Sweet Dreams Boxed Set

by Brenda Novak

  She bit down hard on her lip. “Will they let me visit?”

  “Probably not, but as his attorney of record, I can get a message to him.”

  Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest, birds’ wings desperate for flight.

  “I don’t think you should try to see him,” Wright added during the brief pause. “It might alert whoever’s looking for you. It’s too dangerous. Roger wouldn’t want you taking unnecessary chances.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” She felt her cheeks flush and her eyes mist. She’d never, not for a minute, believed her father had killed her mother. If he were dying, she had to find a way to convince him of that continued belief – and her love for him.

  “Tell him – tell him I said, ‘semper fi.’”

  “Like the Marine Corps?”

  “He’ll know what it means.” Frankie cut the connection before she began crying like a baby.

  When she returned to the dining room, she got right down to business. “Let’s proceed as if I’m the target. Surely it’s easier to find out where my house is than track down a recently-paroled homeless man.”

  Cruz quirked his mouth. “You’d think, but I found Cole pretty fast.”

  “Hot shot,” Slater said in an attempt at humor.

  Cruz took in Frankie’s pale face and damp eyes. “Everything okay?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I – I know you both want me to hide out here, tend to my patient, but I – I have to visit my father.” She paused and then dropped the bombshell. “He’s in Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, under guard.”

  “Father?” Slater and Cruz spoke at the same time, and it would’ve been comical if the situation weren’t so dire.

  Cruz recovered first. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “You gotta give us more than that,” Slater said wryly.

  Frankie gave them the short version. “My father is doing fifteen to life for murder two. He was attacked in the exercise yard at Folsom State Prison. Knife wounds. They don’t expect him to live.”

  Stunned silence followed.

  “I’m going to see him,” Frankie insisted, a fierce look on her face. “With or without your approval.”

  Chapter 54

  Toward dawn, the three of them lounged around Slater’s great room, a fire roaring in the fireplace, the comfortable area warm with the heat of fire and strong coffee. This was the first focused opportunity they’d had to share their individual findings with each other.

  Cruz had made copies of the kite Cole had stolen from Pelican Bay, and handed Frankie a yellow legal pad to jot down notes. “Let’s try to figure out what we know about the deaths of these three people,” he began, “see how they’re connected to each other and the attacks on Frankie – and maybe what’s going on at the prison.”

  Putting down his coffee mug, Cruz shifted toward the front of the armchair he sat in. “Okay, we have three dead victims, all attacked in a similar fashion, but not exactly the same way, according to the medical examiner.”

  Frankie spoke from her position on the couch, “Cole claims they were all chopped, slashed and bashed – his words. He says that’s what the Lords do.”

  The description of mayhem sounded creepy, and an ominous silence settled over the room, a grim contradiction between the fire’s cheeriness and the topic’s gloominess.

  “Unfortunately, Cole summed it up right,” Slater said. “All three bodies were savaged by knives and blunt instruments.”

  “Then, what’s different about the murders?” asked Frankie.

  Cruz continued the thread of conversation. “Two of the three had internal body parts removed – not Dickey Hinchey, though.”

  “What?” Frankie sat up straight. “Someone removed your victims’ organs? In tact?”

  “Dr. Wilson thinks so,” answered Cruz. “He doesn’t know for sure, and not all of the organs – maybe the liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart. And he says the murder weapons don’t match.”

  In her mind Frankie heard Cole’s crazy mutterings again – Music! Keyboards! Music!

  “Cole tried to warn us,” she said, “when he talked about music.”

  Slater rose from a wing chair and jabbed at the fire with a poker.

  “And Frankie’s findings about the illegal surgeries performed at Pelican Bay.” Cruz addressed Slater’s back, “She discovered that a high percentage of inmates at Pelican Bay have had some kind of abdominal surgery.”

  “I’ve postulated that they removed kidneys because that’s the only whole organ that could’ve been excised and the patient still survive.” She looked troubled. “But I had no idea your murder victims were missing organs, too.”

  “Holy hell!” Slater turned away from the fire, his bronzed face disturbed. “What are they doing with these kidneys? Why are inmates willing to give them up?”

  “Frankie and I think it’s some token of allegiance to the white gang Lords of Death.”

  “What the hell is the world coming to?” Slater raked his fingers through his cropped hair. “What do they do with these – parts, just throw them away?”

  “Or sell them on the black market,” Cruz answered, “but we think it’s tied to our homeless people,” Cruz answered.

  “Dickey Hinchey didn’t have any of his organs taken,” Slater argued.

  “There’s no way someone could know if the organs were viable or not,” Frankie said, “just by looking at the person. There would have to be medical files to confirm a diseased liver, a damaged heart.”

  “You think the Lords of Death’s involvement in removing organs from inmates is tied to our murders,” Slater concluded.

  “Maybe,” Cruz said, handing Slater the kite Cole Hansen had retrieved while in the SHU. He explained what they thought the codes meant as Slater stared at the succession of letters and numbers on the paper.

  Slater’s face took on a grayish pallor. “Holy hell, it looks like an order-on-demand for black market organs.” Still clutching Cole’s note, he shook his head. “I can buy the allegiance theory, donating an organ to show loyalty to the prison gang, but this other thing – ” He waved the note. “An enterprise like this? Using homeless people to fill orders for body parts? How?”

  Cruz answered slowly, suddenly feeling the final pieces of the puzzle click into place. “Corruption,” he murmured. “It occurs at every level – at Pelican Bay and here in Rosedale. At least one local cop has to be involved.”

  “You think a cop is killing homeless people,” Slater scoffed. “One of our own is doing this – this thing? That’s impossible.”

  But Slater’s words rang hollow in the large room.

  Angie Hunt woke up in hell. She knew this because the world around her was a swirl of colors – blacks and grays and reds. Flames and wickedness, she thought groggily, payback for all the evil she’d committed during her long years of using and hooking. All the people she’d hurt and betrayed.

  Her body throbbed as if the Devil himself had punched her with giant fists.

  She heard a distant groan, didn’t realize for a long moment that the sound came from her own swollen, dry throat. Her slender fingers fluttered like palsied digits on the ground beside her, but her body wouldn’t respond to her brain’s command to move.

  Battling her way through a deep fog of hurt, she tried opening her eyes. One was swollen completely shut, but the other offered a narrow line of vision. Not hell, then, because she saw the rock ceiling of the cave around her.

  But she was on her way to dying, she thought.

  Chapter 55

  Cruz sat back in the arm chair, one leg crossed at the knee. “Who better to target than the homeless? They’re virtually faceless unknowns. Nobody misses them when they disappear. We assume they’ve moved on to another place, another county, even another state.”

  “And who better to facilitate than cops?” Frankie added. “Local cops know who the homeless are, and where they congregate.”

/>   “But Hinchey’s organs weren’t taken,” Slater said again, this time without conviction.

  “A mistake?” Frankie answered. “The killer didn’t think about the quality of the organs? And that’s why the last victim was young and presumably healthy? She was homeless, but specifically targeted because of her youth.”

  “Shit,” Slater said, “I’m having a hard time believing a cop is involved in this.”

  Mind working furiously, Cruz said, “It wouldn’t work otherwise. An organization large enough to execute the harvesting, the packing and transportation, a list of clients wealthy enough to pay for illegal organs, and doctors willing to do the illegal surgeries.”

  “The donor lists for organs are long,” Frankie explained. “Some people wait years for a new kidney or heart. Bypassing the legal lists of donor recipients is a very complex project.”

  “Maybe,” Slater said grudgingly. “Gangs and the mob, with an assist from a cop.”

  Frankie nodded. “It could be done. With the right precision, skill and planning, even the inmate organs could remain viable.”

  They sat in stunned silence, barely able to comprehend the bizarre scope of the project. Slater cleared away their mugs and glasses, while Frankie and Cruz remained immobile their expressions grave.

  “So Anson Stark’s blood oath was the start of it,” Slater concluded. “He just moved from there into a new, illegal activity. He’s probably been planning this for years.”

  “We have to expose this,” she finally said, “but where do we start? Who do we trust?”

  “People were bribed or paid off to make a scheme like this work,” Cruz said, “dangerous people.”

  Frankie chewed at her bottom lip, asked tentatively. “Could there be two killers?”

  Slater and Cruz exchanged glances. Cruz shook his head, “I thought at first – ” He frowned, thinking of that vague possibility, “ – but it’s too much coincidence.”

  “We’ll have a hard enough time proving the killer’s a cop,” Slater muttered. “The D.A. won’t believe there are two of them.” He swiped his hand over his forehead, damp in spite of the warm room. “Heaven help us all if it’s a cop. And heaven help the cop when we find him.”

  Angie wasn’t dead, but her throat burned, swallowing was almost impossible, and her arms and legs were boulders anchoring her to the ground. Was she paralyzed?

  She tested mobility by turning her head gingerly to the left. A sharp bolt of lightning shattered her skull.

  Oh, shit. Oh, shit. A cloud of foggy panic blanketed her mind and she lost consciousness again.

  She awoke later – years, days, hours? Time had no meaning in her dark tomb.

  Not dead yet. He hadn’t killed her, but he’d tried damn hard, enjoyed himself, too. He’d tried to choke the life out of her with those rough hands of his. Not dead, but dying.

  A tear trickled from the slit of one eye. The bastard was going to win. She’d die here in this dark, remote cave, and no one would ever know what’d happened to her.

  Her breath was a sighing release, a letting go, a giving in to the inevitable.

  No, no! The voice reverberating around the cave came from inside her.

  Git your lazy ass up and fight, girl! You gonna die like some old ‘ho after all you been through?

  No, no, she forced her cracked lips to whisper. She thought hard to bring up her killer’s face, that weaselly man with the mean face done this to her. A man supposed to protect people like her. He was a damn coward, pickin’ on someone her size.

  She kept up the litany in her brain, her mouth forming wordless shapes, her strength building until she could lift one hand off the ground and place it on her chest. She felt the dampness of blood below her breast, the sharp jagged edge of bone, and knew she was seriously injured.

  Gotta move, gotta git up, gotta go, don’t lay here and die like a broken, used-up ‘ho.

  The passage of time was nothing but agony and release of consciousness, waking up to more pain and passing out again. It must’ve taken her hours, inch by inch, to drag herself from the interior of the cave to its mouth. She saw the faint orange and yellow wash of sky on the eastern horizon when she finally rested.

  Rolling at last onto her uninjured side, she looked at the long downward slope of sagebrush and shrub and rock that stretched for what seemed forever. She lay for an hour, watching the sunrise, thinking if she died here and now, she’d have a beautiful burial site.

  But pain was her savior and made her gird her last ounce of strength to roll as hard as she could down the long treacherous hill.

  Chapter 56

  At last Slater pulled himself out of the wing chair. “I’m heading for bed now. Thinking of a cop this corrupt – well, I can’t wrap my mind around it – but if I find solid proof, there’ll be hell to pay in the Rosedale Police Department.”

  With that final comment, he left the living room and made his way to the den where he’d bunk for the night.

  Cruz turned to Frankie, suddenly feeling awkward. “You and Cole will be safe here tonight, so don’t worry.”

  “I won’t.” She walked into the kitchen for a glass of water and he followed her.

  He stood next to her as she began to wash the dishes. “It’s been a harrowing few days for you.” Her dark brown hair had fallen out of its loose knot and strands hung across her cheeks and forehead.

  “Not so bad.” She shrugged and gave a slight smile. “Although I did get a new appreciation for practicing medicine in a sterile environment.”

  They finished washing up in silence, Cruz very aware of her closeness, and her apparent indifference to his presence. He grabbed his jacket and walked to the door. “If Slater asks, tell him I decided to stay at my apartment tonight.”

  Frankie trailed him onto the front landing where Cruz paused to look down at her pale face. “Sorry. I’ve got to get back to business at the parole office. I’m behind on my cases.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  I don’t want to,” he murmured. She stood very near, and his breathing became shallow. “Slater will look after you,” he added softly.

  “Don’t worry about me.” She placed one hand on his chest. “Take care of yourself.” They stood so close he could smell the light fragrance of her soap or shampoo. He placed his hand over hers, felt his heart begin a steady thumping, wondered if she could feel it.

  She smiled wryly. “Besides, I’ve got you on speed dial, remember?” She looked fresh and innocent, a façade for the steely determination he knew lay beneath the surface.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Slater will investigate the police department.”

  Moments passed before either moved. Then it seemed the most natural thing in the world when he lowered his mouth to hers for the briefest brush of his lips across hers.

  Sergei huddled in a corner at the end of the alley by Jesus Saves. He knew he should tell someone what he’d seen, but he also knew his English was not so good. Officer Cruz had been looking for Angie. He would believe Sergei. Maybe.

  He’d always been suspicious of the police who hassled the homeless people on the street. He shouted at them, called them dirty names, treated them like dogs, like the soldiers Sergei remembered as a boy in Russia after the fall of Communism.

  He took another long gulp from his vodka bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had an alibi for the night Dickey Hinchey had been murdered. Sergei had been housed in the Methodist Church with all the other homeless people.

  But tonight he was on the street because of the drinking. He couldn’t go in the van for a nice dinner and a warm place to sleep if he was drinking.

  What if the cop killed Angie and they blamed Sergei, who had no alibi tonight?

  No, it was better to keep his mouth shut and stay alive. Who would believe him over the word of a Rosedale policeman? No one.

  As the vodka worked its paralysis on his mind and body, Sergei wasn’t sure he himself believed what he’d
seen. Maybe it was all a figment of his imagination, the alcohol convinced him. Maybe he was an idiot.

  A land owner, surveying his property in preparation for selling it, found Angie Hunt’s body. The figure of a small, dark-skinned woman lay in a culvert – unmoving, battered, bloody, and bruised – dead, the farmer thought at first.

  He looked up the long length of the mountain, saw the disturbed brush and dirt.

  How could she have fallen that distance and survived? When he put his aged fingers to her throat, he noticed the ugly, bluish-purple ring around her neck, but found no pulse. He shifted his fingers, searching desperately for any thread of a heartbeat.

  Nothing.

  He dialed emergency services, even though the reception was spotty in this part of the foothills. No luck. The farmer was elderly and his truck was parked a half mile away. It couldn’t negotiate this rocky terrain.

  Could he move her that far on his own? She looked sleight, almost weightless, but at sixty-nine he was a weak shadow of his younger self. He sighed heavily, but knew he had to try. Couldn’t just leave the poor little thing here even if she was already dead.

  The animals, the carrion birds – no, he couldn’t do that.

  He sighed deeply, a religious man, who believed in signs and miracles. If she was dead, moving her wouldn’t matter. If he left her here to get help and she was somehow alive, she’d likely be dead before he got back.

  He raised a quick prayer to heaven and made his decision. Bending on creaking knees, he lifted the woman into a sitting position, then hefted her over his shoulder. She was heavier than he’d imagined, or maybe he was weaker than he believed.

  God help him, he thought, as he staggered his way back to the truck. It was the longest half mile of his life.

  Chapter 57

  “We found Angie Hunt,” Slater said as soon as Cruz picked up his cell phone.

  In the parole office, Cruz clutched the receiver close to his ear, sucked in a deep breath, afraid to let it out. “She’s alive?”