At What Cost

by James L'Etoile

  Layton’s chest fluttered; the air hissed through the respirator mask over his mouth. The burns to Horn’s face left open cavities though his cheek, and the respirator air spat a pink stain on the pillow.

  A groan issued from deep inside the burned man’s throat. His stumped limbs wagged in agony seconds before his eyelids popped open and his eyes fought for focus.

  John bent over the man. “Layton, where is my son?”

  Layton lolled his head away from John, avoiding him.

  John grabbed the raw flesh and pulled the man’s face toward his.

  A thin mewing came from Layton as the pain registered.

  “Where is my son?”

  Layton’s eyes hardened and moved away but then focused on his interrogator when John tightened his grip, digging his fingers into exposed burnt flesh.

  “Where?”

  Layton drew in air to speak, but smoke-and-fire-damaged vocal cords stifled his voice to a low murmur.

  “Tell me,” John said.

  “W. Win. Winnow. Brice Winnow has Tommy,” Paula said, leaning in close to Layton’s lips.

  “You mean Patrick Horn?”

  “He ain’t Patrick no more,” Layton said.

  “Where is he?” John asked.

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  “Where, where is he waiting?” John said, digging his fingers a bit deeper.

  Layton’s eyes locked with John. A rough whisper came from the man’s mouth. “I won’t tell you. He’s Marsha’s boy. I owe that to her for what I did.”

  “What is he talking about?” Paula said.

  John lowered his face within inches of Layton’s ear. The pungent smell of burnt flesh caused a momentary gag reflex. “What did you do?”

  The old man’s chest heaved. His phantom limbs fought to escape the torment.

  “I showed him. I showed him.” Layton gagged, then shook his head. “He said you for the boy—one will die.”

  The exertion drained Layton, and his eyes fluttered, then closed. Seconds later, alarms sounded on the heart monitor, and the jagged, peaked lines on the displays narrowed to shallow waves.

  Medical personnel rushed in and went to work on the patient, rustling John and Paula out of the space. The thin curtain couldn’t contain, or dampen, the frantic, desperate sounds within.

  “Call it. Time of death, nineteen thirty-three,” a voice said.

  John looked at his watch, not to confirm the time of Layton’s demise, but in recognition there was little time left to make contact with Horn and negotiate a trade.

  John’s life for Tommy’s. His vision shrank to a pinhole. According to Layton’s last words, only one would survive.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “John—John, wake up.” Paula’s voice cut through a dark, gauzy film in his brain. The lights weren’t where they were supposed to be; they were in front of him, not overhead, and cast a jaundiced glare in his half-closed eyes. An ammonia odor burned his nostrils and shot a bolt of electricity through his brain. The jump start made John press against the cold linoleum floor.

  Paula read his confusion and said, “You passed out.” A broken ammonia smelling salts capsule wafted under John’s nose once more.

  John shook his head and tried to sit up. Dizziness swept over him, and Paula caught him before he toppled over to his side.

  “Easy now. You’ve given yourself a nice little gash on the head,” the doctor said, who seconds ago, in John’s memory, had attended to Donovan Layton.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Maybe a minute,” Paula said. “You scared me when you dropped like that.”

  “We’re slowly going to help you up and get you on a gurney, Mr. Penley,” the doctor added.

  “I don’t need a gurney.”

  “I need you to lie down and be still until I suture up that wound on the back of your head.”

  John reached back and felt the slick, golf-ball-sized lump. He didn’t need to see his hand to know it was bloody.

  “I don’t have time for that. Slap on a butterfly bandage and I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not fine. I need to close that wound, and after you bled all over my trauma room floor, you don’t have much of a say in the matter,” the doctor said.

  The physician took one of John’s arms and Paula grabbed the other. John let the two women guide him to a gurney. He tried to hide the fact that the room spun, but he involuntarily listed to one side.

  Paula caught him and propped him back up. The doctor began cleaning the wound with a purple-red betadine solution.

  “Can you sit still, or do we need to strap you down?” the doctor said, preparing a syringe.

  “I’m good,” John said, looking at Paula, who held him up.

  The doctor dripped the Xylocaine anesthetic into the wound and waited a few seconds until it started to work. She jabbed the needle near the wound and injected the solution under the scalp.

  “Your head might start to feel a little fuzzy. Can you feel anything?” The doctor pressed on the wound with a gloved hand. A nurse with electric clippers cut a swath of hair from his scalp.

  “No, nothing.”

  The first suture went in, and the doctor started talking. “So who was that guy you came in with on the ambulance? I get that he wasn’t a family member.” Another suture went in.

  “He knew the guy who took my son from Central Valley Hospital,” John said. The thoughts unfogged as the unsteadiness diminished.

  The doctor stopped and drew back a step. “From the dialysis unit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard about that. We got the alert over here, in case someone came in.” She went back to work on John’s torn scalp. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did I pass out like that?”

  The doctor tugged on a suture, pulling the wound tight. “It’s the acetone. One of my nurses got a little lightheaded too. The patient was saturated in acetone. That’s why he was burnt so badly. We see that quite a bit from meth-lab fires.”

  “How much longer?” John asked.

  “I’m going to put in another three, eight total.”

  “Paula, we need to get to a computer terminal so I can make contact with Winnow, Horn, or whatever he’s calling himself.”

  “Whoa now, slow down. I want to admit you for observation. You had a serious bump to the noggin, and you have a concussion. With the loss of consciousness, we need to keep an eye on you,” the doctor said.

  “That’s not going to happen, Doc. I have to find my son.”

  “Are you going to be with him?” the doctor said to Paula.

  “Yep. I can keep watch over him.”

  “Any signs of dizziness or another fainting spell and you need to get him back here. We’ll need to get a CT scan and check for a brain bleed. Watch for a mood change and increase in the intensity of his headache.”

  “Hear that? I get to watch you for mood swings,” Paula said.

  “I’m fine,” John insisted.

  “No, you’re not fine,” the doctor countered. “You shouldn’t be doing anything except staying down and keeping quiet, but I understand.” The doctor scribbled on a clipboard. “I’m signing you out AMA, against medical advice.” She turned and left the room without another word.

  John’s cell rang, and the sound generated a disapproving scowl from a nurse in the passageway. He fumbled with it, and Paula snatched it out of his hand.

  “Detective Newberry.”

  “Detective, it’s Dr. Kelly. I have an ID on your floater, the man you and Detective Penley found at the Delta King.”

  “That was fast. How did you figure that out?”

  “Our coroner’s investigators got a hit on the missing persons database. Lawrence Travis was reported missing by his wife five days ago.”

  “How were you able to identify him? That body was in bad shape,” Paula said.

  “The wife said he had a left knee replacement while he was in prison. The body you found had an artificial knee implant, a
nd we pulled the serial numbers from the device. It is Lawrence Travis.”

  “Was she able to tell you anything about when he went missing?”

  “We didn’t get that much from her. Only that Lawrence got a call from the blood bank, and he was supposed to drop in for a donation. He got called regularly, AB-positive blood type. Nothing more. I’ll text you with the contact details so you can fill in the blanks on that part of the story,” Dr. Kelly said. “One thing I can confirm, though, was that the victim was gutted like all the other cases. The tissue matches the remnant of the kidney from the aborted transplant at Central Valley Hospital.”

  “Tommy Penley’s transplant?”

  “Yep,” Dr. Kelly said.

  “John wanted to know . . .”

  “The child’s kidney left at his home was not from Tommy. It matched the tissue type of the Cardozo girl. I need some additional testing, but I think this was the kidney she had removed during her transplant. It showed signs of cancer.”

  “How did her kidney get to John’s house?”

  Tension released from John’s shoulders when it registered that his son hadn’t been gutted. Yet.

  “Weber was working at the hospital when we brought the girl in,” John said.

  “Also, the first of the human remains from the barn are coming in. This is going to be nasty. Tell Detective Penley the butchering theory is holding up. We have hook marks through the victims’ thighs.”

  “Butchering theory? What’s that mean?” Paula asked.

  “Detective Penley can catch you up.” The doctor ended the call.

  Paula handed the phone back to John. “Lawrence Travis. That name mean anything to you?” she said.

  “Nope. That’s our water baby?”

  She nodded. “He went missing when he was supposed to give a donation at the blood bank.”

  “That’s where the kidney came from—the one Tommy was supposed to get?”

  Paula nodded again.

  “The one Weber’s computers found and Horn harvested,” he said. John touched the back of his head and felt the short, prickly hairs where the doctor had shaved his scalp.

  “Well, we can’t ask Weber anything about this Travis guy,” Paula said. “How rare is AB positive?”

  John turned white. A cold sweat formed on his brow.

  “Can you take me back to my place? I can get online and make contact with Winnow from there.”

  “The tech team snagged all your computer drives for prints and to find anything he may have done with them,” Paula said.

  She helped John to his feet, and he wobbled a bit before he steadied himself against the edge of the gurney. “Can we get to my computer?” he said.

  “We can use another one, a terminal at the bureau or back at my house.”

  “I need to use mine.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think I know how he targeted his victims,” John said.

  “How’s that?”

  “My son’s blood type is AB positive, and the blood types are listed in the UNOS database that Zack Weber hacked. Less than five percent of the population has that blood type.”

  “But you didn’t make the buy, so why would he go forward and hunt a donor?”

  “It’s the blood bank. Weber had everything wired together—who needed transplants, what organs were in demand, and then they found them using the blood bank donation data. The blood bank was a shopping list.”

  “I’ll bet Cardozo, Mercer, and Johnson tie back to the blood bank too.”

  John snatched his jacket from his chair and started to put it on when he noticed the bloodstain on the back of his collar. He folded the ruined jacket, tucked it under his arm, and made for the door. “Where did you park?” he asked.

  Paula pointed down a warren of hallways. As they headed out, Paula watched John for any unsteadiness on his feet. A few steps worked out the kinks, and he regained his stride.

  “Dr. Kelly said something about the butcher theory. What does that mean?” Paula asked.

  A set of glass automatic doors opened as they approached, greeting them with a cool blast of evening air. Paula hit the remote unlock from her keys, which flicked the headlights of her car on and off, signaling their destination.

  “Mercer and Johnson were hung and gutted like game animals. Butchered,” John said as he opened the driver’s door out of habit.

  “Like Layton’s hogs,” she said.

  Paula held the passenger door open and tipped her head, directing him to the passenger seat. He started to argue the point, then recognized it wasn’t the city-issued sedan. The local anesthetic started fading, and a blossom of throbbing pain grew in its place.

  He walked around, got in, and Paula took over behind the wheel.

  “Is that what Layton meant? The whole ‘it’s my fault’ deal?” Paula asked.

  He pressed around the knot on the back side of his head. “Sounded like an old man with regrets. But there’s something darker there.”

  Paula turned out of the hospital parking lot and shot through a break in the cross traffic.

  Paula drifted across the lane until her tires ran over the raised dots and shook the small car’s frame. “Patrick Horn and Brice Winnow ran in completely different worlds.”

  “Same person but different personalities.”

  Paula shot him a glance. “Multiple personalities?”

  Paula jammed the shift lever, pumped the clutch, and shot the compact Miata down the city street, in the sweet spot, after the commuter traffic but before the nightlife erupted into a throbbing, pulsating mass of barhoppers.

  “It’s like two different people. Horn was conservative, from humble stock, and Winnow screams extrovert right down to his shiny, gold Rolex.”

  “That’s what strikes you as odd? We have a whack job butchering people, and his choice of wristwatches is the thing you find odd?” she said.

  They pulled into the Sacramento Police Department parking lot, and Paula aimed for an empty slot near the door. The spot belonged to the administrative captain, who rarely appeared after dark.

  John released his seat belt, pushed the door open with his knee, and climbed up from Paula’s low-slung car. A wave of nausea rolled through his gut, and he grabbed the doorframe for support. He recovered before Paula turned to close her door.

  “I worked a case a few years back, a messy one with a dude hearing voices, telling him to do stuff,” John said as they locked up Paula’s Mazda and went to the door.

  Paula slid an access card through a reader that looked like a debit card machine at a grocery store. The lock popped open, and they walked down the hallway into the atrium in the center of the building.

  “The point is, it wasn’t a clean split. One personality would come out, then another. These people are fragile and need mental health care; they’re sick and can’t function very well without lots of attention and medication,” John continued.

  “Winnow doesn’t seem to have that kind of problem. He’s found himself a little niche in city hall.”

  The detectives approached the atrium, a lush, green space in an administrative jungle. John stopped. “If Winnow is having a schizophrenic reaction, some event or trauma would have triggered it.”

  “Triggered how?” Paula stopped outside the tech unit’s door and faced her partner with a quizzical expression etched in her brow.

  “Something created Winnow. Remember Layton said something about how Patrick Horn was dead. We find what he meant, and we get a peek inside this fun house.”

  John reached for the door, but Paula grabbed his wrist.

  “You can’t do this. The nerd herd took your computer, so you can’t traipse in there and snag it. It won’t look right. It’ll look like you’re trying to cover up something,” Paula said.

  “I need that computer to contact Winnow. They won’t let me do that. I’m nearly out of time,” he pleaded.

  “Leave this to me. I’ll meet you back in our office. Now go,” she
told him.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  John backtracked to the detective bureau offices. Most of the investigators were out or off duty. A few of the vice cops were getting ready to head out for a prostitution sting. A female cop, new to the unit, scanned a city map displaying bright dots. Each colored dot represented a prostitution or sex-crime complaint. She tugged at the tight hot pants and fishnets, uncomfortable in the undercover hooker guise.

  “You gotta act like you done this before, Lizzy. You keep trying to cover up and you won’t be able to pick up a dime,” a male detective said to the undercover lure.

  John nodded hello to the vice detectives and stopped at the coffee urn for a shot of the thick, dark brew that fueled the detective bureau.

  A voice startled him, so much that he nearly slopped his coffee across the counter.

  “Why aren’t you home, John?” Lieutenant Barnes asked. The same wrinkled shirt, now accompanied by stubble and heavy eyes, spoke to his weariness.

  “I need to be doing something. I can’t sit around and wait,” John said.

  “I have everyone out looking for Winnow. I heard about Layton.”

  John looked for any sign in the lieutenant’s response that he knew Paula and John had been at the riverside house. The lieutenant didn’t say anything more about it and poured the remnants of his coffee in the sink.

  Barnes wiped out the dark-brown coffee residue with a paper towel. He balled up the paper, tossed it in the trash basket, and started back to his office. With his back to John, the lieutenant said, “I gave the tech unit the go-ahead to release your computer to Newberry. Make sure you guys color between the lines on this one.”

  A ball of ice formed in John’s chest when Barnes mentioned the computer. He stood at the coffee counter and wondered how much more the lieutenant knew.

  As if on cue, Paula appeared with a laptop computer under her arm and a worried look. She plopped the laptop on top of a pile of files in the center of her desk.

  John returned from the coffeepot, and as he approached, Paula spoke in a hushed voice. “The tech unit called the lieutenant.”

  “I know,” he said. “He came and told me.”

  “He let us have this? Why?”