Redzone

by William C. Dietz

  Lee remembered the drone and the split-second decision to duck. Had that been the difference? She was alive, so maybe it had. “I need to make a phone call,” she croaked.

  “No you don’t,” the EMT countered. “We know who you are, the police department was notified.”

  So all Lee could do was lie there while the ambulance pulled into the hospital’s parking lot and came to a stop in front of the entrance to the emergency room. She wanted to get off the stretcher and walk in, but the EMT wasn’t having any of that.

  So Lee was forced to remain where she was as the attendants pulled the stretcher out of the van, allowed the undercarriage to deploy, and wheeled her inside. There was a brief pause near the front desk, followed by a short trip to the treatment area. Then came a flurry of activity as a nurse took her vital signs, and Lee stared up at the stylized sky on the ceiling. She could see the sun, plus some fluffy clouds, but no drones.

  Then the privacy curtain parted to admit a small woman. She was wearing a white coat over OR scrubs. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Doctor Wu . . . How do you feel?”

  “As if I was hit in the head.”

  Wu laughed. “Your sense of humor is intact . . . That’s a good sign. Do you feel dizzy? Or nauseous?”

  “No, but my head hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Wu said sympathetically. “Please turn your head to the left. Let’s see what we have.”

  Lee turned her head, winced, and tried to look stoic as the bandage was removed. “You have a scalp laceration,” Wu announced as she examined the wound. “But I’d say you got off easy given what happened. Five stitches, maybe six, and you’ll be good as new! We’ll have to shave a small area around the wound. Sorry about that.”

  “Can I go home?”

  “Probably,” Wu replied. “We’ll see how you’re doing once the stitches are in place.”

  Wu injected a local anesthetic into the area around the cut and went to work. It took less than fifteen minutes for Wu to close the gash, apply a small bandage, and declare Lee fit for release. A nurse gave her some pain pills, and she took two.

  That was when Jenkins appeared. There was a frown on his face and a look of concern in his eyes. “Cassandra? Damn, girl . . . You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry,” Lee said. “The sky fell in.”

  Jenkins turned to Wu. “Can she leave?”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. She should be fine. But if she feels dizzy or nauseous, bring her in.”

  Lee thanked Wu, allowed herself to be wheeled outside, and felt a little light-headed when she stood. But that passed as Jenkins helped her into the passenger seat of his car. “So,” Lee said, as Jenkins got behind the wheel. “What the hell happened?”

  Jenkins pulled out of the loading zone and steered the car toward the street. “That’s a damned good question. Wolfe’s looking into it. But, pending further investigation, it looks like the Bonebreaker took the bait.”

  “Really? With a drone? That’s way outside his MO.”

  “True,” Jenkins conceded. “But who else would do such a thing? Maybe the press conference spooked him . . . Maybe he’s scared. I’ll check with the shrinks to see what they think.”

  “Good idea,” Lee said. “What’s Ayeman up to? Is he busy updating my personnel file or something?”

  Ayeman was her supervisor. Normally, he would be the one to rush to the hospital, and Jenkins was well aware of that. He kept his eyes on the road. “Ayeman has a lot of meetings scheduled for today. I left a message for him.”

  Lee smiled thinly. “Tell him not to worry . . . I’ll turn the personnel assessments in on time.”

  * * *

  Lee made a point out of arriving on time the following morning and took a lot of good-natured ribbing as she crossed the bull pen. “Hey, Lee,” one detective said, “don’t sit near a window!” She flipped him the bird and kept walking.

  The drone attack was all over the news by then, and Lee had been forced to say, “No comment,” over and over again as she hurried from her apartment to the car that had been sent to pick her up. Now, as she entered the conference room, there were more jokes mixed with a bit of sympathy. “The motor pool wants their car back,” one officer said. “What happened to your hair?” another wanted to know. “It took a hit.”

  “Ignore the cretins,” Yanty said as he pulled a chair out for her. “We’re glad you’re okay.”

  Ayeman entered as Lee sat down. Wolfe was two steps behind him. And when he took a seat, Wolfe sat next to him. “Good morning,” Ayeman said. “As all of you are aware, someone tried to kill Detective Lee yesterday. Thankfully, they failed.

  “We have no way to know who initiated the attack, but unless we receive information to the contrary, we’re going to assume that the Bonebreaker was controlling the drone. The shrinks think he’s scared. If so, that could explain his departure from his past MO.”

  Yanty raised a hand and got a nod. “Regardless of who did it, where was the shadow team at the time?”

  Lee smiled. Yanty might look like a CPA—but he had some balls. Based on their facial expressions, it was easy to see that neither Ayeman nor Wolfe were pleased. They couldn’t dodge the issue, though. “Would you like to take that one?” Ayeman inquired, as he turned to look at Wolfe.

  Lee watched as Wolfe’s eyes shifted from Yanty to make contact with hers. “Of course . . . The simple answer is that the possibility of a drone attack never occurred to us. We fucked up. It won’t happen again.”

  Lee was pleasantly surprised. Wolfe was willing to take responsibility. That made quite a contrast to pass-the-buck Ayeman. Maybe I was wrong about her, Lee thought to herself. And maybe you weren’t, the other Lee countered. It ain’t over until it’s over.

  Having successfully avoided any blame, Ayeman nodded. “I, for one, appreciate Lieutenant Wolfe’s honest appraisal. Now that we know about the danger, we will take steps to prevent such attacks.

  “Detective Lee, if you feel up to it, please make yourself available for a press conference at one o’clock. We’re going to pull the Bonebreaker’s chain. Who knows? Maybe he’ll show up in person next time. If he does, we’ll nail him.”

  Roll call went downhill from there as Ayeman covered a variety of topics including a ten-minute dissertation on how important the personnel assessment process was. Prospo fell asleep halfway through the lecture—but came to when Lee nudged him.

  Once the team was dismissed, Lee returned to her cube, where she forced herself to fill out assessment forms on both of her subordinates, studied the statement Molly had e-mailed to her, and took a pain pill before reporting to the sun-splashed plaza.

  The second press conference was similar to the first except that it had a more militant tone. “There’s a coward out there,” Ayeman said as he read from a prepared statement. “A lunatic who tried to assassinate Detective Lee with a homemade drone. But I’m happy to say that the attack failed—and she’s standing here beside me. Detective Lee?”

  That was Lee’s cue to step in front of the mike, look perky, and deliver a largely fictitious report about how much progress had been made. The press had lots of questions about the drone attack, but experts were present to deal with the technical stuff, and that meant Lee could fade.

  She was supposed to meet Yanty down in the garage at two and got there with time to spare. By visiting the personnel department, and raising a fuss, Yanty had been able to obtain McGinty’s real address. A place the first set of investigators missed because they, like everyone else, assumed that the chief lived with Cheyenne Darling.

  Yanty was at the wheel and clearly knew where he was going as they drove to the south side of the downtown area. It appeared that McGinty, like Lee, preferred to live close to work. The address they were looking for was emblazoned on the front of a nondescript apartment building. It was a boxy affair that had an ugly parking lot out front with two graffiti-covered Dumpsters sitting off to one side.

  After parking in a slot ma
rked VISITORS, Yanty told her to wait while he went looking for the manager. He had spoken to the woman earlier and was armed with a search warrant. Under normal circumstances, Lee would have gone with him but was grateful for the chance to take it easy. The detective was back ten minutes later. Lee got out of the car. “The manager says McGinty wouldn’t let anyone enter the apartment unless he was notified ahead of time,” Yanty said. “So we’re the first ones to go in since his death.”

  Yanty led her inside. An elevator with a cracked mirror and threadbare carpet carried them up to the fourth floor, where the smell of what Lee recognized as Indian cooking permeated the air. Yanty led her to apartment 407, inserted the key into the lock, and motioned for her to move aside. Then he unlocked the door, took a step to the right, and gave it a push.

  The double-barreled shotgun went off with a roar—and sprayed the opposite wall with double-ought buck. Both detectives drew their weapons as Lee called out, “Los Angeles Police! Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!” A man down the hall stepped out into the hall to look around and went back inside when Yanty flashed a badge at him.

  Not having received a reply, Lee took a peek around the corner. Gun smoke eddied in the air. The shotgun was clamped to a sawhorse. Wire cables led from it to pulleys and from there to the door. “It was a booby trap,” Lee said. “How the hell did you know?”

  “I didn’t,” Yanty confessed. “It pays to be careful, that’s all.”

  “You are a fucking genius,” Lee said admiringly. “I’ll call the bomb squad. Who knows what else might be waiting in there.”

  It took twenty minutes to get the bomb squad on-site, and Lee had a headache by then. Yanty took her back to headquarters, where she requested another car and drove it home. Lee knew that the walls had eyes, but she was too tired to care. The moment her jammies were on, she went to bed. Sleep pulled her down.

  * * *

  Lee overslept the next morning, missed roll call altogether, and went to visit Jenkins. If he was upset about her tardiness, there was no sign of it on his face. “There are two possibilities,” he said, as Lee took a seat. “The first and most obvious is that McGinty hoped to bag the Bonebreaker. But it could have been the other way around as well. What if the Bonebreaker killed McGinty, went to the apartment, and rigged the shotgun?”

  “And?” Lee prompted.

  “And we don’t know yet. Not for sure. But it’s my guess that McGinty’s fingerprints are all over that shotgun. That’s why he told the manager not to enter the apartment without talking to him first.”

  “That makes sense,” Lee agreed. “Plus, prior to the drone attack, the Bonebreaker always did things the same way. And it’s a stretch to think that he abducted the chief, locked him up somewhere, and went to the apartment to set a trap.”

  “Exactly,” Jenkins said. “We’ll see what, if anything, the forensics people come up with. They’re processing the apartment now.”

  “Good,” Lee said. “In the meantime Yanty, Prospo, and I are going to look at all of the past suspects. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Be careful out there,” Jenkins cautioned. Lee promised that she would and left.

  Thus began the long, tedious process of checking to see which suspects were still alive, which ones were on the loose, and where they’d been on the day of the abduction. And in the wake of the drone attack the police had another filter to apply. Given the complexities involved in building a drone, even one that came in a kit, the profilers had reason to believe that the Bonebreaker was an educated man.

  So days went by, the headaches disappeared, and Lee’s hair grew back. During that time, the team took a second look at a retired science teacher with a penchant for sadomasochism, a computer programmer who enjoyed killing cats, and a priest who had switched his allegiance to Satan.

  But the science teacher was confined to a wheelchair, the programmer was in prison the day McGinty disappeared, and the priest had been killed in an auto accident. And Chief Corso was getting antsy. Operation Thunderstorm was sucking up a lot of valuable resources, and the department had nothing to show for the effort thus far. And that was bad for Jenkins since the whole thing was his idea. But things changed when Prospo phoned Lee and asked her to join him and Yanty in a conference room on the seventh floor.

  Lee got off the elevator and made her way down a long hallway to Conference Room 7-J, which was located next to an emergency stairwell. When Lee opened the door, it was obvious that Yanty and Prospo had converted the tiny space into their own mini–operations center—complete with pieces of paper taped to the walls and a big stack of cardboard boxes, all of which were marked as EVIDENCE.

  A table occupied the center of the room, and both men were seated at it. Prospo was halfway through a candy bar, and Yanty was typing on his laptop. “What the heck is this?” Lee inquired as she took a look around.

  “It’s where we drink coffee and take naps,” Yanty replied. “And every once in a while, we do some work. That’s how we came up with a grade-A, number one suspect for you.”

  Lee felt a rising sense of hope. Prospo and Yanty were good detectives, so if they had a suspect, there was bound to be some there-there. “I like it,” Lee said as she sat down. “Tell me more.”

  “His name is Arnold Kaplan,” Prospo said, as he pushed an eight-by-ten mug shot across the table. The man in the picture had a receding hairline, dead eyes, and a soul patch on his chin. “This piece of shit was halfway through medical school when he stabbed his wife to death, dismembered her in the bathtub, and used a secondhand vacuum sealer to package the body parts. Then he took the packaged parts out of the apartment house one or two at a time and drove to who knows where. He never told anyone.”

  Lee’s eyebrows rose. “How do we know all of this?”

  “We know because Kaplan’s wife thought he was banging her sister—and placed tiny surveillance cameras all over their apartment three days before he killed her,” Yanty replied. “And when Kaplan reported his wife missing, and a couple of patrolmen asked to take a look around, he couldn’t say no. Not without looking like he had something to hide. One of the boys in blue was a sharp cookie. He came across the wireless recorder, checked to see what was on it, and blamo! Case solved.”

  “Okay,” Lee said. “But the guy’s in the slammer, right?”

  “Wrong,” Prospo said. “All this took place back in 2051. About a year later, the bastard escaped custody while being transported from the North Kern Prison to Tehachapi. And he hasn’t been seen since.”

  “The first murder took place in 2053,” Lee said. “So he was out and about at the right time. But why?”

  “Revenge, pure and simple,” Yanty suggested.

  “It fits,” Lee said cautiously. “Kaplan is educated, has a demonstrated willingness to kill, and knows how to butcher a body.”

  “So?” Prospo said hopefully.

  “So let’s find the bastard.”

  * * *

  Even though Arnold Kaplan would have preferred to delegate such chores, it was his experience that “pickups” couldn’t be left to others, not if he wanted to keep the donors in tiptop condition. He was riding shotgun in the long, gleaming hearse as it oozed through traffic. Check all of the lights before you depart and drive at five miles per hour under the limit. Those were just two of the rules that Kaplan’s employees had to obey.

  And, if the police stopped the hearse, what would they discover? What they expected to discover . . . A body in a coffin. Never mind the fact that the wino wasn’t dead but heavily sedated. That would escape all but the most rigorous examinations, and very few people wanted to get up close and personal with a dead body. Cops included.

  Of course, transporting the donor was the easy part. Identifying a good “pick” was more difficult. Age was the chief criterion, because the older a homeless person was, the more damage one could expect to the donor’s liver and kidneys. And Kaplan prided himself on supplying top quality “meat” to his clients
in the red zone.

  Although nearly all mutants were disfigured in some way, most could live fairly normal lives. But there were those, perhaps as many as 5 percent of the mutant population, who would die without an organ transplant. Most had to settle for hearts, lungs, or livers harvested from other mutants. But that was far from ideal.

  No, those who could afford to pay wanted to receive normal organs. And to get them, they had to depend on suppliers like Kaplan, who maintained a citywide network of “spotters.” It was their job to locate healthy candidates and summon the hearse. Then, once the order was filled, Kaplan would ship it east.

  The driver turned into the drive and followed it up and around to the rear of the two-story funeral home, where Kaplan’s staff hurried out to meet it. The wino would be dead in fifteen minutes, fully processed by 10:00 A.M., and on the way to the red zone by noon. Then it would be time to make the drive to Malibu and Kaplan’s oceanfront home. Life was good. And so, come to think of it, was death.

  * * *

  After sharing the information about Kaplan with her superiors, Lee received the go-ahead to follow up early the next morning. Eleven years had passed since Kaplan’s escape, and the case was ice-cold. That made it difficult to know where to start.

  The team was gathered in Conference Room 7-J for a brainstorming session. “Kaplan will have a new identity by now,” Lee predicted. “And chances are that he’ll look different as well.”

  “True,” Yanty agreed. “But his skills are the same. He can’t practice medicine, but he could get work as an orderly, a lab tech, or something like that.”

  “Good thinking,” Lee said. “Although it will be damned hard to sort through such a large population.”

  There was a moment of silence followed by a comment from Prospo. “There’s another thing he can’t change . . . And that’s his relatives. Maybe he cut them off, and maybe he didn’t.”