Margaret Truman's Deadly Medicine Read online

  A year after settling in Port Moresby and opening his clinic, King fell in love with Lanisha, one of his nurses, a stately, sensuous black woman whose Melanesian heritage traced back thousands of years to one of hundreds of primitive tribes. Eyes were invariably raised over the marriage between the fair-skinned Australian physician and his ebony wife, which cut into their social life. It meant little to King. He’d become immersed in his work, both as a clinician, and in the laboratory he’d built as an addition to their modest house.

  A year later Lanisha gave birth to a daughter, Jayla, whose arrival filled them with unimaginable pride and joy. For Lanisha that ecstasy was short-lived. She died of pneumonia when Jayla was three, leaving Dr. King with the task of being both mother and father to the child.

  When Jayla was sixteen, her father left her at home in Port Moresby while he traveled to the jungles of the Sepik River where he was privileged to witness the coming of manhood in native boys. They were initiated by having their backs, chests, and thighs sliced open with a bamboo razor, one cut after another until, despite having ingested a drink made from coconut leaves to dull the pain, they passed out. Ash was then worked into the gaping wounds to create what resembled the backs of crocodiles, and the wounds were rubbed with clay. The young men then waited together for days in a special hut until they were told by tribal elders that they were now men and could rejoin the world, having been “ingested” by the mighty crocodile and emerging with the power of those powerful, mystic reptiles that ply the waters of Papua New Guinea. Those with the most grievous wounds were considered especially attractive to the tribe’s females.

  “A brutal rite of manhood,” Dr. King told Jayla after he’d returned and had recounted his firsthand look at the practice, “but with important meaning for the tribes. Despite the cruel nature of the initiation, they are peaceful, kind people, and treated me with respect.”

  By the time King’s wife had died he’d purchased acreage in the Sepik River region, a remote area of the island on its northwest corner named after the winding river, where many of Papua New Guinea’s primitive tribes still lived. He didn’t buy the tract as a land speculator. He’d become infatuated with the need to develop more effective pain medications after treating patients with intractable suffering, and it was in his lab that he’d begun experimenting with natural herbs and plants grown in his four-acre plot in search of a more potent medicine without the addictive qualities of the day’s popular prescribed painkillers. To say that he was dedicated to that goal was not an overstatement.

  * * *

  Jayla was so consumed with memories of her father and of growing up in Port Moresby that she almost failed to hear the boarding call for her Air Niugini flight and had to run to the gate.

  She was going to what had been her home, but it would not be the same without him. She handed her ticket to the gate agent and prepared for the final four-hour leg of her sorrowful journey to Papua New Guinea, seventeen hundred miles away—a million miles away in her heart.

  CHAPTER

  3

  PORT MORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

  Jayla had called Eugene Waksit from the Sydney airport restaurant to give him her arrival time at Port Moresby’s Jacksons International Airport, and her father’s assistant had assured her that he’d be there to meet her flight.

  She’d had mixed emotions about Waksit since the day her father hired him. A Papuan by birth, he’d moved from his remote village to Sydney to complete his advance degrees and had answered an ad that Dr. King had placed in an Australian medical journal, more a monthly newspaper that reported on the latest medical news and listed job openings. King had arranged a day of interviews at a Sydney hotel, and had chosen Waksit from among the seven young men and women who’d responded. Handsome and self-assured, and surprisingly fair-skinned considering his background, Waksit had won King over by waxing poetic about his ambition to work alongside a man like him in his quest to bring quality health care to the indigenous people, and to develop a more effective pain reliever. He’d previously attended a medical conference in Sydney at which King had presented a paper on his work with native medicinal plants, and told King that his presentation had been inspiring.

  “I’d give anything to work alongside you,” he’d said.

  To which King replied, “Then pack your bags and get to Port Moresby. You’re hired.”

  Jayla’s conflicting reactions to Waksit couldn’t be neatly packaged. He’d always been unfailingly courteous and pleasant with her. He’d also made romantic overtures, which she’d deftly sidestepped. Not that she didn’t find him attractive. She did. He was tall and physically fit, with eyes the color of jade, and a wide smile. She was aware that he had been involved with a number of women in Papua New Guinea, and in Australia when vacationing there. But there was something about him that put Jayla on edge.

  Disingenuous? Smug? She’d conjured many adjectives to describe her feelings about him, none of which adequately nailed it down. Maybe it was his use of cheap cologne called Cuba Black with which he liberally doused himself that contributed to her avoiding spending too much time with him. She’d once asked her father how he could stand being in the lab or clinic with Eugene and his piquant cologne. Her father replied, “I never notice it,” which was typical of Dr. Preston King. His focus on whatever he was doing at the moment was intense, so much so that nothing around him ever seemed to register. Besides, he seemed to have unbridled faith in the young man, which Jayla never questioned. But she knew that for all his education and worldliness Dr. Preston King could be too trusting of people at times, too willing to accept the image they presented and unwilling to question their motives. Of course those qualities contributed to her father’s openness and charm, but also, in her estimation, posed a potential weakness.

  Waksit was at the gate when Jayla arrived. Seeing the first person from her father’s life since receiving words of his murder activated a switch in her. She let her tears flow freely as he wrapped his arms around her and said repeatedly, “I know, I know, Jalya. Let it out. Don’t bottle it up.”

  Jayla pulled herself out of his arms and brought herself under control. She accepted his handkerchief. “Murdered!” she said. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “That’s what the police are trying to determine,” Waksit replied, his pessimistic tone not lost on her. Port Moresby was one of the world’s most crime-ridden cities, and too many of the local constabulary’s officers were known to be corrupt. The city was particularly dangerous for women; rape was commonplace, including sexual assaults by police officers. Another reason for Jayla to be grateful Waksit had come to meet her.

  “Luggage?” he asked.

  “Only what I’m carrying.”

  “I’m parked right outside.”

  He took her arm and they headed for the airport’s exit.

  “It’s hot,” Jayla commented when they reached the outdoors.

  “Unusually so,” Waksit agreed.

  Waksit’s Range Rover was parked in a restricted area, and a uniformed member of the airport’s security force eyed it suspiciously.

  “I’ve only been here for a few minutes,” Waksit said pleasantly. “Picking up a passenger.”

  “You are in the wrong place,” the officer said. “No parking zone.”

  Waksit reached in his pocket and pulled out a five-kina banknote with the Port Moresby parliament building prominently displayed on its face. He handed it to the officer, who shoved it in his pocket and walked away without saying a word.

  “Nothing’s changed,” Waksit said to Jayla through a sardonic laugh.

  “Everything has changed for me,” she responded sadly as he opened the door for her.

  Waksit negotiated a construction zone that held up traffic. Once clear of it he gunned the engine and sped down a narrow street leading from the airport to the center of town, causing pedestrians to scatter.

  “Slow down,” Jayla said brusquely.

  “Sorry,” he said, decreasing his spe
ed. “Bad habit.” He stole a glance at her. “I’m sorry to have been the one to break the sad news to you, Jayla.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you,” she said. “How did it happen? When?”

  “The night before I called.”

  “How? I mean, how did he die?”

  “It was—well, it wasn’t pleasant, Jayla. Someone used a knife. He was in his lab working late.”

  “How is Tabitha?”

  “She’s a wreck.”

  Tabitha had been hired by Jayla’s father shortly after Jayla’s mother had died. She’d been with the family ever since, becoming Dr. Preston’s trusted and beloved housekeeper once her services as Jayla’s nanny were no longer needed.

  “She must have been devastated,” Jayla said.

  “She hasn’t stopped crying,” he said as he turned a corner and pulled up in front of the house that had been Jayla’s childhood home. “I cried, too, once the shock had worn off. I couldn’t believe that it happened.”

  He turned off the ignition and watched Jayla’s face as she stared at the modest house that her father had maintained in pristine condition. The yellow paint was fresh, the green shutters immaculate, a small patch of lawn and flower beds in front carefully tended.

  “Where are the police?” she asked.

  “They finished up their investigation.”

  “And left the property unattended?”

  “They knew that Tabitha is here a lot, and that I spend most of my time in the lab. They’re stretched thin. An investigator from the Australian Federal Police is in charge. He works with two locals from the constabulary.”

  “It happened in the lab?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did someone get in?”

  Waksit shrugged. “You know how lax your father was. The house had been broken into a few times over the years. I used to get on him all the time about becoming more security conscious, locking up when he went out, having an alarm system installed, at least in the lab. He always agreed to appease me, but he never followed through. Too late for alarm systems now.”

  Waksit was right; her father had been blasé about his personal safety. At the same time she resented criticism of him, as accurate as it might be.

  She opened her door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Waksit came around the tan-and-black Range Rover and stood next to her. “Want me to go in with you?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  There were two entrances to the house. One led into the living quarters, the other to the clinic where Dr. King treated the city’s underclass. “The only way to judge a society,” he often said, “was how it treats its less fortunate and most vulnerable.” That message was deeply instilled in his only child and she often cited it to friends, and to colleagues at work.

  The laboratory was to the rear of the building, accessible from both the living quarters and the clinic.

  Jayla took tentative steps into the house’s small vestibule. Hanging on the wall to her left was a rendering of the King family coat of arms. A portrait of her mother posed in front of a huge wild begonia bush dominated the opposite wall. She saw herself in the handsome woman in the painting, staunch and proud, a hint of a knowing smile on her face.

  “You okay?” Waksit asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  The living room was dark; the drapes had been pulled tightly shut, allowing only tiny slivers of light to penetrate the gloom where the fabric didn’t meet. Waksit switched on a table lamp. Jayla stood in the center of the room and slowly turned to take in the familiar setting. A folding wooden game table captured her attention. On it was a chessboard; she and her father had spent many pleasant hours opposing each other, with him winning a majority of the time while Jayla managed to salvage an occasional match. Had he let her win on those occasions? He’d denied it the few times she accused him of it but she still had her doubts. He would feign exasperation when she declared “Checkmate.” “Is the clinic closed down?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” Waksit said, “but I’ve been seeing certain patients.” He laughed. “I’ve been practicing medicine without a license, I suppose, but no one has complained.”

  “Had the clinic been busy before?” she asked.

  “It was always busy. Want to go there?”

  “I’d like to see where…”

  He waited for her to finish her thought.

  “I’d like to see the lab.”

  They passed through the living and dining rooms until reaching the kitchen where the door to the lab was located.

  “You don’t have to, you know,” Waksit said.

  Jayla seemed unsure whether to proceed. She’d spent many hours in the lab with her father, and it was this exposure to the world of research that had determined her career path. Visions flashed through her mind of her father wearing a white lab coat and heavy apron, hunched over whatever he was examining at the time, his total attention directed at what was displayed before him. She knew, of course, that he would die one day, and could accept that reality. But to have been savagely murdered by someone wielding a knife was beyond any reality.

  Who? Why? To what end?

  She stepped into the lab, turned on the overhead fluorescent lights, and stood silently, allowing the moment to wash over her. Everything seemed in perfect order, the two long tables that held the paraphernalia of a laboratory—two microscopes, Bunsen burners, an operant conditioning chamber, a row of glass beakers in their racks, reagent bottles, Petri dishes, test tubes, and an expensive Glen mixer that mixed ingredients from native plants and herbs while expelling air from the mixture—and against a wall a large commercial microwave oven as well as a full-size refrigerator and freezer.

  “He loved working in here,” Waksit said.

  “This was his real home,” Jayla said, skirting one of the tables until her eyes went to the floor where a faint brown stain had created an irregular pattern on the white stones.

  “He was found here?” Jayla asked, pointing.

  “Yes. The police did a cursory cleanup, and Tabitha worked for an hour after they left. The stone is porous. The blood—”

  “I know, Eugene. His blood seeped into the stone.”

  “They’ll have to remove those stones and replace them.”

  She turned to take in more of the gleaming white space. “Did the police come up with any clues as to who did this?”

  “They didn’t mention any when I spoke with them.”

  “Did my father have enemies that you know of?”

  Waksit sighed and shook his head. “I suppose we all develop enemies as we go through life, but I didn’t know of anyone in particular. It was probably a thug, a drug addict looking for money. Your father must have encountered him and—”

  “Was anything taken?”

  “I checked. The police asked the same question. His notebooks are gone.”

  “His notebooks? Where he kept his findings, the results of his experiments?”

  Waksit nodded. “They’re not where he usually kept them. The sealed packets of herbs and medicinal plants he’d been experimenting with are also missing.”

  “A drug addict might take the herbs, but wouldn’t bother to take notebooks,” Jayla said sternly.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then—?”

  “I can’t imagine why they were taken, Jayla. I haven’t the slightest idea. It was the first thing I noticed when the police allowed me into the lab.”

  “Did you inform them about the missing items?”

  “Yes. They questioned me, of course, but they quickly realized that I admired, even loved your father, and could hardly be considered a suspect.”

  Jayla ignored his comment and continued her slow, deliberate path around the tables, taking mental inventory of everything she saw. “Where is Tabitha?” she asked.

  “At her daughter’s place in Koki. She visits her occasionally.”

  “I’d like to see her. You say that she was the one who found him.”


  “Yes, poor thing. She’s getting old, Jayla. She has health problems. Cancer. Your dad had been treating her for pain.”

  “You said you spoke with the police. I would like to do that, too.”

  “I have the name of the Australian who’s in charge. I can call and set up an appointment for tomorrow. They’ll want you to identify the body.”

  “I assumed that they would. I dread it.”

  Jayla excused herself and climbed the stairs to the tiny bedroom that was hers while growing up. She sat on the bed and let the tears roll, heaving against the spasms that knotted her stomach and caused her to lose her breath. She knew that she had to pull herself together. Her father’s death was fact, and what mattered now was the aftermath, the resolution of what he’d left behind and answers to why he’d been killed, and who killed him.

  Drained, she returned downstairs where Waksit waited.

  “You’ll stay here tonight?” he asked.

  “No, I’d rather not,” she said. “I’ll go to a hotel.”

  “The Grand Papua on Mary Street? It was your father’s favorite when he had visitors.”

  “That will be fine. Have burial plans been set?”

  “The police will know more about that. Come on. We’ll get you settled into your room and have dinner together.”

  Two hours later, after checking in, unpacking what little she’d brought with her, and freshening up, Jayla met Waksit on the terrace of the Grand Bar where he’d ordered two bottles of Australian red wheat beer and an appetizer platter of cold seafood.

  “I called dad’s attorney from my room,” she told him as they looked out over the city, and the Coral Sea in the distance. “I’m seeing him tomorrow at three. Dad had a will. The lawyer will go over it with me when we meet. Mr. Taylor and my father go back a long way. They were good friends. I know that I can trust him to handle everything that has to be done.”

  “I called the detective while I was waiting for you. You have an appointment at ten.”

  Waksit took a drink from the bottle—Jayla preferred a glass—and his expression told her that he had something else, something difficult to say.