Panacea Read online

  Henniger was nodding. She held up a slip of paper. “That matches with a call from a Miriam Brody in Williamsburg. But she says his name is Chaim Brody and he’s her son.”

  “Chet … Chaim … close enough.”

  “The wrinkle is she’s Orthodox and it’s Friday and she wants to get him in the ground before sundown. You ready to release him?”

  Laura nodded. “We’ve got all the tissue we need. If it’s okay with the PD, we can let him go as soon as she gives us an official ID. I’m ready to release Tommy Cochran too.”

  “The MVA boy. Good.”

  “I found a strange connection between Brody and the Cochran child.”

  She gave her chief a quick rundown of her conversation with Tommy’s mother.

  “Odd,” said Henniger. “Very odd.”

  “I feel I should write it up for the record—for future reference and so the connection doesn’t get lost—but I don’t know where to file it.”

  “Attach it as an addendum to both reports. By the way, what about the burn victim?”

  “Beyond the fact that he and Brody are connected by arson, tattoos, and indeterminate cause of death, all we have is the name on the rental agreement. We’ll have to wait on Hanrahan’s dental records to confirm the ID.”

  “Put a rush on those. I want this tied up ASAP.”

  Laura wondered if they’d ever fully tie up these cases.

  3

  Nelson read the newspaper article and wanted to scream.

  Before shuttling back from D.C., he’d wrangled a same-day appointment with a surgeon in Forest Hills who had been doing clandestine freelance work for the Company for decades. She was mostly retired now, but liked to keep her hand in. He’d said he just needed her to take a quick look at the mole on his neck to see if he should be concerned.

  Forest Hills was a short ride from LaGuardia and he’d arrived a little early. To pass the time in her empty waiting room he’d picked up a copy of Newsday lying on an end table. He was glad he did, but almost wished he hadn’t.

  Nothing surprising in the first few pages: Police were investigating the suspicious suicide of a local woman named Christy Pickering, the author of some new bestseller called Kick was speaking at the Massapequa library, blah-blah-blah until he’d come to the photo.

  This nobody county deputy medical examiner, this Laura Fanning, had released a photo of the second dead panacean, Brody. The man in the photo looked thinner and frailer than the Brody he’d seen in the trailer, but fill out those gaunt cheeks and no question they were the same person. He didn’t know where she’d found it, what with his trailer burned to ashes.

  This was bad. Nelson didn’t know how many of Brody’s fellow panaceans knew him by sight, but if they did, they’d hightail it into hiding. The only thing worse would be publishing the tattoo on his back. Even panaceans who had never heard of Brody would know that tattoo. The result could mean a long, long time before Nelson tracked down another.

  A door opened at the end of the narrow waiting room and an elderly woman appeared. She motioned to him.

  “Come.”

  He entered an examining room where she indicated an odd-shaped table at its center.

  “Where is this mole?” she said in her French accent, so it came out Whair eez zis mole?

  Dr. Adèle Moreau was in her seventies if she was a day. Painfully thin with very short, almost mannish orange hair.

  “On my neck.” He’d removed his tie and now he pulled down the back of his collar. “Right there.”

  She adjusted an overhead light and stared.

  “Remove the shirts.”

  “Can’t you see it? It’s right there.”

  “It needs biopsy. You want blood on your shirt?”

  “Biopsy? Really?” He pulled off his dress shirt and T-shirt. “You’re going to do surgery right now?”

  “Just punch biopsy. Little piece. We send it out for a look.”

  “You really think it needs it?”

  “Mais oui.”

  He wasn’t too crazy about the certainty in her tone.

  He heard her rattling instruments behind him. “You have no jokes about my name?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Doctor Moreau—everybody makes the jokes.”

  “I apologize. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The Island of Doctor Moreau—a famous novel.”

  “I don’t read fiction. Made-up people, made-up events. Waste of time.”

  She tsked. “Quel dommage.”

  Let’s stick to me, he thought.

  “What do you—?”

  “Hush while I sterilize the skin.”

  He felt something cold and wet on his neck.

  “Hold still,” she said, then a sharp, stabbing pain.

  “Damn!” he cried, trying not to jump. “What did you do?”

  “I told you: biopsy.”

  “You ever hear of local anesthesia?”

  “That is for babies.”

  He turned and saw her dropping a tiny bit of bloody flesh into a specimen jar half filled with clear fluid.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Does not matter what I say, only what microscope say, n’est-ce pas?”

  She taped gauze over the biopsy site, then felt around his neck. As her questing fingers lingered in a spot, she made a hmmmm sound.

  “What?”

  “Feel here.”

  He reached up and pressed the area. “I don’t—”

  She guided his fingers. “Little lump, oui?”

  He felt it. Like a lima bean under the skin. “What—?”

  “A lymph node—enlarged lymph node. Get dressed.”

  His fingers lingered on the lump, then he pulled his undershirt back over his head.

  “But if you had to guess, could my mole be a—what do they call it?—a malignant melanoma?”

  “If it is not, I shall change my name to Anke and speak German only for the rest of my life.”

  Nelson felt a coldness seep through his stomach. A malignancy …

  “No, really.”

  “Really.” She began scribbling on a prescription pad. “Also I am sending you for chest X-ray.”

  “Why?”

  “You will want to see if it has spread.”

  He noted the “you” rather than “I” or “we.” Not her problem.

  “Why the chest? You didn’t even listen to my chest.”

  “It spreads to the lungs.”

  “The tumor?”

  “Of course the tumor. What else do we talk about?”

  “You’re that sure?”

  “The lungs are the Riviera of melanoma. An easy trip so it goes there whenever it can.” She tore off the script and handed it to him. “Go to any hospital or imaging center. No appointment. They will do this as a walk-in.”

  “But what if it hasn’t spread?”

  “That is good. Wide excision on your neck may give you cure.”

  “But—”

  She shoved the biopsy jar into his hands. “Take this to CIA lab. Much faster than commercial.”

  “But—”

  She held up a hand. “I can tell you no more because I know no more. We are finis.”

  She guided him to the waiting room and shut the door behind him. Josef Mengele had probably had a better bedside manner.

  Nelson stood in the close, empty space and took deep breaths to gather himself.

  Okay. If the mole was malignant, he’d deal with it. Do that “wide excision” she’d mentioned if it hadn’t spread—although he’d be damned if he’d let her touch him again. And if it had spread, well, medicine was doing amazing stuff with cancers these days.

  As he headed for the outside, his gaze fell on the copy of Newsday. He snatched it up and tucked it under his arm. Time to refocus on what was really important. That medical examiner … Laura Fanning … she’d gathered too much evidence that needed to be neutralized.

  And why did her name sound so dam
n familiar?

  As soon as he stepped outside he put in a call to Bradsher.

  4

  Laura looked up at the knock on her doorframe. Juan, one of the morgue attendants, stood there: dark, twenty-something, with one of those dorsal-fin hair combs.

  “Sorry to bother you, Doc,” he said.

  “What’s up?”

  He held up a leather belt. “Word came down that the family didn’t want two-oh-three’s clothes.”

  “Two-oh-three?”

  The attendants tended to refer to the cadavers by the number of their cooler locker.

  “Brody.”

  Chaim Brody’s mother and brother had come by to identify the body. Miriam Brody told her that Chaim had been disowned by his father for being gay and was unsuccessfully treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma—common with AIDS.

  “If that’s his,” she told Juan, “you can just toss it—or keep it if you like.”

  Some of the attendants weren’t squeamish about taking discards from the dead. Sometimes, when it came down to a choice between their closet and the landfill, their closet won.

  “I ain’t got no use for it, but as I pulled it out of the loops I noticed there’s something written on it.”

  That piqued her interest.

  “Let me see.”

  He handed it over. “On the inside.”

  A string of letters ran the length of the inner surface of the leather, vertically along the line of the belt. She held it up by the buckle and let it dangle.

  She turned it around for the attendant to see.

  “Mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head. “Just a bunch of letters.”

  She twisted it back toward her. Yes, just a bunch of letters, but somewhere in the back of her mind a little voice screamed CODE!

  Brody’s body was gone but the mystery of his death, and the mystery of the solution or elixir or whatever he gave Tommy Cochran, remained. Not to mention the disappearance of his AIDS, his lymphoma, and his sarcoma. She’d notified the police that she was releasing the body and the detective she spoke to said they’d been unable to develop any leads on who had torched the two growers’ digs.

  Still an open case—very open.

  “I’m going to keep this,” she said. “Might be evidence.”

  Juan shrugged and waved as he left. “All yours.”

  “Oh, and thanks for bringing it by.”

  He was gone but she heard a faint “De nada” from down the hall.

  She stared at the letters. Definitely a code. But why so repetitious? And why vertical?

  She rolled it up and stuck it in her shoulder bag.

  5

  Looking rather military—after all, he’d spent time in Iraq with the First Brigade of the 82nd Airborne—Bradsher stood before Nelson’s desk, giving his report.

  “As instructed,” he was saying, “we penetrated the medical examiner’s LAN. Wiped both Brody’s and Hanrahan’s tattoo images from the system. Same with the sheriff’s office. I should mention that this ME woman seems very interested in the tattoo. She’s accessed the Brody tattoo many times since loading it into the system.”

  “What’s her name again?”

  “Laura Fanning.”

  Again the feeling that he’d heard her name before.

  “What do we know about her?”

  Bradsher fiddled with his phone, then began reading: “Laura Fanning, age thirty-seven, divorced, one female child, age eight. Did freelance bioprospecting in Mexico and Central America after medical school, then married and took a pathology residency at NYU.”

  “Where’d she go to school?”

  “BYU, then Stritch Medical at Loyola in—”

  “Wait-wait! BYU? Is she from Utah?”

  Bradsher nodded as he stared at his phone. “Born and raised in SLC. Is that important?”

  Could it be her? Twenty years after turning his life upside down, was it possible she was back to complicate it again? He shook it off. Later …

  “Nothing. So you’ve seen to it that she won’t be accessing it again.”

  “Let’s hope not, but we can’t say for sure.”

  The faint buzz of relief Nelson had felt that the photo was gone dissipated like steam.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, there’s always the matter of a printout. And our other problem is that we don’t know where the tattoo photo originated. Did she use a department camera or her smartphone?”

  “I’d assume a department camera.”

  “That’s logical, sir, but the newer phones take high-res photos and are always close at hand, so it’s possible she used hers. The photo might still be on the camera’s SD card.”

  “Which will allow her to upload it again. Any suggestions?”

  “I’ve arranged for someone to visit the medical examiner’s premises tonight.”

  “Someone from the Company?”

  “Yes. Very competent. I’m thinking of having him bug her office while he’s there—in case she’s got any more surprises.”

  “Excellent. Do it.” This was why he liked Bradsher: thorough and efficient. “But what about the potential of photos on her phone?”

  “I wanted to discuss that with you. We could have someone steal it, make it look like a mugging.”

  That was always an option, and in this case it felt like a good one. Smartphones were a popular target.

  “Very well. But I’d rather not have the Company involved in that.”

  “I agree, sir. One of our own?”

  “Yes. Find a brother who’s fit for the job.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “And speaking of photos, the one of Brody in the paper looked cropped.”

  Bradsher nodded. “Good eye, sir. I saw the original on Fanning’s computer. He was with a native woman.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I saved it along with the others.”

  “Good. See if we can identify her, and where the photo was taken.”

  “You think she might be connected to the panaceans?”

  “Well, look at it this way: He appears sick in the photo, and yet he looked perfectly healthy when we cornered him. Remarkable improvement between the time the photo was taken and Wednesday night. It’s circumstantial, but enough to make me suspicious.”

  “Then she might be a panacean as well.”

  Nelson nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Perhaps Brody’s gateway into the cult.”

  Bradsher’s expression turned grim. “I’ll get right on it.”

  6

  When Bradsher was gone and Nelson was alone, he slumped back in his chair. It had taken every iota of will to stay focused on the problems at hand. The headache had calmed since this morning—still there, but bearable. The potential time bomb lurking on his neck kept intruding on his thoughts, usurping his concentration. He could almost feel it growing. He knew that wasn’t possible, of course, but still …

  He touched the bandage. Tender. With or without anesthesia, the biopsy spot would be sore now. But Dr. Moreau couldn’t be bothered at the time. Called him a baby. Snail-slurping bitch.

  But why had she been so quick to order a chest X-ray? Did she really think…?

  He didn’t want to borrow trouble. He couldn’t be seriously ill. But he’d gone to Forest Hills Hospital from her office anyway and presented her prescription to the radiology department. After a short wait they’d done the chest X-ray—turn this way, hold your breath, turn that way, hold your breath, good-bye. No one would tell him anything about the results. Call your doctor tomorrow.

  But she wasn’t his doctor. No way was that icy bitch his doctor. Still, she’d ordered the test, so the results would go to her.

  He’d then called Dr. Forman down at Walter Reed to tell him he’d had the mole biopsied and was sending the tissue down to have him do whatever they do to biopsies. Forman had tried to slough him off, saying he didn’t take private patients, but Nelson had pushed him hard, arguin
g that he was the one who had spotted it and the least he could do was expedite the diagnosis. Forman finally relented. As soon as Nelson had reached his office, he overnighted the specimen jar to Bethesda.

  So now all he could do was wait. And while he was waiting, he could check out this Laura Fanning. The hunt would provide a little distraction from his health concerns.

  With the help of the Internet it took only a few minutes to access the right issue of the Salt Lake City Tribune from twenty years ago—he would never forget that date—and the story about a pedestrian run down while crossing South State Street.

  Yes! The driver’s name was Laura Fanning. No picture of her but her age was given as seventeen. Fast forward to Laura Fanning, MD, with the Suffolk County ME. Same year of birth.

  No doubt about it: The driver who’d hit Uncle Jim and left him partially paralyzed, ending his career, had performed the autopsies on the two panaceans Nelson had been chasing.

  How does something like this happen? How did—?

  His cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but the 347 area code was local. Could be Queens … Forest Hills …

  His finger shook as he tapped the talk button.

  “Allo? This is Agent Fife?”

  “Speaking, Doctor Moreau.”

  “You recognize my accent, oui?”

  “Of course. You’re calling to inquire how my neck is feeling?”

  “Why would I do that? It is only a biopsy. No, I have your X-ray report.”

  So soon?

  “And?”

  “Not good. The tumor has spread to your lungs.”

  Nelson repressed a sudden urge to vomit.

  “H-how bad?”

  “Any spread to the lungs is bad. You must immediately see an oncologist.”

  “Can you…?” His thoughts were scattering in all directions. “Can you fax me the report?”

  “I have it in email. I can forward.”

  Email … that explained how she’d got it so fast. Those radiologists probably took one look and sent it right out. He gave her his private email address—he didn’t want to use the Company’s.

  “Be aware, Mister Fife, that if it is in the lungs it is in other places as well. Good-bye.”

  The words themselves might have conveyed concern had they not been delivered in a better-have-that-taillight-fixed tone.