Lisa Jamison Mystery 01-A Dead Man's Eyes by Foster Lori Duffy

Author:Foster, Lori Duffy [Foster, Lori Duffy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, American Suspense, Crime Procedural, Crime Thriller, Murder Investigation, Crime Reporter
Publisher: Level Best Books
Published: 2021-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

The black market for corpses was rich.

Lisa sat at a small table in the university library with copies of a dozen of articles that had cost a small fortune in printing fees. It was worth it to get them in their entirety from the journals that were referenced online. She could have asked the newspaper librarian to print them out for her, but she would have asked questions Lisa didn’t want to answer. The first one she found was about a gang in South America that had slain obese people, targeting those who weighed at least three hundred and fifty pounds. They hung their decapitated bodies from a specially made wrack in a warehouse to drain, harvested the body fat, and then melted it into gallon-sized containers for sale to cosmetic companies. They took in sixty thousand dollars per gallon.

Dermatologists quoted in the article said there was no scientific basis for adding human fat to cosmetic formulas. Human body fat has no role in preventing wrinkles or smoothing skin, they said, but they added that some people will believe anything if they are desperate and that desperation comes in many forms. The creams and lotions were also sold on the black market, mostly to wealthy women who feared losing their wealthy husbands, and to owners of exotic spas. Investigators insisted it was an isolated case and highly unusual, that no other similar gangs existed and that there was no longer a market for human fat.

But Lisa knew better. With news of the arrests, more potential customers most certainly had read about the creams and started demanding to give it a try. Someone else out there, someone cold and unfeeling with a fiscal need, had most certainly started slaughtering people again, filling the vacancy. A crooked chemical engineer or scientist or someone else with just enough education to be dangerous had formulated his or her own lotions and creams, selling them for a bundle. The market was still there. It had to be. The publicity surrounding the investigation and the dark, vain side of human nature ensured that.

Next came the stories about medical research and transplants.

Three funeral directors were arrested in California for removing leg and arm bones from corpses and replacing them with PVC piping. They made their cuts on the backs of the limbs so that they would be undetected by family and friends even during open-casket funerals. The trio had been doing it for years, selling the limbs for about five thousand dollars apiece to companies that provided bone tissues to doctors for transplants and to medical researchers who didn’t want to go the legal route. They had harvested hundreds and hundreds of parts, pulling in three hundred thousand bucks in just one year. But they made too many mistakes. They simply deposited the money in their checking accounts, drawing suspicion from bank clerks and the IRS. They bought high-end sports cars and took expensive vacations. One of them repeatedly slept with an expensive escort to whom he told everything.

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