“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.
Funny how things work out.” Harry sat under the walnut tree outside the house, the sun setting.
Fair, enjoying the Sunday evening, nodded. “Yes, it is. When Nita and Al won the BMW at the five-K ball, it seemed a kind of recompense.” He turned to her. “You had your last treatment. My wife is her healthy, beautiful self.”
Harry beamed. “You are such a flatterer.” Then she hastily added, “Don’t let me stop you.”
He rose from his chair, bent over, and kissed her. “Beautiful.”
“Fair, I’ve had a lot of time to think. You and I endured a rough patch way back in what I think of as our time of troubles, but we ironed it out. I don’t think I would have gotten through all this as well as I have without you.”