Damaged

by Alex Kava

By the time she spoke again the hitch in her voice was gone.

  “I guess we just have to hope our insurance covers everything.”

  That knocked Scott cold. No way he could tell her now that he hadn’t taken out insurance on their new place, the dream house that had already skyrocketed over their budget and would almost be finished if his wife would quit changing and adding.

  “Daddy said we can stay with him during the hurricane. We can’t stay here on the bay. We’ll be safe at Daddy’s.”

  By then Scott hadn’t been listening anymore except to the key words that irritated him. Words like “daddy.” Southern girls sure did love their daddies. Scott would never get used to that term of endearment. Not from a grown woman. Daddy was what a five-year-old called his father.

  Trish had pouted a little while he changed clothes but didn’t say much more before he left. His Midwest work ethic was one characteristic she found appealing after all the deadbeats she’d dated. Besides he promised he’d help her board up the patio doors at their new house in the morning as long as they were finished by noon. He had to move up a memorial service for a stiff in his fridge. The family had originally scheduled for Wednesday but now they were all freaked about the hurricane and wanted to bury Uncle Mel before the storm hit.

  Promising to help board up had seemed to satisfy Trish. So maybe she wasn’t calling just to nag at him. He pulled out his cell phone as he sat down at the hotel’s deck bar. He was just about to listen to Trish’s voice message when the blond bartender appeared in front of him.

  “Your friend’s already here,” she told him with a smile. “He said to tell you to meet him inside the restaurant. He’s buying you dinner.”

  “Really?” But Scott was more impressed with the attention she was paying him than the dinner invitation.

  “Why don’t you guys stop out here later for a drink,” she said, then hurried across the bar to wait on another customer.

  Her smile made him forget why he had his cell phone out and he simply slipped it back into his shirt pocket. As he headed into the restaurant he vowed to assuage all the stress of the day. Assuage. Yes, that was a cool word, one that Joe Black would probably use. Scott decided he’d find a way to use it in their conversation.

  CHAPTER 24

  Maggie’s knees felt weak. Her ears still hummed and if she looked, she knew she’d see a slight tremor in her fingers. But she was relieved to be back on the ground, away from the thumping rotors and the nerve-rattling vibration.

  Escambia County sheriff Joshua Clayton was waiting for her, and everything about his tall, lanky body—from his tapping toe to his erratic gesturing—told Maggie that he wasn’t happy. But he’d promised Charlie Wurth that the DHS and FBI would have full disclosure of the evidence. Clayton didn’t seem to have a problem with allowing access. It was his time he had a problem sparing, and at one point he mumbled, “I don’t have time for this. There’s a hurricane on its way, for Christ’s sake.”

  Maggie had barely peeled out of her flight suit. She thanked the aircrew and they agreed to meet later for drinks on her. Clayton stood at her elbow the entire time, twisting his wrist in an exaggerated show of checking the time. Now, in his cruiser, the man was tapping out his impatience on the steering wheel.

  Back at the office he handed her a form to sign then led her to a small room at the end of a hallway. There was nothing on the walls. Only a table and two folding chairs sat on the worn but clean linoleum. On the table was the battered white fishing cooler.

  “Contents were photographed and bagged,” Clayton told her. “They’re all at the ME’s office. We haven’t processed the cooler yet,” he said as he handed her a pair of latex gloves. “We’ll dust it for prints, but with it being in the water I suspect we won’t find much.”

  His cell phone rang. Clayton frowned at it.

  “I’ve got to take this. You mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He was out the door in three strides. Maggie couldn’t help but notice that despite his initial frown, he looked relieved to have a reason to escape. His voice disappeared down the hallway. It was just as well. She preferred taking a close look without him standing over her shoulder.

  She began opening the lid but snapped it shut after just a whiff of the rancid smell. She prepared herself, took a deep breath, and tried again. No wonder they hadn’t processed the cooler yet. About two inches of pink liquid covered the bottom, residue from melted ice and at least one leaky package.

  Maggie let the lid flap open. The initial smell would be the worst. Adding some air would dilute it. She stepped away and pulled her smartphone from its holder at her waistband. She pushed a couple buttons and activated the camera.

  The cooler was huge, white paint over stainless steel. A popular name brand that even Maggie recognized was stamped on the side. The inside of the lid was unusual, with an indentation of a large fish and slots of measurement alongside it. What drew her immediate attention was the tie-down, looped around the cooler’s handle.

  She took several pictures, close-ups to focus on the blue-and-yellow twisted strands. The rope was made of synthetic fiber, smooth, possibly coated. One end appeared to be frayed. She took more pictures. On closer inspection it looked like the frayed end had been cut, not ripped. All the fibers, though frayed, were the exact same length.

  Maggie glanced back at the door. No sight or sound of Sheriff Clayton. But just in case, she chose to text-message her partner, R. J. Tully, rather than make a phone call.

  HEY TULLY. SENDING PHOTOS. CAN U CHECK DATABASE?

  It took her less than a minute to e-mail close-ups of the rope. Tully would be able to scan or download the photos and run the information through the FBI’s database. Maybe they’d get lucky and be able to identify the manufacturer.

  She remembered another case in the 1980s. An airman named John Joubert was arrested for murdering two little boys. Authorities found an unusual rope at one of the crime scenes. It had been used to bind the hands of one of the boys. This was before DNA analysis, so the unusual rope became a key piece of evidence. During a search of Joubert’s quarters, they found a length of it.

  Before she sent the last photo she had a text message from Tully.

  NO PROB.

  Finished with the rope, she moved on and shot photos of the cooler and the measuring tool inside the lid. Not much to see. She agreed with Sheriff Clayton’s speculations about fingerprints. Maybe they’d get lucky with a print inside the lid, but the salt water had probably eliminated anything on the outside.

  Maggie took a final shot of the open cooler, the smell less potent now. That’s when she noticed something in the liquid. She held her breath again and leaned over for a closer look. A small piece of white paper, no larger than two inches by three inches, was stuck to the side, several inches from the bottom. Part of the paper fell below the liquid’s surface and the moisture had loosened a corner. Had it not been for it flapping into the liquid, Maggie would have never noticed. And that was probably why Sheriff Clayton’s staff had missed it.

  She glanced over her shoulder. As she holstered her smartphone she searched the room. In a lone cupboard behind the door she found a box of ziplock bags. She grabbed one and pulled on the latex gloves Clayton had given her. Then carefully and slowly she peeled the piece of paper from the cooler wall, trying to limit her touch to the flapping corner as she eased it off little by little.

  Maggie held the paper between her fingertips. She needed to be patient and let it air-dry before placing it into the plastic bag. As she waited she examined the other side of the paper. Its corners were rounded, resembling a stick-on label. The side that had been facing out was blank but the one that had been stuck to the wall of the cooler was not. The ink had bled away. Only a ghost of the hand printing remained. But Maggie could still read the three lines of letters and numbers, what looked like a code:

  AMET

  DESTIN: 082409

  #8509000029

  She glanced back inside th
e cooler. There was nothing else. Maybe this piece of paper didn’t have a thing to do with the body parts. It could have been left over from the cooler’s previous usage. Perhaps dropped in accidentally.

  Or, and Maggie hoped this was the case, it had once been a label attached to one of the packages.

  CHAPTER 25

  Benjamin Platt leaned his elbows on the lab countertop. He pressed his eyes against the microscope and adjusted the magnification. Once in a while he glanced up at the test tubes he had prepared, watching for the results. Ronnie Towers’s blood had already tested negative for several of Platt’s best guesses. He was running out of ideas.

  The small laboratory suited him despite the strong smell of disinfectants. It was well equipped and quiet, much better than the conditions he was used to on the road. Platt had learned long ago to travel with a hard-shell case filled with everything he’d need to run basic lab tests whether he was in a war zone, a hot zone, or even a tent in Sierra Leone.

  He sat back on the stool and stared at the test tubes. No change. A good thing, albeit frustrating as hell. The young man’s prosthetic leg rested on the counter next to him. He had carefully scraped some of the bone paste applied to the prosthetic during surgery. He smeared it on a slide then prepared a second slide from the sample tissue taken from Ronnie Towers.

  What he had found so far was something he identified as a strain of clostridia, a family of bacteria that caused a number of infections. The most prevalent one was tetanus. Another was sepsis leading to toxic shock syndrome. Except what Platt saw under the microscope looked more complicated.

  To his left, Platt had opened his laptop, accessing a database he had worked for several years to put together. Now on the screen was a close-up of the clostridia family. He needed to wait for all the files to download before he could begin clicking through the photos in his database. He hoped he would find an exact match to what he saw under his microscope.

  While he waited, he pulled out his cell phone. Certainly he could get some basic information without breaking his word to Captain Ganz about keeping this situation classified.

  He keyed in the number, expecting to get the voice-messaging service for the Centers for Disease Control’s chief of outbreak response. Platt was surprised when Roger Bix’s slow, Southern drawl answered, “This is Bix.”

  “Roger, it’s Benjamin Platt.”

  “Colonel, what can I do for you?”

  “I didn’t expect to get you on a Sunday.”

  “It’s a 24/7 job.” He laughed. “I doubt you’re calling me from a golf course. What’s up?”

  “I’m wondering if you have any recent reports of life-threatening infections related to … say, any kind of donor tissue or bone transplants?”

  “Illnesses, sure. Deaths? None if your definition of recent is the last forty-eight hours. I’d have to check for sure. Are you calling to report one?”

  Platt had forgotten how direct and to the point Bix could be. Not a bad thing. The last time the two men had worked together they were dealing with two separate outbreaks of Ebola.

  “Just need information,” Platt told him. “If there was a possible contamination at a tissue bank or a hospital, you’d know, right?”

  “Depends what the contamination is. Tissue banks are required to screen donors for HIV, hepatitis B and C, and other blood-borne viruses.”

  “What about bacteria?”

  “What kind of bacteria?”

  “I don’t know, Roger.” He felt himself shrugging as he stared at his computer screen. “Infection-causing bacterium.”

  “The FDA doesn’t require us to culture donors for anything beyond blood-borne viruses. Many of the accredited tissue banks don’t go beyond those requirements. Infections are rare. I won’t say they never happen. I remember several years back three deaths in Minnesota. Routine knee surgeries using the cartilage from a cadaver. But that was a freaky case. Even our investigation couldn’t determine whether the donor was already infected or whether the tissue became infected while it was processed. The tissue bank blamed the collection agency and the collection agency blamed the shipper. It’s a crazy business.”

  “Business?”

  “Sure. It’s a business. Organ transplants have strict regulations. Only one organization per region. Have to be nonprofit, so plenty of federal oversight. Whole different ball game. But you get into tissue, bone, ligaments, corneas, veins—the supply can’t keep up with demand. A cadaver might be worth $5,000 to $10,000, but sliced and diced—excuse my flippancy—and sold piece by piece? That same cadaver’s worth anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000.”

  “I thought it was illegal to sell cadavers and human body parts.”

  “Ben, no offense, but man, you need to get out of the lab more often. Selling body parts might be illegal but it’s not illegal to charge for the service of procuring, processing, and transporting. But truthfully, a lot of good comes out of this stuff. Some of the technology is amazing. They say one donor—by using his bones, tissue, ligaments, skin—can affect fifty lives.”

  Platt felt his stomach sink to his knees. One donor could infect fifty recipients?

  “Ben, I hope you’re not working on another fiasco that the military is trying to keep quiet.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Platt was glad Roger Bix didn’t know him well, or he’d recognize what a terrible liar he was.

  CHAPTER 26

  Scott downed his Johnnie Walker—neat, this time—trying to keep up with Joe Black. Maybe he’d get used to the sting. His head started to spin. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, he sort of liked the feeling. It didn’t even bother him when Joe cut into his rare steak and the red juices leaked out and streamed across his bone-white plate, soaking into his baked potato.

  Joe had ordered a bottle of wine for them to share with their porterhouses and Scott noticed he was a bit behind on the wine. Joe was pouring a second glass for himself and topping off Scott’s. And the whole time Scott couldn’t shake out of his mind the envelope Joe had handed him when they first sat down. It would have been uncool to pull the money out, but with only a glance Scott saw the envelope contained hundred-dollar bills. And there were certainly more than the five hundred dollars they had agreed on.

  “Your finder’s fee for the indie,” Joe smiled at him. “And a little extra for the storage space I’m going to need. Looks like the conference is being postponed. I have some frozen specimens I’ll need to bring in. So are we good?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Other than what we added earlier, I only have one guy in there now and the family wants the service Tuesday morning. Not even an open casket. They wanna get the old coot buried before the storm hits.”

  “And you’re set up with generators, just in case?”

  “All set,” Scott told him and made a mental note in the back of his spinning head to check.

  “I have a delivery coming in tomorrow morning,” Joe told him. “I asked them to reroute it to the funeral home. You’ll be there around ten, right?”

  “Absolutely. Not a problem.”

  “How old of a guy?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The old coot.”

  “Oh, him. Sixty-nine. Bachelor. Lived alone.”

  “Obese?”

  Scott stopped mid-bite. Even with a fuzzy head, Joe’s interest seemed odd.

  Joe noticed Scott’s hesitancy and said, “Just curious,” and sipped his wine. “You know how it is. Occupational hazard.” He gave Scott one of his winning grins and Scott relaxed.

  “You should hear the calls I get,” Joe continued. “Independent brokers, toolers, even surgeons contact me. And the worst are these conference organizers. You should hear them. ‘Hey, Joe, I need six torsos, five shoulders, and a dozen knee specimens in two weeks.’”

  He slung back the rest of his wine, reached for the bottle, and filled his glass, taking time to top off Scott’s again.

  “And you should see these conferences.” Joe pushed his plate aside and
planted an elbow in its place on the table. “Five-star resorts, usually with beaches and golf courses. First-class flight, deluxe suite, dinners, cocktail parties. It’s all included for the surgeons.”

  Scott slid his plate aside and mirrored Joe’s posture, leaning in and sipping his wine. He really didn’t need any more alcohol. His head was already starting to swim. But now he just nodded and listened, grateful because he wasn’t sure he could trust his words to not slur.

  “And for guys like us, Scott? The sky’s the limit. Don’t get me wrong. I respect the rules of the trade. It’s not my fault there’re so few. And as long as I transport within Florida I don’t even have to worry about shipping regulations.”

  Scott was still stuck on the phrase “guys like us.” He liked that Joe finally considered him a part of his network, his ’hood.

  “Can I get you gentlemen some dessert?”

  The waitress’s sudden presence startled Scott.

  “Yes,” Joe answered as smoothly as if he hadn’t had several Scotches and half a bottle of wine. “How ’bout the flaming cherries jubilee?” He was asking Scott, not the waitress.

  “Oh, absolutely,” Scott managed, surprised at sounding so coherent.

  “Excellent choice.” She rewarded Joe with a smile. “Oh, and I need to get a cheeseburger to go. Medium well,” he told the waitress.

  “Fries?”

  “That’d be perfect.”

  As she left, Scott raised an eyebrow at Joe. “Still hungry?”

  “Don’t ask. I promised someone.”

  But something had changed in Joe’s demeanor. Scott saw it immediately though he couldn’t put his finger on what it was exactly. It made Joe sit up. He waved a hand over the table.

  “This is the lifestyle, Scott. And it only promises to grow. I can’t keep up with the demand. Having a few choice funeral directors like yourself has really helped. You know, you guys are the true gatekeepers of America’s donor program. You have such tremendous influence over whether a family recognizes the valuable gift their loved one can give to future generations.”