brain thief

[holli]

What it came down to, in the end, was lists. Sam had a list of people who’d been found with parts missing, and a list of people who’d died at the hospital. All he had to do was compare them: who didn’t appear to have had anything else taken? One of them must have been the brain donor.

During the period that the patchwork woman was being made, six women died in hospital who weren’t on Arni’s list. Two died of old age, one died in childbirth, one in a traffic accident, and the last two of illnesses. Sam struck the accident victim off his list-- the death certificate said ‘head trauma’-- and looked over the remaining five.

Maud Morrison, Elberta Fowler, Worship-Om-with-Prayer-and-Keen-Reasoning, Sophronia Lessup, and Bissonomy Atwell. One of them had died, and lived again, and died again. One of them had some link to the Rag-and-Bone Man, and would, with any luck, lead Sam to the person who’d stolen her brain.

First, though, was the tricky part.

Sam visited Mrs. Morrison and Mrs. Fowler’s families the next morning. Mrs. Morrison’s family was quite kind and terribly accommodating, right up until he explained what he wanted to do.

“Dig her up? You can’t want to dig the poor thing up, she’s been dead for weeks,” her daughter protested. “Whatever would you want to do that for?”

“I’m investigating a case involving the hospital,” Sam explained. “Mrs. Morrison died during the period I’m examining. It’s just a precaution, but of course I’d need your permission to do anything.”

“What sort of case is it, then?” piped up a grandchild. “Was there a robbery? Did someone hide the loot at the hospital, and it got stashed in a body, and--”

“Edwin!” snapped his mother. “Hush up. The corporal doesn’t want to hear that dreadful rubbish.” But she looked as though the idea didn’t seem too far-fetched.

“Nothing like that, ma’am,” Sam assured her. “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, but I can assure you it’s not that. There’s just... a bit of an accounting problem, and the hospital’s not been terribly cooperative so I’m looking into it myself.”

“Well, all right,” she said doubtfully. “The family’s not going to like it, I can tell you. But I suppose it won’t bother Mother-- it’s not as though she’s there to mind.”

Mrs. Fowler’s family was quite kind too, and seemed genuinely unhappy that they weren’t able to help. But they’d had their grandmother cremated, unfortunately, and her ashes scattered on the Ankh.

“It was what she would have wanted, you know,” he was informed by one of her many relatives. “She worked down the docks for ages, said she was never at home far from water.”

“Mind you, I think she would have quite liked being scattered on the actual ocean,” another relative noted. “Seeing as how it’s quite a bit cleaner. She was always one for cleanliness, our gran.”

The relatives fell to squabbling over this point, and Sam excused himself, with a sinking feeling. No way to know if she was the donor, then. Unless it turned out to be none of the remaining three, in which case process of elimination was his friend.

As for Mrs. Worship-Om-with-Prayer-and-Keen-Reasoning, well. Sam met with her husband, a harried, hollow-eyed man with an infant in a sling that wouldn’t stop crying, and found he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask. He resolved to come back if the other two didn’t pan out, but “Can we dig up your wife’s body and make sure she’s still got a brain?” was not a question he could ask the man in any sort of good conscience.

Sam got the exhumation report from Igor on Mrs. Morrison: all brains present and accounted for. So no luck there. That left Sophronia Lessup and Bissonomy Atwell, both of whose families took some convincing. Both were young women who’d died of long and chronic illnesses-- a lung condition in Sophronia’s case, a weak heart for Bissonomy. Either one could have been the Rag-and-Bone Man’s victim.

Talking their families round was tricky, but Sam managed it. Then it was just a matter of getting the graves dug up, and letting Igor examine the bodies. It took a few days, during which Sam hardly had any worry to spare for the upcoming Cotillion, or the trouble with Meg. But it was done eventually, and Igor came to him with the report.

“It’th Mith Lethup,” Igor said. “No quethtion. It was cleverly done-- I could hardly three where he’d thewn up the thcalp again-- but her brain’th clean gone. She’th the victim.”

Sam pulled out the picture of Sophronia Lessup he’d gotten from her family, and compared it to the iconograph of the patchwork woman. Now he knew to look for it, he could see how similar the two faces were, how the Rag-and-Bone Man had modeled his creation after Sophronia. The girl posing in the studio portrait was lively and bright-eyed, despite her thin frame and pallor, nothing like the cold composed face of the patchwork woman, but the resemblance was still there.

Sam had met Sophronia when he was alive, he realized. He remembered the girl wheezing in her wheelchair, still able to make smart remarks despite being a week or less from death. He’d liked that girl. And now she was dead twice over, had been turned into a monster and ended the strange half-life she’d been given by throwing herself into the black water.

I’ll work out who did this to you, Sam promised the picture. And there’ll be hell to pay, once I do. I swear.

Finding out who Sophronia’s doctors had been wasn’t easy-- the hospital still wasn’t cooperating-- but eventually he got a list. One name in particular jumped out at him.

Dr. Henry Dussel had treated Sophronia throughout her long illness. He’d still been touchy on the subject of her death, weeks after it happened. And Meg thought he’d been sweet on his patient...

Sam headed down to Forensics. “Igor,” he said, “could you ask the hospital Igors if they know anything about a fellow named Henry Dussel? I’ve got a bit of a feeling about him.”

Igor frowned. “Duthel? I know that name. You said Heinrich Duthel?”

“No, Henry. Why?”

“Well, my thecond couthin Igor worked for a Heinrich Duthel back in Uberwald. He wath a chemitht, not a thurgeon, but he thertainly wathn’t the thanest thientist an Igor ever worked for.”

Sam tried not to let his excitement show on his face. This could be a coincidence, or it could be the best lead he’d gotten yet. “How long ago was this?”

“Oh, twenty yearth at leatht. Duthel Manor burned to the ground when an experiment got out of hand. Funny how that alwayth theems to happen, ithn’t it?”

“Yes, I can’t imagine why,” Sam answered absently, hardly listening.

It took a lot of digging at the Public Records office, but eventually Sam found it. Ingrid Dussel had come to the city twenty-two years ago, her infant son Heinrich in tow, and settled in a flat in Dolly Sisters. Little Heinrich had become Henry, obviously, and grown up to become a doctor just like his dad. His mum must have been proud. She’d died last year-- Sam found the obituary-- and perhaps that was what had sent her son over the edge, set off his mad quest to conquer death?

Sam had shaken hands with the man. He’d seemed quite normal, if perhaps wound a little tight. But if Sam was right, there was something very wrong with Henry Dussel.

Comments

[ambyr]

“Yes, I can’t imagine why,” Sam answered absently

Hee!

Just figured I should let you know that I'm still reading along and very much enjoying, even if I've been too lazy to comment on every installment.

[petra]

\o/ still Totally Awesome.

[cofax7]

HAH. I knew it was the unpleasant doctor!

... unless it's the red herring. Hmmmm...