Rushin' Death, page 12
“I really couldn’t say.”
“You couldn’t say.”
“Sorry, no.”
“But I should just stay out of it.”
“Right. I’m sorry that I can’t be more clear. I wish that I could.”
“Did you talk to Lisa?” Kenzie tried. Lisa might have told the governor what was going on and that Kenzie needed to just stay as far away from it as possible. She couldn’t understand what was going on and what Lisa knew. She had, as far as Kenzie could tell, let a stranger into her house without question and had just stayed quiet about that and about her ex-husband dropping out of sight. But she refused to give her reasons for doing so.
Kenzie kneaded her forehead with her fist.
“You really need to just let it alone,” the governor repeated. “There is more at stake here than you understand. So I have to ask that you… forget about it for now. Things will work out. But you need to not interfere.”
“Does this have something to do with Maksim being dead?” Kenzie asked.
There was a long pause from the governor.
“Who?” he asked eventually.
“If you’ve talked to Lisa, then you must know who Maksim is. And I know that he’s dead because he showed up on my autopsy table. So what exactly is going on?”
“Something that is above your pay grade, Dr. Kirsch.”
She knew by the use of “Dr. Kirsch” instead of Kenzie that he was dismissing her. He had done his duty as Walter’s friend, but he wasn’t going to give Kenzie the information she wanted. Whatever was going on, he didn’t want her to be involved. So he was going to freeze her out just like Lisa.
Kenzie directed Zachary to a table by the window. It wasn’t one of their usual places to sit and visit, but she wanted to be able to look out at the outside world, to feel the sun on her face and not feel like the two of them were trapped in the hospital with no way out.
Of course, she could leave any time. Whenever she wanted to, she could just get up and walk out and no one would stop her, least of all Zachary. And he too could leave when he wanted to. It would be a little more complicated to sign himself out against medical advice, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. It might not even be against medical advice. He was no longer suicidal and was on a new cocktail, and they would probably agree that he could leave when he liked as long as they continued to monitor his symptoms and return to see a doctor if there was a problem.
But Zachary wasn’t ready to leave yet, and Kenzie wasn’t going to walk out before they’d had a chance for a visit.
And she couldn’t really feel the sun on her face through the window because it was past sunset and all of the lights in Roxboro were coming on, twinkling like tiny fairy lights.
Zachary was not comfortable with his back to the room, so he sat with the window behind him, and Kenzie gazed at him or through the window as they talked, trying to relax all of her muscles and let the cares of the day fall away.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked Zachary, though she knew he wouldn’t like too much of her focus on him and his symptoms. “I’m just wondering how the new meds are—if there are any side effects.” Keeping it on his physical state rather than his emotional state. He could share more if he wanted to, but she would make it easy for him to keep his feelings to himself if he didn’t feel like sharing.
“Not bad so far,” Zachary said. “Dry mouth. I’m drinking lots of water. The morning nausea is better.” He let out a sigh. “I really hated that.”
Kenzie nodded. “Pretty difficult to enjoy food if you are so nauseated you can hardly keep anything down. I’ll be really happy if we can move forward without that one.”
It would be much easier to get his weight up to where it should be if he could eat in the morning. Choking down one granola bar or snack-sized yogurt in the morning was not enough to keep his calorie consumption up. She sometimes wondered if he even managed to keep that down after she left for work in the morning. He never complained about throwing up, but he wouldn’t. He knew she was concerned enough about his health without adding that complication.
“They’re hoping the rebound won’t be as bad with the new ADHD script. And that I’ll be able to sleep better. Get to sleep earlier.”
“You’re sleeping pretty good on this cocktail so far, aren’t you?”
Zachary nodded, but tilted his head to the side slightly in a gesture that seemed to be a partial shrug. An unconscious “maybe” or “sort of.” Kenzie raised her brows, inviting more information.
“I’m sleeping when I’m supposed to,” he explained. “Mostly. But that’s with a sleep aid each night, and I really don’t like to…”
He didn’t like to have to rely on a sleep aid every night. And he didn’t like how they made him feel when he got up in the morning. He complained of feeling groggy for hours and unable to focus on anything unless he took the ADHD meds. Once he got home, he would probably ditch the daily regimen of the sleep aids and ADHD prescription, saving them for days when he felt like he really needed them. Something that Kenzie didn’t agree with, but she couldn’t fight him on it. It was his body and his choice whether to follow the recommended protocol or not. He needed to know that she trusted him and would treat him like an adult, not a child.
“It would be great if this medication will let you sleep better without taking anything else,” Kenzie said, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.
24
How are you doing?” Zachary bounced the conversation back to Kenzie. “How was work? Things dead quiet as usual?”
Kenzie grinned at the joke. “Unfortunately not. Dead, but not quiet.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
She laughed. “We’re not talking about zombies here. Just that things have been busy. Lots of cases coming in.”
“Yeah. You said that. Anything interesting?”
She loved that she could discuss her job with him, that he didn’t get squeamish about it and was genuinely interested in any weird medical stuff or puzzling cases.
“We got back a bunch of reports and slides back from the lab for a bunch of stuff that we sent last week.”
“Good turnaround.”
“It is. I’m sure they must be busier this time of the year too, but they’re staying on top of the workload.”
Not that any of the samples they had sent to the lab had been for any complicated procedures. No DNA testing or trying to identify an unknown toxin.
“We found an unusual parasite profile in a few of last week’s cases.”
“An unusual parasite profile. What does that mean?”
“Well, we had one guy last week with a tapeworm. Very big.” Kenzie watched Zachary’s eyes, weighing how he would take it all. Did he want the details, or would tapeworm stories gross him out?
“How big?” Zachary prompted.
“Twelve feet long.”
His eyes widened.
“I got ten feet out before I broke it. So I had to add the two pieces together, but it was all one worm.”
“Is that what killed him?”
“Nope. Not even close. I think they probably had a very happy relationship. Until he died.”
“But not from the tapeworm.”
“No. He was… very badly beaten.”
Zachary nodded slowly.
“So that was the first one. We sent slides of all of the organs and asked the lab to specifically check for parasites to see if we could narrow down where the guy was from.”
“How could the parasites tell you where he was from?”
“The kind of tapeworm that he had wasn’t a kind that you usually see here in North America. Usually only Eastern Europe, South America, East Africa…”
“So you knew that he didn’t pick it up here. He was either from one of those areas or had traveled there and picked up this tapeworm.” He paused. “But it would have to have been a long time ago, right? Because it takes time to grow to that length. He didn’t just pick it up last year.”
“No. Probably took decades to grow that long.” Kenzie agreed with a nod. “And I knew—we had witnesses who said that he didn’t have an accent, but did talk like English was his second language. Very precise and slow, like he had to think of the right words.”
“So he didn’t just move here recently and was learning the language.”
“No. And most people don’t bother to go to speech training to get rid of their accents. They do their best to learn the language, but coaching can be expensive. Most people don’t do it. They just do the best they can on their own.”
“But it wasn’t natural enough that he had moved here as a child and learned English very young.”
“No. So, he moved here some years ago, not when he was a child, and had the money for speech training. But we still didn’t have any kind of ID on him, so Dr. Wiltshire figured that if we checked for other parasites, it might narrow down where he had come from.”
Zachary smiled, thinking about this. “So what did you find out? Did you get anything back that you could use?”
“Yes, definitely. The various parasites he had made it most likely that he was Russian.”
“Great job!”
“Well, I can’t claim all of the credit for it. But it was kind of cool to be able to do that.”
He nodded his agreement. His eyes flicked around the room, and Kenzie turned partway to see if there was something in particular that he was worried about. She did not see the patient who had previously made a fuss. Or anyone else that looked like they might cause any trouble.
“Everything okay?”
Zachary nodded. His eyes moved back and forth, keeping an eye on several different people. Kenzie turned back to face him fully.
“That’s not the end of the story.”
“Oh? What else? Did the parasites lead right back to his hometown? To the farm he grew up on?”
Kenzie laughed. “Only on TV. They’re always able to narrow down where the subject was killed or came from by rare pollens and insects and all of that.”
“What, then? What’s the rest of the story?”
“We did slides on a number of other subjects as well. Just being thorough. They all seemed pretty routine. The kind of stuff that we see all the time.”
“But…?”
“We had a couple of other subjects with tattoos that looked Russian. And they came back with the exact same parasite profile as Maksim. As the man I had done the first set of slides on.”
Zachary frowned, thinking about this. He shook his head. “They all came from the same place?”
“Yeah. They did. So now we need to see if we can figure out how else they are related. It could be as simple as them all coming from the same Russian community here in Vermont, or the same area in Russia. And I don’t know yet how big an area we’re talking about.”
“But then…” Zachary was frowning, “Why were they all killed around the same time? Who is killing off the Russians?”
Kenzie nodded, pleased to see that his brain was still as sharp as ever, keeping up with her on the questions to be answered on the cases.
“Huh.” Zachary scratched the back of his neck. “There hasn’t been anything in the news? I don’t have internet here, don’t really know what’s been going on in the real world. Have there been gang wars? An outbreak of something?”
“Dr. Wiltshire thought maybe the guys with the gang tats were rivals. But when I compared the tattoos and did what research I could, it looked like they both come from the same gang.”
“Infighting? Or a third party that killed both of them?”
“It looks like coincidence.”
“Your tapeworm guy was beaten to death.”
“Yes. But the others weren’t. One was starvation, and one was hit by a car. Not exactly common methods of murder.”
“No,” Zachary admitted. He chewed his lip, thinking about it.
“I can’t think of any way to tie them together,” Kenzie said, shrugging. “I’d like to, but is that just because we like everything to tie up neatly? Could it just be a coincidence that they were all killed last week?”
“I don’t know a lot of Russians. Do you?”
Kenzie shook her head. “No.”
“Then there can’t be a very big Russian community in Vermont. If neither of us can think of anyone.”
Kenzie nodded her agreement.
“And more than one guy with Russian gang ink. That’s not just coincidence. They didn’t both just happen to come to Roxboro and happen to die within days of each other. They have to be connected. It’s just too wild a coincidence.”
“But we don’t know how.”
Zachary tapped his fingers on the table and looked around the room. “Neither of them has been identified? Nobody has claimed the bodies?”
“No.”
“I would look for Russian communities in Vermont. Search them up on the internet: Russian friendship groups, cultural foundations. Maybe look for Russian restaurants or import stores if there isn’t anything else. Ask about where people who are Russian gather. Go to those places and talk to people. Show the pictures and ask around. See how cooperative people are. If anyone is worried about them. If they have families here, wives and children, then they must be worried. Even if it is against the community’s rules to talk to the police or outsiders, they would still be looking. Trying to get word of what happened to them.”
Kenzie gazed at him. “All of that would be great… if I was a private investigator.”
He gave a rueful smile. “Sorry. That’s my only frame of reference. I know you’re not an investigator. You do the autopsies and document everything about the body. You don’t do any other investigation.”
“I wish I could. I would like to find the families of these men.”
Not to mention wanting to find out who Maksim was and what he was involved in so that she would know if her family was in danger. Walter off the grid and Lisa saying nothing about whatever was going on. When clearly something was going on.
Lisa could deny it, but Kenzie knew just enough to be worried.
People were being killed.
25
Kenzie pulled out her laptop at home and settled in front of the TV, using Zachary’s mobile desk. It had been almost a week without any word from Walter. She was trying to respect the governor’s request and stay out of it, but she was really getting worried. She needed to know that he was okay. That was all. She didn’t care what else he was involved in, as long as she knew that he was safe and sound. It was New Year’s Eve, the cusp of a new year. She couldn’t see herself going into it without knowing something.
New Year’s Eve had always been an important day to Kenzie. Sort of the opposite of Zachary with Christmas. He couldn’t see past Christmas and dreaded it for weeks ahead of time. Kenzie looked forward to the New Year. A fresh new start. Envisioning what she could accomplish over the next year. What things would look like a year from now.
She and Zachary would still be together and stronger than ever. Maybe he would be able to get through Christmas without a major depression. She would make sure next year that October and November were quiet, that nothing could happen that would jeopardize Zachary’s mental health. Not a vacation this time. No retreat to a remote cabin where they could get snowed in. Not this time. Lots of quiet family time and positive experiences so that Zachary would be strong and just skate right through the difficult season. With medications that didn’t make him nauseated or have other adverse side effects, he would be able to eat well and keep up his weight, which would help make him more resilient. It would be easier to bounce back from little problems.
And next year, she would know where her father was. She would arrange ahead of time for a visit with her mother and father over Christmas break. Enough of acting like a child and avoiding them, as if it would change anything that had happened fourteen years before. How many more years was she likely to have both of her parents? Maybe they would both live to be ninety, but what were the chances of that? Walter did not take good care of his health. Lisa spent too much time at banquets and fundraisers, not leaving enough time for self-care. Kenzie would give her mother a spa day. Maybe they would both take it together. A nice relaxing day or two, just regenerating.
But if the new year was going to be better, she had to do something to start it off right. It might be magical thinking, but she knew she had to do something.
The first organization she called was one that funded and assisted in Russian immigration. Kenzie wasn’t sure how she was going to get any information out of them, but she wouldn’t get anywhere if she didn’t try.
The woman who answered the phone sounded like she was in her sixties and had a pleasant accent. Not so thick that Kenzie couldn’t understand her, but enough that it was apparent where she was from. Kenzie pictured a plump grandmother in a print dress. A stereotype, maybe, but she was sure a woman like that would want to help the families of the men who had died.
“Hello,” she forced herself to speak slowly and enunciate her words more clearly than she normally would. “My name is Kenzie Kirsch. My mother, Lisa Cole Kirsch, runs our family foundation, and I am looking for worthwhile organizations that would benefit from a sizable donation.”
“Lisa Cole Kirsch,” the grandmother repeated. “I have heard her name before.”
“Maybe she’s donated to you in the past?”
Wouldn’t that be an interesting coincidence? It would, at least, get Kenzie in the door. A foundation that had received money from the Kirsch family in the past would be much more likely to be cooperative, answering Kenzie’s questions even if they didn’t understand why she was asking them.
“I don’t know,” the woman mused. “I do not think so. But she is a great philanthropist. Maybe she has.”
“I wonder if you could tell me about the Russian community in Vermont? I haven’t seen a lot of Russian immigrants in my area, but I am told that the community is growing. Has there been a lot of immigration lately?”
