Рита Браун - Hiss Of Death

Annalise stopped, then started anew. “That woman was a complete waste. Cory and I both made a lot of money, but that wasn’t my primary purpose. After I killed Paula, he said he wanted out, once he figured it out—which took him ten days. Well, how long before wanting out meant chickening out, or even possibly turning me in to save himself if he thought our business might be discovered? Weak. Didn’t want to kill him—or anyone else—but it really was them or me. My work must be protected.”

“How can you do good when you kill people?” Pewter asked.

“It’s a human thing.” Mrs. Murphy lifted the tip of her tail, then let it flutter down again. “You can kill anyone, and as many as you want, if you justify it by religion or calling someone an enemy. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter if it makes sense to us. They kill us, too. We just kill to eat.”

Harry sighed. “It’s a long walk to the barn.” She wiped her cheek, still dripping blood, with the back of her hand. “I liked you. I just don’t get it.”

“In some ways, we’re alike. You figured out I removed Paula, Thadia, and Cory using some reasoning and your instincts. Maybe a better way to put it is you thought by synthesis instead of analysis. If it hadn’t been for you, I think I could have gotten another job, say, on the West Coast, with excellent references, a big bank account, and continued my efforts out there.”

“Maybe. You underestimate Sheriff Shaw and Coop. They aren’t hick law enforcement people.”

“Maybe not, but it would have taken them so much longer. If nothing else, the tangle of laws would have slowed them down. It would have been a while before they could arrest me. And you have to admit my program is ingenious.” She shook her hand. “Tucker has strong jaws.”

“Next time I’ll bite your hand clean off,” the dog threatened.

“Why did you kill Paula?”

“She was meticulous, observant. She made notes about things that weren’t even her province, like the bodies coming in after car wrecks or whatever for organ harvests. She knew who was operating when. She knew who received an organ transplant. She knew when a liver was shipped out. Her interests exceeded the operating room. She noticed that Cory and sometimes Jennifer attended my autopsies and organ harvests. Cory almost always attended when I worked on a healthy, young person.

“Once we disagreed about an operating time—oh, from months back—and she showed me her notebook. She was right about the time. That’s when I realized she could be dangerous. Another one of those rigidly moral people who lose the forest for the trees.

“My mistake wasn’t so much in killing her. I would have easily gotten away with that except for you. It was miscalculating how much it would take to destroy her files. I overdid it at Pinnacle Records.”

“You set that fire?”

“Of course not. I paid a professional. Once you know where to look and who to call, you can get many services performed. I’d taken her computer, saw what was in there, and knew I had to destroy any backup. The damned Vitebsks, another principled pair, would never have let me into her file cabinet. And the security there was so tight I couldn’t get in. All I wanted was one lousy file cabinet.”

“Liquid nitrogen.” Harry lifted her eyebrows, which hurt, as the right one had been sliced by the thorns.

“We sent the harvested pituitary glands to an equine clinic in Lexington, Kentucky, where Cory had a friend who was a glamour vet, huge practice. Cylinders full of semen and liquid nitrogen come into the clinic every day. The vet knew how to harvest the human growth hormone from that. Vets can work on humans if they have to, and all he had to do was understand endocrinology, which he does. The lab there is fantastic. The HGH was distributed out of Lexington.”

“Where did you get a liquid nitrogen cylinder?” Harry inquired.

“Cory had the Lexington vet ship me one. And I really knew I had to be extremely watchful when one went missing from my car trunk. I rarely lock my trunk, just throw junk in there. I never found it.”

“Heavy Metal?”

Annalise shook her head. “Noddy didn’t know. Her competitive days just overlapped the beginning of human growth hormone in sports. She’s ignorant of anything I’ve done. I helped a few people there, but very quietly.”

“She’ll be devastated. A lot of people will.”

“I’m sorry for the ones I trained with, but I’m not sorry for what I’ve done, and I’d do it again. With HGH, I have helped people recapture their youth, grow muscle if they need it, strengthen their ligaments, and I believe sharpen mental function. HGH is a miracle our bodies produce themselves. When it begins to wane at about age twenty-five, that’s when the injuries pick up, aging truly begins.”

“Thadia figured out HGH, right?”

“Given her background, Thadia could spot any kind of evasion, cover-up. She did ultimately realize we were removing pituitary glands. She’d thought Cory was covering up our affair. That’s what started her snooping.” Harry’s eyes widened, and Annalise continued. “He was fun, but he had to go. Don’t think I would spare him or anybody. My work had to continue. Anyway, Thadia shadowed him. It was a matter of time before she’d run her mouth and create big problems. If he’d slept with her, pretended to be attracted, she would have been mollified. Apart from being unstable, she was silly. No man is worth that much effort.

“Paula was much smarter. She once asked me, ‘Why is Cory always there when you harvest organs and eyes?’ And I said he needs to see healthy bodies. She believed it for a while, but eventually her suspicions were aroused, too.”

“How did you kill her?”

“Injected her with potassium. Creates cardiac arrhythmia, quick death. Not a trace. Appears totally natural. Then all I had to do was, once she was dead, inject her with bee venom.”

“But how could you inject her? Why didn’t she fight you off?”

“I had a bottle of cyanocobalamin, B-twelve. When I stopped by to pick up brochures that other cancer benefits had printed. I’d asked to see them, to compare with ours. You all saw them at the meetings. I told Paula I’d give her a B-twelve shot, as she’d complained of being tired. She hated to give herself shots. I gave her a shot in her vein. It took her a second for reality to click in. She started to pull away, because B-twelve is put in the muscle, but I had half of the syringe in and quickly emptied the rest in her vein inside her elbow. Potassium works quickly. I’d made sure to really load her up. She was dead in fifteen seconds. She hadn’t time to struggle. It’s a swift death. The bee venom produced the bodily effects of anaphylactic shock. As she was literally only dead a second, it worked on her body. Then I put the dead hornet next to her.”

“Why did she trust you to give her a shot?”

“Why not? She never thought I’d want to kill her. Even if she thought I was up to something, she wouldn’t have considered herself in danger. Maybe a month or two later she would have.”

“Did you know she had a cylinder under her counter in a cartridge box?”

“No.” Annalise exhaled, hand throbbing now. “I was lucky, very lucky, she hadn’t put two and two together just yet. But people don’t think of pituitary glands.”

“How’d you get the potassium?”

Annalise laughed. “Harry, don’t be naïve. I’m a doctor. I can get anything, and potassium isn’t considered dangerous.”

“Oh, Annalise, how I wish you hadn’t killed those people.”