Life Struggles (Life Stories Book 1)

by Mark Treble

  Chapter Fifteen

  A day or so later Alex and I were both cleared medically to get on with our lives. We had a celebration. Barbara brought by champagne and appetizers. Luke and Marcus showed up. Then Danny came by. He looked around and asked if he had to take off his clothes to come in. Cheryl laughed and told him that she would most certainly enjoy that, but he was welcome to stay dressed. He looked relieved.

  Danny wanted to know if I had a source inside the medical examiner's office. Well, I didn't, but that wasn't relevant.

  “Danny, much as I'd like to help you as a private citizen, even if I had a source in the ME's office I couldn't tell you. It is not the function of journalists to help the police solve crimes. If we can do so through helping to inform the public, we're usually eager to do it. Can you tell me what you want?” Danny glared at me. “Not for publication, OK?” I nodded, and that seemed to satisfy him.

  “Everybody but me and Ethan needs to leave. This is official police business and you have no need to know the information.” Four people got up and left, but Cheryl stayed in her seat.

  “Detective, autopsies are medical procedures. I've assisted in several over the years. If you have something that might involve medical knowledge, I might be able to help. In any event, Ethan has hired me as a consultant and you're a journalist's source. I'm bound by the source shield law.” With that she got a dollar out of my wallet and put it in her purse.

  “Now I'm hired.” Cheryl smiled.

  “We're up against it. We can't figure out how the autopsies play into it. We've been over all of the reports and had the tests that could be repeated re-done. Nothing is jumping out.” Danny looked beaten. This was tough on him. The missing boys were his case and, even if it had now gone national, he still had nine missing boys that were his responsibility. I felt for him, but couldn't figure out what to do to help him.

  “Obviously you've looked at the staff doing the autopsy,” I noted.

  “Yeah, and every ME in the office did at least one. All but one of the dieners has been involved, and he just started.” Danny sounded beyond discouraged.

  “That's not the whole staff,” Cheryl said. Danny's head snapped around.

  “Just about every employee in the labs will be involved in the autopsy. Slides and tissue samples are sent to the labs, blood samples taken from clothing, sometimes even the clothing itself. There are more people involved than the ME and the diener.” Cheryl was teaching, something she enjoyed and did well.

  Danny picked up his phone and relayed that information to his partner. He listened for three minutes, got put on hold for a quarter hour, then listened for another fifteen minutes. He looked even more discouraged.

  “That's twenty six people plus the head of the lab. Not to mention two outside specialty labs with we don't know how many people. And, they use couriers to the outside labs. I feel like we're back looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack.” Danny put his head in his hands before looking up.

  “I know I'm on duty. Can I get a beer?” At last, I could be useful. One for me, one for Danny, one for Cheryl, one for Alex if he came out but it was really another one for me.

  “How many courier companies?” This was from Cheryl.

  “I think it's only two, but that's another crowd of people. Where the fuck do we start?” Danny was done in. He finished his beer and left.

  “Lucy told me she thought your underwear was sexy.” That was Cheryl to me. Anybody who used me and sexy in the same sentence certainly got my attention. My focus was heightened as Cheryl took off her top. She was braless.

  “I think it would look better off of you.” Now she had her slacks and panties on the floor.

  “Out here? What if Alex walks out?” That was me.

  “Listen.” Cheryl again. I listened. Alex and Monica weren't coming out for another hour.

  I let Cheryl slip my underwear from me. She had me lie down on the sofa, and she crawled between my legs. Her mouth had me hard in seconds, and she stopped.

  “Get up.” I got up. I know which side my bread is buttered on.

  Cheryl lay down on the sofa and told me to come toward her. Of course I came toward her. Then she grabbed my cock and began rubbing it over her tits. This was fun. No, this was really fun. And new. And I liked it. But what happened to the blowjob?

  Everything became clear in about two minutes. By that time my belly button was over her nose, her hands were holding her tits together, and I was fucking her between her tits. I had never thought of this! We were going to have so much fun. Then I stopped thinking as my balls drew up to my body and an explosion started in my spine, then spread to my balls and my dick. I came all over her chin. Boy, this consulting gig of hers was really paying off. For me at least.

  We retired to the bedroom after Cheryl cleaned off her chin, her boobs and my dick. In bed, she reached again for my cock and was stroking it. God that felt good. I could just lose myself in that feeling. It was so….

  The next morning Cheryl told me I fell asleep during the hand job. Fuck, now I was another orgasm in the hole. And, Alex found the cum stains on the sofa. Double Fuck. He told me not to give him any shit about him and Monica fucking. I told him I'd give him shit about anything I wanted, but my heart wasn't in it. Alex grinned. He had only been partly serious about not giving him shit. I think.

  I worked on a couple of columns that day and put in an hour on the book. Writing a book was hard shit. A column might run as many as a thousand words, but that was a rare exception. Perhaps 250 was a long column. A book would be 70,000 or more. And that was after editing, guaranteed to slice at least fifteen percent from what I wrote.

  Let's see. Fifteen months is at least five thousand words a month. In a normal month I wrote a bit over a thousand that didn't wind up in the trash heap. And that was in a good month. I'm truly fucked.

  That evening Danny came by again. The four of us were in the living room drinking beer (surprise) and were mostly decent – at least by loose standards. Did we have anything else to contribute? Well, Monica sure did.

  She was all of a month or so into her first semester toward a two-year degree in criminal justice. She was eighteen, which of course meant that she knew absolutely everything about police work. She started ragging Danny.

  “You guys are real experts, you know. You figured Alex was one of the suspicious disappearances but you didn't know shit. How many others might not really be suspicious disappearances? How many almost fit the profile and aren't, so you haven't included them?” Monica looked satisfied with her shared wisdom.

  Danny actually took her seriously. Someday I'll be that mature, too. I hope.

  “What do you mean by ‘almost fit the profile,’ Monica?” His tone was serious, so she continued.

  “Well, it might be …” and she went on for three full minutes with all sorts of uninformed speculation. Just like TV political commentators, come to think of it. Finally she got to “… and somebody else might have been kidnapped at the same time, or…”

  Danny stopped her. She tried to talk again and he held up his hand. She tried one more time and Alex pointed out that Danny had a gun. She finally shut up. Alex then pointed out that he had a gun, too, and it wanted to use Monica's firing range. They went into Alex's bedroom.

  Danny called his contact at the feds. “Have we or anybody else ruled out a similar case because more than one person disappeared at the same time?”

  I figured that was unlikely, but kept it to myself. Danny turned back to talk to an absent Monica again when his phone rang. He listened for four minutes before speaking.

  “Damn Fuck Cocksucking Shit.” That was certainly informative. “A boy of seventeen disappeared about fourteen months ago in Omaha along with his mother. Nobody knows if it's linked or not.”

  “What do you know about the mother?” I was proud of coming up with a sort-of intelligent question. Finally.

  Danny consulted his phone's contact list and made a call. “Flint, New Orle
ans … Yeah, I know what time it is in Omaha. Surprise, it's the same time in New Orleans. … Fuck you too … What can you tell me about the mother who disappeared with her son fourteen months ago?”

  Danny listened for a few minutes. “OK, thirty-nine, white, female, good health, no priors no warrants, homeowner, everybody loved her just like anybody who disappears, no known motive, a physician, worked in a private practice downtown, no current boyfriend, last one was a Baptist preacher.” Danny looked at us.

  “What kind of physician?” This was from Cheryl, of course.

  Danny asked. “An uncle-ologist.”

  Cheryl asked if that was oncologist, a cancer doctor, and spelled it for Danny.

  Yep. Cancer doctor. I could not see how it fit.

  “Danny, it's probably blood. Nearly every oncologist in the U.S. is also a hematologist – a blood doctor. Ask Omaha to confirm that tomorrow first thing. And call Wendy – Dr. Marsten – with the oncologist information.” Dr. Marsten was the chief medical examiner for Orleans Parish.

  Danny made the call, and the doctor asked to talk to Cheryl. We could only hear one side of the conversation.

  “Yeah, I don't know why, but it's the only thing that makes sense. Either blood or cancer, and blood seems more likely … You've re-run the blood tests and found nothing, hunh … How about the blood-rich organs? … OK, thanks.”

  “Danny, you'll probably get a call tomorrow from Dr. Marsten. This is nine autopsies meaning nine hearts, nine kidneys, nine livers, nine spleens and some other organs. This isn't a quick turn-around thing.” Danny still looked hopeful.

  Danny left, Cheryl left, the kids were already in bed, so I got to sleep.

  Bright and early the next morning my phone rang. By bright and early I mean six forty-five. I wasn't sure the world existed at that time.

  “Give Cheryl a hug. She can call Wendy if she wants details. We've found the next link.” Danny hung up.

  I called Cheryl, and caught her on her way to work. “Honey, Danny said you could call Wendy if you want details. They've found the next link. Goodnight.” Without waiting for a reply I returned to sleep.

  Cheryl and Wendy were close. Wendy was another one who was originally a nurse Cheryl had trained. She went on to medical school and became a pathologist. A very good pathologist who was the youngest medical examiner in the office she ran.

  Wendy spilled the beans and Cheryl called me. “It's the liver. Every one of the liver samples is too small. Somebody has harvested part of the liver samples in every one of the cases. Liver tissue would have been harvested in the autopsies, so Wendy is having blood typing done.”

  That confused me. I thought there were only four blood types: A, B, AB and O. I was AB, relatively rare but still millions of us in the country. I told her so.

  “Ethan, there are many other blood typing systems besides ABO. At least twenty others, although I can't remember their names. This is going to take a while.” Shit.

  It took less time than expected, but that was because by now there were fourteen cities involved, each with its own medical examiner's office. A hematologist at NIH was recruited by the feds to sort out the work. They had an answer in six hours.

  There were a few positives for Lutheran, Duffy and Colton. But all of the samples in Oakland were positive for Kell. Four hours later they had their answer. Every sample was positive for Kell.

  The newspapers and TV were all over the task force. Some of them ran with speculation, some of them tried infiltrating the task force (epic fails), a few were obsessed with so many missing teenagers and no answers.

  That's when Mr. Overbright called me. He was our paper's publisher. For those who think the managing editor has much to say about things, here's some new information: the publisher is king.

  The feds had decided to let in one pool reporter. There had been enough leaks that the medical aspect was known or at least suspected. The networks, the cable news guys, and the big papers all clamored to let in their chief medical reporters, who were physicians.

  The feds wanted me. Little old me, a weekly column writer for a small paper in a mid-sized city. Their rationale was simple. They already had enough doctors involved to satisfy a small country's medical needs. And, my learning curve was not steep. They announced their choice and refused to explain.

  When the publisher told me I immediately felt thrilled. Then honored. Then reality set in. I was fucking terrified. In the world of journalism I was barely a multi-celled organism. I was a mouse among elephants. I was a very short pygmy in the NBA. I was … well, you get the idea. What the fuck was I going to do?

  “What the fuck do I do?” That was aimed at Mr. Overbright.

  “Accept, god-dammit. That's an order.” Well, shit. I accepted.

  Before I left for St Louis I asked Marcus to move into the house to babysit. Alex threw a fit. In the first half hour he told Marcus to fuck off one too many times. Cheryl paid a visit and pronounced Alex's jaw bruised but not broken. Alex called Danny to report an assault. It was the best laugh the detective had had in days.

  Chapter Sixteen

  One of the questions was why these cities had been chosen.It would have been easier to kidnap a dozen young men in New York, and Chicago, and Boston and a whole bunch of other cities. One of the army of doctors had that one covered.

  It seemed that only taking a slice of liver from the ones they were going to abduct was absurd. If they already knew that the guy qualified, why did they need the liver sample? That meant that they had to take samples from every liver in the ME's office. Of course, they wouldn't need to take baby's livers or nun's livers, but you get the idea. The doctor opined that taking a sample from everyone between 35 and 55 would do the trick. And, In New York that was thousands. In New Orleans, it was hundreds.

  They finally reverse-engineered the selection criteria. Every liver sample from an adult age 32-59 had been pilfered. The rest of the rationale was provided by a medical economist.

  He started giving a lecture on costs of running an ME's office and was asked to cut to the chase. “These cities mostly have smaller ME office budgets per population than the others. They were less likely to do obscure blood tests because they cost money.”

  That, then, caused the feds to use the profile to identify seven other cities that might be involved. It turned out that four of them were. That put the number of missing young men at 148 and counting. Nobody was egotistical enough to think we had found all of them.

  I spent the first two days being brought up to date on the investigation. I also took time to identify the folks with whom I would most likely be interacting. Strangely, my list wasn't the same as the feds'.

  “These people are very busy and don't have time for this shit.” Sounded reasonable.

  So did my reply. “So, the first story published is denying access to your own pool reporter?” Yeah, I had grown a pair.

  Mostly all I did was introduce myself and walk away. The operations officer's secretary was my primary source, along with some of the analysts. Their supervisor was a real firecracker. And, not bad looking either. I wondered if she was married or an axe murderer.

  As is usual, the secretary knew more than her boss, and lots more than the guy nominally in charge.

  Why Kell antigens? I asked one of the doctor tribe for an explanation.

  “Well, you see, there are a lot of blood typing systems, and they all involve antigens. Antigens are …” I woke up when he stopped talking.

  “OK. Are they going to use these guys as organ sources for transplants?” That elicited a sneer.

  “Of course not. People with the KEL gene on chromosome seven cannot donate blood nor can they be organ donors. The antigens attack the erythrocytes (in answer to my puzzled look he explained that these were red blood cells). Transplanting an organ from someone with Kell-Celano would be grounds for loss of a medical license.” To the sneer was added a hint of smugness.

  “So, there's no medical use for the blood?” That seemed
reasonable.

  “Absolutely none. It is dangerous.” The guy was ready to walk away.

  “What happens if I get blood with Kell antigens?” The guy looked exasperated.

  “If you have a transplant from a Kell-Celano individual it will probably be rejected. If you get blood from a Kell-Celano donor you will at minimum become sick. With enough of the antigens you die. So, there is no use whatsoever.” He was completely exasperated with me and stalked off.

  Gosh, with enough of that you would die. You would at least get sick. How would that help anybody?

  Having just crawled through the criminal muck of New Orleans I knew the answer.

  It would not help anybody who got it. But there was probably a benefit to someone who was not intending to help the person. I related this to the head guy.

  He asked one of the doctors what the fuck good would it do to have a bunch of teenagers with Kell blood type. He got the worst of all possible answers. “I have no idea.” He told the guy to get an idea.

  Calls to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, got nowhere. The next day a call to Fort Detrick, Maryland produced a result. Fort Detrick is where the U.S. Army's biological warfare defense research is conducted. It was all speculation at this point because nobody had ever heard of weaponizing an antigen. But the potential was frightening.

  It seems that antigen size is measured in angstroms, or one ten-billionth of a meter. Weaponized antigens, still speculation because nobody knew if it was possible, would defeat every gas mask ever invented. They would be absorbed through the pores in the skin, through the mouth and nose and any other opening in the body. Once inside a human, they would begin to wreak havoc. The body's immune system would of course attack them.

  What was the concentration of Kell antigens necessary to defeat the body's immune system and become lethal? Nobody had a good answer. One pint of blood containing Kell antigens would make a healthy person sick. Two pints would make the person very sick. Three pints would probably be lethal in most cases. How many antigens were there in three pints? They're working on it.