Kathy Reichs: Grave Secrets

No!

Die from a bullet or die God knows how in the cooler? I spun around Lucas and lunged for the door.

Locked!

I whirled to face my attacker.

Lucas had a Beretta pointed at my chest.

My vision blurred.

“Go ahead, Dr. Lucas. Shoot me.”

“Pointless.”

We glared at each other like wary animals.

“Why Zuckerman?” I asked.

Lucas splintered into four, recongealed.

“Why Zuckerman?”

Had I said that or only imagined it? “You’re very pale, Dr. Brennan.”

I blinked away a trickle of sweat.

“My distinguished colleague will keep you company.”

I struggled to understand his meaning.

“Why?” I repeated.

“Dr. Zuckerman couldn’t be trusted. She was weak and prone to panic. Not like you.”

Why didn’t Lucas shoot me?

“Did you kill your victims, Dr. Lucas? Or merely steal from their corpses?”

Lucas swallowed and his Adam’s apple bounced like a kid on a bungee.

“We would have made a great contribution.”

“Or a black market killing.”

Lucas’s lips curled in an imitation grin.

“You’re even better than I thought. All right. I do love it when the gloves come off. Let’s discuss science.”

“Let’s.”

Stall!

“Your president has sent ES cell research back to the twelfth century.”

“He acted out of a commitment to scientific ethics.”

“Ethics?” Lucas laughed.

“Their argument has no validity?”

My thoughts were fragmenting. It was becoming harder and harder to think.

“That the retrieval of stem cells requires the killing of little babies? That stem cell researchers are no better than Mengele and his Nazi mutilators? You call that bullshit scientific ethics?”

Lucas waved his gun at a list of safety regulations taped to the wall.

“A blastocyst is no larger than the dot on that ‘i.’”

“It is life.” My words sounded slurry and far away.

“Throwaways from fertility treatments. The discards of aborted pregnancies.”

Lucas’s agitation was growing. I was doing this all wrong.

“Hundreds of thousands suffer from Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, crushed spinal cords. We could have helped them.”

“That was Zuckerman’s goal?”

“Yes.”

“And yours was to fatten your wallet.”

“Why not?” Spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth.

“Mechanical hearts. Pharmaceuticals. Patents on orthopedic hardware. A smart doctor can make millions.”

“By killing or just stealing embryos?”

Hadn’t I asked that eons earlier?

“Zuckerman would have taken forever mixing eggs and sperm in her little dishes. My way was quicker. It would have worked.”

I wanted to close my eyes.

“You know it’s over,” I said.

“It’s over when I say it is.”

I wanted to stop hearing and sleep.

“Zuckerman’s death will be solved. Her lab has been seized.”

“You lie.” The bottom rim of his eye twitched.

“Two detectives are on their way here. I was to meet them.”

Lucas wet his lips.

I hammered on, barely conscious of what I was saying.

“The truth is coming out about Chupan Ya. We’re putting on record what happened to those poor people.” My knees began to buckle. “And the blackmail’s over. Díaz’s involvement in the massacre has been exposed. He won’t be your patsy anymore.”

Lucas’s fingers tightened on the grip of the pistol.

“Jorge Serano is in custody. They’ll cut him a deal and he’ll give you up.”

A derisive laugh. “Give me up for what, stealing a few dead embryos?”

“For murdering Patricia Eduardo.”

Lucas’s gaze remained level and unblinking.

“That skeleton’s long gone. Its identity will always be conjecture.”

“You forgot one thing, Dr. Lucas. Patricia’s unborn baby. The baby you never allowed to draw breath.”

In the distance I heard the sound of a siren. Lucas’s head jerked to the right, returned to me.

Keep talking!

“I found that baby’s bones inside its murdered mother’s clothing. Those bones will provide DNA.” My voice was sounding farther away by the second.

“That DNA will match a sample provided by Patricia Eduardo’s mother. That baby will reach out from death to seal your fate.”

Lucas’s knuckles bulged white as his eyes went hard and black. The look of a sniper, a terrorist, or a hostage taker who has been cornered. The realization there is no way out.

“In that case, I might as well settle up with you. What’s one more?”

A veil fell across my vision. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. I would die in a morgue in Guatemala.

Then, “You are skilled and resourceful, Dr. Brennan. I admit that. Consider this your luckiest year.”

Through a black fog I saw Lucas take the gun from my chest, slide the barrel into his mouth, and pull the trigger.

30

THE STORY NEVER MADE HEADLINES IN GUATEMALA OR CANADA.

In Guatemala City, La Hora ran a blurb on the indictment of Miguel Angel Gutiérrez for first-degree homicide. Claudia de la Alda’s mother was quoted expressing her satisfaction with the investigation. Two column inches. Page seventeen.

In separate articles, the Patricia Eduardo and Maria Zuckerman murders were attributed to organized crime, and Lucas’s death was classified as a suicide.

Not a word about stem cells.

In Montreal, La Presse and the Gazette ran brief follow-up stories on the rue Ste-Catherine shoot-out. In addition to Carlos Vicente, a second suspect had been identified in Guatemala City. The man died before an arrest could be made. Period. No speculation as to the motive for a Guatemalan shooting an American in Montreal.

No ink anywhere on Antonio Díaz, Alejandro Bastos, or André Specter. Díaz remained a judge. Specter remained an ambassador.

Presumably, Bastos remained dead.

I’ll never really know why Hector Lucas turned the gun on himself. I believe it was arrogance combined with desperation. He saw himself as a superior being, and when he knew it was over he chose the terms. It was also arrogance, I believe, that led him to spare me. He wanted me to know that it was he who chose that I would live, and he wanted me to remember. A memorial of sorts.

Ryan was at the hospital by seven the morning after the morgue. With flowers.

“Thanks, Ryan. They’re beautiful.”

“Like you.” Goofy grin.

“I have a black eye, my cheek’s an eggplant, there’s a needle in my arm, and Nurse Kevorkian just shoved a suppository up my ass.”

“You look good to me.”

His hair was matted, he hadn’t shaved in two days, his jacket was smeared where he’d dropped ash and tried to rub it off. He looked good to me, too.

“O.K.,” I said. “Give.”

I was awake but weak. Whatever was in my metabolism had moved on, chased away by drugs, or simply depleted by the passage of time.

“Galiano and I phoned your cell when the judge cut paper for Zuckerman’s clinic. No answer. We tried again when the cops netted Jorge Serano.”

“I was either in the shower or had already left and forgotten the phone.”

“We figured you’d shut the phone off to sleep. When I got back to the hotel, I knocked on your door, tried the handle.”

“Hoping for?”

“Just checking on the health of a friend.”

I jabbed at his stomach. He hopped back.

“That taquería was your idea.”

“You chose the fish.”

“I distinctly remember passing on the side order of botulism.”

“Apparently it’s included, no charge, though you may be falsely accusing the fish. Anyway, your door was unlocked, your room a mess,” Ryan went on. “I spotted the article on stem cell retrieval from dead bodies, and wondered if you had gone detecting or done something similarly stupid.”