Clay

by Jennifer Blake

  “Now don’t get yourself all riled up, boy. It ain’t as if you was going anywhere.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “I told you how that was,” Arty protested in aggrieved tones.

  “So you did, which doesn’t make it right. You owe me.”

  “I brought you some clothes, didn’t I?” The old trapper waved the overstuffed paper bag that he carried. “Sneaked in the back window at your place to get hold of them, just so you wouldn’t have to go nekkid. What more you want?”

  Clay would be glad to have a change or two of underwear, if nothing else, was even grateful that Arty—or was it Janna?—had thought of it. Still, he was too much of a Benedict to like the idea of someone entering his home while he was away. His voice hard, he said, “Thank you very much. But don’t do it again.”

  Arty gave him a wry look. “Ain’t you in a stinking mood?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Since that required no answer, Clay went on without pause. “Tell me something. You ever hear Janna say anything about a kidney transplant for Lainey?”

  Arty rubbed at the bristling beard on his face. “Can’t say as I have. But I ain’t bad to get into people’s business.”

  That was an understatement. Arty seldom asked questions of any kind, mainly because he didn’t intend to answer any himself. “She’s never mentioned any kind of connection to the Benedicts?”

  “Family tie, you mean? What makes you ask?”

  “Just a thought.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, since it was obvious that Arty knew little, if anything. To change the subject, he asked, “How’s Beulah?”

  “Still off her feed. She don’t look right to me, either. I’ll be keeping her up close, one way and another. There’s bad doings in the swamp just now.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Found a floater this morning. Young guy not much more than a teenager. Caught on a tree limb at the edge of the main channel. Been dead a couple of days.”

  Dead bodies were known as floaters in the lexicon of swamp and river dwellers. Clay asked, “You found him?”

  Arty gave a morose nod. “Called Roan, of course. He came out.”

  “Drowning victim, I suppose?” Clay felt his stomach muscles clench as he waited for the answer.

  “Kilt, or butchered would be more like it. Poor kid had his heart, liver and lights taken, all sliced out clean as a whistle.”

  Clay stared at the old man for a grim moment before he asked. “What about his kidneys?”

  “Nobody mentioned them parts, but I guess it’s possible. Word is he was a drug-user, needle tracks on his arms and all that. Still, he was just a boy, maybe fifteen or so. God, but don’t it make you pea-green to think of some creep doing such a thing to a young’un with his whole life ahead of him? I mean, it’s bad enough, all them poor, deluded souls over in the Philippines or China selling body parts for a new start in life, but to have somebody just up and take them.” The old man shook his shaggy head so his hat brim flopped. “If somebody’s selling people pieces, there ought to be a law agin it.”

  “There is. Traffic in human organs is illegal in the United States, has been for years.” Clay spoke almost at random as his brain worked on another problem altogether.

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s a felony that can cost you up to five years in prison and a fine of fifty thousand dollars.” Clay had come across that particular tidbit a while back when a man offered his kidney for sale on an Internet auction site. Bidding had reached almost six million before being halted by the site owners. Human organs were a valuable commodity.

  “Well, thank the good Lord that the law finally got it right for a change.” Arty scratched meditatively at his beard. “But why else would anybody cut up the boy that way?”

  “Being illegal doesn’t mean organs aren’t harvested.”

  Arty grimaced at the terminology. “Wasn’t there some tale about a college kid during Mardi Gras who partied too hearty down on Bourbon Street and woke up in a hotel bathtub minus a kidney?”

  “No connection,” Clay answered. “That one’s an urban legend, one of those grisly rumors that take on a life of their own because they sound so plausible. The removal of a kidney is a complicated process requiring a skilled surgical team and first-rate medical facilities. It’s not something you want to try in a hotel room.”

  Arty lifted a bushy gray brow. “That’s only if the guy with the knife cares whether the patient lives or dies, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Maybe. But it also assumes that having the kidney remain healthy long enough to be transplanted would be a good thing. It wouldn’t last an hour without the special handling found only in a designated hospital setting.”

  “So where does that leave this body from the lake? You think somebody snatched the organs at some hospital and dumped the kid here to get rid of him?”

  “Makes the most sense that way.”

  “Well, damn ’em to hell then,” Arty growled.

  Clay agreed completely. It sickened him to think of his swamp being used as a dumping ground. Death came often within its watery precincts, but it was a natural and unpremeditated ending, a part of the life cycle of all living things. It wasn’t obscene and vicious and designed to benefit somebody’s pocketbook. It didn’t pollute the pure, clean air or perpetuate the idea of Louisiana’s wetlands as places of lurid evil.

  All the same, Arty’s vehemence struck Clay as unusual. He’d known the old swamp rat for years, respected his knowledge of the place he called home, but had few illusions about him. Arty had never cared two cents for environmental issues and liked animals, in the main, much more than people of any age. He hadn’t been a saint as a young man, from all accounts, and growing older had done little to improve him.

  Abruptly Arty said, “Roan asked about you while he was at my place, wanted to know if I’d seen anything of you lately.”

  “I suppose you told him no.”

  “Had to, didn’t I? Couldn’t have him coming around here upsetting Janna and Lainey.”

  “Upsetting?”

  “By talking about this boy that was cut to pieces. Janna’s scared enough out here already. Anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you talk about around womenfolk.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Arty, my man, but females aren’t like they used to be. I doubt Janna will appreciate being kept in the dark. But that isn’t a big concern at the moment.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What about me?”

  Arty grunted. “You’re all right, ain’t you?”

  “For now, but what about later?”

  “Later?”

  Clay stared at the old man. He was deliberately acting obtuse, he thought. The question was why? Was his concern strictly for Janna and Lainey, or did he have reasons of his own?

  Neither answer held much comfort.

  6

  He was waiting when Janna walked down the steps from the screen porch for a brief stroll to the lake’s edge. She didn’t see him, had no idea he was there until he moved from the darkness into the dim patch of light that fell from inside the house.

  “Dr. Gower!” She stood perfectly still, her wide gaze on the physician’s slender yet wiry form, his thinning, precision-cut hair and skin mottled by sun exposure during his favorite sport of bass fishing.

  “Why the surprise, my dear?” he inquired with a touch of stringency. “You did contact the office?”

  She had, of course; it seemed expedient after her encounter with Clay the night before. Still, her surprise was real. She’d seen the nephrologist and surgical specialist professionally, but never at the camp. It was his nurse, Anita Fenton, who came to take blood samples and pick up the installment payments for the impending surgery. A buxom woman with fading red hair and crooked teeth, Nurse Fenton worshiped the doctor and had apparently been with him for years. Actually trained as a physician’s assistant, she took much of the workload from Dr. Gower’s shoulders so he could spend time on his humanitari
an pursuits like his free clinic for the underprivileged, as well as the transplants. Her extra effort in making house calls was designed to protect Lainey from unnecessary exposure to illness that might jeopardize the transplant operation, and also to prevent multiple office visits that could tip off observers to the clandestine activity carried out behind the medical center’s charitable facade.

  “I wasn’t expecting a visit,” Janna said after a moment, “only a return call from you or Nurse Fenton when you found the time.”

  “I assumed the situation was urgent or you would not have risked communication. We both know how unwise it is to speak about sensitive matters over a cell phone.”

  “I was careful with what I said, I promise. But I needed to let you know that I may have located a relative donor for Lainey.”

  “Really.” The doctor did not appear impressed.

  “I thought you’d be pleased, since it means we might not have to wait for a cadaver organ.”

  “Yes, certainly. It does present problems with security. The fewer people who know about the surgery, the better. You’ve discussed donation with this relative?”

  She gave a definite shake of her head. “I thought I should check with your office first. It seemed that you or Nurse Fenton might do a better job of explaining the process and its benefits.”

  “Really, Janna.” The surgeon’s voice was pained.

  “I’m sorry if you’ve made the trip for nothing. As I said, I only expected to talk about it with Nurse Fenton.”

  “She had other obligations,” he said, his tone distracted. “I decided to combine this visit with a few hours of scouting the lake for the bass tournament this weekend. At least, I suppose that will be held in spite of yesterday’s unpleasantness?”

  “Unpleasantness?”

  “Some kind of drowning accident. It was on the news.” Dr. Gower waved a narrow hand in a dismissive gesture. “But we seem to have a more important problem here. You have a man inside with you. Who is he, a boyfriend or live-in lover?”

  The question was so unexpected that she was thrown off balance. “What?”

  “I heard a male voice as I approached the house, so naturally I investigated. The view through the curtain wasn’t the best, but the gentleman appeared quite comfortably installed in your bed.”

  Janna stared at Lainey’s doctor. Meticulous in his speech and manners, he always appeared rigorously clean, an excellent quality in his profession. She’d never seen him anything less than formally dressed, and often wondered if he changed to casual wear or got dirty while fishing. He’d been agreeable to Janna in a distant fashion on Lainey’s initial visits, but his primary attention had been for her daughter. Certainly he’d shown little personal curiosity before tonight. Her amazement was in her voice as she said, “You were spying on me.”

  “Not at all,” Gower answered, shifting his gaze away from her. “It was a simple precaution. I needed to know if you were alone. Since you weren’t, I was forced to wait for a chance to speak to you, not the best use of my time.”

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t realize…”

  “That isn’t the point. May I remind you, my dear, that the instructions you were given to isolate your daughter, abandon contact with family and friends and restrict your movements, were designed to protect us all.”

  “I know that.”

  “Sexual activity is important to human health. No one understands this better than I do,” he went on with scarcely a pause. “Still, you must control your libido under the present circumstances. I’m afraid that your private life will have to wait.”

  “The circumstances have nothing to do with my private life!” Janna declared in rising anger. In fact, she had no private life as this man understood it.

  “No, but who you permit to know about our association may be extremely important, since it could jeopardize everything. I thought I had impressed upon you the need to be discreet.”

  To reassure him on that point would be easy. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell him that the man inside was the prospective relative donor, and that he was helpless to prevent the removal of a kidney. She couldn’t do it. Something inside her, some reaction to the doctor’s scolding tone, some simple instinct or internal prohibition, prevented the words from forming. Moreover, she wasn’t so sure Clay was that defenseless. His response was bound to be violent, in spite of his bonds, if Dr. Gower or anyone else came at him with a sedative-filled syringe. It would require at least two people to subdue him for transport to the medical center, and possibly more. Why that hadn’t occurred to her before she didn’t know, since it was so obvious. She hated the idea of witnessing it, much less being a part of it.

  Another factor was the doctor’s obvious reluctance to accept a kidney from a source other than the one used by the center. What that meant was unclear. She didn’t know—and wasn’t sure she wanted to know—the exact black market conditions that provided the kidneys he implanted. She suspected that they were obtained from accident victims who had never meant to be organ donors, or perhaps other cadavers in an organ-theft ring based in some big city hospital. Another possibility was that they were taken from living donors, third world citizens desperate enough to exchange a kidney for a ticket to a new life, or drug addicts willing to sell one for the price of a few weeks or months of fixes. Such possibilities haunted her waking hours, and were another reason she’d acted so recklessly where Clay was concerned. He was not only a good candidate for blood and tissue match, but he was obviously healthy so she need have no fear that either he or Lainey would be put at more risk than they could stand. The guilt she must live with over taking a kidney would be the same, but the potential benefits much greater.

  Or so she’d thought before the time had actually come to turn Clay over to Dr. Gower. “The longer we have to wait, Lainey and I, the more risk we all face,” Janna said at last. “That’s one advantage of this relative donor. Arrangements could be made almost immediately instead of depending on location of a compatible cadaver kidney.”

  “That’s no longer true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t come here tonight solely because of your call or even the tournament. I have news, as well, the news you’ve been waiting so long to hear.”

  A fatalistic acceptance descended on Janna. “You have a compatible kidney now? It’s ready for Lainey?”

  The doctor smiled a little, though he didn’t answer directly. “How is the dear child? Well, I hope? No setbacks, no little illness that might make surgery problematical?”

  “Nothing. If you’d like to take a look at her…”

  “That won’t be possible under the circumstances.”

  “No, of course not.” She put her hand out to touch his arm under the smooth sleeve of his shirt. “I just—you are saying what I think, aren’t you?”

  “We’ve been promised a kidney.” Gower’s face softened and he covered her cool fingers with his own.

  Maybe this was better. Maybe it would cause fewer problems in the end. “Promised?”

  “Soon. Anita will be in touch. That is the good news. The bad news, I’m afraid, is that the price has gone up.”

  It was a moment before the last words penetrated. “Gone up? But I made the final payment last week, as agreed.”

  “I’m sorry. Anita insists that it’s necessary, and she handles financial matters for me, you know. You have to realize that it’s getting more and more difficult to arrange these things.”

  “Yes, but still.”

  “Your daughter isn’t my only transplant patient. I do my best to help everyone possible, in spite of heavy expenses—complicated delivery and preservation procedures for the precious kidneys, payoffs, security personnel, that sort of thing. The money must be found to take care of them.”

  She believed that he was sincere; it was there in his face and voice. She’d liked Dr. Gower well enough on the occasions when he had seen Lainey, and respected what he was trying to do for those
who had nowhere else to turn. She’d often wondered what caused him to set up his transplant facility down near the Projects, whether it was pure altruism as Anita Fenton maintained, or alcohol, drugs, maybe even the lure of huge fees in the form of cash that he didn’t have to share with the IRS. He’d given her a cut-rate price at first because he was drawn to Lainey, she thought. Some of the patients to whom she whispered about such things during Lainey’s legitimate treatments had mentioned sums well over a hundred thousand for the clandestine transplant procedure. No price was too high for her daughter’s life, but Janna wondered now if the low initial price hadn’t been a fraud, if she wasn’t being manipulated by her own desperation.

  As firmly as she was able, she said, “I don’t think I can pay more.”

  “You must, for your daughter’s sake. It will be an additional thirty percent.”

  Thirty percent.

  Thirty percent more. Thirty percent in addition to the amount she’d scraped together by selling nearly everything she owned, borrowing from every institution that would lend her a cent and every person that she knew. Voice flat, she said, “I can’t.”

  “I think you can if you try hard enough. You have three days before Anita comes to collect it.”

  “Please,” she said, hating the necessity for begging but driven to it. “I really can’t rake up another penny. There’s just no one left to ask.”

  “Try your male guest,” Dr. Gower recommended with a slight twist of his lips. “I will be surprised if he refuses you.”

  “You don’t know him,” she said tightly, “or the situation.”

  “No, but I know you. In his shoes, I’d find it difficult to say no to anything you wanted from me.”

  She glanced at the doctor, met his dark gaze that was only an inch above her own. Stillness settled between them, and she had the unwelcome impression that he might be waiting for her to make a different, more personal appeal. The idea was disconcerting. Had it always been there or only surfaced because of the presence of a man in her home, her bed? Had she been oblivious before in her concentration on Lainey, but was aware now because of the sexual undercurrents between her and Clay? Or was the whole thing a figment of her overwrought imagination?