When you're young, you want to do everything together, when you're older you want to go everywhere together, and when you've been everywhere and done everything all that matters is that you're together.
Unknown
ePub
A4Chapter 29
I
had never been so cold in my life.I was lying on ice at the bottom of a deep, dark pond.
I wiggled my fingers to bring back feeling, fought to rise to the surface.
Too much resistance. Too far down.
I breathed in.
Dead fish. Algae. Things of the deep.
I spread my arms like a child doing a snow angel.
Contact.
I followed the contour with my hands.
A vertical rim with a rounded lip.
I explored the rim. Not ice. Metal, surrounding me like a coffin.
A tickle of recognition.
I took a deep breath. The stench of death and disinfectant. But the proportions were inverted. The odor of rotting flesh had the upper hand.
Refrigerated flesh. My heart shriveled.
Oh God!
I was lying on a gurney in the morgue cooler.
With the dead!
Oh my God!
How long had I been unconscious? Who had put me on the gurney?
Was that person still here?
I opened my eyes and raised my head.
Shards of glass blasted through my brain. My insides contracted.
I listened.
Silence.
I pushed to my elbows and blinked hard.
Inky black.
I rose to a sitting position, waited. Shaky, but no nausea.
My feet were dead weight. Using my hands, I drew my ankles to me and began rubbing. Slowly, feeling returned.
I listened for signs of activity outside the cooler.
Stillness.
I swung my legs over the edge and pushed off the gurney.
My knees were liquid, and I collapsed to the floor hard. Pain shot through my left wrist.
Damn!
My right hand came down on a rubber wheel.
I crawled on all fours and pulled myself up.
Another gurney.
I was not alone.
The gurney held a bag. The bag was occupied.
I recoiled from the corpse. My mouth felt dry. My heart pounded.
I turned and stumbled in the direction I thought the door should be.
Dear God, is there a handle on the inside? Do these things have handles on the inside? Let there be a handle on the inside!
I'd opened morgue coolers a thousand times, never noticed.
Trembling, I groped in the dark.
Please!
Cold, hard metal. Smooth. I moved along it.
Please! Let there be a handle!
I could feel myself weakening by the minute. I tasted bile, fought a tremor.
Years, decades, millennia later, my hand fell on it.
Yes!
I depressed the handle, pushed on the door. It opened with a soft whoosh. I peeked out.
On the light box, smoky gray organs and opaque bones, a glow-in-the dark portrait of a human being.
Autopsy room three, dimly lit.
Did the gurney behind me hold room three's recent occupant? Were we both put on ice by the same hand?
Leaving the door slightly ajar, I staggered to the gurney and unzipped the pouch. A slash of light fell across pasty white feet.
I twisted the toe tag, strained to read the name. The light was dim and the letters were not large.
RAM—
They swam in and out of focus like pebbles at the bottom of a stream.
I blinked.
RAMIR—
Fuzzy.
RAMIREZ.
The Guatemalan equivalent of Smith or Jones.
I worked my way down the gurney, unzipping as I went. At the head end, I pulled back the flap.
Maria Zuckerman's face was ghostly, the hole in her forehead a small black dot. Smears darkened the front of her clothing.
I lifted a hand. She was fully rigorous.
Shivering uncontrollably, I backed the length of the gurney, rezipping as I went.
Why?
Inane habit.
Opening the door with my bum, I backed into room three.
And felt cold steel pressed to the base of my skull.
'Welcome back, Dr. Brennan.'
I knew the voice.
'Thank you so much for saving us a trip.'
'Lucas?'
I could feel the front sight, the barrel, the hollow tube that could send a bullet screaming through my brain.
'You were expecting someone else?'
'Diaz.'
Lucas snorted.
'Diaz does what I tell him.'
My addled brain cells screamed one word.
Stall!
'You killed Maria Zuckerman. Why?'
My head was heavy, my tongue thick.
'And you had Ollie Nordstern killed.'
'Nordstern was a fool.'
'Nordstern was smart enough to uncover your dirty cell-harvesting game.'
A hitch in the breathing behind me.
Keep him talking!
'Was that also Patricia Eduardo's mistake? She learned what Zuckerman was up to?'
'You have been a busy girl.'
The room was spinning.
'You're a tough one, Dr. Brennan. Tougher than I anticipated.'
The gun barrel jabbed my neck.
'Back to bed.'
Another jab.
'Move.'
Don't get back in the cooler!
'I said move.' Lucas shoved me from behind.
No!
Die from a bullet or die God knows how in the cooler? I spun around Lucas and lunged for the door.
Locked!
I whirled to face my attacker.
Lucas had a Beretta pointed at my chest.
My vision blurred.
'Go ahead, Dr. Lucas. Shoot me.'
'Pointless.'
We glared at each other like wary animals.
'Why Zuckerman?' I asked.
Lucas splintered into four, recongealed.
'Why Zuckerman?'
Had I said that or only imagined it?
'You're very pale, Dr. Brennan.'
I blinked away a trickle of sweat.
'My distinguished colleague will keep you company.'
I struggled to understand his meaning.
'Why?' I repeated.
'Dr. Zuckerman couldn't be trusted. She was weak and prone to panic. Not like you.'
Why didn't Lucas shoot me?
'Did you kill your victims, Dr. Lucas? Or merely steal from their corpses?'
Lucas swallowed and his Adam's apple bounced like a kid on a bungee.
'We would have made a great contribution.'
'Or a black market killing.'
Lucas's lips curled in an imitation grin.
'You're even better than I thought. All right. I do love it when the gloves come off. Let's discuss science.'
'Let's.'
Stall!
'Your president has sent ES cell research back to the twelfth century.'
'He acted out of a commitment to scientific ethics.'
'Ethics?' Lucas laughed.
'Their argument has no validity?'
My thoughts were fragmenting. It was becoming harder and harder to think.
'That the retrieval of stem cells requires the killing of little babies? That stem cell researchers are no better than Mengele and his Nazi mutilators? You call that bullshit scientific ethics?'
Lucas waved his gun at a list of safety regulations taped to the wall.
'A blastocyst is no larger than the dot on that
'It is life.' My words sounded slurry and far away.
'Throwaways from fertility treatments. The discards of aborted pregnancies.'
Lucas's agitation was growing. I was doing this all wrong.
'Hundreds of thousands suffer from Parkinson's disease, diabetes, crushed spinal cords. We could have helped them.'
'That was Zuckerman's goal?'
'Yes.'
'And yours was to fatten your wallet.'
'Why not?' Spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth. 'Mechanical hearts. Pharmaceuticals. Patents on orthopedic hardware. A smart doctor can make millions.'
'By killing or just stealing embryos?'
Hadn't I asked that eons earlier?
'Zuckerman would have taken forever mixing eggs and sperm in her little dishes. My way was quicker. It would have worked.'
I wanted to close my eyes.
'You know it's over,' I said.
'It's over when I say it is.'
I wanted to stop hearing and sleep.
'Zuckerman's death will be solved. Her lab has been seized.'
'You lie.' The bottom rim of his eye twitched.
'Two detectives are on their way here. I was to meet them.'
Lucas wet his lips.
I hammered on, barely conscious of what I was saying.
'The truth is coming out about Chupan Ya. We're putting on record what happened to those poor people.' My knees began to buckle. 'And the blackmail's over. Diaz's involvement in the massacre has been exposed. He won't be your patsy anymore.'
Lucas's fingers tightened on the grip of the pistol.
'Jorge Serano is in custody. They'll cut him a deal and he'll give you up.'
A derisive laugh. 'Give me up for what, stealing a few dead embryos?'
'For murdering Patricia Eduardo.'
Lucas's gaze remained level and unblinking.
'That skeleton's long gone. Its identity will always be conjecture.'
'You forgot one thing, Dr. Lucas. Patricia's unborn baby. The baby you never allowed to draw breath.'
In the distance I heard the sound of a siren. Lucas's head jerked to the right, returned to me.
Keep talking!
'I found that baby's bones inside its murdered mother's clothing. Those bones will provide DNA.'
My voice was sounding farther away by the second.
'That DNA will match a sample provided by Patricia Eduardo's mother. That baby will reach out from death to seal your fate.'
Lucas's knuckles bulged white as his eyes went hard and black. The look of a sniper, a terrorist, or
a hostage taker who has been cornered. The realization there is no way out.
'In that case, I might as well settle up with you. What's one more?'
A veil fell across my vision. I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. I would die in a morgue in Guatemala.
Then, 'You are skilled and resourceful, Dr. Brennan. I admit that. Consider this your luckiest year.'
Through a black fog I saw Lucas take the gun from my chest, slide the barrel into his mouth, and pull the trigger.
