Hiss of Death

Shortro and Tomahawk watched in wonderment as the old Saab bumped over the open meadow behind the barn.

Harry turned back from the barn, running for all she was worth toward the creek. She knew Annalise couldn’t get the Saab over the steep banks. If Annalise was going to kill Harry, she’d have to get out and run after her.

Tucker flew to the paddocks. “Jump out! Jump out!”

Shortro needed no further provocation. The Saddlebred took three trotting strides to gracefully arc over the three-board fence, which stood at three feet eight inches.

In the same paddock, Tomahawk soared over, too. The mares and youngsters remained in their paddocks.

“Follow me!” The corgi tore after the Saab, tiny bits of soil flying off her claws.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter sped alongside Harry. Bouncing over the pasture, Annalise bore down on Harry—now zigzagging to present a tougher target to hit. Windows up, the doctor didn’t hear the horses coming up behind her.

The steep creek, thirty yards off, might be Harry’s salvation. Running evasively delayed her reaching the wooded high banks.

Tomahawk and Shortro thundered up on Annalise’s left side. She could have cared less whether she killed the horses, but she knew if she turned into them they’d damage her car. She needed the car to get out of here once the deed was done.

No fool, Harry ran to the left at a diagonal, finally reaching the creek. She slid down the banks above the beaver dam, where the water was lower.

Annalise skidded to a stop, her car’s nose in a pricker bush, and got out of the car, Colt MKIV .38 in hand. The gun, while well balanced, was heavy in her hand.

Tucker slammed into Annalise behind the knees. Down she went. Annalise rolled down the bank, the little dog right behind her, the horses peering over the bank. She never loosened her grip on the gun.

Pewter and Mrs. Murphy swam to the other side of the creek. Harry, who had been knee-deep, clambered up the steep side, slipping as she went. She grasped a protruding root, pulling herself up.

The beavers, out of their lodge now, began slapping the water with their broad, flat tails.

Annalise plunged in, holding her gun straight up over her head. Harry, already over the bank, proved a difficult target. Annalise needed to pull up over the bank.

Swimming behind her, Tucker called to the horses, “Get in the water. Follow me!”

Harry turned, saw Annalise climbing up, more difficult for her while carrying a pistol.

“Go back to the creek bank! Use the trees!” Mrs. Murphy hollered, heading to the creek bed to show Harry.

Whether she understood the cat or figured it out herself, Harry dodged behind a large old sycamore, large sheets of bark on the ground.

Pewter acted like a rear guard, slowing to watch Annalise, then telling Mrs. Murphy, “She’s taking aim.”

A report, then a thud as a bullet hit the sycamore. Harry moved down into the creek bed, but she couldn’t go fast, for she was now below the beaver dam, and the water was high, the creek bed soggy.

“Won’t work,” Mrs. Murphy screamed. “Get back up, use the trees. It’s your only hope.”

Fit, Annalise was fast. By the time she reached the sycamore, Harry had hauled herself back up on the creek’s bank again. Senses razor-sharp, Harry dug in her toes, bent low like a runner coming out of the blocks on hearing the pistol shot. But unlike those on the track, the pistol shot was aimed at her.

Again, moving from tree to tree, Harry continued downstream, sprinting, bent over, when she could. The only plan she had was to get to Coop’s house, if she made it that far down, or try to reach her own barn. She would be exposed when she ran across the back pastures to her sunflowers, which were not high enough to cover her. She’d also be a clear target in Coop’s newly mown pasture. She still might make it again, zigging and zagging. She didn’t know whether to again cross the creek into her farm or to keep on Coop’s side. Sooner or later, Annalise would empty out her clip. She’d counted three shots—five would be left. Then she’d run for all she was worth for about fifteen paces, hit the dirt, roll, and run some more.

Compromised as Harry was due to radiation treatments, she was pumped with adrenaline and running for her life.

Tucker kept at Annalise’s heels. Much as the physician wanted to plug the irritating dog, she’d been counting bullets, too. Harry’s speed and evasive actions were proving to be a real problem.

Taking aim, she fired again. This time the bullet burrowed into the black ridged bark of a sweet gum tree. Harry backed away from the tree, pushing through Virginia thornbushes, trampling wild lilies, sown courtesy of birds. She dodged behind the trees near Coop’s cutover lower pasture. The level ground there meant she could burn the wind, but fast as she was, a bullet was faster.

Annalise saw a flash of Harry’s blue T-shirt. She missed the cats, running with her, darting in and out of low bush.

Harry’s lungs seared. She needed to bend over and take a deep breath. If she did, she’d expose herself and allow her pursuer to draw closer. Behind an ancient Fiddle oak, Harry veered right to a hickory at the pasture’s edge. Annalise, slower, was running in the mown pasture to catch up. As the ground was flatter and drier, she gained on Harry. Harry had little time in which to decide whether to try for Coop’s house or to go back into the creek. The water was deeper down here. It might be difficult getting across before Annalise reached the bank.

Now aware of his master’s fragile position, Tomahawk said to Shortro, “Do what I do. Get behind me.”

The seventeen-year-old Thoroughbred trotted twenty yards behind Annalise. She turned for the creek bed. The cats called out Harry’s location to Tomahawk.

“Get her before she makes it to the trees!” Pewter shrieked as loud as she could, sank her claws into a tree, and climbed at warp speed. She hoped Annalise would walk under this tree, since it was at the best crossing. If she got this far, Pewter could drop onto her. Pewter devoutly hoped the doctor wouldn’t get to that point.

Harry’s face and hands bled from the thorns. Her T-shirt was ripped, her body looking like she’d run through barbed wire. Her mind remained clear. No panic. She felt she had a slim chance.

Annalise saw movement in the grasses. Birds flew out of the shrubs. She saw a flash of shoe as Harry slipped down toward the crossing. Taking aim, she fired, just missing Harry’s boot heel.

In a gallop, Tomahawk rode right onto Annalise, knocking her down. She knew the horses were behind her, but it never occurred to her she’d be in danger from them. Flat on her face, Annalise struggled to rise, the gun knocked out of her hand. Before she could rise to her knees, Shortro plowed into her, full weight on her back. The massive weight on those iron-shod hooves broke her back.

Annalise couldn’t move her legs. Her upper body worked. She pulled herself toward the gun, but Tucker grabbed her wrist, biting down for all she was worth. Then the dog grabbed the gun, running to give it to Harry.

Harry slid down to the water’s edge. She caught her breath as the dog gave her the gun.

“Tucker!” Mrs. Murphy rubbed against the panting dog.

Speechless for once, Pewter backed down the tree.

Having neutralized Annalise, Tomahawk and Shortro noticed the alfalfa and orchard grass in Coop’s back pasture. They walked away, put their heads down, and enjoyed it. Someone else’s pasture always seemed better than one’s own.

Harry wiped her forehead, smearing blood all over. She then noticed her hands were torn. Blood dripped down her cheeks, seeping through her torn T-shirt—an old favorite. Whatever was on the thorns began to sting.

Hearing Annalise’s shriek of pain, Harry hugged her dog, blood now on Tucker’s fur. Both cats sat at her feet.

Pewter, who’d had the best view, said, “You wouldn’t believe what Tomahawk and Shortro did to Annalise!”

Harry looked down. “You all stayed right up with me.” She choked up, cleared her throat, then warily walked out, using trees as cover, to see where Annalise was. Harry might have Annalise’s gun, but she was keenly aware how powerful Annalise was. She was shocked when she saw her lying in the pasture.

The doctor had rolled on her back. “Can’t move my legs.”

“Hurt?” Harry asked.

“No. My hand hurts more,” Annalise replied. “You look like hell.”

“If you had your way, I’d be dead.” Harry put the safety on the pistol. “This gun is heavy.”

“Cost me a thousand dollars. And yes, you would be dead. I like you. I like you a lot, Harry, but you were going to ruin my project.”

“Got a cellphone on you?”

“No.” She asked, “Pull me to a tree and prop me up?”

“No. You’re stronger than I am. I saw your bench press, remember? You’ll try to choke me.”

Annalise didn’t deny it. “Then shoot me. I know you won’t give me the gun to shoot myself. Just shoot me. Self-defense. Everyone will buy it.”

“They might, but I won’t.”

“Harry, is it possible to be too principled?”

“How would you know? In your case, you haven’t any.”

Annalise’s eyes flashed. “I was helping hundreds of people over the years. The stupidity of our government causes so much suffering, prevents millions—literally millions—from healthy lives. I cut through all the bullshit and helped them myself.”

Harry sat a bit away from Annalise so the prone woman couldn’t reach her. The animals listened, too. They remained vigilant.

“I don’t know about that, but once I knew it was you, I figured you had to be making a lot of money.”

Annalise began talking too fast. At first she made no sense. “He first got wobbly when a piece of skull, the base, which is just above the pituitary gland, was on his desk. I swore it was Thadia, who was so obsessed with him, she had to have been spying. I have no doubt she got into the hospital morgue, not all that difficult, rolled out a harvested corpse, and checked it out. Our removals wouldn’t be obvious, not like a missing arm. But Thadia, like most dedicated addicts, knew a great deal about the human body and body chemistry. Thadia knew where that small pituitary gland was located. She’d know if it was removed. She knew. It’s amazing the woman lived as long as she did, and I think one of the reasons was she understood drugs’ effect on her own body and on others’. Think of the good she could have done if she’d taken organic chemistry, gotten into med school.”

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.”

“You can’t give a damn about Thadia.”

“I didn’t like her, but I would hardly wish her throat slit.”

“Harry, she was a complete fool. One of those subjective people who sees everything through their emotional needs. An idiot. People ruled by their emotions always are.”

“That’s cruel.”

“Life is cruel. Consider how people who impede progress are removed. The natives who lived here got in our way. We killed them. Now, a century and more from that time, the dominant party, you and I, feel guilty about it. If we were alive in 1835, we’d feel differently. You can only go forward if you remove whatever obstacles are in the way of progress, be they obstacles of time and travel, geography, or people. Unfortunately, Paula, Thadia, and Cory became obstacles.”

“I don’t feel that way. How did you trap Thadia?”

“She called and said she’d tell people about my affair with Cory if I didn’t end it. I told her we should talk about it somewhere quiet and safe. Like I said, the woman was an idiot. I put a wrapped box of OxyContin in the car, thought it might send law enforcement in the wrong direction, but it was never mentioned in the papers.” Annalise took a deep breath. “I feel a little guilty about killing Paula. I really wish Paula and Cory hadn’t presented problems.”

“I don’t need to know about Cory. I know how you did it, and now I know why. Annalise, you’ll be here for maybe an hour or more, and I’m not going to move you.”

“My spinal cord is snapped. I’m a doctor, I know my back is broken and I can’t move my legs. End of story.”

“Well, I can’t drag you, so you’ll have to lie there.”

As Harry turned to go, Annalise propped herself up on one elbow. “Harry!”

“Yes.” She turned, as did her animals.

“I didn’t underestimate you. Your mind moves very fast, and like I said, you trust your instincts.”

“An—” Harry didn’t know what to say.

“And you’ll beat the cancer. You will.” She stayed propped up as she watched Harry recede.

• • •

When Coop, Rick, and Harry arrived at the scene, horses still grazing in the next meadow, Annalise was dead. She’d gotten her pocketknife, a three-and-a-half-inch sharp blade, out of her jeans and tore her throat. Given the state of her right hand, it was not a clean slice, and it must have taken her time.

“Jesus.” Coop looked at the blood. “The willpower.”

“The delusion,” Harry sadly noted.