Perfect killer

CHAPTER 29

The shock stunned us speechless for a solid minute. Then Jasmine tapped the Blackberry with a manicured but not flashy, index finger.

"It's about Braxton," she said. "Talmadge's lawyer Jay Shanker, put the files together showing that Braxton served as a lab rat for some secret medical research program at one of the old POW camps in the Delta."

I nodded. During World War II, the United State had a problem with Southernported cargo ships returning empty from Europe. On top of that, there were European food shortages and huge troop resources needed to guard POWs over there. Somebody looked at the situation and solved them all by loading captured German soldiers on the empty ships and sending them to rural Mississippi with its plentiful food and cheap land and open spaces where escapees had no place to run and few citizens who spoke German.

The Army located POW camps near Delta farming communities like Belzoni and Greenwood. After the war, most prison camps deteriorated, although as a child I heard talk of continuing activities at the camp in Belzoni, southwest of one of the Judge's plantations.

"Belzoni."

"What? How did you know?"

"Educated guess."

"You're right. The MicroSD card Mama gave you says the Army conducted some sort of secret medical experiments there, something not quite kosher-like the Tuskegee syphilis thing."

An uncomfortable vision of my previous life burrowed toward the surface. As a new recruit, I participated in the end of Project 112 and later, Project SHAD, experiments that tested nerve gas and bacteria on more than five thousand military personnel from 1962 to 1973. Scores of soldiers closer to the release site than I had suffered permanent disabilities. These tests leaked into the media in 2003 with little interest.

Instead of mentioning this I said, "Or like all the atomic tests on soldiers in the 1950s."

Jasmine gave a rueful shake of her head.

"Jesus, it hurts me to think of things like that," I said "Here we have brave men and women who're willing to die to protect their country and they get betrayed by the fatassed, political paper-pushers in the Pentagon."

I felt the anger rise as we finally cleared the Malibu congestion and started making some speed up the hill.

"Anyway, the stuff on the memory chip contains excerpts from Braxton's medical records. They indicate he underwent brain surgery in Belzoni as treatment for a head wound he received in Vietnam."

"That's pretty famous."

"Uh-huh, but these records say Army doctors experimented on him and others with head wounds in order to make them more aggressive. In their words, they wanted 'perfect killers' for the Army."

I whistled. "That's political dynamite."

"More like a nuke."

"On the other hand, maybe it helps: brave, mortally wounded hero gets taken advantage of by the military he so bravely served."

"I doubt it," she said. "Nobody wants a head case for president."

"Why not? They've all been head cases since JFK."

"Good point."

The road dipped toward a broad expanse of beach and ocean. "What else is in the file?"

Jasmine shook her head. "A lot of vague stuff, intended to tease Mom and get her involved."

"It worked."

"Jay Shanker promised her the microfiche archives of all the Belzoni medical records on a CD, including name, rank, serial numbers, dates, procedures, doctors, and chain-of-command approvals authorizing the whole thing."

I whistled. "Any number of people would kill to keep that quiet."

A few miles past Point Dume, I slowed for a small, discreet sign designed to attract only the attention of people already looking for it. As I had twice a week for the past six years, I turned into a narrow, cobbled lane bounded with lavish landscaping; a sculpturequality steel gate fixed to stone columns loomed ahead. I stopped next to an intercom/keypad pedestal and punched in my code.

"Talmadge ties everything together," I said as the gate opened. "Which means the answers are back home."

"Home?" Jasmine gave me that Mona Lisa smile again. "I thought California's your home."

I accelerated slowly through the gate as I thought about this.

"Camilla used to catch me saying that. She told me it made her sad."

"The Delta never lets loose."

"Yeah, it's got my heart, but I can't imagine living there again."

We drove in silence for a bit more, then I said, "Why now? Why bring Talmadge to trial now after so many years? And why kill Vanessa?"

"Well, the leading theory for the killing-at least among the cops-is that Mom was assassinated by someone in the African-American community who didn't want her helping Talmadge."

"Blame the victim?"

"Old story She got a lot of hate mail. Some pretty angry voices among big AfricanAmerican groups condemned her for helping the white devil."

Jasmine stared silently out the side window. "It had a race thing about it. And a personal thing. Some of them were the same voices which slammed her years ago for being a traitor to her race when she dated a couple of white guys in New York."

She said it evenly, but my pulse stumbled anyway. Her ability to talk so casually about the incendiary topic of race astonished me. I had friends of every race and tried to ignore skin color, which seemed to strengthen the friendships because I considered each as a surgeon, an entrepreneur, a talented artist, first, rather than as a Pakistani, Asian, black, whatever. But then, I was white and could afford to ignore race since it was not constantly thrown in my face by those who were incapable of seeing past skin color.

"So," I said, and hesitated. "So could it be that?"

"It's always possible, but I doubt it. Doubt it very seriously. Convincing the police is another matter."

"But why prosecute Talmadge now? The man's old and coming apart at the seams. His awful seizures tear him apart and he's got terminal larynx cancer from cigarettes. Why doesn't somebody just let him die. The cancer's its own punishment."

"Punishment is not always justice," Jasmine said. "Do you think the Nuremberg trials were only about punishment and the culpability of those being tried?" She paused for an answer I did not have, then shook her head.

"Justice outranks punishment. It brings a cultural repudiation of criminal behavior and that act brings justice-to the individual directly wronged and to society as a whole."

"But why Talmadge and why now?"

"What's happening now began in 1990, a couple of weeks before Christmas when a grand jury in Jackson indicted Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers."

I was familiar with the case. Evers had been gunned down in front of his home in 1963. An ambitious young district attorney in Hinds County, Bill Waller, brought De La Beckwith to trial and endured abuse and anonymous death threats to see justice done. Waller also resisted intense pressure from the racists who controlled the state-the Stennis/Eastland Democrats who had made their careers standing in the schoolhouse door and who thought good race relations was providing new paint to freshen up the Colored Only signs smeared across the Mississippi landscape like ugly cultural graffiti. In this atmosphere, Waller got hung juries in two separate trials. I suppose that, given the allwhite juries back then, the verdicts stood as a partial victory, and indicated that not all white people were behind Mississippi's brutal apartheid.

Less than ten years later, Mississippi elected "nigger lover" Waller as governor thanks in large part to the FBI backed up by the guns and steel of the federal government and National Guard troops. Many think the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent protests did the whole job. True enough, Dr. King and his protesters had to be the first wave to show the nation their dedication, their suffering, and to help Americans understand the evil. But they could never have succeeded without the federal muscle even the Klan had to respect.

"Bobby DeLaughter got a conviction in the Evers case," Jasmine continued. "And produced more than simple justice for Myrlie Evers and her children. It sent a tremendous signal that Mississippi had changed, and if we got a conviction here, it might happen everywhere. Lightbulbs went off all over the South, and pretty soon we had convictions in the Birmingham church bombings and in a whole lot of other Klan killings. All the way up to Indianapolis and Pennsylvania."

"A compelling case, counselor," I said.

"Feed one person's hunger for justice and you can feed a whole people. Its a fishand-loaves thing."

We came out of the dense landscaping at the top of the hill to find a rambling, three-story building with extensive porticoes, a red-tiled roof, and simulated adobe walls designed to evoke the Spanish missions to the north and south along El Camino Real.

"Impressive." She stretched the word out over several seconds.

"I wanted the best for her." I let my eyes follow along with Jasmine's. "And I'm fortunate enough to afford it."

A uniformed man waved us past a small guardhouse, and I continued on into the guest parking lot and pulled into an empty space.

"There's one problem," Jasmine said.

I put the truck into park and turned off the ignition.

"With this place?"

Jasmine shook her head. "With the Talmadge case."

"Which would be?"

"It's what bothered Mom. She looked up thoughtfully, gnawing on her lower lip as she searched for the words. "Talmadge wasn't a known hate crime gone unsolved. It had been long forgotten as an old Balance Due homicide.

"Then one day last year, an anonymous file arrives at the Greenwood PD, the evidence and information all lined up, almost too perfect to be real. Mom suspected something and started asking questions."

"Then they killed her?"

She nodded.

We sat quietly listening to the metallic ticks and creaks of the truck's engine cooling off. Then Camilla's primary physician, Jeff Flowers, walked out of the building, his white coat trailing behind and an arm extended in a broad wave.

"That's my appointment." I pulled the keys from the ignition. "Come on in and wait for a while."

"Okay," she said, then followed me across the lot.

"Professor," Flowers said with a smile as he extended his hand. "You don't look any worse for wear for a man up all night making news."

I took his hand. "Well, I feel a lot worse than I look."

I turned to Jasmine. "Jeff's the medical director and CEO here. This is his baby." I introduced him to Jasmine.

"Very pleased," Flowers said warmly as he shook her hand. "Come on in. It's nicer inside."

"Nicer?" Jasmine made a show of taking in the building and grounds, then said, "This I have to see."

We followed Flowers into the building, where he settled Jasmine in one of the private reception rooms.

"The phone there has my cell and pager number and my assistant marked on the speed dial," he told her. "Make sure to call one if you need anything."

"Thank you."

Flowers gave her a little bow, then held the door for me. I stepped into the corridor.

"Sorry to be so harried, Professor," Flowers said to me as he took the lead, heading toward Camilla's suite. The days had long passed when he had been the bright student in the front row of my neurophysiology class at UCLA, but he still insisted on calling me professor in an honorific way that made me uncomfortable.

"It happens to me as well."

He picked up his pace. "Your wife is not doing well. In the past fourteen hours, she's acquired a nasty inflammation around the enteral site of the transgastric jejunostomy. We began immediate and aggressive antibiotic treatment, but there's no sign of a response so far."

I nodded as we detoured around a housekeeping cart and made a right-hand turn into a stairwell leading up to the front wing with the ocean-view rooms.

The transgastric jejunostomy feeding tube entered an incision in Camilla's abdomen and threaded though her stomach into the upper part of her small intestine. Acidic gastric fluids can leak outward from the incision and erode the tissue; bacteria can infiltrate from outside.

"Not surprising," I said. "It's actually hard to believe she's gone six years without this."

"That's not all, Professor" Flowers said seriously. "Her renal function has declined noticeably and there are signs of developing pneumonia. We don't know yet whether those are connected to the wound infection, but the lab is working on it as their top priority."

My hopes rose and fell with his prognosis. For six years I had wrestled with the fatigue and resentment tied to Camilla's endless hover between life and death. Years ago, Flowers had discussed removing Camilla's feeding tube. But I loved her deeply despite the evidence that the Camilla I had known no longer inhabited the still-breathing body she had left behind. Also, in the back of my mind, loomed the AMA's ethical statement that "there is no ethical distinction between withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining treatment."

The feeding tube had been installed in the relatively early days when there was hope Camilla might recover. But once installed, removing made me executioner or murderer. Other things restrained me as well. Before Camilla, I had lived like a kite without a string, soaring and diving wildly, hitting enormous heights and knowing the terror and pain of watching the earth rush up at me, all jagged, hard, and sharp. Camilla had been the string to my kite. Even the idea of Camilla had allowed me the same discipline for the past six years. Living without her terrified me.

"We've also seen changes in her EEGs I don't understand," Flowers continued as we reached the top of the stairs and made directly to Camilla's suite. "I'm hoping you can shed some light on them."

We entered the door leading into the suite's sitting room. The Pacific Ocean glowed through the broad windows, showing a top-heavy container ship on the distant horizon heading toward Point Conception. Closer in, I made out the brilliant geometry of a red-and-while sailboat spinnaker and, nearer still, a squad of surfers astride their boards waiting for a good wave.

I followed Flowers to the door leading to Camilla's room. He opened the door, then turned back to me.

"I'm afraid she also looks worse than last week." He turned and I followed him into the room.

As always, Camilla's bed was inclined toward the window. We detected no cognitive control over her eyes, but knowing how much she loved the ocean, I wanted to make sure, if there was any spark in her brain connecting her to this world, she could spend her time as pleasantly as possible.

Research showed we had no way of proving she lacked consciousness, only that we could not detect it. So I paid for the best DVDs and music and for people to come and read to her. I don't know whether it did any good for her, but it did a little for me.

When I approached the bed, my heart fell. Camilla had shrunk from the woman I'd visited less than a week before. Her skin trended toward gray and I became acutely aware of the additional IV rack with the antibiotic drip.

"I'm sorry," Flowers said as he read my face.

I moved to Camilla's side and held a cool, dry hand so inordinately small in mine. Behind me, the door clicked discreetly as Flowers quietly excused himself.

Camilla's eyes held steady at the ocean as I held her hand. Then careful not to disturb the network of tubes and monitor leads, I put my head near hers and looked out the window, trying to see what she saw. I recalled a time when our thoughts and emotions and imaginations synchronized with a rare coherence that kept our two lives utterly in step. I looked away from the ocean and into her eyes. They did not change, did not find my own gaze, did not look away from a distant vision I knew extended beyond any horizon visible to me. My heart told me she was not aware of me that she was no longer there, that she was no longer Camilla.

But I wasn't sure.

I bent over and kissed her on the cheek.

"I love you," I whispered. "I love you."