The Angel Maker lbadm-2

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt spelled Sharon Shaffer's name for the man. "I doubt it's a recent file. I'll wait," he said in anticipation. As he assumed, he was placed on hold. He would have to check central processing using another-line. "Lou?" Daphne asked, eyes squinting, lips pale.

  Boldt felt impossibly hot. The seconds grew into minutes. He thought: I should hang up right now. I should leave this for others. I should stick to my family and my piano playing, because if it turns out … It was Henderson telling him what he didn't want to hear. He wouldn't need the results of the Professor's tests. Not now that he had this. He felt sick to his stomach.

  Daphne had desperate eyes. She had already guessed. "Lou?"

  How did you put something like this to Daphne? Why, as a cop, were you always the bearer of bad news? "Sharon Shaffer is in the Bloodlines database. Three years ago she was a regular donor."

  Daphne gasped. "I think the harvester's struck again." He looked over at Agnes Rutherford, her blind eyes steady and untracking. "And she's our only witness."

  Sharon Shaffer looked on as the black man in the kennel next to hers came awake for the first time. She remembered the terror of that moment and could do nothing to warn him of the horror he was about to experience, nothing to lessen its effect. The dogs started barking; she knew he would awaken-it had been the same for her. She couldn't remember exactly when. Had it been just yesterday? It seemed more like forever.

  He looked around. Surprise. Astonishment. Terror. He clearly noticed then the chain-link cages; and a moment later, his own nakedness. She knew that his head ached miserably from the drugs just as hers had.

  He spotted her then. She tried her best to communicate with her eyes, for her jaw was now held in a modified dog muzzle made of nylon webbing, one strap of which ran across her mouth, keeping a gauze rag stuffed into place to prevent her from crying out, as she had to this man. She felt responsible for his being here. She was responsible. His jaw was secured in a similar muzzle, although the gag had been omitted, probably because the doctor feared he might vomit on coming awake, which he did, repeatedly. She had to wonder: Was it the effects of the sedation or from looking at her? She could only guess at what she must look like. A bandage glowing a lurid pink at the edges. She had pale skin the color of cigarette ash. Her hair was matted flat. Or perhaps that expression of his arose from the dogs and their horrid smell. The deafening barking at the slightest instigation. It would take him a while to adjust to their situation, but she needed him to adjust-to settle down.

  To help her escape. She was going to get out of here, with or without him.

  She thought that if only she could stop him from what he would do next, she could spare him some pain. But the muzzle and gag prevented her from speaking; she could only grunt and gesticulate. And that, only quite weakly. She had little strength, drugged as she was by whatever was in the IN. It felt like a combination Valium-Demerol to her. She was experienced enough to know. When she thought about it, it brought on resentment and anger, rage and indignation. She had spent the last three years of her life learning to live sober. Now, forced on her, she found herself drugged up again-enjoying the feeling, wanting more. She looked up at the precious drip, drip, drip of the IN. Worst of all, she couldn't bring herself to disconnect the tube. If anything, she wished it would flow faster. She could take more.

  She had always been able to take more … Despite her efforts to warn him, her neighbor reached out and touched the chain-link door of the 4, cage. He actually laced his fingers into it and shook it with his considerable strength. He must have heard the collar sound its electronic warning-the buzz-but like her on her first time, he didn't associate this sound with the pain that would follow. And like her, he would learn soon enough.

  She watched as his fingers met the cage, as a blinding pulse of electricity stung his neck, and literally knocked his knees out from under him. She heard his head thump against the cement as he wilted. His bowels loosened and he fouled himself. He lay there staring up at her, flat on his back, the pain, fear and terror so great in his eyes that she felt herself break into tears. A maddening frustration stole through her, and briefly she found enough strength to sit up, to sit forward and be as close to him as possible.

  As his strength returned, he reached for the shock collar, and despite her shaking her head in discouragement, he tried, in vain, to rid himself of it.

  How clearly she remembered those first few minutes; they seemed so distant now. He would deny his situation at first. She knew. He would think: This can't be. This is impossible. Then, as reality sank in, as his muscle strength returned, as he began to assess, to realize the hopelessness, he would recoil. A minute later he sat in the center of the cage, wrapped in the fetal position, sobbing and mumbling incoherently. "Impossible What did I do? Can't be …" He mentioned God, he mentioned his parents. He glanced over at her several times, but seemed not to see her. He retreated.

  She sat back onto the burlap and waited. In time he would come around. Given time, he would come to realize they were a team now and that their only chance of escape was to work together.

  Her one single hope remained that he would come up with a plan.

  After all this time here, she saw no way out. Like the IN. in her wrist, she was stuck here.

  Not long after that-she could not determine the passage of time because of the drugs and the suspended states in which she found herself-the ground rumbled. A car! The dogs paced restlessly inside their cages.

  She turned quickly to her neighbor, charged with adrenaline. She shouted at him through the gag, able to win his attention but unable to communicate. She resorted to an archaic pantomime, pushing her hands along the cement as if to say, "Clean up!" Demonstrating that he should scoop up the vomit and excrement and get it into the bucket left as a toilet. When he failed to respond, she twisted her face angrily and screamed, shaking her fists, and then pointed to the door. "It's him!" she mumbled. She grabbed hold of her collar and shook it. That reached him. He sat up with a jolt. Again she motioned that he must clean his cage. Her panic contagious, she drove him to it. He worked quickly, glancing over his shoulder all the while, both at her and the door he expected to see opened any second.

  Miraculously, he got most of the mess into the bucket at the last possible moment.

  The door rattled as The Keeper fumbled with the lock.

  The dogs erupted into barking once again. Sharon covered her ears. The door opened. The Keeper was dressed in a business suit. He was smiling. "Good morning," he called out, sounding more like Captain Kangaroo than the madman she took him for.

  Elden Tegg walked down the narrow cement aisle that separated the two sides of the kennel, carefully inspecting the inhabitant of each cage. He knew the medical history of each of these animals. He had grown to love them. Each and every one despite-or perhaps because of-their nasty dispositions.

  "Time to eat," he said, pushing the wheelbarrow to each cage, the bag of dog food precariously balanced. At the end of the run, he reached the two newcomers, Sharon and Washington.

  Sharon was huddled modestly in the corner, looking at him through the muzzle he had cleverly rigged out of nylon strapping. Her contempt for him never left her eyes, although he intended to correct that by harvesting her right cornea. "Come on," he said to her, encouraging her to show him her incision. When she failed to obey, he reached for the remote device that controlled her collar, threatening to use it. Use of this device had the same effect as coming in contact with the wire-it triggered the collar. She sprang into action, obediently duckwalking toward him, paying careful attention to her I.V. She clung to modesty by keeping folded up on herself. "Let the doctor see," he instructed, enjoying the title. He could care less about her nudity: It was the incisions that held his interest. His insistence on leaving the two of them naked had no basis in voyeurism. A determined person could hang himself with clothing. He couldn't afford to lose her, that was all. He waved the remote again, and she turned herself for him. The skin around her ban
dage was slightly pink but not bad.

  He motioned her back into the far end of the cage and let himself inside, the shock collar's remote "wand" constantly in hand, constantly a threat. He changed her dressing, removed the muzzle, took her temperature-ninety-nine and change, nothing to worry about-and replaced her I.V. of Ringers solution with a fresh one supercharged with Valium, a dash of Demerol and a higher dosage of antibiotics. He gave her new gauze for her gag, returned the muzzle, and handed her a bucket of a Quaternarybased disinfectant they used at the clinic. He stood by and watched her as she scrubbed the pen's floor. He directed her to a few missed spots and then took the bucket back, convinced of the pen's cleanliness. Locking her inside he told her, "Cleanliness is next to godliness."

  He turned and faced Washington. "Welcome," he said. "You're insane," Washington whispered. Tegg went rigid. His first temptation was to shock him, but he resisted. He had never felt clearer. "Sticks and stones," he answered. "She needs medical attention."

  Tegg shot back dismissively, "What do you think I just gave her?"

  Sharon grunted at her companion, waving him off, asking him to stop.

  Tegg added, "Perhaps you need some medical attention."

  "Perhaps you do," Washington protested.

  Tegg understood that such charges, if left unanswered, gained validity in some perverse way by simply having been spoken. He picked up the "wand" for this man's collar and reminded him with a short little zap! Washington responded with a spasm of pain. "You are out of your element. I would watch my accusations if I were you."

  Washington backed into the corner. "Don't do t is."

  Tegg objected, "Do what? You don't even know what this is about.

  This is about basic needs. This is about life and death.

  That's fairly simple, isn't it?"

  He clearly wasn't getting through. Tegg paced the center aisle.

  He couldn't describe his present feeling. The air seemed to be vibrating, his thoughts precise-as in the middle of an operation. He felt righteous and angry-why was he forced to defend such obvious logic?

  He checked his watch: eight-twenty. From the top of the hill closer to town, the cellular would operate. He could call Pamela. She could reschedule some of the morning appointments and be out here in a little over forty minutes. Why waste a specimen like this? he thought, pausing by Washington's cage. Make the most with what you've got. "Some lessons," he told the young man, "are better learned first-hand." He returned the shock collar's remote device to its hook on the cage, clearly confusing his captives. "Remember our little skirmish yesterday? I certainly "won't allow that to happen again." It wasn't a confusing situation to Elden Tegg: With a strong specimen such as Washington, the dart gun was clearly the only way to go.

  "This is my son Miles."

  "Hello, Miles." Dr. Crystal Light Horse, a transplant surgeon on the University of Washington's-the U-Dub's-medical staff whom Dixie knew through his lecture series, wore an oversized lab coat and a laminated name plate that included the hospital's insignia. She seemed young for a practicing surgeon, mid-thirties. She was a Native American with laughing eyes, barn-wood brown. She pursed her lips whenever Boldt spoke, her attention focused on him as if she were looking down a gun sight.

  Boldt wondered at all the social obstacles she had overcome to get here.

  He said, "We tried Miles in day care for about three days, but we noticed this look in his eyes," he explained. "Do you have kids?"

  it Two. "Then you know what I mean."

  "No."

  "You see that look?" Boldt asked, pointing at his son. "That sparkle? Well, that's him, you know? And after day care," he waved a hand in front of his own face like a magician, and acted out the transformation, "gone. just this glazed look like no one was home."

  She bristled. "Both my children went through day care, and I never noticed any such thing." "As a surgeon," Boldt asked, "have you ever had to remove a person's foot from his mouth?"

  That won a smile. "Thankfully, no." She added, "It's a good thing you're a policeman. It looks as if you have a kleptomaniac on your hands." Miles had stolen a fountain pen off her desk-expensive by the look of it. Boldt wrestled it free and returned it. Miles promptly grabbed it again. His father stole it back and fed him a Bic.

  Her office was buried in books and papers. He worried that she might be one of those more-diplomas-than-you-can-count type-A educators, quick to lecture, short on substance.

  He explained, "I need to throw a hypothetical situation at you.

  I'm involved in an investigation that is really more your field than mine, and I'm at a loss for specific leads to follow."

  "A scent."

  "Exactly."

  "I'll do what I can."

  "Let's suppose you're a transplant surgeon which you are-who, for one reason or another, finds herself in need of a great deal of money." "You're broke."

  He nodded. "You're broke and you hear that overseas or maybe right here in this country, this city, people are willing to pay big money for certain organs."

  "There's no evidence that in this country-" He raised a hand, interrupting; he didn't want her getting ahead of him. "Now as I understand it, in transplanting something like a kidney, you would want the donor to be blood type O."

  "Not accurate: You would prefer the donor organ to match the recipient's blood group exactly."

  "But to sell?" he inquired.

  She bristled again. "Type O might indeed make it easier to sell," she agreed. "Type O is the largest, most common blood group, and Type O organs have the lowest rate of rejection in transplants into any other blood group."

  He suggested, "So, if you put yourself in the roll of the harvester-"

  "The procuring surgeon," she corrected. "We don't like the word 'harvester."' "Nor do I" He completed, "How would you, as the procuring surgeon, locate a potential donor with blood type O?"

  "The procuring surgeon is looking for cadavers.

  I suppose the first resources I would draw upon would be the hospital morgue, the Medical Examiner's office, and any of a number of mortuaries."

  Boldt took notes. Miles took his pacifier out and threw it across the desk at Dr. Light Horse, who scooped it up, brushed it off, and offered it back to him. Miles liked that. He accepted it gladly and sucked noisily. Boldt asked, "And if those resources weren't available to you or were exhausted for one reason or another, what then?"

  She offered him a cold and puzzled look. "You're not suggesting?"

  "What am I suggesting?"

  "Someone living?"

  "It's possible, isn't it? I've read about Egypt, India …"

  "But those people are desperate for money.. "There are people desperate for money in this country as well-in this city as well."

  "But it's different there," she protested, clearly upset, "in terms of professional health services. It's true that some Third World countries have limited resources, limited access to technologies such as dialysis. The reason for the high prices, for the whole transplant mess in these parts of the world is that without those transplants people die. It's different here. Much different."

  He admired her vehemence. She was morally and ethically undone by what he was suggesting. "Which means that your market is overseas, if I'm reading you right."

  "Now you're scaring me."

  "Good." He wanted her scared, because he felt scared for Sharon Shaffer, for whoever else was scheduled next for the knife. "Here in Seattle?"

  "You can't quote me on that," he said.

  She thought long and hard. "Blood type? Depends what kind of resources you have, I suppose. You would need computer access, of course, but what comes immediately to mind are hospital records, the Red Cross, the insurance companies. Any of those databases would be likely to list blood type. / "A plasma bank?" he asked. "Just exactly how far along in this investigation are you?"

  He handed her several autopsy photos of two of the incisions.

  "Dixie suggested you have a look at t
hese."

  She studied them thoughtfully. "Anything special?" he asked.

  She continued to look them over. "Perfectly competent closures.

  Although the incisions are a little large."

  As Boldt wrote this down, one of his notes caught his eye. "What kind of team does he need? How many assistants?"

  "It depends on which organ we're talking about and which procedure." "Kidneys," he said. "Harvesting kidneys."

  "For a kidney procurement it's helpful to have an assistant. But again, I'm thinking in terms of cadavers," she corrected herself. "A live procurement? An anesthesiologist, a surgeon, a nurse or two." "Could it be done with less?"

  She nodded. "A surgeon and an assistant at the bare minimum." She added, "You'd be busy."

  Miles was getting restless. Boldt contained him, but lost his train of thought. "Have you thought about where this would be done?" she asked. "A location?" Then in a professorial tone of voice: "I see problems with this premise of yours. First, when a procurement is done in a hospital, the organ becomes part of the system. There's an airtight system in place. There has to be, because of the public's wariness about the whole transplant process. It's called UNOS-the United Network of Organ Sharing. The procuring institution assigns the organ a UNOS number. The recipient of that organ is assigned that same number. It all has to match. There is a paper trail a mile long the moment an organ leaves a body-hearts, kidneys, livers, marrow, it doesn't matter. The procuring surgeon lists an organ's destination as part of that paperwork the name of the hospital or organ bank. The paperwork follows that organ everywhere. The organ is transported in specially sealed and labeled ice chests. It's all computerized. UNOS does an incredible job. I just don't see how someone could get away with what you're implying."

  "And if the procedure was not done at a hospital? Could I get an organ into the system?"

  "That's just my point. You can't without a UNOS number. No surgeon is going to touch an organ without the proper paperwork. At the end of every year UNOS follows up on every single organ procured or transplanted. Numbers have to match. If your numbers don't match, you come up for review-you're in deep trouble."