At What Cost

by James L'Etoile

  “Like Tucker said, someone has to keep the squatters from setting up camp.”

  “People who lock stuff up have something to hide. If the business went under, then who cares if someone sets up house?”

  “You think Jimmy Franck saw something more than a dead bird, don’t you?” Paula said.

  “I know the guy’s a meth-head, but even he wouldn’t mistake a bird for a person.” John took another sip from his coffee mug. “Jimmy said the warehouse was on Fifteenth. Guzman sat here and told us he and Cardozo picked up the crates at a warehouse on Fifteenth. We gotta go check the place over. Stark screwed up by not conducting a good search when he went in.”

  “We don’t have anything to base a search warrant on. Tucker and Stark went on a dead body call, so they had a reason to enter. They didn’t have cause to search the locked rooms. We could find out who owns the property and see if they would give us consent.”

  John slid out of the booth and dropped another five dollars on the table. “It has to be the same place Guzman was talking about. It might take days to go through all the bureaucratic channels to find out who owns it.”

  Paula scooted from the booth. “You’re not talking about jumping the warrant. There’s too much at risk here. If we find anything, any half-awake defense attorney will get the evidence tossed. We have to wait.”

  “I didn’t suggest we peek before the warrant. I don’t think we’ll need one. We don’t need to find the building’s owner. We’ll get the owner to come to us.”

  ELEVEN

  “This is such bullshit,” Paula said.

  After a quick stop at the station and a phone call, the detectives parked their unmarked sedan in a potholed asphalt parking strip in front of the vacant ice plant and warehouse on Fifteenth Street. Layers of faded, chipped paint chronicled the delivery of block ice to the city in a time before refrigerators offered the convenience of crushed or cubed ice without leaving home.

  “Here he comes now,” John said, pointing to a white pickup truck with city plates kicking up a rooster tail of asphalt chunks in its wake. As the truck drew nearer, the code enforcement lettering on the doors came into view.

  A stocky man, who John guessed was in his midforties, unfolded from the cab of the small truck. The city worker wore dark cargo pants and a polo shirt with the city emblem on the chest. The code enforcement officer strode toward the detectives and leaned in John’s open window.

  “You Penley?” he asked.

  John nodded and said, “This is Detective Newberry. You call the owner?”

  “Yeah. I’m Jackson,” the code enforcement officer said, extending his hand. “What’s this about?”

  “One of our units pulled a dead animal out of this building last night. Homeless probably using the place as a toilet. All kinds of public health violations going on in there,” John said.

  Jackson sniffed the air. “I don’t smell nothing too ripe.”

  “You’re fifty feet away,” John added. “Is the building owner coming?”

  “Most of the places we roll up on, you can get a whiff a half a block away.” Jackson pulled a notebook from his back pocket, thumbed to a page, and said, “The city records show that this building hasn’t had a license to operate since 1989, been vacant since. The owner is listed as Margolis Associates. Their property manager is a guy named Brice Winnow. I’ve worked with him before. Seems to be a stand-up guy.”

  “Margolis Associates? Any relation to city council member Susan Margolis?” John asked.

  “One and the same. It’s her company. She bought up a number of old places downtown and in the midtown corridor with big plans for redevelopment and revitalizing the city center. Everything went on hold after she got elected to the city council. She didn’t want any conflict-of-interest complaints if she moved forward on any of the properties.”

  “Jesus, Penley, this is the councilwoman’s place. We can’t go messing around in there,” Paula said.

  Jackson jutted his chin toward Paula. “What’s her problem?”

  “She’s a real animal lover, and she’s all broken up about the mistreatment of animals in there,” John explained.

  “Not to mention the political blowback from the councilwoman,” Jackson added.

  “Not to mention,” John said.

  A yellow Lotus Elise turned the corner and gingerly made a course around the larger potholes in the parking lot.

  “I thought commercial real estate was dead,” John commented.

  “Apparently not,” Paula said.

  The flashy yellow sports car pulled up next to the city truck, and the engine purred through twin chrome exhaust pipes. Not an introvert’s car of choice; it screamed for attention. The driver’s door swung open like a bug’s wing, and a pair of high-gloss shoes touched down on the asphalt.

  With a politician’s glad hand, Brice Winnow greeted the code enforcement officer as if he were a pricey campaign contributor. He sidled up to the police sedan, thrust his soft, moisturized hand to John, and said, “Brice Winnow, representing Susan Margolis.”

  John knew that statement really meant, “Don’t mess with the councilwoman’s interests.” The detectives got out of the sedan, and John repeated what he’d told the code enforcement supervisor.

  “The place is an attractive nuisance. During the last shift, one of our patrol units reported dead animals, human waste, and hazardous debris. Could be a homeless camp or a shooting gallery—whatever, it’s unsafe, and we need Mr. Jackson to tag the building,” John said.

  As Winnow heard the words “attractive nuisance” and “tag the building,” he reacted as if slapped. “Hold on now, Officer . . .”

  “Detective,” Paula countered.

  Winnow’s eyes narrowed as they shifted and washed over her body. “Detective,” he said in a tone that dripped of dismissive indifference. “You have no right to come in here and threaten to tag the councilwoman’s property because of the actions of a few street people.”

  “When it becomes a public nuisance, we do,” John said.

  “Why haven’t I been advised of any problem with the property?” Winnow looked to Jackson, who shrugged his shoulders and walked to his truck.

  Winnow pivoted around to face the warehouse and scanned the aged facade. “I don’t see any ‘public nuisance.’ I don’t even see any public,” he said, gesturing to the empty loading bays, solidly boarded windows, and the absence of so much as a single shopping cart laden with street treasure.

  “Can we get on with this? I get off in twenty minutes,” Jackson asked as he pulled out a notice for an unsafe building that he retrieved from his truck.

  “I demand proof of this alleged nuisance,” Winnow said.

  “It’s your show, Penley,” the city worker said.

  “Fine, let’s head inside,” John directed as he and Paula headed for the stairs that flanked the loading bay.

  Winnow didn’t move; he stood fixed to the asphalt.

  “He’s not buying it,” Paula observed.

  “He will,” John said as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Jackson pulled off the adhesive backing on the unsafe-building notice.

  From the parking lot, Winnow called out, “Hold on. Let’s talk this over. I’m sure there’s been some mistake here.” He started across the asphalt and scuffed the tip of his shoe on a section of cracked pavement. Winnow climbed the stairs, and his face betrayed the fact that he held Penley responsible for the deep gouge in his shoe. “Show me this great threat to public safety.”

  “You got a key?” Jackson asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Winnow said. He thrust a hand into his pants pocket, pulled out a ring with a single silver key, and caressed the metal with a finger. “Here, let’s get this over with.” He handed the key to Jackson.

  “There’s your consent to search,” John whispered to his partner.

  “Keep your key. The lock’s busted,” Jackson said.

  John pushed the door back against rusted hinges
, and it opened into a deep black maw beyond the threshold. A stale copper smell wafted from within. “Lights?”

  “I had the utilities shut off ages ago,” Winnow said.

  John fished a hand behind the door and located a gang of switches that once operated the electric roll-up doors and overhead lights. He flicked them up, one at a time. Nothing happened. He reached for the last switch, and a jolt of electricity shot up his arm from a bare copper wire where the switch had once lived. John involuntarily jumped away, banging into the steel door. A white spark sizzled and burned bright spots in John’s field of vision.

  “You okay?” Paula said.

  “Yeah. I guess the power got turned back on.” John looked to the code enforcement officer. “Hand me your flashlight, would you?”

  John took the thick black flashlight and pointed the beam on the exposed wire. Careful not to repeat his near electrocution, John held the light steady and observed that the switch was missing, replaced with a new strand of heavy yellow Nomex-wrapped power cable. The new strand of cable joined in the switch box in a messy, twisted copper connection.

  “You need a better handyman, Mr. Winnow,” John said. John ran the light from the box along the path of the new yellow-coated power cable. It ran toward the dark rear of the warehouse and disappeared into a gray metal box mounted above a door.

  “Squatters, no doubt,” Winnow responded. “Same ones who broke the lock.”

  “Copper wire and fixtures are stripped from abandoned buildings, not usually added.” John took a few steps forward into the warehouse, and a light snapped on from overhead. The light nested above the old industrial fixtures that once illuminated the ice-plant floor. This light was new and included a motion-sensor switch. The beam focused on a particular spot. Illuminated on the floor below was a pentagram, punctuated with melted candles.

  “What the hell is that?” Jackson said.

  Paula stepped closer and bent on one knee. “This is what Stark and Tucker found. I’ll give Jimmy the benefit of a doubt on this one. It is kinda creepy.”

  “Bird? This is all about a dead bird?” Winnow scoffed.

  Jackson gave the pentagram altar a wide birth and made the sign of the cross with a quick motion.

  John stood over Paula’s shoulder and examined the chalk drawing around the dead hawk. It was unlike any pentagram he’d ever seen, all jagged angles and straight lines emanating out from the hawk’s carcass. The design gave off an ancient vibe, almost Native American. That’s when it struck him. It wasn’t a pentagram; he’d seen this drawing once before. This was a crude replica of the tattoo on Daniel Cardozo’s chest.

  “There is too much blood under this bird. There had to be another source,” Paula said.

  “Detective, is this all you came for?” Winnow said.

  John ignored Winnow and walked deeper into the building, following the yellow power cable. A faint hum, mechanical and continuous, arose from the darkness. John reached the far wall, where the power cable terminated in an old electrical box mounted above a bank of ancient walk-in freezers. A few freezer spaces no longer had the thick insulated doors, but the one directly under the power box was intact, secured by a shiny new padlock and reinforced steel hinges.

  John waited for the others to catch up and then borrowed a set of bolt-cutters from Jackson. After snapping the lock’s shank, John drew it back out of the hasp bolted into the insulated door. A tug on the thick handle released the door, and a fine mist of vapor seeped out from the edges.

  The humming sound grew louder as the door opened, but the space inside was unlit, filled with a veil of cooled mist that reflected his flashlight beam.

  John pulled the door fully back on its hinges, and mist pooled onto the floor around his ankles. The copper scent was sharp. He stepped into the freezer, directed his light on the wall nearest the door latch, and found a switch. Using the end of his flashlight, he forced the switch up, and three banks of fluorescent lights flickered on overhead.

  Inside, the freezer was larger than expected. It stretched back thirty feet, with opaque plastic sheeting draped from floor to ceiling. At the rear of the space, a curtain of sheeting separated a section of the freezer. A metallic surface, beyond the plastic barrier, reflected the glare of an overhead light fixture.

  The burnished concrete floor told a history of ice blocks being shoved and pushed across the surfaces of the warehouse. Rubber tubing snaked from beneath the plastic curtain and disappeared down an old floor drain in the center of the space. Congealed blood pooled in the drain. The sharp note of bleach in the air failed to cut through the stench wafting from the drain.

  As the detectives and Winnow approached the sheeted area, the code enforcement officer stayed near the door and readied to bolt like a sorority girl on a ghost hunt.

  John reached the plastic curtain and pushed it aside, revealing a deep-channeled table with high-set sides. John had seen similar pieces, but only at the morgue. The table design served the coroner and morticians well, ensuring human remains, fluids, and detritus remained on the surface and didn’t slop onto the floor.

  Thankfully, the table was clean, but deep gouges in the stainless-steel surface betrayed heavy use. In the center of the table, a single metal case, slightly larger than a standard briefcase, sat upright.

  “What is that?” Winnow said.

  “That looks like what Guzman told us he and Daniel Cardozo picked up,” John said.

  “Guzman and who?”

  John placed a hand on the case. “It’s vibrating.”

  Paula moved closer. “There is a tag on the handle.” She flipped it over. “It’s addressed to you.”

  Dark, handwritten block letters spelled out Detective John Penley. Under the name, the only information consisted of eight letters and numbers, indecipherable gibberish, on the paper tag.

  “What the hell is this?” John said. He shifted the metal case so that it faced him. He thumbed the locks open on the corners and slowly raised the lid. A puff of cold vapor snuck out from the seal as the lid opened. From inside the container, a mechanical thrum sounded. John recoiled and fell back against the freezer wall.

  A perfectly shaped human kidney glistened within a plastic case. Small diameter tubes ran from the organ to a battery-operated device that pushed a milky fluid through the tissue and circulated it back through the pump in a closed loop.

  The message couldn’t be more personal. The killer knew that John’s son suffered from kidney failure.

  TWELVE

  “Usually, you bring me more to work with,” Dr. Sandra Kelly said.

  The metal case was splayed open on the autopsy table like a clamshell. The kidney, wrapped in its protective plastic cover on one side, seemed dwarfed by the size and bulk of the battery pack and pump on the other. A nest of tubes and wires ran within neat grooves and channels cut into a dense foam-insulated layer.

  Dr. Kelly loosened a clamp on the part of the case that stored the kidney. “I feel like I should call in my auto mechanic for this part.”

  “What’s the purpose of all this stuff? One of our sources said something about a trophy. Is that was this is?”

  The doctor continued disassembling the protective layer of foam. “This is an organ harvested for transplant.”

  “Don’t you have to get harvested organs for transplant to a hospital right away? Ambulances, helicopters, ice chests, and stuff?” John said.

  “Sooner the better, certainly. If preserved properly, organs maintain their viability for hours. The research in this field is expanding so fast, and newer technology keeps organs viable for longer periods than anyone thought possible a few years ago.” Dr. Kelly worked the clear plastic container free from the case and placed it on the stainless-steel autopsy table.

  “How long would something like that last?” Paula asked.

  “Hard to say. Given the right circumstances, the health of the donor, and the methods used to cool and preserve the tissue—forty-eight hours, maybe more,” the doctor sai
d.

  “Two days from killing his victim to mailing out the parts and delivering them to their recipient,” Paula observed.

  “Two days from harvest to executed sale,” John added.

  The constant high-pitch thrum ceased as Dr. Kelly snapped the battery pack out of its housing. “Huh.”

  “What?” John asked.

  “No backup. Most perfusion pumps have a redundant battery backup in case one drains. This one doesn’t,” Dr. Kelly said.

  “Perfusion?” John said.

  “Perfusion pump. This one is cutting edge. They’re designed to push a specialized fluid through the organ to keep it viable for transplant. I’ll test this, but I’m willing to bet it’s Viaspan, Euro-Collins, or simple Ringer’s lactate.”

  “Where can someone get a setup like that?”

  “There’s a dozen manufacturers. You can find the pumps on eBay,” Dr. Kelly said.

  “We should be able to track the purchase,” Paula said. “Can’t be too many people out there buying perfusion pumps.”

  John picked up the battery pack, and the surface was hot to the touch. “What’s the significance of operating without a battery backup? I mean, other than the obvious—the pump stops working and the tissue dies.”

  “The choice your suspect made is . . . interesting. I guess ‘interesting’ is the word I’m looking for.”

  “Cutting up a body isn’t new, but usually it’s to cover up the crime,” John said.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. The choice to try to preserve the organ by machine perfusion over cold storage is puzzling,” the doctor said.

  “It was cold when we opened it,” Paula said.

  Dr. Kelly snapped off her latex gloves, leaned against a tall cabinet, and rubbed her temples. “I did an internship, longer ago that I’d like to admit, in cryogenic preservation.”

  “As in freezing people?” John said.

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes.”

  “I thought that was all science fiction,” John said.

  “That’s why I don’t bring it up very often. But the research in cryogenics has revealed useful techniques in related fields. You’re looking at one of them now. Machine perfusion.”