Transplant
A petite woman in her thirties was seated directly across the two detectives. One of the men had a very serious face whose grim expression made the woman wonder why she feeling guilty at his accusing eyes even though she had come to see them. The other man was more relaxed with one arm hooked behind the back of his chair, attempting to balance on one leg of the chair while writing on a notepad and recording the details of the interview.
“What is your case Mrs.…?” asked the serious man whose fingers were crossed in front of him on the table.
“Miss Aubry,” the woman said. “I—I came because I’ve been having problems. You see, I have been having these weird dreams lately … and I think it relates to murder.”
“Dreams?” The man leaned back on his chair looking skeptical as he repeated the word. “And what about these so called dreams.”
“Now Detective Ryan, be open-minded to Miss Aubry’s case here,” stated the other detective as he lifted his head from the notepad to look at his client. “We should at least hear the full story of it first, please go on.”
“Yes, thank you Mr. Stewart, I guess I should be more direct,” Miss Aubry stammered, wondering how she should phrase her dilemma. She decided to start from the beginning. She held up one hand to her heart, “you see, half a year ago I had a heart transplant. And ever since then I’ve been having a particular dream every night, a—a dream about the previous owner of the heart … a dream of her being murdered.”
The last statement caught Ryan’s attention but he was still a bit skeptic and was doubtful in what seemed like a superstitious case. His partner told her to continue on once again.
“ I know it sounds crazy but I truly think the previous owner of this heart is trying to tell me that she was murdered. Every night I see a pair of ghastly hands reaching towards my neck and edging me towards an open window. It’s also not just these dreams that I have lately, weird things have been happening to me that never usually happened before. I have always been a vegetarian and hated the sight of meat, but now I always have strong cravings for rare steaks. I used to only listen to classical music but for some reason I am able to sing country songs that I have never even heard of before. And also, I have started to speak Italian, a language that I have never learned before in my life.”
Ryan coughed into the arm of his jacket, although Stewart knew it was to hide his uncontainable laughter. Stewart gave his partner a bleak look as if telling him to behave.
Stewart directed the woman’s eyes towards him so as to divert her attention from his partner whose face began to show hints of turning bright pink. “Well Miss Aubry—“
“Please! I beg you, please solve this mystery and give my mind and heart a little peace at night. Please!” Maybe it was the desperation in her eyes, or the soft heartedness of the detectives –or of a detective —but they both decided to take the case, despite the absurdity in the sound of it.
After the interview session ended and Miss Aubry was told she would hear back from the detectives soon, Ryan questioned his partner about his reason for accepting the case. “She’s a complete nut, no doubt about it. How can you believe a story like that?”
“It’s not completely unbelievable.” Stewart took a sip of his now cold cup of coffee. “If you’ve done your studies correctly Ryan, you would know that there have been proven cases of people’s attitudes changing after a major heart transplant. Some of the old hobbies or habits of the decease is kept inside of the heart through nerve peptides, which is basically memories, and there have been discoveries that such chemical can be secreted by places other than the brain, such as the heart.”
“So you’re saying, there’s a possibility that what she said can be true? But the transplant happened half a year ago, there must have been an investigation.”
“I’ll check up on it with the chief downtown and get back to you on that.”
~*~
“This is the family of our deceased?” Ryan asked. The two detectives looked up and read the address number 1563.
“Yep, her name was Meryl Streeks. Had a husband and a little boy around 6 years old. Meryl was checked into a hospital at the time of death and was later reported that she committed suicide by jumping out of the 10th story window of a hospital, which matches with Miss Aubry’s dream of being pushed towards an open window.
“Was she sick?”
“She was supposedly brought in overnight because of an abnormally high fever. The case was suspicious to the police because there were no past signs of depression or reasons for to kill herself. She was just a normal housewife—says her family.”
“Well, usually the normal
ones are the ones with the most problems.” Ryan walked up the front porch and
rang the doorbell. “Well, it’s protocol to inspect the closest family and
relatives first. The only person who showed up on our records is her husband.”
A man of
thick stature and critical eyes opened the door. Ryan opened his mouth to
introduce his partner and himself but Mr. Streeks interrupted first.
“Whatever
you guys are selling, I don’t want to buy.” He started to slam the door shut,
but Ryan quickly slipped his foot into the crack before it fully closed.
“We are detectives, sir, here to investigate your wife’s death,” Stewart said calmly despite Ryan’s seething glare and string of curses at his foot jammed in the door, but he began to feel the pressure lessen as Mr. Streeks peered out to take a closer look at the two men. His face was ghastly with a distinct show of surprise.
“So you don’t believe Meryl killed herself either,” Mr. Streeks silently remarked, eyes wide. The two detectives exchanged glances. Mr. Streeks became lost in a bit of a self-ramble now, “No, of course not, how can anybody believe such a ridiculous act? She was always happy, never worked a single day after we were married, I was a doctor you know, and a damn good one too. We have a son almost two now; she would never bear the idea of leaving him all alone in this cruel world. It doesn’t make sense for them to say she committed suicide it doesn’t make sense— it doesn’t make sense!”
Mr. Streeks slowly turned around and walked back into the house, but leaving the door ajar. The two men followed suit, assuming they were indirectly invited in. Ryan first looked into the living room, visible from the main entrance. There was trash everywhere; the house was in complete shamble. The only thing that set everything apart was the collection of pictures that hung over the fireplace next to the dining table. It was a family portrait of the couple and their newborn baby. As they walked into the room, they discovered Mr. Streeks sitting on the couch placed right in front of the fireplace, just silently staring at the portrait. Stewart was first to break the silence, a question directed to Ryan.
“Isn’t today a Tuesday?”
Ryan nodded.
“Didn’t you say you are a doctor?” His question turning to Mr. Streeks now, who was chugging down a can of beer, wincing at Stewart’s question.
“Was. They fired me for drinking and disorderly conduct in a public hospital, I punched another doctor and broke his nose,” he chuckled silently, then grew grim, “she died at my hospital, you know, but I wasn’t in charge that day. Everything happened in that week. My intended promotion was given to crooked nose Dr. Sumner, and do you even know why? It’s because that goddamn son of a bitch was the one who operated the famous heart transplant of my wife. I didn’t have the heart to do the procedure myself, but that heartless bastard was in that ER with a straight face, even though we were all close friends, and now he’s even went on to win an award for performing the first successful rare-blood type heart transplant. Afterwards, he didn’t even have the face to come to the funeral or visit even once for that matter. Now that he’s become all famous and everything, it doesn’t even matter how many years we were family friends and co-workers. That’s how cruel the medical world really is, all about the competition, another reason I didn’t give a damn that I was fired. They’re all damn cold-hearted pieces of—”
As Mr. Streeks continued on with his speech, Stewart tapped Ryan on the shoulder and jerked his head towards the main entrance door. Ryan got the message and they both began to head out the Streeks house.
“Know where we’re heading towards next?” Stewart asked.
“Yep. I’ll drive,” Ryan replied.
~*~
The two detectives parked outside of
“This the right place?” asked Ryan. Stewart looked down at his notepad and then nodded. “And who’s the person we’re looking for again?”
“
“And?”
“Both were both highly respected surgeons and the both came out clean,” Stewart continued, “There were no other suspects related to the decease in any other way so after a week, they closed the case.”
“Well let’s check out our suspect number two then, shall we?” Ryan got out of the car, and Stewart followed out after him.
~*~
“Good evening gentlemen, what can I help you with today?” Dr. Sumner’s smile stretched from ear to ear.
Ryan shivered. The vibe he got from this overfriendly doctor told him this man was the type of person who would lie about how much a procedure would hurt and smile perfectly as he did exactly what his Ph D in medicine allowed him to do, but then again a lot of doctors do that.
“We wanted to interview you on the surgical transplant that you performed on Meryl Streeks six months ago.”
Dr. Sumner’s smile wavered a bit at the mention of Mrs. Streeks name.
“Dr. Sumner… we know that you had an affair with Mrs. Streeks,” Stewart said seriously. The doctor stopped smiling altogether and looked at the detective with surprise. Ryan looked at his partner also. He was not aware of this information either.
“Uh… uhm… well,” the doctor looked down at his hands and stammered for a couple minutes, then gave up and admitted it. “Yes, I guess it’s bound to come out in the open eventually … I did—do still—love her, truly.”
“Were you guys in a fight or argument of any sort before her death Dr. Sumner?”
The doctor looked up at that statement.
“What are you trying to say? That I’d killed her? Meryl and I never argued or fought, we were happy together; all that stopped us from complete bliss is her marriage to Charles Streeks. That man never cared for Meryl, she was always left alone and uncared for, it was I who stood next to her and cared for her all the way to the end, it’s with that tenderness that I was able to be so successful in her organ transplant.”
Ryan
interrupted this time with his observation skills. “So she wasn’t entirely
happy?”
“Well…
no, not completely. She cried a lot at times complaining about her husband and
her child. That was where she found comfort in my arms. If they hadn’t had a
child together, she would have divorced her husband and married me instead!
Besides if you guys found it then Charles must know also, who knows, he’s
probably the bastard that offed his own wife.” The doctor spat on the ground in
disgust.
Ryan gave
the doctor a little “hmph” with a yeah-right look.
“OK,
well, that’s all we wanted to know doctor,” said Stewart standing up in
preparation to leave, “if there’s anything else you’d like to inform us, here’s
our card.”
Once
outside the office, Ryan turned to Stewart, “Now what? The doctor’s blaming the
husband and the husband is blaming the doctor. It’s all a finger-pointing game
now.”
An
elderly nurse carrying a clipboard walked by and stopped mid-step.
“I couldn’t help but over hear,” she said, “that the case of Meryl
Streeks has been reopened.” The detectives nodded. “Well you two look like two
nice gentlemen, almost the age of my son, around late twenties?” They nodded
again. “Maybe I can be of some help? I know where her room used to be, nothing’s
been touched since on orders of Dr. Sumner. Would you two men like to see it?
It’s pretty normal really, not gory or nothing, everything was left exactly as
if she was never there, didn’t even have to take out any garbage, which is good
for our workers. It’s a pretty famous place around this hospital, we all knew of
the affair of course, staff and patients. It’s sad that it ended up like this,
real shame. Well, come along now, let’s not dawdle.”
Once
inside the room, the first thing the detectives noticed was the opened window.
They must have really kept everything exactly the way it was that night.
“She fell from there?” Detective Ryan looked down the edge of the widely ajar window and whistled, “Ouch.”
Stewart looked around the bed, couch, and desk. He noticed there was a part of a notebook with a small piece torn out of it. He then looked at the small trash bin underneath the desk. It was empty. Stewart then called to Ryan to help him look around the room.
“The nurse had said nobody changed anything in the room, that it was spick and span, even the garbage never needed to be taken out.”
“A note it is maybe… like a clue to who killed her?
Maybe she had time to write it down before she died. Although, don’t you think
the policemen would have found it by now?”
“I’ve worked with the men downtown. They always look in the wrong places.
They say they had searched every nook and cranny but with the neat technology
these days they just use the portable x-ray machines. Our victim must have
hidden it quickly before she was killed, meaning she must have known the suspect
and they were together long enough that she was able to jot down something and
hide it.” Stewart felt around the edges of the small desk next to the bed. “And
usually, there are compartments of a desk that people never know about, such as
sliding the drawer out … and then reaching in from behind… and just slipping a
little something into a crack and … BINGO.”
Ryan watched as Stewart pulled out a slip of crumpled trash paper the size of those inside a fortune cookie. Stewart unraveled it and stared at the tiny handwriting.
“So who was it?”
“It’s … nobody… this is—,” Stewart cleared his throat, “—a suicide note.”
“What? We did all that investigation when all this time, it was exactly what it was reported to be … a suicide?”
“This says she actually truly loved her husband and son, but she acted out when her husband seem to stop caring, and now she couldn’t stand living the way she is. In the end it says goodbye Charles and Michael.”
“Is Michael the doctor’s name?” Ryan asked.
“No, the doctor’s name was Jim. Michael was the name of the son. She doesn’t mention much about Dr. Sumner I’m guessing she never really loved him, just an unhappy wife acting out. Guilt and sadness made her ill and got her sent here and guilt and sadness pushed her out of the window.”
Ryan stared at the piece of paper that Stewart handed to him. “So, in the
end I was right, that Joan Aubry chick was a kook.”
~*~