The Killing Harvest

by Don Donaldson

  The six-story health sciences library was perched on ten tall cement piers with a disconcerting amount of space between them, as if Memphis wasn’t in a major earthquake zone. Access from the street was in the back, through a foyer that also served as the library’s smoking lounge, so as John and Sarchi waited for the elevator they were bathed in the effluvium from the cigarette of a thin woman reading a paperback.

  When they had reached the reading room on the second floor, they went immediately to the computers, where Sarchi gave John a quick lesson on how to search the MEDLINE database. They agreed Sarchi would check everything from 1990 to the present and John would check from 1980 to 1990.

  In about thirty minutes they were finished. They found that Latham had a long-standing interest in myelin, the material that insulates nerve fibers. He had also dabbled in studies of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s diseases with a variety of collaborators. More recently, after joining the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt medical school in Nashville, he’d worked with a biochemist there named Timmons. Together they had published a series of papers dealing with the molecular biology of myelin protein expression. Three years ago, Latham moved to Westbank Medical. Interestingly, although he’d published at least two papers a year for nearly two decades, there was nothing listed for the last three years. A gap that could probably have been filled with papers on his treatment of paralyzed kids had he chosen to write them.

  “I don’t feel any closer to what he’s hiding,” Sarchi said on the way to the car.

  “We’ve just located some building blocks,” John replied. “Patience is more than a virtue in a detective. It’s a requirement.”

  “What now?”

  “I’ll have to think about it. I’ve got some errands to run before my shift starts. Maybe something will occur to me while I’m doing that.”

  Parked out in front of Sarchi’s house, Sarchi could tell that John was apprehensive about parting. “The police can’t protect you twenty-four hours a day, but in the future, if you see anyone around your house you don’t know, call the south precinct and have a car sent over to check things out. I’ll alert everyone there to give any call from you the highest priority they can.”

  Sarchi agreed to call immediately if anything seemed suspicious. In the morning, Sarchi was to make another run at the computer expert, and they would meet at one o’clock for lunch at the Barbeque Place.

  They hadn’t advanced their investigation to any significant degree, but as she watched John drive off, Sarchi felt considerably better than she had earlier. So much so that after determining that there were no more anonymous messages waiting in her hospital e-mail account, she was able to put her troubles far enough out of mind to peruse several days’ worth of caver’s digests with real interest.

  She’d been home about forty-five minutes when the phone rang.

  “This is Doctor Sam Brookings,” a voice said, “from the Tennessee Impaired Physicians program. Would it be possible for me to come to your home this afternoon and talk with you?”

  The hairs on Sarchi’s neck prickled, for it seemed likely that this guy had no relationship to the program he mentioned, but was actually part of Latham’s campaign against her. Seeing a chance to snare him and give detective Treadwell something to work with, she said, “When would you like to come?”

  “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll expect you.”

  As soon as she hung up, Sarchi hurried into the backyard and checked the phone line to see if there was anything attached to it. There wasn’t.

  Back inside, she called the south precinct, gave her name and address to the woman who answered, and explained what she wanted. “There’s a man on his way to my house who I believe intends to harm me.”

  “I just talked to Officer Metcalf about you,” the woman said. “But I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. I’ll send a car.”

  Five minutes later, a cruiser pulled into her drive and a black cop graying at the temples and with a paunch worthy of a detective got out. She met him on the porch, where he introduced himself as Officer Rivers. After a brief consultation, they put the patrol car behind the gates to the backyard, and Rivers came inside to wait.

  Only moments later, a car slowed in front of the house and turned into the driveway.

  “He’s here,” Sarchi said.

  Rivers joined her by the door.

  When the driver got out, Sarchi began to think she’d overreacted. He looked so old and thin she could have handled him by herself. Following the plan they’d agreed upon, Rivers stood out of sight behind the door when Sarchi opened it.

  Brookings introduced himself through the storm door, and Sarchi let him in.

  Rivers then took over. “Doctor, would you show me some identification, please?”

  The little bit of color in Brookings’ face drained away. “What’s going on here?”

  “Some identification, please,” Rivers said firmly.

  The old man fumbled for his wallet and produced his driver’s license. Rivers looked at it and said, “Would you come with me, please.”

  “Where?”

  “To my car. It’s in the back. It’ll only be for a few minutes.”

  Rivers led the bewildered Doctor Brookings through the kitchen to the patrol car, where they stayed for a quarter of an hour, doing whatever cops do to check people out. Then Rivers came back inside. “He’s exactly who he says he is. Should I bring him in?”

  “I don’t want to talk to him. Tell him to leave. I’m sorry to have brought you over here for nothing.”

  “If one of my friends had called the precinct for help and John Metcalf was on duty, he’d have done the same for me.”

  Even so, Sarchi felt foolish for calling him.

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN Linda came home, she was upset with Sarchi. “I thought we were friends.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We live in the same house, yet I had to hear from the grapevine about your problem in the park and your suspension.”

  So it was all over the hospital.

  “Is it true?” Linda asked. “Do you have a drug problem?”

  “It’s not true. Koesler is mistaken. You all are.”

  “What about the park?”

  “Is the gossip mill also conveying my explanation for that?”

  “No. What is it?”

  “Please don’t take offense at this, but it’s very complicated and not easy to tell.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “It’ll just sound self-serving.”

  “Try me.”

  “Look, I’m trying to dig up some corroborating evidence to support my position. Until I have it, I don’t want to say any more. If we are friends, you’ll understand that.”

  “Well . . . sure. Of course I do.”

  “I knew you would.”

  Later that evening, as she reflected on Linda’s belief that failure to confide in her was a betrayal of friendship, Sarchi decided to call Sharon McKinney and bring her up to date. After that call, feeling now that she had two allies in her campaign against Latham, her spirits rose higher than the circumstances dictated.

  BOB KAZMERAK STOPPED by the office first thing Monday morning to pick up some papers before hitting the trail to see how the dipstick docs in his area had been pissing away his company’s money over the weekend. Being there made him think of Harry Bright and how he’d never see old Harry sitting behind his desk again, never again hear him bait the announcer at the River Kings’ game by shouting, “How much time is left?” a couple seconds before the guy made his usual announcement that there was one minute left in the period. Then Harry’d yell, “Thank you.” Funny guy.

  It was good they’d opted for a closed casket funeral with just a picture of Harry and not
the actual cold carcass for everybody to have to deal with. It was . . . thoughtful. Bad as they usually do at the box office, it was a sure bet the River Kings’d miss him.

  Kazmerak tried to picture Harry in his mind and was distressed to realize he couldn’t remember how Harry wore his hair, whether he parted it or combed it back. Damn, you go down, and the world just closes over your spot.

  Noticing a white envelope on Harry’s desk, he walked over, picked it up, and read the writing on the front: Dr. Seminoux—Children’s Hospital.

  Well, the least he could do for old Harry would be to stop at the hospital and drop this off.

  EAGER AS SARCHI was to talk to Ella Dodge about locating the sender of the anonymous e-mail, she waited until all the other residents would be on duty before going to the hospital. And instead of parking in the hospital garage, she went to the commercial lot that she and John had used the day before.

  Ella’s office was on the second floor, with windows looking out over the hospital lobby. Glancing up as she came in from the street, Sarchi’s expectations fell, for Ella’s windows were dark. Hoping Ella hadn’t decided to take another day off, Sarchi went up to the second floor help desk to ask about her.

  The news was good. Ella had called in to say she would be about an hour late. But what to do until she arrived? Thinking of a possibility, Sarchi made a phone call. “Carl, this is Sarchi. I was wondering if you’d made any progress on sequencing those primers I gave you.”

  “Funny you should call. I just sent my technician to pick up the results.”

  “Okay if l come over?”

  “Sure.”

  When she arrived, she found Carl in his office working inside a U-shaped enclosure formed by a desk and two long tables that gave him easy access to his computer and stacks of journal articles. “Looks like we got some good data,” he said.

  Sarchi was relieved that he didn’t seem to know about any of her problems.

  He handed her two sheets of paper with one line on each page accented with an orange highlighter. The accented portion on each sheet consisted of a line of twenty capital letters representing the arrangement of the four DNA building blocks, Adenine, Thyrnine, Guanine, and Cytosine in each primer.

  The sequence for primer one was:

  5`-TAAGACGGCTCCGGGAAAAA-3`

  The sequence for primer two was:

  5`-CGCCGGGGTTCGAACAATTG-3`

  By itself this meant nothing. “If someone were to use these primers in a PCR reaction, what would they be looking for?” Sarchi asked.

  “Come around here and we’ll see,” Carl replied, turning his chair so it faced the computer behind his desk.

  Sarchi circled the desk and entered Carl’s inner realm.

  “Just push some of those things aside and sit.”

  Clearing a space for herself, Sarchi perched on the edge of the desk so she could see what he was doing.

  He connected his computer with the National Center for Biotechnology information, chose a sequence identification program, and entered the sequence of the first primer. While the computer searched the databases, a DNA helix icon in the corner of the monitor spiraled along a progress line. When it reached the end, the results flashed onto the screen.

  Carl leaned forward, scanned all the information displayed, and pointed to a line halfway down. “Primer one exactly matches a sequence in adeno-associated virus two.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A virus that can’t replicate on its own, but needs help from adenoviruses.”

  “So the other primer will just match another region of the same virus.”

  “Probably.”

  He entered the sequence, and they waited for the results.

  When they came up, he muttered, “That’s odd. We got a match with an engineered form of Molony mouse leukemia virus, a retrovirus that, like adeno-associated virus, can’t replicate by itself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If these primers ever detected anything, it’d be a hybrid stretch of nucleic acid derived from parts of both viruses.”

  “You said the retrovirus was engineered . . .”

  “It’s a form that was made by scientists to serve as a gene carrier.”

  “So you would never expect to find that virus in nature.”

  “Nor the hybrid the primers would detect. What’s this all about?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think what you’ve told me is important. I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

  “That’s what friends are for. I hope you know Gail and I both are always available to you for whatever you need.” This was obviously not a generic expression of friendship, but meant something more. Perhaps he too thought she might be on drugs. Whatever his motivation, she wasn’t going to engage in a discussion about it.

  “You both are the best,” she said, moving out of his work enclosure. “We’ll all get together soon.”

  Walking back to the hospital, Sarchi racked her brain trying to figure out why Latham would be searching the tissues of his patients for evidence of a virus that didn’t exist in nature.

  26

  ELLA DODGE HAD the biggest chair in the information systems department because nothing less would accommodate her. Sarchi found her in that chair arranged as usual, with her sneaker-clad left foot and phlebotic left leg resting on a small rolling stool. Seeing Sarchi in the rearview mirror attached to her monitor, Ella said, “Doctor Seminoux, what brings you to the nerd ward?”

  Sarchi walked around and stood by Ella’s elevated foot. “How’s the phlebitis?”

  “Better when I don’t think about it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You meant well, so I won’t hold it against you. Might even help you with whatever you want.”

  As much as she liked Ella, Sarchi couldn’t help thinking that her life would be far better if she lost a couple hundred pounds. Apparently, she either hadn’t heard about the suspension or had chosen to keep it to herself.

  “Is there a way to track the return address on an e-mail back to the sender to get some information on who they are or where their computer is?”

  “Did you bring a printout of the header?”

  Sarchi dug in her handbag and gave her the anonymous e-mail, which was folded in half so she couldn’t see the message.

  Ella looked at it briefly. “That’s not good. It was sent from a site that creates an e-mail account with a phony identity then, if the sender wishes, erases the account right after the e-mail is sent.”

  Sarchi’s hopes fell.

  But then Ella said, “On the positive side, it was sent to your hospital account. That means I have access to its route of transmission. So we’ll see . . .”

  Her fat fingers flicked over the keys with amazing dexterity. She played the keyboard like a prodigy for several minutes, then said, “All I can tell you is that it was sent from a Wi-Fi server located at a place called Tropical Joe in New Orleans, which is . . .” She clicked a few more keys and added, “A coffee shop on Magazine Street. Want the address?”

  Sarchi jotted down the name and address of the coffee shop, then thanked Ella profusely for her help.

  So, the anonymous e-mail had been sent from New Orleans. But she still didn’t know who the sender was. Any customer with a computer could have done it.

  Driving home, she rolled her morning’s work around in her head, trying to assemble it into a plan of action. But even having had a little time to assimilate them, the PCR results sat like a ton of granite in the path of progress. Blocked so effectively in that direction, she allowed herself unrealistic hopes for Tropical Joe. Maybe it’s not what it sounds like. Maybe if she knew exactly what the place was, what it looked like, and how it worked, there would be a way to discover the person who’d sent the message. She couldn’t
determine those things herself, but Sharon could.

  SARCHI WAS WELCOMED by the din of hammers and power saws from next door when she arrived home. Propped in the holder below the mailbox was a thin package wrapped in brown paper, addressed to her, but with no return address. She looked at the postmark: Biloxi, Mississippi. Who did she know in Biloxi?

  Grabbing the rest of the mail, which was as uninteresting as usual, she went inside, chucked everything else on the table by the door, and tore at the wrapping on the package.

  It was a children’s book. How odd.

  She saw a folded sheet of paper protruding slightly from the pages. Believing it to be a letter of explanation, she pulled it free and opened it. It bore only three typewritten lines:

  Find the friend who has a copy of this book.andThink about how children communicate in secret.

  Tropical Joe, Sarchi thought. Another message.

  Sarchi thumbed through the book, which had lots of pictures but few words. It was about a rabbit family whose two kids ignored all the advice their parents gave them about crossing the street and avoiding lawn mowers. At the end, a hidden device played a little tune sung by speeded up voices like the Christmas songs sung by the three chipmunks.

  Wait a minute . . .

  She’d heard this story and the song before.

  Of course. Marge read it to Drew that night in the hospital. She had a copy. But where did she get it? And what did it have to do with all this?

  Sarchi called Marge at work to talk about the book but had to settle for leaving her name with the receptionist because Marge was in a meeting. With the phone in her hand, she then called Sharon’s pager in New Orleans and left her number.

  Now, what did Tropical Joe mean about a child communicating in secret? How do they do that . . . pass notes . . . tin can telephone . . . whisper?

  The phone interrupted her thoughts. It was Sharon.