Panacea (9 page)

He wished this was a Saturday instead of a school day. He'd zip over to Eddie Roe's house and show him that the old Tommy was back and they could go biking together again. Maybe he'd head over there anyway. Leave him a note for when he got home from school. He imagined Eddie's face when he read that Tommy Cochran had ridden by for a visit.

He made a hard left off the curb and didn't see the truck until its horn blasted in his ear.

 

5

Deputy Lawson, as was his wont lately, had shown up at the morgue looking for information on the second grower. Gowned and bootied, he'd arrived, manila folder in hand, just as Laura was finishing the postmortem.

“Me again,” he said, adjusting his surgical cap around his ears. “I'm very interested in this guy.”

Yes. Phil. Again. She hoped he wasn't interested in her as well, because he was destined for disappointment.

Not her type. Sooooo not her type. The neck popping only made it worse. The thought of spending the rest of her life hearing that dull
pop!
every few minutes …

“Well, did you find a—?”

“Don't ask.”

“Aw, no.”

“Aw, yes. As healthy as can be.”

She felt his frustration, because it mirrored her own. She'd just finished dictating her preliminary findings. The voice recognition software would have transcribed it into her computer by now. She'd edit it later.

“But he was a pot grower, a druggie. He had to—”

“
Used
to be a druggie,” Laura said. “And a big-time user at that.”

“How big?”

“Very big. A ton of old track marks, and look at this.”

She took a probe and stuck it in the corpse's left nostril. It came out the right.

Phil gave an uneasy laugh. “I'll be.” Then he popped his neck.

“This was one hard-core user with emphasis on the past tense:
was
. All the scars are old. We tapped his bladder and ran a quick seven-drug screen on his urine. Not a trace of anything. But that's not the real problem. What's got me stumped is that hard-core IV users ruin their veins, yet his show no sign of sclerosis. And they inevitably pick up a variety of infections along the way, like hep-B, hep-C, HIV that cause all sorts of organ damage, especially to the liver. This guy's liver is like a baby's. I haven't seen the slides yet, but I bet they'll be clean.”

The deputy was looking a little seasick. “And the rest of him?”

“Just like the previous. No apparent cause of death beyond cardiac arrest of unknown etiology.”

“Don't you find that just a little strange?”

Laura had to laugh. “A little? I find it a
lot
strange. I've never seen an adult body with perfect internal organs. There's always
something
wrong. But to find two adult males—drug growers to boot—back to back with pristine organs?” She shook her head. “Uh-uh. That's … that's almost science fiction. That's getting into
X-Files
territory.”

An exaggeration … she hoped.

“And those tattoos…”

“Right. I've got something on those.” She whipped the sheet back over the corpse. “My office.”

After shedding their protective wear, she led him up to the top floor. A hand-lettered sign on the wall next to her office door read
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE.
An old joke, but she'd left it there because it was so apropos.

“Wow,” Phil said, staring at her array of tropical plants as he entered. She'd never invited him up before. “That sign isn't kidding.”

Half a dozen lush ferns of varying sizes—
Achrostichum, Dicksonia,
and other species—rimmed her office. Her window faced east, allowing the plants to feast on the morning sun and bathe in filtered light the rest of the day. Dr. Henniger, the CME, liked the department on the warm side year-round, so all Laura had to do was keep the plants watered and they grew like crazy.

“They're all from Mesoamerica,” she said as she moved behind her desk and awaited the inevitable question.

“Where's that?”

Right on cue.

“Roughly central Mexico down to Costa Rica.”

She motioned to the chair on the far side of her desk. As Phil doffed his Stetson and seated himself, she wiggled her mouse to wake her computer.

“One of the assistants here is a graphic artist on the side, works with photos … manipulates them every which way. I gave him a couple of high-res shots of the burn vic's back to see if he could clean them up some way that would bring out the tattoo.” She opened a desktop folder and clicked on the first jpeg icon. “Here's the best he could do.”

A rectangle of burned skin appeared with the tattoo vaguely visible. She clicked the
NEXT
arrow and the same image appeared except that the tattoo had been outlined in yellow, showing the snake, the staff, and the comet. It also showed a horizontal line through the middle.

Next she opened a photo of the second vic's back. No photo tricks needed on this one: all the same elements, except the line here was angled, running through four o'clock and ten o'clock.

“Well,” Phil said, leaning forward for a closer look, “that clinches it, doesn't it.”

“Something is certainly clinched,” Laura said. “But just what remains to be seen.”

A neck pop. “The killings … they're related.”

“I prefer to say ‘deaths' for the time being. But I don't think there's any doubt about a relation. But what do these tattoos mean? And why the bisecting lines at different angles?”

“Who knows? Maybe it's a rank insignia.”

Laura doubted that—tattoos were not easily changed—but didn't press the point.

“A gang tat that's a variant on the caduceus? Don't they go more for bloody daggers and skulls with flames shooting from the eye sockets?”

“Well, yeah. Usually.”

“The caduceus reference implies healing and … oh, God.” A thought hit her like a punch.

“What?”

“Caduceus … healing … and the two healthiest corpses I've ever seen. There's a crazy symmetry to it.”

“I'm not following.”

Just as well that he wasn't … too crazy.

“I'm rambling. Don't pay any attention.” She moused up another photo, this one of the vic's left palm—the one with
536
drawn on it. “Does 536 mean anything in gang terms?”

“Not that I know of.” He leaned closer. “A tattoo
?
”

“No. Done with a Sharpie. Shortly before his death, from what I can tell.”

He shook his head. “Doesn't ring any bells. But I can look into it. In the meantime, I've got a present for you.”

He opened the manila folder he'd brought with him and handed her an eight-by-ten color photo. It showed a bare-chested man and a short, dark woman standing before a wall of dense, lush greenery.

“Where did you get this?”

“Believe it or not, the vic had a fireproof lockbox. The arson guys found it in what was left of his bedroom. This was inside it. The original is out for fingerprinting. If our guy's in the system, we can ID him.”

“Just this? No insurance policy or birth certificate?”

Lawson shook his head. “Not a single identifying document.”

She stared at the photo again. “Must have been very important to him.”

“I'll say. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but that sure as hell looks like our second vic in better times.”

Laura nodded. The facial resemblance was remarkable, but …

“I wouldn't say ‘better.' He looks sick and wasted.”

Like someone with AIDS … because those sure looked like Kaposi's sarcoma spots on his chest.

Phil said, “I meant the living-and-breathing kind of better.”

Laura stared at the photo and felt her palms grow just a tiny bit sweaty. This was vic number two, no question. In the photo he appeared to be dying of AIDS. But the man in the cooler downstairs had been hale and healthy and carried none of the stigmata of the disease.

He'd been cured … healed. And his tattoo hinted at healing.

What was going on?

“You know something?” Phil said, looking around. “The plants in the picture sorta look like these.”

Laura snapped out of her mini daze and shifted her gaze from the man to the background.

“Good eye,” she told him. “A couple of them are the same.”

“I just wish we could identify the woman he's with. They look pretty chummy. She could give us the lowdown on him, I'll bet.”

Laura studied her. “She's Mayan.”

“Really? You mean like the ancient Mexican Mayans? I visited one of their pyramids on a side trip when I was in Cancun. How do you know?”

Because I'm half Mayan.

“I just know. Trust me on this.” She didn't want to get into her lineage.

“I didn't think they were around anymore.”

“They never went away.”

“They're still in Mexico?”

“Not Mexico—Mesoamerica.”

“Strange how things keep repeating themselves here.”

“More than strange. Downright eerie.”

A tap on her doorframe made her look up. A sixtyish woman stood there holding a folder. Highlighted hair in a short bob, face prematurely aged from sun exposure, she had a runner's physique with thin, tanned arms poking out of a sleeveless blouse.

Doctor Susan Henniger, Chief Medical Examiner for Suffolk County.

“Sorry to interrupt.”

Deputy Lawson, ever the gentleman, leaped to his feet. He knew the CME—he seemed to know everyone—and they exchanged a few pleasantries.

“I'm checking up on those two dead pot growers,” he told her, then popped his neck.

Henniger flinched. Obviously she'd never heard him do that.

“Oh, um … yes.” She turned to Laura. “Were you able to establish a cause of death on the second?”

“Same as the first, I'm afraid: extremely healthy and no detectable trauma.”

The chief ME's usually flat expression turned dour. “That's not acceptable.”

“I'm well aware of that. Let's hope the myocardium slides shed some light.”

“Yes, let's.”

She's ticked, Laura thought. She wants answers and I don't have them.

“In the meantime, we have a new arrival. I know you'd rather not do children but we have no one else available.”

Posting a child always got to Laura and she ducked it whenever possible.

“How old?”

“Eight. MVA.”

She shuddered—just a little—as she took the folder. Marissa's age. At least a car accident vic wouldn't be an involved case. Head or visceral trauma. A quick in and out.

Henniger added, “And besides, the mother asked for you.”

“What? Really? Why?”

“Haven't the faintest. At least the cause of death on
this
one won't stump you,” Henniger said pointedly, then turned and left.

Laura peeked inside the folder. Tommy Cochran? Why did that name sound familiar?

“A real sweetie, that one,” Phil remarked after Henniger was gone.

“She can't help it. It's not an easy job. Everyone wants a cause of death yesterday.”

“Or the day before,” Phil said. “Gotta get moving. Tell you what. Do me a favor: Scan that photo and see if you can pinpoint the location of the plants.”

Laura already knew it was taken on the Yucatán Peninsula, but she said nothing. Her office printer was a three-in-one, so she scanned the photo and returned it to Lawson.

“Great,” he said. “I'll crop the girl out and see if one of the papers'll run it. Maybe someone'll recognize him. And can I get copies of those tat photos? And the 536 on his palm? And a little case summary if you've got one. I'll need to show them to the gang task force. Maybe someone has seen something like them.”

“Sure. I'll email them.”

When he was gone, Laura returned to the folder on the young MVA vic. She read the name again.

Tommy Cochran … slowly it came to her. She did know a Tommy Cochran. She checked the address. Mastic. Yes, that would be about right.

When Marissa had first fallen ill, her initial diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis was soon proved wrong, but not before Laura met Tommy and his mother through a rheumatologist. Tommy's JRA had been well along by then.

She read further.

“… struck by a truck while riding a bicycle…”

Riding a bike? The Tommy Cochran she'd met couldn't even walk.

 

6

“I left the house and the panacean in your hands,” Nelson said, pacing his office. It looked much like Pickens's, only half the size. He fought to keep from screaming. “All evidence up in smoke: That is the protocol.”

He'd left for the airport first thing this morning, never imagining that the panacean's body hadn't burned.

Brother Bradsher stood by the window, hands in his pockets. “I'm well aware of that, sir. It's the worst imaginable luck. But what was I to do?”

Nelson had no answer for that. The early arrival of the fire trucks had left Bradsher no choice but to flee the scene.

“At least the plants were destroyed, right?”

Bradsher nodded. “Completely. They received the bulk of the accelerant.”

Good stuff, that accelerant. Burned hotter and cleaner than anything like it. A Chechen terrorist had developed it. The Company had disposed of the Chechen but kept his formula.

“Then we should be good. They may have the panacean's body but there's nothing to find there.”

“The ME working the cases has already matched the back tattoos.”

“But the first body was immolated.”

Brasher shrugged. “She managed.”

“You're so sure?”

“We're into her office computer. She has comparison photos.”