lever had come to rest at 175 pounds.

  “Now that we know what he weighs,” Lipsky said, “what else can you tell me?”

  “No forced entry,” Riley said. “No sign of a struggle.”

  “How long he’s been here?”

  “Couple of workers came in an hour ago. Said they hadn’t been inside the warehouse in months but came in this morning to retrieve some stored equipment.”

  “What did they know?”

  “Not a lot. Saw the body. Called nine-one-one from a cell phone.”

  “Got numbers for them in case we need to talk?”

  “Of course. Both the cell and the company they work for.”

  The second officer, quiet until now, whispered to his partner, “And the fresh blood?”

  Lipsky knew the guy was a rookie. After twenty-two years on the force, he could spot them day one.

  “Speak up,” Lipsky told him. “No secrets here.”

  “We don’t know what to make of it,” Riley said. He shined the flashlight on the floor beneath the corpse’s hanging feet.

  “Tell you what,” Lipsky said, “I can’t see shit in here.” He turned around. “Does that big door open?”

  After Riley released a metal latch along the floor, he and the new recruit strained to lift the rusty door and get it started rolling up and back into its frame. It made a terrible racket, screeching and bucking as though it hadn’t been opened in decades.

  For moral support, Lipsky pushed up with one hand. As the door gained momentum, its weight carried it the last few feet. Light flooded the room. The opening faced west toward the Mississippi, and traffic on Second Avenue seemed only a few feet away. The body hung in full view from the street.

  “We thought about opening it but didn’t want a bunch of rubber-necking.”

  Lipsky turned toward the body. “They’ll get over it.”

  What had first appeared as an indistinct figure suspended in midair was now visible as a young male, mid-twenties, wearing a stylish short-sleeved shirt. A gold chain hugged the man’s neck. By the way his head flopped back, his neck appeared broken. His right tennis shoe and sock were missing, the pants leg of his blue jeans ripped up to the knee.

  “This is what we wanted you to see,” the officer said and pointed with his flashlight to the victim’s foot. Blood had dried between the toes and pooled on the concrete below. A footstool sat beside the blood. Lipsky imagined the killer using it to position the body, then cover his tracks. On top of the stool, as if on display, was a piece of bone. Lipsky squatted like a baseball catcher and studied it. The bone was oddly shaped, like a little boat, but cut in half, exposing the spongy marrow inside.

  Lipsky turned his head toward the officers. “What the hell?”

  “That’s what we thought,” the rookie said.

  Lipsky studied the foot a little closer. A clean, horizontal slash had been made in the skin, leaving a small cavity inside the tissue where the bone had been extracted. Next to the bone lay a square piece of paper. Without picking it up, Lipsky could see that the paper was coarse, thicker than typing paper. Sketched on it was a small oval object cut into two pieces. A quick glance at the piece of bone revealed an exact likeness. Even Lipsky could tell that the rendering was of artistic quality.

  Lipsky stood up. His back popped, his hamstring started to cramp, and he felt light-headed. Sleeping in a recliner after a few beers was not as kind to him as it used to be. He closed his eyes to find balance.

  “You okay?” Riley asked.

  Lipsky opened his eyes. “Damn heat’s getting to me.”

  “Weather Channel says it’s the worst heat wave to hit the Mid-South since they been keeping records,” the rookie said.

  Lipsky felt a twinge of nausea. “Thanks for telling me.”

  A car horn blew on Riverside Drive. Lipsky looked up to see cars at a standstill in both directions as drivers gawked at the body. On the river just beyond the traffic, two guys on the deck of a tugboat passed binoculars back and forth.

  The rookie stepped into the street to start traffic flowing again. His complex arrangement of hand signals looked as if he was guiding aircraft into a hangar.

  Riley peered at the bone. “What do you think?”

  Lipsky shook his head. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to string this poor bastard up like that.”

  “And the foot?”

  “Hell, if I know. A bone cut out and put on display for us? Even took the time to draw the damn thing.”

  “Like the perp’s trying to tell us something.”

  Lipsky turned toward the street. Despite the rookie’s efforts, the traffic was barely moving. A collection of boats had now gathered along the waterfront.

  Lipsky circled behind the victim and noticed a lump in the man’s back pocket. Riley handed him a pair of gloves. Lipsky manipulated the wallet out of the pocket and opened it. The gloves were too big for his stubby fingers and the extra folds of latex made it difficult to remove the driver’s license. He read the victim’s name. The date of birth indicated that he would have turned thirty in three months. His address was only three streets over from Lipsky’s home in Midtown.

  There were two credit cards, an old Blockbuster card, and a photograph of an attractive young couple lying in a pile of leaves. Lipsky slid the photo back in its slot and removed a business card.

  BOARD OF CERTIFIED REGISTERED NURSE ANESTHETISTS (CRNA)

  He flashed the card toward Riley. “This guy’s a nurse anesthesia whatchamacallit. Probably works at the medical center.” Lipsky studied the body again. “He’s the one asleep now.”

  “We need to cover the entrance,” Riley said. “The forensic investigation will take a while. By then, we’ll have a mob out front.”

  With Riley’s help, Lipsky pulled on the metal door from the outside. It slid down easily this time and banged into the concrete. Behind them, someone said, “The city’s dying.” The street person had returned, arms spread wide, and way too close.

  Lipsky stepped back as both officers closed in on the man.

  “We’re all going to burn,” the man said. “Then the rains will come and wash it all away.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Victorian Village is a small group of unoccupied museum-like mansions from the 1800s nestled between the rough side of Jefferson Street and the bad side of Washington Avenue. Interrupted wrought iron fences separate this shaded, otherworldly place from the aimless foot traffic milling about its borders at all hours. Complete with pre-Civil War accessories such as stables and slave quarters, most of the mansions have been turned into museums offering guided tours and gift shops. Gardens with picturesque fountains are popular locations for summer weddings. One of the houses supported a tower on the roof so that its original owner, a merchant, could watch his supply boats drifting in from the Mississippi Rive
r.

  Although Eli had never entered the village grounds, he was familiar with the location of the Victorian-era mansions. For three years while attending the University of the Mid-South Medical School, he lived one street over in a medical fraternity house on Jefferson. The morning sun had begun to bake the pavement as Eli parked his car along the curb on Adams.

  Eli admired the three-story Victorian mansion belonging to Dr. Liza French, the only privately owned mansion in Victorian Village in which the owner took residence. The house was unique within the village, its exterior resembling Italian Villa architecture with arched windows and a stone block stucco façade.

  At five minutes past eight on a Tuesday morning, Eli assumed she would be home. The federal agents had assured him that Dr. French’s medical office was closed and her hospital privileges suspended until further notice. He delivered three loud raps on a lion’s head door knocker and waited.

  A few seconds later, he saw the curtain of a floor-to-ceiling window part briefly and then close. A young woman opened the door. She wore a button-down white shirt and black leather skirt well above her knees, which showed off her striped see-through hose. She was barefoot. Her skin was an exotic deep caramel brown, a mixture of black, Creole, and—based on the way she snarled at him—witch.

  “Did you knock on this door?”

  Eli looked at her as though the answer was obvious.

  “I know who you looking for, my dear.” She stepped out from the threshold, cupped her wrist around Eli’s arm and turned him back toward the street. “But it’s much too early. Go home, or wherever it is you go, and come back later. Much later.”

  Out of courtesy or politeness or the firm cadence of her leather-skirted hip bumping against his, Eli let her escort him until they were halfway to his car. Then he stopped her.

  “This is very important.”

  She smiled, bumped his leg with her knee. “It’s always important,” she said, as though an unexpected visit to this address was not the least bit unusual. “Believe me, I know.”

  She tugged his arm again toward his car. Eli heard a knock against one of the windows, and he turned to see Liza French standing behind upstairs glass. Dressed in workout clothes, she drank from bottled water, acknowledged Eli, and closed the drapes.