New Orleans Parish Courthouse--Present Day

"Forget everything you know, and maybe you--and your daughter will live."

Jeanette LaFleur stopped in the middle of the courthouse lobby. Her heart pounding in her ears, she turned slowly in an attempt to locate the source of the voice.

The trial had already started, and the lobby was almost deserted. The only other visible presence was a bored security guard at the entryway metal detector almost thirty feet away.

Swish, swish.

The sound, like fabric rubbing against itself, had come from above and behind her.

Whirling around, she looked up and caught a glimpse of a hand protruding from beneath the edge of a dark sleeve, then it vanished from the second-floor railing.

For a second, she wondered if she might have imagined it.

But she knew she hadn't, anymore than she had imagined the voice.

The voice had been unfamiliar, but there could be no doubt who the owner of the voice worked for. Jeanette's testimony was due today, and her words could seal the downfall of the defendant.

The perceived danger gone as quickly as it had come, she turned and headed toward the relative safety of the courtroom and the mass of people gathered inside.

With a hand more shaky than she would have liked, she pushed the door inward and entered.

The evil in the room was so thick Jeanette could almost touch it. She knew its source.

The man in the defendant's chair.

As if by some foul telepathy, he sensed her presence and turned his head toward her. His thin lips stretched into a humorless smile. His dark cold eyes reflected the truth of his depraved soul.

And for the first time since this whole mess began, Jeanette wondered if she had the fortitude to end this man's reign of evil.

Swallowing the ever-present fear that threatened to choke her, she prayed for her legs to move. As she walked, head held high, toward the front of the courtroom, his dead eyes followed. She could have sworn she heard his taunting laughter in her mind.

New Orleans, a year and a half earlier.

The essence of scrambled eggs, bacon and other indefinable breakfast smells mingled with the lemony odors of antiseptic cleaning solution and of something else Jeanette was sure she'd rather not know the identity. She leaned against the wall next to the door of the Charity Hospital morgue and waited for the arrival of Walter Monnier, the Eye Bank technician. He was going to show her how donor tissue was harvested for Dr. Byron Rutherford's Epi Study, more commonly known as the Living Lens Project..

It was her first day on the job, and she was excited--nervous--and still unbelieving of her good luck to snag such a jewel of a job straight out of college.

It had been four months ago, though it seemed like only yesterday, she'd met the charismatic head of the research project, Dr. Byron Rutherford. She'd attended the annual National Ophthalmic Convention, representing her professor and mentor, Dr. Austin Shriver's, contact lens project on which she'd been a research assistant. Rutherford was the conference's keynote speaker, and according to Dr. Shriver, the only reason the convention was held in New Orleans. Dr. Shriver introduced her to his residency classmate, Rutherford, who in turn charmed, then invited her to apply for a job with his project after her graduation.

And, here she was.

As she waited for the Eye Bank technician, the hospital awakened.

Food service techs moved large carts filled with breakfast trays in and out of the kitchen, located right across the hall from the morgue. If the patients knew where their food had been prepared, Jeanette was sure they would think twice about eating it. She'd already made a mental note not to eat in the cafeteria.

Down the hallway, the morning shift janitors checked in, joking with the night shift as they punched out. The Tower of Babel had nothing on the mix of languages Jeanette overheard. Spanish phrases intermingled with Cajun patois, African-American hobnobbed with Vietnamese, southern twangs socialized with Texas drawls, and all of it punctuated with laughter--lots of laughter. She smiled. The unaffected joy of the hard-working men and women was infectious and brightened the gloomy lower level corridor.

Further up the hall, blue-suited security personnel also started their day. No infectious good spirits in that crowd. They could have been cloned from the same set of genes--tall, stern-faced men with crew cuts, thick necks and eternally suspicious eyes. Women's lib had somehow managed to miss this corner of the employment world. She'd caught several of the men eyeing her, probably assessing her potential for danger.

Now, if they were looking for someone dangerous, the man just entering the hallway would head the top of the list. It wasn't his size, since he was only average in height and build, but his demeanor that threatened. His body language was that of a street thug, reflected in the way he looked from side to side, as if he suspected someone might jump him. He looked like the kind of guy who carried a knife and knew how to use it.

He stopped at the end of the hall and scanned the area slowly. His gaze swept over the janitors and the security personnel, then fixed on her. Smiling slightly, he headed her way. A sudden chill swept through Jeanette, the instinctive fear of a female being stalked by the dominant male in a primeval age. She fought the urge to check the other end of the hall for an escape route. She was overreacting, and she knew it. After all, this was a busy hospital and dozens of people, including the security men, were within calling distance. She was being silly, probably a result of her anxiety in starting a new job. However, preferring to err on the side of caution, she decided to keep her eyes and options open.

As the man passed the phalanx of men in blue, one of them called out. The man stopped to speak to the security men. One even punched the man lightly on the arm in a teasing manner. So he must be okay. Jeanette sighed, letting out the breath she'd been holding--so much for judging people by their looks.

Still, the man gave her the creeps.

One of the security men motioned toward her and laughed. The man followed the gesture. He nodded at the others, joining them in the joke. They were talking about her!

Jeanette's face burned. With anger? Embarrassment at being the brunt of some men's off-color jokes? Probably a bit of both. She hadn't been intimate with too many men since her husband, Paul, died on the burning sands of Iraq during Desert Storm. Before her marriage, her experience had been nil. Her current male friends, Charles Carter, a recent law graduate, and Dr. Scott Fontenot, Paul's boyhood friend, always treated her like a lady.

The man clapped several of the security personnel on the shoulders, then left, continuing with a slow, steady stride toward her position. His manner was that of a predator who knew his quarry had no place to go. His face showed satisfaction in having reached his goal.

Jeanette shivered and fought the urge to run. All she had to do was ignore him. He'd get the idea she wasn't interested. She had a job to do and couldn't afford to be late on her first day.

Then it dawned. Oh no, please God, don't let him be Walter Monnier.

God wasn't listening.

"Hey. You Ms. LaFleur?" He wasn't from New Orleans. In fact, he wasn't from the south at all. The broad vowels and nasal intonation suggested east coast. New York? New Jersey?

Jeanette mentally groaned, hoping her expression didn't reflect her innate dislike--all right, she admitted it--her fear of the man standing in front of her, unlocking the door to the morgue.

"Walter Monnier?"

Stupid question.

"That would be me." He grinned at her while his black-eyed gaze traveled up and down her body at an insolent pace. His smile did nothing to lessen her unease. It reminded her of the look her grandmother's cat got when it grew tired of tormenting a mouse and went in for the kill.

Walter opened the morgue door, then motioned for her to enter.

Okay, so he had nice manners, but most predators lured their victims into a false sense of security with inviting ways. Fighting her gut, Jeanette preceded him into the morgue.

Whoa! Now, she knew the origin of the indefinable odor she had smelled earlier. The room reeked of something sickeningly sweet, although a lemony cleaning solution fought hard for supremacy.

"Formalin," Walter said.

"What?"

"The smell. In the morgue." Walter stepped into the room after her, then closed the door.

Jeanette jumped. The thunderous click of the door lock vibrated throughout her body.

If Walter noticed her reaction, he didn't give any indication. He just continued talking. "It's Formalin. Pathologists use it to preserve and fix body parts. The odor's hard to get rid of. I smell it for hours after I leave work. Gets in your clothes something fierce. Hell, sometimes I even taste it."

"Uh huh." Well, what was she supposed to say? She could find no coherent response. She needed to get a grip here. She had to work with this man, though, hopefully, not on a daily basis.

"Not much for talking, are ya?" Walter looked her up and down--twice--slowly, lingeringly. "You're a tiny thing, ain't ya? Got a boyfriend or something?"

"Yes!" No flies on that answer, Bootsie, as Paul would have teased her. No way did she want this guy to get the idea she might be available. She'd have answered "yes" even if it weren't true. That's what they made confession for--those necessary white lies.

"Too bad." Walter eyed her once more in a total body sweep. "I've heard you New Orleans' gals are hot."

Definitely New Jersey or New York. New Orleenz, indeed.

"Mr. Monnier, this really isn't appropriate. Even if I were available, I wouldn't date a co-worker." Her statement had sounded stuffy and she'd meant it to be. She only hoped that would be the end of the personal discussion.

"Rutherford know that?"

"Of course." What did he mean by that? Dr. Rutherford was attentive and charming to her, kissing her hand and looking her deeply in the eyes when she spoke. But he couldn't be interested in her that way, could he? And if he was, she would make it crystal clear, she was his employee--and only that.

"If you say so," smirked Walter. "Okay, guess we'd better get the eyes and get them processed so you can get back to the Med Center. Wouldn't want to keep the boss waiting for his co-worker, now would we?"

Jeanette ignored the implication in Walter's statement. The way he said "co-worker" created an urgent desire for a long, hot shower.

Walter checked the chart on the wall by the refrigerated drawers containing the corpses awaiting autopsy, harvesting, or pickup by a mortuary.

"Well, let's see what we got behind door number five, why don't we?" He unlatched the door, then pulled over a gurney on which to slide the body. The body shifted smoothly. After slamming the door shut, he pushed the cart toward the stainless steel sinks on the longest wall in the morgue.

"Aren't you going to place the body on the autopsy table?" Jeanette asked as Walter removed several stainless steel instruments from a drawer under the sinks.

"Nah. It takes too much time. 'Sides, not much mess in taking out eyes. Don't need the drains and such."

He uncovered the body of an elderly black man. The dead man had an emaciated appearance as if he'd been sick for a long time or maybe suffering from malnutrition. "Get me one of those small plastic containers over there. And a lid." Walter nodded his head toward the opposite wall.

Jeanette moved over to the indicated shelves holding numerous empty containers of all sizes. "How small?" she asked.

"Urine cup size." He laughed. "Oh, excuse me, guess I should say two eyeballs size, huh?"

Jeanette cringed at Walter's cavalier and unprofessional demeanor. The shelves were clearly marked with metric measurements. But, instead, Monnier had chosen to be juvenile. "Where did you get your med tech training?" McDonalds? She set the empty jar near the corpse's head. Walter had opened one eye lid and was extracting the first eye.

"Not a tech." Walter put the eye into the container, released the lid over the empty socket and proceeded to the next eye. "I'm 'monkey-see, monkey-do' trained." He chuckled.

"Oh." Well he certainly was fast and efficient. He almost had the second eye out. "Then where did you apprentice?"

"Prison."

Prison? Jeanette gulped, not even caring if he heard her or not. No wonder he was fast with a knife. Visions of knife fights and other images too horrid to put a name to flashed through her head. Speechless, Jeanette focused on the eyes lying in the translucent plastic container. While Walter re-covered the corpse and placed him back into the refrigerated drawer, Jeanette stood shivering. All her first impressions came back. This guy was a predator. Why had Dr. Rutherford hired someone like that? And more importantly, why hadn't he warned her?

"You okay?"

Walter's question, laced with suppressed laughter, shook her out of her shock. "Yes. Sure." She wasn't going to ask what he'd been in prison for. Nope. She wasn't going to go there. Dr. Rutherford wouldn't have hired him unless he trusted the man. Walter was probably completely rehabilitated.

Yeah, Bootsie, and Attila the Hun was a pacifist.

"Come on, then, move your cute little butt. We need to get these eyes to the lab and harvest the tissue." Walter picked up a cooler filled with ice into which he set the smaller container holding the eyes. "The transportation guys didn't get the stiff down to the refrigerator very fast. Cellular degeneration speeds up at room temp. I need to get the corneas off while the eyes are still half way fresh."

Jeanette struggled to keep up with him as he strode away from the morgue. "Doesn't Silver River provide Dr. Rutherford with most of his tissue?"

She was sure she'd heard a SRP sales representative say so at the convention. She recalled wandering around the convention exhibits, her goal to obtain an abstract from the Epi Study Booth, when a booming voice had captured her attention, side-tracking her.

"Yes sir, doctor. Silver River Pharmaceutical provides all sorts of tissue for research--in fact, we provide all the corneas for Dr. Rutherford's research on the living lens."

She could hear Stu Thomas's voice as if it were only yesterday. Yes, he had definitely said all the corneas.

"Nah." Walter started down the stairs at the end of the hall. "We've got a deal with the Eye Bank. We get fifty percent of the donated corneas during the course of the Epi study. Doc pays them monthly for the use of the lab and my services."

"Oh."

More vivid images of the convention flashed through her mind. She recalled a persistent doctor in the crowd, asking questions. Questions that had made Stu Thomas, a consummate salesman, uncomfortable. So uncomfortable he avoided the side of the crowd where the overly inquisitive doctor stood.

Behind her a man had snickered and whispered loudly to someone, "Guess old Stu wants to change the subject. Wonder why?"

Another man replied in a deep monotone, "One of Rutherford's clinic partners told me they had to throw out one whole shipment of SRP corneas, because..." The reasons were lost in the noise of the crowd.

A third voice chimed. "Yeah. I heard that. I also heard Rutherford may be stuck using SRP tissue. He and the Eye Bank have been flaming each other over donor corneas. What's up with that? You're on the Eye Bank Board, Fred. You going to clue us in?"

"Not here." The deep monotone presumably belonging to Fred murmured, "Later, over drinks at Chez Paul's. I'll tell you all about..."

Confused, Jeanette blurted, "I heard the Eye Bank and Doctor Rutherford don't always see eye-to-eye."

"Funny lady." Walter stopped on the landing and looked at her. "The Eye Bank and the Doc get along just fine. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. It's all politics and ole Doc knows how to play the game in this town. Now come on, we ain't got all day."

"Why are we going this way?" Jeanette stopped at the bottom of the stairs. A long, very dimly lit and fetid hallway stretched out in front of her. This had to be the sub-basement. "Isn't the Eye Bank lab in the Clinical Building on the first floor?"

"Yeah, but the first floors in the two buildings don't connect," Walter threw over his shoulder as he started down the hall. "It's faster to take the tunnel. Are you going to stand around and ask questions all day or are you going to move?"

"I'm coming."

Jeanette followed Walter into the Stygian darkness. The smell of sewer gas and the sound of steam hissing from the pipes overhead added to the hellish atmosphere. Puddles of water dotted the cement walkway--whether from dripping pipes or leaks in the walls of the tunnel, Jeanette didn't know, and if the truth be told, didn't want to find out. Just the idea that she was underground in a city whose water table was above her head gave her the willies.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. At several points, other hallways fed into it. Walter seemed to know exactly where he was going, so she stayed close enough to follow, but not so close to be within grabbing distance. She still didn't trust the man--especially alone in a dark tunnel.

Finally, at one of the tunnel junctures, other people started to appear. She and Walter must be getting close to the Clinical Building. This part of the tunnel was brighter with flourescent lighting and white walls. The steam pipes, used to power the generators providing electricity to the hospital complex, were now hidden away in a false ceiling. Civilization was near. Jeanette sighed. Walter snickered at her audible relief, but she didn't care. The tension of the last few minutes had to escape or she'd burst.

"Don't like tunnels?" Walter pushed open the door to the Clinical Building and allowed her to pass in front of him. "I'll remember that--for the next time."

Like hell there would be a next time. She'd walk outside in a hurricane before she would go into that hole in the ground again.

"It was fine." Another white lie to confess. At this rate, she would have lots of "Hail Marys" come Saturday evening mass.

"Sure, whatever you say." Walter led the way once more to the service elevator. "We've got to take this one. The administrators don't like us to carry body parts through the public areas. Sort of upsets the visitors and such. Once, one of the pathology assistants dropped a leg in the lobby. That's when the rule was created."

As Jeanette stepped onto the elevator, she wondered about Dr. Rutherford's connections to the Eye Bank. The conference had been four months ago. Obviously, Dr. Rutherford had smoothed things over with them. According to Walter, all tissue came from the Eye Bank. As it should. The patients participating in the research project paid nothing but a processing fee for the corneas. If Dr. Rutherford had to purchase corneas from SRP, the cost would be prohibitive for the project budget, since they could not pass the cost of the lenses to the patient. In fact, the project would have to shut down. Research was always woefully under-funded.

"You awake there, Flower?" Walter snapped his fingers in front of her face.

"My name isn't Flower." Jeanette pushed past him and left the elevator. She stood and waited for Walter to follow. "You can call me Jeanette, not Jean and not Jeannie." Only Scott was allowed to call her Jeannie, and she barely tolerated Jean.

"Well, Jeanette, the lab is to your left." Walter thrust the cooler with the eyes into her hands. "Take this and go on in. I need to take a leak."

"Uncouth jerk," she muttered.

She opened the door, then entered the well-lit, sparkling clean lab. Begrudgingly, her opinion of Walter rose a notch. At least he was professional in how he kept his work space. Other than that and his efficiency in harvesting eyes, he was too rough, too uncivilized. Which is why he probably worked in this area of medicine and not in patient contact. Jeanette shuddered. Imagining Walter dealing with the public was a gruesome picture.

Setting the cooler on a work bench, Jeanette moved around the lab and checked out the equipment. All of it was familiar from her training days. Seeing extra lab coats hanging on the wall, Jeanette found a fairly small one and put it on. She swam in it and had to roll the sleeves up several times. She wanted to be ready to assist if Walter ever decided to return.

Glancing around the efficient lab, she pinched herself. She still couldn't believe she was part of one of the most prestigious eye research projects in the country, maybe even the world. Dr. Rutherford's Epikeratophakia procedure, known generically as the "living lens" procedure or Epi study, had been the sole reason the national organization had chosen to come to New Orleans. The rumors were this study would revolutionize the treatment of myopia, substituting a living lens made from donor corneal tissue for that of the plastic lenses traditionally used. Her former research project concerning the efficacy of contact lens wetting solutions would be moot. The living lens needed nothing to help it float since it became part of the eye. This project was the focus of the entire profession, an awesome responsibility for Dr. Rutherford and his staff.

"I'm back."

Walter's words startled Jeanette. How had he entered the room without her hearing him? The man moved like a large cat.

"You ready?" Walter took the lid off the cooler, then removed the container. "There's a pad over there if you want to take notes."

"Why would I want to do that?" Jeanette followed him to a work bench, upon which he spread a sterile drape.

"You're here to learn, ain't ya?" Walter sighed at the look she threw him. "In case you ever have to do this part of the job." Walter picked one of the eyes out of the container and laid it on the clean cloth. "Doc likes his people to be multi-taskers."

"Oh." What could she say? Nothing had ever been said to her about this aspect of her job. Not that she minded, she was always willing to learn new things. But the fact that she had to hear it from Walter made Jeanette feel--stupid.

"The S.O.B. didn't tell ya, did he?" Walter chuckled. "Well, besides coordinating the patient studies and doing follow-up, you'll be assisting in surgery, too. Yep, he likes to get the most bang for his buck out of the help." Walter winked. "I could tell you all the stuff he's had me do since he borrowed me, so-to-speak, from the Eye Bank, but it might gross you out. My advice, just take it as it comes."

Jeanette picked up the pad of paper and found a pen in the pocket of the lab coat. Assuming a calm expression, and resolutely suppressing wild speculations about what other tasks Walter might have done for the Epi Study, she said, "I'm ready when you are."

"Oh, Flower, I'm always ready."

Walter cleanly removed the cornea from the first eye. As in the eye harvesting, he was deft with the scalpel, removing the cornea with a minimum of effort. He discarded the eyeball in a red-bagged container next to the workbench.

Setting the removed cornea in a small glass dish, he proceeded to the next eye and again quickly removed the cornea, placing it next to the other.

"Okay, listen up." Walter picked up a small stainless steel instrument that looked like a minuscule cookie cutter. "This is a trephine."

"I know that."

Walter shrugged. "Well, you never know these days. Some of the people coming through here can't tell a scalpel from a suture."

Jeanette didn't believe that, but she nodded. The sooner he explained the procedure, the sooner she could get away from him.

"Anyhow--I'll use this to remove a central portion of the cornea."

Forceps held one of the corneas in place as Walter placed the trephine in the center of the small piece of tissue and applied a small amount of pressure. In a movement almost too fast for Jeanette to see, he flicked the excess cornea into the red bag, then used a second trephine to cut the other.

"We now have two corneal disks called buttons, the size of most gas permeable contact lenses." Walter swung around to the microscope at the work station. "Now, I'll remove the top layer and bottom layer of the cornea using an alcohol wipe. We do this..."

"You remove the epithelial and endothelial layers to lower the antigen reaction and to allow for new growth on the recipient eye." Jeanette was tired of Walter's condescending tone. She knew what the top and bottom layers were called, after all she had a degree, dammit. And she'd read Dr. Rutherford's research papers thoroughly before reporting for work, so she knew the basic whys and wherefores.

"Well, go to the head of the class, Flower." Walter smirked, unfazed by the heat in her response. "You'd be surprised at some of the bimbos the Doc has hired in the past."

Again, Jeanette resisted comment. She refused to believe that an esteemed physician like Dr. Rutherford hired any less than the best technicians.

"Okie-dokie, then. You probably know this, but I'll explain it for the record." Walter took the two small corneal disks and placed them in a small wire basket. "We next place the buttons in liquid nitrogen to make them rigid, so we can lathe the lens to mimic the curve and lens power of a basic contact lens."

After removing the basket from the container of liquid nitrogen, he placed one of the disks on the cryolathe and added small amounts of liquid nitrogen during the process to keep the disk rigid until the exact measurements he desired were reached.

"There!" Walter removed the lathed lens. "We have the Living Lens. Now, all I have to do is vacuum the moisture out of the lens to return it back to its original supple state..."

"Lyophilization."

"Yeah, what you said." Walter pulled a small oddly shaped jar from the cupboard and filled it with a blue-tinged solution. "After we suck out the moisture, we place it in this blue stuff and store it until the surgery. If we don't use it within three to four weeks, we throw it out."

"Do you store them here? What keeps the Eye Bank from using them for other hospitals?"

"Nah, we ship them over to the Doc's lab at the med center, but it wouldn't make any difference if we did store them here." Walter held up the container. "See, these containers are for the Epi Study and only the Doc uses this blue solution. He patented it for this project. So, no one else uses either of these. No way are they gonna make a mistake and take the wrong corneas."

Jeanette nodded. She'd never seen containers like these before, so it made sense.

"Well, that's it. Any questions?" Walter quickly cleaned up his area.

"No." Jeanette gathered up the instruments, cleaned them with alcohol rinsing with sterile water, then placing them in the autoclave for complete sterilization.

"Okay, Flower. You're free to go. Doc is expecting you for lunch, I believe." Walter smiled the sly smile Jeanette was beginning to associate with him. "Going to learn the rest of your duties."

"Yes, that's what he told me."

"Well, good luck, little Flower." Walter winked at her. "You ever dump that boyfriend, let me know. I could show you a real good time, if you know what I mean."

Pig! Only when New Orleans rises to above sea level.

Jeanette stalked from the room, followed by the sound of Walter's laughter.