“That attitude, Frank. It’s why I’m here.”
“Right, sure, that’s why. Let me tell you how people look at dead hookers.”
“Don’t tell me-like they’re asking for it?”
“No. But listen and you might learn: If you don’t want to end up dead by a Dumpster, don’t turn tricks in the Fifth Ward.”
“You ought to make that your epitaph,” Muse said.
“Don’t get me wrong. I will get this sicko. But let’s not play games about priorities and headlines.” Tremont moved a little closer, so that his belly was almost pressing against her. Muse did not back up. “This is my case. Go back to your desk and leave the work to the grown-ups.”
“Or?”
Tremont smiled. “You don’t want that kind of trouble, little lady. Believe me.”
He stormed off. Muse turned back around. The ME was concentrating very hard on opening her work case, pretending not to have heard.
Muse shook it off and studied the body. She tried to be the clinical investigator. The facts: The victim was a Caucasian female. Judging by the skin and general frame she looked to be about forty, but the streets had a way of aging you. No visible tattoos.
No face.
Muse had only seen something this destructive once before. When she was twenty-three, she spent six weeks with state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike. A truck crossed a divider and smashed head-on into a Toyota Celica. The Toyota driver had been a nineteen-year-old girl coming home from college break.
The destruction had been mind-blowing.
When they finally pried the metal off, that nineteen-year-old girl had no face either. Like this.
“Cause of death?” Muse asked.
“Not sure yet. But man, this perp is one sick son of a bitch. The bones aren’t just broken. It’s almost like they were ground into small chunks.”
“How long ago?”
“I would guess ten, twelve hours. She wasn’t killed here. Not enough blood.”
Muse already knew that. She examined the hooker’s clothes-her pink bra top, her tight leather skirt, the stiletto heels.
She shook her head.
“What?”
“This is all wrong,” Muse said.
“How’s that?”
Her phone vibrated. She checked the caller ID. It was her boss, County Prosecutor Paul Copeland. She looked over at Frank Tremont. He gave her a five-finger wave and grinned.
She answered. “Hey, Cope.”
“What are you doing?”
“Working a crime scene.”
“And pissing off a colleague.”
“A subordinate.”
“A pain-in-the-ass subordinate.”
“But I’m in charge of him, right?”
“Frank Tremont is going to make a lot of noise. Get that media on us, rile up his fellow investigators. Do we really need the aggravation?”
“I think we do, Cope.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because he has this case all wrong.”
8
DANTE Loriman came into Ilene Goldfarb’s office first. He gave Mike a little too firm a handshake. Susan came in behind him. Ilene Goldfarb stood and waited behind her desk. She had the glasses back on now. She reached across and gave them both quick handshakes. Then she sat down and opened the manila folder in front of her.
Dante sat next. He never looked at his wife. Susan took the chair next to him. Mike stayed in the back of the room, out of sight. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. Dante Loriman began carefully to roll up his sleeves. First the right sleeve, then the left. He placed his elbows on his thighs and seemed to beckon Ilene Goldfarb to hit him with the worst.
“So?” Dante said.
Mike watched Susan Loriman. Her head was up. She sat hold-your-breath still. Too still. As if feeling his gaze, Susan turned her lovely face toward him. Mike aimed for neutral. This was Ilene’s show. He was just a spectator.
Ilene continued to read the file, though that seemed more for show. When she was done, she folded her hands on the desk and looked somewhere between the two parents.
“We ran the necessary tissue typing tests,” she began.
Dante interrupted. “I want to be the one.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want to give Lucas a kidney.”
“You’re not a match, Mr. Loriman.”
Just like that.
Mike kept his eyes on Susan Loriman. Now it was her turn to play neutral.
“Oh,” Dante said. “I thought the father…”
“It varies,” Ilene said. “There are many factors, as I think I explained to Mrs. Loriman during her previous visit. Ideally we want the HLA typing to have a six antigen match. Based on the HLA typing, you wouldn’t be a good candidate, Mr. Loriman.”
“How about me?” Susan asked.
“You’re better. You’re not perfect. But you’re a better match. Normally your best chance is a sibling. Each child inherits half his antigens from each parent and there are four combinations of inherited antigens possible. Put simply, a sibling has a twenty-five percent chance of being an identical match, a fifty percent chance of being a half match-a three antigen-and a twenty-five percent chance of not being a match at all.”
“And which is Tom?”
Tom was Lucas’s younger brother.
“Unfortunately, the news is bad there. Your wife is the best match we have so far. We will also put your son on the cadaver kidney transplant bank, see if we can find a better candidate, but I would call that unlikely. Mrs. Loriman might be considered good enough, but frankly she is not an ideal donor.”
“Why not?”
“Her match is a two. The closer we are to a six, the more likely your son’s body will not reject the new kidney. You see, the better the antigen match, the less likely he will have to spend his life taking medications and doing constant dialysis.”
Dante ran his hand through his hair. “So what do we do now?”
“We have a little time maybe. Like I said, we can put his name on the list. We search and keep working with dialysis. If nothing better comes along, we use Mrs. Loriman.”
“But you’d like to find better,” Dante said.
“Yes.”
“We have some other relatives who said they’d donate to Lucas if they could,” Dante said. “Maybe you could test them.”
Ilene nodded. “Make up a list-names, addresses, and exactly how they are blood related.”
Silence.
“How sick is he, Doc?” Dante spun around and looked behind. “Mike? Be straight with us. How bad is this?”
Mike looked at Ilene. Ilene gave a little go-ahead nod.
“Bad,” Mike said.
He looked at Susan Loriman when he said it. Susan looked away. They discussed options for another ten minutes or so and then the Lorimans left. When Mike and Ilene were alone, Mike took the chair Dante had been in and raised his palms to the sky. Ilene pretended to be busy putting files away.
“What gives?” Mike said.
“You thought I should tell them?”
Mike didn’t reply.
“My job is to treat their son. He is my patient. The father isn’t.”
“So the father has no rights here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You took medical tests. You learned something from them that you kept from a patient.”
“Not my patient,” Ilene countered. “My patient is Lucas Loriman, the son.”
“So we bury what we know?”
“Let me ask you this. Suppose I found out from some test that Mrs. Loriman was cheating on Mr. Loriman, would I be obligated to tell him?”
