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  Stone leaned back in his chair. Since Eli hadn’t said a word, the CEO continued to drive.

  “We know exactly what you make. Consider it doubled.”

  As Eli was calculating the numbers, his beeper went off. Eli had not yet memorized many numbers at the medical center. He knew the OR, the ER. But he immediately recognized the number of Dr. Fisher’s office.

  “You have a future here, Eli,” Stone continued. He could see that Eli was distracted now by the call. He reached in his desk drawer and brought out a small envelope. “And I happen to have two season tickets at Ole Miss, fifty-yard line. Know any Rebel fans?”

  Eli held his beeper in front of him but stared at the glossy tickets that Stone had displayed in the shape of a V.

  Then his beeper went off again.

  It was Fisher’s office followed by three numbers that made Eli rise to his feet.

  *911

  “I need to get this call,” Eli said.

  Stone had already turned his phone around to face Eli.

  “Where the hell are you?” Fisher yelled into the receiver.

  Eli carefully considered his answer. “I had to go downtown a minute.”

  “Get your ass back here, now.” Fisher yelled even louder, his voice shaking with anger. “There’s police all over your lab. Yellow tape damn near everywhere.”

  “What do you mean?” Eli said to the steady hum of a dial tone.

  Stolen equipment could get me a felony charge. How many years is that?

  Eli hung up. “I have to go.”

  Stone stood and offered Eli his hand. “Think about this, Eli.” He pointed to the phone. “Fisher off your back. Permanently.”

  Stone made a call, ordering the limo to the entrance, then followed Eli into the hall. “One more thing,” he said, “we’ll move your brother out of that hellhole. You won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  NORTH RESEARCH BUILDING

  9:36 A.M.

  Six police cars were parked at the front entrance. Their haphazard arrangement highlighted the urgency of the situation. One officer stood behind the open door of a patrol car and talked into a handheld radio, all the while staring up at a line of second-story windows. He was intense, focused, as if negotiating the release of a hostage.

  From his seat in the limousine, Eli was amazed at the scene.

  All these police cars to recover some stolen lab equipment? Must be an unusually slow crime day in Memphis.

  In addition to the half-dozen police cars, an imposing red truck from the Memphis Fire Department was parked dead center at the entrance to the North building. Next to it sat an ambulance with its back doors open.

  An ambulance?

  Two firemen placed rescue equipment back into storage bins in their truck. They appeared calm, if not disappointed, with the whole thing.

  All heads turned when the black limo pulled to a stop. Eli was thankful for the anonymity provided by the darkened window. He waited for his door to be opened since he could not find an inside handle. A mob of people stood outside as if forced from the building by a fire alarm.

  “Here we go,” the driver said with an apprehensive shrug. “Good luck to you.”

  A limo ride to my crime scene. What next?

  The crowd parted as Eli approached. Custodians, administrative assistants, and a group of Asian lab techs huddled in a group. Eli recognized three guys from the Finance Department. In ties and white shirts with sleeves rolled up, they were taking advantage of the diversion to smoke.

  “Isn’t that Branch?” one of them said.

  At least one person Eli was glad not to see.

  Vera.

  She would have been raising all kinds of hell.

  Pig cop communists.

  Then he realized the probable reason she wasn’t there. Already cuffed and down at the station.

  With all the commotion, Eli almost missed noticing one other response vehicle. WRUP’s media van was parked behind the fire truck, a pole transmitter reaching thirty feet in the air. From the crowd, a handheld microphone was thrust in his face.

  “Are you Dr. Eli Branch?”

  The female reporter gave a thumbs-up toward the station’s vehicle. She was a distractingly gorgeous black woman in a yellow sleeveless blouse that hugged her neck in a plunging V nipped by shoulder-length black hair, an outer strip of blonde framing deep caramel skin. She brushed a hand through her hair to achieve the perfect look.

  “We’re live at Mid-South Medical Center with Dr. Eli Branch.” Camera lights swung to his face, their heat adding insult to a sultry morning.

  This was not Eli’s first television interview. He had been on CNN in a segment about cancer research and the innovative work at Vanderbilt with MMPs. The interview had been shot locally at the VUStar studios in a very controlled setting. He’d even had a bit of rouge brushed on his cheeks.

  “Cancer cells release an enzyme called matrix metalloproteinase that cuts an escape route through normal tissue and allows them to metastasize,” he had said.

  It was the only line of his entire interview that was aired, but Eli thought it was a damn good one. So did USA Today, which carried the story and used the escape route part of his quote for the title.

  Before the interview, Eli had been coached on how to stay on story, to pick a single take-home point and emphasize it. Here it comes, Eli thought, looking straight into the bright light. No amount of rouge could help him this time, because he had no idea how much of the theft to admit to.

  “Dr. Branch,” she said with an expression of forced concern. “Within the past hour, a dead body was found in your laboratory. Did you know the victim?”

  In the limo, Eli had prepared a statement for his chairman to explain the stolen items. I’m sure there’s just some misunderstanding. We’ll work it out. When he saw the press, he decided to use the same statement. But this information caught him off guard.

  “Excuse me. A body?”

  What are you talking about?

  “Yes, did you know the victim?”

  Eli could not respond. No amount of coaching could have prepared him for this.

  Another police car arrived with both sirens and lights going full blast. The camera swung around to catch the live action, and Eli used the distraction to escape. He sprinted toward the entrance to the North Research Building. He could feel the bright camera lights on his back and heard the reporter close the story with, “There is a lot of confusion about what appears to be a homicide on the campus of Mid-South Medical. We’ll keep you updated. Reporting live, this is Shontay Williams.”

  Eli entered through the automatic double doors.

  “I wish someone would update me,” he muttered in the stairwell, then took two-at-a-time steps to his second-floor lab.

  At the top of the stairwell, rather than hurdle the strip of yellow tape that blocked the hall, he ducked under it. The hallway was packed with people: police, firemen, and personnel from neighboring labs being interviewed.

  The associate vice chancellor of health affairs was there, and at her side the hospital chief of staff. They’re trying to save face, Eli thought. Wearing a dark business suit, he hoped he could pass as another administrator.

  But none of these sights gut-clenched him more than seeing Karl Fisher giving a statement to the police. His chairman was probably wishing he had never heard the name Eli Branch. Eli pushed his way through the congested hall and made it into his lab without Fisher seeing him. The first thing he noticed was the incubator room cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. Two armed policemen stood at each side of the door frame. They stepped forward as Eli approached.

  “I’m Branch,” he said, looking beyond them at a young man in a white coat dusting the glass of the cell culture hood. “This is my lab.”

  “ID, please.” The second officer spoke into a microphone attached to his lapel and almost immediately two more policemen were standing behind Eli.

  For the intervie
w at RBI, Eli had not taken his medical center photo badge, a face shot that showed him smiling, a starched white coat barely visible. He thought the photo looked much too friendly. From his wallet, Eli removed his driver’s license and a business card that introduced him as an assistant professor of surgery.

  One of the officers took the card, glanced at his partner, then at Eli.

  “Wait here.”

  Over the strips of yellow tape, Eli had an unobstructed view into the incubator room now. The young man in the white coat was snapping pictures from just outside the culture hood. Inside the chamber, he could see what looked like a tangled mass of human body. Eli clasped his hands behind his neck and leaned his head back, eyes closed, as if this would make it all go away.

  What the hell is going on?

  “Dr. Branch?”

  Eli turned to see a short, heavyset man, mid-fifties, who looked like he’d just come back from a trip to Hawaii. He wore a short-sleeved shirt adorned with red chili peppers.

  Instead of extending a hand, the man removed a notepad and pen from his front pocket, to which a clip-on Memphis Police Department badge was attached. He introduced himself as Detective Lipsky.

  “Need to ask you some questions,” he said, inserting a series of r’s into r -less words. He pressed his pen against the pad as though the task of writing might pose a challenge.

  Eli started with a set of his own. “Why are all these people in my lab?”

  Lipsky looked at his pad, unsure of which one of them voiced the question.

  Eli continued. “I walk in with police everywhere and yellow tape and —”

  “Okay, slow down.” Lipsky’s eyes shifted both ways without his head moving. “I’ll bring you up to speed,” he said and sucked some spit through his front teeth. “Then I’ll ask the questions, damn it.”

  Lipsky referred to his pad. “Call came in at 7:23 A.M. One of the custodial staff. A Mexican lady, hysterical.” The detective looked up at Eli. “You know, ayee, ayee, ayee, that whole bit.”

  Eli did not know. He was fixated on the crime-scene technician. With tweezers, he was delicately removing fibers from a piece of the victim’s clothing. As he thought it, the word struck him.

  Victim?

  In my lab!

  “Anyway,” Lipsky continued, “when the crew arrived, some of your lab neighbors were here to help, bless their dumb-ass hearts. Prints all over the scene, the whole thing screwed to hell.”

  “Who is it?” Eli demanded. “Just tell me who the body is.”

  Lipsky hesitated a second, as though searching his database for the proper procedure. “We have an idea. But this is your turf. You need to ID.”

  Lipsky placed his hand in the small of Eli’s back and nudged him toward the line of yellow tape. “Hey, Basetti,” he yelled to the chap in the white coat that reached bare knees above a pair of ankle-high black sneakers.

  Basetti looked to be in his early twenties. He sealed a plastic evidence bag with gloved hands as if forensic investigation was a summer job he picked up during college.

  “You’bout finished?” Lipsky looked back at Eli and winked. “Got the scientist dude out here. Can he ID now?”

  “Sure. Send him in.”

  Lipsky peeled back the tape and Eli went straight to the culture hood. He reached for the glass to raise it, but Basetti stopped him.

  “If you’re going to touch, you need these.” He handed Eli a pair of gloves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  NORTH RESEARCH BUILDING

  BRANCH LABORATORY

  10:16 A.M.

  Eli snapped on the latex and thought of Meg. If the body was taken to her autopsy suite, he’d have another chance for a postmortem tango. It was a strange, twisted thought, but at this point, Eli needed a glimmer of hope.

  Together, Eli and Basetti raised the glass, and Lipsky watched them from behind. An arm fell forward and released the thin-boned form of a woman’s hand. The head was turned inward, with matted, dirty curls of hair the only thing visible. Gradually, as though turning the base of an antique urn, Basetti twisted the head to face them.

  She appeared comfortable in death, the hard lines of her face smooth, internal voices finally lifted, the burden of this life, gone.

  “You know her?” Lipsky asked with the compassion of a pickax.

  A flood of thoughts raced through Eli’s mind. The stolen equipment, the racial slurs ingrained in her vocabulary. She may not have been a saint. But she didn’t deserve to die. Not like this.

  “Yeah, I know her,” Eli said with a thick voice. “Her name’s Vera Tuck. She was my lab technician. At least for a day or so.”

  “From the degree of rigor, we think she’s been dead three to four hours,” Basetti volunteered.

  Lipsky did some quick ciphering. “Puts the death at, say —” he studied his watch, “six A.M.” He backed up to the door, putting a little distance between them. “Hey Doc, just curious, what was your schedule like early this morning?”

  Eli turned to face him.

  “What do you mean, my schedule?”

  “I mean, where were you this morning around six o’clock?”

  Eli realized that this line of questioning was usually reserved for murder suspects.And I am one of them?

  “At six o’clock, I was at home.”

  “Where might home be?” Lipsky was finally getting to make use of his little notepad.

  “Harbor Town.”

  Lipsky nodded in approval. “Nice.” After a few moments for deep thought, he asked, “So do you normally hang out there until nine or so and then cruise into work in a long black limo?”

  Eli was fast losing his patience with this little chili pepper detective. “Look, I’m a surgeon and I also have a research program. I’m a surgeon-scientist.”

  “And this is what surgi-sciences wear?” Lipsky struggled to pronounce the term. “Tailor-made suits and limo rides. Damn, Basetti, we’re in the wrong profession.”

  They both strained out a few laughs.

  Eli looked back at Vera’s body.

  Why would someone want to kill her? And why cram her into such a small space?

  “I met her two days ago. This is only the second time I’ve seen her.”

  “Other than at six o’clock this morning, you mean?”

  The detective was proud of that one. His notepad shook as he said it.

  Lipsky’s presence in the doorway was making Eli claustrophobic. He pointed a finger at the detective and said, “Get out of the way; this is ridiculous.”

  Eli tried to pass but, the officers on guard stepped up to block the door. “Hold on there, Dr. Jekyll,” Lipsky said. “Got some more questions for you.”

  Eli let out a pent-up breath and stepped back.

  “How would you describe your relationship with the victim,” Lipsky stopped to check his pad, “Vera Tuck?”

  “Relationship?”

  “Yeah, you two get along okay?”

  “Like I said, I hardly knew her.” Eli looked back at the woman’s face, bluish-gray, globes of her eyes just visible through a squint. “Yes, we got along fine.”

  “Look doc, these are standard questions I ask at every homicide.”

  “Homicide?”

  “You don’t think she climbed in there and offed herself, do you?”

  “I don’t know. She was definitely peculiar. Had pressured speech, sentences running together. Manic-depressive like.”

  Lipsky focused on his notepad.

  Eli imagined one of those fat kindergarten pencils fitting perfectly in his hand.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “She pushed around this shopping cart and was convinced that religious groups were after her, Baptists, Jews. I don’t know.”

  Lipsky glanced at Basetti who was replacing his tools in a white plastic container. It looked like a fishing tackle box. “Sounds like a real nut wad.”

  Eli wondered if Lipsky wrote nut wad in his notes as if it was a psychiatric diagnosis.r />
  “Look doc, you seem to know her better than anyone.” Lipsky flipped a few pages back. “This is all we got—Vera Tuck, age fifty-one, no address, no family, no nothing.” He looked up at Eli. “Anything else you can remember?”

  “Yeah, there is. She kept saying Rich Bitch Ink, over and over.”

  Lipsky looked up. “Come again?”

  “I don’t know.” Eli shrugged and said it again. “Rich Bitch Ink.”

  Lipsky wrote it down. “Nut wad,” he said drawing out the “nut” with an escalating pitch like he was calling pigs.

  Standing on tiptoes, Eli scanned the main lab and tried to locate Fisher. The chief was standing in the corner, of all places, fuming. He gave Eli a look that bored right through him.

  The more this drags out, the deeper I’ll fall, Eli thought.And I’m dragging the Department of Surgery down with me.

  “How much longer?” Eli asked Lipsky. “I want these people out of my lab.”

  “One last question,” Lipsky said, followed by five seconds of silence just for the effect. He checked the facts in his notes once again. “You were at home, in Harbor Town, you say, until when?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “And after that? Between seven and nine?”

  “I had a meeting,” Eli said.

  “Downtown.” “Downtown where?” Lipsky mimicked a child’s voice, as though they were playing a game.

  Eli glanced in the direction of Fisher, but he was gone. “At a company, Regency Biotech.”

  The detective looked surprised. “Out on the Reef? At RBI?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lipsky shook his head. “Doc, I’d be careful whose bed you lie in.”

  Eli dismissed this peculiar line from Lipsky. A lot of people assumed that doctors took handouts from pharmaceutical companies.

  “So that’s whose limo,” Basetti added. Lipsky nodded in agreement.

  Eli was growing tired of this dog and pony show.

  Lipsky winked at Basetti and motioned to his tray of tools, as if this next part had been choreographed as well.