Greg Iles - Blood Memory

“That’s tough to nail down,” Kaiser complains. “Anybody could lie about that. We can’t take blood levels on every male relative of six murder victims.”

“Why not? The DNA evidence proves the source is male, and this is your only real lead. The British police did blood tests on thousands of people in one town to solve a murder case.”

“This is America, Cat, not England.”

“Okay, okay. Any sign of anaerobic spirochetes in the cultures? Bacteroides melaninogenicus? Anaerobic vibrios? Those are specific for teeth, and we could rule out edentulous people.”

“Shit. I’m looking…I don’t see anything like that.”

“It’s still early for those to show up, and they’re difficult to culture anyway. I’ll keep thinking about this angle. What about the skull in Malik’s lap?”

“Nothing. The only fingerprints on it were Malik’s.”

“Naturally. What else?”

Kaiser blows out a stream of air in frustration. “We’re checking all film-processing labs, in the hope that someone’s done work for Malik. It was video equipment we found in his apartment, but I’m hoping for a break.”

“What else?”

“I’ve got the technical services guys trying to resurrect data off the drives we took from Malik’s office computers, but they’ve got nothing so far. I think his film really is our only chance. But if the killer got that when he killed Malik…we’re fucked.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been more help to you. I’ve had my hands full here.”

“You just get me the names of the women in Group X. Do that, and I’ll keep your ass out of jail.”

“I’m trying, John. But I need your help, too.”

“What do you need?” His voice is wary.

“The same thing I asked you for yesterday. The autopsy report on my aunt.”

“What are you looking for? Cause of death, what?”

“You know what I’m looking for. Her reproductive organs. Anything out of the ordinary?”

Kaiser takes his time to answer. “I shouldn’t give you this.”

My throat tightens.

“Didn’t you tell me that Ann was obsessed with having children?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that makes no sense at all, Cat.”

“Why not?”

“Because your aunt was sterile. She had been for decades. Probably from the time she was a teenager.”

“What do you mean? Sterile how?”

“Her tubes were tied.”

Something goes hollow inside me. “That’s impossible. The pathologist must have made a mistake.”

“You know better,” Kaiser says wearily. “And the sterilization wasn’t done by any normal procedure, either. That’s how the pathologist knew it was done a long time ago.”

“How was it done?”

“Apparently, in a tubal ligation the procedure is done fairly low down the fallopian tube. Your aunt’s tubes were cut just below something called the fimbria, a flowerlike opening of the tube just below the ovary. They were tied off with silk sutures, and the silk was still inside the scarred tissue at autopsy. The pathologist said OBs haven’t used silk for that procedure in decades.”

A cloud of fog has descended in my mind.

“I know this is giving you some ideas about your personal situation, Cat. Please try to stay calm, okay? Maybe you should call Dr. Goldman.”

“Did the pathologist say anything else?”

“He said that an OB wouldn’t cut off the fimbria. That was something a general surgeon might do as a quick method of sterilizing somebody. He thought it was damned odd.”

My hands are shaking, but not from fear this time. It’s outrage. “I have to go, John.”

“No!” he says quickly. “You can’t just go. I’ve given you a lot of rope to play with, and I’m afraid you’re going to hang us both. I’ve got superiors to answer to, like it or not. And every hour you’re on the street comes out of my credibility. I’m looking for some help here.”

Michael’s clock reads 7:05 A.M. “Give me eight hours, John. In that time I’ll have something to give you, or I’ll come back to New Orleans and let you throw me to the wolves.”

The silence seems interminable.

“What can you possibly learn in Natchez that can help me?” he asks.

Probably nothing, but I don’t really give a shit. I just need you off my back.

“Eight hours,” he says softly. “Cat, if I haven’t heard from you by five o’clock today, I’ll have the Natchez police pick you up on suspicion of murder.”

If they can find me… “Thanks, John. Hey, could you fax me the autopsy report?”

Another pause.

“I’m a member of her family, for God’s sake. Please.”

“You’re a pain in the ass is what you are. Do you want it sent to the same number where we sent you those files on Malik?”

“Perfect. I’ll talk to you before five.”

“Cat-”

I hang up, then get up and run for the bathroom. My father’s body is coming out of the ground today, and nothing is going to stop that. If the judge needs an affidavit from my mother to issue a court order for exhumation, he’ll get one. There will be no more denial for the women of the DeSalle family.

Denial is death.

Mom is sitting at her kitchen table in a sweat-soaked housecoat, staring blankly into a mug of coffee. She doesn’t even look up at the sound of the door. Only when I sit down opposite her do her eyes rise to take me in.

“Has Grandpapa been here?” I ask.

She shrugs.

I’ve already slipped into my grandfather’s office and retrieved the autopsy report that Kaiser faxed there. I was lucky Grandpapa wasn’t in his office when it arrived-though part of me wished he had been-but my luck ended when I tried to borrow another pistol from his gun safe. The combination had been changed.

“I have some things to tell you, Mom. They won’t be easy to hear, but you don’t have a choice anymore. You owe it to Ann.”

Her eyes are shot with blood, and the skin of the orbits gleams blue-black. But her mind seems alert. Whatever drug she was on yesterday has been flushed from her system.

In a soft but deliberate voice, I tell her what the pathologist discovered during Ann’s autopsy: that she was sterilized many years ago by an unorthodox procedure, probably during her “emergency appendectomy” on the island. Mom listens like someone being told that her child has been tortured to death. I have the sense that if I pricked her face with a needle, she wouldn’t flinch.

“There’s something else,” I add. “I had a dream last night. It’s the recurring one, about riding in the old pickup truck with Grandpapa. Last night I saw the end of it. He parked by the pond, and then…Mom, he started touching me.”

Her eyes remain focused on the table.

“And right before he took my pants down, he pulled Lena from under the seat and stuck her in my arms.”

A trembling has begun in my mother’s hands.

“That’s how they found Ann,” I remind her. “With Timid Thomas beside her naked body.”

“I had a dream last night, too,” Mom says softly.

“You…you did?”

She lifts her coffee cup to her lips, takes a sip, then sets it rattling on the saucer. “Something happened on the island when I was young,” she says in a voice I’ve never heard from her. There is no affect, no illusion, nothing added for the benefit of the listener. “I was fourteen. It was summer, and I’d gotten to be friends with a boy there. A Negro boy. He was a year older than I. It was innocent, mostly. But toward the end of the summer, we did some touching. He touched me, anyway.”

She takes another sip of coffee, the tremor in her hand so pronounced that I fear she’ll drop the cup. “We’d meet by an old shack near the river. Nobody ever went there. But one day a cousin of mine followed us. And he saw Jesse touching me.”