Being Young Only Once Isn't Always True

Being Young Only Once Isn’t Always True

     Detective Henry Waters sadly shook his head as he entered the local morgue for the city of White River, MO. This was the thirty first dead body that had been taken from there in the last four months, and this month was barely half over. Why was that happening to a small town of seventy-two thousand? It just didn’t make any sense to him.

     “You called me about another stolen body,” said Henry. “Who is it this time?” Henry asked as looked down at only a sheet on an exam table.

     Medical Examiner Roberta Garson looked down at the bodiless table she stood by. “She’s not a resident here either. So, I don’t know too much about her, but her name was Edith Conrad, and she was in her mid-thirties too.”

     Another female. Most of the stolen bodies have been female. “Did she die like all the others?” Henry asked.

     “I’m not sure how she died yet, but since she has been taken too I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. I was about to do an autopsy when it was taken. The ironic part is that I was only out of the room a few minutes when it was taken.”

     After asking Roberta a few more questions that he already had an answer to, Henry returned to his small office at the local police station with a picture of Edith. The door hit his desk as he opened it. Putting another dent in it and chipping off another sliver of his desk.

     Henry squeezed thought that partially opened door. He went around his desk but stopped in front of his Case Board at the far end of it. After putting the picture of Edith on his Case Board, Henry leaned back against his desk. “What do all these body snatches have in common besides the two obvious ones?” Henry kept his eyes on his Case Board as he stepped back to the chair behind his desk. He stumbled as he fell into it.

     After getting back in his chair, Henry leaned forward. He continued staring at the pictures for several minutes when a knock on his door glass made him jump. He’s still in a seated position as he returned to his chair. Henry looked over at Officer Wilma Vincent.

     Wilma sidestepped into the room. “One of the other stolen bodies has been returned.”

     Henry wasn’t surprised when he heard about the other dead body being returned. What did surprise him was when it happened. There had been a few times when that had happened, but usually, they were returned before the next one had been taken. Something like that hadn’t happened in quite a while. Henry wondered why it happened that way that time. He couldn’t stop thinking about all of it as he headed for the Mattan Funeral Home. Once he got there he only had to wait a few minutes in her office before Barbara Mattan showed up.

     Before Barbara couldn’t even sit down in one of the chairs in front of her desk and Henry he started asking her questions. “Whose body has been returned? When did it get here? Did anyone see who brought it here? Have the next of kin been notified yet? Was it already ready for burial like all the others?”

     Barbara put her fingers to Henry’s lips to shut him up. “Stop rapid questioning me. You have a bad habit of doing that. You’re not giving me a chance to answer them. I’ll answer all of your questions, but you need to give me a chance to do it.”

     The conversation with Barbara lasted about a half hour. It didn’t really help Henry in his investigation. After all, it was the same thing that he already knew about. The only difference had been which funeral home the body had returned to. Most of them had been taken to the Mattan Funeral Home, but there had been a lot sent either to the Saunders or the Greg Funeral Home.

     After talking with Barbara, Henry returned to his office. The first thing he did after getting back there was to remove the picture of the latest returnee from his Case Board. Then he sat down in his chair and started staring at the other pictures on it. Henry scooted his chair to the end of his desk for a better look at those pictures.

     Henry started mumbling as he read his notes he had written around those pictures. “There has got to be another connection between all of these bodies. I just haven’t seen it yet.”

     Suddenly, Henry sat straight in his chair with his mouth opened in shock. He was about halfway through the notes when he did that. “There is a connection between them. I should have noticed it long before now.”

     After swiveling around toward his desk, Henry turned on his computer. Once on, he opened the Serial Thief folder and started reading over each stolen body file. Henry scrolled down each file to what he wanted to look at. After he finished reading all of them, Henry got up and headed for the door. He was about to leave when he realized he hadn’t turned off his computer. So, he returned to lock it before he left to go down to the morgue.

     When he got to the morgue, the only ones there was about a dozen dead body on exam tables there. Where was she? Henry wondered if any of these bodies came from the local hospital? Sometimes he hated living in a small town that had a hospital that specialized in cancer problems.

     Just then Roberta entered. She jumped back when she saw Henry. “You startled me. What are you doing here? I didn’t call you down here about another missing body.”

     Henry took out his handcuffs as he walked toward Roberta. “I’m here to arrest you for body snatching and organ harvesting. Why did you just steal dead bodies from those who have died from cancer?”

     To his embarrassment, Henry was wrong about Roberta. Roberta didn’t do it. She had an alibi for most of the times the bodies were taken or returned. Luckily for Henry, he hadn’t taken her upstairs for interrogation and booking before he learned what a big mistake he had almost made. Roberta told him why she wasn’t the body snatcher and had the proof to back it up, but she did think she knew who it might be though.

     No, Roberta didn’t do it. The only reason Henry thought that she had was that she signed off on all the autopsies. Of course, she did. After all, she was the only medical examiner that they had there. Henry realized that now, but that case was getting to him. He should have solved it by now.

     While Henry tried to apologize to her, Roberta interrupted him and told him who she thought was behind it. Roberta thought it was the overnight Security Guard. Not only could Marla Adams have done it with only about a dozen Police Officers there, but Roberta found out around a month ago Marla had some medical knowledge to do it.

     After Henry got his Search Warrant he headed for Marla’s house with another male officer and two female ones. As they headed for the front door of the large three-story house, Henry glanced around his surroundings. What Henry saw besides the beautiful house was a well-groomed yard that looked like all the other ones on the street. The only differences between them that he could see was the way they looked.

     Henry rang the front doorbell when they got there. Cocking his head to the door Henry listened for any footstep either coming toward them or running away. Henry heard nothing. He kicked in the front door. Henry announced himself and that he had a Search Warrant. He kept saying that as he searched it.

     Starting with the first floor, Henry looked in each room. Henry finished that floor and he was headed down the hall toward the stairs when he suddenly stopped and sniffed the air. He opened the door there and followed that much stronger smell down to the basement.

     Henry stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pointed his weapon at Marla who was about to cut into Edith. “Police. Stop what you’re doing right now.”

     “Why you have been doing it?” Henry asked as he paced around a rectangle table with two chairs opposite each other in a small room. Marla sat in the one facing an empty chair. Henry always kept one eye on her, and the other one on where he walked. She kept her eyes on him too. After his fourth time around Henry grabs the other chair and spun it around and sat on it backward.

     “The evidence against you is overwhelming,” said Henry. “It will be in your best interest if you confessed to what you have done. Why have you been stealing dead bodies and harvesting their cancerous organs?”

     Marla’s face got redder with rage as she got up and leaned forward to come within an inch of his face. She started shouting at him. “I haven’t been harvesting anyone’s organs.”

     “If you haven’t been selling them, then what have you been doing with them?” Henry asked.

     “You felt how cold it was in my basement. That’s because I kept all the cancerous organs there. Didn’t you find them in there?”

     Henry looked shocked. “That is even weirder than stealing those organs. I know I have been asking it a lot, but why have you been doing it?”

     It all started twenty-three years ago when they lost their parents in a car accident. Marla was the oldest at eleven. Her brother, Hank, was ten and her sister, Sally, was eight. As the oldest, she was now the adult in the family. Luckily for them, they weren’t in the car when it happened, or they would have been dead too. Sometimes she wished that they had been.

     The only good part about their deaths was that left them a lot of money. Money enough for them not to be separated because they were now orphans. Marla didn’t want that to happen, and she did whatever it took to keep them together. A lot of times it wasn’t easy, but she had no choice but to do it.

     Henry just sat there and let Marla ramble on. He thought that it was good for her to get it off her chest. Only it didn’t really answer his question, though. When she finally took a breath from her rambling. “I’m sorry about what happened to you and your younger siblings, but you still haven’t answered my questions. What does all of this have to do with what you have been doing?”

     “Have you ever heard the quote ‘You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.’? That isn’t exactly true. I have lived the last part all my adult life, but I didn’t live young just once. That was taken away from me when our parents died.”

     It wasn’t all that bad, though. They did have the money and each other. At least they did until Sally got cancer and died three years later. A few months ago, another young girl a couple of years younger than Sally died from the same cancer. That was when Marla started taking dead bodies.

     After the death of Sally Marla wanted to know everything there was to know about that cancer. Especially if she was the reason why she got it and died. It wasn’t her fault. That learning led to knowing about other cancers. She learned a lot from doing that. When she started taking dead bodies, she had to learn how to take care of them. Marla took them not to find a cure, but to better understand them.

     Henry felt very sorry for Marla. He still had to arrest her for what she had done, though.

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