At What Cost

by James L'Etoile

  “You can’t do anything sitting around here,” Melissa said. “Besides, all this hovering will make Tommy worry. Go. I’ll keep you updated.” She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed John on the cheek.

  John looked to Dr. Anderson. “If I find someone here has been playing some sick game of Russian roulette with my son . . .”

  “I know these people, Detective. I’ve worked shoulder to shoulder with them and none of them—absolutely none of them—would get involved in something like this.”

  “If someone’s desperate enough, there is nothing they won’t do.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Back at the station, John found his partner tucked behind a cart-mounted video monitor rolled up alongside her desk. An extension cord ran from the back of the monitor, stretched across the aisle to the wall like a mad bomber’s trip wire. Paula had her head propped back against the back of her chair; the reflection of the video played off her wire-framed glasses, the pair she was supposed to wear but usually didn’t because they made her feel old. She glanced up as John plopped into his chair. She took off the glasses and rubbed her eyes.

  The clear plastic evidence bag with its takeout firearm chow fun contents was balanced on a stack of file folders.

  “You have a chance to lean on Zack Weber?” John asked.

  She nodded. “He’s not giving up anything. He’s keeping up his social warrior front. He refuses to admit he knew anything about that particular sample from the lab or how it happened to go missing.”

  “Or how that human tissue got into the transplant pipeline?”

  “Nada.” Paula pointed at the gun. “But I got a hit on this. The serial number on the gun came up on NCIC as stolen. Not a big surprise there. I’ll ask the techies to run a ballistics match on NIBIN to find out if this gun was used in another crime while they try to pull prints.” Paula referred to the two national crime data repositories, the National Crime Information Center and the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.

  John sorted through his new phone messages and tossed his notebook on the center of his desk. “No telling how many times the gun changed hands since it was reported stolen. Local?”

  Paula tabbed to another window on the computer screen, bringing up the NCIC information on the stolen firearm. “Yep, reported stolen in a residential burglary about two years ago. The reporting party was Donovan Layton, in Wilton.”

  “What was the address?”

  She told him, and John penciled in the location of the rural neighborhood onto a blank notebook page. “I’ll pull the original burglary report and look for any connection to our case.”

  “I already printed it out.” She tossed it on his desk. “Probably some tweakers out looking for a quick score,” she said. Paula let loose a sigh and pressed her palms to her temples.

  “What’s got you all twisted up?”

  “Something’s not right, and I can’t figure it out,” she said.

  “Like?”

  She sat forward and hefted a computer printout. “The UNOS access logs for the hospital terminal. We got a hit.”

  The hairs of the back of John’s neck tingled. “Who was it?”

  “The access log shows a doctor, Christiaan Barnard, entered the UNOS database the day before Tommy went into the hospital and again three hours before his surgery.”

  “That’s just before the transplant center said they found a kidney for Tommy. That was about ten in the morning, right?”

  “Yep.” Paula pushed the video monitor toward John so he could see the screen. “The date and time are on the bottom-right corner. See it?”

  “Yeah,” John said.

  The video screen showed a row of hospital office cubicles. John recognized the area from his many trips to the hospital and yesterday’s interview with Trisha. The UNOS terminal sat next to her office door.

  Paula tapped the rewind button on a remote, and the people who came into view ran in reverse with an awkward, disconnected motion that didn’t seem human. She froze the video and pointed at the screen.

  “This is the exact time the UNOS data was entered into the system, according to the log,” Paula said.

  The video screen glared back at them. There was no one using the hospital’s UNOS terminal.

  “Did you check the access logs again?” John’s conversation with the online “doctor” who offered to manipulate the list scratched at the base of his brain. “There has to be an entry.”

  “I’ve looked at them upside down and sideways. The UNOS system access logs pinpoint the hospital and terminal used for that transaction. According to these logs, there was an entry made at that terminal, at that time.”

  “Is the video time stamp wrong?”

  Paula shook her head. “No. Look at the next log entry. Trisha Woods accessed the terminal an hour later. If you fast forward to that time . . .”

  Paula hit a remote button and queued up the time. Trisha strode into frame and sat at the terminal.

  John’s brow furrowed at the disconnect between the log entry and the videotape. “What about the second log entry? The one right before we got the call from the transplant center?”

  Paula thumbed the remote and buzzed through a blur of action on the screen. People moved like busy, frantic ants in and out of the frame. They stopped when Paula tapped another button. Once more, the UNOS computer terminal sat empty.

  John took the paper log and ran a finger down the listing. “How is that possible? It’s the same time on both, and nobody is using the terminal. Again, Dr. Barnard supposedly used this terminal to make an entry in the UNOS database. He’s not listed on the approved list of UNOS users.”

  “I can’t explain it,” Paula said.

  “Wouldn’t you expect to see an entry from the hospital harvesting the organ, putting the tissue in the registry, and then a second entry matching the patient, perhaps from another hospital? Dr. Anderson said it came from a hospital out of the region,” John said.

  Paula nodded. “Makes sense, but the logs show both entries at Central Valley Hospital at that specific terminal. Both entries made by Dr. Barnard.”

  John grabbed the phone from his desk and called the transplant center.

  “Trisha Woods,” the voice said at the other end of the connection.

  “Trisha, it’s Detective Penley. Thanks for the UNOS access logs, but we’ve hit a snag on our end. What can you tell me about a Dr. Christiaan Barnard?”

  “What?” she said.

  “Dr. Barnard. He accessed the UNOS database.”

  “There’s no one by that name on staff here, Detective. Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No joke. Are you certain you don’t know any Dr. Barnard?”

  “Dr. Christiaan Barnard was the doctor who performed the very first heart transplant in the 1960s. He’s famous in medical circles.”

  “Is there any way for someone at the hospital to use the terminal near your office remotely?” John asked.

  “No. The requirements for UNOS data access are that we have a standalone terminal, separated from our hospital network. Direct secured Internet access to the UNOS encrypted server.”

  John thanked Trisha and hung up the phone.

  “Dr. Barnard doesn’t exist, at least not here,” John said.

  “I figured as much, but someone made these,” Paula added.

  “Whoever it is knows their way around computer systems.” John leaned back in his creaky wooden desk chair.

  Paula shrugged. “Trisha knows how to access the system. Maybe we should take a look at her.”

  “First, I think we need to go spend some quality time with Zack Weber.”

  “The kid from the lab?” Paula asked. Her face brightened, and then she said, “Dr. Anderson said Zack was a whiz with computers.”

  “The Outcast Killer needed access to the system, and Zack has the skills to pull that off. You have him in holding?”

  “Yep. I thought you’d want to have a shot at him before we got him booked at t
he jail. And I wanted to get started on reviewing these tapes,” she said.

  The detectives pushed back from their desks and made the short walk to the interrogation holding rooms. John opened the holding-room door and found Zack Weber slumped over the table. He could have been sleeping, except the pool of blood that collected on the floor beneath him said otherwise.

  John reached for a pulse on Zack’s neck and knew he wouldn’t find one. The color had drained from the dead man’s face.

  “Son of a bitch,” Paula said.

  “It hasn’t been long. He’s still warm. Dammit, who got to him?”

  Zack Weber’s hands had fallen to his lap when he died, still handcuffed while awaiting interrogation. His left wrist bore a wide, jagged gash inches above the steel of the handcuff. Blood seeped from the wound, soaked the fabric of his pants, and trailed down his leg to a pool on the floor. Glistening and spreading, it had yet to congeal.

  “Who even knew he was in custody?” Paula asked.

  “What the hell is this?” John said as he stepped back from the table.

  In front of the dead man’s head, words were scrawled in blood. Zack Weber’s fingers bore the red stain; his last moments in this life were spent scrawling a bloody message.

  You can’t stop him.

  John noticed a sliver of plastic on the table near Zack’s head. He didn’t need to pick it up to figure out it was half of Zack Weber’s hospital identification badge. “Slashing your wrist with a piece of plastic is a desperate move,” John said.

  “I had him cuffed behind his back. How did he get them around front?” Paula asked.

  “He could have slipped his legs through. He’s not a very big guy.”

  “I cuffed him in front,” a uniformed officer said at the doorway. Ashen, the young cop looked away from Zack Weber’s body. “For—for his attorney.”

  “What attorney?” Paula asked.

  “His attorney needed him to sign some documents and asked me to cuff him in the front,” the officer said. “That’s the procedure for an attorney visit. That and shutting off the video feed to the room,” the officer said, pointing at the camera mounted high on the wall. “Turned it back on when the attorney checked out. The prisoner was fine when he left, a little quiet and sullen maybe, but he was still alive. I swear.”

  “Did you have the attorney sign in?” John asked.

  “That’s the procedure,” the officer said, holding out a clipboard with a completed form for the visit from the attorney.

  John took the clipboard and found the attorney’s name.

  “You check his ID?”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  John handed the clipboard to Paula.

  She glanced at the paperwork. “Winnow? Brice Winnow, the councilwoman’s chief of staff was here?” she said.

  “What business did he have with Weber?” John wondered.

  “The guy gave me the creeps when he met us at the warehouse. The flashy car, the clothes. Like he was trying too hard,” said Paula.

  “He’s a politician. They’re all slimy,”

  “I wasn’t looking for a connection between Weber and Winnow. I couldn’t find much on Winnow at all,” she said.

  John recognized that Paula was holding something back. “And?”

  “The guy is too clean. No parking tickets—nothing. It doesn’t seem natural.”

  “He got a job with the city. They had to do a background, at the least. Let’s go pick him up,” John said.

  “You think he went back to work after his visit with Weber?”

  “City hall is a great place for a rat like Winnow to hide,” John said.

  Paula tossed the clipboard on the desk next to Weber. “Winnow probably won’t cop to anything. Besides, we have it on video that he wasn’t even here when Weber died.”

  “Zack Weber here is gonna tell us what Winnow had to say,” John said.

  “The newly dead Zack Weber?”

  “The one and only.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Golden State’s capital ended up in Sacramento due to the availability of hotel rooms in the 1850s. In the intervening century and a half, the city continued to be considered by many as more convenience than capital. Sacramento City Hall was a brick-and-mortar representation of local politics. The old building faced I Street and was elegant, open, and welcoming. The new addition loomed over the original building. The glass faces and cold surfaces smothered the old public hall’s era of civility and birthed a time of power mongering, lobbyists, and self-promotion.

  John and Paula asked for Brice Winnow’s office, and a harried young woman told them he was in the city council chamber. She rushed away after jabbing a finger in the general direction. Winnow stood on the elevated dais where the city council members would reside when the council went into session later in the evening. Winnow’s sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscled forearms and the hint of a tattoo that bled from beneath the starched shirt.

  Winnow gave no sign of surprise at the detectives’ arrival. “Here to try to condemn city hall?” he said.

  “Wouldn’t do any good,” John said.

  “Make sure the council members have copies of the district maps,” Winnow directed a staffer.

  “We need a couple of minutes of your time,” John said.

  Winnow put his hands on his hips. “I’m in the middle of something here. Can’t this wait?”

  Paula stepped forward to the dais where Winnow stood. “Are you an attorney?”

  Winnow arranged papers at Councilwoman Margolis’s seat, glanced at Paula, and said, “Do you need one, Detective?”

  “Where’d you go to law school?” she asked.

  “You want to be an attorney?”

  “Too much deception and too many half-truths in that profession, for my taste. So where’d you say you went?”

  Winnow cracked a slight grin. “I didn’t say. Tell me, why the sudden interest in my educational accomplishments?”

  John picked up one of the white binders, noted that the title was for a redevelopment project in the North Sacramento corridor, and tossed the thick volume back on the desk. “You came to see Zack Weber in lockup. Signed in as his attorney. I didn’t know the city provided lawyers to lowlife computer hackers like him.”

  “I didn’t hear a question there,” Winnow said.

  “Why’d you come see him?”

  “It wasn’t a city matter. A private one. I’ve helped Zack on legal matters from time to time.”

  “Like what?” John said. The detective poked around at documents on the desk, rearranging them with a fingertip.

  Winnow’s jaw muscles pulsed. “That’s attorney-client privilege. And could you stop messing with the proposal materials?”

  “That privilege only applies if you’re an attorney,” Paula said.

  “Check with the State Bar Association,” Winnow said.

  “Why don’t you come with us while we check?” she responded.

  “I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Winnow said. The cords of his muscles tensed as he crossed his forearms. Defiant, untouchable.

  “I think I can make it happen,” Paula said.

  “You do and you’ll find yourself unemployed. My staff has better things to do,” a voice called out from behind Winnow. Councilwoman Susan Margolis approached. Her sharp features looked more hawkish in the harsh chamber lighting.

  Paula craned her neck up at the politician. “Did you do a background check on Brice here before you took him on?”

  “Excuse me?” Margolis leaned over the dais. “Who do you think you are? Does Chief Patterson know you’re here, harassing my staff?”

  “We’re here investigating a homicide. We have a few questions for Mr. Winnow,” John said.

  Margolis straightened and kept her eyes on Paula. “Then ask them and get out of my chambers.”

  “I thought this was the public’s chamber,” Paula said.

  “I’ll be having a talk with the chief about your poor
representation of the police department.”

  “That’s Officer Newberry,” Winnow said.

  “Detective,” Paula corrected.

  “Whatever,” Margolis said.

  “What did you and Zack Weber talk about?” Paula pressed.

  “I told you, that is privileged,” Winnow said.

  “Why’d he kill himself after you left?”

  “Huh, sorry to hear that,” Winnow said. His face remained locked in a dispassionate veneer.

  “I can tell you’re all broken up about it,” Paula said.

  “Enough!” Margolis pounded on the surface of the wooden dais. “Out.”

  John and Paula walked up the center aisle of the council chamber and made for the exit.

  “Shame about Zack. He was always a bit too altruistic for his own good.”

  John turned to see Winnow grinning.

  “Zack left us a message before he died,” John said.

  Winnow’s face changed. Something darker appeared.

  “Didn’t know that, did you?” John added.

  “I’m sure it was little more than the rantings of a haunted man.”

  “Maybe. Why do you think he mentioned you?” John asked.

  Winnow’s complexion went ashen for a heartbeat, then recovered to its usual pallor.

  That was the tell John waited for. “Like I said, we’ll be in touch.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Winnow’s reaction, when you mentioned a message from Zack . . . you hit gold there,” Paula said.

  The pair dodged pedestrian traffic near Cesar Chavez Park, where they’d parked their city sedan. A crowd of a hundred gathered for an evening concert in the park, and the beer bellies masked with muscle shirts foretold the harder edge of tonight’s lineup.

  “It was important enough for Winnow to get to Zack before we had a chance to book him. Zack hadn’t made a phone call to an attorney. Winnow magically showed up,” John said.

  Paula sidestepped a beer can on the sidewalk and said, “How did he know we’d picked Zack Weber up in the first place?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Had to come from the hospital, or from the department.”