Scott searched Charles's apartment for anything that might be useful in the pursuit of Rutherford. He didn't expect to find much, and only went through the motions to satisfy Andrew that his brother had not been the primary target.

Scott knew for a fact that whatever had killed Charles had been meant for Jeannie. Now, all he had to do was isolate it. Andrew had offered his CDC lab as a resource after the autopsy. The turn-around time on the tox screens would be faster. And more confidential than having it done in New Orleans.

"I'm done here." Andrew entered the living room from Charles's bedroom. "I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Just Charles's usual mess. We might have better luck with the personal files and effects we picked up from his law office."

Once again, Scott had to look twice to be sure that the man speaking was Andrew, not Charles. It turned out they'd been twins. Identical.

"Let's take these things to Jeannie's." Scott picked up the box with the personal effects. "His briefcase with his other research and notes, along with our research, is at her place. You can look it over and see what we're up against."

Andrew headed for the door. "I'll leave my suitcase here. I can make camp here until I make arrangements for Charles's transfer for burial in Atlanta."

"Aren't you going to send him back north?" Scott motioned Andrew out ahead of him.

"Nah. Mom isn't there anymore, and she'd be the only one who cared." Andrew locked the door and pocketed the key. "Dad would say he'd gotten what he asked for by poking his nose into something he shouldn't. Dad took a cover-your-ass approach to life, especially if it was his own ass."

"No wonder."

"No wonder, what?" Andrew cast him a curious glance as they got into the car.

"Your brother had trouble dealing with family relationships, which is probably why he and Jeannie weren't married."

Scott wasn't going into any greater detail. He just realized he could be a perfect suspect for Charles's murder -- at least in the eyes of Andrew Carter and outsiders who didn't know the situation.

"This Jeannie -- she has a child, right?"

"Yeah. A little girl."

"Then Charles would have had a problem." Andrew sighed. "After Mom had us, the marriage fell apart. Father hadn't really wanted us, but after the divorce, to spite Mom, he kept us. Then proceeded to either ignore us or attempt to control our every thought. After he remarried, he trotted us out for perfect photo ops. Charles and I used to plot father's demise in painful, gruesome ways."

"What about your mom? Didn't she see what was going on?" Scott pulled into the alley leading to the garage for Jeannie's apartment block.

"Mom didn't get to see us again until after we left for college." Andrew's lips thinned into a parody of a smile. "Father had paid her well to stay away. She gave up all visitation. Charles never spoke to Father again, and only just recently made it up with Mom. Yeah, you could say Charles had familial relationship problems."

Scott mentally groaned. "Please don't tell Jeannie all that. I'm sure she's figured out by now that she was the intended target. If she knew what kind of childhood he'd had, she'd feel even worse."

"She made an issue of the family stuff, I take it?" Andrew raised his eyebrows in a manner so like his brother's that Scott got chills.

"Yeah. They agreed they wouldn't suit after that."

Scott led the way to the second floor apartment.

"Leaving the way open for you to compete the family group?"

Scott heard no suspicion in the rhetorical question, just a sense that Andrew felt satisfied at solving a puzzle. He turned to face Andrew.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. You have a problem with that?"

"No." Andrew returned Scott's regard. "As long as it wasn't an issue between my brother and you, why should it bother me?"

"Well, it wasn't an issue." Scott turned to proceed the man up the stairs. "Your brother saw this case as a way to put his name on the New Orleans' legal-political map. He was committed to his career. Family was way down his list of priorities."

"That sounds like him. I just wanted to clear the air before we get down to the serious business of finding out who killed Charles."

"To be precise, we're seeking the person who killed Charles by mistake," Scott said over his shoulder as he waited for someone to let them into Jeannie's apartment. "Jeannie was the target. And still is."

"I stand corrected." Andrew tugged on Scott's sleeve. Scott turned his head to stare into blue eyes blazing with anger. "I want to get this bastard. Count me in for whatever I can do."

Scott nodded. "We'll need all the help we can get. New Orleans is as corrupt a town as you're likely to find. We need Federal contacts."

As footsteps hurried to the door, Andrew whispered, "I've got all sorts of those -- and, if you need corrupt, I can call on my father's friends. The Carter name does mean something in certain underworld circles."

Scott's shock must have shown on his face, because Andrew laughed, piercing the quiet of the courtyard and scaring a flock of finches from their resting places.

"Obviously, Charles hadn't divulged the family's skeleton." Andrew sneered. "Father made the family fortune as an accountant for the Jersey mob."

Scott emptied his mind of everything but the need to perform the autopsy. He wasn't going to look on Charles as someone he knew, but as a clinical case. Objectivity was crucial in order to find all forensic evidence. He had no forensic training, but Andrew had and had offered to come along to assist in place of Scott's friend. Less lips to worry about talking out of turn and tipping Rutherford off. The medical community was small when it came to gossip.

"If someone walks in on us, let me do the talking," Scott said as he and Andrew started with the initial cuts. "I'm playing it as a surgical resident who wanted more anatomical study."

"Okay. Gotcha." Andrew frowned. "I called my lab and had them fax me a list of all organs we use for tox screens." Andrew snapped his gloved fingers covered in a combination of blood and tissue. "Hey, Scott. You with me, buddy? You look sort of pale."

Scott scowled. He thought he'd gotten over queasy stomachs in his freshman year anatomy and physiology lab. Give him a live, anesthetized patient any day. Cutting on dead bodies spooked him.

"I'll make it."

Scott deftly cut the rib section so Andrew could get to the heart. The electric saw sounded like a dental drill and the ensuing smell reminded Scott of the hot odor of grinding teeth.

"Takes some getting used to."

"Yeah, but you become immune to it," said Andrew. "Med school cadavers are worse than anything because of the formalin smell. Fresh dead bodies are better."

Scott admired Andrew's objectivity in light of the fact he was cutting his twin. This seemed to be harder on him, a total stranger, than on Andrew.

He placed the ribs to the side. They'd sew them back into the chest cavity later for the undertaker to tidy up.

Andrew placed the heart on the scale. "580 grams. Let's get some heart tissue."

Scott took the heart and placed it next to the ribs on an empty stainless steel table. They'd take tissue for slides before putting the heart back in with the ribs.

"What next?" Scott let Andrew lead, since he seemed the calmer of the two.

"Next we go to the gut and get the samples we need." Andrew pulled out the abdominal organs and laid them between Charles's legs. "Why don't you start checking every millimeter of the colon while I take care of the stomach contents."

Scott's lips tightened, but he started examining the colon beginning with the small intestines and working his way down. "What exactly am I looking for?"

"Unusual bleed-outs, loops, tumors -- anything that shouldn't be in smooth muscle tissue. GI is not your area, I take it?"

Scott looked up from the colon. Andrew ladled stomach contents into a plastic container. Now that the gut was opened, foul bacterial odors had replaced the fresh meat smell in the room.

"Uh, no." Scott swallowed hard. "Believe it or not I'm in a trauma surgical residency."

Andrew laughed. "Blood and guts are okay -- just as long as you don't know

them. Right?"

"Yeah." Scott hesitated. "Doesn't it bother you -- this being your brother and all?"

"I refuse to let it." Andrew stopped and looked at him. "You were in Desert Storm, right?"

Scott nodded, knowing what was coming.

"You saw people killed. You killed. You risked your life to bring your dying friend, Jeannie's husband, out of the line of fire." Andrew paused. "How did you do that? Didn't it bother you?"

"No. It was something I had to do. Something I would do again. I didn't think

-- I just reacted."

"Bingo." Andrew turned back to the stomach contents. "I'm not thinking. I'm just doing what is needed to get the bastards who killed my brother."

Scott nodded, his stomach now calm. His mind focused on what needed to

be done. He turned back to his examination of the colon.

"He'd eaten not too long before death, right?" Andrew stopped removing contents and fished out something floating on top of the slop.

"Yes. He ate the same things we ate."

"Did all of you take gelatin capsules of some sort?" Andrew pinned Scott with a penetrating glance. "Cause I just found something that looks like that."

"No. I don't recall him taking any meds at dinner."

Scott let go of the colon, marking the place he left off by tying the glove he'd

removed around the spot. Then he walked over to the phone on the morgue desk.

"I'll call Jeannie, and see if she can tell me anything about a capsule."

While Scott waited on the phone, Andrew muttered as he continued to remove stomach contents -- now into two containers: one for general content and a smaller one for gel cap remnants.

"Hello?"

"Jeannie. It's Scott."

"What's wrong?" Scott heard Tony's voice in the background asking her who

it was. "It's okay -- it's Scott." Tony's voice rumbled once more. "Scott, do you need to speak to Tony?"

"No. I need to ask you if Charles had taken any medicine that night."

"Yes. I thought I told you. No, I'd forgotten. Damn. I'm sorry."

"Darlin', don't worry. You're telling me now. What did he take?"

"He took one of my allergy capsules. He said they were the same kind he

took. Why? What's wrong?"

"Jeannie, get the bottle. Use something to pick it up. Then, give it to Tony. Do

not -- I repeat -- do not touch the bottle anymore than you have to. And whatever you do, don't take any of them. Now go -- and put Tony on."

"Scott. What did you find? What's this about allergy meds?" Tony's voice